Brother and sister.

One of the things I love most about staying home with these kids throughout the day is seeing their sibling relationship develop and Everett’s adoration for his sister. He wants her involved in everything we do. Just today, he got hurt from a door closing, and he sobbed through his tears, “I need Cambria,” and they cuddled and it made him feel better. Especially on our slow mornings at home, he stops to hold her, kiss her, hug her, rub her head, and wants to cuddle with her every morning in bed. He wants her to watch him play and dance, and sit right next to him while he eats breakfast and lunch. When he rides his scooter, he says, "Mama, turn her this way so she can watch me." He wants to build a fort and read her books in it. It is so sweet to observe. This will be such a short season of life where we get to spend all day, every day together, and it is beautiful (although I do look forward to the time where we don’t have to spend all night, every night together). These days, I find myself getting overly emotional about the inevitability of my kids growing up. As I savor our slow mornings, I think about how one day they’ll both be in school all day, every day, in separate classrooms, and they won’t get to hang out all of the time, and it makes me sad. Parenthood is so weirdly emotional and I tend to be an over thinker by nature, which I am finding can be especially troublesome as a mom. So I take a lot of photos to overcompensate for the anticipated nostalgia I will feel for this season of life, and it helps me to appreciate all of these little moments and fill my heart with gratitude for the present.

One time, while I was capturing their cuddles with my camera, there was this moment where he kissed her butt, because he loves her that much. Moments like that help me to get out of my head and to just enjoy the present. They remind me that the most important thing is that we have a lot of love in our home, that these two will always have each other, and hopefully the rest will fall into place.

Our sweet, brown eyed girl.

Before we had any kids, I thought we would have two girls with brown hair and brown eyes. We would sing the song “Brown Eyed Girl” to them, and play it during living room dance parties and long adventurous road trips. I have no idea why, but I pictured us as a two girl family. We didn’t find out if Everett was a boy or a girl ahead of time, and as we now know, he is a boy with blue eyes and white blonde hair, so that goes to show how much mother’s intuition I have about such things (zero). Still, I hoped I would have a daughter one day.

A year ago on the President’s Day weekend holiday, I thought I was losing our baby and was waiting for some test results to come back. Because of the holiday, we had to wait an extra day to hear from the doctor's office, and it made for a painfully long weekend. Everything turned out to be okay, and this past President's Day weekend our little girl turned four months old. This time, the long weekend seemed to go by too fast, and as I remembered back to the worry we experienced last year, I was feeling extra grateful for our sweet, brown eyed girl.

We’re not brave enough to take her on an adventurous road trip just yet, and she can’t yet fully participate in our living room dance parties except for in our arms, but we sure do love looking into the eyes of our brown eyed girl and imagining all of those moments that have yet to unfold.

Be present, be grateful. Alternatively titled: The Worst Mom at the Library.

I enjoy taking Everett to morning events at our local library more than I ever thought I would. I am constantly surprised by myself these days. Everett thinks our library days are fun, too, a little too fun sometimes. 

Read-aloud books. Wheels on the Bus.  Stretches. If You’re Happy and You Know It. Dance Party to Taylor Swift. Bubbles. Crafts. A dream line up for a two and a half year old.

The theme for this week was Valentine’s Day, so we kissed the air, hugged ourselves, and talked about who we love. We (the caretakers of these children) created a love bug craft, because in my experience, if there is gluing, cutting, and markers involved, the adults in the room usually do more than the squirrely kids, even though we let them take all the credit. 

Then, it was time to leave the library.

I tried all of the strategies I know to prepare Everett for leaving, and none of them worked. Instead of calmly holding my hand and walking to the car with me as I had hoped, he ran down an aisle of books, took off his shoes, and began screaming/kicking/crying. I tried everything I could to get him to willingly leave, to no avail. I was that mom. The mom who can’t handle her kids. The mom who everyone looks at while her toddler is having a tantrum in public. While wearing my three month old daughter in the carrier, I ended up pulling/dragging/carrying my screaming/kicking/crying kid all the way to the car and forcefully buckling his flailing body into his car seat. I was the worst mom at the library. We both cried during what felt like a long 1.4 mile ride home. It wasn’t our best moment.

Motherhood is the hardest thing I have ever done. I have a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, have traveled the world, have had a successful career, and this is what breaks me: a two and a half year old. 

Upon arriving at our house, we hugged and kissed and said we’re sorry, as we do. We played in the dirt in our front yard to reconnect and reset.

I adopted a new mantra this week for my parenthood journey: Be present, be grateful. I am trying to say it silently to myself during the most challenging moments. The hard moments are so hard, but I don’t want to get lost in feeling overwhelmed. Motherhood is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it is also the most beautiful gift I’ve ever been given. So I say it silently to myself during the beautiful moments, too: Be present, be grateful. Because how lucky I am to get to spend my days with these two beautiful children. How lucky I am to be their mom. How quickly this season of life will go.

So we will go to the library again next week, and hopefully it will have a better ending, but if it doesn’t, that will be okay, too.