I lied. I’m not updating this more frequently.

Wow, am I terrible at blogging. Every time I think about it, it’s either 5am and I’ve got my hands full of baby, or I’m out at the grocery store with my hands full of groceries and babies, or I’m writing a horribly inappropriate (but hilarious) post on Facebook to one of my closest friends. In other words… it’s never at a good time. Somehow I sort of look at blogging as something that has to be done like this:

Sit down. Straighten desk just so. Have some deep, meaningful topic that will make people cry/be super insightful. Flex fingers. Write the great Canadian novel. Sigh. Perfect.

IMPOSSIBLE.

First off, now I have two kids. Trying to do all of that with two kids is similar to trying to wrap a cat for Christmas, only with more biting. If I had a moment’s peace, I would have 400000X as much quiet as most parents. It’s a little nutty how fast things change once you add one more teeny tiny hedonistic little ankle biter to your life. People think, it’s a baby- how much different could it be?

A lot different.

Secondly- my desk looks like something out of the movie Twister. It’s a contentious issue with Graham & I. There are no Excel spreadsheets anywhere NEAR the vicinity of my desk, because they’d break into hives and die a slow, horrible death. It’s an organizational nightmare, although I still maintain that I thrive in that environment and that I know precisely almost generally where everything is.

ANYWAY… that’s not the whole point of this. Just wait- it’ll all come together, I swear.

In my last blog post, I was talking about how we were expecting this little bundle, and then everyone got to guessing the gender and arrival time of Baby X. She arrived promptly, four days late, on January 4, 2013. Ok… so maybe not promptly, but that’s never been one of my strong points either so I can’t hold it against her. We named her Quinn Kathryn-Quinn meaning “intelligent” and Kathryn because God is a god of second chances, or so my sister Kathryn says. According to her, the reason we had another girl, and the reason she was guessing we would have another girl from the first announcement of being pregnant, is because we didn’t name our first daughter Mia after my sister. THEREFORE- because God was a god of second chances, we would have another girl and could rectify this unfortunate situation. We did.

Birth is a funny thing. It’s always depicted either as a beautiful experience, or as the worst possible thing that could happen to you, and it’s actually sort of both. (Now hang on to your hats if you’re still with me, because this is where things get a little graphic and REAL.) Nothing prepares you for what labor and delivery is actually like. There’s no set of A-Z guidelines to tell you you’re DEFINITELY in labor and it will be precisely 2-72 hours before your baby arrives. A few of my friends who are about to be first time moms were asking me “how do you KNOW when it’s real? How do you KNOW when you’re in labor?” It’s simple. Here’s how.

If you feel like some savage, crazed beast with huge claws, red eyes, and a gaping, slavering mouth is trying to rip it’s way out of your insides, you might be in labor.

If you suddenly get the urge, without prior provocation, to crush every bone in your husbands arm and hand, you might be in labor.

If you can’t stop making noises that more closely resemble a hippo and a gorilla madly going at it in the bushes than a human being, you might be in labor.

If you find yourself laying on a bed, surrounded by people you just met, with all of your um, nether regions, exposed, and are singing Cash’s “Burning Ring of Fire” to prevent something awful from happening…. you might be in labor.

And if you suddenly want to rip off all your clothes, paint your face, sharpen sticks to a point, drop to all fours and crawl like the primal creature you are… well then you’re definitely in labor.

Ahhh yes. Birth. It’s the great equalizer. So… beautiful? HECK NO- it’s like a Tarantino movie, only with more gore. Granted, you do get a baby out of it, and that’s pretty cool, but it’s definitely not as perfect as a scene from Grey’s Anatomy.

So what’s the point of all of this? Well… in my quest to be a bigger better blogger, I’ve decided something. I need to approach it differently. My life is CHAOS now. If I wait for something particularly meaningful to happen, or wait for the perfect blogging moment to arise, it ain’t gonna happen, and also, I’ve decided that after two rounds of having children in the fashion described above, I owe it to myself to be REAL about this. Genuine. Imperfect. Honest. And mostly hilarious. That’s what my life is like.

I want to be able to just say it like I see it, and be straight up, because I think if I can be FOR REAL about this, then I’ll actually get it done, and the blog and I can go back to being friends. Granted, this isn’t going to be for everyone. There will probably be some people offended. Good, I say. People need a little shaking every now & then.

Here’s the new addition- she is SUPER CUTE and I can’t believe she’s almost two months old already.Mia is infatuated with her, and fortunately Quinn doesn’t have personal space issues yet.

Here’s to a 2013 of being REAL, no matter what that looks like.

PS- the winner of the baby contest was Chad Diblasio- he’s apparently a baby guessing prodigy! Well done, Chad!!