For all of its daily joys, the biggest knock on parenthood is the suddenly-crystal-clear lens through which you begin to finally grasp the relentless speed at which life is passing.

Before I get into today’s topic, may I just say, Holy crap, moving with three young children (two of whom were sick at various points over the past week) is its own special brand of hell, and I’m not sure I’ll ever reach my baseline of relaxation again, let alone ever be able to smell cardboard without immediately dry heaving.

How sweet is this? I would love glancing down at my hand and remembering my favorite job in the world.

Want to know what we’ve been up to for the past, oh, I don’t know, 15-thousand hours? Packing. Okay, maybe it’s technically not been that long, but it sure does feel like that.

What no one tells you about motherhood is just how very not glamorous it is. Motherhood is lots of great things, but it’s also all of this aforementioned crap (literally), and more.

When I launched The Style Project on the blog at the beginning of the year, the goal was to force myself to curate a practical and stylish closet, which I very much did not have after spending approximately six years making and taking care of babies. This is not an exaggeration. There were pools of vomit. It was messy.

34+ hours of labor and emergency C-section? I can handle that. Unmedicated until 9cm VBAC? Got that too (times two). Surviving bleeding nipples? I’m ya gal!

There are many experiences from my childhood I would love to revisit. To wit: Long, lazy afternoons fishing on the lake with my grandfather. The feel of smoothing down a bluegill’s fins as I unhook him and toss him back with a splash into the crystal water.

…because when you’re a mom, everything changes. And that most definitely includes spring break.

Imagine the feeling of stripping down naked and plunging into an ice cold pool of water. That complete shock you feel? That’s new motherhood.