I just had a crazy insane week. We had a huge and very important trade fair last weekend, my Mom arrived, the Girl got sick, Halloween happened, then I got sick, then a Halloween party, a baby shower, and my mom left. Right this minute I’m vegging out on the sofa, cars 2 on the tv, two kids that haven’t made it out of their pjs since the afternoon nap and a serious case of the sugar jitters all around from all the goodies from the shower. I love having parties. I also hate having parties. Having a party with my Mom in town multiplies these feelings by a gazillion bajillion. I’m a perfectionist, my mom makes me look like a slob, put the two of us together and you get party one-upmanship insanity of the “let’s make a diaper baby”, “oh, I’ll make a diaper cake!”, “sounds good, why don’t I make a diaper palace?!!”. We were up till two a.m. last night. And I made this:

I ended up making this cake and what felt like two thousand cupcakes, my mom made a diaper baby.

I’m posting it because I pinned it a few months ago and had been thinking about making it since, so this prove that pinning is useful. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it. (Also, if you love me, or even if you just kinda like me, you can pin it from here and I’ll link the original post with how to instructions here, yes I’m hawking my blog on pinterest now.)

Anywwwwaaaaayyyyy, let’s get back to the Monday Listicle. This week Stasha picked Ducky’s (batcrapcrazy) suggestion, which is ten amazing memories from a not so distant past. I’ve been wanting to write a bit more about my kids, so they have something to read when all the wonderfully adorable things they’re doing now will be replaced in the, apparently pretty limited, storage space in my brain with all the wonderfully adorable things they’ll be doing in the future.

So there ya have it, ten amazing memories related to the Boy and the Girl (mostly).

1. this is happening right this minute so I’m recording it in real-time and already it’s one of the things I want to remember: the Girl is feeding me Annie’s organic cheddar cheese rabbits (the modern mom’s version of the goldfish cracker, which, though much saltier, and likely less healthy, remains the superior orange animal shaped cracker) one by one, from her snack box, one for me, one for her. I’m also getting kisses here and there.

(She just slapped me on the nose, twice, am thinking of deleting this as an amazing memory…)

(Now she’s withholding the crackers because I won’t put away the computer. Very annoying child, luckily she’s cute,)

2. Their births: the two of them came out in two directly opposing manners but looking exactly the same which was weird, especially the second time around with the girl, cause it was like having the same baby twice. The amazing memory is, of course, of holding them in my arms, the Boy after a failed labor and emergency c-section and the Girl after a pretty standard labor and a barely missed home birth (as in I almost didn’t make it to the hospital). That brief moment when you realize that by God, you’re somebody’s mother, it’s wonderful and terrifying all at the same time.

3. Another pretty amazing memory, and this one a recurring one, was the feeling of relief when we got the results of the husband’s first bone marrow biopsy after the second transplant. Relief, but not release, because since the leukemia had come back once already we go through a certain degree of trepidation whenever he does the biopsies, but luckily the amazing memory is recurring as his biopsies have been clean since.

4. We’ve recently bought a “house”, the quotes are there because we bought an old 17^th century barn which will become a house in the hopefully not too distant future. But that’s not my amazing memory, because the day we bought the house I actually had a mini meltdown, but I’ve already told that story. The first time I went to the house with the husband, with a bunch of crystals and some sage and lavender and I walked around and smudged it, that was the first time the house felt mine. Ours. That’s when it finally felt full of possibility and hope. (And so what if I sound like a crazed new ager!!!)

5. The other night, I turned to the kids after our bedtime routine and said “bedtime” and they both got up and got into bed, no further prompting needed.

6. Saturday I was getting ready for the baby shower I was hosting yesterday, decorating the absolute masterpiece you see above, and the Boy comes downstairs at 11.30pm asking me to walk him back to bed cause he had gotten up to pee. I walked him halfway up the stairs and then relented and let him hang out in the kitchen with his Nana and I and help make the frosting. It was just ten minutes, but it made him so happy, in fact, when I tucked him in he said: thank you mama, that was fun and now I smell like sugar. Can there possibly be anything better than going to bed smelling like sugar?

7. The beach a few weeks ago. There’s nothing quite as relaxing as going to the beach at the end of the season when the days are still nice but there’s no one around.

8. My mom surprising me with a visit last week (surprising because she called Friday and said, Hi, I’ll be there tomorrow), there’s nothing quite as comforting as the feeling of knowing my mom’s going to be here soon. Of course, it only lasts for about five minutes, before I realize that it’s, in fact, equal parts comforting, fun, tiring, and irritating.

9. The Boy sneaking into our bed last night at 3am because he was afraid of “the witches”, his warm little body snuggled up against mine.

10. This sentence uttered a couple of weeks ago in a very serious, slightly suspicious voice: mama, where are you going? You look beautiful. (The sense, of course, was, if you look beautiful it means you’re leaving me and I don’t like that, but who doesn’t appreciate those words, no matter what the meaning behind them is!)

Ok, so not all ten are about my kids, but close enough.  And let me just add that having to sit and think up ten positive memories just made me really happy so thanks Stasha and Ducky!!