But Memory Will Fail Me

These are the things I must remember. I write them down, because I can not take photographs of them. They disappear into the past so quickly, and they can't ever be recaptured. They are the parts of parenting no one ever tells you about, because they can't really be explained. They are the things that fill your heart when you think of them, both because you are so blessed to have experienced them and because you are so heartbroken that you won't ever get to relive them. These are the things that can't be captured, that slip through my fingers like water, leaving only the residue of memory.

These are the things I must remember.


How small my son's hands are in mine, the fineness of fingers, the thin bones, the softness of their skin. The trust of that little hand, to be held and led. The feeling of walking with them, each holding a hand.


How they smell, right after a bath. How they smell when they need a bath. How they smell in the morning.


The taste of their tears, when I kiss their cheeks as they cry from a bump on the head, a disappointment, a bad dream, a reason I can't discern. The salt of it. The wet cheeks under my lips.


Their weight when they have fallen asleep on me. Heavy heads on my shoulders, limp arms hanging down, legs dangling. The warmth left behind on my skin when I have laid them down in bed and they roll over contentedly.


How sweaty and warm they feel when I take them out of bed in the morning or after a nap, hair damp, cheeks warm, sleep still in their eyes.


The way they ask the oddest questions and wait for the answer, trusting implicitly that I have it, and that it is true, because they do not understand or believe that there is anything I don't know.


The light in their faces when I have been away and they see me arrive back. The joy that I have returned, the happiness that their little world is right again. No one else in the world, not even my dog, has ever been so happy to see me, nor shown it so clearly.


The sounds they make in their sleep. Little snores, deep breaths, mumbles and coughs. The sounds that keep me awake at night both exhausted and relieved to know they are there, they are ok.


The way they climb on me, all knees and elbows, making me grunt in pain and surprise. The discomfort of it, the joy they take in it. The way they always want to be on me.


The sound of their feet running through the house. The soft footsteps in the early morning. The herd of elephants when they are ready to play.


Their arms around my neck hugging with abandon. The wet sloppiness of their awkward kisses.


The feeling of them both in the bed between Shaun and I early in the morning, squirming because they are ready to get up and yet happy to be where they are.


The way they display every emotion they feel with every part of their body, completely surrendered to the feeling, without restraint.


These are my children. They are growing and changing, and soon none of these things will exist. These things, these are what I must try to remember. These things I must lock in my memory somehow, and protect them from time's attempts to make them fade.

These things, I must remember, to know that they were real.

This post is about boobs

I just gained a huge readership of males who will quickly disappear when they realize there is nothing sexy about the topic. And the topic today, my friends, is just that: boobs are not sexy.

Ok, let me qualify that. Pre-kids boobs are sexy. I guess. I have always found it odd how intensely the Western world has sexualized the female breast. Much of the rest of the world pretty much thinks they are no big deal. Remember how scandalized you were when you first saw a naked African woman in a National Geographic magazine, and wondered how she could just walk about with her boobs out? Nobody thinks it's weird over there. It just is. A part of the body. And it's bloody hot, so no thanks on the bra and shirt.

Boobs. The essential part of what makes us female, a part of the trifecta of measurements that allow us to determine how close we are to Monroe-esque perfection. So very important that you can have them enlarge, reduced, lifted and even have surgery to change the size of your areolas.

When you become a mom, and you decide to breast-feed, you discover the awful truth. You were not provided with your breasts in order to titillate the males around you. They exist to feed that crying little creature in your arms. They leak. They hurt. They are decidedly not sexy. And unless you opt for some of the procedures above, they will probably never be sexy again.

So we all lament the loss of our sexy, perky, pre-kids boobs. And then we are told we should be proud of our saggy, stretch-mark covered twins. Because they are battle scars! We fed the hungry! We nourished a child! Go BOOBS! It's not that I'm not proud. I am glad I made the decision to have my boys and to nurse them. But proud of my stretch marks and the sad state of my girls? Not so much.

I accept that I am not the sexy young thing I once was. I accept that it's going to take some serious help from Victoria's Secret to make my shape anywhere near what it once was. I accept that braless is no longer an option. I just wish that boobs weren't such a huge part of what is supposed to make us feel sexy. I wish that they didn't have to be so much a part of my identity as a woman. I wish that our society would just accept that boobs are not sexy, they are just a part of our biology, an important piece of the reproduction puzzle.

But alas. I live here and not in the Africa of National Geographic. Perhaps I should consider a move, me and my proud, saggy girls.

Promises, Promises

Nolan had his first day of school today. He cried when I left, and was clinging to me for dear life, and I felt awful as I left.

"Mommy will come back for you sweetie! I promise. I will always come back for you"

That's what I told him repeatedly, before I left and again when I got back and he threw himself sobbing into my arms. His relief at seeing me again translated into tears, pretty much the way 3 year olds express everything from fear, to frustration, to even apparently total joy. At least the kind of joy that comes at the end of a period of abandonment by the most important person in your life, when you discover you aren't abandoned after all.

Now, I know I am a bit of a morbid person. You don't have to tell me that. I have a tendency to see the dark side of everything and my mind often travels down the worst of the "what if" paths of possibility. And in keeping with this side of my personality, it struck me today that I made a promise I couldn't keep.

It is my hope, as it is the hope of all parents, that I should leave this world before my boys. No parent wants it the other way around. But I assume that will be far off in the future, when they don't need me anymore. When they are no longer counting on mommy to come back and get them, to hug them and take them home for lunch and a nap.

There is no real reason to believe I will be one of the people for whom this will be an accurate prediction. Certainly there is enough proof out there on a daily basis to make it clear that a good number of us don't outlive our children. One day, I might promise Nolan I will come back. And I might not. And yet, for all the horror and grief of that possibility, it is still to the mind of a parent better than the reverse.

We are none of us promised tomorrow, or even the next five minutes. People die every day in a million different ways. We have the luxury in this country of making a fairly safe assumption that we will safely return to pick up our children at the end of the day. Most of us never stop to think about the chance that we might not. That's probably for the best, because if we did our poor kids would be stuck with clingy, overbearing mothers for the rest of their lives.

The thought leads me to some of the other things we take for granted. That my kids take for granted. For starters, they know that when they wake up in the morning, there will be breakfast. That they will go to bed every night safe and warm, and have no reason to fear anything in the night. Their fears are abstract, unfounded. We promise our children that there is nothing under the bed, nothing lurking in the shadows. We tell them there is no such thing as a monster, and nothing can hurt them.

We are liars, all of us. For those of us lucky to live in a country that is wealthy, where war, disease, and starvation aren't every day concerns, we feel relatively safe telling these lies to our children. What else would we tell them? Certainly not the truth. There is time enough for that, reality will intrude into every life at some point.

We keep our kids safe from the truth - that there are monsters in this world. That there is danger in some of the shadows. That food does not always appear as if by magic when they are hungry. That mommies will not always be back.

Dear God, by all the names and all the faces you are called and seen by, let me be a liar to my children for as long as possible. Let them believe the world is a safe and happy place for many years to come. Please, please, let me always be there to welcome them back into my arms and take them safely home. For as long as they need me. Let my promises be true, at least for now.

I know that I am lucky, so lucky, to be able to make these promises and tell these lies, because so many mothers the world over can't. Reality has been there in faces of their fearful and starving children from the day they were born. And there are many mothers who did not come back, who died before laying eyes on their children, or who set out to help them and did not return. And those mothers, perhaps they tried to lie too. Perhaps they told their children not to fear, that they would be back.

How silly to compare leaving my child at preschool to what mothers far less fortunate than me have to face. How ludicrous. How unbelievably lucky am I. Lucky beyond all deserving. And I promise to never forget it. Let it be a promise I can keep.

The Face I Won't Forget

So, dear readers, it's been a bit too long since I was last here. The last time I posted, I talked about Nolan turning three...and here I am two months later and Aaron is turning two.

You probably all know Aaron was a preemie. At 29 weeks, out of nowhere, I went into labor and delivered him within an hour of my arrival at the hospital. Although I had been having contractions all day long, my morning visit to the hospital found no cause for concern. Twelve hours later I was back there, and was told I was at 10 cm and my baby was delivering immediately.

There's no way to explain how that feels, hearing those words. Shock. Panic. Fear. In the triage unit, as they quickly did an ultrasound to determine that Aaron was head down and ready to be born and prepared to wheel me back, I heard the words and felt the ground drop from under me. I couldn't breathe all of a sudden. I grasped at the oxygen mask over my face, trying to get it off, and the only thing I could say was the word "No" over and over.

Leaning over me, close to my face, the nurse looked me in the eye and told me to breathe. And she told me my baby was going to be ok. That he had everything he needed to survive, he was just going to need a little help to grow. She was calm, cool, collected and so certain that my little Aaron, not yet free from the womb he was apparently so anxious to escape, was going to be just fine.

In retrospect, I know she had no way of knowing for sure he would be fine. 29 weeks is early enough that most people give me a look of shock when I say the number. It's not the earliest gestational age at which a baby can survive, but it's certainly very early. It was very possible that he could have serious complications, and long-term ramifications of his early birth.

But right then, it was the only thing she could have said, and I am forever grateful. After that moment, I didn't panic again. The birth was hard, and I was still afraid for my little guy, but the panic was gone. In that moment, when she looked me in the eye, she became a focal point for me and carried me through one of the most frightening experiences of my life.

When I close my eyes, I can still see her. Every detail of her face. The random labor and delivery nurse who was assigned to me by chance, and made it possible for me to calm down enough to do what I needed to do. The woman who didn't know me from Eve, but looked me in the eye and said what I needed to hear. I never got to thank her.

So today, as I look back on that day exactly two years ago, and my little preemie is doing just fine as predicted, I want to take a moment to say thank you. Thank you to that nurse who stood by me and helped me breathe. Thank you to all the nurses who bring babies into the world every day. I know you do the harder job, and the OB's for all their training and paycheck are really the ones assisting.

Thank you for helping all of us with the strange, beautiful, sometimes intensely frightening process of childbirth. Thank you, random nurse whose name I don't remember but whose face I can't forget, for assuring me my baby would be just fine. You're right. He is.

My little boy is not so little anymore

I sat across from Nolan this evening in the dark bathroom, on his second trip to the potty since attempting bedtime an hour previously. I sat on the edge of the tub while he chattered about random things and did nothing resembling actual potty business.

They tell you that time flies, but there is just no way to understand that until you are sitting there, on a cold and somewhat damp tub ledge, watching your firstborn discuss the finer points of playtime etiquette, on the eve of his third birthday.

It could be because so much has happened in the three years since he was born that it seemed to go by incredibly fast, but I know that's not it. It's just the way it goes, for all moms. You blink, and that tiny baby you held in your arms, so new and fascinating, so small and sweet, is a kid. And I know I will blink again and he will be a teenager. And then another blink, and he will be gone. Moved out, moved on, and not needing mommy anymore.

Being a mommy has been more challenging, more frustrating, more of a struggle and more exhausting than I could ever have imagined. Back when I was struggling to conceive a child and wanted the title of mommy more than anything in the world, I would never have believed the day would come when I would just want to not hear the word mommy for a little while. I could not have guessed how downright draining it would be.

I also could not have guessed that I would be sitting on the tub, feeling a strange awe that this little person I made, gave birth to, and went through so much with has actually been here for three whole years. And in that time, has morphed into a little boy with thoughts, opinions and the ability to express them. A little boy who gets up repeatedly and rather annoyingly to pretend to go potty after he is supposed to be sleeping, and thinks it's quite funny.

Time flies. Babies grow. People change.

My son is three tomorrow. Three. Behind him, Aaron is sneaking up on two. I won't have any more babies. This is it. Babies are behind me. How can something I dreamed of and fought for so long and hard be in my past now? And when I think of what is in my future, I feel overwhelmed by the knowledge that I have only a few short years to turn boys into men.

And only a few short years to be mommy before I am mom.

I sat on the edge of that tub, and then I tucked him back into his bed. And I gave him every extra hug and kiss, every "one more song" and sat with him for a while longer than usual before I left his room. I closed the door with the odd feeling that I would re-open it in the morning to find a big kid on the other side, and no longer my sweet little Nolan. I am just not ready for that.

Happy Birthday to my Nolan, my first baby, and the first to grow up before my eyes. You drive me nuts. You completely exhaust me. You make me wonder if I am cut out for this mommy gig. And I am so grateful for all of it.

I love you little boy.

It isn't easy, folks.

There seems to be a general belief that working from home is easy. When people hear what I do from home, I get the impression they somehow think it's a great gig. I get to work at home, be with my kids, and save on childcare costs all at the same time. I admit, I once thought working from home part time sounded easy as pie too.

Here's a little reality check. It is HARD. I have deadlines. I have clients who expect quick replies, I have work that has to be done, just like everyone who goes to an office. It's not optional. I can't just put it off because the kids are sick or I am tired or I just don't feel like it. It's my job. Only I do it WHILE doing my other, full time job, which is raising two boys full time.

I work 24/7. That is the case with all working moms, whether at home or at the office. But because I am taking care of my kids all day, I can really only get my work done when they sleep. Which means a day looks like this:

6-6:30 am, kids wake me up
7-8 am, provide breakfast, check client emails while kids eat
8-12, take care of kids, entertain kids, feed kids snacks and lunch, attempt to fit in what little work I can while they are playing
12-2:30, kids nap. Shove food down throat while working the entire space of the nap.
2:30-7, amuse kids, prepare a meal, feed kids, bathe kids, put kids to bed
7-8, continue to put kids to bed, clean house
8-11, work
11-2am,sleep
2-2:30am, convince Nolan that it is not morning, and no he can not go in the living room
2:30-6am, sleep

Start over. Oh, and attempt to spend some time with my husband too, somewhere in there.

I am never off duty. I do not sit down at the end of my day and relax. There is no lunch break, no coffee break, no break. Yes, some days are better than others, depending on my work load and deadlines. No, I would not trade the time with my kids for anything in the world. It is my choice, it is my life, and it is damn hard some days. It's worth it, in the end. But is it easy? No.

The Cutest Baby

I am not going to vote for your baby in the cutest baby contest. I don't care what you could win. It's not that I don't think your baby is cute. It's not that I don't want you to win fabulous prizes. It's not that I have a problem with you thinking your kid is the cutest on the planet.

It's that I am the mother of a child who was born with a serious facial deformity; a complete bilateral cleft lip and palate, and cutest baby contests make me cringe.

If you have never walked through a store and seen people trying not to stare at your baby, whispering as you walk away, or even flat out asking what is wrong with him, then you can't imagine how painful the concept of a cutest baby contest can be. You can't imagine knowing that even if you did enter, no one would vote for your baby, except maybe your friends and family out of pity, or to prove they think your baby is cute.

Everyone loves to tell me how they always thought Nolan was cute, but I am not stupid. I am a realist. I know he had a deformity that wasn't cute in anyway. I know that even though it is repaired he will never look 100% normal. I know that it will follow him for the rest of his life.

I appreciate you all saying how cute you thought he was as a baby. I know that you all saw him through the eyes of love, just as I did, and that his cleft never mattered to any of you. It's not that I don't believe you, it's that I know your opinion was tempered by the fact that you care about me and my son.

Now, I have a second son. He is as cute as they come. Aaron has huge blue eyes, full lips, round little cheeks with a dimple in one when he smiles. He is adorable. I have been told he could be on the cover of a baby magazine. Recently, I saw the ads in Parents for their cover model search, and thought, I bet my Aaron would have a chance. But I won't enter him, just as I will never enter him in any contest that is all about looks.

You see, I believe both of my sons are beautiful, adorable, and worthy of the cover of a magazine. But I know that the rest of the world wouldn't see it that way. And to consider that one child is more important or special than the other because of his looks is abhorrent to me. The idea of babies competing based on looks is saddening to me. The very reminder that my sons' looks will affect the way the world treats them and thus their happiness in life is heartbreaking to me.

I know we live in a world where looks matter. There is no point in pretending it isn't so. I know that every time I put on make up or clothes to improve how I look I am a part of it as much as everyone else. And I am not pretending for a second that I have never judged anyone for how they look. We all do it, and anyone who says they don't is flat out lying.

But babies. Children. Their beauty isn't in their big eyes or their kissable cheeks or their soft as silk hair. Their beauty is in their spirit. And maybe we could wait just a little longer before we start beating that spirit down with the realities of our harshly judgmental society where appearance is everything, and what is within falls second.

Maybe we could wait a little longer to teach them that how they look is so important, we need to have a competition over it.

Do as you will with your own children. I wish you luck, and I hope you win something - prizes, bragging rights, whatever. But I am sorry, I am just not going to vote. Because my vote is for every baby, and my heart is with every mother who has cried for her child's pain, suffering, and the differences that will never be accepted by society, no matter how much we pretend we're better than that. We're not.