Evie has been gone this week. She traveled up to Pittsburgh with Vince for 5 days and it’s utterly insane how quiet the house is, despite me still having 3 …

I haven’t written a blog post in some time. I’ve been distracted with other life things. Which is ok, I guess. But I do feel like my mind has been pulled into too many different directions and that I’ve been doing things that really aren’t my jam. Like fuuuucccckkkkking taxes. I keep swearing every year that this is the last year I’m doing our taxes. But then, every year, April sneaks up on me and I find myself in TurboTax again.

Taxes aside, what’s really been keeping me busy in the free time I manage to eek out when my two youngest are still sleeping are my children’s books and associated quest to become a published author. I don’t think I’ve written about this yet here because I kind of see these two pursuits as separate. The “me” that writes children’s stories shouldn’t be the same “me” that talks about vasectomies, pubic hygiene, and what not. Right?!

As a mom of 4, alone time is hard to come by. Not so much with the oldest two. Hell, Gianna and Scarlett spend their entire lives in their rooms so even when they are home, it’s hard to tell. They very rarely hover around me anymore. But the “second half kids” as I like to call them, are always up my ass.

This lack of alone time includes any sort of privacy when taking a shower as well. Since Evie has claimed ownership of mine and Vince‘s bedroom and closet, this of course also includes our bathroom as well. It’s very rare that I will get a shower at night without her in tow, asking to play Paw Patrol as I wipe the grime of motherhood off my body each day. Marina will often be perched in her bouncer, a spectator to our nightly routine.

Showers in solitude are not something I get very often.

We have two cars in our family despite having three drivers. We’ve been wanting to get a third car for a while now, however life is already too expensive and Florida …

After living in Florida for almost 8 years, I finally invited our nearby family over to our house this past weekend. There’s no real reason why I’ve never had them over. I simply get caught up in the day-to-day of our lives. Plus, entertaining house guests is literally not my thing at all.

But my in-laws were visiting and we had no big plans going on so I figured why not invite the cousins over. The extended fam came over and, as we were all chatting in the kitchen, someone mentioned doing a tour of the house. Immediately, my stomach sank. A house tour, really? Must we do this? Let’s just stay in the kitchen and pretend like the rest of the space doesn’t exist.

I’m not a rookie. I have raised 3 babies so far. I consider myself somewhat of a pro if you can ever truly be that as a parent. But, looking back at pictures of Marina from a few months ago, I can’t believe I let her get so skinny. Her scrawny legs and arms are so obviously wrong to me now, but then we joked about how she had bird legs. Of course, all my babies were tiny. I don’t make giant turkeys. But I don’t know how me back then thought she was fine when I was allowing my baby to basically starve to death.

Oh, I know what it was. It was sleep. Glorious sleep.