We have a lot of feelings in our house.

On the way to school this morning, Charlie Mac had a lot of feeling about his pants. They kept “coming up” and he DID NOT like it. Everyone in the car knew it. Everyone in the cars around us knew it. The houses we passed heard the news. Charlie Mac was not happy. (These pants were fine last week, btw)

By the time we pulled into the school, my nerves were frazzled. I was white knuckling the steering wheel and counting down the minutes until a teacher opened that car door and he climbed out.

Then he saw a house all decorated for Christmas. He suddenly exclaimed, “Elle look at those Christmas lights!” And all was right with the world again.

As parents, I think we do our best to try to anticipate and prevent these dramas from happening. It’s why we always carry snacks and a change of clothes. It’s why we never have just one special blanket or stuffie. It’s why we make food that we think they will eat, often regardless of nutritional value.

More often than not, these unreasonable and unpredictable tantrums throw us off guard and leave us scrambling to manage emotions that are normal for kids, but incomprehensible to our adult minds.

A few nights ago, we had an unexpected emotional situation with one of our older kids. For their privacy, I won’t say which one. Our older kids are now 10 and 11. Despite my best efforts and my own personal desires, they have both learned about Santa Claus. It was a sad day for me but I try not to dwell in the inevitable, so here we are with big kids helping us keep secrets and most importantly, hide the elf. If you don’t know about elfs, you must not have had young children in the last 15 or so years because it’s all the rage and all the cool kids have them. Just kidding, it’s actually quite a hassle. But if you’d like to read the story of our elf – here it is.

Anyway, one of our kids learned about Santa months ago. Unbeknownst to me, he had been planning some serious elf shenanigans since this time. He was looking forward to his new role and quite possibly, feeling a little sentimental that this piece of magic was gone. Well, the other child just officially learned about Santa on November 30th, the night before the ELF’s arrival. He immediately asked to hide him. I agreed.

Chaos ensued.

The child who had been planning the mischief, was devastated. My big ol kid cried his eyes out because he didn’t get to hide the elf.

I had unintentionally foiled his plans while trying to soften the blow for the other one. It felt like an impossible situation, as they often are. And I hope, hope, hope that this is what it feels like when you are doing it right…like sometimes there is no right answer and so we do the best we can.

My mind went round and round on how to diffuse this situation. I felt like my son should “grow up,” but who am I to tell him what he can and can’t get upset about.

I found myself a little stuck. Do I make a big deal over this? Do I revoke the privilege from the one child and give it to the other because he pitched the biggest tantrum? Do I tell him to grow up, get over it, it’s just an elf? Do I allow him to tantrum all over the place, steal the joy from his brother and drive the rest of us a little nutty?

It was so crazy for a while that I couldn’t get a clear thought on what to do. I had the one crying child, the other flabbergasted child, a frustrated husband plus my own emotions, all while trying to wrap up the day and get ready for bed.

As I put on my pajamas and climbed into bed, I heard my son, still crying on the couch. And I just knew, in the quite moment before bed, that yes, I want him to “grow up” . . . whatever that means (that’s a post for another day) but he IS going to grow up. He just is. And everyone, everyone in the world is telling him he needs to. He goes to school everyday where he is learning how to move in the world. He is making new friends and navigating tough social situations. He is on his own so much more that he was even 1 year ago. And in our house, he can just be. He can cry over the elf. He can cry because he didn’t get to go first. And he can cry because growing up is hard.

And I want to create a home where it’s ok to feel emotions, even if others don’t understand. We don’t always have the time or capacity to dwell in those emotions, which is honestly, probably a good thing. But, you can feel them. It’s ok to be human.

So, I went out to the couch and laid with him while he cried. I apologized for not realizing how important this was to him.

As I laid there with him, I was reminded of the Avett Brother’s song, “Well you send my life a whirlin, darlin when you’re twirlin on the floor. And who cares about tomorrow, what more is tomorrow than another day. When you swept me away. Yeah, you swept me away.”

I listened to this song more times that I can remember as I nursed this newborn, played with him on the floor of his nursery and rocked him to sleep.

And I knew that going out to him on the couch, apologizing and giving him the space to feel, was the right thing to do. I needed a quiet minute to get there but when I did, it was perfectly clear.

Admittedly, it can be very hard to get a quiet moment to have a clear thought. Most of the time, it isn’t possible, there is too much noise, too many emotions, too much to do. This is the reality of raising kids. But IF and WHEN I can, that quiet minute to go inward, to pray, to listen, is when I have the most clarity in this freaking bananas parenting circus.

I think the best mothering is inside of us. We know through our intuition, through our creator, through our ancestry, how to care for these babies. I believe that my kids and I are meant for each other, that we are uniquely, universally and divinely created for one another, but finding a way to access that mama in a very noisy world isn’t alway easy.