Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve wanted to be a mom…and not just a mom, but a mom to little girls. Actually, I wanted twin girls. My best friends back then, Brandey and Mande, were twins. Except back then they were known as Brandy and Mandy. When they hit adolescence, they started experimenting with various spellings of their names and finally settled on Brandey and Mande. But I digress. These girls are not identical, but shared a womb just the same. My own sister and I have nearly 5 years between us, so we were never really friends as children, although we are great friends now as adults. Anyway, I loved being friends with Brandey and Mande. We had a lot of fun in those days, usually doing things we should not have been doing, but also doing things that little girls love to do. We rode our bikes, went to the pool everyday and played school all the time. But I always wished I was a twin too, to have that bond with a sister and best friend who was there all the time and didn’t go back to her own house at the end of every day. I have always known that my chance of having twins was slim to none, but a girl can dream, right? More important to me, however, was to have a girl before I had a boy. I am a fourth generation first-born female. I am the oldest of my siblings, my mom is the oldest, my grandmamma was the oldest, and my nanny was the oldest. We think that Nanny’s mother was also a first-born female, but we aren’t sure. They say that first-born females are very independent and have dominant personalities. That is definitely the case for me. I’ve also heard that if your second toe is longer than your first toe, you have a dominant personality. Not only is my second toe longer than my big toe, but so is my third toe. Of course, that may be because I walk on my toes, so my toes are very long since they provide for my balance. Anyway, that doesn’t really have anything to do with the purpose of this blog, but just an interesting observation. My point is that I have always wanted to carry on the first-born female thing just because I think it’s kind of cool. However, to complicate things, I also wanted to have a boy first so my girls would have an older brother to protect them and scare boys away. I always wanted an older brother for that reason, but I was blessed with a little brother. Since I couldn’t have both a first-born daughter and a first-born son, I preferred to have a girl first. It never really occurred to me back in my younger days that I might actually get both.
Fast forward about 20 years. I met my husband, Geoff, in September of 2002 while I was in my third year of law school. We were both at Slugger Field in Louisville at a bluegrass festival. He was sitting a few rows ahead of me with some friends and he was wearing a t-shirt from Smith’s Olde Bar, a well-known music venue in Atlanta, my hometown. Since I have this dominant personality being a fourth generation first-born female and all, I walked up to him and asked if he was from Atlanta. He said yes…Marietta to be exact, Lassiter High School. I am also from Marietta and would have gone to Lassiter had Pope High School not been built. We both went to Mabry Middle School. We exchanged phone numbers and went on our first date about six weeks later when we went to the University of Georgia/University of Kentucky football game in Lexington. Now, you don’t really need to know any of that, but I love that story and had an excuse to tell it. At Thanksgiving of that year, Geoff and I went to Atlanta together to visit our families for the holiday. That was when I met his son, Joshua for the first time. Eight months later, Geoff and I were moving in together. Joshua’s mom, Nora, had decided to send Joshua to Louisville to live with his dad. We wanted to give Joshua the most stable environment possible and we didn’t feel like having two separate residences was the best way to do that. My lease was up, so Geoff upgraded from a one-bedroom to a three-bedroom at his complex and we all became a family on August 2, 2003, two days after I took the bar exam. I suddenly found myself the mother (or not quite stepmother – we weren’t married yet) to a four year old boy. It all became official about two years later when Geoff and I (and Joshua) tied the knot on June 11, 2005. Since 2003, the three of us lived as a family. Joshua calls me Maggie, but when talking to other people (including his mother), he refers to me as his mom. When he was in kindergarten, one of his classmates asked him, “who’s Maggie?” He said, “my mom.” She asked, “well, why do you call her Maggie?” and he replied, “that’s her name!” I don’t really think that cleared it up for her, but her mom probably explained the situation to her when she got home.
Since Joshua came into my life, it has become very sports-centered. Don’t get me wrong…I love sports. I love watching sports and I love playing sports. BUT, all of our family activities seem to be sports-related. Before my daughters were born, my evenings, of course, were filled with soccer practice and football practice and baseball practice and basketball practice. And my weekends were spent at Joshua’s games. I bought a video camera just hours before his first soccer game (the very first sport he ever played) so we could capture this very important milestone. I videotaped nearly every single one of his games up until the time Kathleen was born. I still tape, but it is harder to do while trying to keep up with a busy toddler. I love being a soccer mom, a football mom, a baseball mom, a basketball mom. It is so much fun to watch Joshua play. He is a talented athlete and if he puts his mind to it, I believe that he could play sports at a college level. We have invested a lot of time and money into athletics. Travel teams, camps, clinics…thousands of dollars and hours. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Now, since I was the only girl in the house, our family outings have always been more mannish than girly. We go to Braves games and Georgia football games, hockey games, University of Arkansas baseball games, minor league baseball games, high school football and basketball games, etc. Our DVR is full of different games and NASCAR races. We own so many sports movies: Rudy, Remember the Titans, Facing the Giants, Friday Night Lights, Dale, 3, We are Marshall, The Express, Miracle, Invincible, Hoosiers. We have been to the Negro League Baseball Museum, the International Motor Sports Hall of Fame at Talladega, etc. I have fun doing these things, but I miss going to the theatre, the ballet. We did go see the Nutcracker, but that’s because Joshua’s school went on a field trip and Geoff and I chaperoned. I also made them go see A Midsummer Night’s Dream with me, but they were both so bored. Joshua actually said he liked some of it, but when I asked what he liked about it, he said, “the sword fighting.”
Oh, how I longed for a daughter to share these girly things with. So, when Geoff and I started talking about having our own kids, I began preparing for a girl immediately. I figured it couldn’t hurt to try osmosis. I found myself buying pink. Pink shirts, pink hats. I bought a pink cell phone. I lost my Nalgene bottle and replaced it with a pink one. I have been drinking from this pink water bottle daily for three years now. When we were conceiving Kathleen through in vitro, I wore a pink shirt to my embryo transfer appointment, and probably to a good number of all of my doctor’s appointments. I wore pink to my 20 week ultrasound. All of that hard work paid off. I found out I was having a girl. A lot of women don’t care for pink and try to avoid dressing their daughters in pink. Yet, thinking pink worked for me, so I embrace that color and have had no qualms about dressing Kathleen in it. When Kathleen was 15 months old, I found out I was pregnant again. It was a big surprise since we didn’t think we could conceive “the old fashioned way.” This time around, I honestly had no preference of sex. We both wanted another boy for certain reasons. First, Joshua is the last male Goodsole, so if he doesn’t have sons, my husband’s name will die off. In the United States, we know of no other Goodsoles except for my husband’s family. There is also my ego that wants one of my biological children to also carry on the family name. Another reason is sports. As I said before, Joshua is an exceptional athlete, but his mother is about as athletic as an old sock. Geoff and I can only wonder what a combination of our genes could produce athletically.. We have also saved all of Joshua’s clothes “for the next kid,” as we always said. So, we have no shortage of wardrobe for a little guy. But there were also reasons to want another girl. Our first concern was space. We moved into our current house when Kathleen was seven weeks old. We have four bedrooms and couldn’t really afford to buy anything larger. Because we live so far away from our family, we need a guest room. Plus, Geoff inherited some antique bedroom furniture from his grandmother, so we need place to put that. Remembering my own love for drawing on anything and everything as a child, we decided it wasn’t a good idea for this furniture to serve as furniture for one of our kids. When we found out we were expecting again, we decided that if it was another girl, she and Kathleen would share a room and if it was a boy, we would have to put an addition on the house. The latter is not exactly a safe move in today’s economy, especially with the risk that Geoff could easily be transferred again. After all, we had moved three times in four and a half years. Then there is the wardrobe factor. A girl would also have no shortage of clothes, and because of the timing of this pregnancy, all of Kathleen’s baby clothes would work again in terms of the baby’s size during each of the seasons. The biggest advantage to having another girl, however, is the fact that they would be good friends. So, when we found out we were having another girl we were both very happy with that.
Kathleen and Leighton aren’t twins. They don’t even qualify as Irish twins. But they are so close in age they can always play together and will go to school together. So many other moms with girls this close in age have asked me if they share a room and have shared stories of their own girls being best friends. One mom told me that when they moved into a larger house which allowed her girls to each have their own rooms, they wanted nothing of it. They wanted to continue to share a room. Kathleen loves her baby sister and you can see the love for Kathleen in Leighton’s eyes and her smile. I know these girls will be the best of friends. So, I realize how very blessed I am. I got my fifth generation first-born female. But I also have the big brother to watch out for his sisters. And even though my girls aren’t twins, they are close enough. I have already started buying matching outfits for them, a task which will become easier once Leighton is a little older. It is hard to find infant clothes that have matching toddler clothes. As all of my children grow older, we will see a gradual shift from all things boy to all things girl. I have no doubt that my girls will play sports. Kathleen has already started gymnastics and she has one heck of an arm. I definitely see softball and soccer in her future…and possibly football (she loves it). But I cannot wait for ballet lessons and dance recitals. It is only six short years before Joshua leaves for college and our boy-life phases out. I hope he plays college sports so I can continue to watch him play and his sisters can appreciate his talent, but I look forward to the princess years with Kathleen and Leighton.
