Ps. 119:52
TUESDAY
Let's get one thing straight: Being a mom is hard work. Whether you're getting up every 3 hours to breastfeed (or bottlefeed) an infant, preventing a new crawler from doing somersaults down the stairs, relocating every object in your living room for the safety of your toddler, or washing your highchair cover for the second time in a week after a diaper leaked all over it, it's hard. Whether you're pumping breastmilk at work, or folding the same just-washed onesies you washed and folded two days ago, or filling your cart with Gerber baby food jars, or trying (again!) to get your baby to sign "please," it's never-ending, it's attention-swallowing, it's emotion-sucking, and it's always changing.
Like some of you, I am a working mom. I spend mornings in the office and come home to care for my son in the afternoons. As a Christian mom, with friends who spend their entire days at home with their kids, I can feel like a failure being only a "part-time mother." Have I bought culture's ideal of the working woman? Am I refusing to give my son the complete mom he should have? Am I being stubborn to keep working when my place should be with my child? Am I to be pitied because we're obviously so poor that I have to keep going to work every day?
To all of these, no.
Do I expect to someday be a "stay-at-home mom?"
I'm not sure.
The days I spend at home with Henry are few and usually they're special. But I just had three of them in a row, and it was exhausting. I'm looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow. I know I wouldn't have felt this when he was a few months old, but now that he's one, I find that I can love him better when I get a break. For me, right now, the mom life I'm living is perfect. I enjoy my job and I enjoy having obligations other than washing diapers and making toddler food and picking up wooden blocks. I love my little boy and I love the time I spend with him. And I think I do it better when part of my day is spent doing something else.
There's no perfect formula for being a perfect mom. If you're a mom who spends your days at home - whether that includes working from home, homeschooling, or just keeping things afloat - that's good. If you're a mom who works half-days or full-days or nights or weekends or some tailor-made schedule - that's good. If you've been in one camp and are now in the other one - that's good too.
Being a mom is hard, but the hardest part is the comparison. "I'm doing it better than you." Or, "She's doing it way better than me." Cloth diapers, disposable diapers. Formula, breastmilk. Babywise, demand-feeding. Home-pureed organic vegetables, Up&Up squeezey tubes from Target. Spanking, not spanking. Working mom, stay-at-home mom. We judge and we feel judged.
Because I'm feeling the importance of this - or because maybe I'm the only one who struggles with this - here's a call to rejoice in the path you're walking. I want to learn from moms who are doing it differently and be open to them learning from me, if they'd like to. I want to stop pitying moms who are "making mistakes" and stop pitying myself for "failing." Without going all Similac-commercial on you, I suggest we recognize that what we're doing is hard and that we're each finding the way through this jungle that works best for us. Keep washing those onesies, keep mashing up those bananas, keep gating those staircases. I'm done judging you and judging myself. And tomorrow, I'm going to work.
Here's a mom moment you can judge me for, if you want. I fed my one-year-old a popsicle today.
He loved it.
WEDNESDAY
Today was going to be packed. Babysitting for a friend. Multiple evening obligations, back to back. An errand to run. Dinner to make, dinner to eat (in some miraculously appearing moments), somewhere else to go, and then dinner prep to do for tomorrow's crockpot meal.
But in a perfect storm of last-minute changes, nothing went as planned.
My babysitting gig got cancelled. We ended up sharing a pizzas with a few friends, leaving the dinner I'd made to be stowed away in the fridge for tomorrow. My evening Bible Study was cancelled, and I had the whole night free to work on some projects that had been piling up.
It was perfect.
"The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps." What am I planning right now? For tomorrow? For next fall? For my next five years? What do I think is going to happen? With certainty, I can say that those things will not be the story I tell after that time has passed. Tonight, on a tiny scale, shows who's in charge. And it's not me. And when everything that happens is completely counter to my expectations, and it turns out far better than my plans were, I'm reminded that the best Planner is not me after all.
FRIDAY
Let's remember how this week went. Monday, no school for President's Day. Tuesday, Snow day. Wednesday, day of ultimate plan upheaval. Thursday, Open House at school keeps Pete out late. Today, two hour delay due to extreme cold. No single day of this week was "normal."
In keeping with that theme, I got home today and discovered there was a bat in my basement. A very active bat. A bat that was fluttering angrily against the door between the basement and the kitchen. You should know that in my married life we have had no fewer than three real-live bat experiences in our living space. And Pete had several notable encounters before we were married. So as unusual as a bat situation should be, I was disappointingly unsurprised. When Pete came home, I had an errand to run, so I took Henry and left Pete to battle the villain alone. But when I was on my way home and texted him to ask if the coast was clear, he replied "Not necessarily. I haven't found your adversary."
Great.
As I pulled into the driveway and got myself and Henry out of the car, I heard a creature in flight banging into windows inside the sunporch. My bat! But it wasn't a bat. It was a starling. A better outcome than a rabid bat, but still a less than desirable basement pet. We let it out of the porch into the freedom of the great big world and he joined a large flock on the tree next door. Pete said they must have been waiting for him. Maybe so.
SATURDAY
I'm back where I was some 11 hours ago, sitting with propped feet in the living room while H sleeps upstairs. But this time I don't have the ever-escalating heart rate as his nap's-end draws near and my "free time" comes to a close. Now he's down for the night and I have the house to myself. We're snowed in. Pete's at the Men's Retreat and hopefully on his way home soon. I'm wanting to worry, but I'm choosing peace.
At the beginning of the week I was feeling worn out by long days with my son. Today, though, I enjoyed him. We snuggled in bed when he woke up too early. I chased him in endless circles around the dining room table. We read books (and ate scones!) with Nannie and Pops who came over to keep us company. I managed - finally - to find a toy of his that was missing. He shared grape halves with me. We went for walks in the snow. We shared a dinner of pesto tilapia with penne and roasted broccoli. I gave him a bath and sang him his bedtime hymn and he snuggled down in his airplane jammies with Bunny's arm in his mouth. We didn't manage to get out today like I'd hoped, but I relished the day with my little boy.
Now, to battle the worry about Pete's safety that's nipping at my mind, I'm going to bake. If it's any good, maybe you'll see the recipe here!
Grateful this week for:
disrupted plans
coffee
more coffee
snow glitter
little boy smiles
little boy laughs
little boy babbles
guests
Italian Delite
baking
more baking
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