I sometimes get angry or tired or angry and tired at my girls. They can be such a drainer on energy and patience at times. But then, once every so often, I get blessed (maybe blasted!)with a simple moment of pure love from them, when I least expect it. And I forget all the frustrations and tiredness and instead, am so sweetly reminded of my vocation as a mother and how it is all so worth it in the end.

Tonight, when I walked out of my room after a conference call to get a snack, I was accosted by a family of cranes sitting on the dining table flying in formation. In the silence of the night, as my girls lay sleeping and I lay awake working, it brought such a big grin to my face, melted the weariness away from my bones and lifted my spirits.

Yes, my kids are a handful and it means I don’t get a lot of time to myself, that my home is always way too noisy, that my clothes and bags often get smudged by dirty hands, that I always have to carry packs of tissues and wet wipes in overladen “mom-bags”… But at the end of the day, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world, not when there are cranes to look forward to.