To Become A Mother

To Become A Mother
When it is least expected
Least acceptable
Least convenient
Least conceivable
Least reasonable
Least affordable
Least responsible
Least of all and least of all
Least wanted or ready to become a Mother

Is like stepping through a portal that leads you away from
Who you used to be
Who you would've been
Who you would've liked to become
Who you thought you were
Who you never thought you would be

And it takes you to
Where you ought to be
Where you are needed
Where you must provide the way
Where you least expect it
Where you can never return from
Were you are changed forever
Where love has a face and laughter
Where you can watch it sleep and grow
Where you learn about life
Where you begin a legacy
Where you find your way
Where you start to live

An excerpt, of an excerpt.

...A million sharp points splinter in my chest. I struggle to catch my breath. I watch the world go by but not through regular sight. I feel it in the pit of my stomach; a place that though is in the center of me feels like a long lost memory I once had in a place I only visited once and have never returned to. I am at once drowning in a sorrow that is too strong to do anything but submit to it. There are no body parts you can flail to over come it. They can only show resignation with their tears or not at all. There are people who live like this aren't there? They live in silent battles so deep rooted, too deep down in that cavernous pit of their bellies to push up to the top of their tongues. Colliding with teeth and lips is an impossible feat for these sad small words. Instead they live in the dark, and mold to it. Becoming the lining of where it resides. Consuming it's owner. Sadness is the strangest companion in life. No one on the outside can see it except for when it's imprints mark the space outside of our eyes and around our mouths. Our bodies doing the work our words cannot. Blanketed beneath the weight of sadness, it does not warm you but it does not let you slip from it's cover either.





I was asked by a substitute teacher in the 6Th grade why I was reading such a sad book in class one day. It wasn't unusual and it still isn't to catch me reading whenever there's a quiet moment, somtimes even at a long red light. Anyway, at this particular time, I was reading Izzy Willy Nilly a fictional story about a 16 year old girl who loses her leg as a result of a car accident. At first and for a long time I felt embarrassed at his remark. As I got older and the more books I read I realized finally that the reason I like such sad books is because they are some of the most poetic, inspiring, time-stopping stories I have read. I decided I want to write like that. I want to know how to say things that people will read and have that feeling of recognition in them that cannot be explained nor denied. I feel it in my bones that I could do this. I am waiting for my story to come. In the mean time I write short stories. I am still looking for a place to share them but I think it's a blessing that I cannot yet. I still need practice. Thank God for blogger! Here at least I can feel that release that comes with seeing words as they manifest on the screen by the work of my own hand (or finger tips, whichever.) That's all I have for now...I'll keep you posted.

Working Mama!

I have found myself an amazingly perfect job. I found a place where I feel passionate about how I will spend my hours there every day. I can only describe it as having found my niche. (spellcheck?) I feel fully present here in my office, and when I'm venturing out on home visits. I am feeling so blessed lately to have a job AT ALL and even more so one that I absolutely adore.

I must admit that my first week, when I was feeling so lost and confused by all of the paperwork thrown at me, not to mention the 2 case loads, I was wondering why I had ever wanted to work again in the first place. I contemplated my decision up until the night before I started working. I was fearful of leaving my daughter in daycare, I was feeling guilty of not being able to spend that time I had felt Leila needed one-on-one with me now that Christian had started school. So I prayed. I prayed that if it wasn't meant to be then God please intervene and make it impossible for me to do so..

Instead I found affordable day care where I know Leila feels at home within just 24 hours of actually looking at sites, and my friends and family have come together to make the responsibility of picking up Christian from school a smoothly orchestrated transition . All of the worries, and doubts I had were quickly swept away.

I have always worked in child care and it's nice to be on the other side of the services provided and dealing with the grown ups this time around. Although, I admit going into the preschool classrooms and getting to see the children for whom we invest so much time and effort for is one of the better perks of the job. I am amazed at how well suited I feel for this position as a Family Advocate. I am not however amazed at how great God is. I know this job is a blessing.
The moment I stepped foot inside stay-at-home-mom's home and recognized in her eyes the elation to simply have another adult in close proximity to talk with, sit with and entertain --I knew for sure my time at home, my experiences and frustrations at feeling as though when I not working or going to school that my potential was if not being wasted then at the very least dwindling away into a far corner of my mind where I stuff "some day" plans were all used in his plan to show how marvelous and complete, and sovereign God is.

My new, incredibly witty, sassy, supervisor told me the other day that one of the reasons I was hired was because in my interview I told her I felt God had lead me to this opportunity.

In the world we live in, where the mere mention of any sort of religious, faith affirming or even just too damn optimistic outlook can get you slapped with a law suit of some kind and barked at as being politically incorrect, I realized I was taking a risk even mentioning being a person of faith. Instead, it landed me a job. A really good one that I am proud to do.I do not endorse using those words in all work places but it was just something that to me felt like the right thing to say, especially when this line of work calls for you to have a little faith if not in God then at the very least in people.
I feel that intense energy, that pure drive when I know I'm making a difference in someone's tomorrow. I sleep so soundly at night that not even my active dream world can keep up.I am altogether happy, and it is altogether in thanks to the many people in my life who have supported, encouraged and recommended me for the very job I have today. And so in conclusion, God is good. And more than that, God has been good to me. I hope I can continue to lean on my faith and my friends as I make my way into the tangled web of human services and social work. Thanks for stopping by!

In Hindsight..

There are a lot of experiences in life that you can not feel the full extent of until some time has passed since the experience itself. There is so much to be said for people who can learn their lessons quickly, or better yet the people that just "know better" ahead of time. I'm not one of them. I have always learned my lessons the hard way. I don't intentionally do so but my nature drives me to it. I have often felt I am a strong person, still, I don't feel the need to test my strengths with heavy-weighted issues.



I am learning that often times, I will not learn my lesson until much time has passed and sometimes not even the first time something goes wrong. When a certain traumatic event, or overwhelming period in my life has come to a close I can finally look at it with fresh eyes and see so many of the things I had missed there before. Sort of like watching a psychological thriller more than once to get the full effect, or anything you might have missed the first time around.



Haven't we all been there before? Hasn't everybody gone through something, maybe in a relationship in which only hindsight gave us the true light of what was really going on before our eyes that was for some reason not clear to us at the time? When I think about it in these terms, hindsight can be very..annoying. I wish I could not see now, the things I had never seen then. It stirs up emotions laid to rest, like fallen leaves by the wind.



I think we should have hindsight to thank for our growth, and for our continual acceptance of others. We can so easily call somebody a 'fool' for the decisions they make, the way they speak or act and really, we are not so much more inclined to wisdom than anybody else just because we think we are. I think if we were to realize how often we played the fool ourselves, we would be much slower to slap such a condemning label on to anyone. I remember, not one of my proudest moments growing up, as a seven or eight year old kid having the type of serious discussion only children can. My neighbor and I were playing in our communal stairway, a luxury only kids who live in a building can understand the importance it plays in your socializing time. As usual we were complaining about our parents and somehow we started talking about dads. My friend didn't live with her father and ironically (only in hindsight that is) both her and her sister had different fathers. For some reason-- maybe my two languages were to blame or maybe it was only pure innocent arrogance I can blame it on, I started telling her that if her parent's were not married then he wasn't actually her father. I can see now that I was just a child, confused by the different types of families that existed but back then I had also misconstrued the idea of the nuclear family as being the only kind there was.

Flash forward fifteen or so years: I have two children. Both have different fathers. Coincidence? I highly doubt it. I believe in my higher power. I believe that we learn the lessons we failed to learn the first time through our own sometimes heart aching experiences, the second time around. To sum it all up: never be quick to call someone else the fool, to label them something so permanent in this elastic, ever changing life. Everybody is not done yet. Whether homeless, pregnant and single, divorced, in recovery, on welfare or even just struggling with weight. Not one element of struggle in life is subject to only one "kind" of people. Never be naive enough to believe that one day, your hindsight won't show you something condemning you once thought of someone else in the not so pleasant manner of having you go through it personally. In essence, be kind to yourself in others so hindsight won't feel like such a blind spot.

Majorly Undecided

I was reading my blog over, happy to have a real live blog in the first place when I skimmed over the side panel and read under my picture, the one of my son and I at my Commencement from BHCC and directly below it, there is a very meager, skinny, slim, small amount of words describing Yours Truly. This bothered me for the past few days. It made me think of the movie The Runaway Bride. It may cost me to admit I'm a Julia Roberts fan, as I have recently learned some people just can't stand her as an actress, but I love this movie and I think she did a phenomenal job in it. Really, I did.

What I was thinking about was when the ever handsome Richard Gere comes to town and after a week or so of getting her to warm up to him they eventually fall in love. He makes it clear to the heroine of the movie that the reason she cannot commit to someone is because she does not clearly know who she is.

I am not single. I have never run away from an alter. I've never even walked up an alter, I eloped. I think this could still apply to me though. It was starting to really get to me that although I can unlike Miss Robert's character name the way I like my eggs (sometimes in a hefty omelet other times scrambled to perfection) I don't really know what makes me tick. I know that I like to read, and write. I live to care for my children and dream every day of travel.

More than these things I think there are some fundamental basics I am not as sure on. I went out with a friend who I have not seen in a couple of years and when we went to order food at the local burrito place, she knew I would probably want something steak filled and overloaded with all the delicious things you can have rolled into a tasty portable wrap. Why was I looking at the menu then, deciding what I wanted while she rambled away my "usual" order, including extra salt on the side? It's like I have been a total outsider on the experience of knowing myself. I have this weird feeling sometimes like I am not really in the present.

Ever since I was a very little girl I kept expecting to wake up and be in "real life" We would be driving down the street in our old Toyota and I would ask from the backseat, "Mom, am I going to wake up now?" I think my parents thought I was a bit strange compared to my mostly silent brother, but I didn't know why I always felt like I was in some perpetual dress rehearsal for life.

When I was in high school I was for the most part on the verge of failing out. I was not stupid, I was simply unmotivated and frankly, couldn't see what the big deal was. My junior year of high school I was grounded for the first time, ever. In order for me to leave the house I signed up to take the PSATS. I wasn't totally up on what all the fuss was about that test either. All around me there were flashcards and panic stricken kids flying around every where from the cafeteria to the nurses office looking for some secret blue print for how to pass the imposing exam. And so on the morning of the PSATS instead of using my parent's twenty dollars to take the "stupid" test, I used it to buy my friend and myself some breakfast. Looking back now I see that I was on a pretty bad path of self destruction, especially considering I allowed to do whatever I pleased. And more importantly I look back and think, who was that girl?? Wasn't I entirely present through all those half baked decisions I made? I totally backed them up with convincing arguments such as, if you're smart you'll always find a way to make life work out the way you want it. I can't believe I was ever so brazen at just seventeen. Was it the arrogance of youth? Or something else? Maybe I had carried that childhood notion that the friendships I made and the experiences I had were not really happening via live time into my adolescence.

The next year when my world of care free living turned up side down and I became pregnant, again it was like it was happening to somebody else. Once I accepted what was happening and started to feel excited about baby showers and future birthday parties, the time flew. And the next thing I knew I was the mother of a one year old boy. I watched the videos of my baby showers, with my swollen belly and even more swollen face, and I didn't see me. I mean, not just because I was short of hideous my first time around preggers, but because everything I saw myself do seemed orchestrated, and feigned and like it was coming from someone else. Are my hormone levels dropping here or something? Am I the only one who has ever looked at her life and thought, that couldn't be me, could it?

Every year when I was in elementary school, at the beginning of the school year I would look back on the previous year and determine where I had matured. Maybe this year I won't switch friendships so quickly. Next year I would look back and decide that the following year would be one of solitude and self searching. I was a very intense twelve year old. But when I look back on my pictures, read the little scraps of notes I find in my keepsake box I find that I was pretty consistently the same girl: a bit of a wise ass, who loved to be surrounded by people.
I can't put into words to feel like you are missing yourself at the very moment but it makes me think of a silly poster, one of those inspirational ones they put up in schools to make kids think about life that said: dear me, I went out looking for myself, if I should return before I am here, ask me to wait. I thought this was ludicrous at the time. I read it and reread it but couldn't make sense of it. Now I get it.

Maybe I will wake up in three years and read this and think, who was that? Maybe that's something I can come to anticipate in my personality. Sort of like I'm realizing I may never be Suzy Homemaker considering I can only keep my room let alone house neat for no more than three days a month. Maybe this is an archival growing up, learning to wait for myself when I think I am already there but not really. I am the girl who will be slighted, or offended but not realize it and not think of what to say back to that person for another two months. I am the girl who still has the thank you notes I wrote out five years ago for my son's very first baby shower.
I also hold on to every birthday card I have ever gotten. I still have dried carnations from Valentines Day in 8th grade. I cannot see the importance of dusting, over finishing the last really good chapter in a book.
So instead of This is me, it's more a process I'm finding of, Is this me?

For all Content and Purpose

I have decided to invest time and effort in my process of becoming a better writer by blogging once a week. Although my number of followers is modest at best I still feel I owe it to them and any others passing by to get down on this visible medium, if only mildly interesting, at the very least a consistent blog. You see I am coming to terms with the fact that I am a dreamer and although all of my dreams may not come true I will still actively pursue them. Even if it means making sacrifices to do so. Like living paycheck to paycheck, or raising my children for part of their lives in a country where the language spoken is not our own. I am willing to take big risks with the hopes of big rewards. Making the decision to follow my dreams is as serious and concrete as deciding to have a second child. Because more than the fear of failure is the fear of the sadness I know would follow me all of my days if I simply don't try and follow my heart. Since being a writer is up there on the list (alongside world travel and changing the world) then in the position I am I can do no more justice to that desire in me than to write weekly for this newly endeared blog of mine. Hate not small beginnings, the bible says. This is just the start.

I have one of the most self motivated, productive and uncontested most impressive friends who has lived a total of about a thousand lives by the age of 23; whom is constantly telling me in more eloquent words that her secret to success is having a plan of action. She is an expert at living the dream. She has taken risks and gone out on all sorts of flimsy limbs to soothe that inner voice in her heart. She is the first person in my life to have shared the experience of that fire that burns in the core of you when you are really passionate about doing something. She knows how to really live life. A talent I suspect she has had since she was very, very young. Always the president of this or that club, activist in the making since the age of 12, She is one of my Heroes. So of course this blog in particular is a salute to her. And her audacious and intimidating levels of achievement.



I am figuratively stepping out into an unknown plane of creativity and I can only ask for advice and guidance from any and everyone who has ever been in my shoes. Like the title says, I will be writing for Content and Purpose. In my attempts to have a blog I can proud to post I think writing (at least) once a week will help me choose the things worth sharing and leave out all the riff raff. Hopefully. The tricky thing about wanting to be a writer is that you can sort of write about anything. In the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron she encourages all of her students of her workshop to write morning pages every day. Three pages of whatever comes to you. Because she knows, that when channeling your inner artist you have to clear the static. So I will use that practice in between posts, to hopefully try and eliminate ramblings... Kind of like this one.

According to Christian author, Philip Yancey, sometimes feedback as negative as it may be is a must for you as a writer. I want to hone my craft so that it is as natural as breathing. I don't care if I am told that I am cheesy, hopeless and have too many run on sentences. I probably am and I know I do. I have never been able to cut my word use down like an economist might cut down their spending. It takes me too long. Almost as long as choosing what to eat at a restaurant; I simply cannot deal with all of the options. So,bring it on people. Bring it on. I promise to bring nothing but my most honest and sincerest experiences to the table in return.

YOU ARE HERE

You know those directory maps inside of huge disorienting shopping malls that help you when you don't know where to start or which way to go? They always have an indicator on the key that says "You Are Here." I feel like I had a real life moment like that today. Except that the mall is actually my life, and I am still disoriented and lost and need to be told where I am, lest I walk around thinking I'm on the third floor with all the high end shops, when in reality I'm just sitting in my car in the parking lot, thinking I'm in the mall already. So here I am sitting in my car. Looking out at a garage. Nature splayed around it like an after thought. What am I doing here? Earlier today when I was talking with my brother and joking as we do about things that should not be joked about, I prompted a little discussion on what would happen if I took off and just started my life over in Italy. Alone. Completely hypothetical of course. He didn't even flinch. You know how you kind of what someone to worry and say "hey don't get any crazy ideas, okay?" He didn't so much as take a breath before he spewed out that it was highly unlikely something so spontaneous would come from me. "Hah" he said. "It'll never happen." Why? I protested. Wanting to know now why he didn't share the same view as me with me being adventurous and daring in life. Simply stated and not trying to spare feelings in the least- cause that's just not what you do with a sibling; there's some sort of unspoken clause in your relationship as brother and sister that allows you to say the stuff you only wish you had the gall to say to friends and significant others. Although my husband does a pretty good job of telling me like it is,too. Basically he said as he looked in the mirror and got ready for work: "you have too many anchors." imagine that. While everyone else is telling me to go for it and follow my dreams, and life is what you make it. Here is my blood relative saying I am to constant and stable and "anchored" to ever do any of those things. What can I say? I was a little deflated. I argued naturally, to try and make him change his opinion about what kind of person I am. Maybe he just doesn't know me that well I thought to myself. Maybe he knows me all too well. The fact is he's right, while he's been off gallivanting through several career paths and relationships and states, I've been here. With the same job, going to school living at home, taking care of the growing brood.Looking from the outside in, it appears I am not quite the adventurer I like to think myself to be. Is everyone just being nice when they tell me I could actually conquer these unharnessed dreams of mine? Is it too sad to tell the pathetic mother of 2 that chances are she'll be in exactly the same spot 20 years from now? Only older, heavier and instead of dreams filled with regret? Why do I feel like there's a chance I can still change my life around so that I'm not so predictable and conventional. I once told a guy I dated that my biggest fear was to be a married, the mother of two, working as a housewife. He said maybe it's what I actually want out of life and not what I feared at all. If so, why all the unsettled feeling. Don't get me wrong I love my family. But I want to take them with me on an adventure of a lifetime. And to make my lifetime an ongoing adventure. Didn't I conquer teen statistics that said I'd probably never go to school, and therefore always live in poverty? Haven't I come so far from that place? I feel like I have been picked up by the collar and dropped back into that zone of lowered expectations. I keep fighting against this current. I feel like my arms might give out but I'd rather lose my arms than my heart. I don't care what anyone expects of me or sees when they look at the life I lead. I am going to lead life instead by the horns where ever I damn well please. God willing.

Much harder than Say..

It is monumentally harder to stop and write about the flowers than it is to stop and just appreciate them-- and then move on. But still, something in me calls for me to get down in words what my heart says when it's looking out at the world.

I would like to someday be able to introduce myself as a writer; and at the same time, not of course misconstruing concepts of self with what I do for work, and yet it would so much define me to be able to say: Fabia, a writer. As of late you can call me a thinker. Or a hypothetical writer, or kinetic energy waiting for some major push to get my words rolling. Whatever you choose to call me, I am in other words stagnant. Throughout the day I may well have at least 6 ideas for my first novel but I can't manage to get those words down on any visible medium. I spend so much time thinking about words I would like to use that I forget to actually use them.

I am looking for inspiration. Correction. I will start looking for inspiration. I will put myself in places that creativity flows like..well I don't know what like because I am without the creative springs from which to pull any witty expressions from. I am in a creative dry land. I am in the drought of ohhh ten. I am hopeful yet! I will one day be able to sit in front of my shiny black laptop and novels will pour out onto it's hardware. I will successfully complete a work and be proud of it, my brain child. I will mold language into a new vessel that will carry to distant shores the very depths of my soulful expressions. And when it is all said and done and written. I will write some more. Til then, I must admit that it is much harder say than dreaming about what it would be like to do all of these things than to actually do them. I will though. I will see to it that it all gets written. Letting love be my guide.

Dream a Million Dreams

I sat in the library today for I don't know how long. I was surrounded by towering shelves filled with hardcover books filled with thousands upon thousands of words about anything you could ever dream of wanting to know about. I started thinking about what it would take to read every one of those books in there. How many years, lifetimes would it take to make your way through every last one of them? And then at your completion what would you become? I know I am always alter a tiny bit, in perspective, in reverence and in awe when I finish a book. I can only imagine how satisfied one's mind might be at having the chance to devour every work of art ever written. I know there are good books and less than good books; but lets say you were given the chance to read every recommended GREAT book ever known to man?

Having been raised in a Christian home my beliefs about life and afterlife include a dreamy place called heaven. I started to consider today what heaven may be like if there are no books there to read...I guess I won't follow up too much on the idea for fear of sacrilege in my petty blog.
I have always been known to be a dreamer. I wait for futures far too great and expansive to ever fit in one life time. I dream of visiting far too many countries and small villas that I know my given years will probably never allow. I expect to complete novels and art works that I have not yet begun and have only mildly considered. I don't what it is in me that makes me hope for the seemingly impossible but I cannot stop myself from dreaming it. The bible says God put eternity in our hearts. I can attest to the truth of that...

So from here I just keep on dreaming and just like with the vivid dreams that entertain me in my sleep, my day dreams wholly fill my time and I am taking the very slow steps to waking up to the possibility of making them come true. Here's hoping!

Witless Thinking

I promised myself I would not let wishful thinking get the best of me. I demanded of myself to let go of whimsical ideas and coulda woulda shoulda temperamental moments. But. I just can't help myself! I've been considering long and hard about what, if ever, I find something worth writing about would it be. It seems like I would be missing a big opportunity to share a lesson learned if I don't write about the joys, frustrations, and completely terrifying experience that is Young Parenting.

I seem to know a lot of mothers (young mothers) who have all come to terms with their new life path and have resolved, fairly so, to just say- Let it Go. Let the past be the past, and move on. They're much stronger willed than I. Or maybe it's the opposite, I'm not too sure. It seems all fine and good to be able to come into unexpected parenthood and be able to say, well I can't change it so I won't waste time thinking about what might have been...

Then why can't I do the same? I have been systematically and emphatically attempting to avoid this question, let alone train wreck of thought. It keeps pulling me back. It seems unresolved. It seems unfair. It seems like I'm always complaining! Although I will admit that no one in my daily life would ever guess I was feeling this way with the exception of a very small circle of friend and husband with whom I have shared my, woe-is-me; please play your tiny violin song and pacify my cries with an Its Gonna Be Alright tune. I am only human. I must showcase my weaknesses now and then to remind myself of this.

Inherently as a woman I naturally try to take on way too much without enough help. Add motherhood to that role and you have a person who is stretched so thin you can see through her. I'm not sure where I am headed with this. I am not sure where I am headed tomorrow. I do know that there are days that I lie in bed before the bustle of the day can commence and picture for just a few brief moments what a day in the life of a 20 something year old is like sans- children...

I would wake up, make myself some breakfast and linger over a book until I was good and ready to put it down. I would spend enough time in the shower to get all pruny (this is said with a very clear conscience in respects to conserving water on my planet, as motherhood has reduced my bathing habits to using up less than half of the water I previously wasted on myself.)I would go to work and maybe make plans to go out afterwards...or not! Or I would go home to my own apartment or maybe just my own bedroom and SLEEP! If you are not a parent, you can not begin to imagine the kind of personal time and sleep you forfeit in order to care for someone else. I would get goosebumps considering what parenthood would do to my social life when I was just 17. I did not know that just two years later my reality would be altered as such.

Becoming a parent is amazing. It is a new kind of love that lifts you up and never lets you down again. It is wonderful and produces all kinds of happy memories. At the right time in life. Otherwise it steals something very precious to all of us that are young and care free--being young and care free. I have to remind myself that it is not selfish to admit this. It does not make me love my kids any less. It does however do a hell of a job wreaking havoc on how I feel about myself. I am just starting to learn how much I have traded in terms of my own life and memories to make space to create a life and memories for my children. Maybe if I had had a few decades of solitude in adulthood before stepping into this all encompassing role I wouldn't have such a hard time accepting the trade off. But I literally stepped out of High school graduation into the doctors office for a sonogram. OK not literally, but still. Even more amazing are those mothers who became mothers before they got to the end of their high school careers(all the more power to you, stars of MTV's 16 & Pregnant!) Theirs is a plight I know even less about than my own. I used a very brief portion of my childhood before I gave it away, that at least I can say.I do not know what kind of grief I would have experienced if I became a mother before then.

Because that's what you do when you become a parent young. You grieve. You must let go of a lifestyle and welcome a change that is not easy for even older adults to accept. Maybe, and in the beginning and I know I did this, I tried to live life like I wasn't different than any of my other newly 21 year old friends. But it is a fleeting experience for those of you who have been there know. Eventually people get sick of taking care of your kid till all hours of the night on weekends. And frankly you get sick of yourself for doing it.

Today I am more than gladly giving up my social life for parent life. But definitely NOT in my own strength. God has been the one to strengthen my resolve and allowed me to flourish in parenting. Without his strength, I would be a very different kind of person and parent. I guess writing this in itself has had some cathartic value! I feel a little more refreshed and renewed in my journey as a mom. Eventually I will get to a point where I am no longer just a young mom. People will no longer ask me if I am the big sister or babysitter in the playgroups and school yards. When my children are no longer in this phase of needing me 24 hours a day, maybe I will be surrounded by new parents who are and are feeling the way I am now. I will have my day in the sun, and I won't always be lathering sun block on my kids noses while I'm there. OK maybe I will always be trying to remind them to put the sunblock on themselvs, but I'll do it gladly. I will have been after all, a mother for the majority of my life. That's not such a bad badge to wear.

About that...

Ever feel like you are constantly making yourself promises and premises that you seldom adhere to? And I don't mean a diet. Well OK- that works for this example too. It's so very frustrating to feel like you are always getting in your own way! If I could have an out of body experience I would use it to slap myself in the face and say LETS GO! I really need to get a move on things.

Yes, I am becoming extremely proficient in the career of stay at home mom. I can feed two screaming children breakfast before 10 am (on a good day) and basically, the rest of the day is the same, feeding the hungry little ones at the appropriate times while simultaneously cleaning and rearranging the ever messy house. UGH. I do love to spend time with the kids and with my bed during the day (nap time!) But I'm starting to feel like my mind is turning as mushy and vanilla as Leila's gross baby food. I really wish I had Stephenie Meyers' number. Maybe she can explain to me how you go about writing huge ass books while caring for children and actually have the mental focus to write something good enough for movies. I'm looking for my muse. I'm thinking about writing workshops and reading as many great American novels as I can in the mean time..good books in, good books out? We'll see.