Sometimes balancing motherhood and managing your home means that the only time you have available to go grocery shopping is late on a Saturday night after the kids go to bed. Like, 11 pm late. And sometimes because your husband is a small business owner undergoing an extreme amount of stress, that means coming home to a house full of sleeping people. And sometimes, while unloading all of the groceries by yourself in the middle of the night, you start to feel like no one gives a rat’s behind that you are doing what you are doing so they can eat breakfast tomorrow.

But at least the house is quiet.

So, maybe if they don’t notice, it’s okay. Maybe instead I can take a few minutes to notice them. I can look and see how peaceful Jack is when he sleeps. How the slow and steady movement of his little chest while  he breathes is evidence of God’s most perfect miracle, human life. I can look at my husband, who works so hard and deserves every single moment of sleep he can get. I can listen and hear Ava, Ella, and Dallin snoring away in the next room, grateful for them and their clean squishy faces. Hell, even our dog is cuter when she sleeps.

It’s okay if they don’t thank me while guzzling down their orange juice tomorrow, or thank me for noticing that we had run out of napkins. They won’t notice, and they shouldn’t have to. What they should notice, and I hope they do, is just how much I love them. How I would go to the moon and back again for them.

Even if that means going to Safeway alone on a Saturday night.