It’s winter in Namibia. That magical time of year when your breath fogs up the air, the kids are home for the holidays, and your house becomes a battlefield of blankets, cereal crumbs, and suspiciously sticky surfaces.
Mama Chaos (that’s me) wakes up at 6am. Not by choice—but because Child #2 has decided that 6am is the perfect time to scream-cry about how unfair it is that Child #3 “looked at her funny.” Meanwhile, Child #1 has taken it upon himself to microwave biltong… in tinfoil.
The microwave no longer works. RIP.
I’ve got emails piling up, a Zoom meeting in 10 minutes, orders for my little home business waiting to be packed, and a half-finished design that I swear was going to be my best seller—if only I remembered where I saved it.
The kids are somewhere in the house—either fighting, laughing, or plotting my downfall. I step over Legos (barefoot, naturally), dodge a rogue wet wipe (why is it wet? Why?), and head to my “office” a.k.a the dining room table covered in markers, glue sticks, and half a peanut butter sandwich.
Child #3 enters with a snot trail worthy of a horror movie and asks me what’s for lunch. It's 9:15am.
I tell them, “air,” and they seem satisfied for now.
By midday, I’ve taken three calls, burned two grilled cheeses, shipped one order (go me!), and managed to sketch out one and a half new designs before Child #1 sneezes directly onto my laptop keyboard. I’m 83% sure it’s now infected with digital flu.
After dinner (frozen fish fingers served with love and ketchup), I collapse onto the couch surrounded by blankets, one kid snuggled under each armpit, and the third using my hip as a trampoline. I glance at my to-do list—still 10 items long—but I also glance at their sticky faces and giggles and think:
This is chaos. But it’s my chaos. And I kind of love it.
(Just not the sneezing. Definitely not the sneezing.)
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