Sometimes I snap pictures of Lo just to capture the moment. It is pure instinct with no real in-depth meaning, but then I go back and I look through the camera roll on my phone, and I stop and I am in awe at the beauty before me. Those messy curls, those morning eyes, the tiny features of her nose and cheeks. She still looks little to me. She still feels small. Yet, when I scroll through my phone’s photos to last fall or the fall before that, I realize how quickly time moves and how much my little one has grown.

It is not for the faint of heart this motherhood thing. It shakes you, tires you, and rattles your core. The good indeed outweighs every bad. How could it not? Just look at her. I melt to a puddle every time I see her.

And one moment I could be scolding her for taking a pen to my painted white walls, telling her at her age she should know better and watching the little light and her head fall in shame. Yet, a minute later I find myself cuddled up to her on the couch rocking her, calming her, and feeling all the guilt of being so hard on her, run quietly through my veins.

That is how motherhood works.

There are days I indeed beg my husband for a much-needed break. A time to check-out of worrying about everything and managing our day-to-day. Just some hours alone to be one with me. Yet, when he willfully complies and even sometimes absolutely agrees and takes our daughter for some daddy/daughter time, I find myself alone, missing them, checking on her through texts to him, and cutting my time short just to be reunited with the lovely chaos of life with a three-year-old.

That is how motherhood works.

I celebrate her every milestone with pride and relief. She is at a point that she is becoming self-sufficient. She will tell me when she is hungry or thirsty, with no more guessing. She uses the potty on her own,  she will run in the bathroom and start her own bath, and if I am not quick enough, she will run with her bath towel wrapped around to her bedroom and put on her training pants and pj’s without my help. It has given me freedom. It has, should I dare say, made motherhood easier. Yet as baby number two’s due date nears, I find myself looking at her and yearning for her dependence. The days she really needed me and when I was constantly hands on.

That is how motherhood works.

And the nights, oh the nights. The nights when she can’t sleep unless she is tucked into our queen size bed, and like a magnet, laying up against me. Oh, I complain the next morning. My back hurts, my neck is stiff, I tossed and turned and nudged and moved her until the alarm forced me to my feet. Yet, when we try really hard to create a routine and talk up sleeping in her own bed and praise her the next morning for a full night across the hall, I feel a pang of longing for my messy haired baby to want me in the middle of the night and find her way to my arms.

That is how motherhood works.

It is the ultimate emotional pull. Take every emotion one may experience, throw them into a well-worn brown paper bag, shake it really hard, and open it up so the emotions come rolling one by one out into the world. That is motherhood.

I look at her now and the pictures of her then, and it hits me… time. Sweet, time. It is why motherhood works so very hard. Because we as mothers know that the saying is so true, that “the days are long but the years are short,” and as we check off another, we let a strand go.

It is the guilt, the sting, yet so much wonderfulness. It is a push when you want to pull. A no, then a sudden yes. It is boundaries and spontaneity. It is that bag of emotions spilling out that you rush around scooping up to place back in.

That is how motherhood works.