Life is sort of settling? Is maybe the word? Like imagine all the most patient testing noises and touches, mixed with an obstacle course constantly at your feet, but at least now you’re coming to expect all the chaos coming at you literally 24 hours a day. And sleeping is literally/figuratively/actually a thing of your past now. Yes. This is my new normal.

I haven’t slept through the night in a solid 2 and a half months. First it was peeing 7x a night which prepared me for the up every 2-3 hours for the last 6 weeks. I wake up and my eyes hurt and my vision feels off for a little. The baby wakes up at 5:30 and is back down JUST in time for the boys to get up around 8. Bedtime is a full blown battle zone, and breakfast is for the fn birds. We’ve had Oreos, ice cream and chicken for breakfast in the last week alone and I ain’t too proud to brag about it. I’m clearly killing it. (Go me, spirit fingers, I’m the real mvp and every other power play is mine)

I know how blessed I am. I know that I am so lucky to have had 3 successful pregnancies turn into 3 healthy children. Who are beautiful, lovely and magical all at once. But I cannot help but think how much my mother would have loved to be here to witness it all. I cannot help but think how badly I want and need and crave her inside all the cute faces, funny pronunciations of words, adorable expressions, and inside all the times I let it all go and cry for her. Her relief, her comfort, her love.

I look into this baby’s eyes and I feel so understood by her. I’m looking at my new best friend. My future sidekick. My little goody girlfriend and the newest “Paula” as my mom and her sisters would call their favorite and most cherished besties. (Read an officer and a gentleman’s favorite line “way to go Paulaaaa!” at the end of the movie) But I just fucking miss my mom. I feel so robbed by not having her be a part of all of this. And often times, I still feel so misunderstood by even the people closest to me because honestly, until you lose your mom, your MOM. You will have no idea how hard it is. Yes the heart throbbing pain has lessened, and no I do not cry as often, but I lose her over and over again in new ways every day that life marches on with out her. And for me, that sucks. And for Venice, and Ace and for Maverick? That sucks.

All we have in life are the people who participate DAILY in loving and supporting us, wanting us around them, wanting to spend good quality times and make lifetime type memories with, even in all the chaos. I’ll never be able to put into words how it feels and how the absence of my mother pumps through all the veins in my life. It’s an absence that makes me miss things about her that haven’t even happened without her yet. A call I’m not allowed to make anymore. A hug I’m forbidden to ask for. A Monday out at the mall that has been taken from me. It’s a loss that is so great it still is a thought in the forefront of my brain. It’s a hollowing feeling all the time, especially when I can slow down to remember I don’t have her anymore, and I cry on the front porch with a baby on my boob.

Maybe I’m a little more lenient now. Maybe I give a little more grace. Maybe I love a little harder and differently than the person next to me. Maybe I make decisions differently than you? It’s because I have this knowingness that anything could change in the next moment. And I’m ok with that, and who I seem to be to others. I’ve had a lot of shit and a lot of good come my way in the last 6 years and I’ve never felt more human, more alive, more aware and more certain of who I am presently at this very second in time.

Blessings come a dime a dozen if you’re not paying attention. So PAY THE F ATTENTION. You are blessed. And so. Am I. But, I still miss you mama ♥️ forever.