Overwhelming. Beautiful.

I was dragging my big kid around the grocery store on my back. My 15 KG weeks-away-from-four-years-old big kid in the Ergo carrier. She was screaming at the top of her lungs “I WANT BREAD!!!!!” because I wouldn’t buy white bread for the sandwiches that we don’t even eat. 

All this was was after she threw herself on the ground next to the tomatoes, pounding the floor tiles with her feet. This was after I put her back in the stroller for the fourth time. After I told her for the eighteenth time, I know you’re upset and angry, but in our family we don’t eat white bread. After I got a staredown from several passers by. After a man in a business suit scowled at us. After I wondered how I was going to manage how I would get everyone home, but we really needed milk, so ugh, soldier on.

I picked her up, swung her onto my back, clicked on the Ergo closed, and pressed on. I pushed the stroller, dragged the basket, lugged the diaper bag, and got the groceries. BREAD!!! I WANT BREAD!!!!!

And then next to the cookies, I burst out laughing. Because what else was there to do, really? My very big kid, streaming with snot, strapped on my back, hollering at the top of her lungs about bread. Me balancing a basket and a diaper bag, pushing a stroller, while the infant sat, oblivious to the mayhem behind him, contentedly playing with his blanket. 

I laughed because this is just real life. You can dress it up in pretty pictures and perfect outfits, but still. Kids lose their shit in the vegetable aisle next to the tomatoes. Parents try to hold it together, sweating through their shirts while they lug around a child, to big really to be luged anywhere. Parents lose it too, collapsing in a fit of anxious giggles, or frustrated tears, watching in as words they thought they’d never say tumble out of their mouths, “Would you just give me five minutes of peace, PLEASE!” after a stream of mummy?! mummy?! mummy?! x infinity for two hours., and my god I just need to hang up this laundry and buy a carton of milk, and when exactly is bedtime?

And then thirty minutes later you’re browning butter and making cookies. Tracking down a bed sheet to build a fort, mummy!? mummy?! mummy?! aaaaarrrrrrhhhhhhhh!!! cuddling and then reading a book and then shouting JUST PUT THE TOYS AWAY NOW, PLEASE and then sticking a band-aid on a stubbed toe, wiping away tears, and I know baby, it hurts, I’m here, then brushing teeth and ready for bed.

That’s what real life looks like these days. Messy and overwhelming in beauty and frustration, and constant need of something, mummy?! mummy?! mummy!? Can I tewl you someting, mummy?! . 

 

A few weeks ago we did a family photo shoot. My friend Becks came round one morning and captured our real life; messy hair, crying babies, stray coffee cups and all.  I love the pictures she made because they speak of how we really live. They show our kid glued to the iPad, breakfast eaten crosslegged on the floor, the paints on the table, the pompom on the couch, the kid who wasn’t in the mood to pose for pictures, or brush her hair, the half-closed eyes, the faces not quite turned to the camera. It’s the beautiful imprecations, the overwhelming gorgeous real life we live. 

My friend sent them to me this evening, and they came on the right day, after the screaming and the snot and the sore back and the constant movement and ever present need, and the cookies, and books, blanket forts and stubbed toes. I needed that reminder that the overwhelming is beautiful and it's all overwhelmingly beautiful. 

I’m so glad we took these pictures. They’ll stay with me and remind me of this time in life when Hugo was three months old and just had his injections, and Stella wanted to go on a picnic, but only wanted green peas and Easter chocolate, and I still had baby weight to lose, and everything was messy and real and so very perfect anyway. 

You can see the whole shoot here. And you probably should, beacuse, yowzers.