10 things about my Mom & being a Mom

Here's the 3 generations!

Here are 10 things I love about my Mom and then 10 things I love about being a Mom:

10 Things I Love About My Mom ...

1) I'm 41 years old and when I get a hole or tear in clothes or need a patch, I still give it to her and she fixes it for me.

2) She has helped me parent over the years. A few weeks back in church, Brady was sitting between us and needed help with something and we both reached at the same time. I thought to myself, "Wow, this is inter-generational teaching." He learns from her and it is beautiful.

3) Again, I'm 41, and every time she stays with me she does my dishes.

4) I call her every day, about everything, and she does the same with me.

5) I told her long ago in a card, I didn't choose you as my Mother, but I choose you as my best friend. It is still true, though I'd choose her as my Mother a hundred times over if I was given the choice.

6) She often berates her cooking, but I truly cannot think of one time she made something I didn't like. Not once. She is a very good cook and her food comforts me.

7) She has a strong will and a soft heart. What a beautiful mixture.

8) My favorite thing she taught me was to love nature.

9) She has really good ideas, about parenting, about marriage, about cooking, about life.

10) The one thing I have always been certain of my entire life, no matter what was going on, no matter what I did or didn't do, no matter how I was feeling, was that I was loved by my mother. I hope so much to pass that on to Brady because that assurance is the most powerful thing a person can have (outside of the same knowledge of God), that this one person's love will never ever leave you or tarnish or fade. Thank you, Mom.

10 Things I Love About Being a Mother ...

1) Once I had Brady, for the first time in my life another person's needs were more immediate, more pressing, more important than mine, and not just for a few days or a week, but forever. That was liberating in a way I never would have imagined.

2) I have someone special I spend most of my time with and I love it.

3) I love knowing another human being so well, beyond what you normally know of someone.

4) There are things I've learned from Brady I never would have known if I had not become his mother.

5) I have to work always at being a better person for him.

6) I have such wonderful conversations with my boy. They are fun and interesting and surprising.

7) I have NO idea what I did with my time pre-Brady. I am never ever ever ever bored.

8) He depends on me, trusts me and he believes me completely. Wow. That is amazing.

9) I look in his eyes and see mine. I hear his voice say the very things I have said to him. I watch him in nature and in prayer and I see a reflection of me there. He is unique, a total individual as anyone who has spent any time with him will tell you, but there's a piece of me there too.

10) Every morning we sit on the couch and I put peanut butter on his banana. Every night I read him stories. We have done these two rituals for - literally - more than five years, every single day. This little human being and I are wrapped up in the rhythm of each other's lives. That is one of the most comforting things I know.