{"id":7671,"date":"2013-03-01T15:59:38","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T20:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/todayslegacy.wordpress.com\/?p=7671"},"modified":"2013-03-01T15:59:38","modified_gmt":"2013-03-01T20:59:38","slug":"open-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/todayslegacy.net\/index.php\/2013\/03\/01\/open-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To the Table of Moms sitting beside ours at the children&#8217;s museum,<\/p>\n<p>First of all, congratulations on expecting your second children in the household. The thrill of a miracle growing inside of you is indescribable, even in those last few months of &#8220;bumping into everything&#8221;. And your toddlers may not have any idea what&#8217;s coming, but they&#8217;ll learn to enjoy the company of another little smiler.<\/p>\n<p>But even in your excitement my heart breaks for you both. I saw your glances and while it would be easy to brush you off as judgemental, my heart is really saddened.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, Big Guy spilled his cup of juice because he wasn&#8217;t paying attention. He&#8217;s only been to a children&#8217;s museum twice that I know of and it&#8217;s a lot to take in, even when wolfing down lunch in anticipation of playing with legos. Yes, Little Man was fussing. What you didn&#8217;t know is that he had already been fed and freshly diapered, he was just having an impatient moment while I was nursing Hannah. And yes, the boys do not look like me&#8230; or my girls. In fact, to a deeply judging eye they could mark me to look like an unfaithful woman&#8230; or a woman in a really biologically confusing mess.<\/p>\n<p>But my heart breaks that you didn&#8217;t really see my kids. You didn&#8217;t see Abi&#8217;s utter bliss at the chocolate covered pretzels we got as a special treat from the shop downstairs. And you didn&#8217;t see the twinkle in Big Guy&#8217;s eyes that even though he forgot his money that he brought to buy a special snack, he got to share a bag of Buggles with all of us after eating his cheese and crackers (the unsoggy ones). And you didn&#8217;t see the progress that Little Man has made in only fussing a bit and being responsive to my touch and my words to calm himself down.<\/p>\n<p>You didn&#8217;t see where my boys were two months ago and how much they have moved from being constantly attention-seeking and fearful to secure and excited.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, we are a noisy bunch sometimes&#8230; many times around eating time. And there are still needs to remind Big Guy to sit still and that just because he&#8217;s not touching it right now doesn&#8217;t mean he&#8217;ll never get to. And there are still needs to balance nursing my Hannah with rocking Little Man into comfort.<\/p>\n<p>But my heart breaks for you, Moms, that while you may be there in your hearts some day to take in a child that needs someone while their world gets a little more under control&#8230; you&#8217;re not there right now. But right now there are Big Guys and Little Mans out there&#8230; waiting for Children&#8217;s Services to intervene and remove them from their crumbling worlds.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow we&#8217;ll probably still be noisy, and a little bossy sometimes, and a little over-the-top excited and needy, but I am so thankful to God that tomorrow these precious boys know that they&#8217;ll still be safe. And loved. And snuggled. And told that &#8220;we&#8217;re praying for your Mom and your Dad&#8221; while they wait to see who will rescue them and who will fade away into a memory.<\/p>\n<p>Sweet pregnant moms, my heart breaks for you.<\/p>\n<p>Please take another glance.<\/p>\n<p>Please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To the Table of Moms sitting beside ours at the children&#8217;s museum, First of all, congratulations on expecting your second children in the household. The thrill of a miracle growing inside of you is indescribable, even in those last few months of &#8220;bumping into everything&#8221;. And your toddlers may not have any idea what&#8217;s coming,&#8230; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/todayslegacy.net\/index.php\/2013\/03\/01\/open-letter\/#more-7671\">Continue Reading &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,23,13,8,19,31,26,9,25,30,32,27,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-being-a-stay-at-home-mom","category-big-guy","category-fostering","category-gods-heart","category-honesty","category-hope","category-little-man","category-my-heart","category-orphan-care","category-thats-just-life","category-the-middlest","category-the-youngest","category-willing-hands","clear"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/todayslegacy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/todayslegacy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/todayslegacy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/todayslegacy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/todayslegacy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/todayslegacy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/todayslegacy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/todayslegacy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/todayslegacy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}