When your days sometimes start at five am, with a three year old lying in the bed next to you peeing on your leg and a baby nursing at your breast and your eyes half open with sleep it can be hard to think about the things you love about being a mom.

Because just two hours away is the chaotic rush to school, to find socks that fit each pair of feet, and shoes that match each other, before all the spots in the parking lot are full.

So when asked by Mama Kat, at mamakatslosinit, what I really LOVE about mothering it took me days. Every time I thought I had it there would be a potty training accident, or a fight over nothing more than the air they breathe ending with a blood curdling cry and an equally scary bite on the back. And I’d be back to square one. Wondering what is there to LOVE about this CHAOS? I mean really.

And then it hit me. Well, sort of. Once I finally had a second to think. (AKA the big guy dropped off at Kinder, the twins in preschool, and the baby asleep) I realized just how much I really do LOVE my kids.

Even as they fill the planters with the garden hose and splash in the mud, Or paint the picnic table while Daddy’s holding the baby and mom is out running errands with the boys, because mom is out running errands with the boys.

Why? Because they have an incredible endless and insatiable ability to LEARN. Sure I may not look like I’m loving it all in the moment as I struggle to get three muddy kids to the tub without making a disaster of the floor I just cleaned. Or paid to have cleaned, depending on the day.

But in these quiet moments, three hours twice a week to be exact, I can really appreciate it. Marvel at it. And even see the beauty in the way they explore, test their limits, and dare to take risks, in ways that only children can.

The way the Big Guy remembers two years after the fact that the circle on a butterfly’s wing is meant to look like an eye in order to scare predators off. Because by then I have forgotten how he almost ran in front of a moving car in the parking lot on the way to the Butterfly pavilion.

None the less it is an amazing thing. Watching my kids learn. Like the crazy mad scientists that they are. Over and over in a million different ways. Even if more often than not it also results in me sprouting a few extra grey hairs each and everyday!

So don’t mind me. I’ll just be the crazy Elvira looking lady trying to keep them alive long enough to see adulthood.