Giving Thanks for my Guys

I'm thankful for my dudes. Not the legions of them lined up outside my door hoping to get a glimpse of my smokin' hotness (oh wait, that's the trash man and the meter reader), but the ones that are presently destroying my house in the process of simply being themselves.

Right now, one is naked except for a hooded hippopotamus towel and a dragon hand puppet, and he's running around the house calling himself "Super Hicko."

One is using coffee filters (swiped stealthily from the kitchen cabinet) to draw and write on. Things like, "Leishmaniasis is caused by a parasite" and pictures of mountains with smiley faces and unibrows. He's using the coffee filters because he has already used up every other available scrap of paper in this house. He is also naked.

One is wearing a diaper on his butt, an oven mitt on his hand, and a stainless-steel mixing bowl on his head, bellowing "I fire-man!" through a tube-shaped vacuum attachment.

And all of them have painted toenails, because while I was painting mine the other day, they asked if they could have theirs painted too. Although they insisted on blue because "it's a boy color."

They're a mess: literally and figuratively. And I gripe ... a lot. Because sometimes - okay, most of the time - being their mom is a dirty, exhausting, and largely thankless job. I deal with poop and clogged toilets and flooded sinks and "experiments" gone wrong and squabbles and knock-down drag-out fights and embarrassing questions and crumbs and stickiness and smudges and mud and unidentifiable crusty smears on my clothing.

But I'm thankful. So thankful. As hard and as frustrating as it can be, I wouldn't have it any other way. The richness and color they bring to my life is immeasurable, even at their most mischievous. And the joy I feel seeing them just being brothers - or watching the love and pride in my husband's eyes as he interacts with them - far surpasses any feelings I ever had before they came along.

I'm thankful, too, for the new life growing inside me. Yes, it's going to be even more crazy and hectic around here - but this new little person is also going to add another layer of happiness and love. Another facet to the sparkling jewel of family.

So here's to the catastrophic clutter and monumental messes. The tattling tales and the super-exaggerated stories. Because they're just a by-product of something special that, no matter how much I complain, I wouldn't trade for anything.

Now that I'm finished being sappy (hormones, maybe?), it's time to break out the stretchy pants - 'cause I'm fixin' to do the other thing that preggos do best: put away some mass quantities of food! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!