the first year

Compare this picture:

… to one taken almost exactly a year ago.

Amazing how much the human body grows and develops in just one year, isn’t it?

Will turned one on Thursday — capping off a week in which he 1. got his first tooth (!!), 2. officially dropped to one nap, and 3. started riding in a convertible car seat. Where did my baby go? All of a sudden he seems so big. Time is going by so fast these days and I wish I could slow the hours down.

I kept hearing when I was pregnant, over and over again, that being a mom was so hard. Having babies was so hard. Life would be so hard, it’s so hard, it’s just so hard.

And yeah, it is hard sometimes. I have some days and weeks where I am lonely and tired and I wish I had coworkers to talk to or something more intellectually stimulating to do. I rinse out a lot of diapers. My body is never again going to return to its pre-baby state.

But hard is not the first word that comes to mind when I think about motherhood. I think joyful, I think amazing, I think huge, I think awe-inspiring. It is all those things — and also fun, weird, frustrating, humbling, hilarious — before it is hard. Life is amazing (I mean Life here, not my own small little present-day) and I feel stunned and overwhelmed sometimes when I think of the enormity of the task ahead of me. What a tremendous responsibility parenting is. But I feel so blessed and fortunate that it is such a joyful responsiblity. I have done nothing to deserve all of the goodness and wonder in my life, and yet: here it is all the same.

“Long ago, before we were married, H. was haunted all one morning as she went about her work with the obscure sense of God (so to speak) ‘at her elbow,’ demanding her attention. And of course, not being a perfected saint, she had the feeling that it would be a question, as it usually is, of some unrepented sin or tedious duty. At last she gave in—I know how one puts it off—and faced Him. But the message was, ‘I want to GIVE you something’ and instantly she entered into joy.”
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

I can’t help but relate to H.

 

 

doing the dishes

I finished Laura Vanderkam’s 168 Hours last week feeling pretty settled in the fact that I don’t think she’d like me very much.

Don’t get me wrong — I gleaned some good wisdom from her, especially stuff that I can take with me when I eventually resume working outside the home again. Learning more about how to be more efficient and mindful with one’s time is something I am always interested in.

But I would love to hear her thoughts on my lifestyle in general. Cloth diapering? Homemade yogurt? Cooking from scratch? Cleaning your own house?? — Based on an entire chapter in which she chronicles women’s triumphant liberation from the tyranny of homemaking, she clearly doesn’t think very highly of it in general, which is a sad thing to me. I’m not morally opposed to some of her suggestions, but her basic advice in the “home” section of the book seems to boil down to if you don’t want to do it, pay someone to do it for you, which I think is overly simplistic, not realistic for a lot of people, and frankly short-sighted. I think eschewing a lot of these humble, everyday, unglamorous errands and chores is, in a way, eschewing a lot of life in general.

Yeah, it gets old and tiresome and tedious, but there’s something inherently satisfying in homemaking to me that I think I would miss — a lot — if I were to allow someone else to maintain my home for me, do my cooking, wash my clothes, and do my gardening. And I read a blog post* today that elucidated that feeling pretty well:

A few weeks ago, as I was turning on the dishwasher before we left my place, she said something like, “Dishwashers are what’s wrong with the world.” Something about that sounded right. I asked her to explain.

“Life is composed of primarily mundane moments,” she says. “If we don’t learn to love these moments, we live a life of frustration and avoidance, always seeking ways to escape the mundane. Washing the dishes with patience and attention is a perfect opportunity to develop a love affair with simply existing. You might say it is the perfect mindfulness practice. To me, the dishwasher is the embodiment of our insatiable need, as a culture, to keep on running, running, running, trying to find something that was inside of us all along.”

We used to have to spend a lot more time and attention maintaining our basic possessions. Dishes had to be washed by hand, stoves had to be stoked, clothes had to be mended, and meals had to be prepared from scratch.

Little was automated or outsourced. All of these routine labors demanded our time, and also our presence and attention. It was normal to have to zoom in and slow down for much of our waking day. We had no choice but to respect that certain daily tasks could not be done without a willing, real-time investment of attention.

“It helps to cultivate patience,” says Lily, “and the enjoyment of a task which we usually discard as ‘not worth it’, too boring, too mundane, blase. It gives us the chance to take a little peek into the tiny but enormous world of simply noticing what is around you, and engaging fully with it. If you are someone who is naturally averse to washing dishes, you abhor it, you avoid it at all costs, you grudgingly go through it as quickly as possible… Well then, this is the perfect opportunity to engage fully with those feelings, and to gently scrub them away, until what you are left with is the realization that life is an amazing, and beautiful, and precious gift, no matter what kind of activity you are engaged in. You are surrounded by great textures, and images, and formations of light, and sounds, and smells, and everything, all the time.”

I think there is a lot of wisdom here. This time of year, you hear a lot of people talking about how much they’re looking forward to summer vacations or bemoaning that they just need a break from the mundane. One of my goals in life, generally speaking, is to have a life I don’t feel the need to escape from. As I’ve said to Steve many times, doing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen and vacuuming the floors and doing the laundry and all that goes into homemaking is, in essence, Sisyphean (Laura Vanderkam even uses the same word!). It makes no sense to me to spend so much of my time fighting against it when these “primarily mundane moments” are all around me. If I want a life I don’t feel the need to escape from, I need to be at peace with everything in it, not just the pretty parts that I like.

So this is why I can’t fully get on board with Laura Vanderkam, though I think her advice probably works really well for people who have a very different life than I do or who are truly more pressed for time than I am. As a stay at home mom I need to use my time wisely, but I have a lot more flexibility with that time than a working mom does. But even if my time were more divided and I did find myself feeling more frazzled and rushed every day, I still think I might stop and do the dishes (or fold the laundry, or pack my own lunch, or plant my own flowers). I want to be fully engaged with all of my life. Not just some of it.

Anyway. In other news, I did this to my hair:

I think the lighting here makes me look kind of sickly … but you get the idea. Now I just need to find a mountain to climb so I can start singing about how the hills are alive. I love it.

* Raptitude.com: one of my favorite blogs these days. Go check it out.

 

i have more time than i think

… or so says Laura Vanderkam in 168 Hours. I started reading it on Tuesday and am about 2/3 of the way through it — so far, so good, although it has made me continue to miss being in the workforce! (I know, I know … move on …) — Her comments on balancing career and home were an encouragement to me, though, instead of making me feel guilty, lazy, or condescended to. It makes me feel hopeful that someday I will have the opportunity to put some of this advice to practice.

In the meantime, the first immediate takeaway that I have from reading is the reminder that how I spend (or waste) my time is a choice, not a mandate, and that the best way to make the most of my time (and thus, my life) is to, well, spend as much of my time as I can on those things that are important priorities, not mindless time-fillers. I am especially bad about this at night, but I’m working on it. Reading books, not surfing the web on the iPad. Getting to sleep at a reasonable hour. Cleaning up in the moment rather than letting clutter sit. It’s a process, but it always will be.

This week in particular was a good example of living according to my priorities. Now that the ten-miler is finished, I’m not attached to a training plan anymore — and consequently, my workouts became a much lower priority. It was suddenly incredibly easy to just “not have time” to get a three-mile run in simply because random other things happened to pop up. Of course, this isn’t at all how I want to be prioritizing my time, so I’ll have to do some things a bit differently next week. Just yesterday I realized (as it was happening, of course) that I wasn’t using my time wisely if I wanted to be able to run, do some errands and get some baking accomplished while also having enough time to hang out with my babe and not feel frazzled trying to get everything done. I managed, but barely. It’s becoming so clear to me that managing my time in accordance with my values and priorities is something I really need to be working on. If I have a hard enough time with it now — as a stay-at-home mom to one easy-enough baby — how much harder would this be if I had multiple children and/0r a career or graduate school to balance as well? So I can consider this time in my life a good time to practice these habits and start living fully in the way that I want to.

Anyway. Today is Easter (He is risen!) so here are a few pictures from brunch:

Will and Steve arrived late to brunch because Will took a nice long nap after church. (We lucked out after we had to wake him up a full two hours early to take him to the early service!)

Look at this big gummy smile. Someday he will have teeth and I will miss this! (By the way, do you think he needs a haircut?)

Happy Easter!

 

10 miles + future fitness

Whew! I did it! Yeah, it was a week ago, but still. It’s still pretty fresh in my mind.

My official time for the 2013 Charlottesville ten-miler was 1:34:47 — basically right on target with the time I was hoping to get. Whew. The race went really well (even though it rained for the first few miles). Lots of hills and a tough last few miles. I wish I could share my official race photos with you, because they are amazing*, but you have to buy them in order to do so and the pictures are just too awe-inspiring to share publicly.

So now I am done with my race! I had a great experience and will definitely do it again in the future, but for now I guess I feel a little … unmoored. I’m so used to having a concrete goal in mind that it’s a little strange to not have anything on the horizon, running-wise. Actually, it’s not a little strange; it’s really strange. I think I do really well with a goal in mind, so I probably need some objective to work toward just to prevent myself from getting lazy.

My immediate next decision has to do with whether or not to run a half marathon next month. I can do it as long as I keep my mileage up, which shouldn’t be a big problem, BUT I would probably be running it alone and I’m not sure it’s worth the hassle, logistics-wise, if I don’t have anyone to run it with. And along with that, running 20+ miles per week doesn’t leave me with a lot of time to do anything other than run. I’m pretty bound to working out during Will’s naps, so I need to use my time wisely. And while I love running, it’s not the only form of exercise out there. For one thing, I know I desperately need to build some muscle strength, and for another, I miss yoga a lot.

(Speaking of yoga, I went to a class this past Sunday and was the only student! I thought it might be awkward but it was actually a really great experience. Since I was one-on-one with the teacher, I was able to request a more restorative practice, and she was able to give me plenty of guidance without being too in my face. It was really great. I hope to be able to make it to the same class again this week. Will I be the only student again? Stay tuned.)

So if I don’t do the half marathon, I think I will stick with speedwork and shorter runs for a bit and try and lower my 5k time. The only 5k I have ever actually raced was in November and I finished in 25:56 — a great time for me, and one I am sure I can improve.

Anyway. On Wednesday I dusted off my yoga mat and did some push-ups, tricep dips, planks, and ab exercises. I am still sore. Apparently I have my work cut out for me. Now to see if I can turn these ideas into a real goal …

P.S. Steve and my dad installed a new sink over the weekend. We went from this:

(Look at the faucet. And the hose is on the left hand side because it leaks.)

… to this:

Aaaahhhh. So beautiful. So much better.

*and by amazing I mean hilarious.

 

eleven months old

Hello friends! I haven’t forgotten that I have a blog. I just don’t have all that much to say these days … and even when I have the opportunity to write, I’m too busy watching Downton Abbey (we’re halfway through season 2 and I can’t handle it) to want to talk about anything else.

But anyway. A few days ago, this happened:

LOOK at this baby. Compare him to how he looked just four months ago:

Isn’t it a huge difference? I can’t imagine how different he is going to look again in another four months.

Will is extremely busy these days. He never stops moving and has developed a deep love for cars and trucks. It’s so cute to watch him push his cars around on the floor and follow where they go! As you can see he is holding one in his picture above. We are on the lookout for a fire truck to get him for his birthday (!!) — there is a nice fire truck at auntie Leah’s house that he plays with whenever he visits, so I want to get him one to play with at home, too.

Watching him engage more with specific toys is probably the biggest difference we observed this month. He has also really been enjoying his new activity table (new to him, anyway), which is good because it helps him to learn how to stand more comfortably. He is not really big on pulling to stand and has only done it spontaneously twice (once in pursuit of Steve’s oatmeal), so I will often sit behind him when he plays with his table and help him to pull himself on up it. I also sit on the couch or chair and hold one of his toys (my phone or one of his cars) to try and encourage him to come and get it, which has mixed success and often just results in a frustrated baby. Oh well. I assume he will walk eventually.

He is still a very speedy crawler — and he still crawls on his belly! I have been encouraging him to get up on his hands and knees so that he’ll figure out how to crawl differently, because when we play outside this spring I imagine it will be easier for him to be on his hands and knees. Maybe not. I wonder whether he will crawl on his hands and knees before he walks or if he’ll be army crawling until he walks? At any rate, he seems pretty satisfied with his preferred method of transportation.

Another change this month? We finally gave up the infant bathtub and graduated to this:

Thanks, Pinterest, for the idea. Now he stays happy and contained, and his toys don’t float away! What a wonderful new use for the laundry basket I took to college with me back in 1998. Who knew it would act as a baby tub fifteen years later?

Another change this month is that this baby has fallen head over heels in love with food. He eats pretty much whatever we’re eating, and I can’t think of a single food he doesn’t like! He feeds himself really well. While he can’t feed himself from a spoon yet (I have no idea when babies learn to do that, but it’s evidently not yet) he does like to play with it after I feed him yogurt, cottage cheese or applesauce. Some new favorite foods this month have included pizza, macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, lentils, quinoa and banana bread. I could sit and watch him eat all day. He has also done pretty well figuring out how to drink from a sippie cup.

Another very exciting development is that I dropped Will’s “dream feed”. For the last several months I have been feeding him before I go to bed in order to help him sleep through the night. Last month, he dropped his 4 a.m. feed, which was amazing, so I was very apprehensive that he would start waking up early again once I dropped the dream feed. To my relief, though, he still sleeps all night!

Some more eleven-month facts and stats:

• Still no teeth. I love it. His big gummy smile is so cute.
• He sleeps about 13 hours at night (around 7:30 until 8 or so) and continues to nap well, though more and more frequently his “morning” nap is up to two hours and his late afternoon nap is very short or nonexistent. I have a feeling he will transition to one nap on the early side compared to other babies, but I kind of hope not. I need that late afternoon nap time in order to start dinner!
• As I mentioned above, I have dropped two feedings so far. He does not seem to have noticed and his interest in nursing is definitely waning. I mean, there is so much delicious food to eat!
• He wears 12 month size clothes but I’m starting to notice some of the onesies and sleepers getting a little short. What next? I’m not sure we’re ready for 18 month size. I don’t think there’s anything between 12 month size and 18 month, though.
• It is really, really hard to change his diapers. He is a fast-moving baby.

He’s also the best baby ever. I can’t believe he’s about to be one year old.

 

 

mindfulness and motherhood

Next week I will observe the one-year anniversary of my last day of work. Since then, it’s been a day by day challenge to adjust to a new way of life — not just a new daily routine, but a new way of looking out at the world.

Being a stay-at-home mom has been harder for me than I expected, but for much different reasons than I would have anticipated. Before, if I had to guess what the hardest part of staying home would be for me, I would have chosen some vague variation on losing patience with children or being tired or not having anyone to talk to every day. But instead, by far the hardest thing has been giving up what feels like the whole outside world.

One piece of very good advice that my sister Leah gave me when Will was born was to not let my world shrink too much. Without a job outside the home, it can be so, so easy to let my life be contained to the four walls of my house, and I have put a lot of effort into pushing against that. Ever since Will grew out of the newborn stage I have been very intentional about making sure my world was bigger than that, and I think it’s helped a lot. But I honestly did not expect that I would miss that old life, and certainly not that I would still miss it so much a year later.

Point of clarification — I don’t mean that I miss not being a mom, because I don’t. But I miss feeling like I have a place out in the world.

Anyway. All that to say, since I am a stay-at-home mom at the present, it does me no good to sit here sighing and looking wistfully out the window, imagining how very, very green the grass is on the other side of the fence, instead of enjoying my baby and investing my energy into my home. So I am trying to look at things differently. Can being a stay-at-home mom be a form of mindfulness?

In my own burgeoning practice of mindfulness, I’m trying to stay focused on one thing at a time. Not checking email and reading blogs and eating ice cream and watching TV and carrying on a conversation with my husband and trying to address the mess in the sink. I want to try and take the same approach to being a stay-at-home mom. Just do one thing right now, and do it well, and make the most of the simplicity in my life right now. After all, one of the major reasons I decided to stay home was so that I could have a simple life for a while.

But that simple life has turned out to be much more of a challenge to me — and so much more humbling — than I expected it to be. I hope I am up to the task.

By the way — these lovely pictures were taken by my very talented friend Maggie! Maggie was also our wedding photographer. I will share more of these pictures soon!

 

pardon the interruption

Hello! I’m just stopping by briefly on my way to make popcorn and watch last night’s Top Chef finale to share a few things I’ve been up to on my little blog break.

First:

The maiden voyage! Leah came over last weekend with some homemade turkey stock and we got to work. The pressure canner was VERY easy to use thanks to some blog tutorials I had pinned. When I get a little more well-versed in pressure canning, I’ll share some more. Next I want to try canning beans, and then hopefully I can move on to soup bases and chili. (I want to see if I can can my own butternut squash soup and chili recipes, but I don’t know enough about the process yet.)

I haven’t popped open either of these jars yet but I think (and hope!) that we were successful. And no explosions.

Next:

I feel like I have been working on this handwarmer for an eternity. I am a slow knitter again, but I have a bunch of Downton Abbey to watch so hopefully the second one will be done in time for, you know, June.

Also:

We mastered the side carry and I am babywearing again! It’s so convenient. I carried Will like this the other day when we braved our first consignment sale. (BTW, ignore the clutter in the background. The bedroom is always the last room to get organized …)

Lastly: I ran THIRTEEN miles last Saturday. I can tell that I spend a lot of time with other distance runners because that did not sound all that noteworthy of an achievement to me until after I finished and was basically useless for the rest of the day. I can also tell my body is not at all accustomed to running such long distances. I am still undecided about a half marathon in April, but am leaning toward it, as long as I can keep my mileage up after the ten-miler in two weeks. However, I feel like diving back into a serious yoga practice again (which I REALLY want to d0) would necessitate cutting back on my mileage, just due to how much time I have to devote to exercise these days. I don’t think I can do both. Decisions, decisions. I’m going to see after the race whether I can wait six more weeks to start practicing yoga 3-5 days a week again, or whether I feel like I need to head back in that direction. We’ll see.

Now it’s time for popcorn and Top Chef. Is my blog break over? Another thing that we’ll just have to see!