Do you think I should be blogging?

when it's 9pm and I just finished the dinner dishes from last night (no time during the day to unload the clean ones from the dishwasher) and when I have 29 ice cream cone cupcakes to frost for Mister's class birthday treat for tomorrow, 6 loads of laundry to finish folding, and one 200-page dissertation to finish editing before Friday? (not my dissertation, thank heavens, but a little side job I took on that is taking over my free time). And to think that on the stair master at 6:00 this morning, I actually thought I might have 30 minutes to scrapbook one of Mister's past birthday's before his next birthday. (You know, it's kind of a lofty goal I have: scrapbook one past birthday before the next birthday. So Mister's scrapbook right now contains pictures of his birth, his third birthday, and his fourth birthday. Think I'll catch up anytime soon?!)

But I am in a pensive mood tonight. Maybe because it's the eve of my first child's eighth birthday, and I have been thinking about his birth because my little sister just gave birth to her first baby, also a boy. Wasn't it just 2 or 3 years ago that Mister was born? How did this 8-year-old thing happen? (And just for the record, I think we ought to revisit the accountable-at-age-eight principle because I look at my sweet, naive, obedient boy and I do not want him to be accountable yet--I don't think that he is ready. And I don't think that I have prepared him enough.)

A few months ago a friend asked me if my life so far has turned out as I expected it would. I didn't answer her right away. Outwardly, yes, my life looks much like I anticipated it would: I always thought I would get a graduate degree, although I thought I would stop at a master's, I always thought I would be married and would have children, I always thought we would own our own home, cars, etc. I always knew I would stay active in the LDS church. But I could never have expected the inner happenings of my life: I did not know that I would ache so badly to have a child before being able to have one. I did not know that I would love motherhood as much as I do, and I did not know that motherhood would be as hard as it has been and is. I didn't expect post-partum depression or occasional feelings of being stifled by motherhood. In other words, I don't know how I possibly could have anticipated both the highs and the lows.

Same thing for marriage: J and I just celebrated our eleventh anniversary on Friday (at Benihanas, hence the pic).

The five-year-old girl in this picture

and the almost 25-year-old girl in this picture

had no idea how many moments of pure joy and togetherness I would feel during the next 11 years or how much fun marriage would be. But she also could never have expected how much work it is and how angry she could get at her husband or how lonely she might sometimes feel, even in the midst of a good marriage, or how very, very hard it is to be truly unselfish and to let things go rather than hold on and let them fester.

So, there you go, random thoughts for tonight. Too random to rap up nicely (and too much effort to do so when the cupcakes and the dissertation editing await). If you want to view something a little lighter, go check out Sweetie's and Mister's entries in the Frost Family Peeps contest, a la the Washington Post's famous Peeps contest. Sweetie's is the last entry in the slide show and Mister's is the second-to-last entry.

A rough patch and keeping perspective

It started 4-5 weeks ago with H's first taste of rice cereal. He liked it (and he liked the bib even more!) The problem is that the rice cereal liked him too. So much so that it did not want to leave his little body, despite multiple glycerin suppositories daily, 8 baby food containers worth of prunes, pear juice, and a purchase of miralax.

Add to those problems a terrible cold, cough, and fever that made the rounds through all of us, but has hit H especially hard. Monday I took H back to the doctor because I was worried that his cough, which has only gotten worse over the past 2 weeks, had gone to his lungs. Thankfully it hadn't, but he is sporting a double ear infection. I'm glad that there's some explanation for his waking up 5-6 times a night. However, now that the antibiotics have kicked in, we're off to the store today to try a different brand of diapers. The Pampers Cruisers are not keeping the antibiotic-induced diaper contents from doing a little cruising of their own.

So I have spent my fair share of time in the rocking chair in little H's room over the past 4-5 weeks with a fussy, tired, sick baby. And I am worn out, drained, and just plain tired to my core. I have been thankful for this Alex Nabaum illustration that I have hanging in H's room:

At times it has helped me keep my perspective a bit to think about my non-sleeping baby as a little acorn, who will not need this kind of intense, physical nurturing for long. One day we'll all sleep again. Let's hope it's soon!

Catching up: First Day of School and Choosing Not to Be Invisible

Yes, yes, school started a month ago. Normally, I wouldn't even bother to post pics of it this late in the game (aside from the fact that I know you all are dying to see more pics of my kids, right?!). But I've been reading Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's book Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History and in her introduction, she talks about her dissertation and her first book about Martha Moore Ballard, a midwife and healer in Puritan New England. In the intro to Well-Behaved Women, Ulrich writes, "Ballard made history by performing a methodical and seemingly ordinary act--writing a few words in her diary every day. . . . To all appearances, Martha Ballard was a well-behaved woman. . . . Most well-behaved women are too busy living their lives to think about recording what they do and too modest about their own achievements to think anybody else will care. Ballard was different. She was not a mover and a shaker, but neither did she choose invisibility."

That sentence made me think. Made me think about my own life. I am not a mover and a shaker. Most everything I do is "methodical" and "ordinary." But if I do not record my life of nurturing and teaching and loving (and, at times, trying to love!) my children, if I do not record the things in my life that are methodical and ordinary, then I am by default choosing invisibility. I love that so many women and stay at home mothers today are blogging about their daily doings, their daily contributions to a very grand and important endeavor in their careers as mothers. So I am trying to write in my paper journal more and to record more in my blog to print off one day as my own record.

So, pics of the kids. Mister's first day of all-day school! A first-grader! I have to admit that it was very surreal for me to take my first son to school all day and then go home with my newborn son--I felt like I was turning one over to the world outside my home and just beginning again with a new little boy within the walls of my home. The only thing that kept me from crying all the way home was plenty of acquaintences around, including J, who had the day off. Then we have Sweetie's first day of preschool. Ironically, Mister cried again this morning--a month into school--about how he wanted to stay home with me, and Sweetie cried again this morning about how she wanted to go to first grade.

Opposition in all things

Yesterday I got in the shower and had just shampooed up my hair when, as if on cue, the baby monitor lit up and the wailing began. I felt like I was experiencing deja vu. I vividly remember the exact scenario happening when Mister was a baby, a very colicy baby, I might add. I remember standing there as the water poured over me and crying. I was just a new mother who simply wanted to take a shower at 1 in the afternoon. "What about me? What about me?" I said to nobody. And, amazingly enough, Somebody answered me. The thought came into my head forcefully, as if it had been said out loud: "It's not about you."

That was a turning point for me, my own personal Moses-moment, when I really understood for the first time that life in general is not and should not be about me. A thought that, at the time, like Moses, "I never had supposed."

So I have been thinking this past week, as I have been juggling a crying baby around the house and as I have been sitting out on the patio in the 112-degree head to calm his little stomach, about opposition and the paradoxes of the gospel life--loosing yourself to find yourself, receiving all only after giving all, and so on. The three postpartums I've experienced have been very difficult for me, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, as I'm sure they are for most women. But that's probably part of the paradox. Would I treasure this so much

without this?

Would I love so deeply without giving so dearly?

In her book A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard describes the horror and viciousness of a giant water bug that poisons frogs, fish, and insects with one bite. This bite dissolves the victim’s insides—all but the skin, through which the giant water bug sucks out the victim’s body. Dillard then writes, “That it’s rough out there and chancy is no surprise. Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac. But at the same time we are also created. In the Koran, Allah asks, ‘The heaven and the earth and all in between, thinkest thou I made them in jest?’ It’s a good question. What do we think of the created universe, spanning an unthinkable void with an unthinkable profusion of forms? . . . Pascal uses a nice term to describe the notion of the creator’s, once having called forth the universe, turning his back to it: Deus Absconditus. Is this what we think happened?”

Before Dillard answers her own question, she spends a great deal of time in her book describing her walks along Tinker Creek where she was privileged to see God’s creations and to experience what she calls “beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous.” She then ends her book, saying, “Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see.”

Dillard looks at the oppositions in the world—the cruelty and the beauty—and can only make sense of it by concluding that our purpose is to take the time out of the busyness and nothingness of life to really see our surroundings and give thanks for them.

Although I agree with Dillard about the importance of taking time to really see, and although I find her writing beautiful, I’m glad I know that opposition in all things—even in the creation of the giant water bug—has a deeper purpose than she gives it. I’m glad I can find comfort and joy in the togetherness of my family because I have been single and lonely. I’m glad I can feel the peace of watching my baby sleep because I have felt the turmoil and helplessness of watching my baby cry.

Dillard searches all over creation, trying to philosophically think of the answer herself without doing what she should do the entire time: going to the Creator Himself and asking Him the meaning of opposition in life. After 271 pages exploring (among a few other things) the coexistence of both extreme cruelty and breathtaking beauty in nature, Dillard ends without a definitive answer. Despite that, she ends as she should, by praising and thanking God for the oppositions. I’ll quote her because I wish I could express praise and gratitude the way that she does: “I go my way, and my left foot says ‘Glory,’ and my right foot says ‘Amen’: in and out of Shadow Creek, upstream and down, exultant, in a daze, dancing, to the twin silver trumpets of praise.”

I admit that, unlike Dillard, I'm not to the point of glorifying and amen-ing the sleeplessness and pain and mood swings that is postpartum, but I am trying to cherish the moments of these first few weeks while I survive the larger portion of the days (and nights). And I do offer plenty of "Glory"s and "Amen"s when I watch my little baby and his ever-changing expressions as he sleeps.

Mother's Day

I've never been much of a fan of Mother's Day. It started with the days of unsuccessfully trying to conceive and being reminded of my inability to fulfill what it seemed I was created to do. I thought it would change when I did become a mother. But even then, Mother's Day has always seemed to be about holding up the ideal for praise. Either way, a day fraught with sadness/bitterness or some strange kind of guilt. But on my sixth Mother's Day now, I have been less judgmental and expectant about what the day will hold for me. I sat in church, wearing the flower corsage Mister made for me, craning my neck to see them singing "Mother, I Love You," and pasting a smile on my face during the talks. 

Mister and I at his class's Mother's Day tea party, with me, wearing the flower corsage.

I think my history of dislike for the day comes from a sense of the complexity of emotions behind it for so many women--women who have lost their mothers, women who are not mothers and would like to be, women who are trying to come to terms with their own preconceived notions of motherhood versus the sometimes-hard reality of it, women who expect a day devoted to them but don't actually get it, and so on and so on. I like Anna Quinden's take on Mother's Day here:

"Mother's Day is still fraught with strong emotion, if only because each year I feel like a fraud. It is undeniable that I have given birth to two children; I remember both occasions quite vividly. But the orchid corsage, the baby-pink card with the big M in curly script, the burnt toast on a tray in bed--they belong to someone else, some other kind of person, some sort of moral authority. They belong to Mother, and each of us knows quite well who that person is, and always will be. That person is a concept. I suppose that is where it all goes wrong. I know few people who have managed to separate the two. . . . 

That is hard to imagine, even harder to accept, for among other things, it means realizing that your own mother felt this way, too--unsure of herself, weak in the knees, terrified about what in the world to do with you. It means accepting that she was tired, inept, sometimes stupid; that she, too, sat in the dark at 2:00 A.M. with a child shrieking across the hall and no clue to the child's trouble.  . . . 

It has to do with Mother with a capital M: someone we are afraid to be and afraid that we can never be. It has to do with a torch being passed, with finding it too hot to hold, with looking up at the person who has given it to you and accepting that, without it, she is no Valkyrie, just a woman muddling through, much like me, much like you."

Despite my feelings about Mother's Day, I am grateful today for the children who are patient with me as I muddle through, and I am grateful for my own mother who persisted in her own muddling through and is still does her very best during all of the many times that I still need her. 

1.  Opportunity, 2.  Children laughing, 3.  An afternoon nap/rest

Back to being The One

My mom left Thursday evening after a week and a half here helping--again--while I made major, painful revisions--again--to my dissertation. She was and is a lifesaver.  

So I am trying to switch gears and get back into the groove of being The One. You know, The One who has to plan the meals, shop to ensure that we have ingredients for said meals, make sure children eat those meals (even if they can't stand that particular dish), clean up the meals when husband is late getting home or at a church meeting, The One who has to stop all fights and deal out all punishments for bad choices, The One who has to be ready to suggest intriguing play options in order to attempt to bypass these fights and bad choices, The One who plays the Ladybug Game multiple times a day, The One who has to clean up messes, The One who has to stop whatever she's doing at the time to run into the bathroom when she hears "WIPE!!!"  You know, The One. 

I have to say that it has been nice to have a break from being The One, especially when I can turn the duties over to someone I trust so much and who also loves my kids. Every stay-at-home mother needs a chance every so often to be something other than The One for the majority of her day or week. 

So I am trying to get back into the groove and trying to rediscover all of the wonderful things about being The One. For example, The One gets many hugs, kisses, and snuggles. And as The One, because I am always there for the mundane and the frustrating, I am also always there for the funny and the sweet. 

1.  A good morning jog.    2.  A good night's sleep.   3.  An afternoon temple trip.

Simultaneous crash

I went to bed at 8:45 last night, right after I sang Mister his Lullaby. I wasn't planning on it, but suddenly and simultaneously, my body and mind crashed. I wasn't even able to eat half of the shake J brought home or even go down the stairs to say good-night to him. This doesn't happen all too often--usually one or the other crashes and I walk around zombie-like, unable to remember why I came downstairs, why I got the butter out, who I just called on the phone, or what the end of the story is that I am telling. Or, I lay in bed, unable to move, but with my mind thinking of something I wanted to write or say or do, if only my body weren't comatose. 

I think the occasional simultaneous crash might have to do with being Mom Tired. My friend Sarah describes Mom Tired in her newspaper column as follows: "Being mom tired isn’t so much a circumstance as a state of being.  Take any mom, calculate the number of years since her first pregnancy, and you have the number of years she’s been mom tired.  Calculate the number of times she’s had to watch Barney or Mary-Kate and Ashley and you have the degree to which she’s mom tired."

So I have been Mom Tired for over 6 years, since I DO count those 10 months of pregnancy (and yes, I wrote 10 months because 40 weeks is NOT 9 months). And my theory is that when the degree to which I am Mom Tired reaches a certain point, all function fails. 

Thankfully, I woke up this morning slightly re-charged. But already since we got home from church 2 hours ago, I have intervened in a fight over the sole mini-candy bar in a care package from a friend, a fight over the sole piece of gum from the school carnival yesterday, a fight over who was first to play a computer game, and I am now signing off after agreeing to play Candyland and read The Library Mouse (again--already read it twice yesterday) and do something else "that's fun because it's the weekend," as Mister reminded me. So, my degrees of Mom Tired are already climbing. Be prepared for another crash soon.

A Glass-Half-Empty Mother

I have always wanted to be like my Aunt Susan, who exudes positivity and encouragement. When she tells you that she thinks you're wonderful (which she often does), you honestly believe that she actually might be right. Unfortunately, that positive gene seems to have skipped me. Instead, I am a dyed-in-the-wool glass-half-empty person, despite my continued efforts to the contrary. 

Now, don't get me wrong, the glass-half-empty outlook does come in handy, like on back-packing trips when nobody else thought to bring an extra tarp or duct tape, and on family vacations when those darn meterologists got it wrong again. As the glass-half-empty person, you see, I have already thought about the possibility of these misfortunes and have come prepared. 

In some ways, motherhood has made my glass-half-empty personality thrive, thanks to those slight twinges of fulfillment that come when the baby has a blow-out and J looks desperately at me, "Do you have another outfit and a whole container of wipes?" Well, of course I do. Or when Mister finally admits that his size 9 shoes really are too small and that he must have a new pair of shoes right.this.instant. Lucky for him, I bought them on clearance last year. But still, I would rather be less prepared and more positive. 

Until our trip to California a few weeks ago, I hadn't much thought about the impact of my half-empty outlook on my children. The first night at the grandparents, the kids realized that they hadn't put their stack of books into the travel box, so we had nothing to read before bedtime. I dug through the travel box and found a Snow White sticker book with words and read it instead. Mister and Sweetie had never heard of Snow White before. And they weren't so impressed. 

"Well, that's silly," Sweetie said when the story was over. 

"What is?" I asked.

"Snow White, going off with that prince," she said. "She doesn't even know him."

"Yeah," said Mister. "He could be really mean or something." 

"Yeah," said Sweetie. "Reeeeallly mean. Silly Snow White."

Yes, silly Snow White. Such a trusting, glass-half-full heroine. And who knows what ever happened to her? Yeah, yeah, "happily ever after." Do you think I buy that? (Remember, that glass is half empty.)  So, maybe there are some parenting perks to my half-empty outlook after all. 

"Please bless Mommy not to snap at me."

That's what Sweetie said in her prayer tonight. 

Ouch. 

Part of me is glad she said it. I could use all of the help I can get. So if she can pray for me and I can pray for me, maybe something will actually improve. Today was just one of those overwhelming days where I felt like I was doing too much and none of it even remotely well, including mothering. It's easy to get down on yourself on those days, especially when your 3-year-old prays that you won't snap at her. 

Tonight, as I was searching through my Word archives, looking for a specific example for one of my dissertation chapters, I came upon this quote by Toni Morrison that I'd saved:

"There was something so valuable about what happened when one became a mother. For me it was the most liberating thing that ever happened. . . . Liberating because the demands that children make are not the demands of a normal 'other.' The children's demands on me were things that nobody else ever asked me to do. To be a good manager. To have a sense of humor. To deliver something that somebody else could use. And they were not interested in all the things that other people were interested in, like what I was wearing or if I were sensual. Somehow all of the baggage that I had accumulated as a person about what was valuable just fell away. I could not only be me--whatever that was--but somebody actually needed me to be that."

Now I don't know that I would describe being a mother as "the most liberating thing that ever happened" to me. Some days it feels like just the opposite. 

But today the part of this quote that resonated with me is the end: "I could not only be me--whatever that was--but somebody actually needed me to be that." There are many things that make up "me," and unfortunately, one of those things is impatience. But if I look at the whole picture, I can think of a whole bunch of other things about me that Sweetie needs me to be, even if that means she has to put up with my impatience and pray for my soul occasionally. I can draw confidence from that thought that despite my inadequacies, I am what she needs.

And Morrison is right, there is something valuable in the frazzling and abnormal demands that my children make of me. Maybe by the time they're 18 or 20 (or 30 or 40), all of those "Please bless Mommy not to snap at me" prayers will have kicked in and the "me" that my offspring will need will be a little bit more mellow than "me" that they are currently getting.  Maybe.

does it make me a bad mom . . .

if i don't correct Mister when he says "liberry" instead of "library" or "binoclee-arz" instead of "binoculars" and Sweetie when she says "bi-fore" instead of "before" or "wiff" instead of "with." because all it would take is me correcting them once and they would no longer make these mistakes. the pediatrician this week at Sweetie's well-check asked me if she was talking okay and then looked up, completely startled, when she said to me," mommy, can you clip this cuticle when we get home or it will turn into a hangnail and then i might need neosporin and a band-aid." "cuticle?" he said. "that's a big word." so, i know the "bif-ores" and the "liberrys" would stop with just a word from me. but i can't bring myself to do it. they are growing up so fast. soon they won't want to go to the liberry for storytime and they won't need the binoclee-arz to play animal rescuer. i can hang onto the few baby-talk words left for at least a little while, right?

and to copy other bloggers, i think i'll start ending my (very few) posts with 3 things i am thankful for that day. i try to do this in my journal, but i'm not the best journal-writer either these days, so i suppose it's good to do it wherever i can:
1. a husband who turns around on his way to work to come back and give kids kisses
2. friends over for lunch
3. friday night eating out--no dinner prep!