Beautiful Chaos
I was doing a Target run through a couple months ago and, naturally, ended up browsing the dollar section before checkout because what even is a Target run without a good dollar section find?
Anyways, I saw a rug (I think? It’s very thin so would actually not be a great rug) that said “welcome to our beautiful chaos” and felt so very known. Went home and nailed that baby to the living room wall.
I genuinely don’t know a better way to describe our season of life than that. So much beauty and also so much chaos.
When I look back on the past year for us, particularly since Judah was born, I see so many sleepless nights, a couple ER visits with E, a ton of doctor’s appointments and also those terrible couple weeks battling lice (the worst). So much of the past year has been exhausting and draining and overwhelming. The transition from one to two kids did not go as easily in real life as it did when I imagined it in my head.
But I also see Eliot becoming a big sister, Judah’s cackling at his sister’s attempts to make him laugh, Jackson working from home and getting to be around for so many milestones. A few family roadtrips and so many Saturday morning donut runs.
As we are finally settling into more of a rhythm and both kids are (mostly) sleeping normally, I feel like the fog is slowly lifting and I’m realizing that beautiful chaos is pretty much our normal now.
There are very few days that I don’t feel like are mostly chaos. Cleaning potty accidents and dirty diapers, grocery store runs, trying to keep the peace between kids and the nonstop cycle of fixing meals and snacks and then cleaning the dishes and then repeating that all.day.long.
But when I sit down at the end of the day after we put the kids down for my precious 2 hours of peace, there are very very few days that I don’t also see so much beauty.
I think it’s really easy to be constantly caught up on the areas we fail in and need growth in or the moments that our kids created a lot of stress or when things just didn’t go right. And those moments are real and they are stressful and exhausting and I’m not minimizing that. I just think it’s really important, vital even, that we take the time every day to recognize the beauty.
So I’m really trying to make more of an effort to make myself sit in these moments of beauty, everyday. When Eliot says something hilarious or when Judah smiles at me from across the room. When they share sweet (and usually very short) sibling moments. When I get to hug Jackson at the end of a long day. The list goes on and on of seemingly small but really beautiful amazing moments that go on around me every single day.
“Beautiful chaos” are most moments of most days around here, and that’s really fine with me.