MamaBlogga

When I was called as Primary (children’s Sunday school) president in October 2010, I met with the outgoing president. She was very sad to be leaving Primary.

I vowed (silently) that that wouldn’t be me. I didn’t want a big calling right then, with my husband in the bishopric and my kids being 4, 2, and 5 months and already having to struggle through Sunday meetings with little to no help because of Ryan’s responsibilities—and I was pretty stunned to be working in Primary. For perspective, my mom has had a lot of “big” callings on the ward (local) and stake (larger area, cf. diocese) level—but she never had a calling in Primary until a couple years ago. We didn’t do Primary: we did Young Women (12-18 year olds) and Relief Society (adults). Plus, couldn’t I get away from my kids for two hours a week???

Apparently, I was wrong—on all counts. Yesterday I was officially released. It was just time, apparently. The Lord had decided I was finished.

When the Bishop told me last week that I would be released this week, I was pretty shocked—surprised to be released, and surprised at how it felt to know it was coming to an end.

I wanted to stay in Primary. I wanted to be there for the funny things my children say—and they say a lot. I wanted to be there to watch all the kids learn and grow, to see the new 3-year-olds discover the fun of Primary, to stanch the constant turnover in the 30+ positions under our purview. (Ha. This never happens. We did what we could to turn over a full staff.)

When I thought about it this week, I wanted to cry. I expected to on Sunday (yesterday). I didn’t even feel the relief until half an hour before church. When Ryan called my name to stand for my vote of thanks (the custom when releasing people from positions of responsibility in the church), he expected me to cry. (I held it together just fine.)

It wasn’t a long time, but it felt like the end an era to me. It won’t be the same to go to church and not get to see my older two participating in their lessons. And I will miss it. I will miss them—most of all, my own children.

What do you know? I did love Primary.

In the month of October, my children threw up 17 times in 17 days. This is one of their stories.

DUNK-DUNK!

Once upon a time, I decided to take my kids out on a fun trip all by myself. Usually, I try to avoid leaving the house . . . ever, but every once in a while, I’m overtaken by this idea that I should, you know, try to expose my children to fun learning experiences. I want to be a Supermom—you know the kind, those ladies who take their kids out, dressed adorably and coordinated-ly, for the requisite hour of active play every! day! with water bottles and Craisins and carrot sticks, and then they return for hour number five of reading and mind play . . .

Actually doing this in a tiny way, especially with some small amount of forethought and planning (like making them sandwiches to eat in the car!), makes me feel like an incredibly good mom.

So to be completely honest, doing this is at least a little bit to make me feel good about the job I’m doing as a mom. Which is probably totally hypocritical.

Amazing how much three little sandwiches can lull a mom into a false sense of competence, isn’t it?

But how hard could it be? It was a place geared for kids, so it couldn’t be as difficult as, say, visiting the dentist, grocery shopping, or walking down the street.

My kids believe they’re bored and living in near-prison conditions by the end of the average commercial break, so naturally they rejoiced, especially when they realized we weren’t, say, visiting the dentist or grocery shopping—because, hey! sandwiches! Oh, and the dinosaur place.

All until we got inside.

Which was, of course, Mommy Code.

Naturally, once she got out of the stroller and played with the exhibits, she loved every minute.

But when it was time to leave, she began complaining again.

Rebecca had already complained over 12,000 times (approximately) that she didn’t wike dis p’ace, that the dinosaurs scared her, that she didn’t like the noise, that world peace was taking so long to achieve, that gravity was a cruel mistress, &c.

Having exhausted all her logical arguments, Rebecca devolved into vowelless mumbling arpeggios in the key of whine.

Being the kind, understanding mommy that I am, I’d kind of had it.

I was unprepared for the sight that I found waiting.

I’d naively assumed that because it had been four days since the last time anyone had vomited, we were puke free.

Not so. Not so.

After wallowing in the horror! the horror! for a minute, I leapt into Competent-Mommy-Mode. (If you’re counting, that’s mode #3 after spontaneous & fun and fed up.)

Unfortunately for competent-mommy me, rather than using a floorplan with flow-through to the lobby, this museum had funneled us into a closed circuit, hiding the exits to the lobby behind doors with ominous warnings, like emergency alarms were going to screech if we came too close.

Rebecca, of course, is still crying, now covered in cold puke. I’m trying to reassure her, and yet get her to remain completely motionless—because she’s sharing this stroller with Rachel who has miraculously remained clean so far. Hayden is trotting along after us as fast as he can. This stroller was not built for jogging.

After running through the same tracks about three times, I finally gave up and opened the surely-alarmed doors that were about ten feet from where we started.

Who’s doing the pleading? Oh, it’s me.

And hello, lobby (with no emergency alarms).

Finally, after cleaning up my daughter, her clothes, her hair, her shoes, her stroller, and me, using mostly my bare hands, and clothing her in the spare jackets I’d brought for her and Hayden, I plopped Rachel on my hip and maneuvered us all out to the car. And I could move into Mommy Phase Four of the day:

Two hours ahead of schedule!

But I think the real punchline came just after dinner that night. Rebecca was convalescing on the couch, until round 2 began. Hayden ran to tell me—and mid-shout . . . well, that should probably be censored, too.

Have you been through Pukeageddon? Share your war stories!

I think every mom has had a “veteran” mom—usually an empty nester, with grandkids—pat her on the hand and command her to cherish these times, lament how much they miss the dirty handprints on the windows they just washed, and/or wax nostalgic on how wonderful it was to wake up every two hours with an infant. (Only slightly exaggerating on the last one.)

To which moms in the throes of motherhood pretty much think, “REALLY?!?!”

I like to think that memory has glossed over how difficult raising children is—I’m just shy of six years in with my first, and there are already many difficult periods in our lives that have been covered with the benignant mists of time.

Thank heaven. Today is hard enough as it is; can you imagine if all the past trials we’ve endured came crashing down on us whenever we thought about them?

So maybe one day, I’ll be able to look back and say that I enjoyed it—overall. I hope I never forget how hard it was—or at the very least, that it was hard. Because it is hard and I’m not going to pretend like it’s not.

But I think Glennon at Momastery said it much better:

I think parenting young children (and old ones, I’ve heard) is a little like climbing Mount Everest. Brave, adventurous souls try it because they’ve heard there’s magic in the climb. They try because they believe that finishing, or even attempting the climb are impressive accomplishments. They try because during the climb, if they allow themselves to pause and lift their eyes and minds from the pain and drudgery, the views are breathtaking. They try because even though it hurts and it’s hard, there are moments that make it worth the hard. These moments are so intense and unique that many people who reach the top start planning, almost immediately, to climb again. Even though any climber will tell you that  most of the climb is treacherous, exhausting, killer. That they literally cried most of the way up.

And so I think that if there were people stationed, say, every thirty feet along Mount Everest yelling to the climbers – “ARE YOU ENJOYING YOURSELF!? IF NOT, YOU SHOULD BE! ONE DAY YOU’LL BE SORRY YOU DIDN’T!” TRUST US!! IT’LL BE OVER TOO SOON! CARPE DIEM!”  - those well-meaning, nostalgic cheerleaders might be physically thrown from the mountain.

If you have somehow missed “Don’t Carpe Diem,” you have to fix that. Seriously. Now. If you have ever been tempted to bodily harm a well-meaning old lady who tells you how she’d give anything to have her little babies back (or maybe just sic your babies on her), if you’ve ever struggled with perspective and wondering how, exactly, changing so many diapers was suppose to be the ennobling, important calling you’re searching for, if you just need to be reminded that motherhood is worth it—go read it.

Photo by Ed Yourdon

I’m excited for 2012: so excited that I updated all my blogs on December 31.

What do you need to do to bring your blog into the new year? Check for any copyright dates on your blog. I like to put them in the footer, but I know some people add them into each post, or in the feed. Make sure the copyright date runs through 2012!

Be sure to check multiple places. I hate finding an out-of-date copyright buried on one of my sites in mid-April :\ .

This year, I’m also trying to keep a blogging calendar. I’m using a paper calendar that we got free in the mail. With themed days, I can easily fill in the post ideas a month in advance. I try to write them on weekends, and my blog is ready for the week!

What else do you do to bring your blog into 2012?

Photo by Dan Moyle

Rachel is in a really cute phase. If you hold out your arms to her, she runs to you. Her sense of humor is really developing; she teases and giggles and laughs at the drop of a hat. And she loves to dance!

My mom made the purple tiger (okay, I see that they’re zebra now) pants. She’s got some great pajama pants tips!

On the off chance you’re wondering, she’s growing. She turned 19 months last Thursday, and she visited the doctor recently and she’s 22+ lbs and 30+ inches. She seems even bigger to me!

We were worried about her language at her 15 month appointment, when she didn’t even say “Mama” or “Dada.” The doctor said to wait until 18 months to see if she started talking. And she did! She has about 15 words now, including [always whispered] “titititi” (tickle), “h’ow” (hello), “buhbuh” (bubble), and “deydis” (there it is).

And best of all, she picked up another word in the middle of her exam. Hayden tried to take the toy she was playing with and Rachel declared, “MY!”

In case you missed it, I’m a writer. (Shameless plug: I can now say “my book is coming out next year”!) So I was instantly drawn to a guest post by a fellow forthcoming-in-2013 author on the Power of Moms yesterday. I was so drawn to it, in fact, that I tracked down the author’s blog and discovered that we’ll be sharing a publisher (awesome!).

But even more awesome was her essay. I have been thinking about this very topic a lot. As a writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about imaginary people with imaginary problems who live their imaginary lives all in my head. Yes, it does get crowded. So crowded that I spend a good deal of time thinking about what I need to do for this story, how I’ll plot out that story, how I’ll edit another story—even when I have three flesh-and-blood (albeit quite small) people right here in front of me. Shouting at me. Tugging on me. They’re hard to forget, and yet somehow, sometimes, I do.

One of the things that astounded me as a new mother was how much my baby could need me. And he wasn’t one of those children who instantly quiets in the arms of his mother. (The opposite: he was pretty quiet in general, unless he was starving, and getting near his mommy at those times meant he was going to eat soon, SO HURRY IT UP!!)

Somehow, this little lump of a human, less expressive than our house cat, needed me all the time. For eating ever 90 minutes, yes, but somehow even then, I felt the emotional draw of his utter dependence.

My children aren’t quite so dependent on me these days—they’ve discovered the refrigerator—but still, the one thing they need the most from me isn’t games or toys or food or stimulation. What they need most from me . . . is me.

So one of the things I’m going to try to focus on this year is being more mindful of the present. We spend so much of our lives filtering our existence. I want to look up from my camera and my computer and into the eyes of my children. I might even get off the couch.

And hopefully, I’ll be able to come to the same conclusion as Jenny has:

Often days, even weeks, go by without writing a single word. Days that are full of not just the routine maintenance and care of a home and family, but with homework helping, piano teaching, baby building, book reading, game playing, story listening and many other rich and rewarding things that I’m simply not willing to give up. I will not give them up because I want to be present in my children’s lives; and because I know that in the grand scheme of things, my children, not the number of books I’ve published, will be my greatest prize.

This raising of a family is God’s work. I know this. I feel it in my heart, in my bones, and even in the very words that I write. I do not think it coincidental that those moments that have brought me closest to God are moments I’ve experienced as a mother. Writing is rewarding in its own right, but mothering? Mothering is sanctifying.

Amen.

How do you focus on the present? (Or how do you dream and wish your life away?)