Susan and Janice over at Five Minutes for Mom are hosting a wonderful contest that is also a way to share a photo that makes you think about motherhood.  Quite good timing since Mother’s Day will be shortly arriving.  I had a difficult time choosing a photo, so I’ve got several to share.

Here’s my mom with my brother and me.  (My sister came later.)  My brother and I are “Irish twins” so to speak since we’re only 10 months and 8 days apart.  When I was old enough to realize what kind of toll that had to have been physically, I remember exclaiming to her, “Mom, you were pretty much pregnant for a year and a half!”  I think her exact reply was, “Don’t remind me.”  As difficult a time that was for her, literally having one baby right after another, I remember that she took the time to do things with us.  I think in this photo, we’re playing with our Sesame Street Colorforms set. 

Ah, yes.  This photo is famous in my family.  Here I am with my brother again after an afternoon’s play.  Mom said she looked out of the window to check on us while we played in the backyard one day to see that we were wallowing in the mudpatch that had been our garden earlier in the year.  Instead of getting upset, Mom said she remembers thinking to herself, “Well, they’re already messy.  I might as well let them have fun.”  Did we ever!  We slid around that huge mud puddle on our rear-ends and had a blast picking up huge handfuls of mud and glopping it onto each other’s head.  I love the fact that she allowed us to have fun and be kids and just kind of took it in stride.  She could have stormed out of the house and yelled at us for getting messy.  Instead, she let us have fun and just hosed us off afterwards.  Thanks, Mom.

 

This photo is me holding my daughter in the NICU when she was almost a month old.  I love that she’s holding my hand in it.  Although, we still had a ways to go in her preemie journey (and may still have twists and turns ahead of us), it was about the point that this photo was taken that I was feeling fairly confident that she would be okay.  I spent many hours praying to God that she would be fine, but also asking for the grace to make it through if she died.  She taught me more about God’s love and about being a parent right from the beginning and teaches me more every moment of her sweet, Beanish life.