By Colleen Tirtirian | from “Impossible Dream” - Motherhood is . . . / The bask of an early morning snuggle / a quiet, cooing baby on my breast. / It is tracing tiny little hands and feet / The rise and fall of a perfect chest. / An impossible dream

By Colleen Tirtirian | The dock bumped beneath us with the flow of the tide. I steadied my feet and grabbed my children’s hands. “Do not let go,” I quietly pleaded with them as they pulled me toward the small boat. “No. No. Don’t pull me. I lead here and you follow,” I told them, though my subconscious reminded me that I am no kind of leader. I am just good at faking it when it matters.

By Colleen Tirtiriain | The doorbell rings and I hobble my huge, pregnant-with-twins blob of a body over to the front door. It’s a FedEx delivery man here with multiple, large boxes. I know exactly what this is: our stroller. But it’s not just any stroller . . . it is THE stroller; the one I researched like it was some kind of make-it-or-break-it situation.

By Colleen Tirtirian | It’s 4 a.m. and I am sitting in the corner of the room in an armchair. My son is in my arms and he is getting closer to sleep. I will myself through each moment of rocking him as I fight heavy eyelids. The ache in my body is deep and I feel it in every crevice of this newly complicated body I inhabit, likely a result of the hot incision on my low abdomen a mere week prior.

By Colleen Tirtirian | In the parenting world, there are few things that everyone can agree upon. I believe, however, that one of the universally accepted ideas about kids is that they are funny creatures. They do silly things, act ridiculously, and, most importantly, they say the most absurd things.