After the birth of our second, everything changed. All of it. I was most worried that I wouldn't have enough love in my heart for everyone. Baloney. It overwhelms me at times. Everything isn't sunshine and rainbows every second of the day - the transition from one to two was HARD.
IS hard. And then you turn around and realize your relationship with your significant other is also different so you have to figure that out again too, amidst the regression of the things and the mess of a house and ALL THE NOT SLEEPING. At the very least, the not sleeping the second time around is totally expected and therefore not so much rage-filled. Maybe just a little ragey. A cute little rage monster. The thing that I struggle with the most, because I am quite a distracted individual at baseline, is how to be fully present with A while in this crazy storm of life with the little one. Even three months into this things have settled down a little, but she tells me she wants "just girl dates. No boys. No daddy, no little bro." and I have to figure out how to do that without jumping up to clean/email/text/whatever.
This I think will be the struggle of the millennial generation - finding meaningful connection via technology and knowing when to put that aside, sit on the floor and look your kid square in the face and say, "I'm here. Let's play." Hands Free Mama is a good place to start...although I'm reading it on a tablet and that feels wrong...and I think that it also has wisdom for people without kids. I also am enjoying Notes from a Blue Bike and The Art of Simple by Tsh Oxenreider. Simplifying, being present, and living life in this age of consumerism and more-more-more-all-the-everything are all inextricably linked. I wish I had a BLAM! one-size-fits-all fix for this, some prescriptive thing I could read or checklist or whatever but I don't. It's lots of little checklists and no's and conversations about how this or that makes someone feel and whether this THING makes you happy or your life better or what someone wants their life to be like, what they want their kids to remember.
All the big questions and the small questions at the same time. It's kind of a rollercoaster.
I know as a perfectionist yet fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants person that I can beat myself up about missed opportunities or things I could have done differently...currently I am evaluating my craft room, throwing actual DAILY BAGS OF TRASH from there and wondering why the hell I accumulated so much worthless stuff...things that I would "eventually get around to" that eventually just amounted to jumble in my brain and guilt for not having or making the time for the (SEEMINGLY) important but what turned out to be (ACTUALLY) unimportant...eesh.
So yeah, that's the reason for the blog redesign. As a family we're fumbling our way toward an unhurried, intentional, adventurous life.
Is it weird that I say "here's where I document all this unplugged-ness on a blog." ? Yeah probably.
IS hard. And then you turn around and realize your relationship with your significant other is also different so you have to figure that out again too, amidst the regression of the things and the mess of a house and ALL THE NOT SLEEPING. At the very least, the not sleeping the second time around is totally expected and therefore not so much rage-filled. Maybe just a little ragey. A cute little rage monster. The thing that I struggle with the most, because I am quite a distracted individual at baseline, is how to be fully present with A while in this crazy storm of life with the little one. Even three months into this things have settled down a little, but she tells me she wants "just girl dates. No boys. No daddy, no little bro." and I have to figure out how to do that without jumping up to clean/email/text/whatever.
This I think will be the struggle of the millennial generation - finding meaningful connection via technology and knowing when to put that aside, sit on the floor and look your kid square in the face and say, "I'm here. Let's play." Hands Free Mama is a good place to start...although I'm reading it on a tablet and that feels wrong...and I think that it also has wisdom for people without kids. I also am enjoying Notes from a Blue Bike and The Art of Simple by Tsh Oxenreider. Simplifying, being present, and living life in this age of consumerism and more-more-more-all-the-everything are all inextricably linked. I wish I had a BLAM! one-size-fits-all fix for this, some prescriptive thing I could read or checklist or whatever but I don't. It's lots of little checklists and no's and conversations about how this or that makes someone feel and whether this THING makes you happy or your life better or what someone wants their life to be like, what they want their kids to remember.
All the big questions and the small questions at the same time. It's kind of a rollercoaster.
I know as a perfectionist yet fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants person that I can beat myself up about missed opportunities or things I could have done differently...currently I am evaluating my craft room, throwing actual DAILY BAGS OF TRASH from there and wondering why the hell I accumulated so much worthless stuff...things that I would "eventually get around to" that eventually just amounted to jumble in my brain and guilt for not having or making the time for the (SEEMINGLY) important but what turned out to be (ACTUALLY) unimportant...eesh.
So yeah, that's the reason for the blog redesign. As a family we're fumbling our way toward an unhurried, intentional, adventurous life.
Is it weird that I say "here's where I document all this unplugged-ness on a blog." ? Yeah probably.
1 comment:
Um, LOVE this post. Especially this quote: "I accumulated so much worthless stuff...things that I would "eventually get around to" that eventually just amounted to jumble in my brain and guilt for not having or making the time for the (SEEMINGLY) important but what turned out to be (ACTUALLY) unimportant...eesh." Yep.
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