Yesterday it was pouring. 

Today the sun is shining. 
I’m snuggled under a mountain of blankets while a toddler in a red knit sweater climbs all over me and kneads my mama-belly with her scritchy scratchy hands that are ungentle in a very toddler kind of way. Not unkind. Just lost in the sensation and entirely unaware of any unpleasantless experienced by the person on the receiving end. 
Wren is thirteen months, fourteen days. Thirteen and a half months. Close enough to fourteen months, apparently, for her to plow headfirst into the restless sleeplessness that that month has always marked for me. Nursh nursh nursh climb climb crawl. All. Night. Long. 
I handed her to Alex as soon as it seemed close enough to morning to be more fair and less unkind. And he took her from me for as long as one can take a toddler going through a growth spurt. 
He returned her with an apologetic accompaniment of coffee, which I sipped as she warmed her freezing cold hands against my skin. Toddler hands are somehow always a totally different temperature from the rest of their sweaty little bodies. 
Motherhood is a practice in tolerating extremes that somehow average out over time and become nostalgic memories. At least this is what I have come to believe. 
My ten year old shows up with one of the orange partitioned kids plates. He has made me eggs. With a chocolate chip smiley face on them, and a side of saltines. He’s still experimenting with flavor combinations. Some are interesting. Some are… experimental. Chocolate on eggs is not a flavor combo I would have ever otherwise thought to try. 
The toddler steals my saltines, turns them into bed crumbs for me. 
Yesterday it rained. (And watered my garden)

Today it is sunny. (And feels beautiful.)
Today it is the sweet overbearing well intentioned lovely kind of mother’s day that children create on their own. 
Keenie will gift me dandelions and other wildflowers picked without stems. 
Alexander will crush me with the wiggling hugs of an almost seven year old boy.
Wren will shower me with crumbs.  
And I will look back on the remarkable love and delight my own mother showed us all over the years as we appreciated her in the way that only children can appreciate mothers. 
Happy Mother’s Day, Mumsy. We shall visit you soon so you can have flashbacks to when the lot of us were small wiggly people intent on populating your head with… remarkable stories. ❤