So, I’m pregnant.

Just wanted to throw that out there.

I know that wasn’t a super special way to put it out there in the universe. Hashtag thirdkidproblems.

I just really needed to blurt that out, because I have had an intense condition of writer’s block upon learning this news. I have started half a dozen blog posts since then, but all I wanted to write was

IamhavinganotherbabyOMGIneedtotelltheworldrightthissecondbutfirstIshouldtellmyhusband.

Ok, with that in the air, I feel like I can think again.

The pee on the stick was barely dry before I began steeling myself against the reactions I would get upon the announcement of this pregnancy. I was rehearsing responses in my head, such as “Yes, I can handle it!” “Yes, we’re so excited!” “Yes, we just love chaos and never seeing the floor beneath our feet!”

Then I had to stop and check myself for a second. Why do I need to defend my family choices to anyone?

Yesterday, you were three years old.

The day before that, you were two.

Two days before that, you were born.

At least that’s how it feels.

Today, you are four.

I blinked and all of a sudden your chubby legs with all those squeezable, kissable rolls smoothed into skinned knees and bruised shins and painted toes.

You traded onesies for twirly dresses. Diapers for Super Woman underwear. Sippy cups for Starbucks hot cocoa.

You traded porcelain skin for freckled cheeks, sun-speckled by hours upon hours of bike rides and sidewalk chalk and rolling around in the grass.

I blinked.

Your feet hit the floor each morning with intention. You’re on a mission from the second you wake up until your body gives out at the end of the day. You always have been an early riser– beating the sun most days. If you keep this up (and we all survive it), I know you will grow into a productive, purposeful adult.

You pick out your own clothes, and I’m convinced you pair certain items together just to drive me crazy. Stripes with florals. Reds with greens. Frilly dresses with tennis shoes and socks with Crocs. Your socks never, ever match.

Underneath your fingernails are 2 days’ worth of adventures and explorations and, well, dirt…perfectly disguised by pink sparkly nail polish.

I’m just sure your springy curls, soaking wet, would stretch fully down your back…if you’d ever let me comb them. Rather, you insist upon spraying on your own concoction of detangler and my hairspray and calling it a day.

You watch everything I do, and I watch you reenact it when you think I am not looking. You’re the most perfect, flattering, yet brutally honest and humbling mirror I could ever look into. Each day, through your words and actions, you help me to be a better mother, teacher, person.

I blinked.

You’re sensitive, perceptive, and completely alive from the ends of your curls to the purple paint on your toes.

You feel everything, just like me…and because of that, your heart will break– over classroom crushes and sad news stories and friendship betrayals and lost opportunities and sappy commercials.

The good news is, you’ll always have me.

First to pick you up when you trip and fall down.

First to pick you up when your car runs out of gas.

First to pick you up when your boyfriend was a jerk.

First to pick you up when you didn’t listen to me and you went to that party anyway.

Nothing will keep me from you.

There have been days that felt like years.

Days I was convinced you tried to kill me with your tantrums, your attitude, your opinions. Days I physically felt the gray hair taking root upon my head. Days I spent 2 hours trying to get you to serve a 2 minute time-out.

But mostly, there have been years that felt like minutes.

A minute ago, you were a garden gnome for Halloween. A minute ago, you proudly pronounced “papa” as your first word. A minute ago, you smiled from behind your pacifier.

I blinked, and here you are.

Four years old.

Full of amazing, full of intelligence, full of wit, full of happiness, full of bounce, full of color, full of life.

Don’t you dare change.

Yesterday, you were three.

Today, you are four.

Tomorrow, you’ll be awesome.

It’s been quiet around here. Well, not around here, where I live, but around here, the blog.

You see, I was held captive by a project I lovingly call “Death by Elsa Dress.” In an attempt to stick it to the man (i.e. the Disney Store) and make my own version of the highly coveted Queen Elsa dress from Frozen rather than wait with baited breath for the Disney Store to restock these $50 dresses (only for them surely to sell out within 3 seconds like ‘NSync tickets circa 1999), I ended up with quite the project on my hands. It actually all turned out very well, and it only cost me around $30, 42 gray hairs, and 2 bottles of wine. Around here, we call that a victory.

Anyway, all of my brain cells went to gathering Queen Elsa’s skirt, and I simply couldn’t bring myself to write about anything.

But, alas, here I am. Here you are. Here we are.

I’m killin’ it today.

Well, I’m here to talk about babies. I love babies. I love having babies, but I especially love it when my friends have babies. All the fun of a baby (the gifts, the showers, the holding and cuddling), but no real responsibility.

My best friend is having a baby in June, and we just learned on Saturday that she is having a girl! I am so happy because this means that her daughter and my daughters will be best friends. Or they will hate each other, but I’m leaning toward best friends.

I immediately took to Pinterest and started pinning baby shower ideas like crazy. But the thought of a baby shower got me to thinking about baby shower gifts. Oh, the beautiful, thoughtful, utterly useless gifts you get a baby shower.

When I say “utterly useless,” I’m not trying to insult anyone. I’m just trying to say that what a new mom (or any mom) really needs is not a bib with the baby’s name embroidered on it. Or a ruffly butt diaper cover. Or 36 tubes of that butt paste that people love to pass around and laugh about. Over. And over. And over again.

I’m here to say that what the expectant mother really needs is an oxygen mask.

Stay with me, here.

When I flew in an airplane last summer with my small children, the flight attendant made sure to let me know that if the oxygen masks were to deploy, that I should place the mask over my face first before trying to help my children. This seems against our maternal instincts, but it makes total sense. You must save yourself before you can save anyone else.

In the days following childbirth, a new mother goes through so many ups and downs. She will be overwhelmed with love for her new baby, but she will be overwhelmed. Period. She will instantly feel the need to be Super Woman, not remembering that birthing a child already catapulted her to Super Woman status. She will feel the need to clean her house so that the 17 daily visitors who descend upon her won’t see the dirt on the floor, dishes in the sink, or mountain ranges of laundry. She will attempt to make dinner, take a break to feed the baby, and return to find that it is burnt beyond recognition. She will think that 2 days post-partum has been long enough to try on those pre-pregancy jeans (since everyone else on Facebook fit into theirs by that time), and when they don’t even come close enough to do the old rubberband-through-the-buttonhole-trick, she will feel awful about herself. She will pray the smell of her perfume masks the stench of dried spit-up on her shoulder, and she will pray her husband could care less that it doesn’t.

She will feel sad. And happy! And silly. And angry. And happy! And exhausted.

And she will need you, her friend, to be her oxygen mask.

So, my idea of the perfect baby shower gift would go something like this. Buy her that cute item she’s been wanting off her registry, but inside the card, slip her a note.

Dear Friend,

You’re soon going to be a new mommy, and I am so thrilled for you. You are going to ROCK this next chapter of your life because you will love this baby with all of your soul. What a lucky kiddo.

I’m here to tell you that everything won’t be easy. In fact, most of it won’t be easy. And that’s ok, because if it were too easy, I’d worry about you. 

Everyone is so excited for you, and you will undoubtedly receive a steady stream of visitors for days on end. As your friend, I promise that I will always call you before I decide to just appear at your doorstep, and if I don’t ask you if you’d like me to bring you anything (Starbucks, a soft drink, food) before I arrive (with your permission, a reasonable amount of time later), I give you full authority to punch me in the face. Showing up with a new outfit for the baby is great and all, but showing up without something for you, the life-giver to this child, is just shitty.

When I arrive at your home, if I see that you tried for even 30 seconds to “straighten up” a little, I will punch you in the face. I know that seems a smidge extreme, but you do not need to be cleaning for me. I will not judge the crumbs on your floor, the juice on your table, or the laundry on your couch. 

What I can do, though, is instead of let you toil about what I’m thinking about your (gasp) lived in living room, I will ask you what I can do to help. When you say, “nothing,” I will insist that I will not hold that sweet little baby until I have checked at least one thing off your to-do list. Can I unload your dishwasher? Can I put laundry in the dryer? Can I get your dinner started? I promise you that I will not begin folding your laundry unless you specifically ask me to. It always made me feel weird knowing that someone else folded my underwear.

You better give me something to do, or I will stare at you awkwardly until you give in.

Once I have done at least one thing to help you (hopefully more, but some people are funny about receiving help), I will sit down to hold your baby. While I kiss and cuddle your sweet child, that is your cue to go take a shower, take a nap, or get a snack. Even if it is just for 15 minutes, I want you to take some time to yourself. I will be there, with your child, when you get back. 

After you have had some “me” time, then we can have “our” time. I will stay to chat with you as long as you would like, as I know from experience how lonely those first few days can be. But if you think you’re done talking and don’t know how to ask me to leave, we can come up with a secret code to tell me when time is up. You could cluck like a chicken, lightly pick your right nostril, or start screaming “fire!” Whatever you’re good with, and I will be on my way. 

You see, I’m your oxygen mask. I’m here to help you, to support you, to save you, so that you can be better for your child. I won’t take no for an answer.

I can’t wait to travel this journey with you,
Your Friend

Yesterday, while at Target, Noelle was happily jogging alongside the shopping cart in her heavy snow boots. We were breezing by the children’s clothing section when an older man stopped and said, “Well, you sound like a horse!”

Clearly this guy didn’t read my post about how to speak to children.

Before I could react in any way, Noelle stopped and said in an assertive tone, “Why did you say that to me?”

The man was so caught off guard that he made a chuckle-gasp and nervously walked away.

I honestly think my 3-soon-to-be-4 year old daughter intimidated him.

Now, I don’t really think this man was trying to offend my daughter or me. To be honest, her boots are loud and kind of clunky when she runs. However, the word “horse” didn’t sit well with either of us. Maybe simply saying, “I like the way those boots sound when you run,” or “I bet those boots are great in the snow,” would have been better than comparing my little girl to a giant four-legged mammal.

I made a promise to my children as well as myself that I would no longer let people say ignorant comments in their direction without kindly and politely correcting them. I think this is how we get around this problem as a whole– we have to address it and teach people how to treat us.

But my daughter beat me to the punch.

And again, rather than apologizing to her or merely answering her innocent question, the older man simply laughed and walked away.

She wasn’t trying to be cute. She was trying to teach you how to treat her. You failed her lesson.

As a society, it seems we don’t exactly know how to react to strong-willed, independent women. There’s a bit of a double-standard. We want our girls to be outspoken, brave, and confident, but if they get too outspoken, too brave, or too confident, they begin to offend, intimidate, and off-put.

And let the record state that there is a fine line between outspoken and bossy, brave and reckless, and confident and cocky. That’s why we’ve got to teach them young, teach them early, teach them now, how to be a perfectly powerful female.

I almost understand this man’s bewilderment. You do not have to travel too far inside a store with a toy department and see what little girls are supposed to be playing with and supposed to be learning and supposed to be acting like. I made a trip inside Toys R Us last night to scout some ideas for Noelle’s upcoming birthday, and I left empty-handed and annoyed.

The “Girl Section” was made up of every kind of house-cleaning or cooking replica you could imagine, plus grocery carts, baby dolls that pee and poop, and vanities with make-up and hair styling tools.

I get it. Noelle likes that stuff, too, but she’s not a one-trick pony (notice, pony is kinder than horse). She enjoys all kinds of toys and games, so I thought I would browse the “Boy Section” for a few ideas.

Let’s see. She could get a plastic workbench with some plastic tools that don’t really do anything. She could have some Legos or dinosaurs or cars with flames up the sides.

I did find a small section of “girl” Legos that were of course bright pink and purple, and the kit was designed to build a castle for a princess.

So what’s the big deal? I will just buy her the “boy” blocks and tell her to go to town. However, her poor mind has already been brainwashed by what she has witnessed in stores and on commercials so that at the age of 3 and 11/12ths, she knows that those are “boy” toys and girls “shouldn’t” play with them.

I came to the conclusion that the majority of toys for kids these days really just suck. I’m sorry, but they do…especially the toys that we have easy access to at local stores. I honestly feel worse for boys. What do you buy your son if he has no interest in playing with tools or race cars or super heroes?

I have a new mission as a mother, and that is to introduce my children to toys that require them to think, to create, to invent, to draw their own conclusions. I’m not going to take away my girls’ princess stuff anytime soon, but I do plan to make a very conscious effort to vary the types of toys that we bring into our home.

I am currently researching some items for Noelle’s birthday, and here are some front-runners that I think mix engineering, creativity, math, science, and inventiveness with a kind of softness that girls naturally gravitate toward.

Roominate: A Building Toy for Girls

GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine 

B. Pop Arty Snap Beads – even though this is a jewelry kit, it doesn’t have gaudy colors and silly characters.

Kiwi Crate Monthly Subscription – We are about to receive our first monthly craft box, and I know we’re going to love it.

The right toys are out there, but we might have to look a little harder than Toys R Us and Target.

Speaking of looking harder, I am currently in pursuit of the Elsa Ice Castle dress from Frozen (I told you I wasn’t taking away her princess stuff). The Disney Store has been sold out online for quite some time, but I could always buy one from Ebay for $180 (yeah…no).

This week on Facebook, I have had a lot of friends sharing a link to a beautifully written article by Sarah Bessey. The blog post details the feelings of a mother who is at the point in her life where she will not be having any additional children. Merely reading the article gives you what she calls “the ache,” the feeling you have in the pit of your stomach as you realize you will never experience “baby things” again.

As I was reading her article, I found my throat tightening and my eyes welling with tears, but for a different reason. I will be 30 years old in about six months. My husband and I have two beautiful girls, and we very much hope and plan to expand our family in the near future. It is what we pray for, what we dream of, and what we desire– more chairs around our table.

I was feeling a different sort of ache, however. The ache you feel when you realize that by bringing another child into this world, the one who has been your baby for, in our case, 15 months, will no longer be “the baby.” She will be the big sister. Life as she knows it will be over.

As a mother of two who hopes to be a mother of three (maybe four, but I don’t want to be greedy), I wonder if I have enough arms to hold them all at once. If I have enough hands to guide them safely all at once. If I have enough patience, enough energy, enough time.

If I will be enough, for all of them, all at once.

While my heart is starting to ache for that new baby smell, that sack-of-potatoes snuggle, that smile-in-their-sleep thing they do so well, my gut is aching for her new baby smell, her sack-of-potatoes snuggle, her smile-in-her-sleep thing she did so well.

These days, she grows more by the minute. She learns more by the hour. She wakes up a new clothing size. She looks more like a kid and less like a baby. That’s precisely the trouble with babies– we can’t figure out how to keep them little forever.

“Time for another one!” people like to say.

But I can’t replace this baby with a new baby. I can’t recreate her or find a replacement. As much as I yearn for a new baby, I yearn for my old baby, too.

I know I felt this way before we welcomed Charlotte as the new baby and said goodbye to Noelle as the old baby. I know I had reservations and worries. Somewhere, deep down, I’m still feeling that ache, too. There’s no medicine, no cure, no remedy.

God-willing, this chapter as a family of four will begin to close, and I pray we are blessed with more children.

But I predict that as I’m holding a new, beautiful, third baby in my arms, I will feel the ache as my old babies, both of them, wear their big sister shirts and walk away.