|| how to make the perfect pancakes

|| how high they like the water in the tub

|| how to keep a perfectly stocked, perfectly ready diaper bag

|| how to fix the favorite toy

|| how to make basically anything start working again

|| how to shush a crying baby in the middle of the night without having to pick him up

|| how to get everywhere on time

As a mom, I’m good at some varied and unexpected things, but the above things? They all evade me.  My pancakes taste fried (the last time I made them, it was more like county fair elephant ears), I’m lucky to remember any sort of diaper bag (let alone remember to stock it), I nurse all the babies all the time in the middle of all the nights, and I’m perpetually late.

Thank goodness for Dad!  My kids lucked out in that department! He’s smart, he’s articulate, he’s resourceful, he’s precise, he’s playful, he’s patient, and he’s  just the right amount strict and indulgent.

I believe the saying that there are a million ways to be a good mom, and I also believe loving motherhood more is a worthwhile endeavor.  But much of my learning, growth and experimenting in this area come directly from him – he makes them possible.  For this, I am extremely grateful.

I don’t know all the things, and he doesn’t, either, but together we cobble enough together to get by.  I am certainly a better mother–and a better person–because of him, and it seems like a good things to acknowledge on Father’s Day.

I hope you feel the same way about the father of your children.  And if you don’t, I hope you know how admired you are for carrying a heavy load.

Happiest of days to all the wonderful fathers out there who know the things we don’t know.  Those of us who have you are really lucky!

So I did what I do best – I turned to information gathering.  Blog posts, podcasts, and books.  Which is what I’ve been doing for the last little while.  I don’t have it all figured out yet, but I have come away with a few revelations and points to ponder:

1.  Why I procrastinate, part 1 || When something is really important to me, I set it aside so I can get back to it later when I have time and undivided attention to pay to it.  Guess what?  That never happens.  So I spend my time cleaning up the piddly-but-consuming messes while the more important things wait for later.  #badplan

As you can imagine, this isn’t working for me.  It makes me anxious and it winds up looking like I’m ignoring people.  Really, my lack of action/response is because I care, not due to a lack of care, but I can only imagine how someone would feel if I responded to their important email or phone message with a “I’m so glad you sent this over to me.  I can’t wait to dive in.  I’m going to put it off and put it off and eventually I’ll get around to it.  Thank you so much for your time and effort!”

Realizing this was a lightbulb moment for me.  I didn’t know I was doing it until I noticed I’d dropped the ball on several important things – things I even found enjoyable!

2.  Part 2 || It’s not just little tasks.  I put off starting big tasks, too.  The little tasks from #1 make me feel anxious; these still-not-started big tasks leave me feeling defeated.  I’ve been living as though it’s all or nothing – if I can’t do something from start to finish, it’s not worth starting.  In reality, taking some action is energizing and encouraging.  Incomplete but making progress is better than zero progress, zero plans for progress, ya know?

Of course, I can see this quickly going downhill.  Starting too many projects at once could lead to its own sense of overwhelm.  Take now, for instance.  Our children’s room swap, started in January, still isn’t done because Gabe’s platform bed needs to be built.  My living room is half painted.  Both children’s rooms are half painted.  The floor in the nursery is in need of attention since we pulled up the carpet but still need to refinish it.  I have two pallets of bricks in my back yard waiting to be turned into a patio.  I’m at the point where I definitely can’t add anymore projects until I finish some of these.  But if I hadn’t started these, I’d still be sitting around on my thumbs, depressed about everything I wanted to do but didn’t have time to complete.  Progress is better.

3.  Scarcity || I read about this concept in some of Brene Brown’s materials in the context of shame and perfectionism, not time and to-do lists.  But I think it relates.  I think we (ahem, I) fill up our to-do lists partly because things need to get done and partly because doing things makes us feel something – important, worthwhile, better than, etc.  When we (ahem, I) have an overflowing list, we start internalizing the feelings of “not enoughness.”  It’s no longer just about not having enough time/energy/space/margin – it becomes a situation where we (ahem, I) feel like we’re not enough.  This is sneaky and infiltrates everything.  At least it has for me.  I need a mantra, a way to start the day.  Maybe “This day is enough for me and I am enough for this day?”  I don’t know, but I know I don’t want to live from a place of scarcity anymore.  Thankfully, there’s a lot of good, current information on this topic right now.

4. Productive people chunk their time ||  Related to the last point, if I don’t have enough time to dive headfirst into a project and get lost in it, I don’t start it.  But productive people do amazing things in relatively small chunks of time.  Take the book and planner I’ve been trying to work on for the last 18ish months.  I only write on them when I have a solid few hours at a time.  Yet, apparently some of the most productive writers write in 90 minute blocks maximum.  Research on time chunking suggests that you should start at 30 minutes and gradually build your tolerance to 90 minutes for maximum productivity.  But no one suggests longer than this.  Finding four consecutive hours in a day is nigh impossible.  Finding 30, 60 or 90 minutes?  Totally doable.  But I’ve been frittering away those minutes because they weren’t 4 hours.

5.  My to-do list is backwards ||  There are important things on it, and there are things author Brigid Schulte refers to as the “endless stuff of life.”  I spend most of my time working through the endless stuff so I can clear a path for the important stuff.  Schulte says we need to narrow down our top priorities and spend 95% of our time on those.  The endless stuff should get no more than 5% of our attention.

I’ve been mulling this over since I read it.  I think the first thing I need to do is identify my top priorities – like, really nail them down.  Not what should be important to me, but what I actually want to define my life.  She narrowed hers down to 3 things; I’m not sure I can prune that ruthlessly.  But I can certainly do better than I have been doing.

Once you prune, if a task doesn’t fall into one of those categories, it is relegated to the 5%.  She schedules smaller chunks of time to handle the 5% – the stuff doesn’t just get sandwiched in between other things.  There’s purposeful, protected time for that.  In a recent podcast by Gretchen Rubin, she suggested listeners implement what’s called a “Power Hour” – one hour a week to do the things you’ve been otherwise putting off.  I like this idea.  It seems to blend well with this 5% concept.

6. Done is better than perfect ||  I used to be more of a perfectionist than I am now, but I still have to keep reminding myself of this.  When Gabe was little I read a speed-cleaning blog, and they said that if you quickly sweep your floor every day, over time you’ll gradually be hitting all the areas, and you’ll end up spending less time overall cleaning your floors than if you put it off and put it off and finally have to do a hands-and-knees scrubbing session.

This is an area where Tahd and I don’t see eye-to-eye.  Actually, it’s not so much that we don’t see eye-to-eye.  He doesn’t care if I do my things my (less-than-perfect-but-at-least-complete) way.  But being a lifelong perfectionist himself, he doesn’t subscribe to this “done is better than perfect” thing, so it can create tension between the two of us when I’m doing something he cares about in my less-than-perfect way, or when he’s doing something I care about in his exacting, more time-consuming manner.  So, we’re still working out the kinks on this one.

7.  Everybody does their part || I got this so woefully wrong with Gabe.  I blame this on two things.  One, him being an only child for so long.  I’m convinced that when families have a second child, their first child automatically starts to get more independent because they get annoyed at having to wait to get help while Mom and Dad to finish with the baby.  Gabe was never particularly motivated to do for himself, and I didn’t realize there were things I could expect of him that I wasn’t expecting.  Second, it’s so much easier to just do things myself.  I get it done, done well, and over with.  Delegating is much harder, at least in the short term.

I often joke with Tahd that my life is like Groundhog Day.  We wake up and do all the morning chores.  After a whole morning of living, by lunch I start getting antsy at the condition of the house, so we pick up.  By supper, the day has exploded and I have to redo all the things I did after breakfast and lunch.  Then it all needs doing again before bed.  I’m sure I pick up the same toys and sweep the same crumbs and change the same diapers and make the same meals a billion times a week.

About a month ago, I decided I’d had enough.

I’ve been working on a chore system since then, and we finally put it together this week.  I have no clue if it’s going to help – if it’s age-appropriate, if there’s too much or not enough work, if the system is too simple or too complicated – but it’s a starting point.  Hopefully with everyone doing something, Tahd and I won’t feel completely run over by 9:00 each night.

**********

So…long story short.  I have no answers.  But I do have ideas, and I’m willing to experiment, so I’m hoping that moves us in a good direction.

I’d love to know more about your status with being overwhelmed!  Are you?  How do you cope?  Were you?  How did you get through it?

**********

^{Here are some of the resources I’ve been enjoying in case you’d like to check them out:
Overwhelmed by Brigid Schulte
Gretchen Rubin’s Power Hour podcast episode
Inspired To Action’s Overwhelmed and Unorganized podcast episode
Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
I Know How She Does It by Laura Vanderkam (haven’t read this yet but am eager to)}

After several trips to the bookstore in which I obsessed and pored over a newly released book, Tahd caught my “hint” and got it for me for Mother’s Day.  Actually, it was less of a hint and more of a “the-only-thing-I-REALLY-want-for-Mother’s-Day-is-that-book” sort of situation.  I was really, really, really excited about it. Two points to an attentive, indulgent husband!

Of course, the time to go through the book wasn’t the moment I opened it, so I’d set it aside to enjoy in a lingering quiet moment.  But here we are, nearly 3 weeks later, and guess what?  I haven’t cracked the book.  Not even once!  I actually read the book more before I owned it.  What’s up with that???

Tahd and I have been discussing how we feel like we’re drowning.  Our to-do lists are so long and we’re never able to make much headway.  Can you relate?

And yet, I’ve also noticed that there are people who seemingly  have a lot more demands on their lives than we have, and they’re able to either get more done or live with less stress – or, the holy grail, both!  How does this happen???

I decided I was tired of living from a place of “never enough time,” but I didn’t know what we’ve been getting wrong.  So I started to do a little research and digging.  My mom is one of the most productive people I know, and when I discussed this with her, she suggested checklists.  It’s true I’d gotten away from using my checklist, mostly because it always seems like there are enough fires to put our right in front of my face that I never have time to go looking for the list that tells me what to work on.  Like, yes!  I’d love to finish painting the bedrooms and file all my errant paperwork, but there is no path between the front door and the kitchen and I can’t cook dinner because all available countertops are covered and Jude has dumped a bucket of bubbles on himself and Gabe is hounding Isla while she screams for mercy and Isla is actually sick.  And that’s just scratching the surface!

But I know from reading that my brain doesn’t handle long to-do lists well if I’m trying to keep them in my head.  I wind up forgetting things, dropping balls, and getting lost in anxiety, which makes me even less productive.  So I knew checklists would be a part of the solution.

Another thing I considered was hiring help.  It seems like a lot of productive people have assistance in certain areas of their lives.  They hire someone to clean their house or mow their laundry.  They hire people to do their house projects.  They have regular help with their kids.  We?  Hire none of that.  For one, finances.  We choose to use our money elsewhere.  For two, my husband is super handy, and it bothers him to pay someone for something he could do himself.  For three, I decided I didn’t want to solve my problems through any major childcare commitments.  I have no issues with childcare or daycare or preschool generally – just knew that in order to stay true to what I wanted to do, this wasn’t the ultimate solution to my problem.

More than that, though, was that I don’t think our problem is that we have too much to do.  I mean, we do, but even if we off-loaded a reasonable amount of that, I think we’d still be frustrated, maybe even still feel like we’re drowning.  I think the problem is more in our heads and in how we approach life than in the actual contents of our life.  I think we need to figure that out first and then do logistics second.

Part 2 later on the what I’ve decided to do about this.  In the meantime, do you relate?  Is feeling overwhelmed a common motherhood experience?

To the mother who wonders if she can wait through the aches and pains and sleeplessness even one more night for her baby to be born…

To the mother who, with nipples cracked and bleeding and a thousand knives spearing gentle places, wonders if she can keep nursing her baby…

To the mother who knows formula is a better fit for her and her babe but worries about all the opinions…

To the mother whose baby just won’t stop crying…

To the mother whose toddler has throw one big long tantrum all day long and she she feels like she’s going crazy <ahem…me..>…

To the mother whose little one isn’t meeting the developmental milestones no matter how she tries to encourage them…

To the mother who’s going to bed tonight feeling guilty and defeated…

To the mother who’s getting ready to send her little sparrow out into the big wide world for the first time this fall…

To the mother who cooked a meal tonight that everybody told her they hated…

To the mother whose child is poised to bring home a terrible report card…

To the mother who’s doing this all alone…

To the mother who’s afraid to enroll her child in any summer activities because of special needs and social struggles that may cause heartache…

To the mother who doesn’t have any clue where the money is going to come from…

To the mother reading food label after food label, desperately seeking out every last speck of allergen…

To the mother who’s been sassed and talked back to and treated like she’s invisible…

To the mother who’s up in the middle of the night to nurse her sick one back to health…

To the mother whose sick one is facing struggles lasting far longer than one or two nights…

To the mother who’s scared for summer because she’s worried about the choices her pride and joy will make after darkness falls…

To the mother of the tender one who’s cutting or not eating…

To the mother who thinks she doesn’t have enough influence over who her child’s friends are…

To the mother who knows she said the wrong thing…

To the mother who caught her child drinking this or trying that…

To the mother whose 16-year-old newborn is wildly in love…

To the mother who’s trying to summon the courage to watch her capped and tasseled heart walk across a stage before she sends it off into adulthood…

You can do this.

You ARE doing this.

I’m proud of you.

Mamas everywhere are proud of you.

Keep going.

You (really!) can do this.

How can you have a site for moms and not make a Happy Mother’s Day post?  Gah!

All week, I’d been mulling over things to say.  But, truthfully, Mother’s Day is an discomforting time for me.  I don’t know how much crossover there is between readership here and my personal blog, but for those who don’t know, the back story is this…

Five years ago on Mother’s Day, at the beginning of the second trimester and after five years of infertility, we lost a surprise baby.  It’s somewhat odd to miscarry.  It’s pretty odd to miscarry after you’ve seen the heartbeat.  It’s especially odd to miscarry after 12 weeks.  And it’s oddly, horridly unlucky to miscarry on Mother’s Day.

I never know how to “be” around Mother’s Day because I feel conflicted.  On one hand, I don’t feel like a piece of me is missing; I feel like we have the family we’re supposed to have, and I’m okay with things.  On the other hand, I remember how we felt so shredded we were numb, and even just remembering that pain still takes me back to a vivid, agonizing place.  Most of the time, it seems like something that happened to someone else.  But around Mother’s Day, I remember that it happened to me, and it feels traumatic all over again.

And then, there’s Gabe, who, at 5, was excited to be a big brother, and who set the pace for our grieving.  It wasn’t just my loss.  It was his, too, and I try really hard to be respectful of where he is with things and to let him carve his own path through loss.  Even at 10, I still see how he was marked by that experience, and I want to do right by him.

So. Blah.  That’s why there wasn’t a bright, cheerful Happy Mother’s Day post.

But.

Over the past few years, I’ve been struck by the number of women for whom Mother’s Day is equally discomforting.  Reasons differ; for some, Mother’s Day reminds them off loss.  Others desperately want to be mothers but are still waiting.  Some women have lost their own mothers and grieve the profound absence left behind.  Still others are unsuccessful, unappreciated, unacknowledged, or painfully ignored on Mother’s Day.

I do hope you had a wonderful Mother’s Day.  I hope you were doted on and pampered and spoiled by the people who call you theirs.  My own family took great, tender care of me, and I’m thankful they took the time and made the effort to see me and thank me and love me.

But if you did not have a wonderful Mother’s Day…if you are sad and grieving…if you are wounded and Mother’s Day only reminded you of those points of pain…I see you.  I hold space for your grief.

Draw in.

Gather hope.

Muster courage.

Tend your wounds.

And when the sun comes up tomorrow, keep going.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in  || Leonard Cohen

^{(We went to the pet store to take pictures for a little art project we were doing.  Holy chaos.  One didn’t want to be there, one was terrified, and one ran around screaming happily but maniacly for the whole visit.  We might not ever be able to go back.)}

“What do you think about me taking Gabe out for ice cream right now?”

He asked me as we laid on the floor surrounded by 3-year-old antics, trying hard to rally the energy for the final push of the evening when everyone would be asleep and our world would fall quiet and back into place.

Parenting Gabe has never been easy, but it has been especially not-easy lately.  An impromptu indulgence and some one-on-one time seemed like a wise suggestion on my husband’s part, so we quickly negotiated the details to make it happen and set the plan into motion.

By all rights, Tahd should have been the one to tell him.  He came up with the idea and he was the one going with Gabe.  So when I asked him if he’d mind if I told Gabe while he finished up with Isla, he answered, “No, but why?”

“I just want to see him delighted!” I said.  And – what I didn’t say – I just want to see him delighted and know I played a role in making him feel that way.

I don’t expect to be my children’s friends, and I know it’s not their job to make me feel happy and successful as a mother.  But sometimes, even when it’s a difficult season – or, perhaps, especially when it’s a difficult season – we need to use unexpected means to infuse a little extra dose of positivity into your relationship.  It acts like a pause button on the challenges, or maybe as an eraser, wiping the slate clean, even if temporarily, and provides a bonding opportunity that’s a little bit, “Hey!  I’m okay, you’re okay, and we play for the same team!”

Sometimes I worry that if the tween years feel this hard, I don’t know how I’ll survive the teen years!  But I just keep trying to circle back around to the process of healthy attachment and hope that that acts as some level of insulation between what will be and what could be.  More on that later as it’s a subject about which I’ve been reading and thinking about recently.

How do you play up the positive with your child, especially in the midst of adversarial seasons?

Amid yesterday’s crumbs and exhaustion and frustration, I kept hearing this line in my head.  I honestly don’t know what brought it to mind.  I never studied Walt Whitman aside from watching Dead Poets Society in high school and seeing random internet memes on Pinterest.  So, pretty much, I’m an expert.  Or something.

To tell the truth, I actually couldn’t even remember the whole line, but its bits and pieces kept yanking at my shirt sleeve the whole day, like a needy child’s persistent and irritating attempts to get my attention.

Something about a powerful day and I get to add a verse?  What?  Ridiculousness! I mumbled to myself.  A stay-at-home mother cleaning dirty floors and trying to endure endless screaming (yesterday was a screamish day for Jude) hardly qualifies as anything more than inconsequential.  If this verse is my contribution, this is depressing!

I wished I could forget about it.  Thoughts of it heaped insignificance and irrelevance onto what was already an exasperating day.

It wouldn’t let go, though, so I finally googled the precise quote and have been turning it over and over ever since.

Human nature chases significance.  Wiping bottoms, coercing homework, and doing dishes seem decidedly (in)significant.  I don’t find pleasure in many of these menial details, or the frequency with which they repeat themselves.  Mostly, I find grating and numbness.

But today, two things occurred to me.

First, the line doesn’t say YOUR powerful play goes on.  It says THE powerful play goes on.  Like, the universe’s play.  Or God’s play.  It’s the play of the collective consciousness, the bigger picture, the thread that binds us all–male and female, black and white, gay and straight, abled and disabled, young and old, pagan and religious, and everything in between–together in the exquisitely woven, richly textured Grand Scheme.

That’s a really big play.

There’s a lot of “personal empowerment” out there these days – the “your story matters” stuff and the “the world is waiting for you to follow your dreams” stuff.  True, but that shouldn’t drown out the voice of the Grand Scheme.  It’s bigger than any of us, bigger than the sum.  And it’s creating an extraordinary play, and I get to participate.

Put that way, diapers and crumbs don’t less bad to me.  Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of stage experience, but I had enough to realize that shows can’t go on without a supporting cast.  And not even just that, really.  Shows can’t go on without the invisible hands behind the scenes, the people who rush the props into place and muscle the curtains open and engineer the sound.  Their faces are never seen, but their contribution is just as necessary.

Second realization.

I’d never read Whitman’s entire piece.  Have you?

                                       Answer.

It surprised me to realize Whitman’s not highlighting the powerful, awe-inspiring nature of life and reveling in the fact that he’s part of it. No, rather, he’s spinning in the vapidity of repitition, the muck of self-loathing, the mire of unmet expectations, the torment of a search for meaning.  He wrote that last line–that famous, inspiring line–from the middle of the same junk I wade through every day.

Like I said, I haven’t studied Whitman, but I’m feel fairly confident to say he wasn’t writing this from his vast experiences as a stay-at-home mother.  And yet Mr. Whitman and I? We have this in common.

Maybe you do, too.  I realized it earlier and am itching to say it tonight…

we
are
normal.

We question our worth and numb the drudgery and second-guess our decisions and overflow with not-enoughness because we are human, not because something is wrong with us.

Even better?

the coworker who has it all together…
the mom whose kids never act out…
the couple whose marriage appears rock solid…
the entrepreneur-mom whose small business is taking off…
the student who got the A on the hardest test…
even your doctor…
your pastor…
your parents…
your new friend…

they all do it, too.  We are not alone, not at all alone.

We are common in our humanity, each writing overlapping personal plays that together layer into a masterful Grand Scheme.  I really like that picture.  Layer upon layer.

I like thinking that my diapers and crumbs might be helping to form the foundation on which someone else’s stirring, momentous play will root.  I like remembering (and imagining) the others who have laid foundations for parts of my story.  And I really like imagining what it must be like to step back and see the birds-eye view of this beautifully jumbled Grand Scheme, a strong tapestry full of colorful explosions that work together to produce a masterpiece greater than the sum of its parts.

Tomorrow, I will feel frustrated.  I will feel small.  But I hope I remember that even the littlest thing matters and that I’m not alone and that my simple, monotonous contribution looks lovely in the Grand Scheme.

I hope you remember that, too.

“Snaps!” I thought.  “They make plastic ones, even – no need for metal.”

“Or velcro,” I declared as I simultaneously lunged to rescue Jude and scrambled to keep the gaping hospital gown covering at least a fraction of my bare backside.

Ah, the joys of an annual exam with two preschoolers in tow.

I’d originally planned to leave the little kiddos home with Daddy while I went to my appointment, but when he and I realized I’d confused the schedule, I had to come up with a new plan.

Plan B involved strapping the children into the double stroller and hoping for the best.  And I thought we were on track until we got taken back to the actual exam room.

First problem – where to park the giant double stroller in the postage stamp room.  There was, unfortunately, only one place that would barely accommodate the stroller, and it just so happened to be positioned directly at the foot of the examining table.  Yes, right by telescoping spotlight and the stirrups.  Sort of like the “best” seat in the house…I’m pretty sure Isla could have served as the midwife’s assistant.  “Speculum?” the midwife could have said and Isla could have definitely passed it off.

I really hope I haven’t scarred her for life.

As if it’s not demoralizing enough to have an audience at your annual exam, we had to wait for the midwife for a little while. While we waited, Jude melted down, which necessitated me wildly swinging, chasing, and lunging after a completely fed-up toddler, a feat which is super fun while wearing a hospital gown.

Who invented these things anyway?  Ties?  Ties?  I don’t even have words.

When the midwife finally appeared, Jude was so far over the edge, I didn’t even dare to try to buckle him back into the stroller.  Brother can tantrum like nobody’s business.  Which is normally fine with me – I do what I have to do, he gets mad, I wait him out, he recovers.  But given the professional nature of this visit and my desire to hear the midwife’s actual words when she spoke, the stroller wasn’t worth the risk.

So I did the next best thing and held my screaming, writhing baby while my midwife attempted to poke, push, prode, and scrape her way to the end of the appointment.  The fact that this was the next best thing borders on comical.

All I could think was, Dear goodness, is this really happening?  I just can’t even!

And then, praise the good Lord, it was over.  I’ve never been happier for the end of a doctor’s appointment.  Ever.  I’m awfully thankful my midwife likes kids and rolled with it.  She was a total pro.  But you can bet your bottom dollar that when I had to go back this week for a follow-up sonohysterogram, I did not have my children with me!

Have you had a recent “Oh dear goodness!” moment?  I’d love to hear about it!

The newness of spring break was still fresh when I took this picture Tuesday morning, nobody yet bored or cranky or overstimulated or underslept.  The laundry that had been mounting for weeks (um…no joke–weeks!) had been calling my name, and it seemed as good a time as any to catch up.  While I folded and sorted, the kids all played, and in one moment I looked up from my workstation at the foot of the bed to find us all like this–content, quiet, and busily engaged.

Noticing that my vantage point afforded me a simultaneous view of all 3 kids, I sneaked my camera and snapped a quick shot, mindful of Mary Jean Irion’s familiar quote:

“Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.”

This!  I thought.  This is so lovely!  I don’t want to forget this moment–this simple moment where we’re doing regular things in a regular way and it’s just so perfect.  I really need to focus on these experiences, to find the joy in these little moments.  Look at this–it’s right here in front of me!

And it was–joy was right there in front of me for the taking, and I’m glad I grabbed it with both hands and soaked in it and photographed it and have it for the memory book.  But it wasn’t until days later that reality finally struck.

This picture was certainly a lovely moment, but my actual life…well, it’s nothing like this!  It’s bickering back and forth; it’s Jude whining at my feet; it’s people here, there, and everywhere, jumping through my freshly folded laundry; it’s pyjamas for days on end; it’s loud; it’s chaotic; it’s exhausting.

Yes, there was joy for the taking in this idealized quiet moment of folding laundry, but my day-to-day life isn’t idealized.  Not one little bit.  Yet when I looked back at this picture, I realized that I carry with me idealized expectations about more than I’ve realized.  I haven’t just idealized the big things, the sweeping impressions I want of my life.  I’ve romanticized right down to the nitty gritty details of my least favorite, banal experiences.

Pretty pictures are nice, and it can be delightful to take boring or ugly things and make them better.  But sometimes boring or ugly things are just…boring or ugly.  My regular laundry experience?  Super boring.  Cleaning up our dinner mess?  Quite dreadful.  I’m not sure there’s a way to make smeared banana and dripped applesauce mixed ketchup and mashed fries seem anything less than repugnant.  But those?  Those are ordinary moments, too, and I want to find joy in the regular ordinary moments, not just the pretty.

As a mother, I have a hierarchy of joy-worthy moments.  At the top are the earth-shattering moments–the births of babies, the child who overcomes a challenge to reach success, the milestone moments like getting a license or graduation, exploring new places together.  These are, of course, my favorites.  Not only are they monumental for my child, but they carve joy deep into the recesses of my soul.

Next are the intentionally-created moments–the 0ne-on-one date nights, special birthday parties, Christmas mornings.  I expend a lot of energy here, even though these events don’t come around particularly often.  For example, for years now, I’ve been gradually planning a trip to Disney World.  Or on a smaller scale, Isla and I made a quite a memorable little date out of the Cinderella movie.  Big or little, spending energy to intentionally create joyful experiences and memories is fun.

Beneath that are the ordinary days, the place where I spend most of my time.  The school lunches, the commutes, the baths, the lunches, the cleaning, the laundry, the play dates, the homework, the hair-combing…I bet 90% or even 95% of my life is spent dwelling here.  I didn’t realize, though, that I’d only been judging the pretty ones worthy of joy, the ones that looked like I’d always imagined they’d look or the ones that went super smoothly or the ones where there was no screaming.  😉  How unfortunate!  Because life, even ordinary life, rarely looks like how I imagine it should look.  It always has twists and turns I wasn’t expecting, challenges I didn’t foresee looming large, decisions I didn’t want to be making.

Maybe, quite possibly, I’m missing out on some of the best parts of the ordinary days, the moments where the difficult and the ugly are redeemed into something joyful and beautiful.  Maybe there is abundant joy here, just waiting for me to find it.

I’ve been reading Fight Back With Joy by Margaret Feinberg and as I considered this, I was reminded of these thoughts from her book:

“When life begins to shrink, opportunities for joy are magnified…Know that even within the limits, great joy is waiting to be unleashed.”

I’m going to work harder to find the joy that’s hidden in the places where I don’t expect it.  I’m going to work harder to find ways delight instead of trudge.  I’m going to slow down, look closer, try from a different angle, and serve up a spoonful of sugar when things are tasting a little bitter so I can find the treasures hiding beneath the surface.

Here’s to a week of great joy, even in the littlest moments.  I hope we can both find it!

Eight thirty.  Ten.  Until two.  Then two twenty.  Two thirty.  Two forty five.  Four.

You wanna know what all these numbers have in common?  They’re the times–all the times!!!–my baby woke up last night.  It was, thankfully, our last night until Tahd is home for a good long stretch, having been home for 8 days in March.  Eight.  Fun.  This, friends, is why I haven’t blogged, and I’m sorry for that, but dear goodness, I’M SO TIRED!

March has so not been my month!  But here’s it’s April, a new month with a fresh start, and I think I might be able to breathe again…soon!

I never expected to be a mother who did a lot of single-ish parenting due to a traveling spouse.  I never expected to have a big gap between my kids or a colicky child.  There’s a lot about this gig that have sneaked up and surprised me.  Most surprising are some of the things I’ve learned about myself, a person with whom I (apparently wrongly) assumed I was intimately familiar! 😉

Through motherhood, I’ve learned…

 ^{In the car. Which totally does not make me twitchy.}

I’m sensitive to noises || Sometimes, I feel like noise are physically grating on my nerves.  They seem visible and tangible and straight up tangible.  I never realized this was a thing for me. As a teacher, I didn’t care if kids were loud or drumming on their desks or tapping their pencils.  But there’s no mistaking it now–lots of noise drives me crazy!

Baby’s breath is magic || I’m not talking Goldfish and candy breath.  But after they brush their teeth and go to bed and fall asleep, that’s when the alchemy happens.  I can lay right by their face and drink in their breath and it’s pure magic.  I hate grown up breath.  Perhaps quite unromantically, even my husband’s, even minty fresh.  It’s just rebreathed air.  But baby’s breaths are enchanting, sort of like smelling the tops of their heads.

The difference between perfect and happy || I used to think I had to be perfect, and I drove myself crazy trying.  I used to think perfect was the pathway to happiness, the only pathway to happiness.  And then I had kids.  And then realized I had it all wrong.  You have to simultaneously walk two paths to get to happiness – the path of good enough and the path of relationships.  That’s it.  The good news is those paths are compatible.  The path to perfect takes you somewhere else entirely, somewhere dark and heavy and lonely.  I’d still like to be perfect some days, but because of my children I’m learning to pick happy and let the rest of it go.

How to see || When Gabe was 5, I started noticing that there were these mothers out there who had gorgeous pictures of their kids.  I didn’t have those.  Not only did I not have the pictures, but I didn’t even see the gorgeous moments happening in our day-to-day lives.  But the more moms I noticed, the more I decided that since I’m more similar to everyone than different, I must have those moments, too, and I just wasn’t paying attention.  So I started trying, and I developed that ability best through the viewfinder on my camera.  Yes, in fact, beautiful moments were all around me.  I just had to learn to recognize their lines and shapes and tones and feelings.

Similarly, I’d always wanted to draw, but the extent of my drawing ability consisted entirely of doodled alphabets and simple stick figures.  As I practiced photography and learned to see, I realized the same tools that allowed me to take photos I loved would also allow me to draw.  I’m still not a drawing artiste, but I’ve learned that the more I see, the more I can draw.  And the more I draw (or take photos), the more I learn to see.

(Side note: I’m not good per se at drawing.  I’m just better than stick people and fancy ABCs. You should definitely keep your expectation low…)

^{Not chocolate.  Good, but not chocolate.}

How to properly appreciate the combination of peanuts and chocolate || Probably the most important one–am I right?  I’m firmly convinced this one is hormonal.  I hated the combination in my youth.  Hated it in my adulthood.  In fact, I really could take or leave chocolate until I had Gabe, at which point I hadtohadtohadto have peanut m&ms, by the XL Sam’s Club bag, in my house at all times for eating by the handful.  The bags did not last long. This may or may not have contributed to some difficulties losing the baby weight?  But on the upside, I met one of the new great loves of my life.

What have you learned about yourself by being a mother?