Mum’s Day

To all the amazing and struggling mom’s out there, Happy Mother’s Day. To my Mama, I love you and us. We’re like peas and carrots. More and more I am turning into you. I rearrange the furniture constantly, have a thing for handbags, love a good commercial that can either make me laugh or cry, and am a skilled “pile-maker” (paper, stuff, whatever). I'm glad you’re my mama.

But Mother’s Day. It’s one of those days that comes with loads of emotion for some. And truth be told, it’s one of those days that I sort of dislike. As a mom, I feel like it comes with so many expectations that in end look forced and fake and creates more work and anxiety for me than any other random Sunday.

OK, all that sounds pretty harsh. Let’s try this again. I love being a mom. I just don’t need a day where my husband and kids tell me how amazing I am. Because I’m not. I’m not the world’s best mom or even close to it. I’m their mom and I’m doing the best I can to love and raise and them. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU DO WHEN YOU’RE A MOM. It’s your job to be the best version of yourself so your children will try to be the best versions of themselves. It’s my job. Period. Sometimes I’m good at my job and sometimes I’m not. Just give me a card that says, “world’s okayest mom,” and we’re solid. Let’s live out the rest of our fake mother’s day with zero pressure, OK?

Being a mom was never something I dreamed about or thought about growing up. I just assumed that’s what I would do, right? Fall in love, get married and have babies. I didn’t really put a lot of thought into what kind of mom I would be and mostly because I didn’t know what kind of mom I would be, and that was scary. So why think about the scary unknown? Even scarier? Having daughters. What I did think about before marriage and children was that I never wanted to have daughters because I feared I would have a horrible relationship with them. So when we found out we were having baby number one; I just knew it was a boy. My mom had my three brothers before me and her sister, my Aunt Kathleen, had two boys before having my cousin, Chrissy. I would definitely have a boy first. Yes please, Jesus.

But when Emily arrived 5 weeks early, and he was a she, all those fears sort of melted away. Once you meet that little human who was kicking you for the last several months, your heart fills with so much love. An overabundance of love that hurts your chest and makes you take a deep breath. So much love that there’s no room for fear. Well played, God.

Sure, besides bringing the perfect little human into the world (who looked like Mr. Magoo), new anxieties are born too. Remember that car ride home from the hospital? The nurses pack you up, wheel you to the door, and waves goodbye. Wait, what? We were left standing there with an entire human for which WE are responsible. Holy crap that’s heavy. Derek has never in his life driven that slow on I-95. It was in that moment that I totally empathized with all those “Baby on Board” bumper stickers. Should we get one?

Fast-forward 4.5 years later and now I’m convinced I’m having a girl because this is how the universe wants it…me and all girls, no boys. Derek would be coaching girls soccer for the rest of his life. Ha, ha, universe. And yet again, to my surprise, she was a he. I’ll never forget Derek’s face when he told me she was a boy. I think that was one of a handful of his happiest moments in time. I’m glad my bad memory has saved that snapshot to hold forever. What a sweet memory.

And so we’re done, right? A girl and a boy. What a perfect little family unit. I remember giggling at Billie (long-time bestie and forever friend) when she sheepishly told me she was unexpectedly pregnant with baby #3. They were done too. A boy and a girl -wahalaa! But nope, Riley was only 9 (or was it 10?) months old when Billie learned, Trevor wasn’t far behind. Oh, how we laughed, or rather, how I laughed at her and this wonderful and shocking news. In enters Karma. Yep. Aidan turns 9 months old and Lela arrives 9 months later. Billie loved laughing right back at me. So much fun ——oh, how I miss those days, Billie.

Seriously, though y’all. This was a crazy time. How did we survive three small children ages 6 and under? I remember leaving behind a cart full of necessities (like wipes, lunchbox food, and ballet tights) at Target because Aidan had enough and was throwing himself on the floor via textbook temper-tantrum style like any skilled 19 month-old toddler can, and then, Emily could help as much as any 6-year-old can, and poor Lela is in the carseat now stirring because she's an infant and needs to eat soon. Can you see it?

So after leaving the house, putting them all in the car, throwing up prayers for a successful trip, unloading them from the car in the target parking lot, and reloading Lela’s carseat onto a shopping cart and Aidan into it, swiftly moving through the store checking off my list like any mom shopping on borrowed time will skillfully do, trying to make it a fun trip for our patient little stinkpot, Emily, and checking off all but two items on my list, it happens. My armpits start to sweat because I can see him unraveling. Please, God no. Just 10 more minutes. Nope. Not gonna happen. SOS. ABORT MISSION. REPEAT. ABORT MISSION. "Em, hold onto my shirt." --- I am going to have to take this carseat out of the cart and carry Lela and a screaming toddler across the store to our car halfway across the parking lot and leave with nothing. Nothing. You’ve been there too? Fun times, right? What is it that keeps us going on days like these?

Survival. Survival keeps you going because giving up isn’t an option when you’re a parent. So what’s been in our parental survival toolbox? Humor. We are silly as often as we can be and look for ways to always find the joy. There’s joy in pain and joy in loss and joy in crazy chaotic days - even that worthless trip to Target. Embrace the chaos, people. That trip to Target cost me zero dollars. When does that happen? Never. Well, almost never. There's that silver lining via humor.

Now that the kids are older and we’re raising young adults, we have a different sort of chaos which usually involves who needs to be where when and the worry that comes with whenever they aren’t with you. Again, we find humor. They allow me to stalk them via their iPhones and make morbid jokes with various “what if” reasons why it’s necessary. What if you get stung by a bee, have a horrible allergic reaction and can’t remember who you are and where you live? FindFriends helps me find you! Ok, I’ve never used that scenario but you get the idea.

When it’s just us, we’ve always talked to each other in funny accents, right now we’re hooked on a heavy Bawlmer dialect, hon. We make fun of each other with all the love and kindness you can when making fun of someone and we all know how to laugh at ourselves. This is a hard lesson to teach sometimes but super important for humility.

Sometime after Aidan was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes (on his third day of kindergarten), my prayers to God changed. I stopped praying for their health and happiness and started praying for them to be good people. I've mentioned this before, but it really was a pivotal moment in my motherhood. It's made me raise the bar for myself as a person.

And as I look around at our three beautiful perfectly imperfect children and even out at all my best friend’s perfectly imperfect children, I count them each as the miracles and blessings they are….life is hard…being a mom is hard….but it's so, so worth it.

Thank you, God, for our three humans and for making me a mom.

Amen.

xoTrish

Other Tools in Our Parent Survival Toolbox

Google Wifi

In my travels to London over th years, I’m always happy to discover little things we say differently. Like Wifi. Americans pronounce it Why-Figh. The Brits say Wee-Fee. Much more muchier don’t you think? But seriously, do you know how many devices you have connected to your home wifi network? You’ll probably be amazed. How many do we have connected? 18. We have 18 devices connected to our wifi network—-crazy, right? We have smart devices like Alexa, Google Mini, several light bulbs, smartphones, laptops, desktops, and two printers. And did I mention the three young adults that live with us? So, our Wee-Fee + teenagers who live their entire days via the internet: snapchat, instagram, netflix, hulu, facetime, + a mom who works from home = wee-fee war. But when testing our internet speed, it always came back fast, so why is my computer crawling?? Aidan, our resident tech-guy, saved the day when he suggested we get Google Wifi. It comes with three wee-fee points which you place at different points in the home to better distribute your internet coverage. Sounds too good to be true, right? But guess what? It really works. I can even prioritize my device for an hour or so. This way, I hog most of the bandwidth when I need it most, like watching Handmaid's Tale via Hulu on our smart tv. It was the best $260 we spent last year. I think we'll add Google Wifi to our book of Game Changers where we talk about all the things we didn't know we needed. Google Wifi definitely has been a game changer. Thanks, Google!