Life & Gratitude

It's after 9 pm and I can hear Bear playing in the dark of his room right now. I, myself, should be in bed. But I need the quiet. I need the solitude. I need this moment to reflect. 

Today was a hard day. It's been a hard couple of days. Weeks even. Turns out, the older we get, the older our families get. We lose some, some need surgery on their failing joints, some are just learning to sit up for the first time, and tonight I'm stopping to wonder, what did I miss? How did we get here? 

Life, which used to creep by, has suddenly hit the accelerator. Things that really do matter are being replaced with the things that seem quite trivial. It's time to stop, slow down, see things through my children's eyes. Relive the magic of a blooming flower, the interest of sand between my toes, the joy I feel from a good hug from a dear friend. 

Time to be present. 

In response to tragedy - Friday the Thirteenth

I lay here before the sun is up with my son sleeping on my chest. His little breaths are audible over the sound of the noise app I have playing on my phone. The glow silhouettes his tiny back rising and falling. He is innocent. We are lucky. 

After the terrorist attacks in Paris yesterday I held my boys close. We watched Christmas movies and ate cereal for dinner because none of the formalities mattered. Later, watching my children sleep put the enormity of this in perspective for me. All of these people were once children. Attackers and victims alike. They all had a mother who carried them in her womb for 9 months. She held her baby protected in her body and imagined powerful dreams for her child. This cannot be was she had hoped. 

She rocked her baby to sleep, maybe sang lullabies, and told stories of love and greatness to her child. How is it then, that such innocence can turn into such hatred, such terror? I don't mean to say a mother's love can save us, but it can certainly be a start. 

Attacks such as these, on innocents, in public places, places where friends meet and families gather, generate so much fear. So much anger. And for me, so much sadness. Retaliation is imminent. After the attacks on 9/11, I understand that hurt and rage. But I also remember a country uniting as it never has before and certainly has not since. I pray France finds that unity, let it be their silver lining, if there is to be one after this senseless tragedy. 

This morning, when much needed sleep eludes me, I meditate on loving kindness. I send love and light to Paris, to Europe, and to humankind as a whole. I focus on happiness, kindness and peace for my boys and pray they do not have to continue to live in such a cruel world but that we will all unite and spread love. Let us discover that honest disagreement can be peaceful, educational, and productive. 

A mom of two

I didn't know that becoming a mom of two would help me with my identity of being a mother. Right before becoming pregnant with my youngest I was having serious identity issues on being a mom or being Emily. I started running and this helped me to find balance in being both a mom and an individual. It brought forth the requirement for balance. I was feeling REALLY good with my running. I was sticking with it. Then I found out I was pregnant. I didn't feel confident in my physical ability with the newness of running and having had a miscarriage in the past; I thought it was selfish to continue so I put my running on hold. I was actually pretty depressed for the next couple months after giving it up.

My pregnancy was brutal on me physically but I actually attribute that to my stress levels. As you may have read in my previous posts, we sold our house, moved into my grandparent's condo for a month, then into a hideous basement apartment for a month before lucking out on our new home. Meanwhile, work was the most stressful it had ever been. Once we moved into our new home, I was able to release that stress. I started to practice hypnobirthing (although a little late in the game) and guided meditation geared toward pregnancy. This and hour long baths in my giant tub really helped bring me back down to earth.

Fast forward nearly a month, my supermoon baby blessed us with his presence. This is when life's need for balance REALLY came into play for me. This is when patience, grace and forgiveness made their permanent place in my home. In the last six weeks I have had to find patience with my eldest, grace with my husband, and forgiveness for myself. With each of these yins comes the yang and those yangs are my weakness.

I have been home bonding with my youngest son and during this time I have been reading books on Buddhism and motherhood, meditating, and reconnecting with friends and family. Having little family nearby, it is important to create a support system that I can count on, and having a baby really shows the true colors of people. But the creation of my village is going to be crucial for the coming months and years.

My darling husband leaves before we wake up in the morning and gets home just before bedtime. This is going to make life even more hectic once I go back to work. This is why I need to hone in on patience, grace, and forgiveness. My fuse will be shortened with fatigue and stress. Practicing these now will help my family continue to grow and thrive, no matter what life forces upon us. I see myself growing in new ways with Bear. Being able to stop and take a breath, evaluate situations and finding new solutions before losing my cool is the best part of this positive change and probably the most important.

Needing a rest

You know that scene in the movies where an over worked mom disappears from her family and sleeps in a hotel, wakes up and calls the front desk only to learn she has been sleeping for like 10 days. Ya. I need that kind of rest. I worked from home today, and decided to take a short cat nap. I set my alarm for a half hour and crashed. HARD. I am still waking while typing this because I needed something to get my brain going.

I am working on recovering from this week. From this month.... from this year maybe. Yesterday was the hardest. It was an awful, no good, very bad day. The kind where even my sweet husband needed to step back and look at me. I lost control of my emotions. I lost control of my life. I hope to look back on yesterday and say how trivial it all was. That it wasn't as bad as it seemed.... but for now, I want to forget it. Sweep it under a rug and hope to never notice the bulge of the mess that I was yesterday.

Discipline

I don't really discipline my son. We explain consequences, and he does get the occasional time out if he hits, but it is really more of a break from the situation that is frustrating him. Truth be told, I have a really great kid. He tests his boundaries and tries my patience, but I really don't discipline him. Today I did.

Bear loves trains. Bear loves to crash his trains. I don't mind that he does this. They are his to do what he likes with. If they break, I will try to fix them. If I can't fix them, well, that's what happens when toy trains are crashed over and over and over.

I was running late this morning, as I often am. I was scooting my boy out the door when he decided to grab a train and some train tracks to take to daycare. He has been doing this on the regular lately so I just said, "Okay, grab Porter and then we will get into Mommy's car." As soon as we were out the door, my little guy plopped onto the sidewalk to play with his train and track in the yard. Okay. Whatever. I will get the thousands of bags that I frequently haul around with me into the car and come back for the boy and his toys.

As I was wrangling him up, he lobbed his favorite train, Porter, into the lantana bush. These bushes are thriving this summer, and I think the heat has warped them into another desert dwelling plant with thistles and thorns. I rescued Porter, teeny irritating scratches as my payment, and strapped the boy into the car.

We got to daycare, the sippy cup I had packed leaked all over my seat and the diaper bag. I was quite frustrated - and it was already a piping 98 degrees outside. This is not helping the already hectic morning. Bear was unstrapped and ran up the steps to daycare. That was easier than normal I thought to myself. My little guy must have sensed this because then he thought it would be fun to throw Porter into another, less friendly bush that sits right against the daycare house. That's it. Porter was lost. Forever. That was the end of my rope for the morning.

I bent to be on his level, eye to eye, holding firmly onto Bear's arm and said, "That is NO! We DO NOT throw our trains into bushes. Porter is gone. We can't get him back."

Then the lip came out. And the tears. I held onto his arm and directed him toward the door. He lost it. By the time we walked in the door, my anger subsided and was immediately replaced with guilt. Guilt that I had lost my cool with him. I should have bent down and explained it to him, but instead I was stern - meanwhile, he just lost his favorite train for good, because he is still learning about cause and effect. Me being mad didn't and won't help his sadness.

He did fine for the remainder of the day. They played trains all day at daycare - which is generally not the case. But the second we walked outside, he walked over to the bush looking for Porter. I searched the area I could reach, but to no avail. Porter really is gone. Bear will forget eventually. But it was a good lesson for me. He is learning and so am I.

Nesting without a home

Perhaps another thing that has called be back to this space is the inability to nest. I have nowhere to nest at this point. If anything, I would like to use this urge to clean and pack, but my body has major limits as to what I can do this time around. Chasing my toddler is about the most I can do physically, and even that can put me horizontal for the evening.

I don't remember the nesting tendencies hitting me this hard with my first pregnancy, but that could be because I was able to do it. I was able to create a nursery. I was able to wash baby clothes and create a space to bring my baby boy home.

Currently, I have a void.

I am longing to do all sorts of things. I want to craft. I want to crochet. I want to bake - ya, I said it. Me. Bake. What??? I told my Mister tonight that I wanted to take a baking class so I could be better at rolling out dough. *Self discovery - I don't tackle many baking projects because of the rolling of dough issue.

It doesn't look like I will be nesting in a permanent location any time soon either. We have one house to see tomorrow, and if that doesn't pan out well, we will start looking at short term rentals. I have come to terms with this and will still make this temporary house a home for all my guys,

Meanwhile, I will be on Pinterest pinning EVERY pin that has to do with living rooms and bathrooms. See you there!

Blogging as a release.

Sometimes life is so great. Sometimes everything seems so put together and easy. Sometimes I think, man, we really have the hang of this. We should have another baby and see what happens! We should sell our house in the middle of summer while I am 7 months pregnant too.

Oh wait, we can't find a house? Oh what? Work is super crazy and I need to work 50+ hours a week and maybe even travel? Oh, we can't find a house to buy and our house sold the day we listed it and we might be homeless with a toddler???

Ya - this is my life right now. It has gotten so insane that I have had to spend several days in bed (not consecutively thank god) due to Braxton-Hicks contractions. My body and mind cannot handle the stress. I haven't blogged in over a year or so it seems - truly I would have to look to even remember, but I need an outlet to put some of this. I don't have time to see a counselor or even go to the freaking dentist. So I am putting down a few words here - just to have a little release.

Side note - I am going to the dentist next week. Oral health is very important.