Welcome to Moms’ Month on Dr. Stephanie! This month I will be featuring guest posts from some awesome moms around the country. They will be sharing tips, tricks, and funny stories about motherhood. This will be a fun celebration – thanks for joining us! Today’s author is Ariahn Knoedler. Welcome, Ariahn!
Hi, I’m Ariahn Knoedler, mother of four girls under the age of six. I am a church accompanist and play piano for other things occasionally but mostly, for the last five years, I’ve been busy with my babies. I distinctly remember the first day after I quit my job as a financial advisor and chose to stay home with my only child at the time. She was about 15 months old and it was a gorgeous day.  I took her outside in her diaper with a bunch of finger paints and let her make a disaster. I will always treasure the sweet leisure of that memory and I feel so thankful that I’ve had more moments like that than I have had moments where I have felt overwhelmed and out of control.
Fourteen months ago, I had twins. The biggest way I have grown as a mother over the last year has been to yield to the chaos a little, to make myself open to others, and to accept help. Before children, I worked hard to make it seem as if I always had it all together. The last couple years, the friends and family who have supported me have come to realize there are ALWAYS about five loads of laundry piled in my laundry room, my kitchen floor is a mess with the remnants of the last “cooking show” the big girls and I have “hosted”, there’s marker and nail polish all over my beige carpet, and the remnants of two or three crafts can always be found in any given room in my house. I like to think of my home as happy chaos.
The moms I know, whether they have come to this point of motherhood through adoption, through a planned pregnancy, or through the shock of unexpected multiples, are doing the very best they can. They are an amazing, strong, diverse, and beautiful group of women. If I had one piece of advice I could impart it would be to take a breath and accept the mother you are. There is so much pressure to do everything perfectly, and perfection is simply not possible with these little tornadoes, but a (mostly) happy chaos is.