Right now I'm sitting in a pile of cheerios. No really. I am. I was going to clean them up but then I decided to blog instead. It's like college when I was going to write my paper but instead I ate cereal and watched entire seasons of Friends. It's procrastination at its finest, mommy blogger style. I learned this new trick of the trade from my friend Sarah. Brilliant.

Yall. This morning was chaos.

Utter chaos.

I'm not sure what happened to my children or my dog. But I blinked and an atomic bomb went off in my house. I woke up to a clean house, but now... after rounds of picking up I'm still not quite sure what happened.

So I started taking pictures of it to make a flipagram... because I wanted to remember this. The hilarity of it all. And I was going to post it on Instagram... bc that's what i do when technically I don't have time to blog but I want to capture something before it's lost in the abyss, aka the thousands of pics/videos stored on my phone that I never see again. But then I started writing a caption... and it was forever long. And at that point I was like... what the heck... leave the cheerios on the floor, leave the toys, put some saved Jen Hatmaker HGTV episodes in the background for some inspiration to eventually clean (one day... not today), and blog on. So here I am.

And here's my flipagram of the morning.

I mean. Noel picking her nose. I told her to smile... and she picked her nose. Meanwhile Felicity was literally climbing our banister. You just can't make that stuff up. And although it's hard to believe, our house was 100x's messier before round 1 & 2 of clean up.

Crazy town.

And I wanted to capture this #reallife post because... let's all be real here, our lives aren't nearly as put together as we'd like for them to be. They aren't nearly as pretty as our instagram feeds. And there is NOTHING wrong with capturing the good. I love looking back through all our photos and remembering those great memories that are highlighted and preserved via social media. But I also think, for me, it can be really healthy to show the mess. The clutter. The child picking their nose. I need to be reminded that although it can be a real pain at times... real life and all of the chaos that comes with it can also be a joy. And MOTHERHOOD has been the greatest example of that for me.

When I was pregnant I really thought my daily schedule would look differently. I thought would calmly teach my well behaved & good natured children life skills while playing fun learning games and singing songs about Jesus. My children would not even want to watch the television. I'd have a pinterest inspired learning station instead of a play room, and my kids' favorite food would be a tie between spinach and kale! Bless my poor ignorant pre-kids heart.

Yall. I'm not saying we don't try those things from time to time (except the kale. Um no. Just never). We do try to teach them life skills. We do sing them songs about Jesus and we play fun learning games. And while that is a lot of what motherhood is, it is also spilled cheerios, having your clean house wrecked in .2345234 seconds, wiping tears, and kissing boo boos. It's telling them no AND telling them YES! It's splitting up fights and finding your kids in the weirdest places (like on top of our buffet?). It's joy in the chaos and being crazy in the calm. It's doing everyday life with little sinners, and them doing it with bigger ones.

It's REAL life.

And when I look back on all the fun "picture perfect" moments, I also want to see a shot of spilled cheerios here and there... bc I have a feeling that one day, when my house is in order and there's no little people running around... I'm going to miss my floor being covered in chaos.

Much love,

#RealLife: Cheerios.