Doing it Right: Digging Deep and other wins

1. This week, I came upon this thought from Gretchen of the Happiness Project, suggesting that we dig deep.  I've really made an effort to live this.  Last night, my toddler was sitting on my lap asking to watch Wheel of Fortune for half an hour before it was on.  Every time she put her face 2 cm in front of mine and said "Mommy Wheel!" I would just take a deep breath and say "Yes, honey, but it's not on yet.  We have to wait."  To which she would reply, "Wait, Wheel" -- then pause for 30 seconds and we'd start over.  I will now accept my trophy.

2.I let my husband sleep late this weekend without grumping or grouching at him at all.

3. I shaved my legs on Sunday night.  In January, people.

4. I have been making an effort to keep my kitchen counters clear, including putting away my clean dishes instead of leaving them in my dish rack every day.  I haven't been perfect but I've been doing pretty darn good.

5. I've been reading and writing most days this week.

6. I'm okay with not being perfect at any of  these resolutions.

So, what have you been doing right this week?

Linking up with Jaime from James and Jax  

Still my baby

A strange thing happened the day I came home from the hospital with my littlest girl.

Suddenly?  My two year old wasn't a baby anymore.  And I so wasn't ready.

Two months ago, 36 weeks pregnant, I took my big girl to Target to pick up some portraits.  It had been a long no-nap day and I just needed to go, to get something done, to accomplish one task.  And so, when she fell asleep in the car on the way there, I scooped her up and carried her into the store.  Amazingly, she stayed asleep, and I walked around the entire store with 28 pounds of toddler draped over my shoulder, her feet hanging down over my very pregnant belly.

As I felt the weight of her settle into my body, my breathing slowed.  My shoulders lowered. Several times, I paused just to press my lips to her head and smooth down her hair with both hands.

But here, next to her little sister, she looks impossibly big.  She wants to hold the baby.  She wants to help cook dinner.  When did she start talking in articulate sentences?

I don't remember her newborn smell.  I don't remember her feeling light in my arms, the weight of her draped over just one arm.  I only remember the sharp, insistent sound of her infant cries as a story that I tell, not as the stabbing in my chest they once were.

Sometimes she crawls around or lies on the baby's playmat with her feet in the air, and my eyes fill with tears.

And I know that I love the girl she is now.  She snuggles in my armpit on the couch, tells me she loves me, makes up songs about mommy and daddy and baby sister.  She is a source of joy in my life like nothing I can describe.

But as I hold them both in my arms watching Sesame Street, I wish I could keep my big girl little, just a little bit longer.

One month

Sweet little girl,

I am having a hard time believing you have been here for a month.  As you rise and fall with my breath, your legs still curled frog-like under you but your arms wrapped around my waist in what I can pretend is not an accidental hug, I realize that you are already starting to grow up.  I hope that in the craziness that was your first month of life - holidays, visitors, and of course your charming big sister - that I haven't missed any moments that I can't get back, but I know I probably have.  I'm sorry for that.

But there have been enough moments that I haven't missed, and I think you haven't missed them either.  You see everything with those wide blue eyes, and I think that even when you have your eyes closed you are listening to us.  You know how much we all love you, and how hard we're all trying to get this right.  And I'm pretty sure if I asked you, my calm, alert, agreeable baby, you'd tell me that we're doing just fine.  I think you have been telling me, and for that as well, I am grateful.

In our moments alone together like this one, I breathe slower and easier.  When you are sleeping, I want to hold you against my chest like this, flooding us both with all the chemicals that are really science's way of explaining love.  When you are awake, I am as fascinated by the newness of everything you see as you are.

I can't believe that your first month is already finished, that some of your tiniest is already gone, and I miss it. But I also know that what's coming next is going to be in so many ways so much better.  And while I can't promise that I will always get things right - I'm going to go ahead and promise that I won't - I can give you my word that I will always do the best I can for you, and that you and your sister will ALWAYS always be good enough for me.

Doing it right: The Best Thing to do

I struggle a lot with knowing what the right thing to do is, and knowing whether I did the right thing after.  It causes me a lot of anxiety, and often stops me from accomplishing anything, in turn leaving me even more frustrated and overwhelmed.  So my new motto for the week is: The best thing to do is Something.

And with that in mind, I did all this right.

1. I emptied my dishwasher and tidied up my kitchen, getting the flat surfaces mostly cleared off.
2. I put on an audiobook and folded two loads of laundry.
3. When my baby insisted on being held, I held her.
4. When my toddler said "No butter jelly" after asking for it, I didn't freak out.  I just put it in a tupperware and got her some yogurt.
5. I wrote in my journal, even though I didn't think I had anything to say.
6. I'm publishing this blog post without stopping to worry if it's deep or meaningful or Important.

Space and quiet

I need more space and quiet in my life.  And the culprits aren't the two small people who like to simultaneously sit on top of me and scream.  They're okay.  They're just doing their jobs.

But there's a lot of other noise.  From social media, from the perpetually turned on TV, from my own anxious ever-busy brain.  I am inundated, I am surrounded.

And the paradox is, the more I am struggling, the louder it's getting in my head, the more I'm starting to feel crushed and suffocated by it all, the more I seek out the noise.

Quiet is scary.  And the noise in my head is the worst one, so maybe I think if there's just enough other noise, I will drown it out.

But I don't.

In a lot of ways it makes sense.  The more lonely I feel, the more helpless I feel, the more overwhelmed I feel, the more I seek out "easy" ways of fulfilling my needs.  "141 characters is all I can handle," I joke.  It's too hard to read a real book, so I read Internet articles.  It's too hard to write something honest and genuine and vulnerable, so I write something witty and snarky.  It's too hard to actually call someone or get out of my house so I sit and refresh Facebook for an hour.

But those things don't satisfy.  They don't mean anything.  They aren't real.

And that's not entirely true either because I have some real and meaningful exchanges on social media.  I've made real friends there.  But it's harder.  And it's rare.  And it's usually not the point.

And when I do have two kids crawling on me, and I haven't slept at night, of COURSE I need help and company and commiseration.  And of COURSE it's hard for me to do the hard stuff.  I can't just say "well, instead of tweeting, I'll write a novel and found a live support group and participate in a fun and engaging activity (okay, it's sad that I can't even come up with one to make this point, right), all before my morning coffee."

There needs to be space for the easy stuff, especially at this point of my life.

But there needs to be space without it too.

My girls

Last night, about 20 minutes after I put the two year old to bed, she started crying.  Not a whimpering, whining, trying to get back downstairs kind of cry, but an actual cry of distress.  Tears even.

I handed off the baby and went back up the stairs, opened her door, and turned on the light.

"Mommy mommy mommy."

"I'm here, honey, what's wrong?"

"Mommy mommy."

"I'm right here, baby.  Are you okay?  Does something hurt?"

"Hurt."

"What hurts?"

She put her hand to her neck.  "Tummy hurts."

"Your ... your throat hurts honey?  Your neck?"

"Neck?"

"That's your neck.  Does your neck hurt?"

"Oh!"  she laughed, her eyes still only halfway open, and lifted up her shirt. "This tummy.   This neck."

"Right.  So does your neck hurt?"

"This tummy.  This neck.  Eyes.  Mouth.  Nose."

"Okay, sweetie, so nothing hurts?"

"Head.  Head shoulders knees toes."

And as she burst into song, I kissed her and said goodnight, gracefully slipping out the door, leaving her still singing in the room behind me.

Sigh.

It's hard to be mad at her when she's so charming and funny.  Or it's hard to be amused and charmed when she's so maddening.  I haven't figured out which yet.

Whether something hurt or not, my sweet big girl didn't sleep very well last night.  She woke up as many times as little sister who, let's face it has much more right to it.  And so the two of us spent the morning in a constant state of being alternately furious with and gushingly attached to each other, while my poor sweet baby spent the morning trying to protect her head from her excessively affectionate sister and staring at us like we were crazy.

Which, as I've said before, fair enough.

I spend a lot of my morning yelling at my toddler, and at least as much time apologizing to her.

When BG goes down for her nap every day, my little one wakes up and looks around.  I'm sure that I'm imagining the relief, that I'm projecting ... right?  I nurse her and I hold her on my shoulder and stare at her face and I apologize to her.  I tell her I'm sorry that I don't pay more attention to her.  Sorry that big sister gets so much of the spotlight, that she's Big in more ways than age and size.  Sorry that mommy is that way too, with All. The. Feelings. All. The. Time.

And she just stares back at me.

I don't know if I'm getting this right.  I don't know how to keep them both happy, how to make sure everyone (including me?) gets what she needs.  I think maybe I can't. And I want this post to end like all of my posts do, with some wise sounding pat answer, like "and maybe that's okay" or "but I'm trying and that's enough."  But I don't know.  I want to do better.  I just don't know if there is really any way to do better.

Doing it right

Someone during the course of my teacher training taught me, and forgive me that I am totally stealing this and I don't remember from who, "We talk about what we value, and we value what we talk about."

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.  We talk so much about our flaws and failures, and then - accidentally or intentionally - about other people's flaws.  I once saw someone confess online to having let her son watch "a whole hour of TV once."  My self-esteem pretty much fell through the floor.  And while we want to help ourselves and each other be better, while we want to be honest about how hard this whole mom thing is, maybe what we're really doing is giving the negative stuff all the power.  

So, I was glad to see my dear friend Jaime start a bloghop about the things we're doing right.  And while you aren't going to see me pinning fancy cake designs or sensory bins or my 5k progress any time soon (you do still know where you are, don't you?), there are a few things I'm getting right.

1. I drank at least 36 ounces of water today.
2. I bundled up BG and went outside to play, even though I didn't want to.
3. I make milk.  'Nuff said.
4. I am writing this blog post with two children in my lap.  Let's call that a great big win, shall we?