You're (not) going to miss this

  As a mother when you announce that you are pregnant for the first time the flood gates of advice -both welcome and unwelcome- swing wide open. Everything from "sleep when the baby sleeps" to the overshares like "sex is going to be totally different." And since some people don't know when to stop, the advice continues through the pregnancy, and delivery, and infant stage, and toddler stage... and preschool stage.. I will let you know when it stops. But my favorite piece of advice so far is the famous "You're going to miss this"
   I love this piece so much because I already do. My son is 4.5 ( if you ask him he is almost 5) and I already miss being able to watch him sleep, being able to hold him in my arms and rock him, the much simpler days of parenting when there was just one baby and being a stay at home mom really did mean daily naps. Now that we have 3 in the house the days kind of blur together and at 8 months old I already miss Porter's newborn days.
  I miss watching him sleep all day, I miss that new baby smell, I miss the first laughs and smiles and knowing that he knew I was his mama just by my smell and sound. That overused sentiment really is true, which I suppose is why everyone says it to you.. but then there is the flip-side.
    There are things you are most certainly not going to miss.. for instance...
   The high pitched squeal that randomly comes from JT. For no reason, associated with no particular event or emotion. Or the 45 minutes it takes to get out the door with Ellie. I can say with a fair amount of certainty on her wedding day I am NOT going to look her in the face teary eyed and say "I wish we could go back to the days where every time I asked you to get your shoes on you took your pants off instead"
   I can't imagine missing finding poopy fingerprints on the bathroom wall, or having a child scream "MOMMY, WILL YOU WIPE MY BUTT?!" the moment I set down. And while we are talking about the bathroom, I am greatly looking forward to the day I can do that without being asked 90 questions or having a 3 year old give me instructions on how to wipe. I will never mourn the days of going out on a date with my husband for the first time in 3 months only to find snot on my shirt, or being so tired that I did an entire days worth of errands with an inside out shirt.
   I will miss the funny moments that happen. the silly outfits that the kids come up with and the snuggle bug moments. I will miss reading them stories and the proud looks they get when they do something for the first time. I will miss the personality that develops and the laughs. The excitement, the silliness, the dancing around the living room and watching the same movie over and over... and over.... and.... o v e r.
   Personally I am finding it easiest to deal with the screaming teething baby by looking at pictures of him when he is happy, and thinking to myself that one day I will be able to repay my daughter when I am senile and it will be her chasing me around the house while I am butt naked in front of the pizza man. Until that day.... Here are some pics of my lovies in all their fabulousness.

Nothing worth having :

   Marriage: While to some it is a concept, an idea, an event; to me it is a living breathing organism. 
   It's amazing, its terrifying, its freaking hard. Marriage is rewarding and exhausting and infuriating and fabulous all at once, and if you feed it, it will be one of the best things you have ever done, but if you neglect it, it will die.
   Now, lets pause for a minute, what do I know? I have only been married for 5 years. I have also been on both ends of everything I just said in that time, and I have talked to a LOT of people on the subject. Why? because its important to me. I value it, to me it was not a decision I made on October 11, 2008. It is a decision I make every single day.  I have to wake up every day and decide to be married to the man that both feeds all of the wonderful parts of me, lifts me up and stands beside me no matter what decisions I make and pushes me to grow, to be better. I also have to decide to be married to the man who never replaces the toilet paper roll, or does laundry, or closes the cabinets in the kitchen. The man who will argue with me even when we agree, and leaves his shoes in the middle of the floor every single day no matter how many time I complain about it.
   I wake up and have to commit to doing the things I agreed to on that day, to love him, and only him. To follow him, to trust him, to forgive him and to try my very best to make him happy. In our time together we have done a lot, we have moved more times than I want to admit, we have had 3 beautiful children, we gave one to heaven, we bought a house and 2 cars, we acquired 3 animals and lost a few fish along the way. We have opened our home to my mother and my sister, we started a business, we discovered our faith and we nearly fell apart in the process. Because with all of this going on, we forgot that we had to keep feeding our marriage. It won't wait for you, we had to be reminded of that a few times. 
   Marriage has to be a priority. You have to learn what your spouse needs, whether it be words of kindness and respect, or simply quality time together. The book The 5 Love Languages helped us discover that for ourselves. It also taught us how to be better parents, but once we learned what we were doing wrong we learned how to fix it, with a lot of guidance along the way, and a lot of tears on my behalf. But here is the thing...
     My husband is the most amazing man in the world in my eyes. Even on our worst days I would not wake up and chose to be married to anyone else. I could not imagine living my life without the silly text messages and the smiles he gives me. I could not imagine living without hearing his voice when I feel like I am falling apart, and while I am fully aware that I can't fully predict what the future has in store for us, I can tell you this. I intend to feed my marriage until it is fat and happy, even when I don't feel like I have anything left to give. I am prepared to regroup every once in a while, I am prepared to get down on my knees and pray for what I want, for what I need. I am sure that we will fight and disagree, but I am also sure that we will make it through, because we are both on the same page.  And that page is And They Lived Happily Ever After.
   While I believe that everyone makes their own decisions, for their own reasons, and I do not believe that I am better than anyone else, I do disagree with jumping into a marriage. I disagree with the notion of "we can just get a divorce if it doesn't work" and "well he stopped trying so I did too"
I believe in fighting for what you want, fighting and standing for what you believe in, and not giving up when the going gets tough. I also believe that its never too late.
   I want my children to grow up seeing us in love, and I don't think that loving someone is enough to keep a marriage going, I think that being IN love takes effort to keep, but that effort is worth it. I want my children to find an everlasting love, a true, honest love based on the principles of forever, and that may take some effort and resistance on their part since the world has given up on the notion of taking your time, completing the things you start and doing things right the first time. But I believe that if I can show them how a marriage should be, by seeking out marriages that I want to model after and always looking for a way to improve, then one day they will know what they are looking for and not give up before they find it.
   My marriage is worth having, and therefore worth trying for and seeking out and working towards, and theirs will be too.

Happy Birthday sweet pea

   Happy New Year everyone. And with a new year among us it means that everyone around us is making new Years Resolutions, I will give you one of mine, which I normally keep very personal, but since it may excite some of you I will share. This year I resolve to blog more often. My goal is once a week minimum, which I often have ideas of things I would like to write about more often than that, just don't get around to the follow through part. Feel free to yell at me if I slip up. Hunt me down, post on my Facebook wall, text me, or stroll in the house and say.. hey you.. with the sweatpants... get off of Pinterest and do something productive. Seriously about once a week someone should do that anyways.
   A new year in my house is about more than a resolution, which can happen any day you want it to, for us it is the proximity to another very important day that is much more exciting. Ellie's birthday!! For those of you who know me well, Ellie is a test of my patience, she is the unexpected baby that decided that she would hold on to that concept and integrate it into her personality. She makes me want to both pull my hair out and laugh every single day.
  Year 2 for her has brought me a lot of laughs, she remains a strong opponent to clothing at home, She consumes more Nutella than anyone I know, and she has more sass than a whole cheerleading squad. Year 3 should be fun.
  I cant imagine life without her though. Even when she is trying to conquer my very last nerve, she is teaching me a lesson. She teaches me how to bite my tongue when I am angry, she teaches me how to step away when I am allowing my emotions to lead me, she teaches me how to laugh at things even when I don't want to, and to chose my battles. She teaches me daily to look at the world through the eyes of a child, to be excited over the little things, how important the small steps are, to be fearless.
   I joke about how hard it is to deal with myself as a 2 year old, but truth be told, I wish I had the strength and resilience that she does. I wish that I could let things go the way she can, be as unwilling to give up on the things I want, and as clever as she is, as curious as she is.
   I am working on learning to embrace her strengths instead of try to change them simply because I am not strong enough to confront them daily. I welcome year 3 for her, because it gives me a second chance. A chance to be the mother to her that she needs, one that can step out of my own comfort zone enough to let her grow into the unique and spirited individual that she is meant to be.
   So as the weekend approaches and we get a day closer to her birthday, I get a little bit closer to telling her...

      Happy Birthday Ell 'Raine. I love you more than I ever thought possible, Bring on the trouble and challenges, bring on the crazy. But most of all, Thank you for being the most amazing little girl I have ever met, and I thank God daily for being so blessed to be your Mommy. Here is to another year of memories, and a few days of questioning my sanity.