I’ll be keeping this separate site up for a while, but you can access all of my archives also on the new Urban Bliss Life site as well.

Thanks for reading my mom/life ramblings – hope you’ll continue to join me over at Urban Bliss Life! Keep the madness going, y’all!

{French Press of Friendship}

Agatha and I go way back. We met in middle school, and there are some days when I think there couldn’t be two women more different from each other in the whole world: she’s a beautiful cheerful blond with sparkling blue eyes… I’m a short, sarcastic Filipino with dark hair. She’s a healthy triathlete… and I’m a certified channel-changing bacon-&-beer lover. Her kind words are like butterflies dancing across paper … and I swear like a sailor. She was talking about the Eagles once when Nine Inch Nails was playing in my head. We both, however, liked to write, listened to Billy Joel and watched/read Anne of Green Gables.

Through differences, distance and time we’ve remained friends. I credit that mostly to her incredible thoughtfullness & forgiveness. She’s truly one of the most amazing people I have ever been lucky enough to meet.

So when I sat down to pour my second cup of coffee from the French press she gave me, I wrote her a little note and mailed it. You know, pen and paper? Envelopes and stamps? Those old school tools are still used on a daily basis by old school me.

Then if timing would have it, the next day I received a Facebook invitation to join the Write a Letter & Send It In The Mail event for July 9th. I LOVE the premise of this. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, e-mails…they’re all wonderful, but I truly believe that there’s nothing better in conveying how you truly feel than good ol’ pen to paper.

I may not be the best friend in the world. I’m awkward and clunky and weird. I’ve been known to say the wrong thing at the worst time. So it’s important to me that the people I love know how much I love them, how much they mean to me and how much they shape my life. It’s important to me that Agatha knows how much her friendship means to me, and even if I will honestly never be as thoughtful as she is and as she was in giving me this French Press out of the blue when I needed it. What I can do is what I’ve been doing and loving doing since I was four: I can write. Sometimes it’s the most I can give, sometimes it’s all I know how to give, and I am thankful and lucky to have friends who somehow love me for it/despite it.

Share how much someone means to you today, on July 9th, and everyday. Put down the iPhone, and pick up the pen and paper.

But it also means he hurts. So much. I love that he is able to feel so deeply but hate when that feeling is sadness, hurt, pain. My mama bear instinct is to protect his little heart as much as possible. But the older he gets, the more I have to let go. And that kills me. That absofreakinglutely kills me.

It’s been an hour since I dropped off my son, crying hysterically, at school. His dad’s been away at a design conference and comes home today. My son, who has been amazingly wonderful and happy while his dad’s been gone, suddenly lost it. My son, who hates being late to school (which is always my fault) and hates missing anything at school, did not want to go to school today. He wanted to stay home until his dad came home. He missed his dad. Badly. It’s like suddenly a pipe burst and the realization of all of those emotions just hit my son hard and he couldn’t stop it. Watching my son feel all of that pain so suddenly, so fiercely, just ripped my heart out.

But. But…the world doesn’t stop for this kind of pain. The world expects you to compose yourself, take deep breaths, and move on. The world expects you to logically pull together your emotions, stuff them in a sack, stand up, and walk away as if everything is ok. The world expects my son to go to school, and me to go to work, and to table all that we feel for…what? Sometimes I’m not entirely sure, and I’m supposed to be the adult.

I’m torn. Torn between teaching my son how to accept his feelings and move on and allowing him time to have those feelings and know that everything is not ok. Sometimes everything can be as awful as you imagine. Sometimes loving someone means you will feel more pain than you could ever possibly feel physically. I want him to know it’s ok to feel this way, to acknowledge and allow the pain, and to move on with the pain.

I love the teachers at my son’s school. They are amazing with my children. They know them as individuals and respect their unique traits. I left after 20 minutes, and they called 20 minutes later to tell me he calmed down. His teacher asked him to draw a welcome home sign for his dad. Tears, and this time they were mine. I couldn’t ask for a better village to help me raise my child. Because sometimes I don’t know how to teach my son something I haven’t been 100% able to learn myself, and in this way, he and I can learn how to sit with our emotions and move on with the pain, together.

So he’s at school learning to love while letting go, and I’m in my office, trying to do the same.

From the depths of the garage, they found these choice nuggets of my past and handed them over.

A touchy-feely pre-teen self-help book titled “Your Changing Emotions” written by the esteemed doctor of….hang on…co-written by… Jill Whelan?! The spunky little kid from The Love Boat? Man, I wanted to live on that boat.

What’s left of my once-MASSIVE collection of Sweet Valley High books which I spent hours and hours reading in elementary school.

And what I call the Crate of Type-A Chaos: a white crate (hellooo college dorm memories) filled with speeches, articles, pictures, poems, and schedules neatly divided into manilla file folders. Yes, I really have always been this organizationally obsessed, apparently.

My favorite folder? The one labeled “MEN/<3/SCUM.” Inside? Empty. Apparently I just wanted to have this file folder ready, just in case I encountered scummy men whom I loved.

There were also photos of captured moments I had long forgotten with people who once were my world, notes from friendships that fizzled for this reason or that, articles that were published with my byline but in a voice and a perspective so different from today.

These boxes of paper goods that I haven’t needed in 15, 20 years are now sitting in my garage. Logically, I know they should all just go into the recycling bins. But they won’t. I don’t know why, but they won’t.

Boo's first plane trip! Oct 2004, 5 months old. PDX->NYC

I left Donald Trump’s presentation to go breastfeed my 5-month-old son. I got up while THE Donald was speaking, and walked out. I’ve never been apologetic about my life, my decisions, but reading this blog post from October 2004 makes me think that perhaps sometimes I am a little too strong in my stance. I mean, really: I could have waited a few minutes, right?

For my first Throwback Thursday, I share one of the first blog posts I ever wrote: Airplanes, Hotels and Formula…Oh My, written October 25, 2004. Our son – whom we had always called “Boo” on this blog since the very beginning – was just about to turn 5 months old. It was his first plane ride and our first time traveling with a child. I was headed to New York for a PR Directors event with Education Management Corporation, my former employer. My husband at the time (oh don’t worry, he’s still my husband; no string of baby daddy’s here!) was still producing the news for the local FOX station at that time while also working on his second Bachelor’s degree in Multimedia/Web Design. Luckily he was able to join us on the trip, which meant that our son could go too and I wouldn’t have to worry about the whole breastfeeding issue… or so I thought.

Read the whole long saga here. Do you remember your first plane trip with your first child? What age was he/she and where did you go? More importantly, HOW did it go? Please share! I just love other parents’ stories!

In my mind, television is supposed to inspire us in the same way books are. Our mind creates the characters as we want to see them, the writing forces us to think and dream up possibilities, and we’re transported into an alternate universe that, using our own life experiences, draws us closer to answering not the questions asked by the writers and producers but by ourselves in our own lives. I don’t want everything handed to me, I want to be taken on a journey. LOST did this for me. It was a brilliant production that challenged conventional television writing, brought together an amazing cast of international characters like no other (well-written) television series has ever done before, and caused viewers all over the world to constantly tune in, say “WTF?!!” and then connect with others to speculate the meaning of it all.

Brilliant. The character development alone makes this series stand out above all the rest. Over six seasons we were drawn in to these individuals who came together if for no other reason than to not die alone. How is it that we could come to love a murderer (Kate), cheer for a very broken man (Ben) to find his way, and smile when in the end, the sweet, unintentionally funny guy who was the caregiver of everyone else in his own subtle way left with the biggest responsibility of all (Hurley)? They were all, in their own very unique ways, lost, and we watched as the writers creatively weaved their stories together and fused their journeys into one long road home.

What I love most is the presence of love and faith which held the series together throughout and pulled them to the end, together. And I’m not talking about religious faith, but faith in hope, in each other, in ourselves. Love that withstands time, broken circumstances, illness, and even death. In the end, LOST is about humanity, and whether we all work together, whether we all help each other, or whether we want to live and die alone.

The last season ties it all together beautifully for me. Having the flash sideways be not reality at all (as was their life on the island) but be a gathering place they created to meet once they were ready to move on? Loved it. What is it we each need to be able to let go of whatever it is holding us back, and move on? Is it being forgiven by the man you killed? Is it helping someone whereas you feel you couldn’t help the one you loved the most? Is it hearing your friend tell you you ARE a good person despite your questionable actions? Is it being reconnected with someone you loved and once lost? Once we have whatever it is we need emotionally to move on, then it’s time. And I love that they moved on together.

Hate it, love it, but you can’t argue that it has made you think, dream, imagine and question more than any other series on modern television. LOST has made you love, connect, question, cry, laugh, and go “a-ha!” over and over and, like life, just when you thought you had it figured out, turns out you didn’t. I love that we all have our own journeys, and that, however broken we may be, there is love, hope, forgiveness, and redemption possible for all. Thank you, LOST, for making television great again.

Today my son got his own cereal and milk for breakfast. He gets his own bowls, plates, utensils and snacks, and can spread peanut butter & jelly on his sandwiches, but he’s never gotten his own milk & cereal before. This is probably something he could have done on his own many months ago or even years ago — if I had let him. But did I even think to? Nope. They are growing up so fast that sometimes I forget to check in and recognize all of these things that they could do on their own; they’re adding new tasks to their self-reliant repertoire it seems almost every day. It’s truly awesome to see happening.

This especially helps during the hectic morning routine. My 3-year-old can get her own clothes, change, brush her teeth, get her lunchbox and backpack, put her shoes on and strap herself into her carseat. My son can do all the same, plus make his bed, and now, I know, he can get the milk for his cereal on his own. I think I like this independence stuff

As part of the Pepperidge Farm Fishful Thinking program, there’s a great list of questions that I have asked myself over the past year to continue to instill independence in my own kids. I feel like I need to revisit these questions and ask them often, since my kids are growing at an insanely fast pace and the answers are always changing. I love that and hate that about watching their childhood unfold before my eyes. And yet, it is the greatest joy to hear them say “I can do it!” in reference to something they’ve never tried to do before… and then watch them do it, all on their own, just like they believe that they could. Then the smile that follows? The one that says “Look! I DID IT!” That makes mamahood worth it all, right there.

In my last blog post I talked about how becoming a mother has helped me simply be who I truly am. The best part of motherhood though and one of the truest greatest gifts my children have given me? Pure, unfiltered, unedited JOY. I am so much more alive now than I have ever been and it is their silly, hyper, energetic, happy little spirits that put a huge smile on my face every day. I love, love, love being a mom. I know motherhood is not for all of my friends, and I thank my friends without kids for putting up with my constant mom talk, but it really is my life purpose, my soul’s happiness, my every waking moment smile.

So thanks for the happiness, kiddos. I hope that even when you’re grown & you’ve got kids of your own, we’ll still make time for all the silliness..

the massive laugh attacks…

and the love…

(photos taken around Christmastime for our card photos. because it’s Mother’s Day and I reserve the right to be too lazy to sift through our newest photos right now. )

I freaking love being a mom! It’s the best! HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY to all you lovely mamas out there and all of you mamas-to-be!

When I gave birth six years ago this month to my first child, my beautiful, sweet sweet son, my world exploded with goodness and forced honesty that rocked my world. I am still blown away by motherhood’s impact. I was thrown a mirror with all of my faults and it’s there in the form of my two little kidlets everyday, staring back at me, saying THIS IS YOU: ACCEPT IT, CHANGE IT, OR LOVE IT, but you’ve gotta do something because we’re watching. Carefully. Instead of beating myself up over those faults, as a mom I have the incentive to work on them, to try and try again. To fail. A LOT. And try and try again. Motherhood has taught me that in life, Do Overs in some form or fashion are possible, and just as there are critics out there who love to jump at any chance to tear me down, I will always have at least two sweet cheerleaders who not only smile and encourage me but push me to do and be better.

It’s not necessarily that becoming a mother has made me a better person – it’s helped me be ok with who I am and who I have always been. More than anything, I want my kids to grow up as positive, optimistic, caring kids (and those who know my involvement with the Fishful Thinking program know how important this is to me). I don’t care much about what they do for a living, what religion they choose to believe, or what political party they decide to align themselves with so much as I want them to love themselves. I want them to have the confidence or at least the self-awareness that is required to learn to love others fully, to learn to live their lives fully. They need to love themselves to do those things. I want them to see that I’m incredibly happy being so very imperfect. That I don’t ever expect them to be perfect, but just plain ol’ happy. That they are so wonderful in their own individual personalities and that their personalities are and will always be growing, taking new shape, never stuck. They never have to choose between one persona or another, they simply have to BE and I will love them always as is, as they have miraculously loved me.

In order for my kids to see this, I had to see it and I now have to emulate it. In being forced to walk the walk, motherhood has simply made me accept happiness in every moment of being myself, however uncomfortable, sad, painful, or embarrassing.

Every Mother’s Day, I thank my children for bestowing the great gift of being ok with the mama that I am. And for that, I intend to give every bit of myself – however imperfect & flawed & broken – to them every second of every day for the rest of my life.

Happy Mother’s Day, mamas! Cheers to all of the moms out there for all you are and all you do.

This weekend, the reasons I continue to blog were very clear: I do it for me, I do it for the community. Attending Bloggy Boot Camp in Phoenix re-energized my passion for writing in this space and reminded me of the community of women who exist in this space with me to make it all the more comforting, fun, inspiring.

I’ve gotta be honest: as excited as I was, I came in feeling a little nervous, because I don’t consider myself a “real blogger.” I’ve got a lot of blogs but let’s be honest: I don’t market them one iota (although I absolutely love my two followers – kisses & hugs to you both!). I don’t do advertising (yet?), I don’t do giveaways (yet?), I don’t participate in (a lot of) blogger fun. I’m the laziest blogger I know. But, when Tiffany of SITS asks me to be somewhere, my answer will always be yes. She’s like a hypnotic charm girl, that Tiffany.

Everyone I met at Bloggy Boot Camp was insanely amazing. Truly. The SITS Girls who put on the conference created such an incredibly warm, welcoming, inviting atmosphere. The conference was attended by women who were ready to learn from each other and make new connections. It was nice and hot in Phoenix compared to Portland. There were cool cocktails. I was lucky enough to room with and speak with the super talented, genuine & incredibly sweet Lisa Leonard and also speak with the super inspiring and high energy adorableness that is Laurie Turk of Tip Junkie. Those two rock it beyond words. I also got to meet so many incredible women, and I honestly can’t list them all because your eyes would explode from all the awesomeness. Go check out my Twitter list: Bloggy Boot Camp and follow those lovely ladies. Right now. Go. DO IT. You won’t be sorry.

I am in such awe of these women who are so dedicated to their blogs, who move forward each day with such purpose and passion with their blogging. They are the writers, educators and connectors of today’s online world. I learned so much from them this past weekend, and I walked away wanting MORE. I want more of this blogging world.  I want to engage and develop richer connections and just DO and BE better with my own blogging. Thanks for the inspiration, ladies!!

Thanks to The SITS Girls for one helluva kick-ass conference. I am inspired and think Portland needs a Bloggy Boot Camp (ahem)!

PS – should I just give up on the Google connect followers thing? Y’all, if you’re reading this, can you please be a dear and just click over on that Google follow box to add yourself? I know I just added that thing recently but really: the emptiness makes me wanna drink (more) heavily.