1130 pm, 2 am, 3 am, 330 am, 415 am.....every parent has a night where you look at your clocks and think "How are you not exhausted, kid?" You try nursing, rocking, walking, bottles, gas drops and nothing works. Whether it's mama or daddy, it matters not.

So, you wake up....or just get up starting out tired. You walk into the kitchen and bump the bouncer that your child doesn't tolerate anymore and grab the coffee pot. You pour out day old coffee on top of day old dirty dishes. You hear baby trying to escape the UFC level cage set up in the family room. You grab him and as you think it will be a nice, quiet snuggle-nurse session...you feel poop on your leg.

However, as you walk down the hallway trying not to get your child's stools anymore on you than they already are, you smile. You smile because you're not the person you were before they were here. Your shallow need for perfection, success, and popularity go out the window. There's a liberation from expectations the world gives. Because it doesn't matter what heels you might wear with your new dress if there's poop on your leg.

You corral your human puppy and meander back to the once wonderfully decorated front room. You place your coffee cup next to yesterday's coffee cup on the side table and soak in your insanity. You soak it in because it's the hardest thing you have ever done but also the most awesome. Tears form in your eyes as you look at your beautiful child full of life and of you.

You don't care what others might think if they looked into your messy floors and dirty dishes. You don't care what others might think of your unwaxed eyebrows and  unkept hair (hey, someone wanted this fine body at least once....I got a baby out the deal).

You don't care because the awesomeness of family is far bigger than petty cares.

Yup. And now there's spit up on your foot. So you have to stop writing and get to the mop because some of its on the floor, right next to some dried, old spit up from 3 am......