So...What.

Yes, I buy cookies/candy at the store for myself and let Camille carry it to make it look like it's for her...so what? Yes, sometimes I pretend to be talking on the phone in public, engrossed in deep conversation in order to avoid having to speak to someone I don't want to see...so what? Yes, when I make coffee I have to make only odd number amounts of it...so what? Yes, when I eat frosted mini wheats all the pieces have to be facing icing side up...so what? Yes, when I am seen in public with my cute nephews I pretend to be their parents and take the credit for their cuteness...so what? Yes, I eat all the marshmallows out of the Lucky Charms and blame it on my kid...so what? Yes, I secretly enjoy watching the Disney princess movies with Camille AND sing along to EVERY song...so what? I have a few weird quirks but they make me me. My parents always taught me that God me unique...weirdness and all. I want my children to grow up embracing who they are, and not to be ashamed of the personality God gave them. I always think of this song my parents (mostly my Dad) sang to me growing up and I sing it to my girls too. It goes:

"You are a promise, you are a possibility,

You are a promise, with a capital 'P',

You can be anything, anything God wants you to be."

Legacy of Love

Have I mentioned lately how much I LOVE being a mom? The fact that my name officially went from "Jessica" to "Momma" doesn't phase me in the least bit. The fact that I went from spending my weekends hanging out with friends and drinking to jumping on the trampoline, making letters out of jello and taking my children to Sunday school never crosses my mind. I wash and fold a BAGILLION pink outfits every day and the only reason I'm awake at 3 a.m. now a days is to breastfeed. I spend all day every day speaking in three year old language and no, that's not a funky perfume you're smelling, that's the spit up that I'm constantly covered in ;) It may not seem glamorous to many women, but to me it is FABULOUS. My very wise mother (who raised five children) said something the other day that has really stuck with me. She said, "If I'd known how much free time I would have (after all the kids were grown), I wouldn't have minded being stuck at home for so many years." Our "babies" are only babies for a very short amount of time and then POOF!! They're gone. Once they start kindergarten, they're on to middle school and before you know it they're graduating from college and getting married. Yes, it gets stressful at times and some nights I feel like drinking an entire bottle of wine...but when my grandmother passed away recently I realized that when you die, all you leave behind is your legacy. She passed on to my mother the legacy of love and treasuring your family. And in turn my mother has passed that on to her daughters. Now, I am trying to live up to that and teach my daughters the legacy that was started with my grandmother's mother many years ago.

The Facts of Life

So, sometimes when I think about the fact that Im the mother to two...it's a little surreal. I tend to think of myself as still being young and cool. That is until my almost four year old tells me to stop dancing because I'm embarrassing her or the little girl from across the street informs me during one of her visits that her older sister is "so old" at twenty two. That was the first time I experienced the "I'm not comfortable divulging my age" situation. Or like the other day when the hubs and I went to The Houndstooth before the Alabama vs Arkansas game and when I stopped to look around I realized I was in the "older" category...we then humbly went across the street to Egan's (we felt it was more age appropriate) and quietly drank our drinks. So there's this constant battle between acting the way I feel and acting the way a mother of two should act. Am I seriously going to be one of "those" moms that thinks she's soooo cool only to have her kids laugh at her behind her back?!`But then I realize, it actually doesn't matter if my kids think i'm cool. My job is to protect them and to instill in them the love of God and to have high standards and values...although it will be fun to embarrass them every once in a while ;) And now i'm at that place I think every woman that has children gets to eventually...it's called the "when did I turn into my mother?!" stage. But the older I get, the more I realize that that's not such a bad thing.