messy

Today you don’t feel like easy baby. I am tired. All weekend Jorg worked on our porch floor and so I had baby duty. I never realized how much the shared baby care for a few days helped. Plus my parents are away for almost 3 weeks and so no Granny J coming to give us a little break here and there. I ache. I took an Advil and fell asleep on the couch which I sort of feel ashamed about because it’s a beautiful day and I feel like I should be out enjoying it. I feel like I have been super mommy…taking Lukas to the beach and to play groups….baking cookies….making baby food. Now we are almost out of baby food and I need to go shopping but I don’t want to send Jorg because then he is home later. I like all these things…the beach and the park and the play groups but sometimes I just wonder who they are for. Do I do it for Lukas or for me or for Jorg or so I have a good story to tell later and I feel like a good mom? I don’t know. This entry isn’t a composed and well formed entry full of reflections and beautiful discoveries. It is a messy entry. It is the other side of mothering that I don’t often want to share. I like to have my metaphor in hand. Even in the messy moments I want to make it pretty. This messy side makes me feel weak. I am just tired and not from sleepless nights either. I am tired of this wheel that I am on. Get up, feed baby, change baby, clothes baby, put baby down for nap, eat, wash, clean, wake baby, feed baby, change baby and so the day goes. He is sleeping now and I should wake him but honestly, I am not sure what to do with him when I get him up. I don’t have the energy to walk him around this house again, pull the CD’s out, the games, the books, bang the radio, walk in the shower. I don’t have the energy to take him anywhere right now, to the park or even the grocery store. Even feeding him is a pain these days as he wants to feed himself. He grabs at the spoon and flings the food all over him and the floor. This was funny and cute in the beginning. Now it all feels a bit like a struggle. I found dried and crusted baby food on the wall behind his high chair today. I think it was summer vegetables but can’t be sure. Oh sigh….I just want a day to be about me. Somehow I feel like my friends and family watch me and think “Susan needs a day for her. She needs a break.” And I usually say “I’m fine. I like what I am doing.” And usually I do. Somehow I feel like if I say I need a break then all around me will say “Yes! We told you so!” as if they understood me long before I did….then I just feel misunderstood all around. Sigh!
I don’t know. It’s all crazy at the moment. Maybe it’s hormones. Maybe I just need to feel a little messy and cranky some days. So I share the unpretty times too….sigh.

Now

Lukas is 10 months old today. He is almost a year. Last year at this time I was swollen and full. I was full of excitement, fear, expectation. I was gathering birth stories, reading books, taking classes. I was waiting, waiting, waiting. Then he came….he came and for months I felt like I was living in an altered reality. I was having an out of body experience. I was jet lagged. Now here we are. We have some sort of rhythm. We wake and play and eat and sleep and wake and play again. My life just bounces along. All the little moments….the days and days of watching you little baby for some sign of recognition….watching for the eyes to focus….the hands to be able to hold….the first smile. Those days are gone. Now you toddle and babble and try to climb things. You smile and dribble and drool. You laugh and wave and stomp your feet saying I am here now. I am here. But there are so many little things happening now….so many beautiful moments. You holding a flower and waving it at the sky screaming with joy….you laughing loudly as I tickle your tummy. Everyone says that it just flies by but I don’t want it to. Does it have to? Maybe it flies by because we are continually looking for the next milestone….continually watching for the next step…missing that tender moment happening now….the eyes beginning to focus…the hand beginning the grasp….the words forming….the bedtime story….the folding in of this moment….this moment….
I want to be here with you NOW. I want to hold this moment.