I’m always amazed at how different she looks now from when she was first born. But, not when she’s sleeping. To me, when she’s asleep her face looks exactly the same as it did when she was a tiny newborn.

The other night when I went in to check on her one last time before going to bed. Instead of a quick look, I stopped and sat on the floor. I was on my knees with my head pressed against the crib bars, my face just inches from hers.

I silently watched her breathe and like so many other times I was overwhelmed with how much love I have for my child.

I kept thinking….

Do you have any idea how much I love you?
Do you have any idea what I would do for you?
The lengths I would go to for your security? Your well-being? Your happiness?
Do you know?

No, she doesn’t. I can tell her and show her in a million different ways, but she won’t know until she becomes a mother herself.

Just after she was born I remember thinking, “Oh! So THIS is how much my mother loves me. I get it now.”

I think it must be one of the cruelties of parenthood, knowing your child will never understand until they have their own.

Spread it around:

• Email
• Tweet
• 

I had a friend at work remind me that Friday is the opening ceremony for the Summer Olympic Games in London. The last time the Olympic torch was lit, I got knocked up.

Greyson and I have joked that we got pregnant the night of the Opening Ceremony of the winter games in Vancouver back in 2010. The Parade of Nations gets boring! What can we say?! We were smooching on the couch by the time the delegation from Azerbaijan entered the arena.

The last day of the games we watched the gold medal hockey game with our friends. I went home to take a test and passed with the flying colors of the five rings. Well, a pink line anyway. (I understand that biologically the timing of this may be off. It’s just a funny prediction.)

Greyson looked at me yesterday with a cocked eyebrow (that’s his most seductive look) and said, “Hey Hot Stuff, you think we’ll make it through this Olympics without making another baby?” I assured him under no circumstance would we be making another little Team USA fan this year.

However, if David Beckham makes an appearance in the opening ceremonies, I may start feeling a little randy. It is the XXX Olympic Games.

 

Look at these knees. Scabbed and bruised. A year ago I would have doctored up those bumps and fretted over their healing. That of course, was when I was the mother of a baby.

This year I’m the mother of a toddler. In the past two weeks we’ve rarely had a day where I didn’t get a call from Charlotte’s school telling me about some accident or another that skinned her knee, or left a mark on her forehead. It’s always the same, “Weellll…Charlotte is okay, but we just wanted to make you aware of a little incident.” At first we were alarmed and upset that somehow she was being less supervised than we like. But, I’ve noticed even under our stringent parental supervision, she’s a force to be reckoned with.

And I mean force. We have witnessed our child barrel head-first into the side of furniture, rub her bumped noggin, and run right back into it again because she thinks it’s funny. (I told Greyson that is surely a quirk inherited from him.) We’ve seen her fall flat on her face, trip over the dog, and tumble off the couch. That was just this past weekend.

Ooph! My heart feels like it’s plunging into my gut when this happens. My Mama Bear instincts send me running to my cub to scoop her up. I’ve learned that 9 times out of 10, she’s just fine.

Greyson and I laugh when we hear someone say something like, “Our little guy is crazy! He’s all boy!” They of course, are speaking of their son. We just look at each other and shake our heads.

Don’t let the precious pigtails fool you. Behind the baby blues and frilly dresses is a spirit that we have trouble taming. She has the scars to prove it.

I’m the mother of a toddler now. I’m a little more battle-hardened and so are my child’s knees. Of course I want her scrapes to heal up, but deep down, I’m proud of them. She’s fearless and strong. “She’s all girl!”

Spread it around:

• Email
• Tweet
• 

Next week I will be getting on a plane to fly to one of the world’s largest cities to attend one of the world’s largest blog conferences and it blows my freaking mind, ya’ll!

 

What?! What has this turned into? This was just a hobby. It was a way to remember being pregnant. It was a way to write and get my thoughts out. I really knew nothing about blogging nor the blogosphere. I believe I may have heard the term “mommy blogger” some time and cringed at the thought of the Stepford Wives with MacBooks who must have taken up that hobby.

Somebody’s Parents was just a few diary entries written in a Google Doc back in 2010. Not anymore. Somewhere along the way people besides Greyson, my sister (when she had time), and a few very kind friends read my meanderings. All of the sudden I wanted to read more blogs, more stories, and more tales of pregnancy and motherhood. I found women from all over the world experiencing the same joys, disgusting syptoms, and hardships that I was. I joined blog communities, met local bloggers in the flesh and had late night Twitter chats with “friends” I only knew by their avatar. It was fun. It was more than message boards and Facebook. It was a community.

Blogging has gone from a hobby to a passion. I love doing this. I want to get better. I’m taking myself and my little blog to New York City on my birthday. It’s my first birthday away from family in all my 31 years. I can’t think of any place I’d rather be.

I’m not big-time. I know that. I’ve heard about the “types” that you run into at BlogHer. Is it intimidating? Only if I let it be.

I got a little something this weekend to help me on my journey. Yep! Blogging with the iPad2 and a keyboard. I have also ordered my business cards.

The lovely ladies pictured here are two of my BlogHer ’12 roommates. (Visit Erin, Andrea, and Andrea!) We got a few new festive frocks last week before the trip. They are even helping me celebrate my birthday!

Am I nervous? Maybe a little, but I’ve never been much of a wallflower. I figure if I go into BlogHer with the same open mind and joyful spirit that I did when I started blogging, I’ll be okay. Wish me luck! If I see you there, please say “Hello!” Let’s exchange cards. Tell me what sessions and parties you’re going to. I promise I have no idea what I’m doing and I won’t act like I do.

 

I was only 8-years-old in 1989 when Batman was released in theaters.  I wasn’t allowed to see it because it was rated PG-13.  A few years later I finally got to watch it on VHS Home Video.  It was glorious with all it’s rewinding and FBI warnings!  It had all the mystery and sexual tension I was too young to understand, but dying to see more of.  All the kids had Batman Happy Meal toys or Joker lunchboxes.  It was a franchise reinvented.  I had only ever seen the old Batman show on TV with my parents.  To me the BAMS! and POWS! were lame, dated, and should stay on Nick at Nite where they belonged.  This Batman was so much cooler!

Through the years of the Batman movies I was a teen, college student, and young adult.  I remember giggling with my sunburned classmates and sharing popcorn with a boy at one of the Batman’s.  I think it might have been the summer between 7th and 8th grade.  Wasn’t it the best thing to go to the big summer blockbuster?  No matter how cheesy, it had all the effects and fight scenes everyone was talking about.  It was fun.  It was one of the little things that made summer great.

When I woke up this morning and looked at the news alert on my phone my heart dropped.  Aurora, Colorado.  No!  Not there.  Not in that community.  Not again.

You see, my husband is from Littleton, Colorado.  The high school across town from Greyson’s was Columbine.  His family still doesn’t like to talk about April 20, 1999.  I can’t imagine a worse place for another mass shooting aside from Tuscon, Arizona or Blacksburg, Virginia.  As the horrible, gritty details unfolded about what James Holmes did in that movie theater Greyson said, “I didn’t realize the wounds were still that fresh.”

Holmes not only brutally killed a dozen people and wounded dozens more, he opened the old wounds of Coloradans and Americans.  My heart ached for the people of that community as they were forced to remember what happened 13 years ago.  I imagined the alumni of Virginia Tech who were students just five years ago.  Did this incident open their old wounds too?  What about Congresswoman Gabby Giffords?  Were she and others flashing back to that day in January, 2011?

Holmes also ignited the debate for gun control.  Will movie theaters now require metal detectors and ban midnight premieres?  Now I wonder if costumes will be banned in the theater, no more Batman look-alikes.  No more kids dressed as Yoda.  Suddenly the most in innocuous of activities, going to the movies,  is dangerous.

I say, let’s not be afraid.  Greyson and I were going to get our tickets to the new Batman movie tomorrow night.  We still might.  Don’t let this evil grip us with fear.  That’s what this guy wanted.  He wanted us to be afraid, like the “Joker” he claimed to be.