Mommy Life

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Thirteen weeks until we meet our newest little Baer. Twelve weeks and six days if he follows in the very nice pattern his big brothers have laid out for him by all coming the day before their due date.

It’s certainly too soon to be starting any sort of countdown, but I’ve been feeling more and more like we’re in the calm before the storm, and I am enjoying it to its fullest.

I mean, as much as you can enjoy something when you have heartburn, find yourself short of breath, have random aches and pains, and are heavier than you’ve ever been in your life. It’s the best sort of uncomfortable.

The boys' ages are seven, almost six, and almost three, and while there are bad days when nothing seems to be going right and everyone is grumpy and everyone is fighting and no one is listening and everyone is talking at the tops of their lungs, there are more good days than bad. Days where Alec comes home from school bursting at the seams with a project to do. Days where Sebastian spends hours outside riding his bike or putting his shovel to good use. Days where Emmett plays and plays and plays, without needing much of anything.

And I am so much enjoying not being quite so needed at the moment. ...continue reading →

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Man, I love a toddler.

Especially mine.

I just saw sweet little hands uncurl around a big lava rock, a pile of colored rubber bands, and a broken piece of a sparkly geode as he left his treasures on the counter in order to grasp a water cup with both hands.

I leave drinking cups on the counter for the big boys, and Emmett always has to drink out of them both. “I firsty,” and he holds up a hand. Drinks long. Puts the cup back. “I firsty,” and he holds up his hand for the other cup, too.

He loves to say “chicken,” and his two favorite uses are “poopy chicken” and “chicken house.” He said “poopy chicken” out loud at least four times during his Aunt Nikki's graduation, but hopefully no one was able to decipher it.

That aside, he’s very polite. Help him with something, and he’s sure to say “tanks” at least twice, if not three times. When I pray with him at bedtime, he says, “Thank you, Mom,” only it’s so fast and clipped that it sounds like “Tay tu, Mom.” When he wants something and is afraid of not getting it, he says, “Peas, peas, peas!”

He loves to copy his brothers in the things they do and say, and the other day when we were in the car, he was mimicking literally everything they said. He gets goofy right alongside them, and there is so much hooting and hollering and laughing. ...continue reading →

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I've had the bulk of this post just sitting here because I wasn't sure how to preface it. I wrote about three different intros, and they all had to do with being eleven, and it was slightly disjointed and a little strange, and I just wasn't happy with it.

And then I remembered . . . nine years ago today . . . a Starbucks that no longer exists, a rainy night, a doodled-on coffee cup, a handsome boy, and a "yes" finally leaving my lips after literally months and months of praying.

Eric and I met at a Starbucks so I could give him the answer to the question he'd asked two days earlier.

The answer was absolutely yes, and we've been together ever since. 🙂

Those were wonderful days. Dating was wonderful. Being engaged was pretty good, too. Being newly married was amazing.

And then came the children, and more tastes of real life, but guess what . . . I didn't ever want to go back to those dating days or even those newly married days.

This life right here is my favorite yet.

And that's where the feeling an affinity to being eleven came in.

When I was eleven, I wasn't yet interested in the future . . . in driving or graduating or working or boys or marriage or children. I wasn't looking forward to anything major. I also wasn't old enough to be very interested in the past . . . to look back at anything with nostalgia. I was just living in the moment, happy with what I had right then and there.

I kind of feel like I’m there again. I'm not waiting for anything major. Not to graduate; I’ve done that. Not to date; I’ve done that. Not to get married; I’ve very, very happily done that. Not to have children; I’ve done that. There's really nothing major that I'm waiting for (except maybe having a daughter, but that doesn't count because I do have my boys).

And any looking back that I do, while done with fondness, is with the understanding that nothing I ever had before can top everything I have now.

I guess that’s why they call it the good old days.

Not looking forward, not looking back. There’s not some time in the past that I wish I could return to. I'm not chomping at the bit to get to some time in the future. Right here, right now, is just fine with me.

These are the days I'll miss.

These are the good old days.

What an incredible privilege to get to live them in peace and quietness. ...continue reading →

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Almost two months ago, I was trying to catch up on my stash of WORLD magazines and came across a book review that piqued my interest so much that I literally grabbed my phone and ordered the book on Amazon. I couldn’t wait for it to arrive.

It was supposed to come the day before we left to go camping with Ian and Abby, and I imagined lounging in a camp chair reading all day long while my baby played happily in the dirt.

The book came; I took it camping; our campsite was on a slope; my baby trundled around precariously and had to be watched every moment; I did almost literally no lounging in a camp chair; the book remained untouched. (That’s okay, we had a lot of fun without getting any reading done.)

So I just started reading the book here and there in the small pockets of time I had where I didn’t feel like doing anything else. And it didn't disappoint. In fact, literally five minutes after I finished it, I printed Sebastian a bazillion train pictures to color like he’d been incessantly asking me to do, and then I closed out the coloring pages tab, and I opened Word, and I started to write.

It was that good.

I had hoped it would be. ...continue reading →