I was over due with both my babies. With my son, I was 11 days overdue. Yes, nearly two weeks overdue and I was feeling pretty ragey (that's a word, right?). There's something that happens in all of your social interactions when you are uber pregnant - people get nervous and can only talk about how you are pregnant.  Below is a list of 10 things people said to me when I was pregnant and how I responded (or how I really REALLY wanted to respond):

Ever since you were a little girl, you dreamed of the day you would be pregnant. You would stuff a basket ball under your shirt and examine your profile in the mirror, smiling and imagining how wonderful it will be to carry life inside you. You have always admired the raw beauty of a pregnant woman. She glistens (and it's not just sweat) and her curves are poetic. Now, finally, it is your turn. 

I had a friend who was about to have her third babe and she shared, "Giving birth is one of my favorite things ever." At the time I was pregnant with my first babe and thought she was crazy (I mean she was pregnant, so she probably was a bit crazy). This was the first time I had ever heard something positive about giving birth. I was bombarded with horror stories about birth. Everything that can go wrong. The pain. The watermelon coming out of a pea size hole. The screaming. You've heard it all before, so I won't go into detail.

So Kate and William gave birth to their second royal less than a week ago. I feel a special connection to the gorgeous Kate Middleton because I have been pregnant with Kate not once, but twice. And, like Kate, I had son in 2013 and a daughter in 2015. AND I was also totally beautiful 10 hours after giving birth (cue laugh track please). So obviously, we are twins and soul sisters. 

As Mother's Day approaches, I am seeing more and more commercials for bouquets of fruit (wtheck) and heart-shaped necklaces (gag me!). Now, if you have a new mom in your life, let me tell you that while she is trying to eat healthy, she doesn't need a centerpiece of bananas and the small human attached to her hip will likely try to strangle her with that cliche piece of jewelry. Here are a few things I guarantee any new mom would love to receive:

I'm a chipper chicken sort of gal, not always, but most of the time. I like to have money and, believe it or not, the best way to have money is to spend less of it when you can. Here are 5 items that I always buy generic.

Dear Toddler of Mine,

I hear your screams and I see you on your back flailing your limbs because you want another cupcake (yes, readers, I sometimes give my toddler cupcakes - sue me). You are too young to understand that tantrums will not fly in our house, but for now I will let you learn on your own that tantrums are an ineffective way to get what you want. 

Pregnancy is hard. Marriage is hard. Put them together and they can be super duper hard.  The weeks and months leading up to pregnancy are exciting. They are filled with sex and baby names, but mostly sex. So needless to say, marriage is pretty strong at that point. The first couple weeks into pregnancy are fun and exciting too. You and your husband have a big secret about a tiny person and the emotional intimacy that comes along with sort of secret is unreal! Then week 6 hits (about 2 weeks after finding out about your bean)...

In September 2013, my husband and I had our first baby. He won our hearts immediately. Seven months later, we had a seven month old and were pregnant again. OH SNAP! In 9-ish months or so, we would have two babies under two. From the get-go we were like, let's just get this done with. We knew we wanted two kids so we figured we might as well just have them close in age and get out of this "having babies" stage of life. Yes, we planned this insanity.

In our home, 4:30-5:30 is the witching hour. It's far enough past nap time where Titus is bored and a little tired again and usually is begging to watch his "puppet show" as he is craving down time. Everyone starts crying all at once. Cecie is hungry, Titus is cranky, I'm hormonal and Harley (our Morkie) sees a squirrel out the back door. It's chaos and I begin praying that my husband will somehow invent teleporting and get his Vulcan ass home. 

Newborndom has passed and you have finally figured out the floppy little alien you took home from the hospital. It took a couple months, but finally, after lots of trial and error and reading all of the blogs and all of the books, you have your sweet cherub on a schedule which allows you to regain some semblance of a life. And, since you are a superstar parent who is greater than all of the parents who have gone before you and all the parents who will come after you, your little human is sleeping through the night at two months. YAY YOU!! Put that baby down for the night, have a glass of wine (and by "wine" I mean bourbon), go to sleep and don't worry about the baby until morning.

I think it's fair to say that most things that happen during our journey through momming and parenthood are universal across all people and cultures. No matter who we are, we feel a terrifying sense of responsibility of how our kids turn out in this ever-changing world. We don't fully realize this until these little aliens are placed in our arms for the first time. When they hand you your pink, slimy baby, your first thought is, "OMG SO MUCH FUDGING LOVE FOR THIS MONSTER!!!" Immediately followed by, "I hope he doesn't become a serial killer."

So you just found out you are pregnant! You've been having non stop sex for months (yay!!) and have peed on a thousand little sticks waiting for that second pink line to show itself in all its infinite glory and finally it does! You laugh, you cry, you pick out names for if it's a boy or if it's a girl. Your pillow talk is giddy and exciting and you agree to keep it a secret until 12 weeks, just in case. 

You know our good friend Karma, right? What goes around comes around. How many times have you looked at a young mom struggling with her screaming toddler in the cereal isle and you think to yourself, "that kid just needs a little structure and discipline" only to find yourself two minutes later dealing with a total uncontrollable meltdown of your own in the chip isle? That's the karma of parenting.

We attempted our first Easter Egg "hunt" with our 18 month old this year. By "hunt" I mean we threw a bunch of plastic eggs in 10 foot radius in the grass in our back yard and asked him to "clean up" by putting them in the lime green basket I found in "The Spot" at Target. He picked up about 60% of them before he started grabbing them out of the basket, shouting "BALL" and throwing them back into the grass. We got our instagram photo (which is the only reason we do these things anyway, right?), so we're good.