motherhood

My favorite part about summer is the ability, for three short months, to stop looking at the clock or calendar and to start enjoying the present.

Unlike the many women who dance towards the pink sugarplum visions having a girl conjures, I wanted desperately to escape.

Mom-osa: This is like a mimosa, only leave out the OJ.

Motherhood is easily the toughest, most sacred job on earth. Without moms, the human race simply wouldn’t be here. But personally, I’d rather dangle myself from dental floss over a volcano full of spiders than push another human being out of my body.

My heart dropped a bit, and I struggled with what to say. Tae Kwon Do class had always been a safe space for her; a place where her confidence thrived and the teachers encouraged her to reach her full potential. She beamed when she sparred, and counted out the stripes on her belts with glee. Yet here she was, just six years old, the only girl in the day’s class, quieting herself to appease a handful of boys during warm-ups.

When my husband and I looked at the screen in the ultrasound room and saw that we were having a girl, we both breathed a sigh of relief. Not because we didn’t want to have a boy, but because it meant the circumcision debate was off the table.

“Definitely don’t be afraid to use a nipple shield,” I told a woman the other day. “Cracked nipples are the worst, let me tell you!”

The Mom Butt is a little wider, a little flatter and a little longer than the butts on the totally dedicated and amazing women on Pinterest (mad props to them, seriously).