The Snuggler.

Today, on the 5th day of a cold you have had, I have spent 70% of the day holding you. You are two and half. I held you today more than I held you any day you were a newborn. You have a snuggling method. First, you wrap yourself in a burrito in your dad's old baby blanket and then you waddle to find me. I am of course always trying to desperately get something household related done and half the time I bump into you walking slowly down the hall, your legs bound by the blanket. You look up. "Snuggle me, mama." Never has there been a request harder to turn down than this. Even though I should fold laundry. Even though I should start dinner. Even though I should say no, I say yes.

This evening, your sister paraded around the backyard in the fading sun, carrying slugs to and from the trees in her fearless way and I held you on your back in my arms like a baby. You reached up and put your hand on my cheek and I saw the scene reflected in your blue & gold eye. I could see the sky, a breathless pink. I saw the treetops, swaying. I saw your tiny hand on my cheek and my own smile. These tiny moments. This is motherhood.

Potty Training Realities

I need to write this post for both of you so I do not become my own mother. When I started potty training Elle, I asked my mom how long it took to potty training us. She said that one day, Claire (my sister) just decided she wanted to pee and in the potty and I quote "that was that!" Um, ok. With Elle, we did the 3 day method where we stayed in the house for 3 days. Elle did great! By the end of that week, we were accident free.

So then I asked my mom how it was to potty train me and she said the most amazing thing. It turns out, my own sister potty trained me in one day! Amazing! Well, it would be if it were true, but this is an example of mommy memory- where you tend to forget the bad details of parenting and completely over emphasize the good.

With Brynn, I new the possibility of Elle potty training her was out of the question because: reality. So we started on the 3 day method 4 days ago. Here were our rules:

1. Underwear on in the morning
2. I set a timer on my phone for 15 minutes and when that timer goes off we run to the potty in a silly way (keeping it light) and she sits on the potty while I read a book.
3. If there is pee in the potty, she and Elle both got a jelly bean (this turned Elle into Brynn's potty cheerleader).
4. After the first successful potty trip, the timer is moved up by 5 minutes until we eventually reach 30 minutes.

Here is how it has been: First day we had accidents all morning and a pee in the late morning- followed by more successes (all pee). Finished the day with no accidents from noon until bedtime.

The second day, we had successes (all pee) all morning. Then I left for the gym and dad let you run upstairs to play and we had a pee and poop accident.

The third day, no accidents all morning until we went out to a kiddie museum where Brynn played for 3 hours. She had two accidents in a row right when we got there
because she was scared of the toilet at the museum then got over that and went successful the rest of the day.

The fourth day, we had another accident while Brynn was playing outside. It it harder when she is distracted. 

She is now holding her poop.... so we shall see. But this is my honest account so my brain is not taken over by selective parenting memory when you ask me.

Our yard.

When we were building our house, the backyard was of huge importance to me. I spent so much of my time in my childhood yard. We had 5 acres of trails, woods, and grass. My sister was always inside. She liked sewing and re-organizing her room and I lived to be outside. Mostly, I was alone. I had my springer spaniel Taylor.  I had big dreams of running and ball kicking and chasing done by two little sisters I know.

When we first saw the lot, the area that was going to be the yard was huge and flat and I was beyond excited. However, as the septic was put in and dirt was found to be extremely hard, a mound grew and grew and my "flat" when to hilly. It bothered me way more than it should.

Now though, with the warm air and the sound of the wind in the morning when I sneak out there after breakfast for a breath, it is paradise. And in the evening, when the sun streams through trees and the sound of both of you laughing fills the air, it is perfection.

She is....

Brynn.

She is up, padding down the hallway in her footie pajamas, sneaky.

She is fuzzy, her hair is matted and sticking up in a million directions from a night of good dreams.

She is asking for snuggles and her small body still fits in the curve of mine.

She is biting, ever so gently, her tiny thumb for comfort.

She is eating her breakfast very messily with her left hand.

She is laughing and smiling.

She is silly and hilarious, telling stories with her hands way up in the air and her face scrunched.

She is tired and wrapped up in dad's baby blanket.

She is sitting as close to me as possible at all times.

She is following Elle.

She is two and half.

Forgiveness.

{A letter to Elle}

Your dad works 48 hour shifts and by the end of them, I am ready for a break being a mom. My arms are tired from lifting you both in and out of the car. My ears are tired from listening to whiny demands. My body is touched out from being on the receiving end of many hugs, tugs and pulls. My mind is tired from answering endless questions. My back is tired from picking up toys. As the that last day of the 48 drags through dinner and I can almost feel the freedom that lies beyond your bedtimes, I get cranky. It happens every time. I just want peace.

Tonight, after finally arriving home after being stuck in traffic and not having enough snacks and a smooshed finger injury, that need for peace was taking over and I got snippy and snappy and rushed. I quickly brushed your teeth and read one book and kissed you both, I shut the last door and felt my shoulders relax. Then not 3 minutes later, you poked your head out of your bedroom door and said you needed to pee and I slammed around like a teenager and told you "hurry then". And you did, and while you were sitting there perched on the toilet with your tiny legs, you said, "you are a beauty, mama" and you smiled. You had already forgiven me. Within seconds. I admire that so much in you. And of course I let the anger sail out of me like ship, hopefully going to a place where it will stay for at least a few days, so we can all get respite from me, the tired (but oh so lucky) mother.

(pictures from the last month)

Warm.

I have always been a mama's girl. My mother worked when I was little and when she was not working, she found plenty of things to keep herself busy, like sewing our clothes, baking cookies for our class, and working on taxes. I remember needing to be close to her and lying curled around the legs of her office chair as she punched numbers into an ancient and loud calculator. I would feel safe and warm and eventually fall asleep there.

When I met your dad, he gave me the same feeling. He, as a slightly scrawny skateboarding 17 year old, made me feel like I could just float along holding his hand and that his hand in my hand was all I would ever need. I remember 5 months after we met, planes slammed into the World Trade Center and he held me, as I cried in my living room. We were so young but I remember thinking, none of that bad can reach me as long as I can find this safe place again. So I kept him and 12 years later, he is still my safest hug.

When I became a mother, I expected that hugging my children would feel that same, safe way.  In the beginning, your children don't "chose" to need you. They just do and you are the one that can feed them, keep them warm and put them to sleep. Now that you are both older, the best feeling is when you willingly, without me asking you to, run into my arms. You both give such tight hugs. But the tables have turned. Your hugs do not make me feel safe. They make me feel vulnerable. Having children is the most terrifying thing I have ever done, making me lie awake in the night, listening to the rain fall and wonder how I can ever free myself of this blanket of worry and fear that something might happen to one of you. Or to me. That I might leave too soon and miss it all. When I hug you, I a send a silent wish into the air, "Please let me hug these beautiful creatures for my whole life. Please let them stay healthy. Please let me hug them when they are mothers themselves. Please let me hug them when they are grandmothers." 

But I can see in both of you, the way you relax when I hold you, the way your bodies go limp in our hugs that you are both mama's girls as well. So I have to push all the worry away and focus on the way your arms barely reach around my neck and your feet hit the same place on my jeans because in not so many short years, the hugs will come less and less. I do hope though that you both know I have never done anything as magical and fun and beautiful as having you and even though the love I have for you makes me feel very vulnerable, I would not trade it for anything. I will always be a safe place to land. 

Fighting the mama body battle.

I was walking to the park to meet my girls, who were hanging out there with their grandma while I worked out, there was a mom walking hand in hand with a lanky string bean with sawdust colored hair bouncing just below her shoulders. She reminded me of Elle, except she was maybe 8. I was hit by that wave of sentiment that hits all mothers, whether it be of the feeling of nevermore when we see a tiny baby after we are decidedly done having kids or the feeling of time slipping almost visibly through our hands when we see grown children. We will be there soon, Elle and I, walking together through a park, and I will be able to look almost right into her grey eyes instead of down at her long, baby eyelashes.

When my focus shifted from the girl to her mother, I had a couple thoughts hit me at once. She was thin and dressed nicely and I thought, "I have a few years to get that thin/stylish/perfected as a mom/woman/wife". Ugh. I am beyond sick of my brain.

I will say that I do workout and I recommend going to the gym as a mom for a couple of reasons. 1. It always makes me FEEL good, no matter how much I did not want to go. 2. My child insists on being held pretty much all day and I need to put in after hours work to get the muscles to support this needy child. 3. A much needed break from my children. Has going to the gym made me look like the celebrities in the magazine who just had their babies six weeks ago and are, by some act of one god or another, in a bikini at the beach? No. Not at all. Am I stronger? Yes. Do I feel better? Yes. Do I look like a mom when I am naked? Yes, flubby little belly pouch, small pancake-ish boobs, two asses (one big one, one small one hanging out under the big one), arm flap that waves when I do. It's all there.

It is a been a tremendous struggle not to hate my body. Like when I get out the shower, I see it and say out loud, "ughhhhhhhh....". The weird part about it is, I am the only person that seems to notice how "horrible I look". My husband loves my butt. My kids don't care at all about the softness of my belly. Strangers on the street do not gasp in horror when I walk by. In fact, the person I look the most  like are other moms I see out and about.

I am trying desperately to accept myself. To be proud of my body and the know that it will never be the same as it was before kids. But that being a different body, does not make it a bad body. This has of course, all come to the forefront of my mind as summer and bathing suit season it upon us. We are headed to San Diego at the end of the summer and you know what I really want to do when I am at the beach? I want to wear cute shorts and tank tops. I want to lay in the sun in my bathing suit. I want to RUN in said bathing suit and play in the waves with my kids. And you know who is stopping me from feeling like I cannot do that? Me. I am the jerk.

It is not society, as in the actual people who live in the real world, because when I am at the beach or the park now, I never really have a seen a mom of small kids busts out her bikini and looks like a super model (even though that is how we somehow feel we are supposed to look). Us moms, we all look very much the same. Covering our various lumpy parts with cover-ups or hiding under the umbrella. And when I honestly think about it, the women I am the most jealous of at the beach are not the ones who look super good in their swimsuits. It is the woman laughing, playing and running around with her kids. I want to be THAT woman. And I am the only person in the way of being just like her.

It is a tough battle. I know all of this. I can write these words. I know that if I went to the beach tomorrow in a bathing suit and played happily with my kids in the lake, nobody would never bat an eye. No one would walk up to be and ask me to PLEASE cover up my cellulite or laugh at my arm flub. So I am trying win this battle. I am trying to BE the mom who can be in pictures without hating herself. To wear fun clothes without worrying. To be the type of woman I want my girls to see me as and grow up to be.

I am.... a work in progress. But I WILL be in a bathing suit the next chance I get and I will have fun. C'mon brain, you can do it.