I have been consumed by my new side quest, which is editing and republishing my first book! I’ll share a lot more about this project at some point in the future, but I am so excited.
Long story short, I published my first book, a collection of poems, when I was eighteen. Later down the line, I became ashamed of how juvenile and elementary some of the poems seemed, and out of embarrassment, I pulled it off of the shelves. However, nearly nine years later, I have gained a new perspective. While those poems certainly were not literary masterpieces, I am immensely proud of the younger version of myself for putting them out into the world anyways. That was so brave! For a long time, I diminished that accomplishment— the poems weren’t good, I didn’t sell that many copies, it was “only” self-published. But the fact of the matter is, most people won’t write a book EVER, so the fact that I wrote one at all? Amazing!
As a way to honor the younger me, and memorialize all of her hard work, I have decided to edit and then republish my first book, formerly titled Spring’s Illusions. I will remove some poems, yes, but I will also add many more, and what was once a tiny collection of city poems will be a decent-length book with nearly one hundred poems. Working on this project has been so healing, and I can’t wait to share it with you all!
Side quest aside, life still goes on. We had all five kids this week, so we were as busy as ever, not to mention the whole law school thing. What a drag. Cannot wait to be done!
This Week In Review
Picture this: it’s Monday. Not only that, but it’s a Monday Monday. You return from a long day at school just after lunch and your husband leaves for work mid-afternoon, leaving you home alone with all five kids for the night, ages 8, 6, 5, 7 months, and 7 months. You somehow survive the after-school rush on the kitchen, the homework battles, dinnertime, and all five kids are bathed. You are ready to put the twins to bed, followed by the big kids, and then cozy up in bed and read until you fall asleep. But when you make it to the nursery, you are confronted with this sight:
That’s right, Emersyn figured out how to do this approximately three minutes before bedtime! I maybe could have left it, but I also like to let them babble in their cribs in the morning and avoid getting up until there’s true screaming, so for my peace of mind, I couldn’t leave it like this. This led to me running downstairs to find my toolbox, readjusting the crib while all the kids watched on in amusement, and working up a great sweat all the while. Not wanting to ever go through this again, I did decide to just move the mattress as far down as it could go!
My postpartum depression/rage reared its ugly head again this week. It’s not quite a weekly occurrence, so things are definitely better than they were with my first child, but it still sucks. This also luckily never happens around my kids… many apologies to my husband. I have literally the most supportive partner on the planet — the fact that I have done a night feed with the twins maybe six times ever is just proof of that — and yet I still struggle to navigate marriage postpartum. I so desperately miss the way things were before, when we had days and days of endless free time, and I am struggling to accept that things are different now. When my postpartum depression and rage needs a target, somehow, that’s what it ends up being every time. Make it make sense.
Right as all of that was happening, both twins unfortunately came down with their first cold. The poor babies were up every hour the first night, and it was so sad! For days, there were so congested that they could barely breathe or drink their milk, and it was obvious they just weren’t feeling well. They both wanted extra snuggles, which neither my husband nor I complained about. Because of their colds, I stayed home with them while my husband took the older kids to our church’s trunk-or-treat, but that didn’t stop me from putting the twins in their costumes anyways!
The older kids had been looking forward to the trunk-or-treat for weeks, and they all had a blast! Kennedy was Hermione, Thomas was Harry Potter, and Eloisa was Bingo. No more family-themed costumes over here, these kids have wants of their own and I am here for it!
This will be the third year in a row that my husband hasn’t taken his kids trick-or-treating. In lieu of traditional trick-or-treating, we always go to our church’s trunk-or-treat instead. In the beginning of my husband and I’s relationship, things like this definitely used to bother me more. Every holiday just felt like a reminder that our family was “broken.” But my first holiday season post-divorce, my aunt who has been divorced as long as I can remember reminded me that a holiday is just a day. In the end, it doesn’t matter the date on the calendar when you celebrate with your kids; wonderful memories can be made regardless. Rather than dwell what we’re missing out on, my husband and I have learned to focus on the good, and now? Things like this don’t even phase us. As long as the kids are happy, we are happy!
My husband and I are halfway there. In June, he switched his schedules to work night while I worked and attended school during the day. This arrangement has gone on for four months, and there are roughly four months left until I take the bar exam. This schedule has been brutal, and it has tested our relationship and patience in new ways. Through it all, though, we have grown stronger as a couple and closer together, and making it halfway to the bar exam feels like a huge milestone! I could never do what I do without him, and I am beyond grateful for his seemingly never-ending patience.
47 days until graduation!
121 days until the bar exam!
And 1,282 days with my best friend 🙂
