Motherhood: Fully Engaged

I awoke yesterday morning to a strange and wondrous event.

Jude was asleep.

At this juncture, it is necessary to point out that I awoke at a regular time.  It’s not like I awoke at 3:30AM and he was asleep.  At which point I’d be fully expecting him to be asleep.  No, my alarm rang at a regular getting-up time and he was not already awake, pinching and pawing and digging at my stomach.

It was glorious!

Tahd woke up next to me at about the same time and we started our day with delightful adult conversation. Then I got up and got dressed, AND I had a cup of coffee.  You guys, I felt like a real live human!!!

“Someday!” I told Tahd.  “Someday we will start every day without little people’s instant demands and we will feel okay again!”  When that day comes, I know I will miss these days.  But right now–amidst the chaos and clutter and the eighty hundred incomplete tasks that have actually had me in tears over the past few weeks (<ahem>patio…I’m looking at you…)–it was a nice reminder that the crazy I feel isn’t part of my identity, but a transient part of this season.

Okay, maybe I’m a leeeetle crazy on my own.

So.

October brings a giant blogosphere project where bloggers write for 31 days. I have tried to participate in the past and mostly succeeded.  I wasn’t planning to participate this year, though, due to the aforementioned crazy and lack of humanity I feel on a daily basis.  But yesterday I changed my mind.  I decided I’m going to do it.  Actually, I have two websites–this site about motherhood and a more personal blog over here–and I’m going to do it on both sites.

We can blame the crazy, right?  Tahd is totally going to kill me.

Here’s the deal–I do not promise to write everyday for 31 days straight.  I do promise to try. Over here, I’m writing about 31 Days of Motherhood: Fully Engaged.

With all the busyness and chaos and commuting and sibling rivalry around these parts, I make mistakes if I don’t focus on intentionally engaging with my children, mistakes that can add up.  For instance, the other day, I realized it had been days since I played with Isla, and I felt terrible! She asks multiple times daily, and I’m not always in a position where I can stop what I’m doing and play.  But sometimes, I could, and sometimes, I should, or time starts to pile up and there’s no turning it back.

Or take Jude, whose second birthday is around the corner. My baby is going to be two!  When did that happen? Between recovering from a difficult pregnancy and emergency c-section as well as juggling a colicky baby with the rest of life, I feel like I’m only now beginning to really enjoy him, not just survive.  On one hand, that makes me sad. On the other hand, I know we did the best we could with the hand we were dealt.  But now? He’s so much fun–silly and snuggly and mischievous and adorable.  I can’t go back two years or twelve months or even two months and make those days less stressful, but I can make a point to delight in him now.  He’ll never be any littler…

And Gabe, who is fully tweenager, a stage that I loved teaching but I find difficult to parent.  I don’t want to let the difficulties define this period of our life together.  We’re setting the stage for the teenage years, and I don’t want those to be a confict-laden era of growing apart. At least anymore than they have to be.  This is the time to build good habits. This is the time to strengthen connection. This is the time to open dialogues.

My other promise to you? These posts will be short and heavy on action.  I have a tendency to get stuck in my head, dreaming and planning and strategizing about what’s coming next–good things, but only helpful if you put them into action.  So over the next 31 days, I’m not just going to focus on thinking about being a more engaged mom.

I’m going to actually do it.

If this resonates with you, I hope you’ll join me! It’s nice to have company for the journey, especially when the company is like-minded and working toward the same goal.

At my personal blog, I’ll be writing about Getting Things Done. Tahd and I are making a list of all the big and little half-done and undone projects fluttering around our house–the ones where our season of life has taken over and we’ve just never been able to find time to finish–and October is our month of Getting Things Done.

At my other site, my topic is being a more engaged mom.  More doing, less other stuff (like reading about, thinking about, planning for, getting sidetracked with, etc.).  You can follow along at either or both places.  I’d love to have you!

 

Here we go…

31 Days of Motherhood: Fully Engaged and 31 Days of Getting Things Done.  Yeehaw!

You can check back here to see a list of all the posts in this series:

• Motherhood: Fully Engaged I awoke yesterday morning to a strange and wondrous event. Jude was asleep. At this juncture, it is necessary to point out that I awoke at a regular time.  It’s not like I awoke at 3:30AM and he was asleep.  At which point I’d be fully expecting him to be asleep.  No, my alarm rang at a regular getting-up ...
• You Can’t Engage If You’ve Lost Your Mind I suspect three types of mothers might be reading this post.  You either feel… A. totally rational and sane. Probably also well rested, which may explain why I’m decidedly not in this category… B. a little crazy, but usually holding it together, at least publicly. You have moments where your sanity disappears, but you can stem the ...
• How Do You Start Your Day? – Motherhood Fully Engaged Day 3 I am not a morning person. Kudos to you who are! But that is not me.  I come alive at night around 11:00 PM to get creative, get work done, and enjoy the quiet.  Unfortunately, life with kids doesn’t exactly lend itself well to night owls, especially with a 5th graderwho needs to be at school ...
• Ask Them First I thought I had gotten away with it. Or, rather without it.  Playing, that is.  When Gabe was little, over and over again he’d ask about playing.  And I did play with him…some.  But playing with him was hard for me.  First, he’s a boy, and I’m a girl who grew up with no brothers.  Cars? ...
• Your Family’s Story – Day Six Do your kids like photos? Mine love photos–of themselves, of course! Lately I’ve been snuggling in bed at night with Isla while she goes to sleep, and her favorite way to pass the time…”Mommy, show me pictures of Isla!”  So I dig up my Instagram feed and scroll back through pictures I’ve come to love ...
• Four Ways to Learn to Live In The Moment I’m pretty sure my head is set on a swivel, at least as far as my firstborn is concerned.  Four steps this way, four steps back again, all the while gesticulating wildly while proclaiming the minutiae of his latest creation in Minecraft or invention of a recess game.  Not being even fractionally as invested in ...
• Build In Connection Points “How’d your day go?” I asked as he climbed into the car over the mountain of chaos and toys strewn through our backseat.  There was no time for eye contact, the steady gaze of the pick-up line attendant nearly glaring at me with each passing second it took me to pull out of the lot. A ...
• Who are your favorite people to be around? I have a small handful of fellow moms who I especially love to be around. I’m not even necessarily close to all of them, but anytime we’ll be together, I eagerly anticipate those events.  They’re different, these 5 women–different stages of life, different numbers of children, different careers, ...
• Stop Praising Your Child? Have you read this? It made the rounds on Facebook earlier this year.  There are other versions of it based on different data sets, too.  Over and over again. Stop praising your children. The first time I came across this idea, I bristled.  What??? Parents should praise their children? I mean, I know I grew up ...
• Positive Praise Nothing like telling you to come back tomorrow for Part 2 and then going AWOL for a week! <ahem>  But, here it is…Part 2.  We talked last time about some of the information that calls praise into question, but I said I’m not convinced that I want to fully eliminate praise from my repertoire of ...

^{(Some of this introduction to the series was cross-posted at my personal blog, Slightly Cosmopolitan, but I promise the two series are entirely different. Just the initial story that spurred me to action is the same.)}