Racheal Kwacz - Child & Family Development Specialist

I hope you love life as passionately as Mr Izaya Ren loves broccoli and ice cream.

Every week, we go on a little Saturdate together, just her and I. Most of the time, the Malaysian in us is strong and it’s centered around where we’d like to have lunch that day. It’s small, but so big. These dates.

Titi’s are on Fridays and they both look and feel same same but so different. Both a mama trying to climb in together, to hold our little world together just a little bit more, to climb in and make meaningful memories that slow time together.

Today, I wondered why she wasn’t eating her chips and queso she usually devours, my mama heart quietly worrying if she was still feeling meh from the flu last week but then she asked for a bag from the counter and carefully packed all her chips and queso to bring home for her little brother and daddy to share. 😭❤️

Soemthing to say I love you and I missed you.

So small but so big.

For her, these dates are a promise from my heart to hers that even in this season where her little brother needs me needs me so much that she isn’t forgotten. That she is seen and wanted, fought for and believed in, cherished and treasured and always always worth protecting time with.

For our little man, it’s the little bit of magic that his big sister got all the time. She had a different mama, a wildly different childhood of privilege and travel, of having mama all the time and a world of experiences.

So we stop by the construction site one week and park on the side of the fire station the next and just let him enjoy it all. When Ella Grace was young, we used to do this all the time especially when we worldschooled. Do remember those days? Whatever her current special interest was, we would deep dive and go all in.

I’ve been quiet around here and I wanted to come on here to just say, here’s a little bit of what we’ve been up to. It’s not everything but it’s everything. The same the last almost eleven years.

I’m still all in, my loves. ❤️

Have you ever rallied for one another in the basement with the washer and dryer going so our teeny tinies asleep upstairs don’t hear us? Choosing to choose one another over and over and over again no matter how many parts of us want to run and protect?

He says my biggest fear is you’ll give up on us and leave. I share my biggest fear is I’ll be broken a million miles away from home again. Both so fiercely and lovingly recognizing that this is our childhoods and trauma speaking and it seems insane but this, this is gold. This is shared safety. This is anchoring. This is choosing us over and over again and trusting each other with our ugly inside.

We claw our way home to one another building a bridge that is tender and true because marriage isn’t made in the fairytale moments, oh dear heart, it’s forged in the brutal heartwork of choosing to see and trust one another, to surrender and believe with everything we have and don’t that there’s another in the fire and that our cord of three will hold.

He hears me and I hear him and we have had decades of growing up together in all the ways we thought we would and all the times we didn’t know we could.

My homesick heart breaks into more pieces than I can put back together and we hold each other as we grieve it all together. This is the messy middle. This is the heartache of rebuilding and remembering. We have loved and lost together, we have built and torn apart, we have birthed and died, we have ruptured and repaired.

I thought I would be home by now. Over and over again, how did my life implode? How did two weeks turn into summer, thanksgiving, Christmas, new year, Chinese new year. I thought we would be home by now. But where is home now that we’ve dismantled what we left behind but when here still feels so new and hard?

He builds me a home and says I still choose you.

I change my tickets and I do too, Mr Kwacz.

What if home is wherever I’m with you.

This one is for the little big girl that reminded her mama this last week who and whose she is.

I don’t know why but I forgot. I forgot that I could and I can. That I was able and worthy and enough. Somehow moving to Kohler and feeling lost in the new and the hard chipped my confidence of knowing that my weird and quirky was enough.

I’ve drowned in the new so many times this last year, but more than anything, I’ve failed the kids so many times this year by not knowing. Cultures, rituals, weather, and the culmination being sweet Ella Grace calling me on the way to school crying because she was cold and wet in the wrong boots in heavy snow and oh my mama heart. I wanted to make it all okay, still trying to absorb new information and I bought the wrong boots so she paid the price. 💔😭

This last week she asked if we could make Christmas gifts for her teachers, if I would make mama’s granola and I don’t know why but my little felt unworthy and not enough and I didn’t know how to tell her as I wrestled with it all. As our little miracle baby boy turned two, I carried such heavy guilt that I was somehow incapable of throwing him a party worthy of him because I didn’t have our people or a village or help.

It’s so loudly quiet isn’t it? This attack on your motherhood as if we are somehow less than if we need help or don’t know or forget. I forgot who I am and whose I am and so I got smaller and quieter and stuck.

But a little girl reminded me this last week all our little adventures we used to have, her at two and all the weird wonderful fun things we could and can with Izaya. It didn’t have to be more than but simply just us and true.

So a sweet little boy and mama made granola and wrote meaningful cards and it wasn’t a lot but it was everything. I don’t know who she is yet, Kohler mama, I think I’m slowly getting to know this version of me.

I booked the venue for his birthday, I asked who and whose we are, and built a guest list. It’s not KL mama crazy but it is and will be full of the honor of celebrating the little boy calls me mama and the a season of loving because He first loved us.

Thank you Ella Grace for the gift of you.

Stay tuned. ❤️

A little bit late (okay maybe a lot) but here are a few of my favorite pictures of my favorite little humans from our little village this last week…ish. ❤️

Honorable mentions include
✨ Ella Bella’s sweet Thanksgiving card she made our family
✨ Grateful for the aunties in her life that speak and pour life into our blooming tween - they just had a conversation about hair and she wanted me to take a picture to share with her
✨ An epic wish list for Santa Kwacz - I gave her an option of one big gift or lots of little random things and she chose MOREEEEEE!!!!
✨ The best jiejie in the world decided to make one for t**i too but could only think of 4 things he might like for Christmas ❤️
✨ But do you love bread like you give it hugs and keep it safe in the grocery store?
✨ I love being her mom and I learn so much from her always. She asked me for a sewing kit and was so delighted I got her one so she could repair her baju instead of more conveniently getting a new one. 🤯 A gift that Auntie/Jiejie taught her so well through her beloved swap parties that she so misses.
✨ We got a tree!!!!!!! But even more special, grandma Ellie patiently and lovingly hand crocheted us a tree skirt. 🥰
✨ Our wild little boy testing out his new ski/sled helmet! It’s got padding and ear flaps to keep him warm and a little strap on the back to keep his goggles in place as well as a soft chin strap. So amused and amazed. MIPS rated because did I mention wild?
✨ Mama’s world femes roti punggung. 😂🙈
✨ Of all the things I love, the way they love and trust each other is one of my favorite things in the world.
✨ Deer playing tag at the back of our house!
✨ I bought a bright colored snow suit for our little “firework” (geddit? geddit?) so I could easily find him on the snow (his old one was white and blue and super nice but so hard to see him in a sea of people on heavy snow days and everyone is out) but we’re both not sure this is his style. 😂🙈

🌈❤️✨
What was your little collection of joy and color this week?