Surrender

I found the transition from one child to two hard incredibly hard. M and NPF4 are 20 months apart, the BG works 80-90 hours a week - maybe this was why - or I just suck at life.  You be the judge. Either way, it was challenging. More often than not I found myself waking up in the morning with this impending sense of doom.  How will I entertain them today?  What am I going to feed them for breakfast, lunch and dinner? These questions were typically met with - I don't want to entertain them all day and I certainly don't want to be creative in planning three meals. I would dread the hours from 7am wake-up to 8pm bedtime because I was alone. Alone with the kids. Alone in my thoughts.  Just alone. It's strange how my house could be filled with so much noise - laughing, crying, yelling, singing, barking, the rattling and banging of toys and all the other sounds of a day and yet I still felt so alone.

It was almost like going through the motions. Rolling the ball back and forth to NPF4, coloring with M, reading, arts and crafts, dancing, play dates, lunch dates, gymnastics, music class, park, playground blah blah blah. It's not to say I didn't enjoy doing these things with my children.  I did. I do. Something was missing. It just wasn't enough for me. I had very little sense of satisfaction.  The monotony was almost debilitating. The BG would often say "what did you expect? This is your life. This is it. This is what we signed up for.  Try to enjoy it. Stop fighting it." He was right. To say I was fighting it is an understatement. I hate when he is right.  Am I ever going to be right? Digressing.

There had to be more. This couldn't be it. This couldn't be my life. When I thought about what the BG said  I would become overwhelmed with anger and disappointment.  I was angry and disappointed with myself. Why did I feel this way? I worked so hard to get pregnant - I made it my life's mission at one point.  I had these two perfect little beings and I had never felt so alone, sad, empty, confused, bored....and a million other emotions. I would question whether I should even be a mom or why I wanted to have kids in the first place. I was supposed to be treasuring all these precious moments right? Don't get me wrong - I laughed a lot during this time.  A real lot.  My kids are innocent, sweet and delightfully comical. I just struggled with being in the moment and savoring the funnies as well as accepting the piss, puke and poop on the couch, nebulizer treatments four times a day, gallons of milk spilt on the floor, boxes of cereal being poured into the dog's water bowl, handles being ripped off the oven, fridge and dishwasher,  trips to the ER and everything else that ensues in a days time when you have little ones.

Why was I fighting motherhood? Ya, sorry I don't actually have the answer to this. All I can surmise is that I  lost myself somewhere between shooting myself up in the stomach with infertility meds and caring for a preemie. I needed to just let go. To just be, which is easier said than done - for me anyway.  According to my neighbor, I needed to surrender to the goat. Yes.  She actually said this to me.  Surrender to the goat.  What? You're getting a goat? Pretty sure I responded with "I would rather surrender to the llama." Best word EVAH. Obvi.

I needed clarification on this whole goat thing. I was confused.  Shocking. So the short of it - my neighbor had read a blog years earlier where a mother talked about surrendering to the goat.  Meaning, this particular mom did not necessarily want to go to the zoo every week and look at the stinkin goat but she did because it's what her children wanted to do. They loved the damn goat. Eventually she surrendered to the goat and accepted the situation. She embraced the goat because she is a mom and moms are selfless.  She embraced the goat for her kids. Get it?  That wasn't the very best explanation but hopefully you're smart and you get what I'm talking about. Actually, you aren't smart if you're still reading this epic post.  In fact, I'm boring myself at this point and need to stop. This is way too effing long and bordering on obnoxious.

Stop reading.  Grab a chocolate frosted doughnut and come back in a few.
........................................................................................................................................................

........................................................................................................................................................

 How was it? Yum, I hope.

So who knew all I needed to do was surrender to the goat?  Apparently, my neighbor and the BG, although he did not turn me onto to the whole goat movement.  Yup. Loving that I just referred to it as a movement.

Bottom line: I let all the other stuff get in the way of enjoying myself and my kids. I focused too much on the parts of my day that were downright horrid instead of celebrating the fact that M spelt her name or that NPF4 said mama.  I paid more attention to what needed to get done around the house or the errands I wasn't running. I couldn't just sit and be.  What was I in search of? The BG was right, this was/is my life.  It's okay. It will be okay. This phase isn't forever.  I'm often reminded of this when strangers at the grocery store see me with my lil' devils and offer comments such as "enjoy this time. It goes by so quickly.  Oh, how I miss those days." Why is it that when I'm in the moment, in the shit so to speak  I'm not feeling this way? I mean some days I do and some days I don't. I'm scared to death I'm going to look back and regret that I wished away this time. Fifteen years from now when I see a mom carting two tots around the grocery store will I stop and smile and say "enjoy it, I miss those days?" Right now I can't imagine ever uttering those words.

Don't mistake my tone, M & NPF4 are the reasons my life is worth living.  They are the best things that ever happened to me. I would not trade one millisecond of my life for anything in the world.  I didn't get here - a confused gal riddled with self doubt - because I'm a bad mom. I got her because like so many other mamas  I have sacrificed every ounce of my being for my children. There is a danger in this. Selflessness is wonderful but dangerous. I can write about the beauty of my life and the many things I have been and continue to be blessed with.  I enjoy sharing those moments as well but I also enjoy acknowledging these small revelations I have about being a mom and wife. I think my journey helps others because it's real.  It's honest. I'm not embarrassed to admit I had sever postpartum after both my children.  I'm not afraid to admit that my marriage is far from perfect.  I'm not afraid of growing and leaning and sharing my journey with you and hopefully giving you a little chuckle along the way. He haw.

Onward.

So, basically I need to surrender to the fact that M swoons over puzzles and that we are prolly gonna to do the same one over and over again for the next two months and that NPF4 will pick up a toy off the ground, place it on the table and then swipe it off and repeat this same sequence over and over  for hours on end.  Swiper no swiping!

I spend hours upon hours of my life pinning quotes on being grateful and I sometimes feel as grateful as I think I am that I'm not really at all.  Or do I just need to remind myself that I am lucky.  Very lucky. That I don't (for the most part) take one ounce of my good fortune for granted. I know that my very worst day to some would be their very best day. For me I think it's as simple and as complicated as this: life can be great and life can suck.  So I surrender. It's okay to awake some mornings and think I just don't want to be a mom today. It's okay to want ME time. It's okay to ask the person at the Dunkin Donuts drive thru if they need 3 year old or 1 year old workers for the day.  It's okay that there is piss on the couch, split milk on the floor and unflushed poop in the toilet.  It's okay that the dishes in the dishwasher are starting to smell because I don't have any dish detergent.  It's okay that I spray our washed laundry with Febreze because it sat wet in the machine too long and I'm too lazy to rerun it.  It's okay that I let the dog out at 8am and didn't let him back in until 1pm because I forgot about him.  It's okay that NPF4 prefers the dog food to his own.  It's okay that M asks me to take pics of her poops in the toilet to send to dada while he is working. It's all just okay. Ya know why? Cause at the end of the day if my kids go to bed alive and happy that's all that matters. They are healthy and happy.

I on the other hand am a work in progress. As much as I want it to be about me - it's just not. As a mom I have sacrificed  pieces of me in order to give my kids what they need. In due time I'll start recollecting those pieces, putting them back together and begin morphing back into me. I've already started.

I'm learning albeit slowly that this is my life and it's a good one.  I need to remind myself  to stop, take a moment, pull my head out of ass and recognize that it really doesn't get better than this. I lie. A beach somewhere warm is totes better than this. xox