two years full of knox

Two years ago, at this exact moment, I was large and heavy-footed, ornery and tired, pacing around the first floor of our old home on a tree-lined street in the middle of Charlotte wearing an adult diaper.

A few minutes prior to when I took this photo, my water had broken due likely to the three mile uphill walk I took earlier that morning. I had reached that part of pregnancy where everything sucked, nothing about pregnancy felt magical, and I had accepted— albeit irrationally— that I’d be pregnant forever.

Funny how that works.

One day, this picture will mortify you. But for now, I will share it with pride because it was the beginning of the end of the nine months I housed you in my body and counted down the days until I met the boy who I knew would change me forever. What I didn’t know at the time was just how wild of a ride I was in for, which, in hindsight, is likely a good thing. If I’d known, I probably would’ve reversed my decision and agreed to stay pregnant forever. Who really needs to see their feet or sleep on their stomach, any way?!

The truth is, my sweet, sweet Knoxy Boy, is that something shifted in me when I held you for the first time. I felt an obligation to you that was very different than the obligation I felt towards your sisters. Everyone told me that I’d feel differently about you— equally, but different, they said— but I was not prepared for the inherent ferociousness that came over me.

Instantaneously, I became obsessively devoted to not only protect you in the physical sense, but to protect your innate softness in a world that will try its’ damnedest to harden you with all the ideas of what masculinity and manhood and boyhood should look like. I want you to be the one who decides what masculinity means to you, of course. But, mostly, my hope for you will live a life you design absent of fear if that landscape doesn’t line up with what others have deemed appropriate.

I want you to love big, to remain soft, and to never apologize for expressing your emotions. I want you to reject institutionalized gender norms in lieu of whatever makes you happy. I want you to be the first person to comfort others in need and not be afraid to ask for comfort or help when you need it. I want you to be the one who stands up for the person who cannot advocate for themselves. I want you to give absolutely zero fucks about being the “cool guy” and instead give all your energy to being a multi-faceted, evolved, dichotomous, empathetic human who just so happens to have a penis.

I want you to prove people wrong when they make assumptions about you or who they think you should be and I want you to do so quietly and with kindness. I want you to take care of your sisters the way they take care of you because nothing is ever more important than your family. I want you to look for the good in others and to become known for showing others what it means to be good. I want you to soar while never forgetting where you came from and, most importantly, who you came from.

Which is ME, obviously, because this isn’t about you at all. Not, really, anyway. This is about just how unfathomably and overwhelmingly big my love for you is and just how relentlessly loyal I am to you and who you are on your way to becoming. No matter who that person is, your number one fan will always be me followed, of course, by a close second, third, and fourth in your dad and sisters.

Nobody will ever love you like I love you though it’s likely a safe bet to say that many people will try because you’re you and to know you is to love you. You are everything to us and we love you to the moon and back.

Happy second birthday, Bubby.

xoxo,

mama

five things | the same, but different

This current season of life— both literally and figuratively— has gotten the best of me. I’m not sure if it’s the weather or the specific stages my kids are in, but I’m struggling to find the joy in the average day. So, here are five things bringing me joy this week:

1. My kids— even though they’re the ones who are simultaneously making it difficult for me to see the joy right now. But, yes. The kids. It never fails to blow my mind how incredibly different each of my kids are. Marlo is showing signs of the teenage girl she will sooner-than-later become. She’s a deeply-sensitive feeler of all of the feels and believes everything in life should be fair and is quite the budding idealist. *le sigh* Edie Cooper, the wild middle child, is as unpredictable as she is cheeky and never fails to make us laugh. Waking up every morning is as good a reason as any for her to be happy and her disregard for negativity is contagious. To know Edie is to love Edie. And my lone baby boy? Dude is as brutish as a Neanderthal yet also as loving and affectionate as a Labrador retriever. He lives for his next meal and has the same almond shaped eyes as his sisters but with thicker, darker lashes. He rocks a man-bun/mullet coif that requires some real confidence to pull off. Which he does. He also has the largest ass I’ve ever seen on a baby and watching it jiggle as he runs away from me during a diaper change gives me life. This chapter of parenthood is hard but also full of magic.

2. My friend, Megan, just ignited my soul by introducing me to Dani Shapiro. I started with her most recent book, Inheritance, and holy hell. It’s a page-turner. As soon as I finish it, I’m going to dive into another of her novels. Have you read her books? If you have, which one should I pick up next?

3. I just ordered my second pair of denim overalls in one month. Today, I bought the blue denim version of the same black denim style I purchased a few weeks back because 1) they are alarmingly cozy, 2) they require little thought because all you need to add is a t-shirt and you’re done, and 3) they serve a utilitarian purpose by holding all of my kids little useless things they insist on carrying around only to refuse to hold any longer so they end up in my resistant possession. I will add that whenever I wear overalls, all I can think of is the line in Clueless when the spectacularly bitchy Amber looks with disgust at newbie, Tai, and says, “She could be a farmer in those clothes.” Amber is not wrong. I could be a farmer in these clothes but, you know what? I am HERE for it.

4. I’m trying to cut out coffee again. I’m currently sitting here drinking a coffee so, clearly, my willpower is standing strong.

5. It’s cold as fuck. *What does …as fuck even mean, by the way? I have no idea but it really gets the point across of how fucking cold it is. Should out to all the mid-westerners. God speed.

foxy knoxy turns one

Joe is in Nashville this week and while catching up on our days over the phone yesterday evening after the kids were asleep, he asked me how I’m handling knowing that my boy turns one tomorrow. I thought about it for a split moment, vividly remembering how hot of a mess I was when Edie turned one, and then I answered him.

“Tomorrow night I’ll probably do what I always do and make a scene and embarrass myself with lots of ugly crying when I put him to bed but, come Friday morning when we wake up, I’ll remember that I never have to experience a first year ever again and I’ll probably go outside and do a round of celebratory back flips.”

Because it’s true.

Yes, I already mourn the inevitable thinning out of Knox’s turkey thighs and I dread the day he doesn’t willingly let me smother his chubby cheeks in kisses. Yes, I will undoubtedly miss the way he growls like an animal when he wants more food and I will forever very fondly remember the days when his favorite place was perched on my right hip but I will not miss the toll this past year put on me and my family. Yes, I wish I could go back and be a better (and less depressed) mother to Marlo while she was a baby but I do not, with a single ounce of my being, possess any desire to relive the struggle of being a new mom. And, of course I wish I could revisit Edie’s first year and give myself and Mo more grace as we established our footing as a family of four; of course I regret not relishing Edie’ baby-ness more than I did because Edie was a living, breathing inducer of baby fever like I’d never seen before and haven’t met since. But I would never want to go back and feel that lack of confidence, that maternal uncertainty, and crippling frustration ever again.

So, when a well-meaning fellow parent a few stages removed from our our current phase of parenthood tells me with utmost conviction that I’ll miss this current stage so much one day, I internally cringe. I want to correct them on the spot and defend myself and explain what the last six and a half years have felt like. And when they remind me to “be grateful,” that annoyed cringe turns into visceral rage and I have fight every urge to punch them in the throat.

Because, with all due respect, no I absolutely fucking will not miss this part of parenthood. In fact, there are large portions of all three of my kid’ first years that I’ve successfully managed to black out.

The last 365 days have proven to be not much more than a psych experiment in mental, emotional, marital, maternal, and physical survival gone rogue. I have been pushed beyond any and every boundary I previously enforced as a person, as a mother, and as a wife. I’ve expanded in ways that I now realize in hindsight were necessary and vital ones but the work required for embracing that kind of growth often left me wondering why I ever thought I was capable of being a mom to three humans and seriously doubting that I’d ever be a good one.

But I’d be lying if I said that I’m not feeling a little melancholy though, I’m fairly certain that my mood has far more to do with the finality that his birthday symbolizes more so than actual sadness because he’s turning one. Today marks the last page of a chapter whose plot largely revolved around growing, birthing, and sustaining human life. It’s a chapter that will go down as one of the most transformative, significant, consequential, and soul-affirming chapters in my life and, man, I’m eternally fucking grateful for it and for the three little people Joe and I got out of the deal.

Tonight, as Knox lays in my lap drinking his bottle while I whisper Doris Day’s ‘A Bushel and A Peck’ before laying him in his crib, I’ll ugly cry and feel all of the feelings. I spent much of the past year doubting myself and my capacity as a mother, but the truth is, surviving this last year serves as proof that I’m far more than capable of mothering these three babes of mine than I ever give myself credit for. Tomorrow morning when I wake up and go lift my one year old out of his crib, I’ll tell myself that closing this chapter means I’m also beginning a new one— a chapter whose overarching theme is simply loving the hell out of my kids.

Happy Birthday, Foxy Knoxy.

Thank you for choosing us, completing us, and for reminding of what I’m capable of.

I will love you forever.

-mama

the beautiful brute

We almost didn’t have a third baby.

Mainly because I thought people who had three kids were certifiable lunatics. Parenting is really fucking hard and really fucking heavy. Whether it’s one kid, two kids, three, four, or five— being a parent often seems like nothing more than an evolutionary tactic of survival. Loving someone (or three someones) so intensely that I’d quite literally die to ensure their survival seems a little melodramatic, unhealthy, one-sided in their favor, and potentially disastrous for me as the one willing to take the bullet. I wonder daily why people speak so highly of parenting and yet being my children’ mother is solely responsible for giving me a purpose so much bigger than anything I would’ve or could’ve chosen for myself. It fulfills me and simultaneously sucks the life out of me. It gives me direction and causes me to walk into the kitchen for for the third time today and not remember what the hell I even went in there for.

Once Edie turned one, I assumed that the baby-making chapter of our lives had been permanently shut down for business and Joe made no secret that he was emphatically done impregnating me, no matter how much fun he had doing it. We were tired. We were busy. Our patience was stretched thin as it was with Edie being such a high-maintence baby. More than anything, we were both painfully aware of our luck. Conceiving was easy (too easy for Joe’s preference) and what followed were two uneventful healthy pregnancies and two healthy baby girls. Joe was ready to sleep a full eight hours again. Things were getting easier. Why become one of those lunatics? Plus, I felt complete.

That is, until I didn’t.

One night when Edie was around eighteen months old, I had a vivid, life-like dream about a baby boy. He looked familiar. He looked like Marlo. He looked like Edie, only much chubbier. He looked like…. me?! As I watched him, his presence possessed a certain level of comfortability— like an old friend I’d known my entire life. His name was Knox. As I silently admired this beautiful baby boy, he turned towards me and reached out his arms. Instinctually, I reached back and took him into my arms.

And then I woke up.

I shot up in bed, shocked, and remained still for a few minutes. I was confused and needed to gather my bearings. After a little while passed, I made the decision that the dream was clearly a nocturnal hallucination brought on by extreme exhaustion courtesy of Edie. I planted my feet on the floor, got out of bed, and began my day. I made the girls their breakfast. I drank my mug of coffee with cream. I went through the motions of the day only I couldn’t kick this feeling of what can only be describes as emptiness. I felt hollow, like a vital piece of me was missing and I was unable to kick the visceral longing that accompanied it.

And then it hit me: I wasn’t complete after all. WE weren’t complete. There was a baby boy waiting for us and I’d never been more sure of anything. A few months later, we discovered we were pregnant with a baby boy. We named him Knox.

In nine short days, my beautiful brute will turn one. And you know what? After we met the baby boy who completed our family, I can say with certainty that I wasn’t all-together wrong. We are fucking crazy. But when the insanity that is parenthood provides an undeserved, unconditional, otherwise unmatched kind of love and you find that you are quite literally living a dream come true, lunacy can also be kind of amazing.

normal

"Just a normal day. A normal day? It’s a Jewel! In time of war, in peril of death, people have dug their hands and faces into the earth and remembered this. In time of sickness and pain, people have buried their faces in pillows and wept for this. In times of loneliness and separation, people have stretched themselves taut and waited for this. In time of hunger, homelessness, want, people have raised boney hands to the skies and stayed alive for this.

Normal day — let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may — for it will not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth or bury my face in the pillow,  or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want more then all the world to return to you, normal day."

-Let Me Hold You While I May, Mary Jean Irion