And then, one day, you get out of the shower and just... are completely fine. All of a sudden.
(I wanted to post this on May 4th, but I wasn't a hundred percent sure it would stick.
(It has. Everything is totally different. I guess I just finally finished processing, or something.)
~
In May I had an awesome week or two of feeling amazing about life, being all like, man, I have no problems! This is crazy! What do other people worry about, anyway? I wonder what my first new problem will be! Then there was a sudden tragic death in my local religious community, and I felt very strange about my idea of what it means to have problems.)
Aaaaaanyway. We potty-trained Daniel in about a week after his third birthday, and that was part of why I felt so amazing. It was like I had finally passed the final rite and become a Real Mom. I did it! Birth, that just kind of happens. Potty-training, though, you could theoretically just not do, if you were a horrible person. But I did it, and Daniel did it, and it was actually really fun, because I spend that week being incredibly involved with him, setting aside all distractions and paying close attention. I loved it. He behaved better for the attention, and I was less frustrated by always trying to do other things. We enjoyed each other.
Sadly, it didn't take me very long to forget that lesson. I'm just now (like, today) coming out of several weeks of being an unexploded bomb of rage and misery and hating-my-life-as-a-mother. Although much of that has come from problems with nursing; I guess I won't go into the gory details, except to mention that the details actually involve gore. x_x And that drove me to wanting more distractions, which led to me ignoring Daniel a lot, which led to him misbehaving. But things to have resolved, or nearly so! Partly from technique-adjustments, and partly because Noah is six months old now (what?!?) and so we've been experimenting with solid food. In doing so I have discovered that he really really likes and wants and is good at eating solid food. Yay!! It helps that he has five teeth already, plus two almost-teeth (see above re: nursing problems). I've been giving him mini-meals the last couple days, and there's been a huge reduction in the whining and crying and a big increase in smiles. I'm hopeful that we can move more rapidly into nursing just once or twice a day than I did with Daniel (who didn't have a single tooth until he was 8 months, and who nursed to sleep, and with whom I also had painful problems around this age).
I also sat down with Heath last night and set a bunch of new, small goals about how I spend my time all day, aiming to maximize my usefulness and happiness and minimize my angst and frustration. I do way better at life when I have goals, even if I don't exactly meet them. Today went really well inside of me, even when it was chaotic and messy and loud and obnoxious outside of me. So that's awesome. (It also helped to be back in my own apartment, my own place that I'm in charge of, after a week with family. My family is awesome and it was so much fun, but being in one's own home is more the kind of awesome I seem to be in need of right this second, sanity-wise. Have I even mentioned that my sister is home from Nicaragua? I like her.)
(I also like: my kids. Noah was so adorable it was insane today--all happy and grinning all over the place with his little teeth, sitting up on his own all fat and cute, bouncing in his doorway bouncer so hard I thought he might land on his fluffy-diapered little butt. And Heath had a break in the middle of the day, so while the two of them took naps, Daniel and I went off by ourselves for a walk around town. This is absolutely my favorite thing to do as a mother, and I don't do it very often anymore. It was so much fun, and so nice. I miss him when we've been clashing. (When we were nursing, we always had to emotionally reconnect no matter what else was going on, and while I know that won't be the case for most of my time as a mom, it's still new to me (we nursed till he was two, still more than half his life) and I'm still learning to cope with the lost resource. I think that's the main reason I haven't made any gestures toward actually weaning Noah, even when I've had every reason to do so. I don't want to miss out on having that foundation with him as he gets older and more independent.)
So there is my boring and self-indulgent update! In other news, I might start a separate SCA blog because, oh yes, I am that big of a nerd. I do think it's more fun to talk about all my stuff in one place, but I also don't want random society people being like, cool post about late medieval Portuguese armory! What else you got here? Nipple problems, eh? Unfortunate, sister.
I also want to write a less rambling entry about how my identity has evolved lately in the face of my constant ambivalence about my ongoing choice to be a full-time caretaker, but I'm not sure it makes any sense. The short version is, I get way happier and more relaxed when I think of homemaking and kid-entertaining as my job. Like the kind you get hired for. Get up in the morning, get dressed, go to work! Don't slack off during your shift! Don't try to do other things and pretend you're not at work! Even if I'm doing it all the time and don't get as many breaks as I might want, if it's just my job, it's not who I am. This is why I used the word "caretaker" there. Being a mother is in fact a big part of who I am now, and I love that fiercely. But that's about my relationships with these two people, not about whether or not they live in my house and need me to make it a certain kind of environment for them. That part, the part I do, is just a job. And therefore I don't have to thrive on it. I can just do my best at it, and enjoy the kids I'm doing it for as much as possible, without having to transform into an archetype of it. I don't have to become it in order to do it, no matter how much of my time it takes. I can love my kids (which comes easily), get the home-making done (which doesn't), and still be me inside throughout the process. It's not like this is some magic formula that will prevent me from ever getting tired or burned-out, but it helps me feel less oppressed by my own perfectionism. I can get up in the morning and say "okay, I guess I better do some motherish stuff" instead of "ugh, I don't feel like a mother-ish person today...again." It's just stuff. And if I save the selfish things I /want/ to do (especially ones that park me at the computer) for when Heath is home or everyone else is asleep, I may not get as much time in on them, but I'm happier because I'm not spending my day getting interrupted. That ratchets up the resentment-points way too fast.
Whoa, I just went back to edit that paragraph and dozed off in my chair.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Monday, April 22, 2013
Can't say that
Can't say that... Can't say that... Definitely can't say that... Can't say that, can't say that... Can't say that... Can't say that...
More things to preserve
I have this list of amazing Daniel things to blog, but I'm not really in a writing mood, so this is likely to be even more disjointed than usual. (If I ever make a new journal, I should just call it "Disjointed," because I seem to use that word in nearly every entry. Come to think, that might have been the name of my LJ layout.)
* Noah is getting stronger. He can't roll over, but when I set him up in my lap a few days ago he was briefly able to hold his torso erect. I excitedly showed this to Daniel, who said, "He's growing up!"
* Where a normal person might say "That's interesting," Daniel says in highly intrigued tones, "That's serious." I think he might have developed that because serious is the opposite of silly? And therefore when things are remarkable but not silly, this must be what you say? Anyway, it's darn cute and another of the injokes Heath and I have adopted into our own vocabularies.
* There was an armadillo on TV, and I talked to Daniel about it. "Isn't that cool, how they can turn into balls?" "Yeah!" he said, "like cars do!" "Cars can turn into balls?" I asked. "Yeah!" he said. "Huh. I've never seen that," I said. "It's kind of busted," he explained. Which is exactly right, now that he's pointed out to me. A sufficiently busted car would totally look like an armadillo.
* Daniel has always had an amazing brain for making unlikely visual/auditory comparisons between things. Like last summer when he bit a sandwich into the shape of a helicopter, or a couple weeks ago when he pointed to the cover of this book at the library and said, "Mario!", or last week when Noah suddenly howled and Daniel remarked that he sounded like an elephant.
* No matter how whimsical a parent you are, you can't be prepared for everything. When he asked me "What sound does a brain make?" I was overcome by amazement at the question itself and unable to come up with a good answer.
* Noah has been sleeping in his crib at night for the last week or two, and it's been so lovely. It's not really a huge change--we still bring him to bed when he wakes up so that he can nurse, and then fall back asleep for the second half of the night with him still there. Same thing we did with Daniel. But he was spending the first part of the night in the swing in our room before, and there's something just so exciting and wonderful about tucking both my sweet little sons into their shared room and tiptoeing out. Daniel really likes having him in there, and the first few nights I just hung out in there for over an hour after they were both still asleep, playing Backgammon on my phone and just soaking in the magic of listening to my plural children breathing peacefully together.
* In less lovely but still interesting sleep news, Daniel has nightmares sometimes, and they are fascinating. We try not to show him scary things on TV or whatnot, and he hasn't had very many frightening experiences in real life (aside from the occasional Mommy Is Extremely Loud incident), so they're not usually about obvious things like monsters or drowning (although the most recent one is about a burning truck, which makes sense). But if your hormones tell you to be scared, you'll come up with something for it, apparently. The big one last week was, as far as I can understand, about a coconut tree that sprouted in the middle of the church. "It's very tall. It's very big. The coconut tree spins around. It spins around very fast. It's kind of smoky. And the man, he's talking." I think it's amazing how these peculiarly benign elements add up to something absolutely that is absolutely legit creepy.
* Interesting parenting moment: Daniel has discovered the word "beautiful," and as he was examining the DVD case for The Little Mermaid on Saturday, he remarked that Ariel was beautiful. Heath told him that was a nice thing to say. Then he pointed at Ursula and said, "What's that?" "That's Ursula, the Sea Witch," said Heath. "She's very beautiful," said Daniel, and there was this brief pause while everything about the fat, aging, garish, super problematic and stereotyped character design flashed through my mind--along with everything I want Daniel to know about the women in the real world, and all the different body types, personal styles, ages, degrees of physical ability--and how I want him to respect them and treat them kindly, in the fact of extreme peer pressure to the contrary--and how little time I have as his sole and utterly trusted source of socialization... It felt like an extremely long and significant pause for thought, but it was only like half a second. "Yes, she is beautiful," I agreed.
* What else? Oh, yes. Yesterday I asked him if he remembers the names of his fingers--I was thinking pointer, pinky, etc.--and he said yes. So I held up my thumb and said, "What's this one?" and he said with a big smile, "Jenny!
* I am working on returning to being a person who does not swear even when severely provoked, and I'm finally making progress. Last-second cuss word replacements from last week: "What the funny money!!" and "Oh, shirt."
* Today we talked about "full names," and I told him his own, and those of other people he knew. He was fascinated and asked for more. It was awesome. Other than that, it was a really difficult and lonely day. But it was really sweet when he painstaking assembled the sentence, "Is something wrong, Mommy?" (Noah screamed a lot today, is the main thing. He took a big nap in the morning, during which I did a ton of laundry out of sheer boredom, but after that it was Just No Good for anyone. I felt totally abandoned by the rest of the world, and the weather was super nice but I couldn't get everything together sufficiently to get us outside, so I was trapped. Then, after about a century, Heath got home, and with the extra pair of hands I was able to fix everything up. We went for a really excessively long walk in the beautiful sunshine and all came back exhausted, but I felt so much better afterward.)
* Noah is getting stronger. He can't roll over, but when I set him up in my lap a few days ago he was briefly able to hold his torso erect. I excitedly showed this to Daniel, who said, "He's growing up!"
* Where a normal person might say "That's interesting," Daniel says in highly intrigued tones, "That's serious." I think he might have developed that because serious is the opposite of silly? And therefore when things are remarkable but not silly, this must be what you say? Anyway, it's darn cute and another of the injokes Heath and I have adopted into our own vocabularies.
* There was an armadillo on TV, and I talked to Daniel about it. "Isn't that cool, how they can turn into balls?" "Yeah!" he said, "like cars do!" "Cars can turn into balls?" I asked. "Yeah!" he said. "Huh. I've never seen that," I said. "It's kind of busted," he explained. Which is exactly right, now that he's pointed out to me. A sufficiently busted car would totally look like an armadillo.
* Daniel has always had an amazing brain for making unlikely visual/auditory comparisons between things. Like last summer when he bit a sandwich into the shape of a helicopter, or a couple weeks ago when he pointed to the cover of this book at the library and said, "Mario!", or last week when Noah suddenly howled and Daniel remarked that he sounded like an elephant.
* No matter how whimsical a parent you are, you can't be prepared for everything. When he asked me "What sound does a brain make?" I was overcome by amazement at the question itself and unable to come up with a good answer.
* Noah has been sleeping in his crib at night for the last week or two, and it's been so lovely. It's not really a huge change--we still bring him to bed when he wakes up so that he can nurse, and then fall back asleep for the second half of the night with him still there. Same thing we did with Daniel. But he was spending the first part of the night in the swing in our room before, and there's something just so exciting and wonderful about tucking both my sweet little sons into their shared room and tiptoeing out. Daniel really likes having him in there, and the first few nights I just hung out in there for over an hour after they were both still asleep, playing Backgammon on my phone and just soaking in the magic of listening to my plural children breathing peacefully together.
* In less lovely but still interesting sleep news, Daniel has nightmares sometimes, and they are fascinating. We try not to show him scary things on TV or whatnot, and he hasn't had very many frightening experiences in real life (aside from the occasional Mommy Is Extremely Loud incident), so they're not usually about obvious things like monsters or drowning (although the most recent one is about a burning truck, which makes sense). But if your hormones tell you to be scared, you'll come up with something for it, apparently. The big one last week was, as far as I can understand, about a coconut tree that sprouted in the middle of the church. "It's very tall. It's very big. The coconut tree spins around. It spins around very fast. It's kind of smoky. And the man, he's talking." I think it's amazing how these peculiarly benign elements add up to something absolutely that is absolutely legit creepy.
* Interesting parenting moment: Daniel has discovered the word "beautiful," and as he was examining the DVD case for The Little Mermaid on Saturday, he remarked that Ariel was beautiful. Heath told him that was a nice thing to say. Then he pointed at Ursula and said, "What's that?" "That's Ursula, the Sea Witch," said Heath. "She's very beautiful," said Daniel, and there was this brief pause while everything about the fat, aging, garish, super problematic and stereotyped character design flashed through my mind--along with everything I want Daniel to know about the women in the real world, and all the different body types, personal styles, ages, degrees of physical ability--and how I want him to respect them and treat them kindly, in the fact of extreme peer pressure to the contrary--and how little time I have as his sole and utterly trusted source of socialization... It felt like an extremely long and significant pause for thought, but it was only like half a second. "Yes, she is beautiful," I agreed.
* What else? Oh, yes. Yesterday I asked him if he remembers the names of his fingers--I was thinking pointer, pinky, etc.--and he said yes. So I held up my thumb and said, "What's this one?" and he said with a big smile, "Jenny!
* I am working on returning to being a person who does not swear even when severely provoked, and I'm finally making progress. Last-second cuss word replacements from last week: "What the funny money!!" and "Oh, shirt."
* Today we talked about "full names," and I told him his own, and those of other people he knew. He was fascinated and asked for more. It was awesome. Other than that, it was a really difficult and lonely day. But it was really sweet when he painstaking assembled the sentence, "Is something wrong, Mommy?" (Noah screamed a lot today, is the main thing. He took a big nap in the morning, during which I did a ton of laundry out of sheer boredom, but after that it was Just No Good for anyone. I felt totally abandoned by the rest of the world, and the weather was super nice but I couldn't get everything together sufficiently to get us outside, so I was trapped. Then, after about a century, Heath got home, and with the extra pair of hands I was able to fix everything up. We went for a really excessively long walk in the beautiful sunshine and all came back exhausted, but I felt so much better afterward.)
Friday, April 12, 2013
And then
After writing that post last night, I talked to Heath for a long time, and prayed a lot, and asked him for a priesthood blessing. The help I received from all that has already been enormous. I made some plans, had some new huge insights, wrote stuff down. Reminders. Perspective shifts. Gentleness. I feel much better now.
One major point is that I started an indefinite social media "brownout" this morning (no more news feeds), and I can tell this is going to be a really, really good move in my life for a million reasons. Kind of going Walden. Been wanting to do it for months.
So, okay. Onward~
One major point is that I started an indefinite social media "brownout" this morning (no more news feeds), and I can tell this is going to be a really, really good move in my life for a million reasons. Kind of going Walden. Been wanting to do it for months.
So, okay. Onward~
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Footing
I'm in a weird place.
The day right after I decided to do that 30-days meme, I ended up deciding it wasn't important to me anymore, and therefore didn't follow up with it. But I meant to post about why not sooner than now, which would have been a simpler entry, because I could have been vague about just one thing instead of a bunch of stuff like I'm about to do.
Basically, I felt really strongly that I needed to get to the temple before General Conference (which was this past weekend), as I hadn't been there in nearly a year and it was nearly another year to the time before that. And I was excited about some things I'd read recently. So we scrambled up to Portland last Tuesday evening and I did it, and Heath took care of the kids outside. My experience was wonderful and intense and really significant. It may even be safe to call it a turning point in my life, if a small one. A lot of things I thought I understood just kind of changed, and a couple of beliefs I had got, like... toggled. In major (ish?) but really neat ways.
So that was lovely, and made me decide to pay attention to stuff other than blogging on fluff prompts (although I still want to write more), largely because one of my motives for redoing that thing was stupid. And I felt peaceful. I felt stable.
Anyway, GenCon happened and I got to hang out with my brothers. I had a great time with them, also some emotional weirdness. Partly because of old, blegh sibling-habits. Partly because one of the talks bothered me and then the response to it on a friend's facebook wall was incredibly depressing and I felt lonely about that.
My kids have been amazing. Good stuff there. But I had kind of a huge breakdown two nights ago, for reasons not related to them. I felt a lot better after sleep, but... not normal. The big flood may be over, but the dam is still gone.
So there is some really good stuff and some really bad stuff and all of it is bizarre and hard to talk about. I don't really know what I'm doing, or why, or what to do next. I wish the peace and stability had lasted longer, though I guess I didn't do the work to maintain them.
I'm pretty happy, but I'm also extremely unhappy. Usually both at once, with only the first one showing. I'm uncomfortable and I wish I knew which way to jump.
The day right after I decided to do that 30-days meme, I ended up deciding it wasn't important to me anymore, and therefore didn't follow up with it. But I meant to post about why not sooner than now, which would have been a simpler entry, because I could have been vague about just one thing instead of a bunch of stuff like I'm about to do.
Basically, I felt really strongly that I needed to get to the temple before General Conference (which was this past weekend), as I hadn't been there in nearly a year and it was nearly another year to the time before that. And I was excited about some things I'd read recently. So we scrambled up to Portland last Tuesday evening and I did it, and Heath took care of the kids outside. My experience was wonderful and intense and really significant. It may even be safe to call it a turning point in my life, if a small one. A lot of things I thought I understood just kind of changed, and a couple of beliefs I had got, like... toggled. In major (ish?) but really neat ways.
So that was lovely, and made me decide to pay attention to stuff other than blogging on fluff prompts (although I still want to write more), largely because one of my motives for redoing that thing was stupid. And I felt peaceful. I felt stable.
Anyway, GenCon happened and I got to hang out with my brothers. I had a great time with them, also some emotional weirdness. Partly because of old, blegh sibling-habits. Partly because one of the talks bothered me and then the response to it on a friend's facebook wall was incredibly depressing and I felt lonely about that.
My kids have been amazing. Good stuff there. But I had kind of a huge breakdown two nights ago, for reasons not related to them. I felt a lot better after sleep, but... not normal. The big flood may be over, but the dam is still gone.
So there is some really good stuff and some really bad stuff and all of it is bizarre and hard to talk about. I don't really know what I'm doing, or why, or what to do next. I wish the peace and stability had lasted longer, though I guess I didn't do the work to maintain them.
I'm pretty happy, but I'm also extremely unhappy. Usually both at once, with only the first one showing. I'm uncomfortable and I wish I knew which way to jump.
Monday, April 1, 2013
30 Day Redux
I want to write more, and I do well with prompts, so I'm going to redo this silly thing from two years ago. Some of the answers are going to be the same as they were the first time, but I'll try to find new things to say as much as possible.
The first day's prompt is "Recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself." I recently had a baby, and I'm in a really awkward phase of growing out my haircut from last year, and I just got a new phone, so most of my recent pictures are amusingly unattractive selfies. Here is one that is merely silly.
There was a time when I was doing a lot of these things for some reason, so to keep it interesting I
started making the facts I gave about myself kind of obscure. But it's been a
while now, and I've changed a lot. So I'm going to reintroduce myself as
a way of rediscovering myself, or something. See how that turns out.
The first day's prompt is "Recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself." I recently had a baby, and I'm in a really awkward phase of growing out my haircut from last year, and I just got a new phone, so most of my recent pictures are amusingly unattractive selfies. Here is one that is merely silly.
 |
| Although on further thought, I'd probably really dig living in a tree and making cookies. |
- I'm Rachel. I'm 26. That was two facts.
- I have two children so far, Daniel and Noah. They are so cool I kind of can't believe it. I have many many many flaws, but I am better overall at parenting than I used to be, and in my clear-headed moments I call that victory. I dearly miss having long stretches of time to sit in quiet doing whatever I wanted, but I also passionately want to have two or three more and complete my set. I wish that by the time they're all here I could plan to stop sucking altogether, but I guess that's more a journey than a destination.
- Yesterday I was looking at my kind, handsome, brilliant, ridiculous husband, and I finally identified a background feeling I've had about him for the whole 7+ years we've been together. That feeling is a strange sense that I'm actually not in the normal, baseline universe at all. I'm in an alternate universe, a crazy and awesome one where I get to be married to Heath. How did that even happen? Usually the heroes would just make a brief stopover here and hijinks would ensue, but I've somehow wound up living here full-time, and hijinks are ensuing every day. And I find myself the the more-deeply-realized spin-off show version of who I thought I was going to be.
- I have celiac disease. As I was writing this, I bit into a piece of Easter candy and immediately had to spit it out, because I discovered that it was peanut butter and rice crispy. That is the most magical and delicious combination in the world, but it's almost always gluten-contaminated. I'm enjoying the tiny amount of it that I can still taste in my mouth, but I'm also already getting slightly sick from it. Should have broken it open to check first.
- I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I love its doctrines profoundly and joyfully. I frequently take issue with the subculture propagated unofficially among the members (who are, after all, dumb humans like me). I was super devout growing up, but I got lazy and depressed in the last few years and stopped doing very much more than just going on Sundays. I'm working now on making it a deep and growing and active part of my everyday life again, because it's awesome and it makes everything else more awesome. And I'm not content with the flat, shaky sort of awesomeness I'm limited to without it.
- I am a feminist, in the real definition of the word, not the stereotypey one. My main sub-issue is trying to help shift our culture away from its extreme levels of violence, especially of the sorts a significant number of my loved ones have endured. I think and study and talk about that a lot. I'm super enthusiastic and friendly about it when I'm not being immediately freaked out by something despicable. I'm not judgey of individuals who enjoy problematic media, because most people are privileged in some area and it is possible to like one part of something while conscientiously objecting to others. I want to see creators thinking outside the box more, though.
- I'm feminine in identity, presentation, and chosen daily vocation, but I usually feel a lot more comfortable hanging out with geeky men than with people outwardly similar to myself. Men have a different set of social rules that makes way, way, way more sense to me on an instinctual level, and I usually relate more to their interests. I still crave the company of other women, but it's harder to make a connection and feel liked. I often come off as shy. I figure that's better than coming off as a snot.
- I am excessively passionate about a lot of enormously dorky things, and a lot of mainstream-dorky things as well, but somehow a particularly awkward combination of those two. I participate in the SCA, host a weekly roleplaying group at my house, read lots of webcomics, write a (terrible) novel every year since 2007, draw a lot, read constantly, and play video games. I'm working on writing a text adventure right now. But my number one hobby at the moment (which relates to the first item in that list) is medieval history, particularly heraldry and heraldic design. That can pretty comfortably be called an obsession at this point.
- Things I used to do: Design websites. Serve as Wikipedia administrator. Peform regularly in choirs, including two years in an a capella group. Write a weekly opinion column for the school paper. Write for a webcomic (hopefully will do so again soonish). Teach about the Old Testament at church. Study Japanese. Act in musicals.
- My favorite book series is the Miles Vorkosigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, which I love more fiercely than tongue can tell. My favorite single book is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. I can no longer even begin to narrow down my favorite music, but I generally lump it together as "pretty and/or strange." The best video games are Portal (1&2) and Chrono Trigger, and the best movie is I have no idea.
- I have a degree in English (magna cum laude!), the acquisition of which was one of the funnest (yes, darn it, funnest) things I'll ever do. Once my kid-having situation is nice and settled, I'm going back for a minor in writing, and then (depending on how much I like that) a Master's in either Creative Writing or English Literature. I'm looking forward to that a lot.
- And then I had to do other stuff for 10 hours! Coming back in a totally different state of mind. Uhh. Stuff. This has been pretty wordy so far, hasn't it? I value brevity, but this is what brevity looks like to me. At least when I'm writing for myself. There, that's a factoid.
- I have three older brothers (all married, two with kids), and one little sister who is currently on a mission in Nicaragua. She will be back in a year, and I miss her like crazy, but I'm also getting a lot of vicarious satisfaction out of what a cool thing she's doing. My brothers are entirely rad, and so are my parents. So are my other relatives. I love spending time with all of them. I had a fun and diverse and affectionate home life growing up, which is why I want to have a plurality of kids myself.
- I am not a very accomplished homemaker. Today I folded laundry and unloaded the dishwasher, which is about 10% of what it seems like other stay-at-home moms are doing before lunch, but it was super productive for me. I've been plagued by fatigue a lot of my life (see #4), and it's become kind of a habit. So I often forget to notice I have energy. But meanwhile, I really really care about the state of my house, so I've tended to sit around feeling edgy and guilty all the time. I'm a genius! I also can't cook, but I'm trying to learn, because feeding my kids random junk at random hours is more embarrassing than doing that to myself, and I don't want them to be like I've been.
- Well, I sort of implied this in #8, but I get really, really intensely enthusiastic about the things that catch hold of my imagination. If I like something, I immediately want to become an expert in it. I challenge myself to a lot of fairly hefty projects for no extrinsic reason (showing here) and pursue them tenaciously. I devote tons of time and energy to making art or researching subject areas no one else will care about, and boil over with delight all throughout the process. I also use up a lot of myself, day after day, on the things that upset and worry me. All of this is why I need to talk so much, and write so much, and fret so much over needing people to talk and write to, and thank heaven every day for my marriage-and-conversation partner.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Some things to preserve
* Like many toddlers, Daniel is full of energy and loves to express it by running around wildly. In the process, he often shouts out this magnificent word: "PAPOMINGA!" When we first introduced him to video games earlier this winter (mainly N64 games), he couldn't understand what Mario was saying when he fell out of paintings or spun out in his go-kart. Nowadays I've heard him actually say "mama mia!" a couple times when it happens in the game, but his enthusiastic word for taking corners or pretending to triumphantly crash into things in real life remains papominga. I hope he never grows out of it. I'm adding it to my own vocabulary.
* Noah opens his mouth super wide when he smiles. It is the greatest thing. He's three months old now, already. Cooing and adorable. Time for the first batch of really exciting stuff: rolling, sitting, grasping, crawling. Daniel is looking forward to sharing stuff with him, and he's getting good at pushing the umbrella stroller in a gentle, straight line down the sidewalk--at least inasmuch as the sidewalks themselves are gentle and straight. Oh, Monmouth. Anyway, such a sweet big brother. (Having two kids is infinitely better than just one. I can't wait to see my entire family all together. I want them all here right now so I can start knowing them. I was baby-hungry the minute Noah was born, but I guess this time is for getting to know and appreciate him, deeply and individually, while he's the baby.)
* I'm super tired but I'm enthusiastic about the lovely weather lately.
* I bought a white gel pen yesterday and my life is 987398684756 times better. I'm drawing this amazing amazing kind of medieval sampler thingy, and it's almost done.
* Heraldry: still acting on me like a tasty drug.
* My oldest brother is coming up from California next weekend. YESSS I am so stoked to be with all of my brothers! But not all my siblings, sigh. One more year till Jenny-time. We better send her a picture.
* I've had a series of connected epiphanies over the past several months. I guess I should preserve that in my private paper journal in more detail, but that one barely even knows Noah exists, poor thing. The epiphanies, in rough outline, were that I am super attached to divine justice (toward myself), even moreso than divine mercy; that I used to think I was good at forgiving, but actually I'm obviously horrible at it, all things considered, and that's been making my life stupid for ages; and finally that Daniel, luckily, is really really good at forgiving, and therefore things between him and me are probably going to be okay even if I suck sometimes. He loves me. I am trying to learn from him.
* Also about Daniel, I failed to write a poem last week about a moment where I went from reading a lot of articles about violence and horror to going to wake him up from his nap, and ended up just kneeling by his bedside, becoming late for our appointment, kissing his sleeping fist that smelled like sticky oranges and still had dimples in the knuckles and hadn't yet learned to hurt. I am so grateful to be his mom. Send me more sons. They won't be perfect, but there are a few important things they'll know.
* I am learning to be more appreciative of the people in my life. They don't just not-exist, even if they're not the precise à la carte friend selection I would have made in my "Lucy seeks Ethel" desperation. And they're awesome. It occurred to me that maybe I'm Ethel; maybe instead of waiting for someone to come over to my house and make it less boring, I have to pay attention to what's actually happening. Also, maybe this TV show doesn't completely revolve around me. Still kind of following this rabbit hole. Making connections is not really my strength right now. It might not have to be.
* I should go to bed. I need to be getting more sleep. But I should put together that Easter basket first.
* (Apparently it's possible to become reconciled to something while simultaneously being in constant mourning for it. Apparently you don't grieve less, you just do other things more. It's not what I expected or wanted, but I guess it works.)
* Seriously, it will be the first Easter Daniel actually knows about and participates in! That's exciting. Be excited, Rachel. Zzzzzzz I will after I sleep.
I feel very weird because it's spring. Which is a statement that kind of demands explanation but my brain is too tired to elucidate and obfuscate it simultaneously, which is what I'd have to do.
* Noah opens his mouth super wide when he smiles. It is the greatest thing. He's three months old now, already. Cooing and adorable. Time for the first batch of really exciting stuff: rolling, sitting, grasping, crawling. Daniel is looking forward to sharing stuff with him, and he's getting good at pushing the umbrella stroller in a gentle, straight line down the sidewalk--at least inasmuch as the sidewalks themselves are gentle and straight. Oh, Monmouth. Anyway, such a sweet big brother. (Having two kids is infinitely better than just one. I can't wait to see my entire family all together. I want them all here right now so I can start knowing them. I was baby-hungry the minute Noah was born, but I guess this time is for getting to know and appreciate him, deeply and individually, while he's the baby.)
* I'm super tired but I'm enthusiastic about the lovely weather lately.
* I bought a white gel pen yesterday and my life is 987398684756 times better. I'm drawing this amazing amazing kind of medieval sampler thingy, and it's almost done.
* Heraldry: still acting on me like a tasty drug.
* My oldest brother is coming up from California next weekend. YESSS I am so stoked to be with all of my brothers! But not all my siblings, sigh. One more year till Jenny-time. We better send her a picture.
* I've had a series of connected epiphanies over the past several months. I guess I should preserve that in my private paper journal in more detail, but that one barely even knows Noah exists, poor thing. The epiphanies, in rough outline, were that I am super attached to divine justice (toward myself), even moreso than divine mercy; that I used to think I was good at forgiving, but actually I'm obviously horrible at it, all things considered, and that's been making my life stupid for ages; and finally that Daniel, luckily, is really really good at forgiving, and therefore things between him and me are probably going to be okay even if I suck sometimes. He loves me. I am trying to learn from him.
* Also about Daniel, I failed to write a poem last week about a moment where I went from reading a lot of articles about violence and horror to going to wake him up from his nap, and ended up just kneeling by his bedside, becoming late for our appointment, kissing his sleeping fist that smelled like sticky oranges and still had dimples in the knuckles and hadn't yet learned to hurt. I am so grateful to be his mom. Send me more sons. They won't be perfect, but there are a few important things they'll know.
* I am learning to be more appreciative of the people in my life. They don't just not-exist, even if they're not the precise à la carte friend selection I would have made in my "Lucy seeks Ethel" desperation. And they're awesome. It occurred to me that maybe I'm Ethel; maybe instead of waiting for someone to come over to my house and make it less boring, I have to pay attention to what's actually happening. Also, maybe this TV show doesn't completely revolve around me. Still kind of following this rabbit hole. Making connections is not really my strength right now. It might not have to be.
* I should go to bed. I need to be getting more sleep. But I should put together that Easter basket first.
* (Apparently it's possible to become reconciled to something while simultaneously being in constant mourning for it. Apparently you don't grieve less, you just do other things more. It's not what I expected or wanted, but I guess it works.)
* Seriously, it will be the first Easter Daniel actually knows about and participates in! That's exciting. Be excited, Rachel. Zzzzzzz I will after I sleep.
I feel very weird because it's spring. Which is a statement that kind of demands explanation but my brain is too tired to elucidate and obfuscate it simultaneously, which is what I'd have to do.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Noah's birth
Writing a birth story is such a daunting task! I don't see how people can do it without being completely overwhelmed and buried in perfectionism. That's why I never got around to finishing Daniel's. Because the kinds of feelings you get in birth don't show up anywhere else. Like, even just physically, and even without the pain part. Many are impossible to describe, and others are more personal than a lot of people might want to get into. And some things have this weird layer of vague euphemism built up that makes them okay to talk about socially as long as you don't actually talk about them, so that someone can say, "yeah, I needed two or three stitches" and people just nod and carry on as if this was normal. Sure, it is absolutely normal in birth, but it's really not normal in the speaker's every day life. (Your what got ripped open?!) So it's weird to talk about any of it, because at any given moment I might be all like, "Yup, people have been having babies for ages, nothing new under the sun," but later I'll be going, "Holy crap! A freaking placenta came out of me! AND IT FELT REALLY WEIRD"
But, anyway. I guess I have to let go of that, to a certain extent. I'll never be able to actually convey the intensity of the experience in all its pain / joy / terror / relief / amazement / excitement / utter alien weirdness. People who have had their own babies will have an allegory, but even they haven't done exactly what I did. No one has. But I can still tell the outside facts, and remember the inner things better for it later.
But, anyway. I guess I have to let go of that, to a certain extent. I'll never be able to actually convey the intensity of the experience in all its pain / joy / terror / relief / amazement / excitement / utter alien weirdness. People who have had their own babies will have an allegory, but even they haven't done exactly what I did. No one has. But I can still tell the outside facts, and remember the inner things better for it later.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
In which I mention a baby!
Oooooof. Since August? Really? And the one before that was last January? (The funny thing about my last entry is that when I went to the store to buy a new planner, it turned out the only one I really liked aesthetically was a Jan-Jan one after all. So after all that, I completely tossed it all aside and just got the pretty one. X) It was still a worthwhile thought process, though. I am large, I contain multitudes!)
So, stuff~. I'm going to make a list of things I want to write entries about, but first and foremost I will state for the record that I totes had that second baby. He is Noah, and he is super cuddly, and his birth was awesome. Things are going really well so far. ♥ This will definitely change as time goes on, but for the moment, he has yet to present us with any challenges we didn't already learn to deal with from Daniel. So that's been pretty cool and a huge blessing, especially because Daniel is actively blazing new trails in the "how the heck do I parent this?" forest. (He is brilliant and adorable and I love his guts, and also, he is two and a half.)
Anyway, things I want to talk about:
So, stuff~. I'm going to make a list of things I want to write entries about, but first and foremost I will state for the record that I totes had that second baby. He is Noah, and he is super cuddly, and his birth was awesome. Things are going really well so far. ♥ This will definitely change as time goes on, but for the moment, he has yet to present us with any challenges we didn't already learn to deal with from Daniel. So that's been pretty cool and a huge blessing, especially because Daniel is actively blazing new trails in the "how the heck do I parent this?" forest. (He is brilliant and adorable and I love his guts, and also, he is two and a half.)
Anyway, things I want to talk about:
- Birth story! (Hint: 2 hours!)
- Comparison between hospital/n00b experience and birth-center/v3t3r4n experience
- Daniel! He is a toddler. What else?
- Some general musings about how my parenting philosophy and techniques have evolved
- All kinds of interesting food stuff I learned from gestational diabetes
- What have I been doing besides parenting? (Not a ton, but some stuff!)
- Um, heraldry. A lot of that. Yesssss. And some SCA gatherings!
- NaNoWriMo (I did it again last year, probably won't this year)
- How awesome Heath is / what we might be doing next in life
- Quite possibly one of those "30 days of entries" things again, because I need an outlet.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Calendars
I've been thinking a lot about life-seasons and cycles lately, not surprisingly, as my birthday is in a little over two weeks.
When I was in high school, I noticed that I had a deeply-ingrained tendency to conceive of new years as beginning in September, not in January. A new school year brought changes to my schedule, my physical environment, my social pressures and opportunities, the academic subjects I was surrounded by, and the similar concerns on the minds of nearly everyone I knew. The chronological new year was fun and all, but it was never more than a ceremonial gesture. I didn't chart my experiences under terms like "1999" and "2000," but rather as "1999-2000" (i.e. 8th grade). Going by what grade I was in, I was able to organize the seasons of my life in surprisingly coherent mental volumes, and trace themes from one to the next.
(Somehow, nothing incredibly important ever seemed to happen during the summertime--or if it did, I ended up seeing it as either at the beginning, merging smoothly into the previous year, or the end, merging smoothly into the next. Kind of like a Harry Potter book.)
Obviously, this has everything to do with being in public school, an external force that defined most of what happened to me all day. So I always kind of figured that things would change when I had completed my formal education. Specifically, I imagined that in my early-to-mid-twenties I would stop buying day planners that began in September, and start buying ones that began in January. It was sort of a rite-of-passage to adulthood. Grown-ups, I figured, are more comfortable in strictly Gregorian calendars. They do taxes that way. They buy wall calendars that way. They write history books that way.
Yet somehow, a couple years (?!) after graduating from university, and well into my erratic and timeless routine as a full-time mommy, I still find myself in the exact same mental pattern. I realized a while ago that at least one reason for this is pretty simple--my birthday is at the very end of August, just days before my childhood school years generally started. Halfway through college, when exactly what "grade" I was in was getting increasingly hazy, I started identifying my years by my own age, and therefore rolling everything over at...exactly the same time as ever.
What's more, every time Heath and I have changed apartments it's been in the August-October range, and now he's about to start his full-time student teaching, after which he'll start teaching for real. For our foreseeable future, his work will come in waves starting every September. And in a few short years, our kids will start going to school, too... Then at some point, I'll be going back...
So yeah. I think I'll switch back to buying student planners after all.
I might even start right now, even though my current one has the rest of the year's months left in it. It's falling apart, because it was a two-year planner. And frankly, I'm more than ready to symbolically shove the last two years in a box and move on to shiny new ones. I can only strive to hope that 26 be a better year than 25 has been.
Overall, in the little in-between spaces, it's been a really pretty awful one, revolving around one awful theme (which has nothing to do with my family or my body). That's why I haven't been writing here, or talking much to anyone but Heath. Lots of good stuff, too, but that stuff will hopefully and presumably be continuing indefinitely. The rest... I'm ready to be done. Somehow. A symbolically convenient time to declare myself so is approaching; I have no idea what that means or whether anything really will or can change, but at least the timing is something. I don't know. I have no idea. I can hope, but I can't plan. Or maybe vice-versa.
Definite transitions that are coming: Shortly before my birthday, I'm getting my 20-week ultrasound with baby #2. Shortly after, my "little" sister is leaving on her mission, which is exciting but I will miss her like mad. And next month Heath is starting his last term of school, which will end in getting his teaching license. Immediately after that, at the start of 2013, the aforementioned awesome new baby will come along and distract us all for a while. Heath will briefly go back to carpet-cleaning to keep us eating and start paying off loans. By next summer, we will hopefully have found a teaching job for the fall, somewhere relatively close by, and will be getting ready to move. Then, bizarrely, our post-student life will begin as I turn 27.
So that's all pretty awesome. I hope I'm up for it; I think I will be. More uncertainly, I hope I'm up for whatever other unexpected weirdness life throws at us in addition. That's not impossible, either, really, just as long as it's gentler or at least wildly different from and completely unrelated to this year's. That sounds very restful. Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about any of it from here.
So we'll see what we see, I guess. I need to have something change, and a haircut didn't do the trick. (Not that that was the point, but one always hopes.) So for now, I'll happily take the new age, and the new year, maybe some new weather and tree-colors soon. The upcoming hints about who my new baby might be will be fun, too. And when the big roll-over to 26 comes, who knows. Maybe I'll stay up till midnight and sing a song and throw some confetti around.
And hope for the best.
When I was in high school, I noticed that I had a deeply-ingrained tendency to conceive of new years as beginning in September, not in January. A new school year brought changes to my schedule, my physical environment, my social pressures and opportunities, the academic subjects I was surrounded by, and the similar concerns on the minds of nearly everyone I knew. The chronological new year was fun and all, but it was never more than a ceremonial gesture. I didn't chart my experiences under terms like "1999" and "2000," but rather as "1999-2000" (i.e. 8th grade). Going by what grade I was in, I was able to organize the seasons of my life in surprisingly coherent mental volumes, and trace themes from one to the next.
(Somehow, nothing incredibly important ever seemed to happen during the summertime--or if it did, I ended up seeing it as either at the beginning, merging smoothly into the previous year, or the end, merging smoothly into the next. Kind of like a Harry Potter book.)
Obviously, this has everything to do with being in public school, an external force that defined most of what happened to me all day. So I always kind of figured that things would change when I had completed my formal education. Specifically, I imagined that in my early-to-mid-twenties I would stop buying day planners that began in September, and start buying ones that began in January. It was sort of a rite-of-passage to adulthood. Grown-ups, I figured, are more comfortable in strictly Gregorian calendars. They do taxes that way. They buy wall calendars that way. They write history books that way.
Yet somehow, a couple years (?!) after graduating from university, and well into my erratic and timeless routine as a full-time mommy, I still find myself in the exact same mental pattern. I realized a while ago that at least one reason for this is pretty simple--my birthday is at the very end of August, just days before my childhood school years generally started. Halfway through college, when exactly what "grade" I was in was getting increasingly hazy, I started identifying my years by my own age, and therefore rolling everything over at...exactly the same time as ever.
What's more, every time Heath and I have changed apartments it's been in the August-October range, and now he's about to start his full-time student teaching, after which he'll start teaching for real. For our foreseeable future, his work will come in waves starting every September. And in a few short years, our kids will start going to school, too... Then at some point, I'll be going back...
So yeah. I think I'll switch back to buying student planners after all.
I might even start right now, even though my current one has the rest of the year's months left in it. It's falling apart, because it was a two-year planner. And frankly, I'm more than ready to symbolically shove the last two years in a box and move on to shiny new ones. I can only strive to hope that 26 be a better year than 25 has been.
Overall, in the little in-between spaces, it's been a really pretty awful one, revolving around one awful theme (which has nothing to do with my family or my body). That's why I haven't been writing here, or talking much to anyone but Heath. Lots of good stuff, too, but that stuff will hopefully and presumably be continuing indefinitely. The rest... I'm ready to be done. Somehow. A symbolically convenient time to declare myself so is approaching; I have no idea what that means or whether anything really will or can change, but at least the timing is something. I don't know. I have no idea. I can hope, but I can't plan. Or maybe vice-versa.
Definite transitions that are coming: Shortly before my birthday, I'm getting my 20-week ultrasound with baby #2. Shortly after, my "little" sister is leaving on her mission, which is exciting but I will miss her like mad. And next month Heath is starting his last term of school, which will end in getting his teaching license. Immediately after that, at the start of 2013, the aforementioned awesome new baby will come along and distract us all for a while. Heath will briefly go back to carpet-cleaning to keep us eating and start paying off loans. By next summer, we will hopefully have found a teaching job for the fall, somewhere relatively close by, and will be getting ready to move. Then, bizarrely, our post-student life will begin as I turn 27.
So that's all pretty awesome. I hope I'm up for it; I think I will be. More uncertainly, I hope I'm up for whatever other unexpected weirdness life throws at us in addition. That's not impossible, either, really, just as long as it's gentler or at least wildly different from and completely unrelated to this year's. That sounds very restful. Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about any of it from here.
So we'll see what we see, I guess. I need to have something change, and a haircut didn't do the trick. (Not that that was the point, but one always hopes.) So for now, I'll happily take the new age, and the new year, maybe some new weather and tree-colors soon. The upcoming hints about who my new baby might be will be fun, too. And when the big roll-over to 26 comes, who knows. Maybe I'll stay up till midnight and sing a song and throw some confetti around.
And hope for the best.
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