Not your normal ‘Mommy Blog’.
My Girl
I have a beautiful munchkin nicknamed Savvy. She is almost 24 years old. My ‘mommy blog’ is written with the gift of perspective. I can see now what a beautiful, strong, independent young woman she has become.
When she was a baby, I would look at her and think “what will she be like and look like at two or 8, 12, 16, and 21?”
I am so grateful for having raised her in a time, not so long ago, where not everything was shared. No posting what we ate for dinner last night. If we wanted answers we would go to the library. Need advice? Call a friend or relative. There wasn’t Google and internet was a very new concept.
Today, ‘mommy blogs’ are everywhere. No one’s life is private. Write about how you are working from home making $300,000 while being a stay at home mom? Have 2.5 kids and a dog on a corner lot in suburbia? Publish it. What will these kids remember most? That their childhood was broadcast for the world to see with every trip to the grocery store documented? I’m not saying its wrong, just that I choose differently and pray my daughter will remember the good times we shared.
The Little Things
Will she remember the hours spent reading instead of watch TV? The learning and laughter? The time we were dancing in the late autumn afternoon, when it began to lightly rain and the leaves were falling all around us and we laughed as we searched for the prettiest leaf? When we would stay up all night laying on the driveway watching for meteor showers?
Will she remember we would make everyday moments into parties? Hold a movie party, a game night party, reading party or drawing party complete with invitations and decorations. We would have ‘theme’ dinners like carnaval food night with homemade corn dogs and funnel cakes.
Hometown tourist
We would play hometown tourist and go the St. Louis Arch and museum and then dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory. Crown Candy soda fountain or Forest Park and mini trips to explore and expand our world and mind. The horse and carriage rides and dinner in a TeePee? Will she remember learning in everyday moments? Lessons only life can teach. Making sandwiches to bring to the homeless shelter when they asked the community for help.
Life lessons
Will she remember making volcanoes in the backyard, near the treeless tree house she helped me build? Playing explorer in the wood that was our backyard as we looked and often found fossil rocks. Sitting for and being my helper on my photo sessions. Or will she remember the struggles of a single mom?
Evening Falls
Will she remember the nightly rituals of reading her favorite books with character voices, like The Monster in the Cave, or The Giving Tree? When she would let me pick the book only to then say she wants me to read to her The Bookshop Dog again.
Will she remember that each night before kissing her goodnight, I would tell her she can do anything! That she was smart, kind, caring, funny, beautiful and I believe in you.
The Fiery Redhead
Savvy is now a smart, funny, caring, compassionate, beautiful, independent young woman in charge of her own future. That future is limited only by her imagination. Will she remember how proud I am of who she has become? She has taught me to be more open and giving.
a love letter to my munchkin
But will she remember the pride I felt everyday, the love I have for her and that I would do it all over again. Because being a mother, her mother, is the best job in the world! Like in the words to one of my favorite Martina McBride songs, “In My Daughter’s Eyes, the truth is plain to see, this miracle God gave to me, she was sent to rescue me, I see who I want to be, in my daughter’s eyes. For when I’m gone, I hope she’ll see how happy she made me, for I’ll be there, in my daughter’s eyes”. No matter where I am, that is your home!
Leave a comment and tell me a memory you want your children to remember!