I am the oldest child of three, born to an accountant dad and a crafty pediatric nurse mom. I graduated college with a degree in history and Spanish, my younger sister with a degree in architecture (and our youngest brother with a nursing degree). For *years* I thought all of my mom's creative genes skipped over me and landed squarely on my siblings, who were all design, craft, song and creative-oriented. And for the most part, that is true. (You can even visit my sister's etsy shop here - see what I mean? Uber talent!) I remember one summer that I spent on the Mexican border, my mom mailed me a watercolor paint set along with all the necessities for watercolor that you'd need. I had no idea what she was thinking - I tried to paint even one half of a scene of the backyard of the building I was staying at, met total failure and gave up. Creative genes were just not part of me.

thankful

I'm not going to lie. There are days that go by where I do forget to thank God for these precious gifts (at least, consciously). When I am shell-shocked from the pure difficulty that is keeping two tiny humans alive and mostly happy. The hard days full of tantrums, tears, hangry screams and, more recently, guilt that I am not picking up the second child or talking to him enough or feeding him enough or