In the midst of the stomach bug throwing my family into an absolute tailspin these last few days, I have had my patience tested in more ways than one. Nothing says 34 like being a slave to the bathroom and then taking care of everyone else’s butts and throw up for the next 3 days. can we say GLAMOROUS? Hardly. I’ve been so frustrated I couldn’t even get tears out to cry, anyone else know this exact feeling?!! Wretched. One plus side and little moment I don’t want to forget was after I bleached the entire bathroom today, Mav said “wow mom the bathroom looks beautiful!” So there’s that. Little honey pie! So on one of the darkest weeks I’ve had in quite some time, I’ve come up with a little list of love for my fellow moms and friends alike. One that can help to empower you and to think in a bigger way. I hope you enjoy and I hope you are inspired to make one of these lists for yourself!

Find a great brand of vitamins and take them every day.

Thank God for something before you check Facebook in the morning.

Take the good with the bad, baby.

Learn the art of BALANCE.

Simplify.

Go to church on holidays, it’s a start.

Presence over presents.

Replace things with experiences = memory making.

Invest in an expensive (yet super helpful) probiotic.

Don’t say yes just to be kind.

Nothing worth having comes easy.

Do good. Do what is right.

Be the light.

Ask for a light when yours is dim.

Be kind to children.

Talk to make progress not just conversation.

Wash your damn hands.

Take your damn shoes off at the door.

Send a card or a package in the mail.

Saying no to something that doesn’t serve you can mean saying yes to yourself.

You deserve e v e r y t h i n g you dream of.

Never wake a sleeping mother.

It’s ok to fall the fuck apart. And lay down there for a while.

Buy a supplement that helps something specific to your individual health (raspberry leaf tea during PMS)

Text or call when you get home.

Buy good, local, organic coffee and thank me later.

Use a straw to keep your teeth white. (You’re welcome)

Clean your shoes.

Eat fresh. And eat more GREEN.

Be present.

Put your phone down.

It’s ok to hate some of your kids toys, donate, donate, donate. It’ll teach your kids to do good with what they already have, everyone benefits.

Don’t forget to Pray for yourself.

Worry less.

Think on a higher, global level.

Rent an old movie.

Move on.

Drink water.

Quit dairy.

Know a little about a lot, while knowing a lot about one thing.

Curse if you have to.

Be humble, no bragging.

Stop searching the internet to compare your life to Pinterest/instagram/Facebook, search inside and compare you to, you.

No one will ever be as good at multi tasking than you are, so multi task it up and multi task it up well.

Practice the law of attraction. (“We are healthy” and “money flows freely to me” are two of my favs)

Stop the judgement.

Go to the doctor!!!!

Forget without forgiving;

Or forgive and never forget. Or just. Forgive and forget. Whatever dude. Just don’t hold onto a grudge.

Let your kids ride their bike inside during the longest winters.

Remember spring always comes.

Do something to awaken your soul on a regular basis.

Touch dirt in the middle of a cold winter to stay grounded.

Buy more plants, it’s wonderful for your home and your health! (Talk to them! I pretend they’re my mom)

Sing loud in the shower becausssse, acoustics.

Buy cute sunglasses. And you need a new pair of flip flops every spring, please.

It’s ok to leave people in the past, there are better ones coming.

Develop a mantra you believe in and say it out loud every day. Say it like you already have what you want.

FaceTime people you love that are far from you.

Have a second cup of coffee, or take a nap.

Pray for your friends kids.

Ask your friends to pray for yours.

Grow your own food.

Love the people you’ve collected as your friends and family and love them well.

Everything is going to be okay.

The scariest and saddest times are not the hardest part, the fear that is left over after is what’s hard, overcome that and you will be free.

Live each day like it’s your last, because it could be.

Speak to the people you love like it’s their last day. Because it could be.

Live in a way where when God looks down he belly laughs, and beams with a smile at how you’re doing this thing called life.

If you’re a new mom, a second time new mom, waiting to have your first baby mom to be, or if you’re on your second third or fourteenth baby kinda mom, this one’s for you. But especially, this post is for all the moms in my life that fill an extremely special pair of shoes they don’t even realize they’ve stepped into. The moms who have been there and done that before me. The moms who look me in my eyes and feel my anxiousness, my joy, my pain, and my pride. With one look they can tell I haven’t slept or that I’m worrying about something. They chuckle with me and help talk me down to “hey this stuff happens, and it happened to me; but worse!” when I tell them Maverick’s favorite curse word of the week. (it’s BN for inquiring minds, as in the letters B and N and he thinks it’s an amazing insult which is good because all variations of fuck have come to a halt; for now 😅) This one is for all the moms that have taken on a motherly role to ME and in turn my children, and made me realize that a mother’s love truly never does die. That a mother’s love transcends time and death and echoes on through life’s hallways. A mother’s love is magical and will ALWAYS find its way. I’ve been blessed with a fierce, loving, bad ass group of mom friends who speak some Rita life into me every damn day. So to these ladies, thanks for stepping up without ever realizing you have 🙂 it means the world to me. (And I truly hope you know who you are.)

So out of about one billion, these are just some of the things right now that are happening that I wanna write down so I can remember….. So I can remember one day far from now, when my little boys hands don’t fit inside just one of mine. So I can remember one day that when they had a runny nose or a booboo, they wanted to be held. So I can remember where I put the back of my hand when I was checking them to see if they were warm with a fever. So I can remember that some nights when I came home to a messy house and awake, unbathed children at 9:30 after working all day, it was kinda cool that they were still up 🙂 so I can remember always holding Mav’s feet whenever we’d lay together. How Ace sticks his tongue out so much he gets chapped lips 😍 how things like chapped lips can be SO CUTE. How if they had fallen asleep in the clothes they wore that day, it was important for me to put them in pajamas. How getting a fast asleep Acey into his feetsie pjs was more difficult than origami. I want to remember how Maverick started saying his R’s right around this time (the tale end of 3 years old) and how hard he concentrates when he says any word with an R in it now. I’m writing this down to remember that every time it snowed, Maverick thought that meant it was Christmas. I want to remember that one of my stresses was picking up legos and actually thinking I could always keep them out of Ace’s mouth! (Sorry buddy, but you are a gaggy one!) I want to remember how Mav says “mmmmmaaah-maaaay” when he’s oh so tired. And how Ace is starting to mimic everything we do. Like kiss and make sounds that sound like words we say and smile when he sees us. I want to remember this time because everyone tells me I’ll miss this and that somehow this very busy, very noisy, very messy time will be the greatest time in my life one day and I just wanna remember it all. I wanna remember how Mav has really great aim in the toilet bowl, and also how much he still adores baths and only baths, and no BN showers!! I want to remember how the brother bond is already happening right before my eyes. These boys are in LOVE with each other and it’s truly a miracle to watch their similarities and love for each other blossom. Every. Day. I want to remember how Mav asks for matching outfits with his brother, and how he celebrates Ace’s little triumphs and loves to pick him up and even has a “tone” he takes when talking to Ace. I want to remember how Acey sweats SO BAD in his sleep and how adorable I think it is. How when I pick him up sometimes from a nap he’s so squishy and all balled up like he’s still a newborn UGH MY HEART. I want to remember how obsessed with forts Mav is. Or how every night he feels like giving me a kiss, he gives me 14 smackers right in a row and I secretly am dying at how very special this is. I want to remember how full my heart is. How full my head is, and how full my house is. I want to remember to thank God every day for all his blessings. I want to thank the universe or creator or whoever or whatever is up and out there for making me a mother. And especially Maverick and Ace’s mother. I want to remember the toys we upcycled and the clothes we borrowed. I want to remember that Ace loves pastina and Maverick loves steak and raspberries and well, everything really. Or his obsession with breakfast in bed, water and making smoothies. How he calls anything eaten after dinner a midnight feast. Or when he tells me he made morning dinner AKA breakfast. That when I was little, dessert was for special occasions but somehow every night is a special occasion in my sons’ lives because, well ice cream flows pretty freely around these parts. Ice cream, and poop talk, and farts, I love yous, one hundred million kisses, laundry every day, grocery shopping 3x a week, and more than all of these things, I want to remember the feeling. The feeling that comes as a second time around the block, to be able to enjoy being a mother in its entirety. Breast feeding a baby with 5 teeth. How I love love love co-sleeping. Letting Mav keep his nippy at age (almost) 4 and not really caring how I feel judged for those last two. I want to remember how I felt when I found “my” mom gang. These are my people, the people who love me, and love my babies.

And because I found my own little village run by a pretty sweet lineup of moms AKA hype girls AKA crunchy granola moms AKA my badass single moms AKA oily mamas AKA sister wives, where we are not afraid to say we’re scared or we’re guilty or we’re sad or want more or want less, I would take it all. I would take the stress, the broken ass vagina I have, the 10 lingering pounds I have to lose, the boob job I want, the time in a very busy schedule I’ll never make room for because MOMGUILT, the “don’t know the last time I washed my hair” weeks, the grape juice during flu season rule, being thrown up on, pooped at, sneezed on, I will gladly take all the thankless days of motherhood because WITHOUT THE BUTTER THE BREAD AINT AS SWEET. I will take the bad with the amazing because I have people who love my babies, who pray for my babies, and look forward to the next story I’ll have to share, about. My. Babies. SO, here it is. Just some of the things I know I’ll surely miss one day. And I hear one day isn’t so far away and it comes in like a freight train. And all I wanna do is remember being a mom who loved her babies well. Who manifested love and health and happiness into their lives and onto their sacred paths. Who raised good boys with manners and life skills. Who exemplified through my marriage how to respect women and how to lead with your heart and when to lead with your head. I want to look back one day with my boys who will surely tower over me and read this with them and have big happy laughs that turn to tears that turn to laughter again. Because that is my favorite emotion. Where the happy, the sad, it all blends into o n e 💙

It was a little after midnight when I woke up to this low alert sound…. bliiing bliiing…. I got out of bed to see where the noise was coming from. I stood at the top of the stairs when I realized I didn’t hear it anymore. And then, bliiing bliiing. I followed the noise into the office where I realized it was Dan’s printer telling me I had to restart it but not to touch it with a pen. Ok? So instead of unplugging it, the alert was low and ignorable enough that I closed the door tight and returned back into Mav’s bed to sleep.(😂 cosleepers unite)

Ok so I fell back asleep and again was woken up, this time nothing prompted it, but I looked into where the door to the office is adjacent to the hallway and saw this orangey, blushy, golden glow. (I remember thinking in my head “I’ll explain this as rose gold in the morning”)The light had a stillness to it, but also looked like the sun was shining in through a pink linen scarf or something similar to that. It wasn’t pulsing or fleeting it was just completely there and moving but not moving at all. In that moment I felt panic; is it a fire? Did I leave a candle on? Is it morning? I looked out Maverick’s window into the backyard and it was dead dark outside. In that moment I instantly remembered ‘but I closed the office door, nothing could be shining out of it?’ And in that same exact thought I realized it was my mother. I had gone from panic to fright to complete peace and warmth inside and I said “hi mommy” and instantly fell asleep.

It was exactly how you would imagine seeing someone whose passed. It was as if she was right there and I was scared and nervous but automatically when I realized it was her, I was overwhelmed with happiness and instantly felt safe from the other feelings I just worked through, in the middle of a very special night.

So of course, as you would expect I woke up and it was all I could talk about. I told Dan and Mav, my brother and my sister and it was just awesome as it was the day before March 1st. So now get this. I’m in the kitchen and I have a serious superstition about changing the calendar over before the day is through. I also don’t cross my days out on the calendar spaces because that too bothers me. So I walk over to the pantry and notice a new dog in a new yoga pose on the calendar and realize it’s switched to March 1st 2018 instead of February 28th. I of course panic and ask everyone if they changed it. It was flipped up, pinned into the hole, and the marker was hooked on the top of the pages that had been flipped. Everyone denied their premature flipping of the calendar including my son, so I believe in my heart some way some how, mama Rita came and let it be known that if I had any doubt she paid me a visit, there was literally now writing on the wall to support my belief that it was her. I again said hi to her and laughed a little because I almost don’t believe it myself. But this woman, this mother of mine, this magical angel is proving to be just as powerful in beyond as she was here on earth.

It’s March. Rita’s birthday month. Mine. And now it’s my son’s birthday month. Maverick was far and wide her most prized possession in life. Even if he came in March 2014 and she only got to love him for 2 years and 3 months, it was enough love for him to still ask about her every day. Ask me what her phone number is. Sometimes after we read books, we remember together what her face looked like. He asks me why she doesn’t come visit. He talks about her to his cousins, and his cousins now say Gaga every time they find an angel feather (fun fact: an angel feather is any feather Mav finds. Whether it’s from a pillow, a down comforter or a duck itself, they are feathers from Gaga in heaven and he finds one almost every day 💛). He made her a glamma, a Gaga and a Grammie and she lived for him in her last years here on earth. Sometimes life is so unfair. I still have a hard time grasping the fact that my mother, the one whose presence filled up an entire building when she walked in, the woman who was larger than life, in your face, unfiltered and somehow fit her ocean sized heart inside her chest, is gone. She’s missing from us. She’s missing from the new memories we are making. She’s missing from her own birthday month, her favorite season to shop, from Easter planning, Easter basket making, and she is missing from three undoubtedly still very cherished grandchildren’s lives. They will always know about her, because she is certainly always knowing about them while watching from above; and who are we to take that big humongous love away from them?

Mama. This year you would have been 59. Fifty nine years YOUNG. Because that’s always how you acted, young, bold, fun. Wise. Big and strong like a mountain. Rooted like an ancient oak tree, and the size of the love you carried inside you truly was pure, innocent and immeasurable. I miss the way you loved me and how it made me feel. I miss you loving me every. damn. day. and still can’t seem to understand why you were taken from us. Know this, celebrate you we do. We always will. We’ll love you for the rest of our days and whatever’s after that. But missing you. Missing you is the hardest part. Missing you is what we do in between the seconds where we speak your name out loud. Love you love you love you. And happy birthday month to you 👑🎂💪🏽🎀