When Mommy’s Big Feelings Break Out

The picture above is from a year ago. This was the caption I posted with it on IG: “My girl showing her poor addled, short-tempered mommy some sweet grace and comfort.” #empathy #kindness #toddlersweet #grace #graceforthemoment#littlehands

A year to the day, I need this picture because, last night, I was addled and short-tempered again. Last night, I yelled at my daughter when she came out of her bedroom for the 7th or 8th time since I had put her to bed an hour before. She cried; she tearfully proclaimed that I wasn’t nice to her. My heart broke. I apologized. I asked her forgiveness for letting my big feelings break out on her. I tucked her back in with teary kisses and lots of I love you’s. She calmed and sighed and gave me sleepy I love you’s in return. I cried. I cried. I got the house settled for the night. I went to bed, squeezed a favorite stuffy, and cried until I fell asleep.

I know that ‘nice’ isn’t the same as ‘good’. I know that I am not and will never be perfect. I also know that I need this memory and its reminder today, of the grace that my girl has shown me when my emotion is anathema to my gentleness. I am glad that chances aren’t final. I am glad that I can try again today. I love my girl and her forgiving grace, and I want to learn from it. I want to be like my daughter with her sweet, “It’s okay, Mommy. You made a mistake. I love you.”

I have dear ones who have given me marvelous encouragement and loving reminders today, and I am thankful beyond words for them. As I teach and grade and think today, I’m slowly living out that ear-worm of a Daniel Tiger song, “It’s okay to feel sad sometimes. Little by little, you’ll feel better again.” And I look forward to seeing my daughter’s smiling face and her exuberant, “Mommy!!” when I pick her up from preschool this afternoon.

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Ears to Hearts

I just did a Heart Check with my girl (inspired by the beautiful tradition of Hands Free Mama Rachel Macy Stafford and her daughters). We do it every now and again, not really on any regular basis. We listen to each other’s heartbeat and then we tell each other what we think our hearts “sound” like. I listened to her little heart thud like a drum and told her that her heart sounded happy because she had had such a good day at school and had had such a great time running around in her red boots ever since she got home.

My baby girl leaned up and I cradled her head against my chest for her turn. She listened to my heart and then moved to lie down in her bed again. I asked what she thought.

She told me, “I think your heart is crying. I think because it is sad.”

I will not lie; I about lost it into a puddle of tears right there. I told my oh-so-wise girl that, yes, my heart is sad because a lot of my friends are sad right now, but that I am trying to love them as best I can. I asked her if she would pray for me, that God will give me strength and lots and lots of love to share.

Running On Ahead

Today was the day. That day. That first day. Today was my girl’s first day at daycare. And tomorrow will her first day of preschool. Her first day(s) in the care of someone not a parent or grandparent.

Only a week and a half ago, I accepted a very last-minute position and, in a positive gale of change, have returned to teaching this year. This was not what I had planned for, not what I had settled on, and so it has been quite a tumultuous time. One of the most difficult parts for me, however, has been the realization and reality that I would not be able to be there for her first day of school. I will not be there to hold her little hand and walk her to her class. I will not be there to see her face light up with excitement or grow sober with apprehension. I will not be there to hug her close, stroke my finger down her pert little nose, tell her I love her, and remind her to have courage and be kind.

And that hurt. It hurt a lot. For an entire week, I cried every time I thought about it, every time someone mentioned it. I still get a little burn in my chest where my heart aches at the missing. I have always been with her; these are the first “firsts” that I will miss. It’s too soon. It’s happening too fast. I know that she’s excited, that she loved her first day at daycare, and had a great one according to her teachers, and that makes me happy for my girl. But, at the same time, it’s like she’s slipping away through my fingers. She’s pulling away and running ahead and I am so far from ready.

I miss our routine. I miss mornings with her cuddled in my arms in the big bed when it’s rainy and dark and we are both still sleepy. I miss walking in the sunshine with her or helping my fearless, spiky girl place her feet properly as she climbs up the playground ladders. I miss watching her jog through the mall, waving at strangers with a smile and a “Hi!” I miss our quiet times at home, her with her Kindle and me with my book or my writing.

It’s all happening so fast. Too fast. I knew that this was coming. Eventually. But I hadn’t looked for it to be now, to be immediate. I had thought I’d be there to  help her transition to part-time preschool. Instead, I tiptoe from the house before she’s awake and won’t see her now until I pick her up at the end of the day. I can only hope and pray to be greeted by a big smile and lovingly enthusiastic “Mommy!” every evening. That’s why I am doing this. For her. For our family. Not for me. For them.

Tonight, as she splashed and played in her bath, all my heart could do was cry out, “Slow down!” And the song below came to mind, as tears likewise sprang to my eyes and trickled down my cheeks.

I want you to grow, my love. I do. Just…don’t do it too terribly quickly. Please? Don’t pull away just yet. Could you slow down, just a bit?

Bedtime Evensong

I just sang my daughter to sleep (and she actually FELL ASLEEP) for the first time in I don’t know when. It took less than ten minutes for her to drop off, maybe even less than five. I’ve missed that. Usually, if I stay in her room, she will fight sleep to interact so I have to leave her room in order for her to settle down and fall asleep. I don’t know why tonight was different but I am glad that I kept my heart soft and was mindful and went to her when she cried instead of just assuming that it was because she didn’t want to go to bed.

As I sat on the side of her bed, she settled, curled up on her side with her little blankies and snuggled under her “giant blankie”. As I hummed her lullaby, she hummed the first verse along with me, fidgeted around with her blankies for a few minutes, and then eventually quieted, her breathing calming and evening out. When I finally stopped humming and raised my hand from where I had rested it on her waist while I sang, she didn’t stir. I kissed her head, whispered that I love her, and lingered by her bedside for a moment, just watching her.

My girl is growing so very quickly. She’s strong and smart and imaginative and fierce and spiky and strong-willed. She loves to pretend and play dress-up. Her current favorite movie is “Inside Out”, which she calls “Calm Down” and she dreams of being Joy “with the beautiful blue princess hair”. I tell her that one day we will dress up together – her as Joy and me as Disgust. (I mean cosplay, of course.) She is starting to express a desire of wanting to go to school so I am trying to use that as motivation to take that last step towards potty-training. She knows the process and all that stuff; it’s just convincing her to be in regular underwear all of the time and doing the work of going to the bathroom regularly.

But, for tonight, she was just my baby girl who fell asleep to the sound of my voice.

 

((Art: Lonely Lullaby – http://www.deviantart.com/art/Lonely-Lullaby-216206458 ))

Those Pathetic Days

One afternoon, as my daughter nested on her bedroom floor with her stuffies and her tablet, I laid myself down next to her and requested, “Can I lie down next to you?”

I must have sounded like the most pathetic creature to ever live and, truthfully, I felt it to be so. I felt weary-worn in body and soul and literally pathetic in every synonymous sense of the word. There are days when mothering is unspeakably tough, and this week has been a collection those days. From temper tantrums to busy days (which my girl dearly didn’t want to participate in) to ballet class and early morning stomach bugs, this has been quite a week. I’m tired, worn, and, honestly, wilting a bit. I have rarely felt less equal to the task of raising my daughter than I have this week. My eyes are weak from lack of sleep and too many tears. The things that give me joy (reading, writing, working out, etc.) I have often been too tired to fully enjoy, but I am still doing my best to keep up with them because they are my soul food.

This weekend is Valentine’s Day. I’m not looking for flowers or chocolate or a fancy dinner out. All I want is some time with my husband and some time to myself to center down and ground myself before the week starts all over again.

When Did I Become…?

As I was making the beds this morning and turning down the heat in the bedrooms for the day, I realized something.

I have been a stay-at-home mom for three years. I guess that the official date was about two weeks ago when school started back but yes. Three years. That was when I started my FML from my teaching position, deciding that I wanted to stay home and officially resigning later on that summer.

As I made the beds, folded blankets, and picked up clothes for the laundry, I came to realize that I have settled into a routine of being a SAHM, of caring for our daughter, my husband, our home, and myself (the last is still in process). I am learning to better ask for help and time when I need it (in fact, the grandparents are coming over to spend time with my girl while I run errands out in the snow today). I have settled into the joys of organization, my brand-new family calendar in its place of pride on the side of the fridge (Thank you, Mom! The old one was quite on its last legs.) with everyone’s activities for the month listed out as well as copied onto our family Google calendar, so we can keep track of each other. The bank’s new app is uploaded onto my phone (still need to do this to hubbie’s phone), so we can have access to accounts/amounts whenever we need it. My girl’s first dance class will start in two weeks so she needs to be outfitted for that, naturally.

I think I’ve really settled into this SAHM gig.

Having said that, though, it may end sooner than I anticipate. Elizabeth is three. Preschool looms on the horizon (as soon as we can deal with this potty training nonsense), which means that I will need to/be looking for a new position somewhere. Now that is a frightening thought if I am being completely honest. There are lots of frightening thoughts for me in being a SAHM.

• Am I doing right by my daughter?
• Am I spending enough time with her?
• Am I teaching her the skills (educational and life) that she needs?
• Am I teaching her to be independent?
• Am I unconsciously doing for her what she needs to do for herself?
• Am I teaching her that I am there for her?
• Does she feel loved?
• Does she feel heard?
• Am I giving enough time to my husband?
• Are he and I connecting enough?
• Does he feel heard by me?
• Does he feel loved and appreciated?
• Am I giving enough time to myself?
• Do I feel loved, heard, appreciated?
• Am I connecting with my own heart, soul, and body enough?
• Am I connecting to God’s heart enough?

The worries will abound, if I let them. The worries could drown me, if I let them. The worries could leave me paralyzed with fear, if I let them.

So I won’t.

I will take comfort in the truth that I know what I am doing, even when I don’t. That I am trying my best, even when I fall short. That I am doing much better than I think I am at this SAHM gig.

Potty Training Woes with A 4-Year-Old | Scary Mommy

I feel like such a failure. Over the past three years, I’ve tried everything. I’ve used every bribe I can think of. I’ve punished him. I’ve created reward-based potty charts. I’ve set the timer on my iPhone a thousand times. We have left public places when the telltale wet ring appears on his pants. I have let him continue to play, even with wet pants, wondering if other kids ask him about it whether or not he might finally be embarrassed. He hasn’t.

via Potty Training Woes With A 4-Year-Old Scary Mommy.

I feel for her, so much, as I am having the hardest time potty training my girl right now, and I’m very appreciative of her honesty and chin-up-ness.

Warm-hearted Wednesday: Tidying Up

My little girl just cleaned up everything that she dumped off the ottoman and onto the floor. The exchange went something like this:

Bizzy: What a big mess!

Me: Yeah, you did make a big mess. Can you help clean it up?

Bizzy: Yeah. I clean up the mess.

She then proceeded to pick up all the stray articles of clothing, blankets, and pillows that she had dumped onto the floor and stack them back on the ottoman, going so far as to take my robe, which I had taken off and put on the couch next to me and put it up there, too. Watching her struggle with the heavy pile of fabric was rather amusing but I let her do it all by herself as she had insisted. She cleaned up everything and she earned her soccer ball back. ^_^ Well done, Bizzy!

Ghosts of Fridays Past

Last night, after a trip to the gym, I did the unthinkable: I braved the mall on a Friday night, two weeks before Christmas. In my defense, it wasn’t my fault. I had things that I wanted/needed to return so that I could purchase their replacements as soon as possible. As I speed-walked through the mall, determined to be done as soon as possible, I couldn’t help but be accosted by the realization of just how long it had been since I had traversed the mall on a Friday evening. I was also suddenly inundated by memories. Memories of Friday nights past. Before the Big Change, i.e. before baby.

In Friday nights past, Ben and I would often get out of work and head straight to an early dinner. We liked to hit dinner early so that we could enjoy our meal before the start-of-weekend dinner rush. After dinner, we could make our way over to the mall or to Best Buy (depending on our movie location) to kill time before making our way to the movie theater to catch whatever flick suited our fancy that weekend.  We would peruse the DVDs at Best Buy or the bookstore or Hot Topic at the mall, enjoying our geekery in its myriad forms.

I miss those Fridays, if I am being completely honest. I miss strolling around the mall or the store on my husband’s arm, just meandering with no rush, timetable, or out-of-sight worries to keep me out of the moment. I think that is one of the things that I miss the most right now: being able to consistently stay in the moment, whether it’s a date on the couch with Ben, a conversation on the phone or online, reading a book, or journaling. I love my daughter, make no mistake, but she commands the lion’s portion of my time, attention, and strength.

A friend of mine (and fellow mommy) sent me an article by Wendy Wisner today entitled “The Hardest Thing About Being a New Mom” and something that it said struck to the core and heart of a great many of my feelings.

“Oh, the things they don’t tell you about motherhood. […] I’m talking about your identity. I’m talking about the fact that in one quick instant, you go from being woman, girlfriend, wife, professional, artist, lover, free-thinking-doing-being-person to MOTHER. Just like that. And mother, at least at first, is bigger than all those other things, whether you want it to be or not.

But I wish someone had told me it was normal to feel like the person I’d been before kids had been smashed into sharp little pieces of glass.”

I must be honest: I feel this way sometimes. A lot of sometimes. Like all that I was, who I was, has just been smashed to smithereens and I don’t know just how to see myself as anyone other than “Mommy” anymore. And that, truthfully, is very difficult sometimes, especially since it took me the better part of twenty-some years to find an identity that was just and wholly me, apart from anyone else in my life.

Please, do not mistake me. I love my daughter. Love her to the moon and back. But I do want to be more than just Mommy. I want to be Melissa and all that means along with being a mother. I am not entirely sure just what all that is right now, however. I do not know whether “teacher” is still part of that or not, how long “pastor’s wife” will be part of it, what part writer/blogger has in it.

“I wish someone had told me that I would eventually find all those pieces of myself — that I would sweep up the glass, put it together again. And that the new me would sparkle, bend light, make rainbows.

I wish someone had told me I would come out of it all intact, kick-ass, more resilient than ever — a mother.”

I do not feel like I am to this place just yet. I am still searching through those pieces, figuring out what they are, and how they fit together into the ‘me’ I am now. The mosaic that is me, composed by all these differing piece, is coming together, maybe slowly, but it is. I have a few of the pieces, I dare say a few of the very important ones, and I will continue to grow and hope to fit some more of the pieces together in the coming year.  I dearly hope that I can say, as Ms. Wisner does, that I will sparkle, bend light, make rainbows, and, yes, be more kick-ass and resilient than ever.

Those Friday nights past are bright spots in my memory, as are my Friday nights present. Evenings of pizza and tag and kitty-cat finger puppets and singing before bedtime, of cuddles on the den couch leaned against Ben with my book while he plays “Fallout 4”. And I am hoping that my Friday evenings future will be even brighter as we all grow together.

When You Feel So Mad That You Wanna Roar…

This is our first year with a full-sized tree since Elizabeth was born and it has been impossible to keep her from pulling ornaments off the tree. Tonight she succeeded in that top-shelf fear of mine: she pulled the Christmas tree down. Thankfully, it did not land on top of her. I heard it fall, heard the clatter of ornaments on the floor, and hurried to the doorway between the kitchen and living room to see her across the room leaning against the couch and the tree facedown on the floor. I admit, I covered my hand with my mouth and struggled not to cry as I saw my tree sprawled on the floor, ornaments tumbled hither thither and yon around the living room.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t yell. I inhaled, counted to three, and exhaled as I entered the living room, asking firstly if she was OK and she said yes. I then set about righting the tree while she gathered the fallen ornaments into a little pile. I silently thanked God that I had had the means to buy a brand new set of shatterproof ornaments along with this tree. I was not also going to be vacuuming glass up out of the carpet for the next hour and then fretting for days to come that there would still be shards hidden, just waiting to embed themselves in our feet. So there was that in my favor. I slowly and as calmly as I could straightened out the bent branches and replaced the ornaments on the tree, though there was a small struggle with Bizzy over the last one, which she adamantly didn’t want to relinquish. I still think the tree looks a bit at sixes and sevens and I will most likely have my mother give it a once over and fix when she gets here.

But I am glad that I took that three-second pause. I wanted love to be my first response as often as possible and it most definitely was not my first response for most of today. Today was a rough day. We have all been sick for the better part of a week, Elizabeth since Thanksgiving night. So we are tired and worn and she and I got in each other’s way a lot today. Tomorrow, though, I will forgive myself and have the new beginning that tomorrow is.