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 💙