Wordless Wedsnesday

The two faces of my nearly-two-year old:

Quiet and contemplative (and cute!)

Irritated and defiant (and ridiculously cute!)

A Cup that Runneth Over

I have been ruminating a lot on "fullness" lately. In particular, I've been wondering what it means to me to live life fully.

My days are certainly full of tasks, I know that! A lot of you can relate to the Daily List "breakfast, clean up, morning errands, lunch, clean up, laundry, naps, afternoon errands, dinner, clean up, baths, bedtime, time with husband, sleep. Rinse and repeat with some play dates and vacations for variance". The days fly by and I feel like I'm always doing something. And yet, somewhere in there, life itself is escaping me. More and more, I find myself thinking that there has to be more to this life...this making a home...than simply running through the list every day.

To be completely honest, I have struggled with being a stay-at-home mom. I find the mom part to be easy. Well, let me rephrase that. It's not "easy" to be a parent, but I find being a mother to be fulfilling and rewarding. I am never bored with Adelaide and I'm never left feeling that there is somewhere better to be when I'm with her. It feels right that I'm her primary caretaker. For our family, for this time, it's the perfect arrangement.

It's the "stay at home" part that chafes.

I miss working in many ways. I miss the people I used to work with, and I miss the hustle and bustle of the academic library world. I often check out job sites and I don't know why I would do that unless there is a need and desire to work.

And for me, that makes sense. I have a LOT of education. It's almost painful to mention how much, and it is definitely painful to think about the sheer amount of loans we'll be paying back. I spent so much time and money and effort getting an education, acquiring job skills, and launching myself on a career path...only to put all that abruptly aside when Addie arrived. It makes sense that there would be a void in my life. And that with that void would come a nagging sense of promise unfulfilled with attendant feelings of guilt and recrimination and anxiety.

And I know I am not alone in this. In fact, my life is chock full of bright and wonderful women that sacrifice a good chunk of their "career years" to stay home and raise kiddos. And like me, most of them adore being home with their children, and wouldn't change their situation for love or money, in its most literal sense! But I know many of them still feel a sense of conflict. It might not always stem from the same source as my own feelings, but it is still there. We women are hard on ourselves. We want to do it all, and do it all well.

So all that said, this is NOT a build up to announcing that I've decided to go back to work!

For one thing, I don't want to put Addie and our Expectant Happiness in daycare. Not only would we likely LOSE money (let me just interject that no one goes into the library world for its lucrative benefits!) but I just have no desire to be separated from the children on a regular basis. The time has already flown by so fast! Addie has only has a few more years of "little" left, before she's well launched onto her own academic career. And I'm sure I'll feel the same about little soon-to-come's youth also. So that is not the answer for our family.

Long story short, I've decided that I need a new focus for this phase of my life. Or, more accurately, a focus since I feel I've been lacking direction all along.

And here it is, the big announcement. I'm going to be a homemaker.

I'm sorry if that feels anticlimatic, because I know I've been "staying at home" for about 2 years or so. But I have never been a homemaker. Let me clarify. There are people out there that are born homemakers. I know these people. I am so not these people.

I'm an indifferent cook. I'm an OK housekeeper, but that's not my Zen place. I'm laughably bad at crafts. And lest you think I'm using "laughably" in some artistic sense, let me be clear here: you would actually laugh out loud at my crafting attempts. I know, because even I have to laugh. And in my mind, "gardening" is best done by a lawn service or old retired folks in strange hats and earth stained clothes.

But here I am. Staying at home. Raising kidlets. Cooking. Cleaning. Not crafting. Mowing the lawn when forced to by shame and husband's lack of time (that's garden-ish, right?). That's the list, right? The list composed of chores and things to do.

But that's not homemaking. Homemaking is something that you're proud of, something that you strive to achieve. It's a calling, and an art, and a science. And let me repeat this: it's a source of pride.

And I'm not sure that I'm really truly proud of my day-to-day life. Don't get me wrong, I think I'm a good mother. Can you say that out loud, or is it like saying that you think you've got an amazing body? Oh well, it's out there. And that's really the whole point of this exercise. I think I'm doing just fine with Adelaide. She's healthy, she's happy, she's on target developmentally...and let's face it, girlfriend has a pretty swell life. That is all as it should be. But she needs me to be fulfilled as well. And Tim needs that. And heck, people, I need that! Part of happiness...for me...is feeling proud and fulfilled by my daily life. And so, it's time to pursue happiness. I need my cup to runneth over.

So here's my plan and my experiment. Can an indifferent and mostly uninterested woman turn herself into a homemaker? Can I find real pleasure and pride in making a home? Can I teach myself new skills at the oh-so-advanced age of 30?

I don't know the answers to these questions. I expect this will be challenging, humorous, and at times, frustrating. But above all, it will be interesting. And that's the only thing missing from my life at this point...a little bit of interest and creativity.

So, I hope you will join me on my quest. Feel free to laugh and encourage and enjoy the ride. I plan to!

Going Home Again: The Road Trip

And so it begins! Addie is in her car seat, ready to begin the long drive back to Minnesota. That thing in her lap, by the way, is a bathing suit (or bathing soup, as she calls it) that she wanted to hold. I guess even less-than-two-year-olds have a hard time saying goodbye to summer!

Yes, my friends, I DROVE to North Carolina. That's right, I tackled an 18 hour drive by myself with a toddler and a pregnancy. I can't decide whether I'm heroic or nuts. If you're wondering why, I didn't really have a good reason. Plane tickets were perfectly affordable. It just boiled down to " I wonder if I can do this".

And guess what? It was great. Really, it was. Addie was a star. She watched DVDs contentedly and ate snacks and doodled on her MagnaDoodle and slept VERY briefly in her car seat. She only cried twice out of a total of four driving days. She was such a good little travel companion. I was honestly delighted with her behavior in the car.

When she was released from that handy five point restraining harness, she was less well behaved, but I guess that is to be expected. She was WILD on our stops. She ran non-stop, refused to listen to a thing that I said, and was too busy to eat. So of course, I didn't get to eat much either. She also dumped a whole Coke on my lap on our first lunch break during a tantrum. That was awesome.

I quickly learned that stops needed to be about letting her exercise. She could always eat in her car seat when she was calmer. Granted, her once pristine Britax Marathon is now slightly less than clean. But we'll deal with that. And I also learned that stops needed to be "do it all" stops. Get your gas, go the bathroom/change diapers, get your food, get your trash cleared up, and re-boot before you started the next big push. Then don't stop again until it's time to do all of those things again.

Now is a good time to note that I am sincerely thankful for a hybrid vehicle. My little 14 gallon tank took me nearly 500 miles each time. Not bad for a small SUV. I highly recommend the Ford Escape hybrid. And no, I'm not getting any sponsorship.

We stopped in Indiana, roughly halfway, on each trip. I always chose an inn with a pool, so that Miss A could swim and get some exercise and we usually stopped fairly early each night, around 5 or 6. I just didn't think that she'd tolerate more than 10 hours or so in the car, and I didn't want to push her ...or myself...too hard.

Of course, the whole thing didn't go exactly as a I planned. I thought I'd take a lot of pictures and really record "Addie's First Road Trip" at every suitable point. That was a massive fail. The pictures you see? Yes, those are the ONLY pictures of her road trip that I took. I feel pretty disappointed in that, but honestly, it was enough to navigate and keep everyone fed and happy and reasonably clean. Making a scrapbook collection was a little too ambitious, though it would have been nice. If I'd had another adult along, I could have fulfilled that goal.

And here's Addie on our trip, ready to start Day Two of the drive down to NC. Well, except for being in her car seat. And you can see that she's already whining because I won't let her tackle the 9 hour drive in front of us by herself. Details.



It's really too bad, because we saw some awesome sights. We left at about 5:30 AM on Thursday morning under the auspices of the most gorgeous sunrise I've ever seen. I thought Addie would go back to sleep (wrong!) but she was very interested in everything and was obviously taking in the sunset. I noticed her watching the sky intently and when I asked her if she thought it was pretty, she calmly said "Painted." And yes, it really did look painted! Pretty astute little girl.

I'll spare you a state by state description of all the scenery, and just note that we live in a spectacularly beautiful country. Addie and I appreciated the chance to see it all. I still wish I could have/would have taken more pictures, but on the whole, the road trip was great in both directions.

And I've learned that I really like the flexibility of driving. I like being able to take as much with me as I want to take. I like being able to set my own schedule. I like being able to respond to Addie's needs as they arise. And I like that she can shout with glee or excitedly tell me that sees cows or fields (that wore off pretty quickly!) without me having to hush her because other passengers are around.

Long story short, I think driving is going to be the way to go for this family, provided that we're not on a tight schedule. Flying is definitely more efficient, but it's less fun and more stress. And as our family grows, driving will be cheaper for us. And it's more interesting. Hard to top that!