(As a true testament to the “I’ll get to it tomorrow” philosophy, this was written November 19 and not to be posted for another two months.)

It’s hard to believe as I sit here hearing the sound of crackers being thrown on the floor followed by squeals of delight that last year my home was baby free. One year ago I was the mother of two, spending my free moments switching between being excited for to finally see the little kicker inside me to being terrified that juggling three children would finally result in me huddled crying in the corner. But regardless of what was going on in my mind, my body and doctor decided that Fisher peanut #3 was ready to meet the world and so on November 19, 2009, Grace Joelle Fisher let out her first big scream of many and waved her fists Jersey style.

When I was a new mom, I questioned everything. I followed every book, asked for advice and actually listened to it, and worried constantly about milestones and charts. The second time around I still had some doubts and questions on the whole motherhood thing but between the little experience I had, my handy dandy books, needy toddler and the screaming colicky baby, I just trucked through it with my head down. This time however, I used the books as coasters for my wine glass, asked for advice on good books to read and worried more about my own sanity than the kids milestones. It’s not that I believe I know more than I did six years ago about child rearing, it’s that I now know more about myself. As a new mom, I looked at parenting as child-centric. Now, with three kids, I realize it’s mommy-centric.

We named Fisher Girl #3 Grace for a reason. A few months before I got pregnant with Grace, I lost a baby at 9 weeks. We had seen the picture, heard the heartbeat and even nicknamed the baby. It was like opening a check for a million dollars only to find out it had arrived at the wrong house. It was a baby we didn’t know we wanted, learned to love, and then lost. My heart hurt but with the laughter from the other kids echoing through the house, I healed. So when I got pregnant with the peanut that would later arrive nine healthy months later, I prayed to whoever would listen to grant me the grace of knowing another child. And so, as soon as I knew it was a girl, I knew what I would name her. Grace. It fit in a way OJ’s glove never did. And she fit our family.

It’s amazing how true it is that you can’t remember what your life was like without each of your children. You can remember what you did (aside from those really wild blackout type nights) but not how you felt. Because no matter how crazy some days get, how some moments you really do begin to pull your hair out, once you know this life, you feel blessed.

Things I’ve learned since being a mother that friends never told me:

1) No one needs you until you enter the bathroom. Then they will mistake the phrase “I’m in the bathroom” as “please open the door.”

2) Responding to your 4 year old when they tell you that you are mean with “I know you are but what am I” will get you many disgusted looks in the grocery store.

3) You will discuss poop, it’s colors, it’s smell and it’s frequency with other intelligent adults with such intensity that you anyone watching but not listening would think you were discussing strategic global initiatives.

4) Your body will be inspected and touched by so many strangers in the hospital that you will ask for a hot-line number to call.

5) You care more about bringing sleep back than bringing sexy back.

6) You will carry an expensive extra large diaper bag that has everything in it but baby food and diapers.

7) You should sleep when the baby is sleeping is a great rule but once you are sleeping the baby no longer is.

8) Your husband will consider watching you get dressed as “date night.” He may even give you flowers afterwards.

9) Remember not to facebook that you only shower every three days. No one will want to sit next to you at soccer practice.

10) Sometimes you can understand why some animals eat their young. You will feel strongly enough about it that you will mention this theory to the random clerk at the grocery store.

Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togethaw today. Mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam wiffin a dweam…‚

View movie clip

Classic scene from that cult classic movie that brought us the six fingered man, the Dread Pirate Roberts, and the beautiful Princess Buttercup. The line from the old man in his funny voice beginning the wedding scene of Buttercup and Prince Humperdinck.

I always found humor in this scene. Probably because I never thought I’d get married. I think it took me about seven years to finally accept I was. In the first two years together, I would find myself in the middle of a fight removing my ring (ok sometimes throwing it) and yelling that it was over. As if we were in a casual dating situation with no permanent ties. I suppose I had a combination of immaturity and commitment issues. It was never that I didn’t love my husband, it was probably more that I was afraid he would suddenly change his mind and I would be the one left watching him walk away. I found coming to a mutual agreement on things difficult. He would probably say I still do;)

Neither one of us came from divorced parents. Both of us have parents who are still married today. But for some reason, I never thought past what it would be like after you have your “wedding scene.” We had lived together for two years before getting married so it wasn’t the sudden expectations of shared spaces that caught me off guard and vulnerable. I think it was never having had to problem solve with another person.

Everyone has heard the classic wedding vows: for better or worse, in sickness or in health, until death do us part. We tweaked ours a bit to remove some of the negative things but the gist was the same. Baby, with this ring you are stuck with me.

The concept seems easy enough. You say toe-may-toe I say ta-ma-toe but let’s agree to disagree. I’ll love you when you leave the toilet seat up as long as you love me when I leave my feminine hygiene boxes on the bathroom floor. We fall easily into roles like you are in charge of the trash removal and dog poo pick up and I’ll field the laundry, grocery shopping and toilet scrubbing. Everything looks good on paper. But the thing about paper is it can be easily ripped, written and re-written on, or crumbled up and tossed out.

No one explained to me that those vows are figurative, not literal. I was pretty ready to get to the reception, throw on flip flops and just celebrate. I knew we agreed to spend our lives together but truthfully, I couldn’t fully understand what that meant.

These are the things I’ve learned about those vows:
1)For better is not just celebrating when you get a raise or for worse kissing when you forget to brush your teeth. It is learning how to somehow rebound after you get to the stage where you have fall into a rut or stuck in a moment you can’t get out of. We all have our bad days or months or even years. It is knowing the right combination of giving space and intervening. It is letting someone change for the better and accepting them for the worse.

2)In sickness or in health means more than recovering from the flu or holding someone’s hair while they are hungover after a big night out on the town. It is holding each others hand when your child is in the hospital getting oxygen. It is crying tears of joy together at the birth of your new baby girl and screaming tears into each others shoulders when you no longer see a heartbeat. It is hugging each other other when the results come back negative and one day it will be holding hands when it is too hard to say the final goodbye.

3)The last part of the vows sounds pretty self explanatory. But as my husband and I share more together I am learning that last part is not just about our own deaths. Each time we lose someone or something else of value in lives it pushes on the marriage. I have seen in others that this can be the make or break piece. There is a large part of suffering that goes along with death, before, during and after. Everyone grieves different and accepting that without anger, fear or blame is difficult.

Marriage is fun. It is remarkable to sit and look back at all we’ve built together. But it is work. We don’t wake up everyday liking each other. Sometimes we don’t go to bed liking each other either. But every moment I’ve learned that we love each other. It’s not always easy and it’s funny to realize that one day I’ll look back at today and refer to it as in “our early days.” If we are lucky.

My grandparents used to still hold hands after 50 years of marriage. Of course, my grandfather would sometimes take his hearing aids out to not hear every word and my grandmother would sometimes be frustrated at my grandfathers passive nature but they took care of each other. They had love. I hope in 50 years my grandkids will be saying the same about us.

So yes, ma-wage is what brings us together. But learning and love is what keeps us here. It may not be the stuff of romance novels. But it is ours.

Recently I reconnected with an old friend who’s immediate response when discovering I had three little people was you must be the funnest mom ever! I snorted at this and made a joke about my kids disagreeing. Later on I kept replaying this exchange over and over like the police do when watching store video footage after a robbery. I knew there was a clue in there somewhere, something bothering me that I was missing on the surface. Days later as I was sweating in the dance class waiting area struggling to prevent my ten month old from eating a lollipop left on the dusty floor and preparing to race my four year old out the door to a playday it hit me. My friend had used the word FUN to describe the me she used to know. The f word adjectives in my current bloodstream were more along the lines of frustrated, furious, or frazzled. FUN. I forgot what that felt like.

The next few days I watched my kids as we jetted between errands, schools, dance classes, horse riding lessons, gymnastics and soccer. I saw their laughter with their friends at these activities but noticed that they became more serious around me as if waiting for the milk to spill off the edge of the table. I suddenly realized that while giving my kids experiences and opportunities was my intention, I had not only run myself to the point of exhaustion but stopped enjoying all the things we were doing. It had all become another facet of my mommy workload.

Many of my friends and I joke about our “Disney dad” husbands. These men are loving hands on dads who bring the fun to our kids with their arrivals. Their first priority is not to vacuum or run the kids out somewhere but to shape their hands into claws becoming the Daddy Monster chasing the kids around at bedtime or giving an extra squirt of ketchup on the fries that don’t fall into the household food pyramid. These Disney dads thrill their kids while frustrating us wives. I often can be heard snapping angerily towards the Daddy Monster that it would be nice if I could just sit and play. When my husbands asks why I don’t just do it, I then launch into the literal laundry list of things to be done while boring myself and him in the process.

Suddenly I wondered, when did I stop having fun? Why can’t I get on the floor and play instead of sweeping it? And why try to create these experiences for my children when I was actually projecting the stress of juggling these activities instead enjoying my time with them? I’ve forgotten all the reasons I became a mom. In doing so I took on all the characteristics of a disgruntled employee: complaining that there isn’t enough time to meet all the demands, Feeling significantly unappreciated, and occasionally wishing for employment elsewhere.
As my job requirements change as the children age and multiply, I feel even less qualified and more multitasked. All of this has added up to an attitude that needs a big time perspective adjustment.

I realized that Disney dads are stressed too but they look at coming home to the kids as an opportunity to rediscover their sense of play and to laugh. Yes my job is the hardest one I’ve ever done and yes I really am seriously under appreciated, but I also get to work with really cute people, make many of my own hours and I can set my own rules instead of worrying what I should be doing.

This much needed perspective adjustment resulted in a day in which the clean laundry was dumped onto the floor in the corner of my bedroom, dishes were left in the sink to harden and a trail of shoes could be followed to the door if a quick escape from insanity was needed. But I found time to laugh, to sit and do crafts with the kids and to allow for a little lapse in the “rules” (seconds on candy anyone?). The interesting thing is… No one really did care that the house was a mess. And I found the kids listened a little better to the smiling woman trying to wrestle them into pajamas. And I felt a little sprinkle of fun back in my life.

Being a parent is hard. Being a parent means having to be responsible and doing things sometimes that are a bit overwhelming. No, not every moment can be fun and there are times things really do need to get done. But finding a way to “f” this job is just as important as finding a match to that missing sock. It teaches our little people that life may be a series of one thing after the other but enjoying it on the in between is what it is about.

Welcome to my first blog attempt.  Or what I should refer to as a way to scare the rest of you to what really runs thru my mind;)  Also, a huge disclaimer: if you care at all about spelling or grammar, please move on.  I don’t.

Every morning on first waking up, I quickly pour myself a cup of strong coffee.  As the sun starts to filter thru the windows and the soft creaking of doors accompany the thumping of feet down the hall, I add a little crazy to my morning cup of joe.  As a mom of three and a wife of one (this isn’t Big Love people), crazy is many things.  Happy, fun, sad, unexpected, but rarely uneventful and always full of love.