To read last year’s Mother’s Day post, click here.  

It’s 2AM in the States, but I know she’ll be up.  Mothers of twin toddlers never sleep, and my amazing sister is no exception.  Their to-do lists are enormous and almost never completed.  Their too brief periods of sleep are punctuated by baby noises or waking up unable to remember if that last load of laundry went into the dryer.  I don’t know how she does it.  And she doesn’t just do it.  She excels at it. My sister is an awesome mom for a million different reasons.  Here are a couple of them.

She recognizes that her children are different people with different personalities and needs.  This may sound common sense to you, but remember that my little sister has twins, which means everything–teething, first words, first steps, and that manic 2pm temper tantrum–happens in twos.  It’s gotta be super-tempting to handle them both the exact same way all the time, but she doesn’t.  She manages to accept them both exactly as they are–two vastly different human beings who share the bonds of twin-ness and the incredible good fortune of having my sister as their mama.   

She is patient.  So patient.  So incredibly patient.  She keeps her cool even on days when K and W won’t stop jumping on the couch or pulling off their diapers or throwing yogurt covered raisins on the floor. Particularly now, as the terrible twos are beginning to rear their ugly heads, her patience with their colossal emotional meltdowns is awe-inspiring.  When life gets absolutely crazy, my sister chooses most often to laugh instead of cry, to greet them with smiles and hugs instead of harsh words.  

She’s also teaching K and W the importance of family. Somehow she manages to balance the intricate web of family ties formed by grandparents, in-laws, cousins, aunts, and uncles.   After two years, they are Skypers of near-professional level, connecting to Kiki and Uncle Ric in Korea at least once a week, planting their sticky little baby lips exactly where the webcam is located in order to give us goodbye kisses.  Her kids are learning early that family is a source of strength, comfort, and joy. 

She exposes them to books, playgroups, aquariums, and the outdoors.  She teaches them patience, kindness, generosity, humility.  She encourages her little man to grow taller and her big girl to speak real words.  She teaches them to get up and dust themselves off when they fall down.  She has been continuously taking college courses online (and maintaining an honor roll average), so that her children will know that learning never stops.  She is kind to them and to herself when days don’t go so well, when trips to the store end in all three of them screaming or when she makes dinner and K refuses to eat anything but carbs.  She understands that this mom thing is a collection of tiny moments, a build up of day to day reassurances and small tokens of love.  K and W know that, no matter what, their mom is a safe place, a refuge, a place of unfailing love and support and acceptance just they way they are.  

And that’s the greatest gift any mom can give her children.  

Photo by Bonni Stephenson Photography