He was hot. Did I mention he was hot? He very forwardly told me he thought I was attractive too. We spent a lot of time getting to know each other, and around four months later, in the middle of the night, he came over and told me that he didn't know what the future held, but he knew that being with me made him happy. He smiled the biggest smile I had ever seen anyone smile. I had my retainer in, and I remember thinking, "I'm going to marry this man someday, and I'll have to tell my children I had to pop my retainer out to kiss him. Will they be horrified about the retainer or about hearing their parents kissed?"

We never talked about wanting children. We were 19 and 20, and most relationships that start when your a Sophomore and Junior in college don't end up with walks down the aisle and adorable children. I did wonder, in the privacy of my own imagination, what our children would look like if we ever had any.

Years passed by and adventure after adventure came. We eventually married, six years after meeting on the balcony that night in 1999. We still never talked about having children. Our dear friends had a baby girl a couple of years later, and we both fell so in love with her, we knew we wanted children. (Thanks Aubriella). When we talked about starting our family, we talked about how we wanted to wait to make sure our children would be accepted. We half-joked that if McCain won the election we should wait. President Obama won, and about 8.5 months later (he came early) Noah was born.

People tell you that your relationship with your husband/wife/spouse/life partner will change when you have children. The way I love Ash romantically expanded and opened a special place in my heart when we had children. Ash is an amazing dad. There are parts of a person you never see until you see them love their own child. The quiet, special parts of their heart that are saved, grow, revealed and unleashed are astounding.

Whether he's dancing with the kids to Gangnam style, showing Noah how to crack an egg, reading Maya a book, playing the part of the Princess when Noah asks him to play "The Princess and the boy" or running around at the park, Ash is 100% a loving, nurturing, kind father.  In the moments where he holds our children tight, the moment he held me when I miscarried between Noah and Maya, the little moments, the happy moments, the sad moments, the "this could only happen to us" we want to explode with laughter and love moments.  Those moments don't make a man, but they are the moments when a father shows who he is.  Every day, when he is with us or away for work, he is loving Noah and Maya with everything he has.  And a story like that is one that I am so incredibly grateful to be a part of.  Every day.  Even the bad ones.  

Here's a little story of a dad, in pictures.  A dad who loves and is loved.  Very much.

Happy Father's Day, Ash!

Today, I decided I wanted to make the Pioneer Woman's Peach Whiskey BBQ chicken. Only, I didn't want to cook it for two hours in the oven, and I forgot to buy peach preserves at the grocery store, and my garlic looked funky because for some reason, I bought a couple of bad heads recently. But once I get a food craving in line for dinner, I cannot under any circumstance, ingredients be damned, change course on a delicious dinner idea. So I made a modified version of her recipe. And folks, please, calm down, but I wanted dinner to last forever tonight. The peaches, the bbq sauce, the melting chicken, I could not get enough. In fact, I smeared extra sauce all over everything.

Here's my modified version of the Pioneer Woman's Peach Whiskey BBQ Chicken

What you'll need

Your crockpot

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (2 lbs) I used organic smart chicken

Minced garlic

Sweet baby ray's honey bbq sauce

worcestershire sauce

3 delicious peaches

Filtered water

1 cup of sugar

Jack Daniel's whiskey

Extra virgin olive oil

some butter

an onion

kosher salt

cracked black pepper

When I originally saw the Pioneer Woman's recipe, I thought, "Man, I need whiskey? I can't take two small kids into a liquor store for dinner ingredients." Where we live in Maryland, you have to buy alcohol at a liquor store, you can't just pick it up with your other groceries at the store. Luckily, I remembered we have a liquor cabinet that we don't use. Back in the day, we hosted a few holiday parties and a friend brought a bottle of Jack Daniel's whiskey. It was still unopened, seven years later, so I had to ask on twitter if it was okay to use. According to twitter, it was.

I started with some olive oil in a big pot. Then, I chopped up a small onion and plopped it in. As an afterthought, I remembered to put some butter in too. After the onion cooked a little bit, I poured in some whiskey. The recipe said generous, but the whiskey smelled strong so I poured in a bunch then let it cook for a while sort of boiling almost.

I used whatever amount went to the label.

Then I poured in the better part of a bottle of sweet baby ray's honey bbq sauce, a small sprinkle (turn over once and upright quickly) of minced garlic, a dash of worcestershire sauce and I whisked it all together. While this was simmering, I hit a snafu. Peach preserves. I had peaches, but I didn't have the jellied preserves the recipe called for. So I googled make peach preserves. I didn't have the patience for what it said, so I took a pot cut up 3 peaches and put them in the pot on medium heat with a cup of sugar and a random amount of filtered water. It baked down while I mixed together the rest of the sauce.

While the sauce was on warm, I browned my chicken breasts. I browned them in olive oil and a tiny bit of butter, and I seasoned them with cracked black pepper and kosher salt. I use the method of browning I saw in the Julie and Julia movie. I dry the chicken first, season, then cook it over a medium high heat for a few minutes on each side in olive oil and/or a little bit of butter.

I did most of this while holding Maya who was angry at the world. She was crying and screaming most of the time, but I held her on my hip and made sure not to let her reach for anything hot. I'm well-experienced in cooking with Maya, but it takes lots of patience and care. Please be careful with toddlers in and near the kitchen while you're cooking. I always put her down when I need to chop, deal with something hot, and so on.

I put the chicken in the crockpot.

Then I poured the sauce over it.

I cooked the chicken on low for 6 hours in the crockpot. This was mostly because it was the amount of time until I wanted it to be done.

The end result was outrageous. The peaches turned out soft and delicious, the sauce made me want to be a better person, and the chicken shredded perfectly. I poured extra sauce on everything on my plate. This meal was a big hit with Ash and me. Maya liked it okay and Noah wouldn't try it. This is par for the course around here. I recommend you try this, but please don't buy peach preserves. It was so incredible with the homemade, random peach sauce I threw together. Go make this now. I paired it with homemade mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli.

There is some broccoli on this plate. Can you find it?

The Cheerios ad features an adorable little girl, her white mom and her black dad.  The commercial ends with the word "Love" in place of the word Cheerios on a yellow background like on the box and Cheerios falling all around it.  I burst into tears when I saw the video the first time.  My three-year-old keeps wanting to watch it only remarking, "It's fun" each time we watch it.

Cheerios it's fun to see a family like ours in one of your commercials.  Thank you, from a suburban mom in Maryland whose three-year-old is watching your video on repeat.  I never thought a commercial could compete with his love for flashy dancing and depressing love songs, but a fun family that looks a little more like ours than the rest of what we see around us is fun for him.

Check the video out here: 

Unfortunately, racists overtook the comments on this beautiful video so Cheerios has disabled the comments.  These sorts of occurrences are not shocking to families like ours who have heard the echoes of racists in our ears when they shouted as they tried to run us off the road, when they question why I tan my children, if my children are mine and so on.  It echoes through my head when "friends" recount racists moments with their families where they sit silent.  It is not surprising to me that Cheerios received hateful comments, but Cheerios, know there is so much love from families like ours.  Our love for each other is so much stronger than any hateful words or people.  Thanks for showcasing a family like ours.

A nice older couple took a photo for me of the kids and me on my phone, and they asked me if it was okay that Noah didn't want to look at the camera.  "It's fine, I just want him to be in the picture so when he knows we supported equality together as a family."  They paused, then looked at each other and one of the men said, "I wish our parents thought like you."  So many people thanked us for being at the rally.  It broke my heart when people younger and older than me came up and thanked me for being a loving mother and told me they wished their own parents supported them and who they love.  As parents, our job is to love our children and to show them we love them, we love others and we stand on the side of justice and equality, for them and everyone else.

Today, our awesome children were outside the Supreme Court standing up for marriage equality as the highest court in our country heard arguments about the constitutionality of Propisition 8 in California.  Noah, Maya, please come take a look at what you did today outside of the Supreme Court.  Your faces and presence brought so many smiles to folks in the crowd.  The love you share with the world is proof that all families do not have to look the same to love the same.  At the end of the day, whether you have one mom and one dad or two moms or two dads or one mom or one dad or one grandma or two grandparents or one adult or two adults raising you, what matters is that love makes a family.

This is for the moms who love...

Their children.  Even on the toughest of days. Maybe more on the toughest of days.

Warm sunny days when the light shines in your window and makes everything glow.

Drinking ice cold water when they need a break.

Bedtime stories with tiny feet lightly kicking in and out of sync.

That minute just after your child falls asleep and their breathing goes from quick to slower and you can feel their calm peace. 

Rolling down hills in the dirt because you're never too old to have a little fun.

Taking time alone to drink a cup of coffee, listen to a good song, read a book or sit in peace.

Being moms.

Ryan Gosling's "Hey Girl" even though they know Ryan Gosling never says, "Hey Girl" in real life. 

Who they are even when who they are is messy, tired and totally confused. 

Teaching, laughing and learning from their children every day.

Living, breathing and enjoying the little moments with their favorite little people.

There are a million variations of parenting and loving that you will discover over the coming months and years. They are all wrong. There is an academic journal article that will discredit every choice you make. And every correction you might consider making. You are Facebook friends with the only person who has ever read these obscure articles. Trust your instincts. Sometimes you will know the exact right thing to do. Other times, not so much. Be ready to mess up and own up, a lot. I once called the pediatrician after I dropped a camera on my newborn's head. I could barely speak, I was crying so hard. The doctor stopped me, "Mrs. Llorens, Noah isn't crying. I only hear you crying."

Here is the best parenting advice you will ever receive from a mom (with two data points, thus making her an expert):

1. You're going to get pooped and peed on. It will not be funny in the moment but I promise: the memory will get funnier and funnier over time. My son once peed onto his own face moments after I thought to myself: "I've totally got this." Scrambling to do something about it, I shot breastmilk all over our couch because I was new to breastfeeding and forgot my breast was out. I cried at the time. Now? Hilarious.

2. It will get funnier with time. Even colic can be funny a few years off. My first born cried from 8-12 or 1 am for about 7 weeks straight. It sucked, but I repeated over and over "You are loved, you are safe" (to myself?), cuddling him while he screamed his head off. I can't help but giggle thinking about all of the parental acrobatics suggested by the happiest baby on the block techniques, which failed spectacularly. I am pretty sure I googled "Can my baby go deaf from sushing?" more than once.

3. Stay away from competitive moms. You'll recognize them by their ability to simultaneously be happier and more miserable than you. Their kids are either way more difficult or way more awesome than yours, depending on the Facebook comment they are responding to. Their partner is either Dad of the Year or doesn't help at all, depending on the gush or complaint being volleyed. They love percentiles from their doctor's office. Run. Do not engage. Their kid will eventually eat their own shit too. Or at least "taste" it.

4. Some moms have it way more together than you. You'll just have to deal with that one.

5. If you breastfeed, at some point you will forget your boob is out in public after your baby finishes. On a roadtrip to New York when my son was 9 months old, I nursed him in the car before heading in to a rest stop to pee. I caught a glimpse of myself in the window of another car and realized that my left boob was completely out of my shirt. People will be nicer about your boob hanging out than they will be about breastfeeding your hungry infant.

6. Ask for help. People are totally willing to help.

7. Don't ask for help. People are not good at helping.

8. Make fun of people that judge your parenting choices. Preferably to their face, but behind their back, if you must. More times than not, judgmental people are just insecure with their own choices. This is your gig. Do it with your own flair.

10. Some Starbucks locations have drive-thrus. They were invented for moms. If the baristas at Starbucks don't know your order upon hearing your voice in the drive-thru, you're not doing it right.

11. It gets better. Like any other job, you'll get better at parenting as you go along. And whatever weird/obnoxious thing your kid is doing: this too shall pass. One day you'll wake up and they'll be on to the next weird/obnoxious thing (probably right after you figure out how to deal with that last one, but hey). The lows will be close to rock bottom, but the highs will be higher than you imagined.

12. Switch it up. Skip the bedtime routine sometimes and take them out for ice cream instead. We went through a rough patch with our son when he was two years old where it would sometimes take him hours to finally go to sleep. One night, with my husband away on work travel, I made a random decision to ditch the bedtime routine and take our wired toddler out to a local custard place. We laughed, ate a little bit and then he fell asleep on the car ride home. It is one of the moments I am most proud of as a mother. I won all around, and I got to eat ice cream!

13. When all else fails, sing "The Greatest Love of All" at the top of your lungs to your children. They will love it. Or they won't but it is almost impossible not to enjoy each moment when you are channeling your inner Whitney Houston.

Follow these easy steps and you too can dub yourself a Professional Mom. Now that you're a pro, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to laugh at all those amateur mistakes you're still making.

He always gets a chocolate chip bagel that he orders himself.  My order varies, and during my beloved cranberry walnut bagel season, Noah orders me a bagel too.  On the off season, he asks them in an accusing tone why they don't have my favorite bagel ready for me.

Noah and I treasure the time together.  While we're out eating and chatting, Ash and Maya are at home getting in some of their own Daddy/Maya bonding in.  It's worked out great for our family.  Maya often gets one-on-one time with me in the middle of the night or day when she's nursing and again when Noah is at school.  

One of the special games we play on our weekly dates is "Don't eat my math!" I invented the game because I wanted to find a fun way to add a little math into our weekly dates.  

What we use for Don't eat my math:

One delicious bagel

A napkin or plate (we do napkin because we get our food to go since we bring bagels home for Maya and Ash)

One glass of water to wash the math down

Fun attitudes, smiles and silly dispositions

How to play:

I rip up the bagel in pieces for Noah then he counts how many pieces there are on the napkin.  We aim for at least 10 pieces.  Last week, we had 16.

We talk about how many pieces are there, and then I say, "Please don't eat my math.  I'm going to look away, and I want to make sure there are 16 pieces when I count again."

Noah sneaks a piece, I act shocked, he laughs hard and then I ask how many pieces he ate while I looked away.  He usually will say, "1 piece."  Then, I make him guess how many pieces are left on the napkin. 

"If we had 16 pieces and you ate one how many pieces are there now?"

At first he would shout random numbers, but now he thinks about it.  We've talked about how taking one away from the number before is just the number before so he can usually tell me the number.  

I keep track of how many pieces he has eaten as the game continiues.  We keep coutning the pieces to double check our math.  We talk about how many pieces there are each time he takes one and then we talk about adding the pieces in his belly with the pieces on the plate. 

Noah loves it and he often proudly proclaims, "I ate your math!"  Sometimes he counts the pieces in front of me if I have a sandwich or something else and he warns me not to eat his math.  

Don't eat my math! is a really fun way for Noah and I to work on the basics of adding and subtracting all while keeping fully engaged in each other and our special time together.

Next time you are out with your young child, try out "Don't eat my math!" I bet you'll both be smiling from ear-to-ear before you know it!

Eating

Noah loves to do things independently.  He's been grabbing the milk out of the refrigerator for his cereal, pouring the cereal and milk, and grabbing his spoon for a while.  Unfortunately, our bowls are in a high cabinet so he often has to ask for our help when he wants to make a bowl. 

Last week, I decided to clean out the bottom shelf of our pantry and to label it "Noah's food."  I put a bowl and a napkin on the shelf with some of the cereals and healthy snacks Noah likes to eat.  Now, he can grab a bowl of cereal when he wants, independently.  He loves the shelf.  So far he's been mixing cheerios and granola.  Chowing on apples and grabbing snacks on his way out the door for school.  

I also put together little bags of carrots on the bottom shelf of our fridge next to sqeeze packets of yogurt.  Noah already grabs cheesesticks when he wants and asks for the carrots which are usually in a bigger bag.  This way, he can make choices about healthy snacks throughout the day.  I even have started letting him help me meal plan.  He chooses whole wheat pasta, rice, broccoli, carrots, chicken, beef and other foods for dinner from a small list of choices.  

Dressing

I also took a little bit of time to move his sock/underwear/pajama drawer down to a lower level because although he's been getting up and changing his underwear on his own each morning, I realized he was climbing a chair to reach the drawer.  I want to make our house as friendly as possible for him as he seeks out more and more independence.  There was a time where his underwear and pants ended up on backwards, but with a little help and a reminder to look for the numbers and letters in the back of the underwear and pants, he was on his way!  

Activity

A Montessori type of activity Noah enjoys that encourages patience, concentration and repetition is shining his quarter collection.  At school they shine silver and wood.  We're not a fancy silver type of family, but we do have Noah's quarters that he uses for sorting, counting and shining.  He made the steps up himself and he sets the quarters and bowl up on his own and then shines each quarter.  It's fun to watch him concentrate and focus.  

We're making small changes I can address in an afternoon while I'm keeping busy with the kids.  It's fun for all of us, and Maya is enjoying grabbing her own yogurt and snacks too.  I have a few bananas and apples with random teeth marks to prove it!  I ended up heading to Trader Joe's for smaller apples since the kids seem to want an apple every time they head to the kitchen.  Today they picked apples, yogurt and carrots as a snack.  They seem to be encouraging each other to eat healthy snacks.  We've always had healthy snacks, but they are eating more of them as they grab them easily on the go and sit down together.

I'm sure lots of families make little improvements to make things more accessible for younger children.  I'm going to update the blog with ideas for eating, dressing and activities as often as I find new ways to incorporate more of the Montessori philosophies into our house.  What are your favorite household changes that encourage independence and curiosity in your young children?