I was lucky enough to just spend an entire week in Colorado with my youngest son as a celebration of his high school graduation. Just the two of us hiking and exploring. It was wonderful.

It’s that time of year again. We’ve been through it before in my house and here we are again now with my youngest son. The time college acceptance letters start to arrive and the huge decision is made.

My son spent most of his senior year of high school varsity soccer career sitting on the bench. It was really hard to watch, it hurt my mom heart.

School started on Monday and my youngest son began his senior year of high school.  Even typing that out I can’t believe this is where we are in life.

And Ferris Bueller’s statement continues to ring true “Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

My son pointed out that almost all the texts I sent him the first week he was home from school were questions about his plans.

Uh, oh I became THAT mom without even meaning to!

I walk into the house and every single kitchen cabinet is open. There are bags of chips strewn on the floor and all of the tennis shoes are piled up under the table. Smashed goldfish are ground up into the grout of my kitchen tile. A toy is blasting the Baby Shark song on repeat. What the hell is going on?

This is what my house looks like on any given day now that we have a 17 month old who is walking and running full speed through the house. I was not prepared for this.

The past few weeks of my life have been an absolute shit show in every sense of the word.

It’s funny how stressful events come in clusters. All of a sudden and all at once, things in our household and our professional lives got extremely busy. Several unexpected events happened which have left me exhausted, depleted and otherwise looking and feeling like a bus hit me, backed up, and then hit me again.

While I would have loved a healthy, productive coparenting relationship, sometimes we are forced to make the best of our given situation. One of my favorite quotes is “you cannot control other people’s actions; you can only control your own reactions.”. Living this is not always easy, but I try every day and looking at my boys, I think I have been pretty successful.

We had a big milestone in our house recently. My youngest son got his driver’s license. This has opened up so much for him, but also makes this mama’s heart ache and worry.

It is another step away from home. It’s another step towards growing up.

I don’t like the word day care.

I picture a line of cribs with babies standing up crying and the whole place smells like dirty diapers. I prefer to call the place where we take my child from 8:30- 5:00 every day school. Kids belong in school, right? It’s a natural part of life.

I find it lessens the mom guilt to think of him as being at school.

Before I got married, had a stepchild and a baby, I used to feel energized at the end of the work day. My only responsibility was getting to my 5:30 PM spin class and figuring out what to make for dinner. I could eat cereal if I wanted. I could watch 3 hours of uninterrupted mindless tv. Fast forward to the present. 5:30 PM is now what I call The Witching Hour. It is when I feel like everything is pure chaos at my home.

My oldest son is home for his winter break from college. He’s a sophomore at University of Maryland so not too far from home. This allows for a few visits for parent’s weekend and sporting events, plus a whole week for Thanksgiving.

His break is a full month, but it still doesn’t feel like enough.

We’re just a couple days away from Christmas and this is a really special one because it’s my son’s first Christmas. This time last year I was extremely pregnant People told me, “next year is going to be so incredible!” To a certain degree they are right. It is the most wonderful time of year, but at the same time, my 11 month-old does not have a clue about Christmas and for that reason, I (we) did not go crazy buying him everything under the sun.

Traditions are such a big part of what makes each family unique. They are so fun to create when kids are little, but I admit when my kids were little I went a bit overboard with the traditions.

Ok, maybe WAY overboard on the traditions.

My husband, his daughter and I flew with my 10 month-old baby to Louisiana the day before Thanksgiving. The busiest travel day of the year or so I am told. If that isn’t daunting enough, we didn’t check any bags and we didn’t pack a stroller.

My second son was not an easy child. He was spirited and stubborn and his emotions often seemed to overwhelm his little body. He was also a loving and sweet little boy with beautiful blond curls who laughed often and wanted to snuggle with me, but so often there were tears and breath holding.

I met my step-kids over 13 years ago.

Going in, I pictured a lovely relationship with both my stepchildren and their mother. I envisioned that their mom and I would be friends and text and talk about issues with the kids. I naively thought she would welcome me as another parent for her children. I thought we could have coffee together and talk about parenting. I was very naïve.

I dropped my oldest son off to college this week and my mama heart aches. I know he was feeling nervous and excited and likely a little scared too. The mama instinct is to bundle them back up in the car and take them back home, but instead you have to smile and drive away. You have to let them go.

This is the time of summer that I look at the calendar and panic that summer is almost over and we haven’t done anything “summery”.

I pretty much do this every year, despite the fact that 1) we have done “summery” things and 2) I know that I do this every year.

I follow a few different mom’s groups on Facebook and read a post this week that made me stop, re-read, and then respond. The mom was venting how stressed she was as a single mom with budgeting and taking her kids on their annual trip to Disney. She commented how she was feeling overwhelmed with money issues and budgeting and had stopped doing anything for herself. Anything at all, including taking care of herself. I could feel her level of stress just from reading her post.

She wanted to know if this was normal. And so many people responded that yes it was, that they were stressed too. And that they had put themselves aside too. The predominant response was that it was imperative to do everything for your kids and that basically it was a mom’s job to just suck it up and suffer.

What?!?!