Life after loss with one teenager, two surviving triplets and a rainbow baby
Right now I am balancing my laptop with coffee in hand, drinking it while it’s hot. Sawyer is upstairs watching Alvin and the Chipmunks with eyes drooping from fresh air and the weight of his lashes. I can hear Parker, McKenna and Ashlyn’s giggles drifting through the window. They are playing drive-thru window in their old playhouse that is brand new only because it’s standing in a different space. I’m dying to videotape them but it will break the spell. {Read More}
We are in the middle of moving and this week has tilted me completely off center. There’s no morning schedule of coffee then oh-shoot-we-should-be-out-the-door-already. The kids have missed their 2pm chill out time with Peppa Pig and I have missed sitting down for that millisecond between getting someone’s juice and fixing the zipper on someone else’s backpack. We sat down at dinner tonight and I really sat and looked at this table full of people who are mine. We played {Read More}
There are days that creep by slowly, ebb more than they flow. Morning comes before my eyes open and bedtime comes long after they close. I check the clock one time too many, linger in a chair long enough to want to stay. I bury myself in peeling stickers off walls and fastening princess clothes, gather train tracks and crumb covered fingers, and remind myself to breathe it all in. Because these days that drift, long after they should have {Read More}
When I was a full of drama, teenager/middle-schooler/probably elementary schooler and preschooler too, I would stomp off to my room when mad. Shutting my door, I would flop in dramatic defeat onto my bed and sigh loud enough for the house to hear. Laying there, unsatisfied with the lack of results from my grand showcasing of emotions, I would add another sigh or two, for effect. Being mad never really got me anywhere other than staring at the back of {Read More}
This week is World Immunization Week, the perfect time to talk about global immunizations and the children around the world who don’t have access to the most basic of medical care. Shot@life and the United Nations Foundation are working with great people like Nicole of Sisters From Another Mister who will be hosting a link up of motherhood stories to help raising funds for the campaign. The link up opens May 8th and ends the 18th, I will be taking part and I hope {Read More}
Seventeen years ago, while Ashlyn flipped in my belly, pressing to my ribs, I watched the terror of the Oklahoma bombing unfold. Full of pregnancy hormones and fear, I felt the urge to walk with my arms wrapped around my expanding stomach, protecting my first born from the world I was about to bring her into. I took comfort in the fact that she was still inside, but my mind whirled at the thought of the day her umbilical cord {Read More}
Blog confession #3,456,783: I actually like getting older. Like, have been waiting for it, will never complain about a birthday, like it. I became a mom very young and I spent years envying moms who were older, moms who were “supposed to be” moms. I envied how they knew exactly what they needed at the grocery store, how a waitress would look to them for the orders of all the children filling a noisy table, how they were regarded in {Read More}
Mindless reality television paired with a glass of wine is my favorite way to wind down from the day because what better way to forget your own Crazy than to watch someone else’s? So when this new show “Ready for Love” came out I settled in with my wine and twitter, expecting to fill the void The Bachelor has left until the next group of 25 people who have obviously never watched the show hold a weekly cat-fight for roses. {Read More}
When I was pregnant with the triplets I dreamt of the normalcy of their childhood. I’m sure normal and raising triplets don’t usually belong in the same sentence but in my mind they would. I looked forward to sitting still with a cup of coffee and a mom-friend, watching our kids at dance class or a baseball game. Ashlyn was 12 at the time and I had yet to sit down. We had worked on potty training for long enough {Read More}
I see my kids almost all day, every day. Wiping peanut butter from faces, conducting toothbrushing checks and planting kisses, only to have my mommy-ing swished at and to watch the beginning of eye-roll practice. But sometimes I look at them, really look from close up but far away, and have to bite my tongue from asking “who are you and how did you get here and weren’t you just a baby tumbling in my belly yesterday?” And sometimes I {Read More}
I'm Jessica, 30-something mom to five, four in my arms and one in my heart.
On any given day you will find me taxi-ing a teenager, mopping up our latest "art project" and trying to remember when I turned the crock pot on… all the while, looking for the closest Starbucks drive thru. more
