February will be our last month as “us”. “us” meaning just the 2 of you, meaning ‘just us girls’, meaning the tight family of 4 that we have been for almost 6 years. it is the last month of uninterrupted nights, the last month where we don’t have to worry about 2-4 hour feeding schedules and nap times, and diaper changes. in March, we will become a family of 5. this unexpected, unplanned addition of your little brother will make our house seem smaller, our car  too cramped, our lives more hectic, our sleep less slept, our laundry pile significantly larger (how can that even be??), and our hearts….infinitely bigger.

i worry as a mom. i worry that our little pact of ‘the Burse Girls Club’ might disconnect some…after all, we have all done a lot of growing up together over the last (gulp) 9 years. hard to say who has grown up more….i think it might be me. i told myself from the beginning of my pregnancy that we (or i) would be ready for him when he came, but i must have been fooling myself. have i learned nothing as a mother?  you are never really ready for anything as a parent.

you just fake it with love and hope you won’t need to call in mental health reinforcements, or an ambulance in the end.

i wasn’t ready for 2, but after a year of ‘adjustment’ (adjustment = failing miserably, falling flat on my face more than i care to admit even to myself, and giving up on sanity in general) i felt more fortunate every day to have the two most loving little girls. you guys have made me appear to others like i knew what i was doing with this whole parenting thing. when…..i don’t. at all.not even a little.

i just got lucky.

so, with all this worry, i decided to take on a project for a month to capture “us” as we are now. just the every day stuff mostly…’come as you are’ style. because i know “us” will change with William’s arrival.

for the better. for the crazier. but it will change.

love always my darlings,

be silly, be kind, be honest….emerson.

dear Mikki and Katie….

there are few things in this world that make me more proud than setting up our Christmas tree. and, although i am sure it should, it has nothing to do with religion. after 10 years of growing our family, this tree is a patchwork of our first times, our last times, our happiness and triumphs, our expansion of selves, our history as people separate and together. every ornament holds a memory as fresh as yesterday’s frost on the car window.

the star i bought at Rebecca’s in downtown Bangor the year Daddy and i had our first tree together…i was pregnant with you, Mikki. i say it every year, but that tree really was the most beautiful tree we have ever had. it was still fairly early on in our relationship, so Daddy let me buy the biggest tree on the lot. all the more pointed, the tree lot was right next to the hotel (umm…not a fancy hotel, or even a ‘nice’ hotel either) where we had lived less than a year ago. our two and a half bedroom apartment might as well have been a palace. the tree was so big it had to come up through the back steps…not an easy job. your dad just smiled and shook his head, never saying a word. but, that was the last time i got away with anything like that.

i love looking through all of the handmade ornaments that you two have created. messy marker and paint and barely distinguishable clay figures. glitter that still freckles off when coming out of the storage box every year and the sheer of Elmer’s glue is all that remains….they are perfection. it makes me sad to think of anyone who has no such mementos to hang off of their tree. they buy their fancy ornaments that look all the same, and adorn their tree with ribbons, and that is nice enough i guess. no matter how full they are they always seem empty, and a bit lonely, to me.

we moved into our house 2 days before Christmas in the middle of a snow storm, and i bought the DREAM ornament the day after when i got our tree. it was one of the last ones on the lot. even now that its been three years, it still seems like a dream that we live here. we never thought we would be able to afford our own home.

i have a lot from my own childhood as my parents have shuffled things out to make room for new memories they are making for themselves. i always look at those like my tree building foundation. i have some that i made myself, with my beloved babysitter Joyce when i was your age….all dated with a Sharpie marker. i can almost smell the homemade play-dough cooking on her stove through them. there are the ones that your Mema and i made the first Christmas we were on our own after the divorce and we couldn’t afford to buy ornaments for our tree….out of LEGS pantyhose eggs and glued fabric. Mema painted sand dollars collected from the beach the summer before and we strung ribbon from them. we made garland out of popcorn and cranberries. i don’t even remember if we had lights that year, but still, it was beautiful.

i hardly think our tree will ever make the cover of Better Homes and Gardens. but maybe it, and all the other trees out there like it, should.

all my love darlings,

we have this thing every morning. it’s 10 minutes before we leave for school. no matter how ready we are to leave, we are never ready. no matter how calm the morning has been….it suddenly…isn’t anymore. if every lunch is packed, and every shoe is carefully laid out, and every sock (mismatched of course) is on, and every last paper signed, and every tooth polished and hair brushed….in those last moments, we disintegrate into a gurgling puddle of helplessness. i think to myself every day, tomorrow, tomorrow we will try again and it will be more calm….we will whisk out the door with our unzipped coats floating gently behind us in our self created breeze, and the house with go on humming its own quiet tune of peacefulness after the doorknob is released and we are down the driveway.

this never happens.

the shoelaces won’t lace, the picture is not finished (and for the love of all that is child created art, it must be complete before a day of pre-kindergarten or you loose all inspiration), the juicebox isn’t cold (or doesn’t have a straw), the face isn’t washed, that math homework (what math homework? i didn’t know you had math homework…) isn’t done, the permission slip to go to this place or that place or no place really, isn’t signed, the lunch money isn’t evenly distributed, the cat needs more kisses, the car is a rocket-ship (“no Mikayla, it isn’t a rocket ship, its a spaceship”….”Katie, that is the same thing”….”Ummmm, no. actually, i don’t know. i just don’t like that word for it then.”) and until this is settled, and we all decide to get along, the car/rocket-ship/space-ship is not going anywhere….

and then it passes, as if that 10 minute, faucet-leaked time, poured out.

and we are at the front of the school, and we are getting out of the car (or whatever it is), and we are saying good-bye for the day. we hug, we tell each other how much love we have for one another (THIS MUCH….Katie says, arms stretched out, from the sidewalk across the road, her puffy winter jacket hiding most of her body, except for her chubby little knees), and some special order for dinner comes from Mikayla (something-something and with meatballs or pizza), and we are blowing kisses and i am watching you both walk away from me, hand-in-hand (mitten-in-mitten) into the school.

and when i get home, the house is humming its tune of peacefulness, and the cat is still looking for more kisses, and it looks like a bomb went off in the living room, and i am wishing it was 10 minutes ago and we were all still back here to do it again.

(elizabeth.messina)

daily mantra: be with someone who knows what they have when they have you.

i have floundered on how to execute, into words, the last 4 months of my life. i share a lot on my blog. and i felt like not sharing this was somehow leaving a truth untold….a profound experience kept secret. and that just isn’t like me. but i did it. mostly for my own protection if for nothing else.

hi. my name is amanda. i am 31 years old. i am pregnant.

surprise!

(it was for me too)

i see a lot of babies. a lot of soon to be moms and couples. most of them are my brides from years past. and i look, in wonder, at evolving families….loving families, every.single.day.  it is, hands down, the best part of my job.

and i’d be lying if i didn’t say that every time i saw a newborn i didn’t get that pang, that ache, to have another one. but then i would remember what we went through to get our own sweet (super amazing…not an exaggeration) little girls, and how happy i was to have them, and how great the business was going, and how i was in my 30′s now, and how our little house was perfect for our little family (in fact, the two cats made it feel crowded), and how, selfishly, i loved sleep. i mean, i really love it.

i had gone back and forth for years about trying for another. the first year we moved into the house, when Katie was 2, we tried and were successful on the first month, only to have it end in an early miscarriage (talked about here in this post). and with our twin loss (talked about here) before Katie, i just didn’t feel like i could bring myself to go through this again.

plus. i’m not a big fan of pregnancy in general. don’t get me wrong…its beautiful on other people, and as a photographer i am in awe of the human body during this time…my clients simply glow with their perfect bellies.  i just never feel…i don’t know…glow-y. my belly isn’t perfectly round. its like i have speed bump where my upper abs are separating, and then another bump where the baby is. i don’t feel like myself. i’m sick…not just in the morning, not just at night, but like…24 hours, head in the toilet, sick. oh, and those women who don’t start showing until they are 20 weeks…that isn’t me. i show as soon as the other line pops up on the pregnancy test. my average pregnancy weight gain between the two girls….75 lbs. (i know…i could have laid off the pint of ice cream every other night, but why?)

so, we decided we were done completely with having babies in  early July.

then.

20 days later.

life decided otherwise.

and it was like that scene from the movie Parenthood (great movie, by the way), when Karen (Mary Steenburgen) tells Gil (Steve Martin) she expecting their forth child. yeah,  Parenthood seems to sum up so much of my life in general…but that moment in particular sticks out. and, no, it wasn’t jump up for joy excitement in the first seconds, minutes…days…. but it came.

i am completely blessed to be pregnant again.

and this pregnancy has been blissful compared to the others. while queezy constantly for the first 12 weeks, it wasn’t unbearable. i’m still fitting into my regular jeans ( i can’t button them, but they still fit, so that counts, right?). i have never, ever, felt so proud of my belly. its still not perfect, and i am pretty sure i am measuring about 4 weeks ahead of my true dates, but nothing makes me happier than when the girls say goodnight to the baby by kissing it gently through my belly.

being 31 and pregnant, even unexpectly, was perfect timing.

and, i always preferred the roller coaster over the carrousel anyway.

this was not her way of suggesting i read it…this was her way of telling me to.

i finished it the following evening after staying up all night and reading through the entire next day.

there was only one copy left in the bookstore. i hoped that it meant, even in this time of Kardashian daughters, people were still buying and reading and loving this book. i left it on the shelf. i still have my copy.

The curvy scribble of my grandmother’s handwritten inscription reads:

{still with Rockland Reading Corner Stamp}

For my Darling with all my Love,

be brave, be kind, and don’t take no for an answer….

Gram

:: we need to teach our daughters the difference between a man who flatters her and a man who compliments her, a man who spends on her, and a man who invests in her, a man who views her as property and a man who views her properly, a  man who lusts after her and a man who loves her, a man who believes he is God’s gift to women and a man who remembers women are God’s gift to man.

and then…we need to teach our sons to be that kind of man.

dear Mikki and Katie…

our summer vacation drew to an end last week and you both headed to school dressed in shiny new sneakers (ok, Katie, you wore your old ones because i didn’t check to actually see if your new shoes would fit you. i thought to myself at the shoe store filled with frantic haired mom’s and impatient fathers… “No,her feet couldn’t have possibly grown 2 sizes over the summer…I am sure THIS size will fit”….total mom fail but i did make up for it with a brand new pair the next day). the warm days had been filled with swimming, summer camp, barbeques, a trip to the beach, and even a family vacation.

best.summer.ever.

i got teary eyed and emotional on my trips to the store to buy crisp jeans and coordinating tops and sweaters and undershirts and pencils with pink erasers. i picked out Katie’s first lunch bag in the furry of an LL BEAN Sale (those that know LL Bean sales also know that this is not the time for your mommy breakdown…) and found myself telling the check out clerk (all of 17 years old with no ability to relate) that my baby was headed off to kindergarten for the first time, and the house was going to be an echo of my own lonely footsteps. she rang me up and nodded, green gum snapping and stuck in the front of her braces, and when i handed her my signed receipt she sympathetically yelled, “NEXT”, to the person in line behind me. i expected to be a complete, runny nose disaster on the first day. i was actually looking forward to the drama filled moment i waved, tissue in hand, as you both walked hand in hand into the Rumford Elementary School. i would snap a photo of all this and cry over it for years to come, or forever.

but one cloudy, drizzly, cold day about a week before school started, it hit me. Katie you had said, “i’m hungry”, for the 5,618th time in 5 hours, and Mikki, you were singing that Hannah Montana, Highest Mountain song AGAIN and even though you were in your bedroom with the door closed AND your head phones on, I could clearly make out every nauseating word of those horrid lyrics (let’s face it, she is no New Kids on the Block, is she?).

oh, it hit me.

i  was SOOOOOO ready.

despite my emotional umbilical cord to you both, i was ready for you to play with your friends, learn new things, meet your teachers, and, last but not least, leave me, for several hours.

every.single.day.

by myself.

summer was fabulous…it was.

heartwarming and tender

but there have been signs of my impending back to school epiphany (aka mental breakdown). the summer began with my usual pledge of less tv, less video games, and less computer time. more fruit, less fruit roll ups. cooking from scratch more. less pizza. less cups (pots) of coffee for me (was i delusional AND crazy???!!). work less, play more…all that written on a napkin, fantasy, goal list stuff. all good intentions though (don’t all intentions start out so glorious?).

two weeks before school started the conversation goes like this:

Mikki: mom, can we have pancakes for breakfast?

Mom: no. (still in sweat pants at 10am) what about a brownie? i made brownies last night.

Mikki: for breakfast? (eyebrow raised).

Mom: uh, huh. best mom, ever, right?!

really…all of the indications were there. “what website are you on? wait, don’t tell me. as long as it has nothing to do with Hannah Montana.”, “don’t run with that stick please. oh, it’s not a stick, it’s a super hero light sword used to ward off enemies. by all means then, play on.”, “Little Debbie was a close, personal friend of mine. no, really…we were tight.”, “michael, i don’t dare to take the bottles back to the redemption center. why? well, then people will really know how much wine i drank this summer.”, “i will have one large pepperoni, and one small cheese pizza please. yup, this is amanda, how did you know?”.

i snapped a photo on the first day of school.

it was filled with two very happy girls.

taken by a happy mom.

love you darlings,

p.s. of course, now that you have been gone for a week, i miss you terribly, so please hurry home.