Tortillas at Midnight

Right friends and frenemies (wait, surely frenemies wouldn’t bother to read a blog? Surely? And I don’t think I have any anyway (but cool, another thing to panic about while I don’t sleep)), here we are. Welcome to the crash course of freelancing + parenting where you have no choice but to dive right into the deep end. You also aren’t allowed to finish the course, because you will be interrupted 107 times per minute, and even if you did somehow manage to then that would be cheating, as it would make everyone else cry with inadequacy. So here you are, reading the blurb of the course on one of those nice tertiary brochures that smell glossy and are vaguely powdery, about what’s in store for you. The only available grades are fail, or, uh, fail, so buckle in for the journey. 1) Intro to Freelancing + Parenthood: Don’t Take Phone Calls. Phone calls are bad because whenever you need to talk to someone important, your children will inevitably scream. It’s just basic science. Opt for the far ...

So it’s June already (though I swear it was just Christmas? Didn’t we just take down the lights?) and I want to write, but naturally I don’t know what to write about. As per usual. So bear with me please as I delve into yet another list of miscellaneous life facts/comments/questions that are kind of irrelevant to well, everyone, and everything. 1) This blog is one year old! Happy birthday to those tortillas I don’t really eat anymore! And happy birthday to still being awake at midnight most days! But in all seriousness, I’m really glad to have had this space over the past year. It has documented a lot and I’ve gotten to connect with a lot of lovely souls who say, “wow, I don’t know how to do this parenting gig either.” And that’s just the best feeling, truly, aside from sniffing a baby’s head of course. If you want to go all the way back to the beginning, head this way . 2) I’m convinced that babies don’t have hips. They’re just made up of the cutest, big, round tummy and then chunky l...

A dear friend sent me this video recently, and it made me bawl. I didn't even know I had all those tears inside of me or all those feelings, either. All those nameless, ugly-feeling beasts. Which I guess really aren't all that ugly, but instead, they're just real. And when you're trying to exist in this cookie-cutter realm of motherhood where everything glows softly and birds chirp in the background like you're supposed  to, these feelings don't exactly comply. The disconnect between how you think motherhood should be and what it's actually like is the root of all shame. Nobody told me how much I'd miss my toddler.  How for the next 12 hours after giving birth, she was all I could think about. Her warm breath, her chubby hands, her familiar hugs. Not the beautiful, perfect baby right next to me. Oh how I loved her so too, that wildfire kind of love you know, but at the same time, my grief about losing how things were with my oldest baby was all-encompas...