I think toddlers are sort of schitzo. Little people with blossoming personality disorders. Or like donkey’s. Parenting Russell reminds me often of how I used to train the wild donkey’s, (but sometimes the donkey’s seemed to pick up the lesson a little quicker. I’m just saying).
My life is confusing to me, sort of like my evolving social skills. I am in the generation that is on the cusp of technology. I used to have great grammer, now I use numbers in words and rarely capitalize anything but I still take five minutes to type one text message because I think texting sounds so blunt so I end up adding smiley faces when I’m not even smiling and that, with all the other stuff, confuses me!
I’m confused because I love California. L-O-V-E love it. But I don’t know where I belong here. I have added some great new girlfriends to my life, reconnected with my family and I even found myself with overwhelming support when Alice was born and later when she was in the hospital, and Russell has found so many fun friends with me… but I still feel out of sorts. No one needs me here. I like to be needed, I feel kind of confused needing other people so much and it has been really humbling learning how to ask for help. I can’t articulate this well for you, so you just have to believe me that Jon and I both feel like our adult lives began when we got here. There is just such a solid line between then and now, “this is not a test”. We have had moments similar to this through our (gasp!) 9 year romance, but it feels like something really genuine to ourselves has begun.
I feel more grateful now then I have ever felt in my life. My life is unreal, not just being married to my best friend and having my two beautiful babies, but the journey here. There has been a lot of joy in my journey, but I wish I could go back and tell myself that every bad moment, every heartache and rejection, the disappointments and frustrations that seemed sometimes to consume me and ache from the tips of my toes to end of my hairs, those crappy moments are the ones that prepared me to know, really know, what an incredible life I have. I just can’t imagine I would care about gratitude and compassion the way I do if I hadn’t held my broken heart in my hands so many times before.
Does this ramble feel disjointed? I feel disjointed. Unfortunately I have been fighting the post baby blues, I had them under better control before Alice went in the hospital, but two days in and out of the ER and then four days by her bed, never leaving the room, never really sleeping, and feeling disconnected from my faith made the battle with the blues more of a surrender.
I am confused because I know I have ADD, or I did as a kid, and think I do now, but I don’t really have a lot of time to think about it. I don’t know where ADD ends and baby blues/mommy stress begins. I am sure a lot of mothers of little children could answer all the questions correctly for an ADD diagnoses. But to me it just feels, well, extreme. I can’t leave the house. I don’t even want to leave the house. I want to want to, but I don’t. I like it here where Russell and I can paint rocks in the backyard and scramble eggs in the morning and build spaceships and forts in the living room. I like that I have control over what happens here and no one is going to be mad at Russell for being a big strong three year old, and I hate getting everyone ready and plotting out a diaper bag and trying to find an outfit that doesn’t make me feel as fat as I know I am, only to get to the store and realize I left my grocery list at home, or I drove 10 miles in the wrong direction because my brain went on auto pilot, and by the time I finally get where I’m going we are all too tired to stay any longer than 5 minutes before we go home and strip back down to our jammies and wait for daddy to get home and the night to begin.
And I LOVE them in their jammies. Oh that soft warm baby smell, and Russells amazing little body that is always a little dirty no matter how hard I scrub. Sometimes I grieve just knowing that every day he is a little bit older than he was the day before. When I became a mother I knew about the park swings, but nobody warned me about the mood swings.
So I am confused. I am sort ridiculously happy, not only with my family, but for being alive when there is electricity, air conditioning, flush toilets, antibiotics, a freezer for popsicles and the dollar section at Target. I really do have a sort of Pollyanna-esque view of the world, at the same time as I feel overwhelmed by the size of my pants, and consumed with guilt from minute to minute about a myriad of other things I feel like I could be doing better everyday.
So what do I think my 40 year old self would say to me now? Probably something along the lines of “Right now your fat, but soon you’ll be old and fat so enjoy your youth” and that is what I am going to try and do. Tomorrow anyway. Goodnight
AHH! much scarier that lorriane being killed… dolls. Ask my seesters
Cupi Doll (please tell me you know what that is because that is TOTALLY what this is)
