Month: July 2010

Categories
Fulfillment

No, not an easy button

Okay, I guess it would be nice to have a real version of Staples’ Easy Button (you know, you press it and you get instant answers and/or products to instantly solve your problems). What I really need is a RESET BUTTON.

  • For a day when I just can’t be patient
  • Alternately, for a day that I’ve wasted in a book or on the computer while the kids are parked in front of the television (or throwing every toy we own out of the toy box—while a bigger mess, this does seem a lesser sin)
  • On that note, for the family room, Mt. Laundry on the loveseat and, again, every toy we own piled up around the toy box
  • For the rest of the house, choked with clutter that is beginning to attack me. (Seriously. I think I broke my toe last week. Don’t even ask about the bruises.)
  • For my relationship with Hayden and Rebecca, when I hear them echoing back harsh words or tones I’ve used with them, especially to one another.
  • For my sleep and correlated patience levels! (Hm. Related to the previous?)

Personally, I’m prone to wait for a good time to reset—after I’ve gotten enough sleep (ha! with a seven-week-old, even one that sleeps pretty well?), tomorrow morning, Monday. But, really, there’s no time like the present to try again. Aside from the need to rock Rachel’s bouncy seat constantly, I can always turn off the TV and get down on the floor to play with the kids. It would only take a couple hours to clean up the major messes in here. But I get overwhelmed by all the things that need my time and attention, and cope by neglecting them all. (A good solution, eh?)

What do you do when you’re overwhelmed? How do you hit the reset button?

Photo by yum9me

Categories
Fulfillment

A great reward

This past weekend is a state holiday here in Utah. It commemorates the arrival of the Mormon pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley. Usually, speakers in LDS church services note how glad we are that we don’t have to walk all day long, cross dangerous mountain passes, and domesticate a wild desert, and (more importantly) how grateful we are as their biological and cultural/religious heirs for the sacrifices they made to practice their religion in peace. (And yes, I am glad for all that.)

Even the traditional hymns, actually written by those pioneers, convey that message. But one hymn in particular touched me this weekend as I thought about (and participated in) my own struggles.

Why should we mourn or think our lot is hard?
‘Tis not so; all is right.
Why should we think to earn a great reward,
if we now shun the fight?

This is always appropriate on a Sunday morning, when I spend an hour trying to keep my children quiet enough to not disrupt the service too much, while my husband sits on the stand. It’s certainly a fight, even with all the generous help we get from others in our congregation.

But it’s appropriate on a higher level, too. It looks like our modern age doesn’t have a monopoly on entitlement, thinking we should earn a great reward without a fight. But really, why should we think to earn a great reward without doing anything to earn it?

Motherhood is hard. I don’t think I’ve ever danced around that, and I learn it again every week. But don’t we all know, deep down, that the things that are really worth doing are the things we really earn?

Because motherhood and our children are worth it.

The rest of the verse encourages us onward:


Gird up your loins; fresh courage take.
Our God will never us forsake;
And soon we’ll have this tale to tell—
All is well! All is well!
—”Come, Come, Ye Saints,” William Clayton

What do you think? How can we be ready and willing to earn the great rewards of motherhood? What are the great rewards of motherhood?

Photo by Nick Young

Categories
Fulfillment

Is it worth it?

You’d think the third time would be easier to get going with nursing a baby. In some ways, it is, of course—you’re used to some of it, and you know some things that are normal. But once again I find myslef turning to the Internet for help and guidance with problems.

One of my favorite resources is kellymom. I came across a page called Are mothers supposed to love breastfeeding 24 hours a day?, and some of the thoughts there made me think of more than just breastfeeding:

Our culture has become so addicted to the concept that we are supposed to only do what makes us happy or brings us immediate joy, that we lose a lot of the good stuff along the way–pride in accomplishment, joy in fulfilling a commitment, feeling of achievement through meeting a goal. I don't think this means people are more selfish today than they were in the past, I just think they have been taught to have different expectations about what they are supposed to feel and how they should respond to those feelings.

How do you think we can re-learn how to “respond to those feelings”? Can we help our children learn a better way?

Categories
Fulfillment

Motherhood is enough of an accomplishment

I’m typing this on a bouncing laptop. It’s on my knees as I rock Rachel’s bouncy seat with one foot. She has just one fussy time every day: 8 AM to 1 AM the next morning. All it takes to calm her down is to hold her constantly, frequently while bouncing her, and feed her every half hour.

I hope it goes without saying that my house is a little trashed, and I’m just glad the other two are getting along really well these days.

I’m handling it okay, actually. I like holding her, and she’s not that heavy, and usually I can sit down while I’m doing it. We have a television, and it won’t kill the kids if they watch it. I’m used to living in my messy house and raising the next generation of couch potatoes 😀 . Plus, in a few weeks, Rachel should be able to spend more than two hours a day out of my arms. (I realize, of course, there is no guarantee here, but I’ll keep hoping.)

My arms do get a little tired, of course—I do look forward to Ryan coming home so I can get up and do something. And that, I think, is the major drawback: I can’t get anything else done.

Naturally, I have a long list of things I’d like to do, not the least of which is stop watching so much television, but also feed myself and the rest of our family, vacuum for the first time in *mumblemumbleweeks*, and, say, use the bathroom. (Reading and writing are high on my list, too, but a little less necessary, I guess.) (A little.) Holding a baby, even one that can often be held comfortably with one arm, makes it hard to do much of anything.

But it’s okay. It’s okay if Rachel cries for a few minutes while I use the bathroom, or make sandwiches. And it’s okay, too, if I don’t accomplish everything that I’d really like to beyond those basics—these are precious days, and frankly, I’m already doing enough. I’m raising three kids and trying to meet their needs. And if right now, that’s all I can squeeze into a day, it’s okay.

At least, I’m trying to convince myself it is 😉 .

What do you think? Do you ever have unrealistic expectations for yourself? What do you do to try to fix that?

(Happy anniversary, Ryan!)

Categories
Kids/Parenting Fulfillment

How to capture a moonbeam

I think the more kids you have, the more you realize that “this too shall pass.” The fussy period isn’t fun, but it’s easier to remember that it doesn’t last all that long when you’ve survived it before (multiple times).

On the other hand, you also realize that the good times—the first smiles, the intent study of your hairline, the incredible cuteness of tiny toes and feet and hands—will be gone equally fast. And you look at all the adorable things your older kids are doing, and you can’t begin to capture them all.

Personally, I wish I could get down all the new words Rebecca learns every day—she’s become an amazing mimic and can string together up to 5 words. I wish I could list all the words she knows, but I doubt I could recall more than a quarter of her vocabulary. She’s also learning to count and say the alphabet (and she won’t even be two for two more weeks—the benefits of having an older sibling who gets counting and alphabet books).

I wish I could record all Hayden is learning, too—how he puts things together, physically and mentally. He’s learning new concepts and words every day, too (though he already knows so much that it’s not the exponential growth Rebecca is seeing). He loves to run and play outside, and he likes to read books.

Rachel, of course, doesn’t do a whole lot, but I find myself wanting to hang on to these little moments the most with her. She’s already grown so much that I can just feel the rest of her babyhood slipping through my fingers.

Just thinking about the things I’m “missing” because I don’t have something recording my kids’ every action makes me a little anxious, reminding me that I’m missing out more. But just being aware that today is slipping away makes me pay more attention, even if I can’t leap up and get the video camera and coax a repeat of some spontaneous cute thing.

And it reminds me to keep paying attention—to treasure these little moments as they’re happening—to live in the present.

How do you treasure today?

Photo by Erik Fitzpatrick

Categories
MetaBlogging Fulfillment

Four years of fulfillment: blogoversary reflections

It snuck up on me again: today is my blogoversary. Blogiversary? Whatever.

Four years. I’ve been blogging for four years. I keep thinking that must be wrong, but then I remember I started when Hayden was a few months old, and now he’s four, so it must be true.

If I’d been paying attention (and not distracted by something so non-time-consuming as a new baby, a toddler, and a preschooler 😉 ), I could have had a wonderful party set up here for you today. Instead, you’ll have to make do with my thoughts. But, hey, that’s what blogging’s all about anyway, right?

I started this blog for the same reason lots of people start their blogs: I wanted to keep my far-off family updated on my kids’ (well, kid’s at the time) life. And I was bored.

Actually, the boredom part played a big role in starting the blog. While I knew being a mother was where I belonged, I still felt overwhelmed—and bored. I vacillated between wondering How can I handle all this? to Is this it?

And I kept waiting for the sense that I was in the right place, doing the right thing—that all this effort was worth it. Fulfillment. But no magic wand bestowed fulfillment on me. I didn’t wake up one morning with the peaceful assurance that one day—perhaps even that very day—my children would rise up and call me blessed.

I hoped I wasn’t the only one.

Over the last four years, a lot has changed. Our family has grown—and slowly, but not-so-steadily, so has my contentment with motherhood, my current season in life. I’ve come to learn that “finding” fulfillment is misleading. We choose happiness, and then it comes to us.

It’s something we must recapture every day, sometimes. It’s easy to lose. To be honest, a big part of the reason why this blog has been so quiet these last few months is that I lost it, big time. (And some days, it felt like I was seriously “losing it”!)

Things have been wonderful since Rachel was born, even being on my own for the last four days. It’s not because the nature of the thing—motherhood—has changed. My capacity for doing, on the other hand, has. The newborn days are still tough (I swear Hayden and Rebecca could be put down once in a while…), but I know they’ll come to an end, and my tiny little girl will grow into a toddler who’s stringing together four and five word sentences (before her second birthday!), and then a preschooler making amazing connections in logic and reasoning, and on.

I’m trying to treasure them as they are now and imprint them on my heart at each stage, because soon the amazing new things they’re doing and saying will fade in novelty, or out of their vocabularies forever. (Rebecca just stopped calling her brother “Hee-ah” last week. “Hay-DEN,” she corrects us.)

How do you treasure today? How has your foundation for fulfillment evolved over time?