When I started blogging, it was mostly to make other people laugh and poke fun at the few blogs I’d ever seen. I co-blogged on my first blog, Mushroom Printing, with my home-slice Pashmina and I’m pretty sure that the only people that read it were people that had either seen my yapping maw in person or rampant spambots trying to sell me knock-off drugs at bargain basement prices (how could I resist? I mean, really).

I’m still not sure why I ventured out on my own.

I guess I’d found that I really liked to write.

I was lonely. Desperately lonely.

The people who liked stories about queefs and analogies about penises that looked like “a baby’s arm holding an apple” weren’t the same people who could possibly relate to how cripplingly lonely I now was, stuck at home with an infant who wouldn’t be held by anyone but Your Aunt Becky and a husband who was home approximately .0004 minutes a week.

I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. Of course, when you start a blog, readers don’t come flocking, and even after I’d gotten some readers, I’d never connected that people actually READ the words I wrote.

Even now, when I sit down to peck out a post on my keyboard, I don’t actually imagine that the words I write on my own screen are read by anything other than spambots. I know you’re out there because I keep up with most of you on your own blogs, but I still don’t realize that you know me.

And that my words might actually mean something.

My daughter was born in January of 2009 with a neural tube defect called an encephalocele. It’s a fairly rare defect of the bones of the skull. When she was a wee fetus, no more than a blob of cells really, those bones didn’t fuse properly and part of her brain developed outside of her skull.

Somehow, this was undetected throughout my pregnancy, despite many ultrasounds and various screening procedures, and when she rocketed into the world, all hell broke loose.

I was lucky enough to have my Band of Merry Pranksters here to hold me up when I was sure that the world was collapsing around me. In a room that had previously been full of oxygen, I could no longer breathe and you all brought me tanks of air, and stroked my hair, telling me that it was okay to be afraid because this was some fucked up shit, indeed.

Every email you ever sent to me, all of you who reached out to me during those times and every other time, telling me about your own children, how they struggled and how scared you had been, I saved them all. Maybe I didn’t answer you because I couldn’t; I was literally paralyzed on the couch, I cried every time I got one.

I cried because I wasn’t alone anymore. It didn’t matter where I was, I wasn’t alone.

I’ve never forgotten that kindness you continue to bestow upon me and I never will.

This January found me celebrating the my daughter’s birthday while struggling mightily with some Post Traumatic Stress Disorder related to her birth. I was floundering, clawing against the darkness and trying to find my light when I got an email.

Someone, by chance, had happened across my blog, searching for “encephalocele” or possibly “neural tube defect in babies.” Someone had just found out that their child, their 18-week fetus had what appeared to be an encephalocele and had been desperately searching for a success story on the Internet to give them hope.

I doubt I’m the first blog you come across when you search for those terms, but there in Google, somewhere, my blog, my profanity laden blog was found. And you can find no greater success story of someone kicking the ass of an encephalocele to give you hope than the hope of my daughter, Amelia Grace.

This is why I am so proud to be a March of Dimes Mom. This is why I am so proud to be a blogger. This is why I am so proud to be Your Aunt Becky and have a Band of Merry Pranksters to love on.

The email I got was from Nikki, who is now one of my best friends. I mentioned her in a Go Ask Aunt Becky, asking you guys to spare her and her baby some great thoughts and prayers back when she’d emailed me initially.

Well, Internet, Your Aunt Becky is an AUNT!

This is Lily Grace and she is my niece! Doesn’t she look like me? (just nod, Pranksters)

Lily is doing fantastically, neurologically intact and clearly adorable as hell, which goes without saying.

Lily is having neurosurgery today, a similar procedure to what Mimi had, although she does not have a true encephalocele. Her neural tube defect is filled with cerebrospinal fluid only, which is considered to be a win if you’re a neurologist. Being full of brain matter is much, much worse, so YAY for cephalocele or meningiocele, or whatever fancy thing the kids are calling it these days.

Today, Pranksters, I’m asking you to spare some love and light and prayers for sweet baby Lily Grace, who will, no doubt, kick brain surgery in the teeth like her cousin Amelia Grace, for whom she is named after (in part).

And I want to, once again, thank you for being there. Maybe I’ll never truly believe that actual PEOPLE read my blog, but I do know that the connections that I’ve made, the friendships I’ve made, those remind me of something that I desperately needed to know. Something we all need to be reminded of.

Every word we write, every tweet we send, every connection we forage, every friend we make, every breath we breathe, we are none of us alone.

So I’ve frequently waxed on about how my daughter kicked neurosurgery in the balls because, well, anyone who undergoes brain surgery as a 3 week old and walks off with as wicked a scar as my Mimi did deserves to say that about themselves (or have their mother brag about it). Her scar is such that she’s going to have to come up with some kind of wicked story like, “bar fight” which is my go-to story when strangers ask.

Trust me, I get some looks.

Later, I said that Mimi kicked ass because she beat a diagnosis that often kills babies, or leaves them severely retarded. She’s entirely normal, if not a bit feisty, which, again, kicks ass.

What I didn’t count on was that my daughter would be a bruiser.

Sure, my mother often said that I was born “smoking a cigar and barking out orders” but I sort of thought that she meant that I was a short, fat, balding bookie kind of baby. I don’t know why I always pictured myself as The Penguin from Batman, but I did.

I didn’t think she meant that I was a BRUISER. Apparently, THAT was what she meant, not that I was a villain-baby, because to hear her talk about it, she STILL shudders when she describes me as a baby.

Maybe that was why my first word was “fuck.” I don’t know. But it does explain a whole lot about my personality now, doesn’t it? (just nod, it’s easier)

But that would be my daughter, who is, apparently, myself, who is, without a doubt, kicking all of our asses to get what she wants. It doesn’t really matter WHAT it is, she’ll fight you for it. Ear-bleeding shrieks followed by tiny fingered pinches, then followed by a gaze from those beautiful, luminous eyes, I mean, you IMAGINED that tantrum, didn’t you?

Nothing this sweet looking could be such a devil in disguise:

Underneath that sweet, cake-eating exterior, she’s plotting how to steal your wallet AND car-keys. Amelia, she’s a thug-a-lug.

Really, I thought that my testosterone-fueled middle son would have been the member of the Sausage Factory to contend with but it turns out that his sister is going to be the member of the family that will be all DROP AND GIVE ME FIFTY, SOLDIER. Mimi, who will probably drop the fluffy sounding name and go by the more refined sounding “A-Dog” will make an excellent drill sergeant where she will inflict her torture on her troops so much that they will have nightmares that she is standing over them, pinching them.

Of course, she will be standing over them, pinching them while they sleep, because she is THAT kind of bruiser.

I’m wicked proud of my ickle A-Dog, even though I’m sure eventually she’ll try to cut my hair into a regulation buzz-cut every time she sees me, which is fine, so long as I don’t go to sleep (Aunt Becky doesn’t sleep, she waits). Because I bet she WOULD do it while I sleep.

It’s a good thing, I think. The world needs more strong, fearless, smart, pinchy females to stomp the earth in their combat boots making everything their bitch. Amelia will be like Chuck Norris, only cuter.

Just don’t tell her I called her cute. She’ll punch me in the throat.

Fear me world, because I have come to CONQUER you.

Once I finish my juicey.

—————

At Toy With Me, I’m talking about my BRILLIANT plan: Peckers of the Caribbean.

When I found out that last crotch parasite did not, in fact, come with a penis, I will fully admit to you, Pranksters, that I cried. Not like the big UGLY cry, but still, there were some tears. I’d wanted a daughter so badly and this was my last baby and I’d always sort of pictured my life surrounded by a sea of sausages. I’d never thought I’d be lucky enough to have a daughter.

And there she was, resplendent in her pixelated glory, mooning me on the ultrasound screen. My Amelia. Clearly, her mother’s daughter.

When she was born, she was a sleepy little thing, all big bush-baby brown eyes, sweet as pie, even through her brain surgery. We can all now safely say that she handled it better than the rest of us did, and it wasn’t until she started moving that I really noticed something.

Amelia is…okay, I’m just going to say it. Amelia is the Incredible Hulk. You take something away from her and she’s all “HULK SMASH, ME ANGRY, I KILL YOU WHILE YOU SLEEP WOMAN.” I’m actually sort of afraid to go to sleep without locking my doors, which is a FIRE HAZARD, yo. You know I am Captain Safety, Internet.

She’s just so fucking determined to get what she wants that I fear for anyone–or anything–that dares to get in her way.

See, I took the TV remote away from her the other day, because she’s destroying it, right? And I swear to Baby Jesus, the girl is now planning to somehow hoist a dead, bloody horse head into bed next to me now. She may weigh 23 pounds, but that is 23 pounds of DOOM that will fuck your shit UP when you don’t give her the motherfucking remote.

Because I am also a slave laborer, I make my eldest empty the dishwasher–a task that my youngest also loves to help with. And by “help” I mean, “strew the silverware around the kitchen.” So my mom was trying to hold Amelia OUT of the dishwasher so that it could be done in a fraction of the time and perhaps no one would get a concussion from a rogue, flying knife.

HA.

RIGHT.

Amelia was all, “FUCK YOU” and screamed and slithered and writhed until she was put down, where she very happily collected all of the clean spoons. Then she tried to beat her brother about the head with them until I pried them from her hands, and I swear she looked at me with murder in her mind. Luckily, she cannot kill me with spoons, because I hid them all.

The girl is seriously going to break bones, suck the marrow out and then beat someone to death with the hollow empty shells.

When I noted this to my mother, she said, “Oh, she reminds me of someone that I know.”

Thinking she probably meant John Wayne Gacy, I said, “Pogo, the Killer Clown?”

She didn’t even laugh before looking hard at me and saying, “No, Rebecca. YOU.” Then she kept staring at me like I was supposed to say something.

Eventually I retorted with, “Well…the prospect of eating bone marrow makes me want to puke.”

And then I reached for the number for my GP to see if he can put me in a coma for the next 18 or so years.

My daughter

Here you see Amelia rocking out with a homemade shiv. She’s about to cut her brother for hogging the water bucket.

Myself.

What I didn’t tell you is that every Easter, every time we got any sort of animal-themed cake, I ate the head. I INSISTED upon eating the head. This is the lamb cake BEFORE I ate the motherfucker’s head.

I guess that she’s my daughter after all.

I got a bill in the mail last week, which is highly unsurprising, because between my “Get out of -ologist free card” I’m pretty much always sending off some payment or another. So it was with exactly NO emotion whatsoever that I opened a bill from the big umbrella corporation that is home to most of my doctors.

When I put it THAT way, it sounds so sinister.

Anyway.

I opened up a bill, looked at the dates of services, squinched up my eyebrows, wondering how my daughter had walked herself to the doctor, and then looked BACK at the dates of service and realized they were asking for a co-pay from last year.

From one of her many pre-surgical neurologist appointments. The dates just happened to coincide with this month, minus a year.

Somehow, in all of the hustle and bustle of taking our daughter to and from the doctor every day or two, our daughter–whose age was still measured in days–I’d somehow forgotten this one, single co-pay. Everything else has been long paid off, all the receipts and insurance pre-authorizations shoved into a manila folder somewhere.

It’s marked maybe “Amelia.” Or “encephalocele.” Or maybe it says nothing. It could say “Happy Birthday, Steve;” I don’t actually know. There are thousands of cross-sectional pictures of her brain in that folder too, should she ever want to see how her skull wasn’t properly put together, or where her brain hung out of the back of her head.

I thought about what a difference a year makes as I wrote out the check yesterday, because it’s been almost a year since my daughter had her brain surgery. I’m the same person who wrote,

“I cannot break this feeling of doom and foreboding. I cannot imagine a life past next Thursday one way or another. I cannot believe that I am lucky enough to have this baby AND KEEP HER.”

I wish I could go back and give myself a huge reassuring hug because I remember how horribly terrified I was that she was going to pass on the table. If I could do anything, I’d go back and do that.

She kicked brain surgery in the balls on February 26, 2009:

(she was very, very, very swollen from surgery)

And here she is now, my daughter, the girl with curls like a halo. The one who regularly breaks the bones of her foe and then sucks down the marrow for a snack. My ass-kickin’ little girl.

Not to be outdone by her oldest brother, she helps wash walls, even if it’s only with a wee Playmobil brush. Also: planning on how to remove that wall with her teeth. Because OBVIOUSLY.

She even helps with laundry. If by “helping” you mean, mischievously throwing all the “too small” clothes I’d sorted carefully out all over the house with her brother so that they could roll around in them. Which, I have to say, may have made my too-small heart grow 30 sizes.

Oh Amelia Grace, how wonderful life is with you in our world. We couldn’t imagine it any other way.

Dear Amelia,

The first thing that I thought when I saw you in the spotlight that had been aimed at my vagina was “holy shit, I gave birth to a statue!” But you have to remember that I was in extreme pain and had just found out that there was potentially something wrong with you.

And, well, you were covered in white goo.

My second thought was, “holy shit, that baby is PISSED the fuck OFF!” It sounds indelicate, saying that about a brand new baby, but I assure you, my girl, you have the lung capacity and vocal control of someone who is going to either be an Olympic swimmer (providing you’re not physically gimpy like me) or an opera singer (providing your not singerly gimpy like me).

It was a good thing they’d put us in the back corner of the L and D unit, or you’d have probably scared all of those women OUT of labor. THAT is how loud you were. Which, had I been forcibly ejected from my comfy home, I’d have been mad too.

Your temper is legendary in our house, but so is your sweetness. While both of your brothers had first years on the planet that made my hair go grey and my hand trembly, you were sweetness and love. And thunder of doom.

I think that combination will serve you well, actually. It’s always served me well.

I know as a mother, I’m supposed to be terrified of having a daughter. My own mother and I have a relationship that can at best be described as “complicated,” but with you, well, it’s just not. It will be maybe when you’re a surly teenager, but now it’s not.

I’ve never stopped proud when I say “I have a daughter” because to me, I always figured I would have a mess of sons. To me, having a daughter was the holy grail. The pink light in a sea of sausages. I am so privileged, so unbelievably honored to have you as my own, that I can’t imagine a day that I wouldn’t gnaw off my arm to give it to you.

(I’d do the same, of course, for your brothers)

The ways that you’ve changed me over the past year, I can’t even begin to put into words. If I could go back to those weeks when you were a wee embryo and have your neural tube fuse properly, I don’t think I would. Because through you, I’ve become a better person.

The world is a good place, Amelia, and you don’t know it, but you have made yourself quite a lot of friends already. People in all kinds of places have been praying for you since you were a wee thing and they’ve been watching you grow, cheering you on as you reach each milestone, and celebrating each victory.

You are so, so blessed.

As you grow, there are going to be times and places where people tell you that you can’t do something. Now, I’m not talking about spray painting your room silver or something stupid (the FUMES! GAH!), I’m talking about your dreams, your hopes, your aspirations.

Listen to me, my girl: DON’T LISTEN TO THEM.

Absorb every single bit of negativity into your soul and let it strengthen you. Let it fortify your resolve to do it. Let it feed you. Only you know what you need to do. Only you know the path you must take. And you do anything in your power to get there. Stop at nothing.

Live a life of no regrets, my love. Don’t say yes when you mean no. Say no when you mean no and don’t feel even slightly bad about it.

And remember that when you’ve taken over the world, call your mother. She loves you with all of her heart.

So today, my darling girl, on your first birthday, we shall eat pink cupcakes with hearts and pink sprinkles and we will play trucks and cars and trains because that is what you love.

Happy Birthday, big girl. I love you with all that I am.

I am so, so honored to be your mother.

Love,

Mamamamama

Yesterday, our Early Intervention therapist came over to evaluate Amelia and for the first time I was pretty sure what she would find.

I was right:

My daughter is clearly an Evil Genius.

I have no doubt that in several years, when this is really all in our rear-view mirror, and she’s taking over the world from her bedroom, plotting and scheming, I’ll laugh when I remind myself that I ever thought that she might not kick the world’s ass.

I don’t pretend to understand how or why and honestly, at this moment, I’m still in shock. I cannot believe the statistical bullet that she dodged. I can only imagine that she was put on this earth to do Big Things.

As for now, my daughter is no longer in Early Intervention. She’s still eligible, thanks to her diagnosis, but she no longer needs the evaluations, so I had her therapist close her case. She never actually needed any therapies.

So look out, world, Amelia’s here and she’s ready to kick your ass if you stand in her way. Sweet as pie until you fuck with her, that’s my daughter, and don’t you forget it.

“Now my friends are wearing worried smiles, living out a dream of what they was.

Don’t you think it’s sometimes wise not to grow up?”

–Rolling Stones, 100 Years Ago

In terms of blogging years, I’m practically a geriatric and I often have to stop myself from being all “IN MY DAY, BLOGGERS WERE HONEST AND DIDN’T EXPECT…” so I can safely say things like, “normally in my New Years wrap-up posts I say something about how happy I am to kiss the year goodbye” because I’ve had enough of them to choose from.

This morning, I sat here trying to figure out what I wanted to do for my New Years post because it felt weird to not mention that today is the last day of 2009. Normally I do the only meme that I ever do, but today it just didn’t feel right. Then I thought about doing a year-in-review-through-posts and that didn’t sum it all up either because seriously? January and February alone could have each had 10 or so links to posts.

So instead, I’m going to be uncharacteristically honest about my year.

2009 was not the worst year of my life. I don’t know how a year that started by bringing my last child, my daughter Amelia Grace Sherrick Harks, into this world could possibly be a bad one. I was so proud to finally have a daughter and nearly a year later, I am still so proud to have a daughter that even as I type this, my eyes fill with tears.

She was born with an undiagnosed neural tube defect, yes, an encephalocele and I very much feared that I’d birthed her only to send her in for neurosurgery to sacrifice her on the operating table, but would I have traded those three weeks with her? No. Even if she’d passed, I wouldn’t have traded those minutes with her. She’s my daughter.

Amelia, all 8 pounds of her didn’t pass on the table and she’s gone on to beat all of the odds of her grim diagnosis and has proved to me that just because someone tells you that you shouldn’t be able to do something, doesn’t mean that you can’t. It’s a lesson we all could stand to remember now and again.

While Amelia has thrived and continued to place at or above level for every single test that she’s been given, I’ve sort of managed to tread water this year managing to keep my head mostly above water. Lately, I’ve been drinking gasoline to keep warm.

I’m not sure it’s working.

I was diagnosed with PTSD stemming from her traumatic birth and I don’t know if it’s that, or PPD or some other weird acronym, but I’m not sleeping well or eating well, and some nights I manage fight off the demons and others, I’m slain by them.

But I’m hopeful. I’ve been here before and I’ve always managed to claw my way back out of the hole and into the light again.

So I approach 2010 full of renewed hope for the future, because no matter how full of the darkness I feel, I can feel the light on my face and I know it’s all around me. Soon it will be within me.

I am hopeful.

I have hope.

Happy New Year.

In movies, you always know when the really important moments are about to happen because the music swells and ebbs and the soft focus lens sweeps through while time slows down capturing everything in full panoramic detail. It’s nice, I guess, if you’re a movie goer, and if your IQ is 12, because HI, they don’t normally put stuff in movies that isn’t related to the PLOT.

Anyway.

The day that I met The Daver wasn’t one of those days where I had any idea that my life was about to change. We were just meeting for the Einstein exhibit and breakfast in the city as friends, set up by a mutual friend, but it wasn’t all date-y and I certainly wasn’t impeccably dressed. Neither, I should add, was he.

Weeks later, I woke up in bed with him and I had A Moment. It wasn’t a Hollywood Moment, where we adorably shared breakfast in a perfectly fluffy bed, having coffee and witty reparte with our Chicago Tribune, no. I’m sure I was a drooly mess all bleary eyed and sleepy, and The Daver was actually asleep, but I rolled over and Had A Moment.

(I am not a person who has Moments.)

But I rolled over and said to myself: I am going to marry this guy.

And I did. It was one of those rare defining moments. You only have a certain number of those in your life, I think, where something happens maybe to you or maybe within you and nothing will ever be the same no matter what. Defining moments.

The first time I walked into my microbiology laboratory and realized that for once in a long time I was home. Having my naked, warm son laid upon my chest. Finding out that my son was autistic and that I wasn’t just a terrible mother. Knowing that from whatever destruction I found my life in, I would rebuild myself again and again.

I’ve found myself in sort of a mixture of elation and sadness these days–kind of like chewing on a foil-wrapped candy–while I’m really thrilled by the way things are, I can’t help but feel I need to pay tribute and honor the year that we’re laying to rest in a couple of weeks. Never has a year been more filled with defining moments for me.

When I close my eyes, I can still hear my doctor as clearly as if it were yesterday, “Becky, there’s something wrong with your baby’s head” and I can still remember all of the anxious uncertainty. Her first weeks and months were a gigantic question mark. There were no NICU doctors coming to see us or tell us what was wrong, no group huddles or anything. It was all very, “here’s this, here’s that, you can go home, OH WAIT, NO, WE’RE TAKING HER BACK.”

No one comforted us or held us up.

That’s a lie. That’s a lie.

YOU did. As the year draws to a close, I need to once again thank you, my friends who are more than people who live in the computer to me. In a year full of defining moments, I learned who had my back. You did and I am so grateful for all of you. There were times when I all I could do was read and reread my comments and emails because it was like you were here, holding my hand and stroking my hair. Because you were.

I know that if you could have been, many of you would have been. That means so much to me and to The Daver and it will mean so much to my daughter too. I’ve saved every single email that anyone sent me about my daughter in a special folder, and while I don’t routinely open it, because I can’t bear it, it’s there.

I’m shocked and humbled and honored by all of you. Thank you.

I got word very late in the day on Friday that I’d won Divine Caroline’s Love This Site Award, and the only reason I’d won it was because of you. I admit it, I cried. Shut UP, I’ll fart on your TOOTHBRUSH if you laugh.

Sometime in January or February, I believe, we are supposed to get our gift cards, and when I do, mine will be given to the March of Dimes in honor of my daughter Amelia. Because in the midst of all this fucked up year, I’ve found the silver lining. I’m officially a March of Dimes Mom now and while this has been one of the hardest years ever, I wouldn’t change it.

2010 is going to find me rebuilding myself again*, and I’m proud to do it with my daughter, my sweet ass-kicking cinnamon girl by my side. And I know that you, The Internet, will be there too. Now if you tell ANYONE that I have feelings, I’ll kick you.

What are some of your defining moments o! Internet, my Internet? Why don’t you pull up a chair and a glass of Eggnog and tell Your Aunt Becky all about things that made you who you are?

*Am totally getting a tattoo.

In order to be a Sherrick, you have to be willing to deal with traditions. I don’t mean the OCD type where you have to touch the laundry basket 17 times before you can go to sleep or lick the doorknob before you can eat dinner, but in my family there tends to be two types of things: the stuff that you do and The Way Things Are.

The stuff you do is the superfluous crap that goes with living, you know, laundry and work and sleeping and all that stuff, but The Way Things Are, well, this is DOGMA. TRADITION.

And you don’t fuck with TRADITION in my family. The square root of 4 is 2, Helium is the second element on the periodic table of elements and we have basil pesto mashed fucking potatoes on Thanksgiving. ALWAYS.

My brother, my father and my two- year old seem to be the most affected by this DOGMA of The Way Things Are. While I’m happy to try something different, like let’s say The Cheesecake of the Gods rather than my normal Bourbon Pecan Pie, well, that messes with the balance of the universe and well, we can’t have THAT. The universe might IMPLODE because I dared change tradition!

I have my own DOGMA of The Way Things Are, but I’m a little looser with my interpretation of it.

Every year, we sponsor a child from The Giving Tree at Ben’s school. And while my far more rigid BROTHER might have to sponsor the same GENDER or AGE bracket, I’m content to randomly choose one. Last year Dave chose a boy around Benner’s age who wanted socks. SOCKS. I know. I KNOW.

This year I chose a girl whose age was unspecified. I chose her and my eyes filled with tears, much like they always do every single year when I choose a kid from the tree.

Maybe it’s because I think of Christmas as such a magical time for children and I remember how much it hurt the year that I couldn’t afford any toys for Ben because I was so poor. Or maybe it’s because I remember having Christmas taken away from me as a punishment. Or maybe it’s because I think about how hard it must be to be on the other side as a child.

I cried there, though, as I picked up the tag with the gift choice on it because it was what I was going to get my daughter. No age, no identifying characteristics, just a parallel into my own life:

Baby Doll.

Amelia loves the baby dolls that we have, but those aren’t her dolls, they belong to Alex and Ben who begrudgingly share them. So I’d been planning to get her a doll for Christmas. In fact, I’d already been up and down the aisles at my boyfriend, Target searching for the perfect doll, so proud that I could finally go down the Pink Aisles at last.

Friday, Black Friday, we have another DOGMA TRADITION where we go out that evening to Target, my home away from home, to score some cheap DVD’s and see what they still have on sale. While we were there, I noticed that they had this baby doll and accessories pack on sale for half off which I promptly snatched up from the vultures in the toy aisle for my Giving Tree Girl.

This thing was AWESOME. I was admiring it as we walked along because it was precisely the sort of thing my hippie mother never would have bought me, eschewing it in favor of some wooden, anatomically correct doll I would have lobbed out the window. It had everything, though, crib, car seat, high chair and stroller along with assorted bottles and outfits.

I tend to go a little overboard for my Giving Tree Kids because it makes me feel good and why not?

We got it home and I left it on the floor downstairs so that I remembered to wrap it and send it back to school with Ben because I am FULL of The Forgetful. In the whirlwind of unpacking after Thanksgiving Part II, I didn’t really notice it until she was on top of it, but my daughter had made a beeline for the box with the baby inside.

She had pulled herself up on it and was trying her damnedest to get the baby out. Every side she explored, looking for a way in and OH was she pissed when she realized that she couldn’t get at it. I really hope that my Giving Tree Girl loves it as much as my daughter did.

Everyone had teased me that my daughter was going to eschew anything girly to be a tomboy like her brothers, just because I wanted her to be girly, and maybe that’s going to happen.

Then again, maybe not.

Let’s talk about how much I need that hat in my size, Internet, because I SO do.

Those shoes are for Binky Spohr, but Amelia dug them out and loves them. They’re much too small for her, but you know, a girl loves what a girl loves.

You should totally read my interview with my homie Sci-Fi dad: “Thinking is Hard” here. And my Slate.com interview ran simultaneously here, on The Happiness Project, which is a really neat blog run by my friend Gretchen. She’s a thousand times cooler than me, so you should read her.

And then I need more people to interview me because I am officially done with interviews, except those that I conduct in my head. SO SOMEONE INTERVIEW ME. PLEASE.

———————

Every year when my son Ben has to write a “This Year I’m Thankful For” letter, it reads sort of like this:

Dear Mom and Dad,

I am thankful that you buy me sheets. And blankets.

This would lead you to believe that I have him chained in the basement somewhere, perhaps duct-taped to a wall, shivering, only to be tossed a blanket when I’m feeling particularly benevolent. And well that is obviously true, it’s not.

That, of course, written by the same child who recently sent home the answer to the question, “Where would you take Mom for her birthday?”

McDonald’s because it’s my favorite and we eat it every day.

I may have junk in my trunk, Internet, but I do NOT eat McDonald’s EVERY day.

So it’s clear that my son, while he’s fanciful, is also pretty full of The Awesome, because that note is SO on my fridge because I laugh every time that I see it. Not only did he not answer the question because he didn’t pick out my favorite place, he also told his teacher that we eat fast food every day.

I’m thinking we’ll watch Super Size Me for Thanksgiving. Should be very uplifting, I’m thinking. Then it will make me very hungry.

Today is the day before American Thanksgiving, though, and because no one is actually going to be reading blogs tomorrow, save for my spam bots, which are either sending me really punny jokes, insulting me, or selling me knock-off prescription drugs, I figured that today is probably the day to Be Thankful.

And since the only person in the house to regularly write stuff ABOUT being thankful is 8, I don’t exactly have a killer model to choose from unless you want to hear how much I heart q-tips (orgasm in my ear!) or bath towels (orgasm on my ass!).

So I’m going to buck Ben’s model and go out on my own here and surprise the shit out of all of you.

Your Aunt Becky is thankful for this year.

Probably one of the worst, hardest years of my life so far, (made even worse by the Eggo waffle shortage!) and if given the option to have it any other way, I’d say no.

Because even in the darkest times, when I thought that I was suffocating under the weight of what I was carrying, when my fears crushed my chest and it was all that I could do to breathe in and breathe out and the rushing in and out of air seemed to fill the whole world and I didn’t know how I was going to go on, I found myself.

I did go on.

Seconds turned to minutes turned to hours and I lived and grew in those spaces between where I thought that I was going to burst apart at the seems, the fear, the weight, the terror pressing down. The days when I hurt so badly that nothing anyone could do ever helped, and my throat felt tight and the tears were always so close, those days eventually wore away. Slowly, they drifted away.

In their wake, I stand now, a different person.

I’ve lost friends, lost respect for people, I’ve seen who will stand beside me, and who is content to stand back. I am not who I was and I am thankful.

Today, I am thankful for my daughter Amelia, who, in her 9 months on the planet, has shown me more about who I am than I have learned in the 29 years before her. My sweet cinnamon girl, my Emma Gracie, the one who lived, my only daughter, the girl with curls like a halo, for who you are and what you have taught me and the light you have shown me, I am thankful.

Today and always.