Mom-o-Meters (by Heather)

Some moms seem to have this thing all figured out. They never get frazzled, their kids always behave, they are on time for every event, look put together (even at the gym), and still have time to make cute cupcakes. If these women complain at all about their children or how it has changed their life, it is done in a light-hearted manner and the tiny rant always ends with…”but isn’t it all worth it?”

Well no, sometimes it is not!

Sometimes I would like to trade them in!  I rather miss my old life!

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Q of the Week : How often do you wish your life were different?

Happy monday and sorry right off the bat for the heavy question, but it just seems the time to ask it!  How much of your week do you spend wishing things were different, vs. being happy in or at least accepting the moment?  I find myself often wishing for other things, and not quite settling for what I have or what my life is like.  It’s an undercurrent of discontent that I’d like to banish, but still have trouble with.  It’s part itch, part wistfulness, part a heavy sadness for the way things are generally in the world, and always the desire to be doing something that is closer to my heart and more tangibly entwined in the earth and living (as opposed to working to live). 
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Speaking of Embracing things ...

… I did my best to embrace the heat wave we’ve been sweating under, and managed to almost enjoy it (despite the lack of A/C) until this morning.  I just moved slower than normal, drank inordinate amounts of water, and hung out in the pool whenever possible.  (We’re going again as soon as Fynn wakes up.)   I woke up this morning though, dripping and still tired, forced myself to do a wee run, and came home almost as cranky as when I left.  The boys were just as grumpy as I was all morning, but the humidity has finally broken though and it’s now a gorgeous summer day!  Here’s to the winds of change, may they sweep your weekend too …

Q of the Week : How much sleep do you get?

I think all moms are sleep deprived.  Darah wrote about it last week, I muttered about it recently too, and it seems to be universal.  Moms just don’t get enough sleep.  We can talk about how to be more efficient, drop the non-essentials, and slice and dice it however we please but there really aren’t enough hours in the day (and half the night) to get through the list of things we’d like to do.  Need to do.  Want to do. 
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The Worst Parenting Advice I Ever Received (Guest post by Heather S.)

Thanks to Heather S. for this guest post, you’ll be seeing more of her around!  Don’t miss her links at the bottom.

During my baby shower, a little book was passed around.  The guests were encouraged to write their best parenting advice for yours truly.  I received all sorts of advice ranging from sleep when the baby sleeps, remember your husband, sleep now because you will never sleep again, embrace the muffin top because it will never go away, and NEVER WAKE A SLEEPING BABY!  All sound advice.

But the one piece of advice that stuck with me (and still does) is to “enjoy every moment”.

That piece of advice sucked!

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I'm back ...

… and my week is off to a screaming start!  I was sitting down to put my week on paper (at midnight, but hey it’s better than never) and let out a huge shriek as a large chunk of my bedroom ceiling came crashing down behind me, spraying plaster across the dressers and my back and all over the floor.  I wasn’t hurt a shred, and surprisingly little damage to the stuff that’s normally strewn across the dressers, but scary nonetheless.  We’d been watching a crack up there grow a bit over the last month, and do live in a brownstone that’s over 100 years old, but it’s never a welcome thing!  I’m wiped from cleaning up and still haven’t managed to get a grip on my week, but it will happen just fine, planned or not!  I’ll get posts up and a newsletter out one way or another, there’s lots going on and I’d love to share it with you.  Until then, sleep well and may your ceilings stay where they belong …

Appreciation and Motherhood

I’m not sure this will end up in a question, but it’s on my mind.  I’ve been thinking a lot about appreciation and mothering lately.  I’m not talking about the side where I appreciate things … I know I see the short end of the stick sometimes, and fail to fully appreciate the amazing kids I have, the chances I’ve been given, and more.  However, that all falls under gratitude to me.  I’m not sure of the actual distinction, but my mind makes one.  I think appreciation means understanding something, and enjoying it for what it is. 
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Procrastination

I don’t know why I do it.  I procrastinate, and I do it daily.  I’m always behind, running late, just missing the bus, hurrying the kids, feeling guilty about that tucked-under-the-pile project that never gets air … the list goes on.  I’m not sure if I’ve always been this way, I really can’t remember.  I know I’ve never been the first one out the door, but my memories of rushing only go back to high school.  That probably means I always have been this way, and once my mom stopped cajoling me to get moving, I’ve been the late one.
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Friday Roundup

Hi all!  It’s been a light week here as I dig out from vacation, struggle with returning to ‘real’ life, and try to curb my internet addiction a bit.  I’ve only posted one FB status since I got home, and about 3 tweets.  Is that good for traffic, probably not, but it’s good for me so that’s what counts.  I have some posts brewing about all that, but in the meantime here are just a couple of links, but quality ones, so enjoy!

  • The Shape of a Mother : This site is SO good!  It’s full of real (ie non professional or retouched in any way) photos of mom bodies.  Sagging boobs and bellies, stretch marks, all the things that we all struggle with but rarely show each other.  It’s so good to see and know and hear that I’m not alone in my struggle with how I look.  I may not fight weight, but I hate my sags and bulges where none used to be.  Found via Mothering mag. 
  • Six Ways to Help the Angry Child : I need to re-read this one, as I have one that’s sunny as they come, and one that’s often angry.  Of course the sunny one has started imitating the older one’s behavior, but in a mostly comical way which is also hard to deal with!

Only two, but both worth checking out for sure.  Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

SaneMom

Daddy's Girl

I just finished reading Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, by Ayelet Waldman.  I’d seen her books recommended many times, and when stalking the library shelves yesterday for the first time in ages, I saw her name and grabbed the only book they had by her.  I devoured it: her writing is luminous, sharp, and stark all at once.  As I finished it less in just over a day, you might say I was hooked :). 
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Where do you fit your own work in?

A recent site/logo design, that I actually enjoyed doing, but not the fitting-it-in part. I’m obviously more or less a SAHM, with a WAHM component that fluctuates wildly.  Much of that fluctuation is due to procrastination, because quite frankly I may be a very competent web designer, but I don’t *want* to do it unless I have to, or it’s for personal reasons.  I love a good challenge, but not when money/reputation/groceries are on the line.  I don’t want to have to work.  There, I said it.  I don’t.  I’m sick and tired of it, and while I find it fulfilling and empowering and challenging and all that, I’m tired of it. 
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Best ways to get back into 'normal' life?

As vacation winds down, and school is staring us in the face on Monday, I have a dilemma.  Do we wring the most out of the last couple of days (that means bedtimes stay slidden into the 10pm range for the boys) or do we put them down closer to the normal time in preparation for having to be back on schedule on Monday?  I dread having to get up earlier again, and having to go back to a fixed routine.  I MUCH prefer to stay up late and get up whenever … and my boys do tend to sleep in pretty well when they’ve been up late.   It’s a bit of a hypothetical question as we’ve already got dinner plans tonight, so the likelihood of anything resembling a normal bedtime is slim. 

I always have this problem though. 

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A little piece of God

While you’re waiting for a Q of the Week, and a newsletter (I just haven’t managed it today, you’ll likely have to wait till tomorrow) please go read this.  It’s beautiful.  And powerful.  It technically speaks to mothers of autistic kids, but it speaks to us all I think.  A snippet …

I have an autistic son who is truly a bit of God broken off and fallen to this earth. I am fortunate in a a million ways that he is oh… let’s say autism-lite. He has none of the most challenging behavioral and cognitive elements of the disorder and his therapy is moving faster than anyone could have imagined. I am in no way brave about this, and his diagnosis did very nearly turn me to dust, but recently someone asked that I write a letter to her friend, a stranger, who is struggling with her daughter’s recent diagnosis. So I gave it my best shot.

This diagnosis is a pointing finger and nothing more. …

Please, go read the whole thing. 

Q of the Week : Do you ever feel caught up?

Do you ever feel caught up?

I’ve been trying for ages to arrange a coffee date with a girlfriend I haven’t seen in months.  Below is a snippet of our last exchange:

(me) no i didn’t get out, been swamped and feeling rather
overwhelmed this week with work and not enough time to fit it in.

(d) oh, how I know the feeling! 

Sound familiar?  I spend so much of my life feeling swamped and behind, and it feels nasty.  I know a lot of it is about unrealistic expectations (dusting anyone?!), and some of it is just the endless mountain of daily requirements to keep the household functional.  I know from past posts that I’m certainly not the only one that does the majority of the day-to-day organization and I’ve mentioned before how unrealistically high I tend to set the bar for myself.  These things don’t help either!

Some days are better than others, but I only feel “caught up” about 10% of the time.   The other measure is that I feel like I’m on a hamster wheel about 40% of the time, and the other half is just average days that where I never get done what I hoped, but I don’t beat myself up about it. 

And you?  Please share your answer in the comments.

Surprise stats

I put up a post about a year and a half ago that was just a link to a news article that caught my eye.  The subject was women who wish they’d never had kids.  The part that caught my eye was about how unprepared we often are (I certainly wasn’t aware!) for the psychological aspects of the shift to motherhood.  How our identities change, how we deal with what we have to change or give up or rework, and the complexities of our self-image as it relates to our kids.  It’s tough! I certainly don’t wish that I’d never had kids, though I do have my brief moments of wondering what it would have been like without them.  It takes about 2 seconds flat for me to feel empty and a bit adrift.  I can’t envision life without them, nor do I want it. 

What I’m finding hard to is the amount of hits I’m still getting on that old blog post (it’s a lot!, and is at #1 on google for “wish i never had kids”), and what some people are saying in the comments.

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A window to the chaos

One of my favorite bloggers put up a post the other day that got me thinking.  You know the self-talk that goes on in your head when you’re doing one of the 42 million necessities of the day, but you find yourself resenting it or just plain wishing to be elsewhere for awhile?  Then you beat yourself up for wishing that?  Yup, I’ve been there.  Am there.  Daily.  When Douglas talks a mile a minute about the intricate details of a made-up game that he’s been playing during recess, and my mind wanders off into something completely unrelated and I just mmm-hmm at some vaguely appropriate moments. 

As Anna at Borderline Bonkers says …

Somehow I find a way to be there and in the moments sort of. It is something I strive for but in my head I am also a million miles away. It is like there is the front part of my head that talks and sees and functions normally and then there is this dark little back room in my head where all this chaos goes on behind the scenes.

Read the rest of her thoughts (and see her great photos!) here.

To put it politely, being fully present is not my strong point.  Sigh.