MamaBlogga

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?

Update: speaking of looking back of the last year, Esther Elizabeth’s Saturday Evening Blog Post is asking for your favorite post of your own for 2009. I chose my post on how to choose happiness. What’s yours?

I honestly don’t think I’ve ever cared less about New Year’s Eve and Day. Ever. My husband spent the evening patrolling the parking lot at a local youth dance (10,000 youth were expected to attend and the organizers solicited several hundred chaperons) so I didn’t even get a kiss.

I’m also so over resolutions . But I suppose I can still take a look at my resolutions from last year and assess how I’ve done.

• Better prayer and scripture study (specifically a 30 minute scripture study/prayer time first thing in the morning). Eh, not really. I did do pretty well at making at least a page a day. Mid-year, in line with our local (stake) goal, I decided to read the whole Doctrine and Covenants by the end of the year and finished it in about 3-4 months reading 2 pages a day. I only missed a couple days and I completed the goal, so that was good.
• Run a 5K. I’m kind of shocked that I actually did this (along with my sister Jaime). I liked being in shape, but apparently not enough to maintain it. I think I’ll do another 5K this year (again, I must be insane), but probably not until September at the earliest.
• Eat more fruits and vegetables. I neglected this for a while mid-year, but in the fall I had some health issues come up and I had to start eating more veggies again. I wish we could eat a greater variety of vegetables . . . but we already eat almost everything we like. Maybe we’ll have to get more adventurous this year.
• Do more around the house. Yeah—no.
• Write tons a reasonable amount (specifically, finished the first draft of my latest MS at the time, get through the first drafts of two more MS and finish revisions on the two 2007 MS). Well, I finished almost all of this—I finished the first draft and revisions on the aforementioned manuscript and also drafted two more in 2009. I never did go back to the first MS from 2008; if I ever do, it will require heavy re-conceptualizing. I actually went even further than the goal—I submitted that one manuscript for publication. Also, I want to revise the resolution: three manuscripts in 365 days (nearly 250,000 words) is more than a reasonable amount for me.

And my most important resolution: I will choose happiness. That, of course, is ongoing, but something I both did well (since I focused on it), and continued to struggle with (especially with the ongoing health issue).

So several of those are things I’ll want to continue to work on this year (maybe). But most importantly, I want to work on the habit of choosing happiness—doing more to foster that attitude on a daily basis.

Resolutions are hard to keep because they’re not the same thing as goals. So this year, this is my attempt to start channeling my most important resolution(s?) into goals. (For a blast from the past, here’s my post on setting goals, specifically for your blog; I’ll have another one on my writing blog on Monday.) One of the things I need is to work on breaking down the amorphous “choose happiness” into more specific, concrete things I can do to remind myself of and strive toward that attitude.

What do you think? How can choosing happiness become a habit?

Photo by Neal (Visiting this local attraction was the fulfillment of one of his resolutions)

This year I’ve thought a lot about choosing happiness. I named it as my big resolution for the year and used it as the theme for a group writing project. Back in October, several pieces fell into place as I figured out how to choose happiness and why choosing it can seem so hard.

One more piece fell into place this week.

So back in October, I pointed out that

Choosing to be happy does not mean that we will automatically be happy all the time. It doesn’t mean we always choose whatever might make us happy right this second.

Choosing happiness means we choose the things we know are most important for our long term happiness. . . .

Choosing happiness means doing what I may not want to do most right now—it means choosing the thing that I know is right for me, what’s important in the long run.

The rest of my realization might not seem like much of an epiphany, but I think the last piece fell into place this week. I had my first true “White Christmas” this year—but it’s really not exciting. Yeah, I know I live in Utah, but I am already tired of the snow. It seems like it came to stay a lot earlier than normal (and I can’t ski this year, so there doesn’t seem to be an upside, either).

For Christmas Eve, however, I decided that one fun family thing we could do was to play in the snow (and the snow has been here basically all month, but we’ve never played in it, unless shoveling counts). So bundling up is a hassle, and you get cold and wet pretty fast, but I thought this would be a fun thing for all of us.

Of course, Ryan came down with a cold and Rebecca needed a nap, so it ended up just being me and Hayden tromping through the backyard, digging in the partially-refrozen snow, and throwing snowballs. (My very first one hit Hayden in the forehead and burst. He didn’t know what hit him!)

After about half an hour, I decided I’d had enough and brought us back in. After stripping out of our wet winter gear, I had Hayden help me put the cookie dough onto cookie sheets.

Sounds pretty idyllic, doesn’t it? For the most part, it was—there were fewer fits and screaming and begging and yelling during those hours than most of the ones of the previous week—the hours I spent worrying about getting shopping and packing and work done, and the time I spent on the computer procrastinating dealing with those things. It was a time I could spend enjoying him and enjoying being his mom.

The realization that hit me? Choosing happiness means choosing my children. It doesn’t mean that I am completely subjugated or I have to ignore all my own needs—but when I take the time to really work at being a mom, the whole family is happier—including me.

What do you think? What does choosing happiness mean for you?

Photo by Grant MacDonald

Choosing happiness. It’s been a bit of a theme for the year—one of my resolutions, one of our Group Writing Projects (oh, man, looks like it’s about time for one of those again). It’s something we hear about a lot.

And now I finally know what it means.

Surprisingly, it has a lot to do with why, when I talk about how heart-rendingly difficult stay-at-home motherhood can be, people tell me I should get a job.

It’s because we don’t know how to be happy.

Choosing to be happy does not mean that we will automatically be happy all the time. It doesn’t mean we always choose whatever might make us happy right this second.

Choosing happiness means we choose the things we know are most important for our long term happiness.

The analogy that keeps springing to my mind is one of food. I like donuts and ice cream and cake and pie . . . I could go on, but you get the idea. Food does make me happy, treats especially. I do the grocery shopping, so if I wanted to, I could stock up on these things every week and eat them every meal.

But I can’t choose cake and ice cream all the time. Yeah, I’d enjoy eating it (to a point), but I would soon get sick, gain weight, and miss out on vital nutrients. (Scurvy, anyone? Oh and PS tooth decay?)

To be happy with my body (liking how I look) and happy in my body (not feeling like crap), I have to make healthier choices. I do enjoy eating healthier foods, too, though not as much as my sugary treats.

The same goes for my day-to-day activities. I could ignore my kids all day, plunk myself down in front of the computer and them in front of the TV (where we are now, thank you), but we all end up grumpy and lazy.

Choosing happiness means doing what I may not want to do most right now—it means choosing the thing that I know is right for me, what’s important in the long run.

Staying home with my children all day may not be an endless delight for me. There are diapers and housekeeping and tantrums and nap strikes. But I believe the most important contribution a person can make to the world is to raise their children right, to show them love, to give them their personal attention. I know that in twenty years, my successful marketing campaigns won’t be what warms the cockles of my heart.

By choosing to raise my children myself, I’m choosing a long, hard road—but one that leads to real, long-term happiness.

What do you think? Are you giving up treats today so you don’t vomit tomorrow?

(More thoughts on how to choose happiness as a mom here.)

Photo by Swamibu

They say that one of the most important things you need in a survival situation is PMA: a positive mental attitude. A self-defeating outlook is, well, self-defeating. If you don’t think you can build a shelter, it’ll only make it harder to build a shelter. On the other hand, if you believe you can build a shelter, even if you don’t really know how, at least you’re not adding more obstacles to your path. Blueprint. Whatever.

I’ve been in a pretty negative mood lately. Rebecca is teething—and this is way harder than it was for Hayden. (Think near-constant holding, squirming, nursing and interrupted sleep just weeks after we finally got her sleeping through the night.) Hayden, meanwhile, has developed a disturbing inability to sleep at night, too, but his waking is without apparent cause. Oh, and have I mentioned how much worse three has been than two so far?

My outlook has grown steadily gloomier. I began feeling my children and my life were completely out of control, mostly because I was obviously an inadequate mother. What else could explain the constant tantrums, child-juggling (and disappointing) and general overwhelmed-ness?

By Monday, I was walking in a no-sleep-constant-screaming-from-one-of-the-three-of-us haze. I was too down to care about needing a shower or the chest-high pile of laundry spilling off the couch (at least it was clean) or dinner or grocery shopping or anything else. I didn’t care if I slept, since I figured I wouldn’t.

And then Tuesday came (AKA today). In my feed reader, I came across an article on negativity and perfectionism. Sometimes the good is the enemy of the best, when we while away our days with good things but not essential things. But sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good.

As mothers, we don’t have to be perfect all at once. I believe that our lives on Earth are a journey, progressing towards (eventual, heavenly) perfection. God doesn’t ask us to make ourselves perfect overnight, or even all by ourselves. Even if you don’t subscribe to my church, I think everybody is trying a little harder to be a little better.

Sometimes we hold ourselves back from that progress by holding up a “perfect mother” (real or imaginary) as the standard, one that we’ll never measure up to. And because we don’t measure up, we beat ourselves up. But really, that attitude only defeats us before we’ve even begun to try. It doesn’t help anything to put myself down, so this morning, I rubbed the sleep from my bleary eyes and smiled at my (constantly) nursing baby.

Though I didn’t think about this at the time, I see now that this morning, I chose happiness.

Today wasn’t perfect, but it was a heck of a lot better than yesterday. And when it comes down to it, I think that general upward trend is good enough.

To those of you who entered the January/February Group Writing Project: I didn’t forget you! We’ve had a lot going on around here and it’s far from over, but I couldn’t put this off any longer.

We have a great array of entries on the theme of “choosing happiness,” many of them dealing with trials and faith:

• Choosing Happiness from the Pit of Home Renovations by Kate Baggott
• How could I NOT by Janean
• Choosing Happiness At Home by Summer
• Cold Turkey for a Week by Lindsey
• Happiness, Now! by Mama Zen
• Fog by An Ordinary Mom
• Letting the happiness in by Deb – Mom of 3 Girls
• How to stop yelling and choose happiness by Jane @ What About Mom
• I am most richly blessed by Phyllis
• Choosing Happiness by Mozi Esme’s Mommy
• Choosing Happiness=Making Jesus Happy by melissa lightfoot
• Finding and choosing happiness by Jordan (MamaBlogga)

Now, feel free to spread the link love by copying the above list (instructions) and posting it to your own blog. Believe me—they all deserve it.

The Winna!
Chosen at random the winner of our prize, a $30 Amazon.com gift certificate, is <drum roll>…

Fog by An Ordinary Mom

Congratulations, AOM, on not only winning the gift certificate (again, she was chosen at random!) but also on continuing to work through difficult times. The gift certificate will be winging its way to you soon!