New Tricks

This last week Spencer figured out how to actually get off the ground when he jumps.  You know, like 1/4-inch.  I'm still impressed since I've seen lots of kids jump and jump and jump and never actually leave the ground.  He also started throwing balls this week.  As Bill and were cheering him on and totally impressed by his accuracy and distance, we suddenly looked at each other and said, "Should we be encouraging this?"  It was funny.  I get the feeling this kid is going to be athletic.  Not surprising, but it still makes me happy.  It's really important to me to be healthy, and being active is a huge part of that.  I think it would be hard if my kids had no desire to run around and I had to figure out how to motivate them.  So check that one off for this kid. :) No extra motivation needed.

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

This kid kills me.  He does the funniest things.

Hey Mom, want some hot chocolate?

You left the bathroom door open.  You got a problem with that?

Daddy's desk may be the most interesting thing in the whole house.

And he likes pickles.  Fruit? Pasta? Anything else for that matter? No.  But yes to pickles.

Watcha doin'?

I love how he sucks his lips in when he's thinking.

Hey Mom, I'm cute.  Just so you know. 

Thoughts on Motherhood

The media/online uproar about Ann Romney being a stay at home mom got me thinking a lot about motherhood, life, what I want, and why I do what I do.  I have a jumble of thoughts running through my head and I’d like to share some of them. 

My life these days revolves around my husband, my son, my as yet unknown second child, and all the minutiae that goes with keeping our life running, as well as the external things like church assignments, keeping up with family and friends, etc. It turns out that running a household, raising children, trying to make ends meet, working part time to fill in the gaps in the free moments I have when said child is asleep, and being my husband’s partner, cheerleader, friend, and lover takes quite a bit of time and energy, and very little of it has anything to do with me and my needs.  Yet I love it.  Every day is not perfect, far from it, but when I look at my life as a whole, I am happy with where I am at. 

It’s funny because for 26 years minus four days, my life revolved around me and what I wanted and needed. I spent my time figuring out how to enrich myself, enjoy myself, learn, grow, and generally meet my own needs.  Three years and change later I’m in such a different place.  It’s not the easiest place to be, but it’s a good place. 

See, as I see it, being a stay at home mom who happens to work a bit on the side is my ideal.  I could drop the work thing and it might be even better. It hasn’t come without sacrifice.  I agree wholeheartedly with my friend who once commented that it has taken her years and several children to be able to say she’s a stay at home mom when somebody asks, without clarifying that she has a master’s degree and teaches at the university on the side. I don’t know that I’ve reached that point yet.  I too have a master’s degree.  I have a job I can do from home that helps ends meet in our current state as a student family. I have plans in the future to do more with the things I learned in that master’s degree. Why am I not pursuing those goals right now? Because I don’t feel that is the best use of my time.  The work I want to do will be contract work, consulting, things of that sort.  That takes time and energy to build a business out of, and right now I have much more pressing needs at home looking at me from a 15-month old’s eyes. He needs me.  He needs my time, my energy, my attention, and my love.  My husband needs those things too as will this next baby.

Do I feel like I am stagnating, like I should be out working and making a difference? Sometimes.  My masters degree is a professional degree. It lends directly towards working in the public sector, and I found incredible fulfillment from the opportunities I had there. But most of the time I don’t feel that way.  Most of the time I believe that what I’m doing in my own home has a larger effect on the world than anything I could to in the workplace.  I am blessed with the opportunity to stay home, and so I make that choice and then choose to be happy with it.  Because I can make that choice, working outside my home has become something that is for me.  It is for my own growth and development.  I see nothing wrong with that, but I’ve learned these last three years that many personal goals get pushed aside, morphed, and redefined when raising a family is the main occupation.  I don’t know what the future holds, and I hope many of the things I want to do will happen in time, but if some of my goals never come to pass, I think I’ll be okay with that.  I’ll be okay because other goals and joys and fulfillment will take the place of those particular goals. 

Motherhood takes my best self.  Like I said, I spent 26 years taking care of me.  Now I take care of me only after everyone else’s needs are satisfied.  That’s a potentially dangerous path to walk.  I still need care too, and I’ve found that if I don’t fulfill some of my own needs, I am not the best mother I could be.  However, the fact is that my sleep gets thrown out the window when Spencer is sick and wakes up four times throughout the night. 

I remember when I had a full time job.  I found fulfillment there, but not in the same way.  My job never truly got the best out of me.  I didn’t need to give me best self to do a good job.  It was just what I did during the day so that I could do the things I really loved at night and on the weekends.  It’s funny that motherhood is not that way. For one, there’s no such thing as nights and weekends off.  Even if I do have a babysitter taking care of Spencer or am away and Bill has him, he’s still on my mind.  When he took a three hour 40 minute nap this afternoon, while I thoroughly enjoyed the time to get some things done, I had to resist peeking in his room to make sure he was safe and still breathing.  I used to think those kinds of comments were so cliché when others said them, yet now they are the genuine thoughts of my heart and it doesn’t even matter to me if they are cliché or not. It is beyond ridiculous how much joy I get when he comes running up to me just to get a hug on his way to more playing. 

There are numerous things I love about being a mother and particularly being able to be a stay at home mom, but one of them is the ability it gives me to create.  Though I am never truly off, at the same time I have flexibility to do things that were never possible when I was working full time.  I wholeheartedly agree with President Uchtdorf’s talk about how humans are meant to create things and that we each need to find a way to do that.  I think that is the root of some of the things I find so fulfilling about being at home.  I love the ability it gives me to cook meals that align with my health objectives. We have a tight budget, so when we need an item for our house, it gives me the chance to build it myself.  Yes, I save money, and that was the initial reason the hobby even started, but the creation part is what I love.  I can plant a garden.  Something about seeing life grow is very fulfilling. I can sew and craft and generally do things that were not thought to be cool when I was in high school or college. I remember being at BYU and the home ec major, sorry, can’t remember the exact name, but that major was totally looked down upon as not being very worthwhile.  Dang, I wish I had taken some of those sewing classes!  It would really improve upon my current skills.  And the best part of being a stay at home mom? I get to introduce little people to all these things I love.  I feel like I’ve reached a point in my life where I’ve experienced so many things that it’s almost a bit surprising when something comes along that is genuinely novel. Yet with kids in tow, it’s like everything is brand new again because I get to see it through their eyes.  I love that.  I hope I never get tired of that as my kids get older and harder to deal with at times.

I wish it weren’t so hard for our society to value the important aspects of said society.  Good parenting is one of the most crucial aspects of a healthy society, yet we downplay and downgrade it.  It’s the same with teaching.  Where would we be without good teachers, yet it drives me crazy when I hear my teacher friends talk about what they deal with every day at school with the way they are treated as employees.  Not every country in the world is like that.  I was totally floored when a Russian friend of mine presented in our grad program that in her country mothers are given three years paid maternity leave with a guarantee they’ll have a place when they come back.  Three years!  I can’t even imagine! I just wish it were not so hard to value the things that are most important to a healthy society.  Parenting and motherhood are at the top of the list for me.

My last thought is I wish we didn’t tear each other down so much.  I hope comments like saying a stay at home mom has never worked a day in her life and obviously doesn’t know anything about economics don’t happen very often. I referenced earlier that I’m not sure I’m quite to the point where I can honestly say I am a stay at home mom when asked and be proud of that alone.  I’ve spent the last several pages talking about everything I love about it, but it still comes down to that I appreciate recognition as much as the next person and saying I’m a mom doesn’t get me that.  That need for recognition is one of many reasons I blog and post on Facebook.  I’ll be honest, I like sharing what I’ve done so that others besides just me know I’m doing something worthwhile. I hope over time that will change and I can be more secure in my identity and be happy just for me.  We shall see.  I hope we as a society can treat each other better.  I have my doubts it will happen, but our society is made up of people, and we all have the ability to be a little better. I know that’s my goal and motherhood is speeding that process along.   So here’s to another day and another challenge and doing this thing that stretches me to the extreme.

Where did my baby go?

I was looking at my iPhoto and realized I haven't taken any pictures of Spencer since the beginning of March.  Oops.  Don't worry though.  I took a few today. :)  It made me wonder where the heck my baby went and where this toddler came from.  He's being so cute these days.  Okay, I always say that, but it's still true. I figured it was time to give an update on what he's up to.  It's been a while.

He inherited a bunch of shoes from his cousin and today he was sporting a pair of Nike high tops.  People, they are sweet and he loves them.  He stomps all over the house when I put them on and just loves it.  Shoes mean going outside in Spencer's head, so he absolutely loves it when I put them on.  This kid LOVES being outside.  I'm sure he's going to be so tanned by the end of the summer.

Look at this close up.  He looks so old!  He's getting his canines all in this week. Hopefully those will push through soon so he'll be happier.  When they arrive he'll have his whole mouth of teeth minus his back molars, but those shouldn't come in for like six more months. 

We went to DI for a youth activity tonight and he got a little tired by the end, so I laid him down in the cart.  I couldn't believe he actually stayed there for a minute.  This kid is a mover, so anytime he sits still is a surprise to me.

 He's talking up a storm these days, though what he's saying only he knows. Mommy, daddy, and boo are understandable, but nothing else. He babbles to himself, me, and anybody who will listen all day long.

We have a Winnie the Pooh pack 'n' play with a totally useless mobile.  Well, it was useless when he was little.  Now those stuffed animals from it are his absolute favorite toys.  Until he latched onto them, he's never had any kind of lovey item.  But Pooh Bear, Piglet, and Eeyore are his absolute favorites these days.  They mostly stay in his crib, though sometimes he pulls them through the bars.  When we put him in there, he always laughs when I hand them to him and calms right down.  It's so nice.

Spencer has always hated being restrained.  He likes to cuddle, but not be cuddled, if that makes sense.  I do a lot of exercise videos these days and whenever I lay down to do the ab parts, he takes that as his personal invitation to run and flop on me and cuddle for a minute.  I'm not going to lie, sometimes that is enough to get me motivated to workout.  I love cuddling with him. :)

He's eating better these days, but he's still pretty picky.  It's all good though.  We'll get him to realize how awesome food is one of these days.

He's recently discovered how much fun it is to shake his head no.  He laughs and laughs when I imitate him.  In fact, he laughs most of the time.  He's got a really sunny personality.  I love it.

Okay, it's getting late and that's plenty of details.  We love this kid!  Oh, and we find out what we're having in a week, so that's cause for great excitement too.  Woohoo!