My mother. I don’t even know where to begin. Lots of people complain about their mothers, I know. I really can’t. She’s way too amazing. This is what she does when she comes: she breezes right in, takes over the kitchen and the laundry room, and makes our life feel manageable for awhile. And the boys absolutely adore her. When she visits she basically moves in with us (my dad as well when he isn’t traveling for work and can come too), she sees us from the inside out (literally), and we all live together like a multi-generational family under one roof. It is interesting and it is intimate and we’re always laughing. The rest of the time — when my parents aren’t here — we’re on our own, many hours away from all of our family members, pulling our own weight in the world. It is tough, especially because Braydon and I are a two-career-couple. But when my mom is here she more than makes up for all the space in between… So as far as long-distance family goes (especially long-distance parenting and grandparenting) this is about as ideal as it can get. I know this probably makes a lot of you envious as heck… especially you working mothers out there (because you know firsthand how tough it can be!)… I totally get that, I really do, but I can’t hold back from singing the praises of MorMor. This week she’s baked almond breads (truly one of the best things I’ve ever eaten in my whole life!), huge batches of her homemade granola (that the boys and I LOVE), pigs in a blanket (Owen’s new favorite food), from-scratch-mac-n-cheese (Kyle’s long-standing favorite food), turkey divan with egg noodles (one of Braydon’s absolute favorites), my favorite spinach salad with her homemade sweet dressing (I insisted on eating it again tonight for the second night in a row), and her famous homemade honey mustard. Oh, and cookies, of course (to the tune of The Farmer and the Dell the boys repeatedly sing “MorMor has cookies, MorMor has cookies, hi ho the derry oh, MorMor has cookies”). She’s also done about 200 loads of laundry (no joke), cleaned things around my house that I never even knew needed to be cleaned, emptied the kitty litter, helped us sort through all the random items in our basement, run errands with me and taken me out for lunches, played for hours with the bambinos, and made us all feel like a million bucks. Right now she’s rocking a fussy Owen to sleep. Earlier, after dinner (a dinner that she made), she watched the boys gobble down huge pieces of her almond bread — Kyle shoving it in so fast he could barely breathe, Owen doing his famous “human purr” (a phrase so aptly coined by Auntie Jessie to describe our Owen’s happy-“purring”-sound when he’s eating foods he loves). Even earlier in the day she changed poopy diapers, wiped runny noses, cleaned booster seats that hadn’t been scrubbed down in weeks, and ran around the yard in 30-something-degree weather with two two-year-olds. So go ahead and hate me for this post y’all (!!!!) but honestly, MorMor is just the BEST!
