#2 graduates

It happened in a flash. I had a brief thought, 


"How hard can it be?", And the I sat my #2 down and decided I'd just trim up her hair. We couldn't seem to get her to be still, so I had to keep on evening it out. The next thing I know, I'm paying a professional to "fix it" adding, "but listen, she really likes to have chongos


(pigtails)" 

..I'd like to add that she started the hair cut first


(with a little help from her sister).

I just tried to fix it. That's what moms do, right? Fix it.

By the time she was graduating from Noah's Ark Preschool, she finally had just enough hair for chongos again. 
She was 5. I was 27. We were both babies, only beginning to navigate the unique paths of our roles.

This was the same year I asked to put her shoes on so we could get home, and while standing in the room in front of my in laws, she


turned and looked me straight in the face and said, "no." 

They say defiance is just determination peeking its head out. Yet when it's your 5 yr old, you pray you find the willpower to let her live to see another day. It wasn't too long after this that she made up her own school cheer..."what is the name of my school...it's Bears! Bears! Bears!..," 

Her dad and I looked at each other & did the


silent-"that's a negative ghost rider" nod to each other. (Silly girl...Hahaha Baylor? Hahaha! she'll


change her mind! We got plenty of time!)

We were such fools! 

She was tenacious and never let fear hold her back from something she wanted. 

My baby, my #2, graduates from college this week, and she is ridiculously loved by everyone who gets to know her. She is my planner, my


task master & my "schedule it, or I may not cooperate" child. The irony of this is that her birth could not have been more unplanned or


untimely...this mama was just not a big planner. I believe God looked down and saw this weakness in me and said, "Hey angels, gather round and watch this! I'm going to make this mama absolutely crazy, or help her get her act together." 

No doubt, the crazy prevailed.

#2 is FIERCELY loyal. Like to the point that if we even consider taking down someone who hurt her feelings or remotely offended her,


she defends them & asks us to stop. Seriously. Who does this? Once in junior high, her sister and her were fighting about something really important like clothes, & we were at the end of our rope! My man had a, "hold my beer" moment & grabbed each girl & made them face each other & said to #2-"I want you to hit your sister & get it all out!" She burst into tears and said,

"No daddy, I can't do that!" 

(*This parenting moment will clearly not make our yet to published book.)

#2 can be deeply wounded & hurt, but yet, will rally to the aid of the offender. As I stated above, Loyalty has long been her gift, but stubbornness & sleep are close contenders. The child can sleep & nap like no other. (Am I right, or am I right?)

We've been known to draw straws or play


rock/paper/scissors to determine who has to wake her up. We pray daily for the


future man she marries to love sleep as much as her & we hope he never has to wake her up.
(I don't see that marriage surviving if this one tiny detail can't be worked out!)

Oh, and that Cheer she did when she was 5...Yeah, that would prove to be her college of choice. We tried to sway her, but my girl wasn’t


having it.

We even went so far as to send only my man with her, on a college visit. We discussed how it would


go down in detail. The plan was simple: they’d go see the school, and he will


break it to her gently that Baylor is just not in the cards for us, she’ll cry,


but she'll recover and then we'll all move on. We got this!

I don’t know where it all went wrong, but the plan failed


and we drank the Kool-aid.  So we did


what parents do...we started bleeding money for the next 4 years. True story.

And indeed, she graduates as a Baylor Bear this morning.

Time has slipped through my fingers and although I've deeply mourned the loss of my chicks being in my home, I've equally tried to celebrate the birth of all the great things that young adult children bring to this season.

While finishing college is certainly a big deal, you should know, it's not the BIGGEST, nor the most important thing to me. For my


man & I, it's just a miraculous picture of God redeeming one of the many lost seasons in our lives - & it has only been sweeter when he's used our chicks to lavish His love & grace upon us.

You should know that #2 gave up on bangs and short hair many years ago, likewise, I eventually gave up trying to "fix it" all.

Her defiance did eventually evolve into determination. (Just stay the course mamas, the road is LONG!!)

She still won't hit her sister in a fight, and we try not to encourage violence as often.

Much has changed & much has stayed the same.

I miss that little girl with chongos and crooked bangs. Although I am super tempted to do her "cheer" as as she walks across the stage! 

Failing forward...

P

#2 is 22...

When she burst on the scene, it was more like a sloooow burst…like a 12+ hours of labor and no drugs to take the edge off type of burst.  It wasn’t my favorite.  When she was born and they said she weighed in just shy of 10lbs. I was like…no, no, no, remember I’m the lady that was having a new born baby! 10lbs would be more like a 2 month old!

It should go without saying that I declared within moments of her birth that my birthing years were definitely OVER! (hey, my body was definitely not made for that! 10lb babies are just crazy wrong!)

Apparently most of the nurses also mistook her for a 2 month old, and therefore they never did that whole Apgar test in the hospital... why bother? She was practically sitting up and feeding herself. But it’s whatever, we knew she was brilliant, and after her we saw her beautiful brown eyes open, we knew that we could totally handle loving her. Having done this whole “baby thing” once before, her dad and I knew a few things and we were feeling like parenting professionals.

Back when #1 was born, one of us, (starts with a “B”) may have thought (out loud) that babies didn’t open their eyes for 6 weeks, you know, kind of like kittens.  So after both my mom and the nurse composed themselves, they informed us that actually, we had given birth to a baby girl, not a kitten, and she would open her eyes at any moment. So you can see that a mere 18 months later we knew we were total going to nail this parenting thing on this 2^nd baby.  

Our take on parenting was simple: #2 would be a breeze…with open eyes and all! Boom, done!

We justified that since she was such a big baby, clearly the “infant” rules didn’t apply to her. We took that baby everywhere, to church, Mexican restaurants, and I’m pretty sure we let every junior high girl hold her and kiss all over her. For the record, I really don’t think junior high girls, Mexicans restaurants or churches have germs or something, because they held and kissed #2 so much and she really never so much as got a sniffle.

Because #2 really was an easy baby, its often forgotten that there were a few weeks after she was born of nonstop crying. It may have made me slightly crazy, and a tad irrational. She would cry that loooong ear piercing cry that makes you forget who you are and why you live. Therefore, when I got a call they needed a last minute chaperone for a high school scavenger hunt, I promptly loaded #1 and #2 -aka “the cry baby”- up and we placed her smack dab in the arms of our good neighbor, Ron Bergoon. Can I just say that he didn’t even flinch! He took her like a boss and was all calm, stoic and in control, he turned to us and said, “yall go on…she’ll be just fine.”  

And we didn’t even look back!

(please note* If you have ever had any kind of experience with a crying baby at all, you should just fall on your knees and BLESS Mr. Ron EVERYTIME YOU SEE HIM. I’m fairly certain he saved my life and the life of my #2 that day.)

Ironically, shortly after this, my #2 quickly became her old self and fell into her rhythm of content and easy to please, honestly, this is probably because she had NO MORE tears to cry!  She was greatness. A mushy tub of love and happiness and a committed slave to her all of her sister’s brilliant and fun ideas. She easily won the hearts of everyone she encountered…except the sweet 3 year old little girl in her Mothers Day Out class that she kept biting! (& we are still feeling really sorry about that…and we have continued to work on not biting others!)  

There was also a brief but fabulous season in my life when my #2 declared that she had an imaginary friend named Jessica. Jessica seemed to always be the most “real” to her in public places where she would, uhm...let’s say, get left in the car! For some reason, my #2 would choose to wait until we were in front of a crowd of strangers and yell out, “Mommy, we have to go back and get Jessica, you left her in the car again!”

Nothing makes people start turning and staring at you quicker than a child hollering you left another child in the car, it was such a great feeling as a mom. I cannot tell you how many times I walked back to an empty car and opened the door for this invisible person to get out. As if that wasn’t enough, when Jessica, the invisible friend, would finally get out of the car, my #2 would insist that I hold Jessica’s hand, “like a good mommy!”   Since there was a strong chance that CPS was already in route, I did what any normal “good” mom would do and proceeded to hold hands with an invisible child.

It was at this point that I knew I may be actually going crazy. I would actually think to myself, “I am a grown woman who is holding hands, cooking meals and buckling and unbuckling seatbelts for imaginary and very invisible children. This can't be normal”  It is because of this that to this day, I can barely say the name Jessica without having flashbacks to these insane moments of motherhood. -& yeah, although, I’m sure your Jessica is quite lovely and all, let’s just agree that I may call her Jess, or Jessie or something different.

Because of my #2, no one in our homes is EVER allowed to give specific or concise answers. Why? Because, she will hold you to that answer, for-flippin’ EVER!! Any questions out of her mouth are a set up for complete failure. This is simply her sneaky way of roping you into a blood oath regarding something as minor as let’s say: dinner.
#2: What’s for dinner?
Me: Chicken.
So when dinner time comes you change your mind and think, “Hey, let’s eat out!” this is no big thing you think, after all everyone likes to go out to eat, right?

Wrong!

You will never be able to explain away the fact that in a brief moment while being peppered with questions, that you flippantly said “Yo, #2, enough already. chicken is for dinner. Please stop asking me questions!” Because apparently, when you said chicken, you committed to chicken, and not just ANY day or ANY place or ANY chicken, but today. at dinner time. in your house. Kill me.

And while it is these moments that have made me completely question my will to live, I must admit she also made me weep for a week straight when she left for college and my nest was temporarily empty. She loves others fiercely, and is more loyal than anyone I’ve ever known. Today has been a little sad for me since I don’t get to be with her on her birthday. But I have spent a lot of time reflecting on the greatness she has brought into my life. When she was born I was the same age, 22, that she is today. I was ill prepared to mother anyone, let alone 2 little girls that needed so much guidance and the kind of love I just didn’t know how to give. So, as it has been with so many things in my life, God graciously recalibrated my heart and has taught ME guidance as I tried to lead them. And along the way they showed ME how to love well.

Experiencing the love of my #2 (& my #1) has definitely been a great reward for a mother that is just failing forward.

Happy Birthday Cho Cho Baby, like so many others in your life - I am better because of you.

xoxo~
mama