Sister, Sister

Let's talk about sisters for a moment, shall we?

I struck the sister lottery with three of the most warm, caring, talented, supportive sisters whom I consider my best friends. Granted, things weren't always rosy: As the youngest, I had many bedroom doors slammed in my face, persona non grata in their world which I considered much so cooler than my own. Their closets were packed with clothes I wanted to wear, their shelves stacked with tapes (yes, tapes) I wanted to listen to, or toys I wanted to play with, or, later, goopy lipglosses and shimmery eyeshadows and neon-hued nail polish I couldn't keep my hands off of. I snuck in those rooms as much as I could. And I almost always got caught. And they hated me for it. At least for that day or that very hour, and then we'd make up or at least be forced to play nice for the sake of my frazzled parents who put out more fires than FDNY. 

But we grew up. We grew closer. By the time I reached college, I lost my annoying little sister tendencies (or at least I'd like to think I did), and we became friends, even living together all in one West Village brownstone while I interned in NYC for the summer. Since then, we've been though the high highs and the low lows, the stuff that makes you grow even closer. I've developed the kind of relationships with each of them where we may not see each other for months but then fall back into step with ease as though no time has passed. 

Now, having two girls of my own, I want that same kind of bond for them. I know it can't be forced. Just two years older, Nora didn't coo and coddle Nell as a newborn; she tolerated her. She quickly developed a habit of squeezing her a little too tight, or playing a little too rough, and Nell eventually wanted nothing to do with her. In the past few weeks, though, I've noticed a budding friendship between the two. Like tonight before bed, Nora insisted on turning off the lights in Nell's room to have a "dark dance party." The light from my phone illuminated their PJ-clad figures as they spun, dizzily, to Let it Go (what else?). Nell, bouncing unsteadily on her tiny feet, spreading her arms out wide, Elsa style, as she belted out her own version (which, by the day, is sounding more and more like the actual words), Nora, turning ever-so-slowly ("Like a real ballerina, Mommy!"). They laughed and sang and twirled. Two sisters. Two friends. 

I know there will be slamming doors, and pinching, and scratching, and biting words in our future (but hopefully no biting!). Yet for now, for perhaps just for a brief, blissful period, my girls have found each other.

The weightiness of October

October is a complex month. In September, we're coasting along, riding the tail end of the long wave of summer...then October comes along and...wham! Fall is here. The temperature drops. The leaves fall. And it rains. A lot. I always forget how much it rains.

But there are also those gorgeous, #nofilter October days that make you wish that you could press pause on the temperature, the low humidity, the warm sunlight filtering through the vibrant trees. The days when I'm driving along in our neighborhood with the windows down, singing along to some awful song on the radio with the kids and exalting, "This is my most favorite time of the year!" The crisp, clear, days remind me of one of the best days of my life: Our wedding, on October 29, 2005. I remember poring over the Farmer's Almanac in the weeks prior to the wedding, analyzing the past years' weather and trying to calculate the chances of rain. Nothing was even scheduled to be outside, but I wanted pictures at the Grotto. It was a perfect, sunshiny day, of course. And I got my pictures.

Mark's birthday is in October--a day I admittedly always manage to bungle somehow. This year, for the big 36, we had just returned from our kid-free trip to the Pacific Northwest. I spent the afternoon visiting Jeanie and Uncle Phil, my mom, Leezie and Lily at the Farm. We got home too late for any formalities; I dashed into Weis to buy a cheesecake and poor Mark ordered his own birthday pizza. Wife of the year right here. But Papa and Diz came over, we sang, and the kids blew out the candles, and gave him a couple of gifts, including a glittery Redskins Christmas Ornament Eamon so sweetly picked out just for Daddy. He says it was all he wanted, glittery ornament and all. I think I still owe him.

Gotta say, that cheesecake was delicious. 

But with the celebrations of October come a bit of weightiness, too. The month can't slip by without bleak memories of losing both Grandmommy and Grandpop, just a year apart in mid-October of 2004 and 2005. How we all forged forward and had my wedding just two weeks after Grandpop's funeral, I don't know. Reflecting on that horrible contradiction of emotions still makes me a little nauseous, but all along I've known that having a big ol' party was what he would have wanted. The man already had his tux pressed and shoes shined. He was going to walk my Mom down the aisle.

10 (and 9) years gone by, yet I still hear their voices, still feel their papery, but smooth skin. Still feel the stiffness and stickiness of Grandmommy's voluminous, snow-white hair after she had it "done." Still hear Grandpop's cackling laugh and the sternness in his voice after he chastised me for doubting him..."99 out of 100 times, I am right." I tell stories about them to the kids all the time. They know the Farm as "Grandpop's Farm" even though they came long after he climbed that tractor for one last spin in the fields. Nora knows that she has Grandmommy's nose, and that we spotted it early on in one of her very first sonograms. And soon Nellie will be able to understand that maybe, just maybe, got her sparkling blue eyes from JDOC.

One of the BEST times--Oysters with Grandpop in NYC!

As my friend Crystal told me, it's far better to remember the birthday than the last day, so I never dwell on those dates. Yet they do manage to creep into my conscious on gloomier days, like today. I get an inexplicable sinking feeling and then realize the significance of the date. The memories flood back. The painful ones, yes, mostly the amazing ones that make me appreciate the time we had together and wish for just one more hour with each of them.

But back to the much better bits of October. Pretty soon, Halloween will be ringing our doorbell, and I better have some tricks and treats ready. It's going to be major. Like sugar-crazed preschoolers running wild around our house major. The kids are off of school that day, so of course we're throwing a party for Nora and her classmates, and likely some of E's friends too. And of course I've invited neighbors to come over to our house after trick-or-treating later that evening. I'm sure I'll go into a Pinterest-fueled fury leading into it all and will be making pumpkin-shaped cake pops until 3 a.m. the night before. Mark may want to divorce me. But then we'll have a great time, the kids will love their cakepops (and hopefully not smush them into our brand new carpet), and I'll pin my pics like it was all so easy, eventually forgetting how I vowed to never make those motherf&*$ing cake pops ever again.

It better not rain.

Halloween '13: Let's hope Nellie won't be so terrified this year. Or that Nora won't hug her so hard. 

This year, we'll be going on a variation of the bug and super hero theme, throwing in a princess for good measure. Can you guess who will be whom? 

Resurrection

I'm baaaack.

It's been a while.

Things have changed.

Kids are growing, vocabularies are expanding, homework is a thing now.

But I don't want Eamon, Nora, and Nell to one day find this blog and think that all of a sudden I grew disinterested in them or had nothing new to report. It's just the opposite, of course. Every single hour is filled to maximum capacity leaving me little time to do anything else but work and collapse into a heap at the end of the very long day.

Yet I want to remember this time. To sanctify it. To put it in a vault where it will remain, in like-new condition, for eternity. To record their little phrases, sayings. The way Nellie responds to nearly every request with an enthusiastic "Otay!" The way Nora slips into my side of the bed in the mornings to "snuggle in," folding her little body into mine for 30 blissful moments before the chaos begins. The way Eamon zips through his math work faster than I can even process the problems (clearly his Daddy's son). Or how he sends me sweet texts and leaves notes on my phone like "EAMON IS CRAZY COOL."

There's so much. So much fun. So much that drives me absolutely crazy. So much whizzing by at a pace I just can't keep up with. So, so much love.

Eamon, Nora, and Nellie, if you are reading this in the future and you want to know why Mommy just stopped writing updates and posts about you at some point in 2014, know that it was because I was having way too good of a time with you to sit down and actually write about it. (Oh, and there's this little thing called Instagram that kind of took over for a while...). But I do love writing about each of you. And our conventional, crazy, chaotic life. So I promise I'll try again, starting now.

You guys are just too cool not to document. 

Birthday pics!

Because when else to post pictures of a birthday party than two months after the date? At least it's not two years. I just added a few to our kiddo blog. Check it out here.