**Every time I come back it's with another kid

It has been close to two years since I last blogged, and while part of me hates it, a part of me misses putting my thoughts down in writing and creating a memoir for my children. Every post that I go back to read immediately transports me back to the time in my life when it was written. I can feel the feelings again, as if I'm right back in that time, and I like that.

Life is too short, too complicated, too busy to stop to take in the moments that matter. That truly upsets me because I see first hand what regret looks like to a person who's life is cut short. I try to drink in the moments, savour each kiss so to speak and not let the world get to me in ways that are too easy to let happen.

I am reading a book right now! This is a FEAT for me, as anyone who knows me well can attest to! I haven't read a book since the Fifty Shades of Gray trilogy (which to be honest was only because of the hype). I'm reading "BLOOM" by Kelle Hampton and it's a book written by a beautiful mom who got her start writing a blog about her child. She now has three children, one was born with Down syndrome, and she drinks in life in the way it should be done. That sista knows how to rock a parenting moment, let me tell you! Honestly my return to this blog is without a doubt because of this paragraph she wrote (and geez I know nothing about copyright laws but I hope nobody is upset by me quoting her):

"I cried when I traded in the 3-6 month sleepers for the 6-9 month ones...Everything was just so....memorable. I began to feel like I was cupping my hands, attempting to hold water when it just trickled through my fingers and there was nothing I could do to keep it there. I wanted to remember everything. My mom has always talked about dreams she'll have to this day - dreams where we're little again and she's pushing strollers and rocking babies. She says when she wakes up and realizes it's not true-that those days are gone and we're all grown up - that, for a minute, she feels like she can't breathe. Because she wants to feel it again so badly, to hold our little bodies and rock them close to her chest just one more time."

This is how I feel every time I kiss my daughter who just turned one. Like if I take a deep enough breath when I kiss her that I'll breathe a piece of her scent into my soul and feel it forever.

Today is a particularly emotional day. Our final maternity/paternity leave is over. For the first time since I pushed my first baby out (almost 12 years ago) we have to rely on someone else to care for our children. Up until this point we have had our children in someone else's care so little that I can count on my fingers. Once or twice their grandmother watched them, and a few times some awesome friends stepped in. And the stupidest things make me upset. I watched our new nanny wipe my 3 year old's face the other day after he ate a banana and I got so sad. **I** should be washing his face! **I** am his mother and that is **MY** job! He looked at me as if he was feeling the same way but saw that I did nothing to stop this horrific action of cleansing my child so he moved on. I guess if it seems okay to me, he thinks it's okay. But it's not okay. He's my boy.

I am fully aware that this sounds ridiculous to the general population, but to me (and my overly sensitive husband) it's a big deal. Unfortunately, no matter how well versed you are in living in the moment and enjoying each day, you still have no choice but to let some memories pass you by because of circumstance. We have four kids to support, to put through university, to pay for weddings, clothe and feed into adulthood. We need to be a two income family. So our nanny will wipe faces and play cars and tickle my little one's tummy when we can't. It stinks but it's life.

You only live once. Make the memories count. Tell people you love them. Breathe in your babies, and for goodness sake, live for today; not tomorrow or the next. Strive for inner happiness and peace. Act how your heart tells you to act, and feel every moment of it as if it were your last.

**Ten Years

On Monday I will have been a mom for ten years. TEN YEARS! I have learned a lot, loved a lot, changed a lot, made many mistakes, but most importantly, I raised a ten year old I'm proud to call mine. Despite him being my guinea pig and paving the way for the other two, we taught eachother and learned as we went...and still are. Here we go pre-teen years. Bring it on!!

In honour of having been a parent for ten years I have compiled a list of the ten most important things I learned in the last ten years.

#10 - Ailments that present precisely at bedtime are safe to assume not as serious as they are made out to be.

#9 - If you think your kid has been too quiet for too long and you suspect trouble, you are right.

#8 - If your two year old is the type of kid to need 100 reminders to hurry up whenever you're trying to get him to do something, he will still be like that at 10. Sorry to crush your hopes of change.

#7 - If you clean out your toy shelf and throw/give away toys that your kid hasn't touched in three years, they WILL ask for it the next day.

#6 - You MUST follow through on threats and punishments. One slip up and you've lost all credibility....and best of luck when that happens.

#5 - The feeling you felt when you looked at the positive pregnancy test so many years ago could still bring a little tear to your eye, on occasion.

#4 - Many nights you will go to bed thinking about things you could have done better that day with your kids, but in the end all that matters is that they know you love them. Even if there were hiccups and mistakes and tears, if the love is there it will all be ok.

#3 - Write down the cute things your kids say as they grow up. Reading from that notebook is better entertainment than anything else around!

#2 - Learn when to step back and shut up. I'm still working on this one as my boy gets older. Hoping to perfect it before #2 is ten.

And the number one thing I have learned having been a parent for ten years is: (drum roll please)...It really goes by way too fast. It sounds like a cliche before you experience it, but it's so true.

It really feels like yesterday that they vacuumed my little baby out of my body and rushed him off to the NICU. I still get tears in my eyes when I remember being wheeled to my room without my baby, how it much it hurt when I couldn't hold him, the tears I wiped from my eyes when I reached in and touched him in the incubator for the first time. I remember how he stopped crying when I talked to him, but nobody else could calm him. I remember not sleeping for three days because of worry and for the first time in my life I understood a mother's worry. Then I remembered feeling like my life was beginning the day I walked out of the hospital with my boy strapped into his carseat. I walked behind my husband staring at the baby and I was so thankful I wasn't going home without him. That was the day my life started. The day I became a mom. It's the hardest job on the planet, and one that many days brings me to my knees with frustration and exhaustion, but I wouldn't have it any other way. We made these lives and helped them all become who they are today. There is no greater gift in the world than watching them grow.

Happy Birthday Ten Year old.

I love you more than you will ever know.

**IT'S A GIRL

My husband's family comes from a long line of boys...boy after boy after boy. The last girl born in the family was a sister to my husband's grandfather. Let me also explain that he had about a zillion brothers and one sister (okay, I think it was something like 16 boys and one girl). Genetically, sex is determined solely by the male.

When I got pregnant with my first child, I always assumed it was going to be a boy. I just assumed I would only have boys, and to me, that was perfectly fine. I don't think I really gave it much thought.

My husband's grandfather had two boys, his two boys each had two boys, those two boys also each had two boys (except for one who hasn't had kids yet), and here we had our one boy with plans for more.

So my beautiful baby boy was born and he was the light of my life. I couldn't love him any more if I tried, and when I got pregnant again right as he turned 1, I almost hoped for another boy because my love for the first was so intense, I figured I wanted to feel the same for #2.

But did my world explode into a sea of confetti when they said "IT'S A GIRL!!". I had no idea how much that would affect me until it started to happen. When she was placed in my arms, wrapped in pink, and I saw the little sign on the crib that said "It's a girl" in pink, it took my breath away. I can't even begin to explain the things racing through my head - things I had never even thought of before. Like that one day maybe my grandchild will grow in her, that I can do her hair and buy all those cute dresses, she can take dance classes and wear makeup one day and have girl talk with me....

Now this may be sounding kinda sexist to you, but believe me, there are many things I felt I could do with my son too, and equally as fun, but somehow, all of as sudden, it was different with her. And a kind of different that I hadn't at all anticipated.

When I got pregnant the third time, I had no desire for it to be one or the other, and actually kinda hoped it would be a boy just to bridge the bigger age gap between the first and third a little better, but either would be just as thrilling to me. Now I have my two perfect boys and one perfect girl, and life is good.

Of course, naked pictures needed to be sent to my husband's family right after birth in order for them to believe that there was a girl in the family. I think they thought it was a joke. Frankly, so did I. And still, every single day I look at her, seven years later, and can't believe I actually have a daughter.

**CHANGES

My eldest is in grade 3. He seems to have gone from little boy to big kid in the last 6 months. He has grown to almost my height (not so tough) and can share my shoes. Last week (pre haircut) he spent twenty minutes in the bathroom styling his hair. Today he was chatting with kids in his class on a school website. I love that he is growing into a young man, but I hate that he isn't my baby anymore. I can't believe how fast I have gone from changing his diapers and teaching him his letters to policing online activity and buying new pants every other week because he outgrows them. Everybody said it goes fast, but to me it's just surreal. In my mind I'm still a highschool kid who has trouble believing I'm married with three kids, owning a house and working full time. How did this highschool kid end up raising a pre teen??

I spent a long time talking to his kindergarten teacher after school today. We had a good laugh over how angry he was when he started kindergarten. He was PISSED that I left him there every day. It's amazing to me how things that felt like a crisis at the time are now things to laugh about. Even he thinks it's funny.

The best part of this whole scenario is that the things that I have heard happen to kids as they grow up in terms of their feelings towards their parents haven't happened as of yet. My big kid still likes to kiss me goodbye when he leaves for school, he asks to snuggle and read to me and spend time with me. My heart just may break in two the day he decides he doesn't want to do that anymore. Until then, I'm going to wring every drop of being my little boy's mommy out of him that I can.

**MUSICALLY ME

Music has always been an important part of my life. In high-school I excelled in it, was a part of all the bands, choirs and was vice president of "music council". Now let me stop you there in your thinking. No, music, band and choir were not at all loser or geeky groups and NO, I did not go to band camp, and even though I did in fact play the flute, it remained safely in it's case when not being used as a musical instrument. Get your minds out of the gutter!!

I still get a thrill out of music and have to admit that one of my most prized possessions is my professional karaoke machine. I sing harmony to every song I know and still have my flute (though very dusty in a storage area somewhere).

So naturally, I wanted music to be a part of my children's lives. We listen and sing to music often (and not the kid crap - the real stuff), and I have taught them the basics of playing keyboard, the notes, and one day will get around to teaching them how to read music. My son in particular can sing amazingly on key and really shocks me sometimes in his natural abilities. My daughter picks up on songs I play on the keyboard with amazing speed and seems to have a knack for it. The baby, well, he smiles when I sing rock-a-bye baby.

But the highlight of my week came a few days ago when my son took out his recorder and recorder book and he played a song along with my daughter who figured out how to play it on the keyboard. They did it on their own accord, figured out that the notes would work on the keyboard too, counted eachother in, followed along in perfect unison, and I swear, I nearly cried.

I hope they get as much joy from a perfect harmonized note or catchy beat as I do, and I hope that grows with them and they can pass it on to their kids. I know a lot of parents consider their kids making music as noise, but to me, it is music to my ears.

**SCENTS OF PLEASURE

It really amazes me the amount of pleasure I can get out of a smell! I know it's common knowledge that it can bring back memories, but it blows me away every time.

Yesterday I found a new scent at Bath and Body Works. Let me digress for a moment and tell you that my heart literally sang a song when I found out they were bringing that store to Canada. My husband was sure to remind me that I'm a bit pathetic. :-)

Anyway, so "Forever Sunshine" lit up my day. The joy that the blend of sweetness with a hint of floral brings to me is just too much for me to express, and I honestly wonder if they put something addictive into their scents! Really! How is it possible that I want to surround myself in warm vanilla sugar body spray all day long, and slather on Forever Sunshine cream every time I wash my hands?

I still have a flashback to my first kiss when I chew or smell "cool mint" Dentyne gum. I remember doing back flips on the trampoline as a teenager in gymnastics when I smell The Body Shop's strawberry body oil. I recall morning sickness when I smell chicken nuggets cooking.

I wonder if in twenty years when I smell "Forever Sunshine" I will remember these days of washing my hands a million times a day from cleaning up spitup and poopy diapers and then putting on cream because my knuckles are cracking and bleeding.

**BACK AT IT

So it has been a while, and a lot has happened since I last blogged. For one, my family expanded to 5 with a beautiful baby boy. I am bursting at the seams with admiration for maternity leave - a concept I didn't seem to grasp before. I am on the hunt for a bigger house for my bigger family and looking forward to our new adventure of trying to move with three kids (yikes!!).

But the reason I am back is due to a spark of inspiration that hit me as I drove on the DVP tonight on my way home from dinner in Greektown with my cousin.

As I drove along at the speed of molasses (traffic) with my ipod plugged into my stereo blasting Glee songs (LOOOOOOSER!!) and singing at the top of my lungs (not to worry, it was balanced out with some Lady Gaga later), I felt so lucky. I had a nice dinner, nice conversation, nice relaxation and company. This in itself makes me feel lucky, but add to that the fact that I get to drive home to three soapy smelling kids cozy in their jammies waiting to be kissed and hugged goodnight, it makes me feel rich.

It's so easy - especially with this hectic life we are living - to get caught up in the stresses and worries. I had a bad week last week. Some bad news, followed by not winning a bidding war on what we considered to be our dream house. It was hard. Then I heard a story from a friend about a terrible nightmare she has been living day in and day out for years, and it made me realize that I have got it easy as pie. So? I have to pay a big bill. It sucks but it will be okay. And we will find another house, eventually. Whenever it happens it happens. But I need to focus on this awesome life I'm living with my awesomely helpful hubby and three amazing kids and take it all in.

I'm going to blast Glee songs more often. Music always puts things in perspective. If I knew how, I'd put in a song that plays while you read this - one that portrays my mood, but frankly I'm not that technologically savvy. Sorry.

I'm going to try to blog more often. I love going back to read it years later, and it's a journal that my kids will read when they are older and perhaps going through the exact same things I am today.

(If I knew how, you would now be listening to "Sing" by the Glee cast on last week's episode. That song is FANTASTIC!!)