#momlife

Some days, man. 

Tonight I was running late making dinner. I tried to cook one handed with a crying Rosemary while trying to keep Matthew from destroying our home. Partway through I looked down and noticed a strange green stain on my sleeves. I had no clue what it was and kept going until a few minutes later, whenI realized Rosemary had a blowout I had been smearing all over myself. 🤣😂🤣🤣🤣

The worst part was I was cooking rice a roni on the stove and I didn't feel like I could leave to address the mess until I got it simmering. Once I added the water I left in a rush and forgot to turn down the heat. I came back to a thick layer of burnt rice on the bottom of the pan (most of it survived though, Fortunately!) And a toddler who also had a poopy diaper that needed to be changed. 

Life is crazy sometimes! It will be a funny story at some point... maybe even to whoever actually reads this :)

adventures

Matthew and I went on a little mother son date for a couple of hours. We went to the library and the play place at the mall. He even got to ride one of the coin operated rides there and he picked out some candy from the candy machines too.



The second I walked in my parents' door to pickup Rosemary, Mom pointed out that a couple buttons on my shirt had come undone and my bra was showing. Now I have to wonder when that happened and how many people saw. 😳😫🤣

Debbie

 Scrolling through Instagram (a habit I need to break!), I ran into a reel about good old turn of the Millennium music. "When you thought you would be Stacey's mom but realize you are Debbie."

The woman in the reel is singing along to Bowling for Soup's 1985 and then slows down as she realizes she is Debbie. "Debbie just hit the wall! She never had it all. One Prozac a day... Husband's a CPA. Her dreams went out the door when she turned 24...."

I'm not a perfect fit for that but wow. Middle age is just around the corner for me these days. I looked up when the song came out. 2004, 19 years after 1985. Here we are 19 years after that. I'm not obsessed with past culture like Debbie but sometimes it takes my breath away to realize how much time has gone by since college. I lived in Provo for 9 years and it felt like a long time. I realized recently that I've been back in Colorado for 8 years now, and it feels like a blink of an eye. Time is weird like that.

I'm relating more and more to middle aged characters on TV and in books too, which is weird! I kept reading young adult stuff for so long because at least it was clean, but now I'm much more Haymitch than Katniss. 

Life is hard. When you are young, you have big dreams. Of course you do. You should! You focus on the positive things you will experience in life. You don't know what challenges will hit and if you worried about them in advance it wouldn't help anyways.

Part of middle age seems to be accepting that no one has a perfect life, that things didn't go the way you hoped. Understanding that you don't need to be jealous of anyone else because no one gets through this life without some kind of suffering.

I've been through things that I didn't expect. It was excruciating for me to be single until I was 30. That sounds dramatic but I'm sure anyone reading this knows me well enough to remember how devastated I was when Prince Charming was delayed. Since then things have just been harder. I've gone through things I never thought I'd have to in my worst dreams and I have the PTSD to prove it. (I really need to get back in treatment for that....) I have a lot of friends facing serious health challenges right now, some of them life threatening. Some of my friends' little children are facing serious challenges. Some of my friends have already lost a parent or even both of them. Some of them are struggling financially and some can't seem to land a good job no matter how hard they work. I still have wonderful, beautiful, talented friends my age who have yet to have their first kiss or date their first boyfriend, things we dreamed of together as young teenagers decades ago. Others are waiting for their turn to become mothers and bring home a little baby of their own.

Life is messy and complicated. That is how it is meant to be. Somehow we have to find joy in the journey and figure out how to use the time we are given. I think of Anna in the New Testament, widowed for the majority of her life, so she chose to spend her years serving in the temple. I want to be like her and put my life to the best use that I can, even when it doesn't look the way I thought it would.

Parenting Transitions during a Pandemic

 The last few years have been rough, for everyone.

For me, it was hard that my transition to parenthood hit about the same time as the pandemic. Matthew was born in January 2020. We kept him home for 6 weeks while his little body built immunity. He made it out to church twice, and out to 2 shopping trips. I remember we took him clothes shopping at the mall. I'd been isolated for the last 6 weeks and it felt like the world had ended, but here we were out in public again and life was normal.

Then poor little guy got very very sick with some cold virus which turned into bronchiolitis. So we kept him at home and BOOM. Everything shuts down for the pandemic.

It was really rough for me figuring out how to navigate the pandemic as a new parent. We basically kept Matthew at home for the first 18 months of his life. I'm a hermit at heart and the pandemic really shrunk my comfort zone. I don't think I've recovered yet.  And now I have two little kiddos and no experience taking a baby in public, which has been interesting. Normally I would be a pro at this by now, but since Matthew couldn't go anywhere as an infant it's like my first time figuring this stuff out, even simple stuff like how do you shop at Target when the cart is barely big enough to fit the baby's car seat? But I'm doing it at the same time I learn to have a toddler in public too, and how to manage two kiddos by myself. It's just a lot. But it is good.

Recovering People Pleaser

 I've always been a people pleaser, but I'm starting to recover. Slowly but surely.

Part of it is because so much of my energy is diverted into parenting my kids! I can't waste it on all my anxieties about people pleasing anymore!

I really noticed this around Christmas time. I've mentioned in the blog already how I went minimalist for Christmas this year and I didn't give out a lot of presents. We had the idea to deliver homemade gelato to some of our friends. This did not happen at all. But at one point I was planning on visiting someone and giving them gelato, and I started to go into my old people pleasing spiral. Was that a good enough present? Would she appreciate it, or be annoyed I didn't spend more money? I started analyzing this person and trying to figure out what would please her and how she would react... and then for once I caught myself. "She'll have to be happy with it. This is all I have to give."

Not worded the best of course (she didn't have to be happy!), but it was really freeing to realize I wasn't taking responsibility for this person's emotions or her reaction to my gift. I wasn't going to stress it, I was going to do my best and let her take it from there.

I'm trying so hard to be better about that in general. Sometime over the pandemic I lost my voice. That is, I was scared off trying to take up space or share my thoughts or opinions very much, because there always seemed to be someone ready for a fight who would rip my perspective to shreds. (Partially a hazard of being a conservative who was pro-Mask and pro-vaccine I guess. Wasn't making anyone happy.) Lately several of my friends and loved ones have suffered/are suffering intense trials, and I wasn't really reaching out because I felt like I had nothing to offer them. I couldn't anticipate their needs well enough to confidently meet them. What if my efforts only annoyed them? But then I put those thoughts aside and did my best to reach out. I did it knowing I am imperfect and that I was risking some of my efforts falling flat, but hoping that something I did would make a difference for someone. Hopefully it did. Hopefully if it didn't land quite right, the thought counted for something.

I don't want to be passively watching life go by. Getting in the game means getting hurt and making mistakes and yes, sometimes disappointing other people. But I'm trusting that it will all be worth it in the end, and I'm trying so hard to validate my own perspective at all times. It doesn't matter if other people agree with the way I see things.... my thoughts and feelings are still valid.