Yesterday I mom-failed.
This is my confession before you and God. It was when I heard the sound of my boys’ frantic squeals coming from the bathroom. There was much shuffling and lots of giggling. I went to take a look and to my utter horror, there was a toilet bowl filled to the brim with all sorts of excrements and a pool of contaminated water covering the floor. I looked at their amused faces and the wet carpet outside of the bathroom door and I lost it.
Puddles, poop, plungers, and my fury.
Crazy that one day removed from this horrible incident and I can somehow look affectionately on my little fellows again. They are such a beautiful mess of boyishness that I adore.
The thought of having boys scared the mess out of me when I got pregnant for the first time. I came from a family full of girls. Four sisters, a mother, and a female dog. I had NO IDEA what a boy was. I was only just beginning to understand the confusion of how they work because I married one. They’re weird, smelly, stubborn, and a whole lot of crazy. The most daunting and plaguing to me was the puberty thing. I only knew it from A GIRL’S PERSPECTIVE. How was I going to counsel a boy through his…stuff?
Three boys later and my eyes and heart had been opened to snips and snails and puppy dog tails. Of course, I still shudder when I think about their upcoming big kid years, but for now I milk this season of girls still have cooties for all it’s worth.
When Greg and I got pregnant again after the three boys we decided we would keep the gender a surprise until the very end. I had no possible clue or leaning towards what it was. Daddy and the brothers wanted a little girl, but I had been detoxed of all things sugar and spice and hoped it would be another little unruly cadet to add to our three.
And then my entire word was rocked in the prettiest way. A beautiful girl was placed in my arms and I knew at once all was right. My heart was bursting at this bewitching pink theme.
I will never forget one day Oliver and I were sitting on the bed snuggling with Gabby. Oliver put his nose up to her little body, breathed this deep slow breath, and sighed. His smiling eyes met mine and he said, “Mmmmm, she smells like flowers.”
It was in that moment creativity captured me and I knew I needed to write about Gabby. She had enchanted this family and I had to somehow convey to her our delight. So I took my iPad, GarageBand, iMovie, a couple of weeks, and I wrote her a song. It’s quite affectionate and poor Gabbs will love hate it for the rest of her life, especially when we pull it out of the archives on her wedding day.
It's just Me Abby 