Since then we’ve documented all of her firsts.

First time in an official outfit:

First night in a big girl bed:

First official sleep-over:

First pony-tail:

First haircut:

And countless other firsts. Steps, running, first seasons, days of school, traditions and holidays. First time meeting out of town Grandparents, Mother’s Day programs and parades. Firsts!

It’s my job to be there for them. To be there for her.

Aaron works crazy long hours, he’s not available to eat hot lunch with her or help in her classroom. That’s my job, one I’m proud of. One I take very seriously. One of the things I absolutely love about being a mom. Her mom.

GAH!!!!! I’ve been meaning to put this certain date on the calendar. I’ve circled it three times on the take home newsletters and the mountain of paper that comes home with her from school. I’ve ear-tagged certain “reminders” so I won’t forget that coming at the end of this month? There’s a Pumpkin Carnival at her school where she’ll get to show us what she’s learning and we’ll carve pumpkins together.

Turns out? It’s the end of the month.

SHIT SHIT SHIT.

I forgot that today was the day of her Pumpkin Carnival and now so many things about her day make so much more sense:

Me: Did you learn a letter today?

Her: No.

Me: Did you do numbers instead?

Her: No, Mom.

Me: Music? Art? What did you do today? I want to hear all about it

Her: **Hemming, hawing.** Nothing, really. My day was good. I had a good day.

I don’t generally get farther than this unless there’s a snack involved and all the other fairies flying around in her head have been calmed so I dropped it and we went to see the waves at the beach.

Then she took out this special bag she had gotten that day – it was full of trinkets and candy, some popcorn. I deduced that it was her teachers Halloween Treat to the class. She didn’t correct me.

Then we sat down to eat dinner and she finally started telling me about her day … how there was this carnival and everyone’s mom was there and I missed it and she was sad because she was expecting me and I didn’t come.

Oh. My. Word. Today? Today was that day? I started crying and she immdiately took care of my emotional needs when I was trying to take care of her’s.

Her: Mom, it’s ok. I was disappointed but it’s ok. It didn’t really matter. I don’t really care.

Me: ::Crying:: I’m sorry, Jessica. I’m so sorry. I wanted to be there. I forgot. Was I the only mom who wasn’t there today?

Her: Yes. I was all alone.

Aaron came home about then and the first thing she did was retell the tale and the first thing I did was fall completely apart over Hamburger Helper and a glass of red wine.

Turns out I wasn’t the only Mom who wasn’t there today. There were other kids without a parent helping them carve their pumpkins. So she says.

Aaron was surprised by my reaction – that I would feel so terrible and cry so much about this. But he works all the time. He’s used to missing these things. He feels awful, yes, but it is his life. This is my job. Being there, is my job.

There were countless times as a child when one or both of my parents couldn’t be there, weren’t there, forgot or just didn’t show up. Didn’t stand up for me, didn’t defend me and I spent hours crying over this, journaling about it and trying to rebel against my insane need for them to pay attention to me. To see me. To stop with all their other things. The things that seemed so much more important to them, more important than me. Other siblings, work, cleaning, houses, jobs, spouses.

I had no idea it was so important for me to be there for my own kids until I wasn’t.

It was a Pumpkin Carnival. There will be more, it wasn’t her school play where she was the lead role. I didn’t miss her 13th birthday or forget to pick her up from school.

But she’s five and I had nothing going on today. I could have been there. I should have been there.

I bet this will be one of those stories we tell over and over again at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Hopefully not this year though, I’ll still cry. It’ll become part of the fabric of our family. Things we all remember a little bit differently.

Bla bla bla. It’s fine. It’ll be fine. I know it was an over reaction but it really wasn’t. A couple years ago … about the time I was seeing Jill Tanis I was digging through A LOT of junk. I remember one night I was just having a hard time shaking these feelings so I took a hot shower and it hit me:

I will stand up for my child. For my daughter … because no one stood up for me.

That Aha! moment was met with more crying and this feeling that I was finally allowing myself to change my family history. That I was finally letting go and deciding to be different in a better kind of way for my own kids.

So forgetting? Not being there?

Not an option. Not today.

Everything.

Six months ago I knew I was raising a boy and now I’m sure of it.

Bodily functions have become ammo. No, literally. He has almost no idea what a real weapon is but he will aim his tush at your and toot all day long. Then fall over laughing.

Dirt? That’s an appetizer in this house. Smell? Is really just ambiance. Hitting and punching? The preferred emotional trigger for happiness, frustration, anger and love … believe it or not.

Tonight he even named his penis “Baby” and walked around announcing to everyone that his “baby was ok” after an apparently traumatic trial run to the bathroom.

He takes this very seriously.

Oh the poop jokes! Just saying the word results in a fit of giggles and then some awkward hand gestures that are his way of “joking” with us … that he totally understood the joke. POOP!

I have older brothers so I get some of this. I may even know a thing or two of what’s coming and I understand when wrestling is really the answer but raising one of these? This foreign creature.

Mama, help me.

This is my daughters newest lovey. Aurora comes into an already robust family of stuffed animals, Sniffers is her rival.

If her dragging this dog around town is any indication of how she’d actually treat a living one … this was the buy of a lifetime. (Because we saved one, a life … that is)

I had to pick up some booze from the grocery store in order to finally make some homemade vanilla and I had already run a couple errands that morning so I knew that just popping in and out of the store for this ONE thing would be OK. I wouldn’t be stretching the patience or my luck with 2 kids in tow.

Except, when did I ever think that my luck ran that far?

I was holding my son, two years old, through the store because my daughter, 5 years old, asked to push the smaller version of a grocery cart to which I said yes, she could.

Half way through the shopping trip my son decides that this set up is not fair and he loses his marbles. Literally kicking and screaming in my arms. The folks in the aisle infront of me stop, turn and watch as I pass with my five year old pushing a cart with the biggest bottle of vodka available and me holding my thrashing (and filthy) two year old in my arms.

There wasn’t blood. I hadn’t been hit or bit or scratched, so it wasn’t that bad right?? He did finally get his stuff together and we make it through the check out line.

He’s sniffling and I have to tell them both that, No, we are not going to be riding the Penny Horse today – I almost get out of the store (Vodka in hand) when I walk right into the exit door. Still holding my son.

Which means that I smacked his head into the exit door, while holding Vodka and trying to corral my daughter into following me more closely as to not run into traffic.

Which I stopped dead when he started screaming from the pain of getting his head smashed into a door. It was an accident!! And the vodka wasn’t for me (kind of) … I wasn’t going to be drinking when I got home (although, who wouldn’t have thought that after seeing me?).

People from a good 300 feet away turned around, stopped returning their carts or loading their groceries and watched me walk to my car with my vodka, filthy/hurt/screaming child and my daughter.

I got in my car after calming my son down and making sure he was ok and sat there.

Just. Sat.

I was in shock, stunned.

And then I called my mom.

I thought about taking a shot when I got home, don’t you worry, but I saved it for the vanilla.

He’s supposed to be napping but has discovered how to climb out of his crib. Right now, as I’m taking sneaky photos of his shenanigans through the crack in the door, he’s standing on top of his older sister’s bed reading a book.

Then there was movement and I could no longer see him through the crack so I opened the door slightly to get a better view. I am so on top of this.

He’s pulling his “ki-ki” out of the spokes of his crib, still supposed to be sleeping, still unaware of my Private Eye capabilities.

OH NO! He spots me.

He gives me the “Mom, I can see you!” look and is slightly too believable in his disapproval of my watching him disobey nap time.

Wait a minute young man! This is too convincing! I’m the one who should be crossing my arms at you. But he’s SOOOOO cute.

And he starts to smile – which makes me weak in the knees because of his dimples. Wait. Wait ONE MINUTE. There was a nap that was going on in here. Well, sort of. How did we get here?

He’s on to me, he grabs his duck … he dashes!

IN YOUR FACE, MOM!

Touché, my son.

Here it is. Our living room in the apartment. I just uploaded the first photos of the apartment … the day we moved in and stayed the night for the first time. The very first time the kids see their beds in a new house, their couch in a new living room and their toys in different places.

Coming home. Again.

Seems like more than just my creative juices have been released since moving.

She’s fantastic.

All excuses for not eating dinner, “just ONE bite, mom?”.

My kids are snackers. Love the snacking, will snack all day … because I let them.

They eat the square meals with us as well and we have rules at the table about clearing your plate and only taking what you know you’ll eat, but also trying something new … no matter what.

This is just what works for us as a family and they’re not snacking on cheetos all day, although … I do let them have those types of things once in a while. It’s a variety – that’s how they like it, that’s how we deal with the dinner time blues.

Both of our kids are Little Dippers. They love to dip their snacks. Carrots in ranch or hummus, pretzels in peanut butter or hummus … hummus goes with everything. They dip in yogurt, soft cheeses, even ketchup on occasion. They love sauce!

That’s a t-shirt – “My kids LOVE the SAUCE”

We frequent the Farmers Market for in-season berries and fruit and I generally let the kids drive the “what are we getting” train. Some times that means we spend $15 just on fruit and sometimes it means we splurge on things like dips, sesame sticks and organic butters. It also means that by the time we’re home they’ve probably already devoured the raspberries (they’re FAVORITE) or made a great big dent in the 20 pound box of blueberries.

I don’t mind that they eat A LOT of the healthy food and some of the not-so-healthy snacks. An ice cream cone peppered in between some avocado and hummus is OK with me. I want both of our kids to love food, not be afraid of it or worry about calories or the junk factor.

I realize I’m sounding like I’m a pro at this which isn’t my intention – but I get the feeling that there’s a huge rift in how we feed our kids and how we view food ourselves. Maybe it’s just my generation (specifically the legacy the women before me left about food) and that I grew up believing that food was evil and the only good thing about it was the sense of control we could feel if we gathered our intentions and stood on the scale obsessively.

I still struggle with this, personally, daily. Food isn’t “good” and it cannot be “bad”. Food is not a moral. It can be healthy or unhealthy, it can be a choice you make for your self, for your health, for your emotions. The most important thing about food, aside from the intake we need to survive, is that we are in charge of the choices we make about food.

The book you just read can’t make the decision for you. The doctor you just consulted with has no power over what you put in your mouth. The magazine cover you stare out as you’re paying for your groceries is asking you to believe in graphic design more than what would be best for your life, for your body and for your family.

I don’t feel that are many RIGHT and WRONG answers when it comes to food but I do feel that food is a journey to be enjoyed and that it’s not always smooth sailing.

So I let my kids along for the ride.

They just happen to be really adventurous … such is their life on a daily basis.