Last Friday I had one of those mornings. The kids had both been up during the night, and Jacob decided that 6:00am was a fine time to wake up for the day. It was a school day and I was trying like crazy to get Hannah moving but was meeting with no success. She decided she needed her ‘sister’. Her sister is constructed by piling our various dry goods containers one on top of the other. I think she refers to the tower as her sister because it’s roughly the same height as she is.

This is a game that causes Jon and I to cringe, because these containers are full of flour and rice and all sorts of food that we don’t want spilled everywhere. And being only 4 Hannah’s structural engineering is a little lacking. For example, it doesn’t occur to her that larger, heavier containers go at the bottom and smaller, lighter ones at the top. Plus, on this morning we were running late and she was supposed to be eating breakfast when she started her construction project.

You can guess what happened. Hannah’s sister toppled, and the popcorn went everywhere. It took every ounce of strength I possessed not to cry. Popcorn rolls, making it very hard to sweep up. Particularly when I have to do all my cleaning one-handed as Jacob will not be put down. I don’t know what I really expected motherhood to be like. Spending my mornings in a sleep-deprived haze, arguing the merits of breakfast with a 4-year-old, holding a crying baby, and attempting to clear popcorn off the floor was certainly not what I anticipated.

But then I looked more closely. The popcorn was really rather pretty spread across the laminate in the early morning light. I decided that I would enjoy the beauty instead of melting down. I got out my camera and captured the moment. Sometimes all that you can do is take the little bits of beauty that fall your way amidst the chaos of life with kids. Because otherwise you will go start raving mad.