contemplating mortality

We went to the cemetery today. It’s traditional to go during the Days of Awe (the 10 days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur). Something about contemplating our mortality as we approach the Day of Atonement.

I have to say that, while I always appreciate the poignancy and solemnity of this little visit, it’s usually the visit to my grandmother’s grave the day *after* Yom Kippur (her yahrzeit) that gets to me more. It’s more personal, you know.

This year was totally different.

This year, I was holding my baby.

This year, I was thinking about how I might not have been holding my baby.

This year, I was picturing what her little gravestone would have looked like, with her one little date – her father’s birthday.

We saw a grave of a little girl who died when she was 11. I probably saw it last year and I probably thought that was so sad. This year, my heart broke. She was born in September, 1968 and died in 1979. There was a brand new birthday card stuck to her gravestone that read, “I remember the day you were born…I will never forget it!” It was signed, “Dad”.

Standing there with Lucy, I thought – that could have been us. That could have been us, mourning the loss of our baby 44 years later, celebrating her birthday without her.

A friend asked me the other day if I’m kind of “over” the trauma of the birth and everything, and I said, yes, I think so. I’ve told the story so many times it feels like it happened to someone else. But going to a cemetery to contemplate our mortality had me quite literally contemplating my mortality – and Lucy’s.

I’m not one to dwell on the negative, to keep turning over and over in my mind the could-haves and what-ifs. It’s hard not to do that in this particular case, though, and I think I have walked through all the different ways G-d gave us miracles and turned a really bad situation into a perfect, joyful one. Every time I think I couldn’t be more grateful for Lucy and her story, something makes me a little more grateful.

Every now and then, I hear something, see something, read something that makes me hold my sweet baby a little closer and whisper, “I’m so glad you’re here.”

Today was one of those days.

Tzom kal! May your fast be easy!

the story of lucy

I normally wait until my baby’s one year birthday to post their birth story. I don’t really know why – it just seemed like a good time to remember how they were brought into the world. But Lucy’s story demands to be told. It needs to be heard, read, shared. We believe in a G-d of miracles, whether they be hidden or manifest. When He shows His power and His love for us in such clear, tangible ways – we need to talk about it!

I’ve included all the real, raw details, so if that’s not your thing, you’re welcome to move on to a different post. But I want to remember what that night was like, and I want you to feel it with me, all the fear and panic and all the relief and joy.

Buckle up! It was a wild ride!

***

I went to bed on Friday night, May 5, around 11:00pm, after watching a few shows with Joshua and enjoying some banana bread. I had had a perfectly normal day, a few Braxton Hicks here and there. I had lost my mucus plug and that was kind of exciting, because it’s at least progress. At one week overdue, it was nice to have progress.

I woke up feeling strange. I looked at the clock and it was 1:12 in the morning. I sat up, assuming I needed to go to the bathroom (like always). The right side of my head, particularly my ear, felt weirdly hot to the touch. I felt like my ears were ringing just a little and I was a bit nauseous, too. I remember thinking, “What’s wrong with me? I never want to feel like this again.” I started to walk to the bathroom and felt a little gush of something. I got kind of excited, because I thought maybe my water had broken – my water never breaks at the beginning! So maybe this would mean labor would be faster? As I started jogging toward the bathroom, I felt fluid just gushing out of me, and I was sure my water had broken. It was only when I got to the bathroom that I saw it was all blood.

I panicked. I had never seen so much blood before. And it just kept coming. I ran back to the door of the bathroom and then I knelt down to try to stop the blood flow – I didn’t know what to do. All I knew was that if this much blood was coming out, there was almost no way the baby was still alive. In that moment, I was sure she had died.

I started screaming for Joshua to wake up – he wears ear plugs at night, so it took him a minute to hear me. He leapt out of bed in conquer mode. He called our midwife and did all the talking, because I was hysterically crying. I kept saying, “There’s so much blood. There’s so much blood. It’s too much.” A friend of mine had lost her baby earlier this year due to a placental abruption, and apparently had seen about two cups worth of blood when that happened. This was so much more than that – I knew there was no way my baby was still alive. Joshua told me later that he was also feeling the anguish of our miscarriage 9 years ago, reliving the feelings he felt then.

But my midwife was calm. She had already hopped in her car and was driving to check things out herself. She told Joshua to get me into a comfortable position and give me some juice or something that would hopefully make the baby move, which would put my heart at ease somewhat. She assured us that there were other benign explanations for what was happening – it didn’t have to be the end of everything. It was hard to believe. While I was still on the floor of the bathroom, I was pretty sure I felt a few kicks from the baby. But it was hard to tell if it was just my imagination. Once I was sitting in bed drinking juice, blood still pouring out of me at an alarming rate, I didn’t feel anything at all.

While our midwife was driving, Joshua had her on speakerphone. After hearing her reassurance and sharing what I was feeling, Joshua decided to lean over the baby and start praying over and over again for her, urging her in Yeshua’s name to move. He said he felt like Elisha praying for the dead boy to rise again.

Our midwife got to us in record time. She immediately pulled out her doppler and within seconds our baby’s heartbeat was pounding out into the room. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe she was still there. It felt like being in two alternate realities at once – listening to the strong, steady heartbeat of a baby that is totally fine, and looking at the crime scene on our bathroom floor. It didn’t feel like both could be true.

Moments later, our other midwife arrived with her portable ultrasound. She immediately started scanning and they agreed that it looked like maybe the top of the placenta was starting to pull away. Call 911, they said. We all agreed there was no way we could get me downstairs and into the car and to the hospital with the bleeding going on. She told me they would do a c-section. Under normal circumstances, I would probably have been devastated or disappointed to hear that. As it was, I was feeling weak, mentally and emotionally exhausted, and shaking uncontrollably, so the thought of being in labor (which – was I? I was not having contractions) and pushing out a baby that night was absolutely unfathomable. I knew I couldn’t do it in my current state. So when my midwife said it would be a c-section, I felt nothing but peace and totally relaxed.

Joshua wasn’t even off the phone with 911 when we heard the sirens. It turned out later that the EMTs had stopped to grab a burger at Cook Out, just down the road from us. They got to our house within minutes – even beating the local ambulance from our town. After a string of somewhat superfluous questions, they strapped me into a special chair and carried me out to the ambulance. Even with the blood everywhere, they didn’t seem to feel the need to hurry.

The hospital is right across the street from us. It’s brand new – originally the signage said it was going to be a cool shopping center, but then it turned into a hospital, which I have to say was disappointing to us at the time. In this moment, we were grateful that G-d had orchestrated those events five years ago.

We thought when we got to the hospital that they would take me right in for a c-section, but instead, we were wheeled into a hospital room where they started to take vitals and bloodwork and run tests. Their portable ultrasound machine wasn’t plugged in or turned on or something, so it took time to get that up and running. In the meantime, they also found the heartbeat, which was still going strong (praise G-d). When they finally got the ultrasound going, they said that yes, it did look like maybe something with the placenta. There was talk of ordering a “real” ultrasound, taking me down to a different floor, etc. They inserted a speculum to take a look around and see if they could gauge where the baby was, and there was such a huge gush of blood when they did that, they immediately canceled the second ultrasound and started to wheel me into surgery. Now all of the sudden everyone was moving like lightning.

Because it was an emergency and they would be putting me under general anesthesia, they wouldn’t allow Joshua to come back with me. He fought them on it, but they insisted. So he kissed me and said he would see me on the other side.

Looking back, I find it odd that even in this moment, after losing a considerable amount of blood and now facing major surgery for the first time in my life, I wasn’t more scared. I also didn’t feel out of it or dazed or in a fog. I was extremely lucid and very present. I also wasn’t in any pain (until they inserted the catheter on the operating table – ouch).

They rolled me into the operating room at 2:57am. The paperwork says that they cut me open at 3:05 and pulled Lucy out at 3:06. A nurse told us that it was actually 45 seconds between first incision and birth. She also said that it had been a very long time since she’d seen an abdominal cavity so completely filled with blood, and that the placenta was totally detached on its own and came floating out on the river of blood.

I was out for all of this, of course, but we were told later that Lucy needed six minutes of oxygen before she started breathing on her own. Her heart rate was down at 55, when it’s supposed to be over 135. Her APGAR score was 1 out of 10. They had to pump her stomach to get out all the blood she had ingested while still in the womb. They thought they would have to put her on a helicopter and fly her uptown to the NICU, but she turned a corner and came through it on her own. It was truly a miracle. One of the nurses who was there, a believer, said she felt that she had stood side-by-side with Jesus that night.

I woke up back in the hospital room and the first thing I heard was, “You have a baby girl.” If I hadn’t been so swirly from the drugs, that probably would have made me start crying with relief. As it was, I just wanted to know where she was. And where Joshua was. Within a few minutes, they were both in the room with me and I was holding our perfect daughter with her amazing head of dark hair.

It turned out that my parents, my mother-in-law, my older sister, and both my midwives had sat patiently waiting through the surgery to be there when I came back. My father-in-law, G-d bless him, was sitting in our house while our kids slept so that everyone else could be at the hospital.

I found out later that one of the nurses said that, looking at the situation before the surgery, either the baby or me shouldn’t have made it out of that operating room. It was a miracle that we were both still alive.

Not only that, but we were both totally fine. After a day’s worth of rehydrating me and giving my body some time to rebuild the blood supply, I was feeling almost normal. Lucy was acing all of her tests and turned out to be my strongest nurser yet. The medical staff said they never saw a mom and baby bounce back so quickly after such an experience.

Sometimes when I look at her, my mind goes back to those horrible moments on the floor of our bathroom, feeling like I knew she was gone, and I tell her, “I can’t believe you made it.”

the story of henry

Another year, another baby, another birth story, another birthday.

If those words sound kind of like a shrug – they aren’t. Each child is so special, so unique, so incredibly precious. Did having my third (my second boy, who is remarkably similar to my first) and experiencing the joy and excitement of our first year together feel vaguely deja-vu-ish? It did. There were just so many things that felt like it was Richard for a second time, it was hard not to feel like I was living my life over again, in a way. But Henry is not at all Richard. He’s perfectly Henry.

He turned one today, and it feels good to have gotten to this point – he’s walking, communicating, eating solid food, sleeping through the night, flourishing in every way! In short, WE MADE IT! I consider the first year the physically hardest year and quite frankly, I look forward to first birthdays maybe a lot more than I should. I sometimes struggle to live in the sometimes unpleasant moment during that first year, but I tried even harder with Henry, and I think I succeeded, and here we are anyway.

Below is his birth story, for those of you into that sort of thing! It was my best birth so far. 🙂

On June 5, 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and North Carolina in lockdown (thanks to Yertle the Turtle Governor, Mr. Cooper), I found out I was pregnant with our third child. Due on February 10, 2021, my MIL’s birthday. Ecstatic Joshua somehow agreed that we would not find out the sex this time, and let it be a *surprise*!

Fastforward to February, and my sister, Christine, had her fourth baby, another little girl named Violet. She was born on February 5. I was still massively pregnant, of course. Christine planned a little celebratory event for her daughter on the 14^th of February, and we all hoped that I would be able to attend (I mean, if it was a choice between going ahead and having my baby before that or making it, I guess I would say it was a toss-up for me…no, never mind, I probably would have loved to go ahead and have the baby). But as it turned out, I made it!

I woke up the morning of the 14^th have some mild contractions. They were so mild, I thought they might still be Braxton Hicks. But as I got up, got dressed, got the kids ready to go to my sister’s house for Violet’s event, the contractions kept going. So I knew they were the real thing. I texted my midwife and told her I was having contractions, but they were mild, sporadic, and I had an important event I wanted to go to that morning, so I was GOING. And I would let her know if anything else happened. Haha!

I was excited to tell everyone when we got to Christine’s house that I was in labor! The thing was, everything was obviously still mild enough that I could go to a party, so it definitely felt like we had no idea when this baby was going to show. Could be that night, could be the next night…if there was anything that we did feel sure of, it was that it was almost certainly going to be a night birth. Mine always are. 12:30 in the morning.

When we got home from Christine’s house, it was around lunch time and I was in the kitchen getting lunch for the kids. I was moving and walking through contractions at this point, and they were still quite far apart. We planned to send the kids off with my in-laws when I felt like it was time, and I thought maybe after naps we should do that, because it felt like maybe tonight would be the night, and even if it wasn’t, it felt like there would not be a lot of sleep.

I was surprised at how strong the contractions felt already! I tried to do some housework to keep my mind off of them, because they were getting pretty painful. Joshua finally decided it would be best to get his parents to take the kids before naps, which turned out to be a very good idea. They came, the kids left, and it was just Joshua and me ready to rest for the afternoon. I laid on the couch while we watched a show and tried closing my eyes. For me, it’s a good indicator of how intense my contractions are if I can lay still through them. If I feel like I absolutely have to keep moving through contractions, I am getting toward the end. Anyway, I was able to lay down and rest for the afternoon, and things were pretty regular, but not coming closer together. I moved to our tub (our TUB! I hate it! But it did feel good) for a while, and things felt less intense but they did get closer together.

I texted our midwife, and she asked, “When do your kids go to bed?” I said, “They are already at my in-laws’ house.” She said, “Have you eaten dinner?” I looked at the clock because I had lost all track of time, and it was only 5:00pm, so I said, “Not yet…” She said, “Eat dinner and then we’ll see what your body does tonight.”

I could insert here a whole soapbox moment at how horrifying it is to me that hospitals make pregnant mothers go through an entire labor with no food and no water, just crunching on ice chips the whole time. Can you imagine running a marathon on ICE CHIPS! What a moronic system! You need your energy!

But back to Henry’s birth. I ate dinner, but the contractions were coming faster and stronger, and I found that, to my growing consternation, walking and moving through them (the greatest tools I have for labor) was NOT WORKING. These were really intense and nothing I did was taking the edge off of them. I had decided this time around to try a water birth, which my sister swears by, and so I asked if we could go ahead and fill up the birth pool.

It took forever. First, blowing up the pool, and then filling the pool with water. We had never done it before, and I know there’s a bit of a system to it, because you want it to be nice and warm, but you only have so much hot water in the hot water heater, so you fill and then wait and then fill again (I know that now, but we didn’t then). So Joshua inflated the pool and then we waited for the midwives to arrive to fill it up. They got to our house around 7:30pm.

I told my midwife about how I couldn’t seem to find something to help me get through contractions; how getting down on all fours has been good for me in the past, but it was so so painful this time. She said, in her very stoic way, that it’s often the positions that hurt the worst that are doing the most with regard to getting that baby out. So while we waited for the pool to fill, I tried a bunch of different positions. We all chatted about Christine’s truly awful birth story (and when I say “we”, I mean “me”, because the midwives are always super discreet and really don’t tell you anything about anyone else’s birth – I really like that).

The contractions were getting really, really intense and very painful, but they weren’t getting closer together. I was still getting a break between them, so I felt like I still had a while to go. Finally the pool was ready, so I slipped in. I found it difficult to figure out which position I wanted to use in the pool. I guess I was hoping to feel more comfortable than I did, but by the time I got in, I was past the point of comfort. I got on my knees and leaned against the side and held onto Joshua’s hands while he sat by the side of the pool.

I decided I wanted to try pushing, because the pain was getting to me, and I wanted to see if pushing would push the pain away, as it often does. Sure enough, it felt better to push through a contraction. And for the record, that is the only little nudge I get from my body to push. Some women talk about this irresistible urge, but I never get that. I just have to try pushing, and if it feels better than not, then I know I am probably ready to do it.

So after that first initial test push, I knew I really needed to put some muscle behind it and give it my all. With the next contraction, I did, and I started screaming (which is a good sign for me – it means the end is near!). I felt something absolutely giant moving down in my body. I pushed with everything I had until the contraction ended, and I knew I had gotten part of the body out, and I reached down into the water and felt for the head, and what I felt did not feel like baby head or baby hair, and I knew immediately that the baby was en caul, still in the sack. I could feel wriggling, and I said, “The baby is moving.” The midwives nodded and smiled and said encouragingly that the baby was trying to help me get it out! Inside, my mind was screaming, “THIS IS IT. IT’S OVER. ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS PUSH AND IT’S OVER!” I couldn’t believe I was already here!

When the next contraction hit, I was pushing and screaming again, but only for a moment, because out the baby popped, and I reached down and grabbed it and lifted it out of the water, leaving behind the pieces of sack it had been in. I was breathing hard, but the relief that washes over you when you realize you did it! It’s over! The baby has arrived! It’s…there’s nothing like it.

The midwives handed me a towel, and I wrapped it around the baby. I looked at Joshua and I said, “Are you ready?” When he nodded, I opened the towel, took a peek, and said, “It’s a boy!” It happened exactly as I wanted it to, exactly as I imagined it. AND we caught it all on video.

I leaned down and kissed his beautiful, cheese-covered face and said, “You’re perfect.”

When the midwives went to weigh the baby, they put him in the pad they use to protect the sling, and before they could lift it up, he pooped meconium all over the place. So they had to get him out, grab some wipes and clean him all up, throw away the pad and get a new one, and when they went to lift it up, he did it all AGAIN! It was hilarious! After that second poop, they finally weighed him and he was nine pounds, ten ounces!! A giant! I looked at that enormous child and couldn’t believe he had come out of me. Amazing.

He was born at 9:30pm. I was in the birth pool for only 15 minutes! We were so shocked he came before 12:30, we were totally wired and couldn’t sleep after the midwives left. Henry slept peacefully beside us as we talked and talked about the labor and the birth and funny things that happened and how we couldn’t wait for our family to meet him and we couldn’t wait to tell everyone he was a boy, after all.

So that was the birth of Henry Solomon! Our Perfect Henry!

the lies we believe

I see it everywhere nowadays. The same message, in a variety of different wordings. The same reassurances made to women again and again. The message: it’s ok if you feel like you don’t have it all together. It’s ok to cry about a bad day. It’s ok to write off today as a failure, you’ll do better tomorrow. It’s ok to just serve the kids ice cream tonight, you’re not a bad mom. “You’ve got this, mama!”

I used to wonder what was wrong with me. Why is it that I feel like I have it “all together”? Why do I never, ever feel the need to cry about a bad day (not to say I never cry, although…)? Why do I never feel that a day was a failure? Why have I never, ever served my kids ice cream because I just couldn’t get a dinner on the table (I’ll admit I’ve done cereal when in my first trimester, though). Why do I never feel like I’m a bad mom? Apparently women the world over are feeling every day that they are bad moms. Why do they feel that, and why do I not?

Is it because I’m arrogant?

No, I have decided it is not.

I think a large part of it is due to my decision to be 100% mom. My husband and I decided together that I would be 100% a mother. Yes, I work from home a little bit, but I don’t have a career. I chose not to have a career, because I wanted a family (because WE wanted a family).

That’s the lie, you see. The lie we’ve been told is that you can “do it all” – you can have your career and your family, too, and somehow you can give both of these things your all, which would mean that you have 200% of yourself to give. The math nerd in me is so irritated by this.

It’s a lie. It is SUCH a lie.

No wonder women need the constant affirmation that they’re doing great and they “got this.” They don’t! They’re being torn apart by our culture, which is telling them they can be a great, present, mom who is focused on raising her kids and being there for them and kissing their boo-boos while ALSO being a focused, ambitious, driven career woman who is climbing the ladder and deserves to be CEO.

It’s absolutely ludicrous.

And let’s just be clear here: it’s not that dratted patriarchy that’s screaming this lie at us. It’s feminism. Patriarchy, back in the 50s before the dawn of women who no longer wanted doors held open for them or men paying for dinner (thanks, feminism! I just love having to open my own doors and pay for my own meals! what a giant leap for womankind! Thank goodness I found a man who still believes in chivalry!), was more than happy for us to stay home while the men went to their long, laborious jobs and brought home the metaphorical [kosher] bacon for us all to eat and enjoy.

If you could just step back and think about it objectively, rationally, logically, you would see. You would agree. It’s just so obvious.

If your career is important, and it’s important to you to advance and climb that corporate ladder, than you are putting your heart and soul into it. You’re getting there early, maybe. You’re making yourself valuable. You’re not wasting your company’s time by surfing your social media when you should be working. You’re using all the minutes in your work day to bring value to yourself and value to your company.

If your family is important, and it’s important to you that your children advance in life, school, and work, than you are putting your heart and soul into them. You’re getting up early. You’re making yourself valuable to them (maintaining your value, actually). You’re not wasting those precious moments that are so fleeting by surfing your social media when you should be pausing to admire your daughter’s artwork or helping your son build a lego airplane. You’re using all the minutes in your day to give to your children the love they deserve. The mom they deserve.

This post has been on my mind for a while because I see people and I know people who are truly struggling with this guilt they feel, that they aren’t really “there” for their kid(s), that they can’t be present for the special moments (“can’t” being their word, not mine). They feel guilty about it, but our culture is telling them they shouldn’t. Our culture is telling them they should feel amazing, like they’ve reached some kind of pinnacle – I have a career AND I’m a mom! I’m so amazing! I’m “doing it all!” But the reality, which hits them like a ton of bricks once they actually have a baby, is that if they’re honest with themselves, they know that they really aren’t there. The little baby they have fallen in love with, and who has fallen in love with them, will get to know his nanny, his grandmother, or his daycare workers a lot better than his own mother, simply because he’ll spend way more time with them. The daycare worker will watch him take his first steps and say his first word, unless he happens to time it on a weekend.

I don’t want to put down the moms out there who genuinely need to work because there isn’t another option. But really, there so often is.

I wanted to be a mom for a while before our son came along. And now that I am a mom, a mom of three, I can tell you that it takes all of you. It saps all your energy, time, creativity, patience, and brain cells. That’s because I am giving it my all. ALL my energy. ALL my time. ALL my creativity. Quite frankly, and without bragging, I think this makes me a really great mom. But don’t try to tell me that I could be working an eight-hour day at some office job and still be the mom that I am right now. It’s simply not possible.

Jim Elliot said, “Wherever you are, be all there.” I really feel like that is something our culture (or, feminism, mostly) is pressuring women not to do. You can be two places at once, they say. You can be Supermom AND you can be in line for a promotion at work. The reality is that when you try to divide yourself like that, one of those things is going to suffer. And, unfortunately, I see on my social media and even with some people I know – the thing that suffers is the kids. Somehow, they reason to themselves that they need to work, they need to do this job, probably because they feel like no one could quite do the job as wonderfully as they can. But what’s the truth? The kids, being their mom…THAT’S the job that no one can do as wonderfully as they can. That’s the position they hold in which they are absolutely irreplaceable. But because our culture has wrapped up a woman’s value in what it says on her business card, she feels like she can outsource the momming, because no one can run a company like she can.

You have to choose. For me, it’s an easy choice. Raising a child, making sure they always know they are loved, teaching them how to live godly, successful lives, helping them find their place in the world – what could possibly be more fulfilling and important than that? By shaping their little minds and hearts, I touch the future. No other job could compare.

the sad days

We’re just about to finish three weeks of the saddest days of the year. We do this every year – traditionally, in Judaism, there are three weeks, flanked by two fast days, during which we are sad.

I find that there is really no corollary in Christianity. Catholics have Lent, but even that is not exactly what we’re doing here. In general, I get the impression from my Christian friends that they don’t really believe in sadness. I think they feel that a Christian should never be sad. “The joy of the L-rd is my strength” and “I’m in-right, outright, upright, down-right, happy all the time”, etc.

But surely we all agree that for everything there is a season. You know – a time to plant, a time to pluck; a time to weep, a time to laugh; a time to mourn, a time to dance. I’m sure I read that somewhere.

So this is kind of a time for mourning. A lot of sad things happened in Jewish history (and world history) during these three weeks on the Jewish calendar. So we set aside some time, and some joy, and we kind of emphasize the sad, rather than the happy.

Question for you: what would you remove from your life (or add to your life) to decrease your joy? We’re not talking about being miserable. Just not being our happiest selves.

Here are some things we do to help our kids feel the sadness. These are not all traditional things from Judaism, although some of them are.

• We don’t listen to music. This is a big deal for my kids, who have Steve Green’s Hide ‘Em In Your Heart on repeat in the car! We’ve had the car radio/cd turned off for all three weeks!
• We don’t watch TV or movies. We are big fans of Aleph Beta and the little movies they make about the Torah portion every week, and we do watch a few of those on Shabbat, but otherwise we don’t watch anything. This is not a big deal for the kids, because we don’t really let them watch anything anyway, but Joshua and I do enjoy relaxing with a show in the evening, so instead of doing that, we read. We get through a LOT of books in the three weeks. Usually, we pick one book that is more thought-provoking (like Rabbi David Fohrman‘s The Beast That Crouches At the Door or Jordan Peterson‘s 12 Rules For Life, for example) and read it aloud to one another in the evenings, in addition to reading lighter fare privately. This year, instead, we signed up for Unit 1 of Rabbi Daniel Lapin‘s course Scrolling Through Scripture, and we completed all 20 lessons by watching one every evening before diving into our own books. It was exceptional! I look forward to Unit 2! The point is, we try to use this time to grow, and sometimes that even spills over into the time after the three weeks – sometimes we try to keep reading to ourselves or together, to keep growing and keep learning, and not just veg out in front of the screen (although it is so much easier, isn’t it?)
• We don’t drink hard alcohol. Obviously not a biggie for the kids, but we do have a Cocktail Monday tradition over here, and it is pretty sad to skip that after a rough start to the week!

The last nine days of the three weeks are supposed to be even sadder. How do we make it more sad?

• We don’t drink wine. In addition to cutting out the hard alcohol, we stop drinking wine for the nine days, as well. This is also when we normally do our annual liver cleanse, which happens to be ten days long, so it’s pretty perfect! This year, because I’m nursing, Joshua did it be himself, but it still makes us all sad because he has to get off coffee for the cleanse and foggy Joshua is not the most fun. 😉
• We don’t bathe for pleasure. And by that we mean, we don’t swim or use our water table or splash pad. My sister points out that the nine days are almost always the hottest, driest days of the year, when all you want to do is find the nearest pool, and of course we don’t swim during this time. It’s very, very sad.
• We don’t eat red meat. This actually goes hand-in-hand with the liver cleanse, which is why it’s a great time to just go ahead and do the cleanse. We don’t eat a ton of red meat anyway, but there is definitely a difference between choosing not to buy it and not permitting yourself to eat it for a certain period of time.

So that’s not an exhaustive list, but those are some of the things we do. This year, we added an art journal my sister and her husband put together, with a little drawing/coloring project for each day. While it did not augment our sadness, because it was so much fun, the little educational paragraphs they included for each day were a great way to teach my kids a little more about what we’re doing and why. We kept up with it, and we are all set to do the last page tomorrow, which is the last day of these three weeks, and also a fast day. In fact, it’s the saddest day of the year. It’s the culmination of everything we’ve been doing for the last three weeks.

We like to make a big deal at the end of that day. First of all, we have waffles for dinner, which is a much-requested favorite for the kids. Then, we watch scenes from the International Space Station on our big screen while we play music – whatever the kids have been missing. (Simone has already asked for Chanukah songs, and Richard has requested Michael Buble). Maybe when they’re older, this will be a time to watch a family movie, but right now, the space station is actually a huge hit with them! We will probably have cookies or something to make us really, really happy. 😉 Maybe a dance party.

And they’ll know (and we’ll know) that the sad days are finally over!!

“You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O L-rd my G-d, I will give thanks to you forever!” – Psalm 30:11-12, ESV

it’s good to be back

I’m baaaaaaaaack!! For those of you who actually noticed I hadn’t written anything on this blog for quite a while – thanks for reading. 🙂 Here’s what happened: I got locked out. Or something! My blog account went a little haywire and I couldn’t get into it for a really long time! But somehow, now, it’s working again. So yay! Here I am after over a year of silence!

Since my last post, on February 3, 2020, which detailed my son’s potty training story, a lot has happened.

First, there was COVID. I refuse to let this blog be about COVID, so we’ll skip that.

Next, I found out I was pregnant with Baby #3! I found out two days before my 31st birthday that we were expecting another baby. Amazingly enough, I was able to convince my risk-averse, surprise-hating, advance-planning, all-information-needed husband that this would be a fun time to NOT find out if the baby was a boy or girl, because we already have a boy and a girl, so we already have all the stuff we could possibly need! We did one ultrasound to see if the baby had scrambled insides like Joshua or normal insides like me – once again, very normal. We walked out of the ultrasound, and Joshua said to me, “I think I saw something in there. I think I know what it is.” With kind of a sinking feeling, I said, “Me too.” We looked at one another and I said “boy” at the same time he said “girl” and it was like, whew!! I guess we didn’t really see anything because we still have no idea!

Our son turned 3 in August. He is such a delight! And a HUGE helper.

We celebrated our 8th anniversary in October with a staycation, and it was so much fun, especially with that thing we’re not talking about still going on, and most of North Carolina operating in limited capacities. I think we might do another staycation this October, because of our new baby, who will only be eight months old (old enough that I could do one night away, but I wouldn’t want to be too far).

Our daughter turned 2 in January, and woke up the morning of her birthday with a stomach bug, and had that going on all day on her birthday. It was so sad. She is able to communicate pretty well at this point, and she had picked out all the fun food to have for her special day, and we had to postpone it all because she wasn’t keeping anything down. It was truly awful. It is so hard to see your kids sick! We had to cancel and push events with family for her birthday, and I basically spent the whole day holding her, which is unusual because she can’t normally sit still for more than 30 seconds. It was sweet, but sad.

About a month later, I gave birth at home to our second beautiful boy! Yes, it was a boy! He was a Valentine’s Day baby (although we don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, so it doesn’t really matter to us), and we named him Henry Solomon, which is in honor of my grandfather.

Last October and this February, two of my sisters also had babies! Morgan had Rachel on my parent’s anniversary, October 8, and Christine had Violet nine days before Henry was born. So he will always have two little buddies who are almost exactly the same age! It is so fun to have cousins here and close. What an huge blessing it is to have family!

Since then, life has, of course, been centered around the new baby. It’s kind of hard to go back to square one, with the newborn feedings and the sleepless nights and infant cries. So worth it, but hard. My two older kids are almost the same height right now (because Simone is absolutely enormous – she is the size of a four-year-old!), and people constantly ask me if they are twins. Simone can talk, Richard can talk, they are both potty-trained (mostly), and they can both do almost everything the other can. So it was a big change to have a tiny little helpless newborn when it feels like I have two very independent and self-sufficient three-year-olds right now. I wonder when it will stop feeling like The Two Big Kids and The Baby, and just be The Three Kids.

Anyway! I think that catches us up pretty well! Again, thanks for reading! Hopefully I’ll be posting on here a little more often. I have many thoughts. 😉

oh poop

A month ago, we potty-trained Richard (all except the night). If you’re not wanting to read the ins and outs of that adventure, walk away now! My poor brother-in-law came for dinner the other night and all Joshua and I could talk about was our son and his bathroom habits. It is an all-consuming subject right now.

I had potty-training on my radar, because Richard is turning three this year and I wanted to be ready. I was feeling kind of stressed about this, because I felt like I didn’t have a plan and I didn’t know how to do it.

My son is a genius. A prodigy. He is superverbal and super smart and has whole children’s books memorized. He is so bright. I’m ridiculously proud of him. I will say this, after a month of potty training: this does not come easily to Richard. Physicality is not his strong suit. That’s ok, it doesn’t mean anything I said above does not apply anymore. It just means that he wasn’t a rockstar when it came to putting his pee in the potty (and I mean that in the sense that the book I read described what a rockstar might look like, a child who perhaps “gets it” in the course of a week or three days. Richard IS a rockstar in that he is almost completely potty trained before 2.5 years old).

I used the Oh Crap potty training method/book, by Jamie Glowacki, and I really liked that approach. I ordered her book on a recommendation from my friend Rachel, who used it with her daughter. I remember the day the book came, and I started paging through it, and I noticed one of the first chapters was about when to start. Ah! I thought. When to start! Exactly what I need to know. I flipped over and read a few paragraphs of that chapter and stopped cold when it said, “Unequivocally, the easiest time to train a child is between 20 and 30 months.”

WAIT. WHAT?

I quickly did the math. This was in mid-December, so Richard was just shy of 28 months. The window was closing! I panicked and ended up reading the rest of the book in a matter of hours over the next two days. Everything she says in the book made sense to me, including her no-nonsense method. I do think that if you have discipline already built in to your life and your children are not allowed to throw tantrums or scream at you or tell you NO, one of her key reasons for potty-training as early as this is not necessarily valid (children may tend to be more resistant the older they get).

The method uses phases, or blocks, to help get a child from absolutely clueless that anything is happening to “Mommy, I have to go potty.” The first block, the child is naked. The second block, you add clothes. The third and beyond are going places and doing normal life as you integrate the potty.

We set a date. January 3. Joshua took the day off from work, not really to help with the potty-training per se, but to keep Simone. Interestingly, the book doesn’t mention at all what to do with a younger sibling during this very rigorous time of watching your naked child like a hawk to whisk them to the potty at the first signs of pee (probably because not very many people have a younger child by 20-30 months). Joshua took care of Simone, I kept an eye on Richard.

That was a very hard day. My adrenaline was up, I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to help Richard do this. The first four or five times he peed, it was all over the floor, and none in the potty. The first time it happened, I remember feeling like such a loser. I couldn’t believe that after watching my son non-stop for two hours, he had just made a river all over the floor and not one drop went in that stupid little potty we got (quick tip: pee hitting the floor is absolutely silent. Who knew?!). And then the next. And then the next. And then, somehow, we got some in. And then our cautious son got so excited about dumping his pee into the big potty and flushing it down that he wanted to sit on his little potty for hours so he wouldn’t miss his chance!

Fast forward a week and a half, and I have actually gone to the grocery store. I have visited friends. Richard is having less accidents, as long as I stay on top of him. BUT. No poop. No poop in that little potty. And that is because we separated the nighttime/naptime training (totally valid, according to the book), and so of course he is dropping that package in those comfortable diapers. Why not? Why would we do the scary thing and poop on the potty?

Then we had a time or two of, “Oh no, Mommy, I have some poop!” Meaning, there is poop in my pants. That was a lot of fun.

And I said to Joshua, this child will never poop in that potty as long as he is wearing diapers at night and nap. Richard so loves consistency and he hates change and he doesn’t like doing things that are new, different, or hard for him. Joshua and I decided, fine. We’ll be patient, we are in no rush. He is going in the potty during the day and he is doing great, and it doesn’t matter if he hasn’t pooped in that little potty yet.

One day, I had Simone on my lap feeding her a messy snack at the table. Richard said in alarm, “Oh no, Mommy, I have some poop!” And I said, calmly, “Did it already come out?” And he said, “No!” So I said, “Go go go, sweetheart! Get to the potty! Don’t forget to push down your pants!”

Off he went to the bathroom, and I could see him sitting there (in the dark, because of course he can’t reach the light switch yet). I finished feeding Simone quickly, and then popped in on Richard to see if he was done “pooping”. To my SHOCK, he was *actually* pooping. And that was that! He put it in the potty all by himself, there was no drama, and we were over that hurdle!

The next day, he went twice more in the potty! That evening, my husband and I popped some bubbly and toasted to the insane and incredible fact that our little Richard, who is just barely 29 months old, is peeing in the potty like a pro, and pooping on his own, even better.

All in all, this was not easy. I think, though, that a big contributor to that is that my little boy is very resistant to doing things on his own, and would much rather have me do them for him. And that’s the thing, right? This is something I really can’t do for him. It’s his responsibility – he needs to do it on his own. It’s up to him. Over the course of this month, I have seen this gradually dawn on him.

I’m so proud of Richard. He is doing great with this, and I just have to keep reminding myself: be patient. We’re still cleaning up a giant poopy diaper every morning (yes, even on the days and the days after we get poop in the potty…), but I don’t feel the need to crack down on that. We dropped the naptime diaper after about three weeks of training, and he woke up wet two or three times, and then started getting up to pee by himself when he woke up from his nap. (insert *high five*)

We went to Costco on Sunday and got what we agreed will be our last big box of 150 diapers for him. Sometime in that stretch, we’re doing nighttime training. It might be when we finish the box, it might be because Richard starts doing it on his own (please please please!), it might be because we are ready to do it and we know he is too. We’ll see.

So, was that enough poop and pee talk for you? No? Not yet? Wait until I tell you about going to the mall with a newly-potty-trained little boy…

the story of simone

WARNING: another long birth story post below. Again, if birth stories are not your thing, stop now!

I feel like I could quote the birth story post I did on Richard almost exactly. “I gave birth at 12:30am this morning. Wait, no, that’s not right. I gave birth at 12:30am a year ago tomorrow morning.” I feel the same sense of shock that it has been a year already since my gorgeous, long, lean daughter joined us in person.

I wrote out her birth story shortly after I had her, but here I am, finally posting it. Her birth (spoiler alert) was much shorter than Richard’s, but the story is almost as long because of all the details I wanted to remember. I have cut it down for public consumption, just a bit. Enjoy. 🙂

Obviously I went into the labor experience wondering if it would be a repeat of Richard’s, which, I have to say, would have been extremely difficult to do again. It was just so long. I kept telling myself that this time around I already knew I could do that if I had to, so no worries (but I really didn’t want to).

I had picked January 16 as my guess date, although January 9 was my due date. Just thought it wouldn’t do to focus in on January 9 when my family typically runs late. I was in no rush – my pregnancies so far have been easy and mostly comfortable, and Joshua and I are fans of big babies, so the longer she wanted to cook, the better. January 9 came and went, as I suspected. On Monday morning, January 14, I woke up and lost my mucus plug (ew! TMI! Yay!). I had not seen that happen with Richard, so it was a new and exciting thing for me. However, birth can happen as little as 24 hours after that or as late as two weeks. So really it means nothing if you are past 40 weeks and waiting around for labor. Obviously you will probably go into labor in the next two weeks if you’re at 40+. <sigh> But!! That evening, when Joshua got home, I told him, “I think I’m having some contractions!!!!”

I said “I think” because I had (kind of stupidly) gone online to remind myself (?) what “real” contractions feel like, and whatever website had said that “real” contractions will be up in your belly, not down in your hips. But the contractions I was feeling were definitely down in my hips, but they were getting a bit uncomfortable, and I remembered from Richard’s birth that it was when the Braxton Hicks started hurting that I felt my labor had truly started. But anyway, the contractions I was feeling that evening were very sporadic and only the tiniest bit uncomfortable. Definitely early early labor, if that.

We spent an enjoyable evening with Richard, wondering if it would be the last as a family of three. We had arranged with Joshua’s parents that they would keep him for the birth, but we felt no need to call them to come get him at that point. Things might be just starting, and his bedtime was so close, we knew we could just pop him in the crib and he would sleep through the whole thing if anything happened that night.

I texted my midwife, who suggested a hot shower and early to bed. Which is exactly what I did.

I was so excited to realize that my contractions were definitely getting more intense – still nothing crazy, though – but most importantly, I was not having back labor! When a contraction ended, it actually ended! This was mind-blowing to me. So different from Richard’s labor.

I lay in bed and tried to sleep between contractions, which were getting closer together. Around 11:00pm, they had gotten down to about 8 minutes apart and were getting uncomfortable enough that I couldn’t lay still in bed through them anymore, I really needed to move through them. I texted my midwife again and told her that, and she said she was on her way over.

Cue enormous excitement – could it possibly happen this quickly!?!?!??!?!?! Could we be meeting our baby girl tonight!?

The minute – quite literally – that my midwife stepped through our front door, my contractions dialed way back and basically stopped. They started coming about every half hour or 45 minutes, they weren’t super strong, and I knew we wouldn’t be seeing our baby that night. After chatting with our midwife for an hour or so, we offered our guest room, which she accepted, and Joshua and I went back upstairs and camped out on the floor in front of our big screen and turned on Friends on Netflix and let it play, endlessly going from one show to another. We both dozed underneath blankets, half-watching and laughing, and every now and then I would pop up into all fours and get through a contraction.

Around 6:00am on Tuesday, January 15, after getting snatches of a few hours of sleep throughout the night, we went downstairs to gameplan with our midwife. My contractions were almost completely gone. She suggested Joshua work from home, to take pressure off of me that he might be taking a day off from work but I’m not really in labor. We went ahead and had my in-laws come get Richard, because when I did have a contraction, it was pretty intense, and I really needed to focus to get through it, and I hadn’t had a ton of sleep, so keeping up with a toddler would be a bit taxing. I felt really torn saying goodbye to him that morning, though, because with the contractions at a standstill, I really had no idea when things would pick back up, and how long everything would end up taking. What if it was just like Richard’s birth, and we didn’t have the baby until Thursday or Friday?? I would be missing my sweet boy! We would have to go visit him at the Spurlock’s house!

But not having Richard home made the day very easy. I took a two-hour nap in the late morning to catch up on some sleep, occasionally waking up to get through a contraction. I couldn’t believe how awesome it was to be able to sleep in between contractions! Baruch HaShem!

In the afternoon, Joshua drove me over to Morgan’s house, where we had arranged a little mini-shower for my cousin, Sarah, who was getting married in late March. I had thought I might have to miss the event, but no! It was such a pleasant time and, again, it took my mind off the contractions and the waiting and the feeling of non-progression.

When I got back, Joshua and I ran out and picked up an early dinner, which we ate in our bonus room while again watching Friends. Shortly after that, I started pacing to help me with the contractions, and shortly after that, Joshua started timing them on his app. By around 8:15pm (on Tuesday, January 15), they were getting down to 8, then 7, then 6 minutes apart, and lasting for at least a minute each. They were pretty intense.

I texted my midwife, and she said, “Do you want me to come?”

And I thought, well, I want you to come if you think you should come! But I don’t want to make you sit in my house all night again! But then I thought, I would really like to know where I’m at here, because I think that would tell me if I am going to have to do this again tomorrow night and maybe the night after that, like with Richard.

So I texted back, “Yes. I would like you to check me.”

And so she came, arrived around 9:30pm, checked me, and said, “Yep, you’re right about 10 centimeters.”

And I was like YAY!!!!!! This is IT! We’re HERE! It’s HAPPENING!!!! We will meet our baby girl TONIGHT!

So the next thing that would probably happen, and which we were kind of waiting for as I got through contractions, was my water breaking.

After two more hours, it hadn’t happened yet, although the contractions were very strong and we had tried multiple positions. We tried holding up my belly through contractions, to help position the baby to get down there. We also tried me laying on the bed through five contractions – torture. I was getting through contractions ok by basically constantly moving. Walking and pacing and swaying – I had been on my feet for hours at this point, because I really couldn’t sit down, because standing back up would produce a contraction so strong I could barely take it. Lying still on my back through five, torturous contractions was so hard! I held onto Joshua’s hand and squeezed as hard as I could during the contractions. Why does that help? I think it’s a mind game.

It was getting close to midnight, and I had tried the birth stool and I had tried pushing a little, but I was having a hard time connecting to the pushes. With Richard, I felt so connected. I knew where to push, and I was pushing HARD. It took two-and-a-half hours, but I had good, strong, productive pushes through all of that, even after no sleep for like three days! I just couldn’t seem to get there with Simone.

I got back in the shower for the third or fourth time that night, to see if the water would help with the pain. I was starting to feel like the walls were closing in on me, and the contractions were coming so close together and lasting so long and hurting so bad – it felt like there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from them anymore. It felt like I had been successfully dancing around and through contractions all night, but now they had caught up to me and I couldn’t do it anymore. I tried pushing a bit in the shower, but when I felt that weird feeling of my insides starting to turn inside-out with the extreme-ness of the push, I realized I was pulling back a little, I was stopping myself and holding myself back. I realized I had a mental block there that I needed to get rid of.

When I got out of the shower, the midwives asked if I wanted to try getting on all fours, which I was happy to do. Joshua ran down to make me a smoothie, because I was getting really shaky and was almost out of energy. As a contraction started, I pushed past my mental block and really let myself go and pushed as hard as I could. SPLASH, my water broke.

I was so relieved.

Joshua reappeared with my smoothie, and I took a few sips. I felt another contraction starting, and I pushed hard. I could feel the baby traveling down the birth canal, right to the very edge, and at the end of the push, I felt her slip back in a little. And I thought, OH NO YOU DON’T. And with the next contraction, out she came, in one, fell swoop, along with a tremendous spray of amniotic fluid that barely missed one of the midwives. I heard our baby start to cry before I even finished pushing – one of the most amazing, welcome sounds!!

They helped me sit up, and there she was, our tiny, perfect human. I thought, she is much smaller than Richard was! And I took that slimy, beautiful girl, all wrapped in a towel and covered in cheese, and held her for the first time, and relished every moment, because this time I got to really enjoy it, I got to *be there* for it, like I wasn’t really with Richard.

We hadn’t seen her since our 17-week ultrasound, so I have to say we were wondering what she would look like. I took one look at her and thought, oh of course. She looked familiar. She looked like Richard. And I thought, I guess this is what our kids look like.

As it turns out, Simone was just one ounce lighter than Richard, and actually a quarter-inch longer!

Joshua told me the next day that he saw her and immediately knew her name was Simone. Our midwife heard her start crying (loudly) and said, “She’s telling it like it is!”, which is exactly how my mom is, so Joshua thought it would be perfect for her middle name to be Allyn.

And I couldn’t agree more.

No birth is easy – that’s for sure. But this birth was definitely a better experience overall than Richard’s was. The way I think about it, this birth was more of a mental game, while his was more of a physical one (with the length and the back labor). Going into labor on Monday night and having the baby on Tuesday night (pretty much)? PLUS basically not having any labor on Tuesday during the day? That’s a pretty great birth story in my book.

happy birthday to me – thirty years of julianna

It’s Thursday evening, June 6, and I am turning thirty tomorrow!

I’m very excited.

I know, some people are birthday people and some people aren’t. Some people really celebrate the years that pass, some people don’t. Some people are excited, some people are depressed. I think it’s obvious which category I’m in.

One of the reasons is that I am so very happy and content where I am in my life. It’s difficult to feel this way (I know from personal experience) when you feel like you’re falling behind your peers in some important life milestone (such as having children). But I think it’s most important that wherever you are, you be all there (a quote from Jim Elliot). My husband and I really embraced that in 2015, when two out of my three sisters PLUS my sister-in-law and over a dozen other friends produced babies, but I did not. We traveled as much as we possibly could, because there was nothing stopping us (like a tiny infant). We drank cocktails and did wine tastings. We stayed up super late and slept in. We had a lot of fun. And we talked about what if we never have kids?

Anyway, all I’m saying is when your birthday rolls around, you can choose to look at it through the lens of disappointment with where you are and where you think you should be or your friends think you should be, OR you can look at it and say, hey – I guess there is where I’m supposed to be right now and let’s make the most of it.

That’s what I’m doing.

I have to say, it’s much easier this year with my awesome husband and TWO beautiful children! I am overwhelmed!

So what does thirty mean to me? Well, it feels young, actually. Maybe I thought this age would start feeling older, but it really doesn’t to me.

Because I had my first child at 28, I know that my thirties will be full of parenting. My two kids are very close in age, so they are going to hit a lot of things either at the same time or right on each other’s heels. It will be a wild ride of a decade, and who knows if G-d will decide to throw in any more little blessings along the way? 🙂

In addition to parenting, I will also start homeschooling my kids in my thirties. I was a little trepidatious about that, to be honest, but as the time quickly approaches, I find that G-d continues to give me measure upon measure of calm. I can do this.

My thirties will also hold my ten-year anniversary! That feels like quite the milestone! We had originally thought we might plan a big trip, but with a five-year-old and a four-year-old, thinking we might wait on that a bit.

I will still be blissfully in my mid-thirties when my husband hits forty, and THAT feels like it’s getting up there (sorry, Joshua). It’s not, but the number just sounds older. Anyway, I’ll spend the remainder of my thirties keeping him young. 😉 So will the kids.

If I were to count my blessings, name them one by one (and I very nearly did here in this post, because I’m a numbers geek), I would bore you. Not only that, but you would think I sounded boastful. You would probably also think that I’m hiding the underbelly of my life from you and not being totally honest, because it all sounds too good to be true and there must be SOMETHING I’m hiding that’s bad in my life.

Spoiler: there’s not.

G-d has blessed me so abundantly these past thirty years. Joshua and I constantly ask each other, “How did we merit this?” My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life thus far, and surely they always will.

a letter to my firstborn

My dear, darling Richard –

I want you to know that I am so proud of you. I am so proud of how you’ve handled having a little sister when you are still pretty small yourself. I watched you love and accept her immediately, and beam when she enters the room. I heard you say her name in your own special dialect, and it is so sweet to my ears.

And now, as we’re approaching her two-month “birthday”, I am seeing you start to have some trouble. I see how upset you get when I am feeding Simone and you want to be held or helped. I hear you say, “Ma”, and point to the spot on the floor where you would like me to sit and play with you when I need to stand or walk around with Simone. I watch you have a complete meltdown before your nap or bedtime, which is a new phenomenon for you, and one I can only connect to Simone. Maybe you think it’s not “fair” that she gets to go to bed after you, when you’re older. You’re only eighteen months old, but it wouldn’t surprise me if you’re picking up on that even now.

It’s totally understandable. You probably feel like I love you less, because I have to give you less attention than I did. Sweetheart, that just isn’t true. You are too young to understand it right now, to recognize that when love is divided, it multiplies. You may feel like I love you less, but Richard, I love you more.

I hope you will grow to love Simone so much that you will accept what a very good thing G-d gave us in her, and that your life and mine would not be complete without her in them, but you may never fully realize that, like a parent would. That’s ok. Trust me – as you always have – that a sibling is a great thing. A built-in friend, a sidekick, a confidante.

My heart breaks for you, because I see how hard this transition is for you. We thought, over the past two months, that it was easy, because you made it look easy. I guess it must have finally dawned on you that Simone is here to stay. It is so hard for me to watch you go through this, but this is a good thing, son. This is good growth. There are so many things we face in life that we might not like, or we might think are not fair or right or good, but when we mature and look back, we see what great things they really were. Having a sister is definitely one of those things. In fact, it’s nothing but good.

I am confident that all of this is just a phase, but it’s a phase that I see is difficult for you, if not long-lasting. And I wish that you were old enough to understand all the words I’m writing here, to express to me clearly what you’re feeling and help me help you through it. But this is the way that it is, and it’s ok. Just know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I am always here, always watching, always loving you. You are my First, my sweet boy, my One and Only Richard.

With all the love in my heart,

Mommy