I am a young mother. Or so they tell me.

   So I have some kids. A few of them. Not a ton. I know a lot of women with a ton of children, all a year apart, whom they dress in homemade designer clothing and feed homegrown jam and read to five hours a day. I am not one of those women. But I feel like I can safely say that we're in the throes of what some might call "young motherhood", and thoughts on the subject have been percolating in my brain. (You see how I used the word percolating there? That was totally gratuitous. Just to remind myself I know some big words. One of those young motherhood things, probably.) Sometimes young motherhood is awesome. Take today. When it took my daughter four hours to pick up a dozen toys. Reminded me of the time my mother wouldn't let us come out of our closet until we cleaned it. We were in there all day. Mom brought us dinosaur macaroni and cheese to eat in the closet. Best day of my young life. I wonder now if my mother was relieved to have us so happily contained. Probably. Smart lady.

   Today I went to a relief society meeting. That was a smart move, because Jessie sits with the bishop Wednesday nights, so we got to bring all the kids, and they love field trips. Madeline terrorized the nursery. Spencer terrorized Daddy's lap. And Kimberly spent three minutes in nursery, thirty minutes in the hall climbing all over the stroller with dad, thirty minutes in the relief society meeting driving trucks on seats and flipping the lights, and five minutes stealing pudding from the treat table. I got her down the hall by confiscating her pudding and using it as bait to lure her. She cried the whole way and people looked at us funny. I gave them my "young motherhood is glamorous and I know you are jealous" look, which is a great look for me. It should not be confused with the "I feel like a circus freak show and probably should not be in charge of multiple small children" look, which is what it looks like on most other women, but not me, because I'm cool like that. Then I dragged several small children out the door crying loudly for their father. Home to their beds where they thanked me profusely for getting them to bed at a decent hour and feeding them vegetables and washing their laundry.

   Sometimes we are a circus when we walk out the door. Sometimes we're loud and unruly. Sometimes I feel like dishing out a round of spankings or hiding in the closet and eating macaroni and cheese. Sometimes when there's a lot of kicking and screaming and the kids are kicking and screaming even louder than me, I think to myself, "Wow! This is making me really passionate about having lots more babies! 500 of them!" Young motherhood rocks. But seriously. It does rock. Because sometimes a pudding faced kid is the last straw, and sometimes they are the perfect photo op.