When my life was very clear and perfectly manageable and I had all the answers to everything, which is to say, back before I became a mother, I'd sometimes see other parents with their children and think, Absolutely not. I will never do that when I have children of my own.

My list of "nevers" was firm and my resolve was strong. There was equipment I was never going to buy: anything loud or squeaky; anything that took up more space in a room than a couch; anything that was made of plastic, especially products with colors so bright they made your teeth hurt.

I was never going to be one of those parents who interrupted the person they were speaking with, mid-sentence, to issue directives to their kids, stop picking your nose this instant, because it was just so rude. My children would never be fussy eaters, or unappreciative of gifts. They wouldn't say naughty things, or be mean to each other, or me.

You know where this is going, right? I mean, no plastic? Did I even have a hope of sticking to these plans? Every last one of them, tossed over the wooden porch railing like so many plastic play fruit I find dotting the lawn below, making it seem as if our house has been the site of a wild, raucous party culminating in a great mock-food fight.

My closets are crammed with loud and squeaky toys; until we "shared" it with another family, we had a giant plastic slide in our dining room (in loud, bright colors, of course). I can't remember the last conversation I had that didn't involve an interruption of some sort; one of my boys will only eat bacon, peanut butter toast, and milk. We've had our share of frowny-faces when the firetruck wasn't the exactly-right firetruck, or when the big box wrapped in shiny paper contained a sweater.

Everyone in my family has been called a poo-poo head by everyone else, at one time or another, and I've been told that I'm mean and that I don't love them or worse, that they don't love me.

Too, I've been up all hours of the day and night drenched in any manner of fluids; I've eaten more sandwich crusts and salt-less pretzels and de-icinged cupcakes and almost-finished Popsicles than I could have ever imagined. I've slept: standing up, sitting down, lying on the floor, leaning against a wall, tucked in a corner, and yes, even once on a toilet.

I've answered the door with peaches in my hair; with round, black rings around my eyes from the time we all drew silly faces on each other (those markers that say they are washable really aren't, in my experience); with my nursing top mis-buttoned or my pants on backwards. I've worn mismatched socks, mismatched underwear, mismatched shoes (by mistake of course).

All of it, and we haven't even reached the teenage years yet.

There are bigger things, too. I never thought I'd wait until I was in my 30s to begin having kids. I didn't think we'd have any trouble conceiving, or that there would be a four-plus year gap between my kids' ages. I never, ever would have guessed twins; and of course, Avery. Never once did I imagine myself the mother of a child with special needs.

If there were a way to go back in time and speak with the young woman I once was, I don't know if I'd do it. I don't know that I'd be able to explain to her that the things she's holding on to are all the wrong things: that happy children are more important than the way your house looks; that interrupting because your children are speaking to you means you are paying attention to them; that the words my kids use to describe their feelings about a gift that disappoints them or their thoughts about each other or their impressions of the world around them are completely their own, and that even when they say the wrong things, it's their right to say them.

Or this: that someday, I'd be grateful that I'm not that woman I used to be. Instead, I'm more likely to listen before I speak. I'm more likely to consider all my options, whatever they might be. I laugh more. I play more. I try new things; I make-it-up-as-I-go more. Being mother to my kids has required me to reinvent myself a thousand times, and each new version feels like an upgrade.

Which isn't to say it's been easy--change never is, for me. I'm the kind of person who would still be wearing my very first favorite pair of wedge-sandals with the leather straps that my 12-year-old self bought with her babysitting money, or the fantastic poncho with the big pocket in front that I wore all through college. But no, life is change.

The other day my son Bennett and I were walking home together. The sun was behind us, and as we walked, our silhouettes cast long shadows in front of us. A big one, and a little one, holding hands. He's at the in-betweens: in-between 4 and 5, in-between a toddler and a child, in-between his older brother Carter and his littler one Avery. He has so much ahead of him--it's as if he's standing in front of a door, almost ready to walk through. But it's scary.

For a moment, his shadow disappears into mine. Then it reappears. He notices, and begins playing with it, making it go, then come, then go, in and out of mine, in and out of me. His shadow begins to run and mine follows, chasing him all the way down the lane, laughing and giggling, until I spread my shadow-arms wide and wrap them around my shadow boy, envelope him in my mama love.

From our house to yours, Happy Mother's Day!