It's Worth the Messy Mess

I'm celebrating my survival of 14 messy days with my three precious grand babies, their parents, and all their baby stuff. It was touch and go and not without tears but those were due to a turkey incident when tensions were especially high. Incidentally, I do not have a good track record with turkeys. I remember another memorable year when we had guests that were not family and the turkey was simultaneously raw on the inside and charred to a crisp on the outside. Those guests never returned to our house for Thanksgiving and I don't blame them. Turkeys are not my friends.

Laura and Kristen on the other hand are my very best friends and my favorite people to be with and are in a very messy season of life with their little ones. And by messy, I mean my sweater getting soaked when Bridget's diaper was apparently saturated immediately after visiting Santa. The adorable cousin picture with Santa that we got was worth that mess. Being with them was also worth the mess of baby stuff covering every surface high and low in my house. This is huge for someone who is unable to go to bed with dishes in the sink or pillows out of place on the couch. I would have taken a picture of the family room but was unable to find a place to perch where baby or beast or baby item was not. It was worth the mess to spend one evening watching and laughing at home movies when Laura and Kristen were babies and I let them eat pop tarts off the floor. This horrified these sanitized millennial mommies but I stand by my parenting. Pop tarts are my friends.

Although I purchased paper plates and plastic cups to use, somehow they were hardly used. Instead our dishwasher had to be loaded and run continually to keep up with the dishes that were dirtied. This mess was worth having Lucy help me make reindeer cookies and an "apple bie" just to hear her say "apple bie" and watch her lick the sugar off her entire hand. A girls got to do what a girls got to do for the sweet stuff!

I also got to keep Wyatt for his very first overnight, giving Kristen and Ben a brief time away. Getting to bathe Wyatt's little body as he babbled and splashed in the big rubber duck and later having him fall asleep in my arms at bedtime was too sweet for words.

Though I am glad to be able to see my floor again, I already miss seeing their sweet morning faces. I know that the next time I see them, they will have grown up a little bit more. I am blessed to have these little people in my life with all their unbearable sweetness. They are definitely worth the mess.