3 things I wish people would stop saying to me

When you are a young mom with multiple kids, people say a lot of really questionable things to you.
Here's my top 3 things I could do without ever hearing again:

"Wow! 4 kids! How are you still sane?" 
First of all, sanity is relative. Having 4 kids is not easy, especially when you take them out in public alone and as soon as you call them to leave, they employ what I call the "cockroach approach" and scatter in 4 different directions so that you have to run around franticly while attempting to look as if you have a shred of control over the situation. If I look sane, it's because I work really hard to make things appear that way.

"Aren't you glad you finally got your girl? Now you can be done." 
What? Do you people think we were trying to have a 4th child?
Not that we don't love the "Tiny Tyrant" and all, but implying that because I'm a woman, I was just gonna keep popping out babies till we hit the fairer-sex jackpot is crazy-town. My husband had a vasectomy roughly 10 weeks into that last pregnancy, long before we ever knew we were about to be inundated with all things pink. Done and done.

"You look amazing for having 4 kids!" 

Really? This is a compliment? What does that even mean? When you say that, all I hear is "You look pretty good for narrowly escaping death via Zombie Apocalypse." 

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For some reason when you're a mom, nobody looks at you or thinks of you as yourself anymore. 

You're just the mom with 3 boys & a girl, who managed to somehow, against all odds, put pants on before making it out the door in the morning.

The general consensus seems to be that Motherhood makes you stupid. And, apparently, unattractive.

And that is not only untrue but unfair. When a man becomes a dad, people don't start questioning his common sense or qualifying his sex appeal with how many kids he has. 

In fact, women often find men with kids more attractive. 

It's a crying shame that society doesn't seem to believe that women are capable of maintaining themselves intellectually and physically under the demands of Motherhood, but the fact is that we are more than capable and we deserve more than those back-handed compliments that men never receive. 

Things that go bump in the night

Sometime when I was a very little girl, I must have been shown the movie "Dracula", because as far back as I can remember, I have had a thing for Vampires.
When I was young, I was convinced that Dracula lived in my closet.  He was somehow invisible during the day and only came out at night. I had to sleep with my blankie wrapped around my neck so he couldn't bite me. Now I know this is silly because obviously, Vampires are not invisible during the day- they either sparkle, wear magic rings, or burn  in sunlight (unless they drink the blood of a fairy of course).
But, I digress.
This fear of Dracula kept me awake, afraid to fall asleep and let down my guard and sometimes if I awoke with a crick in my neck, my 7 yr old self was certain that I had been attacked whilst I slept.

These days it's not Vampires or any other supernatural monsters that keep me up. It's this:

sleeping, but not so soundly

My 3 yr old.  (We call her Shrinky-Doo. Because she's little like a shrinky-dink.)

Every. Single. Night. She starts out in her own bed, then ends up in ours.
My husband works nights, so 4 nights a week I should be sleeping alone. But I'm not.

Maybe she just wants to keep me company.
She says she wants to snuggle me, but what I end up with is: 

Tiny feet in my back shoving me into the wall. 

This 28lb, barely 36in person lays her claim on my Queen sized bed by taking her half straight out of the middle.
Some nights I just let her come to bed with me to begin with because the inevitability of her joining me at 2am has become crystal clear. 

And truthfully, I guess I must not mind it all that much, because I keep allowing it. 

She is my youngest child, after all, my last baby.

She has managed to stay tiny for 3+ yrs so I can go on pretending that she really is a baby still and not a preschooler already. 

But when I wake up at 6am freezing because she's stolen the blankets, and with an aching back from sleeping in the crack between the bed and the wall, it's hard to remember that these will be the memories that I will cherish long after she's grown.

Yet, every night when she knocks on the door and asks "Mommy, can I snuggle you?" I reply honestly with "I love snuggles."

I guess sometimes the good outweighs the bad.

Flashback Friday: 1,2,3 Happy Birthday to my Baby

Shrinky, age 5 months

I wrote this little poem for all of my children, but just for today I dedicate it to my daughter.
Happy 3rd birthday, my sweet girl.

Before you

There were nights to sleep in uninterrupted bliss
And no boogey-men to dispel of
No wet sheets to change hurriedly
or emergency midnight baths
I had no crayon drawings for my fridge
Or paper bag puppets
No sand in my shoes
Or snot on my sleeve
I had friends and fun
and you were not there
to ask me questions and interrupt
private conversations with silly dances
and made up jokes that nobody understood
there was no “Mama, can I?”
there was no mama at all
before you.

My goofy, smart, sweet, crazy, beautiful, amazing girl, age 3

When I was bad

There are things that we do in life that we cannot take back, as much as we wish we were able to.  There are things that linger in my memory even after decades have passed and wounds have been healed. My wrongs never seem to right themselves in my mind.
They are as much a part of me as my own skin, which I wear for all to see.

By the age of 14, I was a drug addict.
By the age of 15, I was a victim of assault.
By the age of 16, I was a run-away.
By the age of 17, I was a mother.
By the age of 18, I was a wife.
By the age of 19, I was divorced.
By the age of 20, I was a mistress.
By the age of 21, I was an alcoholic.


I have lived through these things and more in my 31 years, and managed to come out whole. Slightly ulcerated in places but yes, still whole. I try my best to not let my mind linger on my former life. I cannot change my history and I cannot live with regret. The only thing I can do is move forward, doing better than I did when I was bad.

I am a wife again. I am a mother 4 times over. I am a friend. I am me again, only better.
I am new.