Starting School! A ramble

Our boys will begin kindergarten this week. I think I need to say that again because even though I've said it a lot in the last few months, the gravity of the idea still hasn't quite sunk in. (Hence the wandering mess that I'm sharing with you here.) E and M are starting school this...

The Secret #11 Most Surprising Thing I Learned My First Year as a Mother

I never really posted about it, or even mentioned it to anyone in real life, but I was really nervous, even a little terrified, of having these babies. Partly because holy shit twins, and because I'd never had my own babies before, so I was scared of how hard it would be and what life...

This Is A Post

I hate it when I get out of the habit of blogging regularly. It seems like then it becomes a Big Deal to post something, like it has to be Important enough to break the radio silence, so to speak. I've got a couple posts percolating (some in my mind, some finally here in WP)...

Motherhood: I’m doing it ALL WRONG

Last fall, I came across this article (10 Things Your Mom Never Told You) on Facebook, and it really rubbed me the wrong way. It's that treacly stereotypical garbage that obviously means I'm an absolutely terrible mother. In fact, I'm such a bad, lazy mom that it's taken me four months to actually get around...

The Mama Matters

I'm in a lot of online groups, and many of them revolve around parenting or babies/kids. Often there are posts from moms who are exhausted and frazzled and emotional. I never have much actual advice, but I like to chime in and say something like, "Your mental health and sanity is really important. You matter...

Things I still think about, six months later

I wrote this over a year ago, when my babies were only a few months old. I never published it at the time partly because I wasn't sure how it would be received--I never read  about these kinds of opinions and experiences. And partly because after I wrote this, I realized that I felt a...

Good and bad

So the babies learned a new skill! They can point to/grab body parts--hair, ears, feet, belly, nose. It's pretty neat and pretty cute. They will also grab our ears, nose, etc--and geez, do they have a strong grip. And sharp baby nails--ouch. The bad news is that I had to be told about this new...

December Darkness

Hallelujah, we've made it to January--past the solstice! I am so relieved. For months, I was dreading this December. Hoping it wouldn't be anything like last December. I should share that I have a mental image of the calendar year, as basically a single column of all the months (like this), so December is at...

10 Surprising Things I’ve Learned This Year

(two weeks old, E on left, M on right) One of the scariest things about being pregnant was not knowing how it would be to actually have a baby, and not knowing how I would deal with the various challenges. Being new at this, I was pretty worried that everything would terrible and horrible and...

Intentions

One of the great things about a very tiny baby is that you have explicit permission to do whatever works. Anything that gets you through the day, anything that gets that baby to sleep or stay calm, DO IT! Guilt-free! Safe in the knowledge that you are helping your baby be happy and healthy! It's...