Oh hey look! A blog post. Actually this was just a test to see if I even remembered my password to get into this site. Turns out I do. I guess that’s the upside to using one of the same three passwords for every. single. thing.

I’d like to say I’ve recommitted myself to writing here, because I’m sure you’re all just itching for more stories about my kids (Mom.) but the truth is, sometimes writing here just feels like trying too hard. And I need to not have to try at something for a while. Between the kiddos and the husband and the job and the grad school there’s not a lot of me time. (Oh wait, that’s not true, I had four glorious hours in the car yesterday where I didn’t have to listen to Dora, instead I could crank up the radio and sing my heart out. PA Turnpike, you are welcome!) 

But there are nuggets of things I want to share (mostly because I still suck at recording these things in a baby book) like how Chessa just pretty much potty trained herself. Yep, one day friends of ours came to visit and Miss E. used the potty and since then Chessa has been all about it. We kept her in PullUps for the first couple of weeks, but then it was like it just clicked and she wanted big girl underwear and hasn’t looked back since. I’m so happy to only have one butt to change and the idea of not buying all those diapers leaves me downright giddy! 

Also? My little girl talks like a big kid now. What the hell? Last week she started leading her sentences with “I guess”. “I guess I’m going to go outside now Mommy.” “I guess I want you to play playdough with me.”  Or she ends her sentences with “yes or no.”  “Can I have M&M’s, yes or no?” “No, Chessa you can’t have M&Ms now, we’re going to eat lunch soon.” “But, can I have M&Ms, Mommy? YEEEEEEESSSS or no?  “No, Chessa, you cannot.” And round and round we go.

And, Cole is still a charmer who doesn’t feel the need to actually use any words. He points and whines and my eardrums want to explode. He can’t talk but he has learned how to tickle and say “GITAGITAGITA” as he uses his little fingers to tickle my leg, or Chessa’s neck or the random shrub.  You guys? It’s hysterical. He’s so michevious and I’m not being flip when I say that in these moments he is so much his father’s son. The same twinkle in his eye, the same waking up ready to tease people… I’m in trouble when he’s a teenager.

I sit with my back against the arm of the couch and my knees pulled up. Like when she was a baby, I sit her facing me, with her back against my knees. Only now, her legs extend past my ears and her head is high above my the tops of my knees. 

I laugh and lean up to kiss the tip of her nose. “Chessa Rae,” I admonish playfully. “When did you get so big?” 

She giggles and I tell her about how when she was tiny she fit perfectly on my lap. “I’m a big girl now,” Chessa says.

We sit like that for a few minutes. Then silly takes over and we start making fish faces and giving fish kisses and practicing our fish face noises.  “Shh… your brother is still sleeping,” I say between giggles.  But really, I can’t shush this. So I tickle her and she squeals and with her hands pressing my cheeks into my best fish face, I say, “Chessa! You’re silly.” 

Her hair is sweeping over her eyes and she pushes it back. She looks like such a big girl sometimes. Even now, in her pajamas and with her hair all a mess, she looks like a big girl. The roundness of baby is gone. The fingers aren’t really very pudgy anymore and she has the vocabulary of a kid twice her age. And the attention of a fourteen year old. Especially when I’m asking her to pick up her toys, eat her vegetables or get dressed. 

“No. I want to stay my jammies on.” 

She gets ‘stay’ confused with ‘keep.’ And I know I should correct her, but it’s the cutest dammed thing, so I don’t. 

A while later, her brother wakes up and together they make a mess with the one remaining cupcake from Cole’s party. Chessa licks off the icing and then gives him the cake to eat. Or destroy all over my living room floor.  I could leave the crumbs, I suppose. Craig or my mother in law would get them, but I have a few minutes before I have to leave for work, so I pull out the vacuum. 

Chessa hears the vacuum rolling across the tile and runs for her safe spot on the couch. Just before she climbs up, she turns and yells to her brother, “Cole! Get up on the couch with me.” 

I lift Cole up next to Chessa and they sit side by side, arm touching arm while I vacuum.  I smile and my heart feels full and for a few moments, while I push the Oreck across the carpet, I’m not thinking about maybe selling the house and what needs fixed before we do. I’m not thinking about what projects are waiting for me at work or the grad school paper I didn’t write. Instead, I’m looking at them, while I sweep up the cupcake crumbs and then some other crumbs and thinking, “This. Just this.”

I push the recliner back and forth, snuggling my feverish baby to my chest. Cole pops his thumb in his mouth and for a few moments sits still in my lap. 

I press my lips to his forehead, using the timeless test of mothers everywhere to feel that he’s still warm, but not hot. I hate that he’s not feeling well, but I love that he’s letting me hold him for a bit.  His eyes are focused on something far away, he’s sort of staring and is getting very still.  I push off the carpet with my toe, in the same sweatpants I’ve been in since the night before, with hair that hasn’t been washed all weekend. 

Chessa walks over to us and I hold my breath. Not wanting to turn her away, but worried she will startle him.  Instead, she pats his head and says, “Cole’s sick.”

“Yes, sweetheart. Cole has a cold. Momma’s rocking him to make him feel better.” 

“Sing him songs?” she asks. 

“OK, we can sing him songs. What do you want to sing?”

“Ahhh… Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” 

As we sing the lullabye, her tiny voice mixing with mine and Cole still so quiet in my lap, she moves around and curls up next to me.  She’s sitting on the arm of the chair, her arms wrapped tight around my neck to keep her from falling.  With my right hand, I pat her leg.  With her left hand she pats her brother’s leg. 

I close my eyes and start another round of Twinkle Twinkle, holding them close to me, trying to freeze the moment.

If the moment was a photograph, it would be black and white. The black sky,  lit only by a handful of stars peeking through heavy clouds releasing soft snow into the sky. The highlights across the curve of his forehead and the bridge of his nose from the nightlight plugged safely into the corner of the room brightened his face enough for me to see his eyes were wide open, even though his body was still. The shadows danced as I rocked back and forth, back and forth interrupting the stream of light.

He’s so content to cuddle in these moments.  Why only in the dark of night, does he curl into my heart and sigh so softly?

If this moment was a photograph, it would be in color. Two little children, dressed in footed, flannel pajamas were standing at the window watching their father push snow around outside. The boy’s head barely peeks out over the bottom frame of the window, and I can’t be certain he sees anything. But when Chessa giggles and pounds on the window, he squeals and imitates his big sister.

From behind them, I wish so hard that I had my camera, so I could capture this memory. Instead, I clench my eyes and try to freeze the memory of their hair tousled by 12 hours of sleep, their tiny hands with the unmistakable roundness of baby and the gray sky, still releasing tiny snowflakes.

If the moment was a photograph, it would be worn and soft from many years of being held close and used as a bookmark. Pausing to take a breath and remember the time, the soft smiles, the light dancing in their eyes, the three of them with their heads close together.  Craig and Chessa are reading a book, using an overstuffed bear as a pillow, Cole weaves in and out of the story, crawling over his father and grabbing handfuls of his sister’s hair.  For just a moment, time freezes and finally, this time, I get the picture.

Cole had a hell of a time going to sleep last night. I don’t know if he was wound up from a late nap, teething, if the medicine I gave him for a cold was messing with him or if he just wanted to screw with me.  But 90 minutes after I laid him down for the first time, on bedtime attempt #3, I burst through his door, into his room and in a voice just shy of yelling, said, ‘Oh my God, Cole! What the hell?!”

And as I was almostbutnotquite yelling at my baby I realized how terrible it was that I was yelling and I calmed down enough to say ‘What the hell,’ not ‘What the fuck,’ like I was thinking coming up the stairs.

Yesterday was a bad day. I had the mother of all yeast infections, (sorry to any guys or other people who do not want to read about the state of my girly bits, but this is a baby blog, it’s what you get) I spent more than half the day with a migraine and Chessa pooped in the bathtub.

I wanted to be done. I wanted to be watching my sleeping children on the video monitor and sighing about how wonderful and perfect and magical this moment was. I did not actually want to be parenting them, I just wanted to love them from afar. 

I walked him around the room, shushing in his ear, whispering that mommy was here and I loved him and it was time to sleep. He calmed down and so did I. 

And this is where I should write that I realized in that moment that he was only going to be young once and only going to need me this much once and some other crap about it being amazing.

Only it wasn’t. It sucked. I finally sunk in the rocking chair and held him close while he allowed his eyes to close and drift off to sleep.  Then I played on my phone, checking Facebook and Twitter, waiting for him to be sound asleep.  And finally, when I thought I could lay him down without waking him up, I did. 

On the other side of the closed door, I thought “THANK GOD.”  

I know parenting is wonderful. And I know that I’m lucky to have two happy, healthy children (see I can’t even write a ranty post without slapping a disclaimer on it.) But parenting is hard, too. And we should be able to talk about the hard times, even when they are silly, without feeling like we need to weave in some silver lining or a glistening moment of puppies and sunshine revelation.  Sometimes your kid giggles and splashes in the bathtub. Sometimes she poops. 

And when she poops, it sucks. And that’s real.  And that’s life.  And we’re just damn lucky that we get a chance to do it all over the next day. 

Here, read this article that my friend Kristie shared today. It says it so much better than I could say! 

It’s been a year since the migraines started. Almost a year since we started talking about a c-section. Just over ten months since the surgery and Cole’s birth.

I never gave much thought to a c-section or paid attention to heated debates, snarky comments and even well meaning advice for people to become more educated and not “let doctors push unnecessary surgeries on them.” But you know how it goes; when something becomes personal you pay attention. When life hands you a circumstance and you find yourself part of statistic, you pay attention.

My c-section was unnecessary. I guess. In hindsight. But at the time we didn’t know. We didn’t know if the symptoms were migraine related and harmless or if I really had an aneurysm.

I had to think about things like, “what if I die?”, “what if I send Craig home, alone, to two children?”, “am I risking the life of my baby?” and “will she remember me?” Thoughts that no mother should ever have to think swirled in my head for weeks as we were in and out of doctor’s offices for second and third opinions.

Those thoughts made the decision, when push came to shove, easy. No, I’m sorry, not easy… obvious. I had to schedule the c-section. I missed the chance to go into labor on my own. I missed the chance have another vaginal delivery. I missed the chance to hold my son the moment he was born.

I am eternally grateful that the surgery was unnecessary and that my medical appointments ended a month later with a follow up test that couldn’t be done while I was pregnant. After the angiogram, I was sent home with a bruise the size of Texas on my groin and instructions to take whatever I needed for migraine pain. But I knew that my head was OK.

So this isn’t a post about the regrets of having a c-section. It’s not a post to rant about being forced into a surgery. It’s just a post to try to explain why it’s such a hot topic for those of us who have had c-sections when we feel as though we’re being judged by people who think natural birth is the best way for everyone.

And I’m trying to be careful here, because I don’t want to offend, I just want to try to explain.

It’s not you. It’s not that your message or your statistics are wrong. It’s not that your tone is condescending (OK, sometimes it is) or that your heart is in the wrong place. It’s just that it doesn’t help. Because no matter how broad or specific you try to be, you can’t possibly understand each and every case that ended up in a c-section. And if we already feel shitty about the c-section, either because it wasn’t what we dreamed or because of a painful recovery or it affects our future family planning decisions, you can’t make us feel better about it.

So I take it personally. I feel judged; even if the judgment is veiled. The hair on the back of my neck stands up and I find myself wanting to shout, “yeah, well listen to my story and then tell me if more education would have kept me out of the operating room!”

Yes, I think pregnant women should know what they want to strive for in labor. Yes, I think they should have doctors, midwives and/or nurses who support their decisions. Yes, I think women should have a general understanding of how their bodies work and know what to expect in labor.

But we don’t all want the same things. And we don’t all get what we want. So whether we scheduled the c-section or whether we ended up there after labor started, you telling us what we should have done just doesn’t help. Using our birth stories as examples, doesn’t help.

By all means, be proud of your deliveries. Tell your birth stories. This isn’t to say we don’t want to hear about your experience. We’ll smile at your memories, tear up at the part where you look at your baby for the first time and be happy that you accomplished your goal of a delivery that was what you wanted. The sharing is what’s important, because more sharing leads to more conversation, more understanding and less judgment.

And isn’t that what we all want? A little less judgment?

Because this has been on my mind for months, I’m linking it up here.

I’m still in sweatpants and the t-shirt I slept in last night, trying to shake off the night of not so great sleep that followed the week of not so great sleep.  Cuddled in my arms is a sweet blond boy who just finished his morning bottle.  As I always do, I run my hand over his arm and his leg, feeling the soft flannel. 

The fireplace flickers as it throws off some heat to warm up the living room.  We don’t have anywhere to be and I’m so very grateful that it’s Saturday. 

On the chair, Chessa – still in her pajamas – is comfortable on Craig’s lap. His hair is still disheveled but he gave her donuts so the picture they create – him in shorts and a t-shirt, with sleep still in his eyes and her with wide eyes and powdered sugar framing her lips – both happy and loved, makes me grin. 

We’re watching Elf on a Shelf.  Yes, all four of us. Chessa is captivated, having started our own Elf on the Shelf tradition this year and the colors and the music have pulled my boy right in.

I know we need to start the day. Clothes need to be changed, proper breakfasts need to be eaten and I have a laundry list of projects to tackle (or rather, for Craig to tackle).  But then, on TV, the elf says something about the magic of Christmas living in your heart. 

So I smile at my husband, giving a knowing glance at our big girl.  I pull my boy closer to my heart and I decide the day can wait for just a few more minutes.

A Sunday afternoon earlier this month.  

Finding joy and happiness in the simplest of things.  Like a game of hopscotch. 

And learning to jump. 

When the weather was cool but not cold. When the leaves had fallen off the trees and the calendar said we should be pulling out mittens and heating chocolate, but the day was mild and almost warm. 

So we pulled on hats and sweatshirts and went outside, determined to get a little bit of fresh air and burn some toddler energy; thinking that maybe, just maybe. the baby will take a late afternoon nap that will make the evening hours a tad more pleasant.  And then, we peeked at him, tucked in under his cozy blanket. 

And we lauged and knew that there would be no napping.

Last night, I was trying to get Chessa to hold her head still while I brushed her hair.  “Sweetie, what color are your eyes?” I asked, in an attempt to distract her. Intently she looked in the mirror and studied her eyes. 

“Blue!” she answered. 

Her eyes are the exact hazel color of her father’s. 

When I was pregnant with her, I imagined a little girl with blonde curls like Craig had as child and eyes like mine – so dark brown that it’s hard to tell where the pupil ends and the color begins.  Instead she has his eyes – soft brown with flecks of gold and green – that sparkle when she gets excited, crinkle when she giggles and narrow when she’s getting mad. 

And they are perfect. 

—-

At eight and a half months old Cole is starting to look over his shoulder at babyhood.  His favorite game is to crawl over pillows and come dangerously close to falling off the bed or couch.  “Move the pillows to the floor and let him have at it,” you say? We tried that. Apparently it is less fun if you’re not giving your mother heart failure. 

But still. In soft footie pajamas, sitting on my lap as I rock and feed him, he is still my baby boy.  His eyes get heavy as he eats, listens to me sing and feels the stroke of my finger on his cheek, the press of my lips to temple and the squeeze to breathe him in.  When he’s decided he’s had enough, he pushes the bottle away and turns around to snuggle into my arms, lay his head on my shoulder and drift off to sleep. 

Toddlerhood will come when it wants and with it the walking and talking that he’s flirting with now, but these moments where he is mine and I am his, I will hang onto them with every fiber of my heart. 

—-

There are big moments and little moments that make my heart hurt with love and my eyes sting with tears knowing that they will so quickly be behind us.  The moments when both kids are reaching for Craig and are snuggled in his lap in the morning; Cole giggling when he falls and I yell, “Oh! Cole went OOF!”; Chessa greeting us at the door when we came home after a weekend away; the moments when the house is a mess, dinner plates are still on the table and they both have dirty clothes but we’re all on the floor together laughing and loving and I lock eyes with Craig and think to myself, “This. This moment right here is everything I ever wanted.”

And thankful doesn’t even seem like big enough a word to describe what I feel.

disclosure: I’m not the first person to write about this.  In fact, Law-Momma wrote two posts that do way more service to it than I could.  Grab your tissues then read this and this. 

Sometimes I think the worst part of being a parent is not the sleepless nights spent walking a teething baby. Nor is it the tantrums in the middle of dinner, in a busy restaurant. Nor is it teaching a teenager to drive.

No, sometimes I think the worst part of being a parent is hearing stories about tragedy striking another family. Maybe someone I know, maybe not. It’s irrelevant.  As a mother, as soon as I hear a story of a lost child my mind immediately goes to my children. I can’t help it.  It’s instinctual and guttural.  And it takes everything I have to stay where I am and not go pick them up and hold them until they are old enough to get married and have their own children – and maybe not even then. 

Because it’s not supposed to happen like that. Children are not supposed to go first. 

I read this week about a baby in Georgia who died after falling in his car seat from the top of a grocery cart.  It was an accident. It was a horrible, terrible accident that is leaving a mother with arms absent of her three-month old son.

And, I can’t shake this story. 

I have done that so many times.  I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to put the car seat there. I thought that because it seemed to fit into place that it was designed to be safe.  Thinking about it now, I guess it makes sense.  There’s nothing holding that seat in if the cart hits a bump or take a sharp turn.  Nothing to protect the baby.  It makes the cart heavy and unstable. 

I get it. Now. 

I’m sure the instructions that come with the seat clearly state that this shouldn’t be done. But I didn’t read them.  I read about how to install the base into my car so that it would be safe, but once I had that figured out, I put the book away. 

Please don’t use your car seat this way anymore. Please. 

I know it’s inconvenient.  I know you may think there’s no other way. But, please, please try to find one.  Wear the baby in an Ergo, Baby Bjorn or some kind of infant carrier strapped to your chest.  Put the whole seat in the big part of the cart and get less stuff.  Send someone else to the grocery store. Go by yourself.

And Target, WalMart, Giant Eagle, whoever, if you’re reading this; please put a warning up for parents. 

I didn’t know that you shouldn’t do this.  I didn’t know that I was putting my child at risk for injury… or worse. 

If you did know, that’s great. This is not the time to make an example of a mother who lost a child or judge those of us who didn’t read the fine print in our car seat safety booklet.   

I’m writing this because I didn’t know.  And maybe you don’t either.