My husband did the 6:45 wake up with the kids and then he napped with the baby in the late morning. When they came down, I asked him if I could have an hour to rest.

“Take more than an hour,” he offered, generously. “Take all the time you need.”

So I decided that while I would not take advantage of his kindness, I would take a nice, long shower, wash my hair (this is actually a big deal. Hi, twinny!), get into bed and doze off, likely to the sounds of Slate’s Serial Podcast (I know. “They’ll tell you I’m insane.”

I grabbed my most plush bathrobe, salon shampoo and

and…

and

then this is how it really went down.

I was barely out of the shower when I heard small footsteps and the words “Mama! Mama!” being chanted on repeat. It was my son, who broke into the bathroom. He held out his arms to me, and instead of picking him up, I just hugged him. We stayed for awhile in that embrace, I was on my knees and he smelled like pretzels. When we separated I also saw that he had a handful of my Vanilla Cream Valentine’s Day Peeps. I felt blessed and warm inside, despite being dripping wet.

Not a minute later my daughter was up, joining us in my bedroom as I tried to transfer from towel to bathrobe while constructing a turban on top of my head. “Oh, hi, mom.” She had a handful of Swedish Fish.

I told them both how much I love them. I moisturized and brushed my hair and then I walked downstairs…

to find my husband, perched on the couch, playing a videogame.

“Are you missing anything?” I asked.

And that, my friends, is what an hour of relaxation time is like for a mom. Gotta jet, I still have 21 minutes.

And that’s if Battlefield 4 doesn’t get in the way.

The post An hour as a mother. appeared first on Mommy Ever After.

Instead of going through each and every one of my hurdles,

naming the ones that I cleared and the ones that I knocked over,

I am going to tell you one story about today.

I picked my daughter up from school and we drove to my mom’s house to pick up my son, as she had been watching him for the day.

On our drive home, my daughter asked if we could go to Wendy’s for ice cream.

It is so funny, but out of all of the blog posts I have written in the past 4.5 years I can still remember this one. And yes, my daughter, son and I get Frosty ice cream treats sometimes.

But today, she had a decision to make: Play with Bubbie or go to Wendy’s. She chose playtime at Bubbie’s which lasted a good hour and a half.

On our way out the door she asked me if we could go to Wendy’s on our way home. I said that no, we could not, as we did not have time because she chose to play at Bubbie’s. This was met with great upset.

“I have an idea!” I said. “I will make you a Wendy’s Frosty at home.”

“Well what if it doesn’t taste the same?”

“I will do my best,” I replied.

“But what if I don’t like it?” she asked, in a choked up voice.

“Then that will mean that my best just wasn’t good enough.”

At home, I mixed vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup and whole milk in my Nutribullet. Mind you, this was all going on as I was getting home for the first time since 7:45 this morning, meaning I had to bring in the mail, unpack her lunch bag, wrangle the baby, get water for the workers downstairs, let out the dog and, if I got a spare second, breathe.

So I made a homemade Frosty. It was less solid and more liquid-like than the real thing, but the taste was spot on. I gave my daughter her “Frosty” in a cup with a straw.

“No!” she refused. “I don’t want to drink it with a straw. I want to eat it like I do from Wendy’s with a spoon.”

So I dumped the contents of the cup into a bowl and added some more vanilla ice cream, mixed it up to thicken the consistency and handed it back to her. With a spoon.

She took one bite.

“Mommy? Will you be angry at me if I tell you something?”

I don’t even think I could muster up the ability to speak by that point.

“I don’t like the ice cream. I didn’t want chocolate.”

And so, my son got a special treat: a whole, delicious “Frosty” as his pre-dinner appetizer. I got frustrated.

My daughter whimpered. She complained about being hungry and she kept saying the word “disappointed”.

And so I got up from the floor that I had been cleaning (I forgot to mention that my son+milkshake=giant mess) and said, “This is not an actual problem. There are real problems in this world. There are sad things and there are scary things and this is not something to get upset about. I have plenty of food for you to eat and we are lucky that we have so many things to choose from.”

She sulked away, up to her bedroom (oh god, I can only imagine what she will be like in 10 years) and I joined the baby at the kitchen table as we happily shared my delicious creation.

And do you know what I say to my daughter? Besides, “I tried my best.” and “I am sorry I am not perfect.” and “You are lucky that I even went through all of this trouble.”?

“I drink your milkshake.”

The post When your best is not good enough. appeared first on Mommy Ever After.

I had at least a handful of moments where I would catch eyes with my son and smile and he would beam back at me with his grin that is becoming more toothy by the day. I think there is a small part of me that fears that he doesn’t love me the way that he could or should because I didn’t exactly make the best first impression. But every time I see him smile like that, and when he nuzzles up to me, right thumb in his mouth, left hand reaching for mine, I know that he loves me, too.

I feel particularly emotional today for no one reason. No, it is not hormonal. Perhaps it is because of what I wrote last night and all that it conjures for me, or perhaps it is from some other stressful things in my life. I just feel extra raw.

And I have no idea why, but today I cried. A lot. And it wasn’t sad crying. It was just emotional crying, if that makes sense.

I cried while reading some personal messages that I received today. I am humbled, truly, when people share themselves with me, as I have with them.

I cried about stuff related to my desire to publish my book (I want to help others so badly!!!).

I cried when I took my daughter to the Pediatrician and saw a new baby in it’s infant seat. (perhaps that was sad crying). I felt so wistful. It ached.

I cried as I made my daughter the appointment for her FIVE year old check up. How is my daughter turning five this year? The receptionists talked about it incredulously as well, as they remember her as a newborn.

I cried when we were in the actual exam room; we had a pretty long wait (as she was given some tests) and I started to sing to her from my new favorite part of her new favorite musical and she stopped me, because she said that the people in the other rooms would think that I was the real Baker’s Wife. I am still not sure why that would be a bad thing (maybe she thinks they would steal me and throw me into the woods?), but I cried at her innocence.

I cried when I asked her if she loves performing and told her how much it has always meant to me. I welled up trying to explain to her how it has forever been my dream and I was so moved by the poignancy of our talk.

I cried on our way home from the doctor, which is literally down the street, because as we approached our normal turn, Queen’s “Somebody to Love” started to play and I said, “You have to hear this song, do you mind if we drive around a little bit?” (we had her dad’s super fast new car and could zip around the streets).  She was obviously game. I told her that it was Freddy Mercury singing. “Oh, Queen.” she replied. And I belted out the words and then, when it ended and we pulled up in the driveway behind my pink peace sign, I cried to have had that experience with my little girl.

I cried this evening, after I put my son to bed, when it was time for me to give a final snuggle to my daughter. I noticed that there were black drawings on some of the furniture by her bed. It is a well established rule in this house that markers are to be used only on paper (and this rule was implemented after certain dolls were colored, etc.) I cried because I saw the fear and pain in my daughter’s eyes. And I had a wonderful parenting moment. I told her that I was not mad at her (her biggest fear), and that I was proud of her for being honest. I told her that we all make mistakes. She asked me not to tell her daddy and I told her that I tell him everything. She asked if she could snuggle on me for a little. Her eyes. Those sad eyes.

I cried tonight when I watched the Season 1 finale of Broadchurch.

And then I cried afterwards when I went up and looked at my sleeping daughter in her bed.

On my way to my bedroom, I looked down at my sweater to see this:

Ok, I thought. I’ve got this.

All of these little crying sessions have been very small, perhaps even too small for anyone else to notice, and part of me thinks I am holding in one giant deluge of tears. That remains to be seen.

But there is one positive that I take away from having an emotional day like this; it means that I am keeping the promise I made to myself to “cherish the mundane”.

I had a cold day in with a sick child and a needy baby and I was able to enjoy them. Not all of the time. But most of the time.

And that shows me how far I have come.

Or, as some may say, how far I been able to travel out of the woods.

The post An emotional day. appeared first on Mommy Ever After.

She was so excited; she had missed her friends and teachers a lot.

We are two days in to the new year and, wouldn’t you know it, she is home sick again.

She woke up late last night, crying for me, and her temperature was 102.4.

After lots of snuggles, a back rub and Tylenol she went back to bed, but is home sick with me today.

So today was supposed to look like this:

That would be me blogging. I don’t think I have ever shared this before, but I have never worked at a desk (outside of being in class in school) in my entire life. I read and write from the bed or the couch or the floor or the car. Right now, I am writing from the third floor room that is currently transitioning from former-playroom to future-guest room.

But, instead of being able to put on my writer’s hat today,

this is how the day has actually looked:

Nice nod to my best guy.

I tried to make up for it with this:

We do what we can.

And when I called the doctor she asked me if the cough was wet or dry or raspy or barky.

I am a somewhat seasoned mom at this point, having had two kids with RSV, croup and both viral and bacterial infections of all kinds. But I am sorry, I cannot classify a cough that specifically unless you are going to play me Youtube clips of each different kind and ask me what sounds most like what is coming out of my daughter’s mouth.

Which means, a trip to the doctor.

Woo!

And pardon me, but I need to go now to deal with this:

So for now, I am forced to say A Farewell…

to the computer.

The post The temperature also rises. appeared first on Mommy Ever After.

My son woke up late, as a treat, and my daughter followed me into his room to change his morning diaper.

“Today is the day!” she beamed.

“I know! Today is the cookie party!” I answered, referring to our plans for the special Pollyanna party with our best friends.

“No!” She cried. “Today, Bubbie and Zeydie come home from St. John!”

My parents have been away for two weeks. Despite our best efforts to make up for our missed trip, she missed her grandparents an extraordinary amount.

They spoke on the phone every day, and, evidently, on one such conversation, hatched a plan for her to have a sleepover at their house on the night of their return. It didn’t matter that they wouldn’t land until nearly 5:30, when we usually start bedtime at 6, or that they had just been gone for two weeks and had a long day of travel; they all needed this date.

She counted down the hours.

Fortunately, she was able to fill her day with plenty of fun; a trip to the library to see zoo animals and out to lunch with her friend (who, as of yesterday, may be her boyfriend. There was a kiss.); our Pollyanna party with a house filled with best friends and more cookies than any of of us could count.

But she had her eye on the prize.

I got a text from my dad shortly after five letting me know that they had landed and I told my daughter.

She threw her hands up in the air and shouted, “I’m free!”

(Whatever that means.)

When the party broke up, she went up to her room and she packed her suitcase with care, and the help of her GodMama , who had stuck around post-party,

as my husband drove to get my parents from the airport and her godfather and I cleaned up the kitchen.

And, finally, after a seemingly endless two weeks, Bubbie and Zeydie walked through our front door. Both of my kids freaked out, but the excitement between my parents and my daughter was incredible. With barely a glance behind her, she went off to their house for their date.

I didn’t hear from her the rest of the night (except for a quick call to say “Goodnight”) but I did follow her evening on Instagram, courtesy of my dad.

First, there was a bubble bath; then, spooky stories in Bubbie and Zeydie’s bed; then morning episodes of “Scooby Doo” in bed and making pancakes with Zeydie and doing laundry with Bubbie.

She was so happy, as for her, my parents are a part of her sense of home. 

I was up in my bedroom with my son when she got home. I heard small footsteps coming up the stairs and heard my door open slowly.

“Your missing puzzle piece is back!” she said, and climbed onto the bed and into my arms.

How could one child hold so much wisdom; so much love?

From where does she get these things?

“How was your time?” I asked.

“Amazing.” She said, telling me stories, some true, some potentially “elaborated”, like shaving with Zeydie (true), playing the Mermaid game with Bubbie (true) and staring at her brother’s picture and wanting to cry but being able to take a deep breath to hold back the tears (ummmm…).

And she is right; my missing puzzle piece is back. But so are my other missing puzzle pieces. Because as much as I am a grown up, it is nice to have my parents back, around the corner.

And then, today, I met another parenting milestone; I took my daughter to the movies all by myself. This is something that most parents with children my daughter’s age have probably done with great ease and frequency, but for me, it was a marker of how far I have come in the past year. This week a year ago I was at my lowest. Today, I was a grown up, a mom, sharing a popcorn and Sour Patch Kids with my little girl, so that I could expose her to one of my all-time favorite musicals that has been made into a movie.

If you have been a reader here from the beginning, you may recall that at four months old, I showed my daughter the filmed stage version of “Into the Woods” with Bernadette Peters and the kid was mesmerized. One point for “Nature” there.

When I found out that it was being made into a movie (and with some of my favorite actors) I (not surprisingly) freaked out and had awaited it’s release eagerly. And I decided that I would try, today, to take my daughter to see this movie with me.

She and I often watch clips from the aforementioned filmed stage version, as she loves the opening number and “Moments in the Woods”. For that particular choice, we may give a point to “Nurture”.

I found myself extremely emotional during the film. First of all, I thought it was excellent. Second of all, the music is incredibly evocative for me and “The Baker’s Wife” is my dream role. But, most poignantly, I was hit with a case of the feels every time that the movie made a point about parenthood. There I was, my daughter snuggled up next to me in a dark theater, listening to Meryl Streep singing,

The post Nurture, Nature and “Into the Woods”. appeared first on Mommy Ever After.

T.S. Eliot

Welcome to www.MommyEverAfter.com.

It is so nice to have you.

Here, let me make you comfortable.

For the past four and a half years I have spent every day hanging out at a simple, static, steadfast site over on WordPress.

Mommy, Ever After started when I was the new mother of a two month old baby girl. I had always loved to read and write, but found myself, at that time, with no resources that were actually helpful when it came to being a new parent. Everything was either a tale of absolute enchantment OR a hyperbolic message board of terror.

So I took a leap of faith and somehow figured out how to make my very first post.

It didn’t even have a title. I used multi-colored text. Take a look:

and by the end of day one I seem to have gotten a bit more bold:

I did not know what I was doing or where I was going (or, to be completely honest, how to even define a “blog”) but I knew it felt good. And people, being voyeuristic by nature, started to read and I, being brutally honest by nature, shared it all; the good, the bad, the inane, the insane, the heavy and the hard.

I will soon be publishing a post that is a guide to this new site, because thanks to the incredible folks at Brand Revive, I have a real, big girl website now, with pages, categories, sections and more. I don’t want you to miss a thing.

But for now, I will either assume that you are an old friend, having traveled with me over here from .wordpress.com (thank you, by the way–so much) or you are new and can lose yourself in the hundreds of archived posts I have up there, neatly categorized, under “A Happy Story”.

And, I will say that the old Mommy, Ever After isn’t here anymore. That chapter has ended.

Welcome to a new beginning.

And what better way to start than with a prologue…

Emergency rooms 3 and 4 were connected, separated by a thin curtain that could easily be opened to make it a makeshift suite of sorts. In room 4, in a stretcher that appeared humongous, lay my son, 3 days shy of 2 months, hooked up to an IV, oxygen monitor and receiving O2 through a tube in his nose. In room 3, I lay, dizzy and disoriented, hooked up to an IV and receiving my third bag of fluids. A nurse handed me a yellow pill. Potassium. She told me that I was deficient and to swallow. We were in a suite in the Emergency Room of a hospital. He and I were together, but still so far apart, as we were each confined to our beds. He and I were ailing. He and I were both being poked and tested and medicated. He and I both needed help.

That snapshot is from exactly this week last year. It is also the prologue that I have written for my book proposal. Yes, I am writing a book (or at least I am trying), and at the rate I am going, the book is writing itself. I have a literary agent shopping my book to publishing houses, and I am hoping to find a good match. My story will be told in the way that it is presented above: “A Happy Story”, “A Hard Story”, and then, ultimately, “A Hopeful Story”.

When I say the book is writing itself, you can probably conjure examples that I have shared from the past year; the flood and subsequent CO poisoining; my hospitalization; the incredible closeness of my group of friends that has now become a family;

But what you do not know is that this past weekend, at the very time that we were supposed to be on a plane to St. John, we were back in the Emergency Room with my son.

Not only were we back in the same hospital, but we had the same nurse that he had had exactly the same day the year before. She wears a necklace with three charms symbolizing her three children and I remembered their names.

Being in the small triage room was surreal. How are we back here?

But, fortunately, we were not there for a feverish 8 week old with a terrible respiratory virus.

My son had an allergic reaction to Penicillin, swelled up, we called the paramedics (our besties!) and we took him to the closest hospital with the Peds department, which happens to be where we spent this week last year, as he was inpatient, on oxygen, as I was fighting for my life in my own way.

This is where the story gets kind of crazy. Before our planned trip to the Virgin Islands, I asked my Pediatrician if it would be safe to give my son a small dose of Benadryl in order to calm him during the flight (please don’t judge. This is the baby who slit his wrist on my coffee table 3 months ago). He approved, but suggested that we test out the drug on him before flying, as in rare cases it can have the opposite effect and actually make kids more wired and not at all sedated.

So, Sunday morning, I was being treated for my severe ear infection, my daughter for her own infection, and my son, prophylactically, as he was fussy, warm and pulling on his ears. Before his nap that morning I suggested giving him some acetaminophen. My husband chimed in and suggested Benadryl instead. At that point, we did not know whether our trip to St. John would be postponed or completely cancelled, so we thought a solid nap would do both of us good and it was the right time to experiment, so we dosed him up with the proper amount of the antihistamine.

But he didn’t sleep well. He was restless. And red. And, actually, my husband and I were laughing at him when we finally brought him downstairs, because he was acting–

forgive me for not being able to find a better way to say this–

high.

He stood, staring at the vacuum cleaner for 20 minutes. He doesn’t stand still for 20 seconds, ordinarily.

And we were cracking up. Evidently, he was in that small percentage of kids who have a paradoxical reaction to the drug.

But after his 20 minute date with the vacuum and some other strange behavior, I noticed that his eyes were swelling up. The redness on his cheeks had intensified and on his forehead there were big hives. His eyes swelled to near slits as I spoke to the 911 operator.

The problem was, he had not just been given one new medication in that 24 hours, he had been given two.

The police arrived immediately, before I could even change out of my pajamas, and the paramedics soon thereafter.

On the way to the Emergency Room, I just laughed. “This must be a joke, right? This year is just a joke.”

As it turns out, by the time we were seen by the Pediatrician in the ER, his swelling had gone down some. This lead them to believe that he had experienced an allergic reaction to his second dose of amoxicillin, and that the Benadryl, the coincidental, serendipitous drug, actually helped to start calm down the effects. Had we been on the plane to St. John, his allergic reaction would have happened at 30,000 feet.

The doctors and nurses were so nice. It was so much better than last year, when he had to be put on breathing tubes, given a spinal tap, a catheter and IVs, and when I was losing my mind.

But it was then that I did something that I rarely do these days; I started to cry.

I cried to the nice doctor in the dark blue scrubs and white coat.

“He has had so much happen to him in such a short life; he is only 13 months old and look what he has been through.”

But it was then that I remembered my recent epiphany;

My son has not only survived some crazy medical and safety situations, a crazy mother and an all around crazy first year, but he is huge and thriving. The doctor looked at me and told me to look at my son.

“He is a moose!” she said.

And she is right. He is so strong and resilient and now that he has had six emergency room visits, he is tougher than ever.

But,

But…

He may be a moose, he may be strong, but he is still my baby.

This is a hard time of year for me. It is the one year anniversary of when I was supposed to go to Brown’s postpartum unit,

when he got hospitalized,

when I was forced to wean him against my will,

when I had akesthesia as a reaction to Abilify,

and when things really started to crumble.

While my real support system became stronger than ever, some real, trusted people let me down, and it was a blow that was hard to handle when I was already in such a weak state.

This week last year, I truly did not know if I could go on. It is scary for me to admit that, but I would be doing you a disservice by being anything less than brutally honest. I was low, like many other people I know who have been or who currently are suffering.

And so, I have decided to do something about it.

I have already proclaimed that this will be the year of really living; of celebrating things big and small, by organizing parties and dates and by making an effort to tell the people around me how much they mean to me.

But there is something else.

This year I want to be a better person.

I want to let go of all that has weighed me down, not just for the past year, but for my entire life.

I want to be good to people. I want to go out of my way. I want to give back. I want to help. I want to be vocal and make a difference.

And that is why I decided to take yet another leap of faith, bigger than my intimidating first blog post back in June of 2010.

I have decided to put my all into Mommy, Ever After, in an effort to help others. When I have opened up about topics like postpartum, anxiety, depression, fear, doubt, self-worth and other hard things to touch upon, I have received an incredible outpouring of support and gratitude. Most of it you do not know about. Most of it has been private. Most of it has been me making emergency phone calls to friends in crisis, or driving to the hospital to hold a hand, or giving someone my phone number to use 24/7. And I do not say this in any way to applaud myself. I am humbled by the fact that there are people who trust me enough in order to confide in me their deepest of secrets and fears.

And so, in moving forward, I will have those “pity party” moments, but hopefully much less than the dance party moments.

I will continue to be an advocate, a voice, a friend.

I will strive to be the woman whom I have always dreamed of being; lighter, happier, and more content.

I will celebrate the big, of course, but also cherish the mundane.

Last night, before bed, my husband and I had just finished the last installment of the NPR Serial Podcast. We talked a little about our thoughts and then I asked him to tell me a bedtime story. I wanted him to tell me about the last few episodes of Homeland, a show that I haven’t watched in several seasons, but that I was curious about, based on all of the hype. He is the best at telling stories.

And he looked over at me and I was smiling, my full face in an enormous grin.

“What?” he asked with a tiny giggle.

“I get to go to sleep next to you,” I said. “I get to have a sleepover with my best friend every night.”

And with that, he kissed me and told me stories of Iranian leaders and CIA infiltrations until I was sound asleep.

That was how I ended my day. And then, as it does, the sun rose this morning, and there was a new beginning.

And today I did some things right, and other things still need work, but guess what?

It is the beginning. I put an end to something dear to me…

and from there, my friends, is where I shall start.

(Featured Image via Lindsay Dochtery Photography)

The post “What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning… appeared first on Mommy Ever After.

Eyes close in my arms;

Remembering your blue hat.

Always my boy, babe.

For her, at wake up.

Before the sun rose
you tiptoed into my arms;
Hearts beating in sync.

The post Two(s) Haikus. appeared first on Mommy Ever After.

The post The time out chair. appeared first on Mommy Ever After.

The post Time, A Haiku. appeared first on Mommy Ever After.

The post Ahhh motherhood. appeared first on Mommy Ever After.