These are my confessions

Ben took this picture. Explains why our heads are chopped off. 

There comes a time when you realize that *this* right here is what you were supposed to be doing all along. 

That the sadness and anger have faded away again - and while you might get frustrated from time to time, they are fragments of the reality that you are proud to call your own. 

For a time there, I was caught. Trying to plan for a future I could not yet see. Remembering a self that I was nearly a decade ago, and wallowing in its loss. 

But here I am in May, 2014. Nearly seven years to the day that I started this chapter of my life, I am content. I am content in a way I thought I'd lost, or worse, that I'd never find. 

When I was much younger, maybe in college, or just afterwards, I was talking with a friend, discussing what we wanted for our future selves. I told her that more than anything else I wanted to be a mom. The sort who hosts the play dates, and bakes cookies. 

I don't host play dates any more. And I don't bake cookies as nearly as often as I thought. However,  I am the mom the teacher assumes can go on the trip to the petting farm. The one who gets compliments on how nice/smart/clever the kid is. The one who - and I am not making this up - was told at some point that the one of the reasons they were considering a second pregnancy was because they had seen me with my kids and it seemed delightful. 

(Surely, if they could have heard me yelling at my kids, they might have had a second opinion on that last bit.)

It might not be the glamorous life I once thought I'd have. I'm not moving up a corporate ladder. I'm not pursuing anything but Ben in a game of tag. 

But I'll tell you what. It's my life. And I'm allowed to love it.   

C'mon, I get to spend all day with these goons?