I took some photos for a blog post. I wanted pictures with my girls in a field, enjoying nature and each other and life in general. You know, to show how we’re the quintessential care-free homeschooling family, frolicking through meadows on warm October mornings. In fancy dresses, naturally.

The pictures came out exactly like I wanted. It looks like the girls are having the time of their life — smiling, laughing, chasing each other through the fields. But the truth is that we were having just about the worst morning ever.

From the moment three-year-old Harbour woke up, she started yelling her every thought at me: “I’m not tired! The sun is up! I don’t want to sleep! I’m hungry!” I’m not even sure if she wanted me to do anything — she just woke up filled with emotion and didn’t know what to do about it.

Her yelling woke up River, who stomped off angrily into another room. And so before I even got out of bed, I knew it was going to be one of those days.

We made it through the first hour or so without much incident, mostly because River hid from us in her bed with a book and I hid from them in the kitchen with the radio and Harbour got so involved in her playing that she probably forgot that anyone else was even home.

Everything was going okay until I heard Harbour close the door to the bedroom, which is the sign that she’s once again forgotten that her closet is not a washroom stall. I asked her if she needed to use the bathroom and she sweetly replied no, that she was just playing — and then five minutes later she came out of the room to tell me she had “an accident”.

I’m normally able to deal with the mess calmly and quietly, but every so often I snap. Friday morning was one of those times. I angrily accused her of lying to me. I asked why she doesn’t at least try to use the toilet. Then I put her in the bathtub, which never works out well because this kid is deathly afraid of water and she screamed and cried and I yelled that she better figure this out because I will not be changing her when she goes off to university.

The commotion woke up my husband who came over and held Harbour on his lap as she tearfully relived the trauma of bubbles and soap. Then she had a cuddle with me. I told her that I’d love her no matter what she did and that there was nothing she could do to make me stop loving her. She replied with a quiet “okay” and sat with me for another moment before she abruptly jumped up to go punch her sister for awhile.

I knew that I wouldn’t survive the rest of the morning if we didn’t get out of the house, so I asked the girls to get dressed and I packed up the baby and we all piled into the car. I thought it would be fun to grab my camera and head to Eramosa Karst, a local conservation area full of fields, forests and caves.

Because I had specific photos in mine, we stopped at a flower shop on the way to buy some daisies. Each girl got a large Gerbera to match their dress and then I bought a few mini ones, just in case the big ones got wrecked. I refused to let Harbour hold the daisies for me in the car, knowing that she would destroy them immediately. She protested this injustice by screaming the entire way to the conservation area, and River did her best to help quiet her by kicking her repeatedly. Luckily, tightly fastened seat belts and car seat harnesses make it pretty much impossible to kick very hard — these are the helpful lessons I’m learning now that the girls are crammed side-by-side in the back seat of my Mazda 3.

Seriously, are we there yet?

Once we arrived at the park, I gave the flowers to Harbour, who immediately popped the tops off of the two biggest daisies. Of course. I gave the rest of the flowers to River and started snapping pictures. My camera displayed that annoying message that let’s you know that your memory card is back at home on your dresser, so I switched to my iPhone and took pictures of my kids, one crying bitterly because I wouldn’t let her throw stones at the baby’s head.

Thankfully my mother decided that she would join us for her lunch hour, which was a good thing because at this point I was wondering if I could lower the girls into a cave and then have a peaceful nap in the car with my newborn. My mom was able to cheer up the girls and even give me a functioning camera to use with a memory card and everything, and in the end we were able to get a few nice photos for my blog post.

Then, just as it was time to leave, it started to rain and so we headed home for an afternoon of well-deserved TV. Which was a nice break before we headed out for our first dance class of the year, an experience that had me burst into tears in front of a crowd of total strangers. But you’ll have to wait for another post to hear about that.

It was just one of those days.

And I suppose all this is to say that pretty pictures are worth a thousand words, but real life needs a whole lot more than that.