I was told soon after my mom died, that all I have to do is ask her for a sign when I need her the most. To say, out loud a shape or a color or an object and she’ll deliver exactly that. On Mother’s Day Eve I asked my mom for a bright lime green sign that everything’s gonna be ok. 3 days came and went but tonight, on my way home from getting the boys, Mav asked me to keep driving and singing the songs I was singing to them… so I did. Somehow I got totally lost and even got a little nervous at one point because the road I was on felt a little eerie with the fog and the rain. I passed a church with a saying I didn’t quite get to read, and once I gained my surroundings, I felt a pull to turn back around to read what it said. Turns out, I wasn’t lost at all 💚💚💚 thanks Mama. You are truly magnificent ✨

I remember when you came into my life. It wasn’t the first time I had met you, or seen you, it wasn’t even the first time I gave you my number. But this time it was different. It was my second time out since I had broken away from an abusive relationship. I was petrified to even be out let alone have fun. I was new and I was broken. But the stars aligned that night and somehow we wound up at the same place at the same time. Friends of yours were trying to hook you up with my best friend, who was out with me and friends of ours. Somehow we wound up standing at the corner of a very crowded bar and we were kissing like we were the only ones in that place.

I remember falling in love with you. It was easy. It happened fast. You were unlike any man I had ever met, and that was a good thing. I can remember the first night you came to pick me up. My mom poured me a shot and said “please have fun.” I took the shot, and you came to pick me up 5 minutes later. I remember where we went and that my ex was blowing my phone up but somehow the anxiety subsided when I was around you. I remember the first time you met my entire family, and they loved you. I remember thinking that night, at my aunt’s fundraiser, that you were a real life angel, sent to save me.

I remember everyone telling us to take it slow. I remember loving to hear what your mom said about me. I remember loving the way you pulled me into your lap in front of anyone, you didn’t care, you wanted the world to know you loved me, that I was your girl.

I remember breaking up. We had gone too fast and we hadn’t healed from the past we had endured. We didn’t listen to our mothers, or our uncles or your pop. We loved each other and we went full steam ahead, until the train went off the tracks a few times and it was necessary for us to part ways.

We found our way back to each other less than a year later. It was apologies and acceptance again into both our families. It was a promise to treat this relationship like it was a brand new one. We talked much less about our exes, and we still don’t really go there. We loved more. We were honest and sometimes that hurt. We moved in together, fell in love over and over, got engaged, and then, married.

It wasn’t soon after we found out that we were pregnant. I remember never loving you more. I remember wanting to spend every waking moment with you and feeling like life was so good I was scared something bad was always on the verge. But nothing bad ever happened. We welcomed our first baby. He made us parents and we were figuring it out together. It was late nights on google and early mornings getting peed on, sleeping in shifts and then somewhere along the way it became a little easier.

Life for you was never a shiny lucky penny heads up. But you had a lot of love in your heart, and you had braveness in your heart, and the fight in you STILL is as loyal as it gets. Now I’m beginning to realize, what it’s like when life isn’t a shiny lucky penny. Where you were raised kind of operating on survival mode, I always had a rather cushy life. Now we witness our life together unfolding. You do better than me with obstacles, you’re a survivor. Your parents raised you, loved you, helped you, pushed you, shaped you, and wanted you to have dreams and hopes and wanted you to always know that family comes first. Now that I’m in a hard season of my life, I’m realizing I’m lacking some tools and I rely on you and only you to help me figure it all out.

I know the immense pressure you’re under. I know it because I can feel it. I’m sorry my father never taught me how to be better at handling money and soon after my beloved mother died, he threw me away. Me, Allie and Chris. I’m sorry that he threw you away and our kids too. I’m sorry this even burdens your big heart, you’re the last one to deserve it. I remember asking you to love me a little more these last two years. You’ve spread yourself so thin and so wide and have provided love and SO MUCH MORE to me and to Allie it’s supernatural what you do for us.

So I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I wasn’t raised to know what’s really important. I know loyalty and love and I know happiness and I never went without, but right now I am trying to fix myself so you don’t fall out of love with me and the life we built over the last 9 years.

I have daddy issues. And they are rearing their ugly head. My dad used to call me fat, my entire childhood. And he would yell like a maniac. He would hit my brother and just the abuse sometimes, and still, it’s disturbing. He’d bounce up and down when he got really mad. He was always dramatic and only after he reached this scary breaking point did he ever feel sorry. And really it was always self pity.

I thank you for rarely breaking. I’m sorry that I am the reason you break. I thank you for being strong and steady. I’m happy you can find a way to love me even when I can’t picture what Love is anymore. They don’t tell you how ugly death is, and all the wicked tricks it plays on you long after you witness someone’s soul leave their body. They don’t explain to you that who you are as a child shapes your entire adult life. They don’t tell you how disturbing life on earth can be. But what they don’t KNOW is. I still have a real life angel. And it’s you. It’s you and it’s Maverick and it’s Ace, my brother my sister, your entire family who surrounds me with love.

I don’t want to be vicious. Or vulgar. I want to be soft and hard in all the right ways. I want to be loved but I want to love you more. And provide you with a soft place to land on your hardest days.

I am sorry. I’m sorry that the pain in my heart has ripped through our life together like a tornado while we’re trying to build it from the ground up. Please have faith in me, and be strong for me a little while longer while I begin, just begin, to pick up all the shattered pieces of my heart. Please have patience with me while I find the girl you married. Please forgive me for being angry and taking it all out on you. I have a lot of work to do on myself and clearly that’s why I stay busy picking you apart. I don’t like who I am right now and if for no one else, I want to become better for you, to you, and for our sweet angel babies. You and them are why my heart has stayed beating these last two years. I’d be dead without you three.

So. Recently I’ve been trying really hard to understand my own feelings and why some things work the way they do. It is extremely rare these days that I find myself in a quiet setting alone with my thoughts. Usually it’s on my way home from work and I turn the radio off and I put my rosaries in my lap and I travel back in time to when I was a catholic school girl and I recite some Hail Marys and a few Our Fathers and round it out with a Glory Be. It’s therapeutic to just give up all my stress, anxiety and worry, if only for a short multitasking 30 minute ride home. Ya know only 3x a week. But I give it up to God. I’ve realized recently that there is no building a foundation in a flood. If I had no faith I’d be nowhere right now. I’d be at rock bottom searching for Jesus. Or driving to the nearest looney bin and checking myself in. Or drinking or smoking some good stuff. But I’m a mother and there will be none of that. So, I pray. And I ponder. And I analyze and worry and google search and over stimulate my brain into complete and utter exhaustion. I know you mamas out there FEEL ME. And damn I wish I could tell you it’s all gonna be ok, because I do genuinely feel like I’m in the storm of a lifetime some days, but somehow, a good nights’ sleep and the dawn of a new day always seems to make things… okay. Even okay is better than bad so we take what we can get. So here’s the thing. When you sit on the shore of your feelings, and feel all of the sadness and happiness too, you can really learn a lot about why you’re feeling a certain way. (WHY I WRITE!) So, for example’s sake – let’s say, someone has this amazing plan coming up for themselves, be it a vacation, a cooking class, or a trip to target alone. You don’t really know why you’re feeling any kind of way until you stop the 10-25 other tasks you’re doing in a days’ time and focus on the feeling. Maybe you maybe you feel left out, unthought of, forgotten, isolated, simple, alone. Maybe you even feel a bit jealous. As a mom it’s extremely easy to fall into the rabbit hole that is comparison, also, longing, wanting and just that feeling of what once was. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my life. I love keeping a house up, mopping floors and waxing hardwoods have become one of my favorite things to do to keep my brain sane. I love having two little butts to wipe and preparing 3-4 breakfasts before 8am some days, I enjoy buying any birthday presents, household needs, planning parties etc. I’m thankful I have all of these busy things to keep me going. It’s when I stop that I realize there’s a lot of empty parts inside the busy. And that it’s ok to feel empty when you’re constantly pouring out love, attention, creativity, detail, and every last bit of brain power and patience most days. Explaining why a drain sounds the way it does/why we have more trees than our neighbor/and figuring out that wanting rice krispy treats really means he wants a rice cake to a spongey 4 year old brain, telling the never end story before bed time, answering but why a thousand all day, all while having the sorest nipples because you committed to 12 months of breast feeding, is sometimes really f’ing exhausting. I’d love to simplify but if you have kids you know there’s a very skinny window of opportunity to donate toys, jeans you’ll never fit in again and decor from your first home. I mean. Can I just feel miserable some days? Isn’t that ok!? Isn’t it all ok??? I haven’t yet made it into a therapist because though everyone was bringing the heat with the suggestions – all the therapists are booked! So I’m wait-listed for 2 of them, and waiting for one to return back from her winter vacation. Sigh. I guess my main point is. It’s ok to be real. It’s ok to say no, because you’re (not so) secretly falling apart today. It’s ok to leave the damn mess, not make the damn dinner, and to not feel bad when you don’t. Truth is, I haven’t slept through the night in about a year. I’m a part time working mom and a part time SAHM, and I am certainly hanging haggardly in the balance of the two. I’m tired, I’m sad, I’m happy, I’m stressed and I am SO blessed. I know one day I’ll miss all of this beautiful craziness I myself prayed for. Life is not a pretty picture posted on Facebook. It’s not a constant upswing. It’s a lot of other things and it’s all gonna be OKAY.

I blindly started hot yoga with a girlfriend recently and was instantly hooked. I’m planning to do it every week until it gets too hot around these parts and then I’ll know some pretty rad moves so I can do it outside somewhere on my own. I’m hooked and I’m making time for me myself and I. I’m in charge of a lot of things but those things are also in control of themselves. A wonderful friend once told me “I’m always up, but if I ever fall down I’m gonna be there for a while” no truer words have ever been spoken. So I guess what I’m here to say today is it’s ok to lay down periodically, catch your breath, calm your mind, put your hand over your heart and say something nice to yourself. It’s ok to fall apart. It’s ok to have a bad day, it’s ok to say no. It’s ok to admit you need some help.

I hope for sunshine in my life and for all the people I love to be healthy happy and loved. Especially my children. I hope for clean kitchen sinks before bedtime and all your food to be organic. I hope for your husbands to cherish the ground you walk on, and I hope that deep inside your heart you feel love. But most of all, I hope a damn therapist calls me back this week so I can get back to feeling myself again. Oh, and C’MON SPRING ☀️

Sia’s “I’m still breathin’ IM STILL BREATHIN” is stuck in my head because her new song is my new anthem. So guess who had herself a little meltdown last week?! ….ME. It’s high time for some therapy and for some truth. Mama doesn’t have it all together. I’ve got a lot going on in my mind to the point where my scary thoughts wake me up at night and it is just TIME for someone to come in from the outside and help a sis out. I’ve wanted to shop, cut my hair, color my hair, get a tattoo and go on a diet all in the last week so that’s ya know all the tell tale warning signs that my brain needs a little order and my heart needs a little love. On the professional level. My goodness, if the highlight reel were the only reel we’d all be a lot less stressed and way more happy. But this thingity thang called life is a roller coaster of emotions that picks you up and then drops you; and I’m just over here holding on and pretending I like heights. Lots of things are mine and belong to me and are made from my loins. My husband is a wonderful loving strong and steady man who I chose and who chooses me every damn day, and he chooses me twice when I don’t wanna choose myself. He loves me harder than I even realize most days and he is a true fucking saint to deal with the emotions that are his wife. He’s amazing and my hero and my saving grace. My children are the very beating of my heart and they keep the wind in my sails, they understand my language of love and they are fluent in speaking it back to me. Acey baby’s tiny little soft baby hands in my hair and on my face and Mavericks all knowing how to put a smile inside my heart when I need it exactly are truly the most magnificent treasures to be found in my world. These children fill me up in ways I’m not worthy of and I say it out loud all day how thankful I am to God for making me their mother. For making me a mother at all, and then blessing me with two perfect healthy children who feel me in all my love and all my pain and the goodness in them makes me want to be better. My sister and my brother. Two of the only people who have my back no questions asked and love me when I’m ugly inside. My in-laws who inside them I have found the most beautiful support system where we look out for one another without even knowing it and we are loving each other’s kids and bringing them up together. For all of these connections I am deeply rooted in gratitude and thanks. I am blown away some days where I have to strip it all away, fall down in a heap on my knees and silently weep for the blessings I am lucky enough to count. It has been a theme in my life that I understand LOVE is all we have. It is given when it’s least deserved, best received when it’s unexpected, and feels unlike any other emotion on this earth. It’s a feeling of otherness. It’s the smell of your favorite city in the summer time. It’s the sound of your children belly laughing. It’s your husband smiling proudly while listening to you speak and help grow your children up. It’s the purest, most sincere, most binding emotion and I am thankful every day for the abundance of different loves I get to give and the loves I get to receive. Today, if you have time – listen to the song “I’m Alive” by Sia. And at the very end of the song when her voice is desperately breaking as she’s singing, she says “I’m alive” four times. As you’re listening think of four different ways YOU are alive. I did this and it was awesome. First I’m alive and I’m thankful for my life and the very mighty lessons I’ve learned to be able to comprehend how very special and short this life is. And how happy I am to be….. Alive. Second and third I thought of Maverick and Ace, respectively as I’m alive to mother these sweet sweet children. To take pride in every millisecond I have with them while they are BABIES, to raise them up to know they will move mountains, smash world records and glass ceilings and become the most loving, supreme, and kindest humans they can be. Fourth, I’m alive for my marriage and for the responsibility that is mine to love this man in bad times and in good. I’m alive because he loves me and our life is a beautiful work of art that continues to be tested by the outside things we have zero control over. After taking this different spin on listening to the song I had a feeling like, wow. I’m alive. My my mother is not. I’m alive for a short time in the grand scheme of things. I only have so much time to walk this earth but here I am, showing up every day living out loud, loving my people and hoping to make an impact on this earth. It’s my most divine duty to utilize this time to experience all that life has to offer, and as long as I’m looking at life and what it has happening before me, me and the people I hold closest are all gonna be ok. We’re gonna be better than ok, we’re all gonna be great. So go ahead and listen. And then listen to yourself. Listen to the tiny seeds of intuition and reality connecting. You and the people who love you have planted these inside your deepest thoughts, and these exact thoughts need to be manifested. We can all manifest more good. It’s amazing to do this especially if you’ve never heard this song – prepare for chills.

This weather sucks. It’s miserable and cold and our hearts are ready for the good times, the sunshine, the warmth after a cold hard winter. I’m not in my best mood myself and I’d like to blame it on the retrograde because I’m not as crazy as I feel most days but shit this has been a wild month to say the least and I think every day I’ve said out loud “I just want my mom” and guess what, she came through, she’ll be coming through again, and she’ll always be here even though she can’t. If you can’t understand that, be happy you don’t 🙂 As for meeeee, on the days that hurt the most, I like to touch dirt. Plant something. Ground myself again. Plant a little seed, feel me? love y’all, happy f’n spring 🌸

How in the world was it you? Of all the people in my little universe, how was it you. That had to be sick. That had to leave? How is it possible the only way I see you smiling anymore is behind a piece of glass. An image on a piece of paper is literally all I have left of you. Your death. Your very. Terrible. death. A death you suffered through. Still haunts me. I’m still processing. Did it hurt? Were you hurting anymore? Do you remember crying? Do you remember us crying? Could you feel our pain? It’s still brutal to think about and most of the things are too much to bare. It was hard when we had the shock to protect us but now that that shock is gone, wow. It is heavy. It’s heavy in the way that your shoulders scrunch up around your neck and you don’t realize why you feel so tense until you actually feel the sad stiffness in your body and it’s then that you can relax a bit. But then your focus goes to the lump in your throat that you didn’t notice because everything else still hurts when you think about it. Envisioning it is too hard. Talking about it and remembering details I’ve pushed away from the ever spinning wheels in my head, those details reappear, but again without any protection. This all really happened. You are really. Gone.

We took Mav to The Whiteface Lodge for his birthday. It was awesome. We had the best time as a family and tears definitely flowed. From my eyes, from Dan’s eyes. It was a true gift we executed perfectly, and in your honor. I hope you know we do a lot to honor you. On the night of Maverick’s 4th birthday, there was no cake, there wasn’t one present, just a full blown experience. I gotta tell ya, it was hard to not invite anyone else. It was hard to not pack presents to have him open up in the hotel room. It was weird not having a cake and I almost left 3 different times to go buy one because it felt WEIRD to not even so much as have a candle topped cake for my little kid!!! (You bet your ass when we got home Wednesday I went to Fresh Market and let him pick out whichever cake he wanted and invited Nance and Al over to sing and celebrate!) In our defense we had all plans to get the waiter to bring a nice dessert with a candle in it and we planned on singing and all that, but whiteface got the best of Mav and he passed out before his dinner even came out to the big cozy leather couch in front of our own personal fire we were eating our dinner at. (Whiteface is dreamy and magical and everything you ever need and want and MORE. So spend the money and GO. I promise you won’t regret it!)

So after both our kids fell asleep, it was Dan spending time convincing me we need a weekend away just the two of us, my mood turned melancholy and he could tell right away why. All morning my phone rang and Dan’s phone rang and FaceTimes came in one after another to wish my little love a happy birthday. And all day we were busy. Laughing, running, swimming, skating, theatering, game rooming, sledding and s’moring it up. But at the end of a very special day it hit me like a ton of bricks.

My mom never called. She never called. And it’s these realizations that come out of thin air that really cut my heart open. Mav had a birthday, and he didn’t get a call from his Gaga, because Gaga doesn’t have cell service in heaven. And she never will. And this is just something I have to accept. And it sucks and I could write for days on end about how bad it sucks for me and for my siblings and for our kids. But you know what? You know what’s kind of awesome? We planned this entire memory making three days away BECAUSE of Mav’s Gaga. We didn’t want to spend money on something that really added no value. We wanted to give Maverick and Ace the experience which created feelings and memories we won’t forget. We had a blast and we spent time together as a family and there is just no other feeling on earth that is more completing than being together with people you love.

It is not lost on me that my mother was just a pebble in this great wide world. But when that pebble took the plunge into the ocean of eternity, that small pebble made a gigantic splash, and that splash created ripples and those ripples are vibrating through time and space and earth and air. Those ripples are everlasting. Those ripples are her legacy, and the lessons she left behind for me. To pick up the slack and to give the gift of experience. To give the gift of my love. To give the gift of living life out loud.

I will never forget the final moments with my mother. I wish I could say it was peaceful or beautiful or honestly any other words than the ones that actually come to mind when describing the way she had to go. It was excruciating, it was brutal, and it kills me every day to remember how it all went down. But what I can take away from the absolute horror of her leaving is the lessons she taught me in her death. She is the reason I keep my head up. She’s the reason I hide my cries from my children. She’s the reason I know how to ask for a hug when I need one. She’s the reason I do, the reason I don’t, the reason I love the way I love, and the reason I stay up. My mother was a force, a beacon of light and the very beat of my heart. When I write about her I can feel her and she helps me understand, every day, what I get by giving. Especially to my kids.

T I M E waits for no one. Your laundry can wait. Your clients can wait, your house can. wait. There is actually no use in crying over spilled milk and most battles are not worth fighting. But at the end of the day, (I know I have said this one million times in this blog but I MEAN IT!) all we have are the people we love, loving us right back. Take your time on this very sacred day to look your people in the eye and tell them exactly what they mean to you. Write it in a card. Date it. Do too much, fuss too much, love out loud, and love til you can’t love no mo’. Because at the end, after all is said and done, the only thing that remains, is love. Please take this from me, because I KNOW. And even on the days i miss my mom’s love the most, she bends time and space and she shows up. Because that’s what love does.

Happy Easter. I hope you enjoy your family. I wish blessings and miracles for everyone. I hope for health and happiness and all the new energy and rebirth that spring brings. I hope you make the best memories today. And I hope your heart is light.

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 👑🎂💪🏽🎀

Fall down seven, stand up eight. As I continue to grow up (yes I’m still growing up, and newsflash – so are you) inside this crazy wild ride of life and speak to other women and peers of mine, I realize we are all in this together. And there is some comfort in the brokenness we all seem to secretly share. And, in the very put togetherness we feel the need to achieve. Yes my children are an absolute blessing. The most supreme, sublime, rewarding blessing I’ve ever received. But other than them, and a few really wonderful days peppered in to my adulthood, I’ve come to realize that this season of life is HARD. All of it, man. I honestly just started to write different things and then backspaced to write another thing and honestly i don’t know which thing is hardest or which should come first, or how to even rank at all. So excuse me if my thoughts seem a bit wonky but here goes nothin. My hands hurt because they’re so dry from this awful depressing weather. Cracking in every crease and no cream does me any justice. I have a constant headache, possibly stress? Maybe air pressure? Or perhaps from the tick I was bit by last summer? WHO KNOWS! I don’t remember my last date night. I haven’t cooked all week. My house is a wreck. My laundry is literally busting at the seems in every basket to be put away. Ok, then there’s the want to visit my friends at their houses because a change of scenery is AMAZING. Easter plans are going right around the corner. I want to lose weight. I want to travel more, sleep in, plan a family vacation, renovate the kitchen, organize my linen closet, get a pedicure/massage/facial. Ya know? But like where do I find time to do, seriously any of this??? Dan had the man flu, I’ll say NO MORE. My almost four year old had the flu recently and it was my scariest night of parenting to date. It was a fever every other night starting on a Thursday and peaking on a Sunday at 104.2. It was an instantly nauseous mommy and a daddy in actual tears over how scared we were for our first born. The fear of the unknown can do that to you. Today was the 24th of February. One entire year, and eight entire months without my mother’s presence on earth. And ya know what. It still sucks! Today was one of those days that starts out as an ordinary day and winds up punching you in the gut. Not a big hard malicious punch but more like when you’d fall off a swing and get the wind knocked out of you. And you’d lay there for a minute and try to not panic and let the quick pain weaken and then you’d stand up and go ahead and hop back on the swing.

Maybe it’s her absence and the number 24 in general that makes me feel weak. Just one day on the calendar to everyone else but the number 24 brings me great sadness. Maybe it’s the fact that I have zero relationship with my father anymore. Maybe I shouldn’t even say that here. Maybe it’s the fact that two years ago the things I complained and worried about, pale in comparison to the things that actually suck today. Think of your husband. Or your best friend. Or your child. You know when they’re sad? The kind of sad that you can feel? It sucks so bad doesn’t it? I don’t have any sugary words to make that sentence taste any better but I’m just soaking in my feelings tonight and tonight I feel sad for everyone who feels sad. It’s palpable to me. It’s truly a blessing and a curse to be able to feel all the happiness and sadness all at once. I laid in bed next to my husband tonight for about a half an hour and I could feel his energy. It matched mine and we just laid together in the silence. I drifted off into prayer like I find myself doing a lot more than I ever have before and as much as it felt safe to be inside a space of God, it also made me feel a thousand other emotions and brought me back to my most common thought place… my mom. And how much I wish I could talk to her. Cry to her. Sit with her. Make confessions to her. Like the time I lied about sneaking out, and she drove all over the neighborhood looking for me and couldn’t find me. But I was safe and wasn’t worried one bit and knew exactly what I was doing but didn’t think twice that at any point she would go into my room to check on me and to her it would seem I had vanished in the middle of the night. How fucking terrifying is it to be a parent?!!!! My God. I myself feel like I’m aging 2-7 years to every one sleepless night and to think that one day these babies of mine are gonna sneak out on me and date girls and drive me up the wall crazy is nothing short of frightening.

Ah life. They say it’s bittersweet. And I’ve gotta admit, it is!! I’m coming up on my 34th birthday and I feel it a little bit. Sometimes I wake up and my body hurts. And I think to myself ‘I am too young for my body to hurt’ and I take vitamins and drink water and eat as organically as my budget allows… GMO free, and dairy free and we are meatless 5 nights a week and even moreso during lent. I do everything Pinterest, Instagram, entertainment tonight, bachelor nation and my doctor tells me to do and I try my best to fit in some form of exercise during the week and ya know I even drink vodka instead of beer because #watchyourcarbs and fuck it’s a lot to do in one little 24 hour period. And I have to compare myself to everyone else’s highlight reel, and make light hearted and sarcastic jokes about myself and my parenting style and actually feel like sometimes I need to make an excuse as to why I don’t wash my hair more than once or twice a week when in reality we are ALLLLLLLL. Just. Tryna. Make it. And ya know what? If I don’t ever weigh under 160lbs again in my life, I’m ok with it. And if my gray hairs are popping out of the top of my forehead, I’m gonna pluck them out and move along with my day. If I feel like I want to splurge on a pair of jeans not in my goal size and the same shirt in two colors, I’m gonna do it. Because I know. Ya can’t take it with you when you go. And I know just as well as anyone that I could go…. tomorrow. I hope to God I live a long and healthy life with my favorite most beloved people by my side just as healthy and happy as can be, in fact I state these things to the universe on a daily basis. I hope I can be a positive influence on my family and my friends. I hope people look forward to seeing me. I hope people are thankful for me in their lives. Because all the people that love me, my God I love them so much. So much it gives me butterflies sometimes to think of how lucky I am to live the life I have with the people I get to do life with. Even on the hard days. Even on the absolute cold nasty wintery days. Even when I’m laying underneath the swing set with the wind knocked out of me. I have to remember that I live an abundant life. With a career I am in love with. With a husband who cherishes me in ways no other man ever has. With two little boys who think the sun rises upon my smile and sets in daddy’s kisses.

So, as per usual in my blog posts – I try to encourage everyone to see the good. And it’s usually at my highest or lowest moments in which I’m inspired to write. And it’s then that I realize sometimes through my blogging I start to cheer myself on. So here I started out on a low note because I was laying in bed late at night feeling less than happy, and though I still feel like my gas level is close to E, I truly believe a good cry and a good nights sleep can fix most of life’s complexities. I also encourage you to talk to your friends and your peers about something you may be going though because let’s be honest, we are all going through something; be it big or small, it’s all the same. So talk! And don’t just talk shit. Talk to make progress not just conversation. Get to the end of a convo and let it change your mood, or your day…. let it change your attitude.

Lastly, we decided to nix the big 4th birthday party. No cake, no balloons, no piñata. We are taking our family of four to Lake Placid to celebrate the absolute magic and wonder that is Maverick John. Like, I’m gonna grab a six pack of cupcakes at price chopper on my way out of town, and call it a day. He is only gonna be 4 for one short year, and for the little boy who asks for nothing, yet wants for nothing, we said YES to his hotel get away request. I can’t wait to share with you how it feels to give him a childhood full of yes and with this weekend getaway in March I’m hoping to create a feeling of fresh happiness, new ideas and springtime inside his little strong heart. I hope to reset mine and Dan’s minds and pour into our own cups, TOGETHER, and focus on our babies while they are still BABIES. We get one life. And in this lifetime we had one great big wish to become parents. God granted us that amazing title twice and we will be damned if we don’t show these kids what Love looks like. What love feels like. And what love can manifest. Since I can remember, every time Dan and I hug, Mav can’t run to us fast enough to get up inside our squeeze. It truly is one of my favorite parts of parenthood; showing him our love. He uses the tools he’s learning from us to love, to laugh and play with his brother, compliment his aunties, laugh with his family, and be a constant light in whoever’s life he enters. As for Acey, he is what baby dreams are made of and gives me baby fever every day, but for now Dan’s standing firm on NOMOREBABIES island and I’m just over here like, but, why not 😂.

L O L. Right? Cause we gotta laugh.

Happy almost spring my friends. We’re on our way to surviving another upstate winter and the sunshine will surely feel SO. GOOD. May you be reborn in the sunbeams and the green grass and the cute little yarn chick-a-dees at target. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about #wecantbefrendz 🤗☀️