Welcome to the rest of my life...

Hi there! This is me at 33 weeks pregnant at my baby shower.  I'm just going to be honest--this blog is not going to be my best work.  I have two other blogs that will probably include substantively better writing quality.  One of them is about food (which I haven't posted on since I found out I was pregnant, not because I don't still eat out regularly, but because my tastebuds are all messed up from being pregnant and I can't eat a lot of things and I get heartburn which probably has little to do with the food and more to do with the baby) and the other is about my journey as an academic.  And, as an academic, I actually write peer-reviewed journal articles related to literacy, secondary education, and teacher education which has gone through a lot of thinking, revision, critique, editing, etc.  But, this blog is basically a brain dump related to my life as a "new mom" (new for the 4th time). 

Ah, so, if you don't know me, you may wonder how I can be a "new mom" for the 4th time.  Well, I have two twin girls that are adopted who came to our family at the age of 15.  This was 10 years ago (so they're now 25).  While my husband and I were going through the lengthy adoption process, we found out (to our surprise) that I was also pregnant with our first biological child, a little boy, who is now 9 (and hilarious).  If you're interested in that story, you can check it out here.

But, after going from engaged to married with 3 kids in the space of 18 months, I needed a bit of a break on the new children front.  So I took a 9 year break.  That break is soon to be broken (within the next 6 weeks, in fact) by a baby girl.  Our family's pretty excited, but along with that excitement is the realization that I completely have forgotten what it's like to raise an infant (and I'm not convinced that I did such a great job the first time--my theory is that my son's awesomeness is totally a fluke of God & nature).  

And so, I've decided (with encouragement from a friend of mine) to blog a little about my mothering journey since I blog about the other important things in my life (work and food).  

So, here we go.  Welcome and I hope you enjoy the bumpy ride into my mommy brain.  It's bound to be a wild and sometimes aimless ride, but hopefully it will be fun and interesting too.