Shoes, that is.

A spotted a kid’s pair a few weeks ago while shopping, and while I’m pretty sure my mom didn’t let me wear jelly shoes when I was a kid because they were impractical, since Abby can’t walk yet I figured there was no reason not to get them for her. What can I say, aren’t parents suppose to live vicariously through their children?

Alas, they were out of Abby’s size, so I waited a week and went back. Nada. So, like the devoted mom that I have become, I went to every other kid’s store in the mall in search of jelly shoes until I found a pair in her size. I preferred the clear ones that had first caught my eye, but Abby seems to approve of these.

Litte toes in little shoes.

This being my first “official” Mother’s Day as a mother, I really wasn’t sure what I expected from it.

Ever since Abby was born, I certainly think alot about being a mother and what the experience means to me. There’s a part of me that really wants to capture the emotions that I feel, perhaps so that I can define them, or perhaps just so that I can reflect on them at a later date when Abby is a older or whenever our next child adds his or her stamp to it. But, so far I haven’t been able to find the right words. Try as I might, they seem to lurk just below the surface, teasing me with their presence and then darting back into the fog before I can gather them up. I feel as if the words that I do have may do motherhood an injustice, that they will merely brush the surface of things without getting down to what really matters the most. Because how do you put into words things like the overwhelming joy you get from watching your child figure something out for the first time, why a look from her can send you into a fit of laugher, or how she can break your heart every single day because it just becomes overloaded with Love for her?

Perhaps words just aren’t the right medium. But, since words are all I know, I keep chasing them.

And since words are what I know, and Mother’s Day is what is now, it was pretty easy to find essays and articles leading up to today on what I might expect from Mother’s Day, a.k.a. How to Celebrate Being a Mom. Or, I guess more precisely, how I should be celebrated as a mom. Some were very heartfelt, others a little more lighthearted. None quite summed up my thoughts on motherhood, but they did make for interesting reading I suppose. Many suggested that I could/should have asked for a day off today – a day to do whatever it was that my heart desired. But when I stopped to think about it, I realized that I was doing what I wanted: if it wasn’t for Abigail, I wouldn’t be celebrated today (I would still, of course, be celebrating my mother), so it kind of made sense to me that I would spend the day with her.

While I might not yet be able to adaquately sum up my experience as a mother, this is certainly the first year that I really noticed all of the Mother’s Day advertising and all of the gifts that they try to get you to buy to commemorate motherhood. And I did get gifts this morning, although, as with Abby’s birth, I didn’t “expect” anything.

I already got the greatest gift.

Cheesy, I know. But also true.