Every time our family has grown by one of these beautiful little girls I have grown to understand a little more that raising them is pretty darn challenging. They are each their own little person. Yes, ours all look exactly alike. Pretty much triplets separated by a few years time, but oh how different they are and oh how differently they need to be parented.
Lucky for me we have just embarked on two weeks of school holidays, aka two weeks to spend every minute with all three of them, aka two weeks to test my ability to parent all three of them differently all the time. Thankfully now as we round the corner towards the end of Emma's second school year I have a better grasp of how I think these two weeks will play out (well I think, but let's be real they will probably throw me a curve ball this go around). This first week, especially the first few days will be particularly challenging, with bickering, complaints of "what are we doing today?", moping around the house with boredom, and testing all of the boundaries. Near the end of the week most likely we will start to settle into the holiday lack of routine and enjoy more of our time together; argue less, create and laugh more. But for now the end of a busy day one has come to a close and I'll prepare myself to wage battle for day two. I'll look at the gorgeous family photos we had taken back in May when I knew I would want to capture these fleeting moments, no matter how challenging they are.
I remember now that they challenged me on this day. It was mothers day and they doted on me for a few minutes when we first woke up but as the day wore on and our photo session approached they stopped listening and prepared to run carelessly around the beach. More or less flirting with our photographer in an attempt to get her to photograph themselves more than their sisters; according to their own plans for this quick photo session.
But just like in life I should just trust God that he's got it figured out and the photos are going to turn out just how I want them to (well plenty of them did NOT turn out that way, but plenty did too). It surely won't be according to my plan but we will get there trusting that our way is not always best, and often not best. And instead we should just take a deep breath and prepare for the ride because He's got our back even when we stumble and fall and ultimately knows just the right way to get us to where we need to go. I'm going to try to remember that tomorrow by escaping out of the house before they can poke me awake with some question that is surely NOT how I envisioned my day beginning. And I'm going to be excited to hear the "mama" when I open the door upon my return home. And I'm going to try to remember how cute they are, and the beautiful moments captured in these photos before I think of anything else.
Like I said, there were plenty of photos that did not turn our exactly how I envisioned. This last one is still one of my favorites. This is real life. We wanted that one last perfect family photo before the sunlight was too dim and no one was having it. Tomorrow will look like this at some point and there will be pushing and shoving and sand being stuffed in a mouth (maybe not sand, but something stuffed in a little mouth). And we will sort it out one challenge at a time.
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