I absolutely, deeply, truly adore being a Mom.
Don’t get me wrong—there are times when I am exhausted, drained to the point of tears. But those moments don’t put a dent into the joy of having my kids in my life.
No matter how much you plan out your life when you’re thinking about having children, you can never really plan for the many ways their presence in your life just amazes you.
Here are 3 surprising reasons why I absolutely adore being a mom.
Being a mom, you get to experience unconditional love.
My favorite thing about being a mom is loving my kids. My next favorite thing is being loved right back.
My kids love me no matter how crazy my hair looks, or how stinky my morning breath is. They love me at my worst and at my best.
Sticky hugs and wet smooches are kind of gross, but also absolutely perfect. And the “I love you more than…” competition we hold all the time is more touching than any conversation I’d ever had before.
Right now, my kids are still little. So I am breathing all of this ongoing love right in— I hear the little stinkers get a tad bit moody as teenagers. Well, since they are not there yet, here are all the things they let me do.
They let me snuggle their little necks almost every day, and get nose-ys by rubbing our noses together in a show of affection.
As I drop them off to school, I get to do a little good-bye routine with both sons, consisting of head kisses, hugs, and “have a good day, be a good boy” speeches with my eldest…
And a hug, kiss, then hand pound leading to hand explosion routine reminiscent of a bro-to-bro greeting with the littlest.
I get to tease them by sniffing their “stink” arms and having tickle fights…
And they love every minute of it just like I do.
Loving my kids was something I expected to do. I just truly didn’t realize that they would also love me back just as much!
Being a mom, you get to have a house full of laughter.
Kids are absolutely hilarious. When Axel was little, he used to rock out to two songs by Rihanna. It was completely unexpected the first time he did it and completely cracked me up.
Before he could even enunciate, he would sit there in his car seat, shaking his head and clapping his hands to the rhythm, occasionally shouting the words or lines he knew or liked the best. All the high energy ones of course.
My husband and I just adored it and sang along with him the entire car ride.
It is no surprise that the first time he ever really spoke in public was to belt out a tune on a mic for his preschool graduation. I cried and laughed at the same time.
Then there was the time that Idris won at hide-and-seek…even though he almost gave us a heart attack in the process.
The kids always hid under a blanket after bath time, certain they had completely disappeared. We would pretend to have just found them every single time.
They slowly expanded their hiding places, giggling audibly as we “searched” for our missing children.
One day, Idris ran to hide. But we didn’t realize it for a few minutes, until Axel called out looking for him. He didn’t respond as usual, nor did we hear any giggling to pinpoint his location.
After a few moments of true panic (he had learned to open doors, so we were worried he may have gotten out or hurt somewhere), we found him hiding between the couch and the back wall.
And he absolutely cracked up as soon as we found him. So did we. Idris had learned to properly hide…and gave us panic attacks in the process.
Not a single day passes where something funny doesn’t happen in our house. It’s either something the kids did, we did, something we saw on television, something from our memory.
Our house is one often filled with peals of laughter, and joy.
Being a mom, you get to start every day with morning cuddles.
It is 4:46 AM as I type this up. And snuggling along the length of my body is my preschooler Idris. He should be asleep, but I took an early shower this morning at the noise woke him up…
I foresee an early bedtime for him tonight.
It actually doesn’t matter what time I get up, there is always a bright, welcoming face there to greet me. No matter what mood I’m in or how worried I am about my day, my kids don’t care about all of that. They come and shower with love, hugs, and kisses as soon as their own day begins.
I’m not going to lie, I used to get frustrated with them when I tried to get up before everyone to squeeze in additional tasks for the day. But one day I sat back and really thought about it.
It dawned on me how blessed I was to be this loved, and how much I should appreciate it before they have grown and left to have families of their own in a blink of an eye.
So I stop my never-ending task list to bask in their cuddles, and shape my body to cradle my children as I work…if they let me get back to work.
Sure, I don’t get as much work done as I would like to sometimes. But, I wouldn’t exchange those sweet moments for anything in the world.
I had certain expectations about being a mom, but there were so many things that I had not expected. Through all of lifes ups and downs, good times and bad, my kids are still the greatest gifts I have ever been given.
They make every day worth living. And I couldn’t imagine being this happy in a world without them.
What about you? What are your top favorite things about being a mom?
Comment below, let’s discuss!