oh hey.

did you know i was pregnant?

i never forget, per se, but it's amazing how much stuff you DON'T freak out about/read about online/research into oblivion when you, you know, have done it before and have a kid on the cusp of being 1 (and already being awesome) running around.

but for the past few nights, i've been feeling flutters. i felt them way early on, and then a kick, but then they sort of went away. that freaked me out a little bit (but nothing like it did with maggie). so i'm glad to have Baby Bean communicating, even just a little bit and every once in a while. i know it will get progressively more and more. i'm glad.  i think i'm ready to figure out who this kid is.

i don't know what i think about being the mom of two. sometimes i think i'm already giving this kid the shaft, because i just don't think about the bean that much during the day. my husband says it's because my body has got it covered and i don't have enough time or energy to worry about it too.  he's right, i guess, but i wonder what it's going to be like to have two kids under 2 and a husband who is student teaching. oh, and me teaching too.

big fun, i'm guessing.

but, as my mom always says, you can do anything for [insert amount of time here]. so i can do anything until musicboy graduates.  if that means not sleeping much and showering less, i guess that's what we'll do. 

i have to have faith, though, that all will be well. will it be hard? heck yes. but nothing good isn't hard.  it's all hard because it's all growth. i think, for whatever reason, i just have a lot of growing to do in a short period of time. 

that's okay. 

remind me that i said this in six months, okay? i may have forgotten by then.

a glimpse.

on monday, i had one of those days that gave me a glimpse of motherhood in another stage.

maggie took an unusually early nap, so we went to our church's playgroup for the first time.  she loved it. she just walked around, throwing her hands up in the air or chewing on a random block, so delighted by everyone and everything that it almost made my heart hurt with joy.  i love seeing her with other kids and, better, i love seeing her so totally brave. she didn't need me. she'd come over, say hi periodically, but she didn't need me.  she was on her own in a giant gym and she was totally fine.

amazing.

then we went straight to the grocery store, where she rode in one of those racecar carts. she got to face forward, which she always wants to do in any cart, and see the world. she was totally delightful the whole time.

we got home, and she got a big new (to us) toy. after a few wary interactions with it, she spent about a half an hour checking it out (it's a riding zebra bouncy thing) and then got on...and started bouncing.

monday taught me something.  i always had this idea in my head about the kind of mom that i would be. i would be the library story time/playgroup/grocery store/outing mom. we would go places, and see things, and i would be happy to let my kids explore.

i haven't gotten to do that much yet. it just hasn't been feasible, for various reasons. but it's starting to become feasible and it made me cry. i was describing it to my husband and i didn't realize how much it meant to me until it made me well up with joy.

i'm going to be the mom i want to be.  no one can ever picture what the first year of a baby's life will be like when you've never been through it before. maggie and i, we've been finding our way.

i think we've found a bit of a stride, though things are always changing and things are always frustrating to a certain extent. i know that will never change.

but i see a whole world opening up to us, and it's so exciting to me.

i know i complain a lot on here, about how hard things are. i hope you can always sense my joy in my journey at the same time. sometimes things are hard. sometimes life is hard for a while. that's okay.

but on monday i got a glimpse of what all this hard work and investment does.  my courageous, delightful girl.  that's who we've been raising.

darn if that's not worth every sleepless night, every exasperating highchair experience, every disgusting diaper change.

delightful, happy, smart, courageous, amazing, beautiful girl.

i'll take it.

mamaland.

today was a day i hope that i always remember, in a tale of two cities kind of way.

it was the worst of times, it was the best of times.

i hit a really hard place this morning.  i don't know why. i could list a million reasons that may sound like excuses to stronger, more immortal people than i am--pregnancy, sickness, nap strikes, jobs that i'm just not doing very well at all, the burdens (yes, they are joys sometimes but right now they are burdens) of being responsible for a home and its care/maintenance, life in general.  it doesn't really matter why. 

i just hit a place where i said something that i've never said before: "i don't think i can do this anymore."  i didn't mean it in some sort of scary way. i meant "i don't know if i can keep doing what i'm doing every day anymore."

in essence, i was saying i was breaking. 

i think it's been coming for a while, but i've been sticking my proverbial finger in the dam.  it works for a while, but it's not sustainable.  and the looming picture of what's coming up for us: new baby, student teaching, me still responsible for teaching as much as i am now...it's just really frightening to me if this is how things are going right now. 

maggie was, this morning, in pretty rare form. when i step back and see it for what it is, i understand.  she's getting molars, i'm pretty sure, and they are making her quite the grumpster. and it takes her forever and a day to get any tooth, so she's also getting her last front bottom tooth at the same time (the partner cut a few days ago, so i know the other one is on the way).  she's getting over a cold.  she's got some kind of developmental thing happening because her language is exploding and she's determined to climb on anything and everything in sight. this leads to her getting to the one place that was the dumping ground for everything that we didn't want her to get to. oh, and she's striking her naps now too.  so yeah...lots of stuff going on here.

but these things are all easy to see with the tiniest bit of perspective. 

i didn't have even a little bit of that this morning. 

instead, i felt like every single day was a fight. a fight to get her to eat. a fight to get her to sleep. a fight to get myself to feel well enough to cook something. a fight to get myself to feel well enough to do something after she went to bed, something that i am being paid to do.  a fight to try to be kind to those around me, including maggie.  a fight to not feel like an epic failure all of the time.

all that fighting? exhausting.

so today, around regular nap time, maggie and i headed up to her room.  normally, she'll let me rock her and then she'll fuss and want to go in her bed.  sometimes this means she's ready to sleep. sometimes this means she's getting there but isn't quite there. sometimes this means that she's about to jump up and party in her bed.  if it's a nap strike, that's exactly what it means.  i have learned, quick enough, how to read the signs.

but this time? this time she added a new twist. she refused to let me rock her.  like she'd let me but then she would try to twist and arch out of my arms, so hard that she nearly faceplanted on the floor out of my arms.  all of this is going on while it seems like she's so tired--that's the other little frustration gold mine. she always seems like she's exhausted when she does this.

i just...lost it.  it seemed like nothing i did would work, nothing i did was good enough, nothing i did was good.  i know that sounds supremely woe-is-me, but that's where i was at. i burst into tears, pretty well begging her to let me rock her, to let me help her, and it had no effect (other than to make her upset).

so i called my mom.

who told me exactly what i needed to hear, because she's a mom and has magical powers.

she told me that i was doing it, that i was doing a good job.  that all of this worrying about being a total failure was COMPLETELY normal.  that i was doing the work of four people and that no one can just do that indefinitely.  that figuring out which battles to fight--in my case, the constant saying "no" and the getting her out of stuff was the most exasperating--would help a lot.  to not worry about whether or not she eats or sleeps--to put myself first for a little while.

how do they do that? how do they know? i mean, i guess i know maggie better than anybody else, in the sense that i can sometimes tell what's up with her or have a sense of what's up with her before anyone else does.  but really...when do the magical powers start? because i could really use some of those.

in the midst of the nap striking and crying, i was also praying. praying hard. and i thought i got some pretty immediate answers, which were cool.  and mom said a few of them again, which was really cool.  but when i listened--when i did the things that i was being directed to do--it was like the entire day turned around.

my eyes are still puffy, red, and sore, but my attitude is entirely different.  i turned off the netflix and turned on some CDs.  i cleared off the table that seemed so very enchanting to maggie.  i figured out a plan for how to break up tasks during the week.  i made lunch.  she actually ate some (sweet potato fries. i swear the kid is trying to kill me. how to get her to eat fruits and vegetables? i have no idea. but at least they were sweet potato fries and not regular fries and at least she had pears for breakfast.) lunch like a real kid.  she seemed entirely different (i had also given her some tylenol for those teeth) and i did too.

i have no doubt as to why.

i don't think there's a mother out there who doesn't have the power to call in the heavenly forces in her favor when her goal is to do the best for her family. i don't think there is anything more powerful than that prayer of desperation, of rock bottom feeling, of frustration.  i know that i have been infinitely blessed today. i can feel it--it's palpable.  i know that i have too much on my plate, but i know that i will be able to manage it better if i just listen a little bit better. 

i guess i just wanted to write this down, while it's still fresh, because sometimes you just feel like you're not doing a good job. sometimes you feel like, from the outside looking in, everybody else has it together and you're the only one who says no too much and who gets really, really annoyed that no one's listening.  you're the only one who feels like you're not measuring up to the dream you had in your head of the kind of mom you wanted to be.  i think that's really, really not true. i think the deepest truth is that every mom has these moments--probably over and over, in each stage of a child's life--and most moms never talk about them because they are so raw.  so we just sit with it, and with live with it, and we stew in it, and we pray about it, and we hope that we can find our way out of it.

and i think most of us do because we reach out, even just a little bit, and feel a Guiding Hand helping us through.  and He leads others into our path who say something amazing, or who are just there when we need them.  and He makes sure that we are known and He makes sure that we know that we are loved. 

but i just wanted to say, that if there's another mom out there who is feeling this way, you're not alone and you're entirely normal.

being a mom is the hardest job ever. it never ends, it never stops, and it never ceases to strip you bare and rebuild you again.  that's hard stuff to endure, and the minutia of it can seem unyielding and eternal.  i'm going to try to not get bogged down in that stuff so much anymore, or when i feel myself doing so, to remind myself of this day and how quickly a little bit of perspective can turn things around.

and how calling your mom can really work miracles.

and how a few sweet potato fries and an afternoon nap and a half dose of tylenol can make anybody's day a little bit better. 

hang in there, everyone.  we're going to make it.

i am grateful for the 30 minutes maggie gave me to write this.

apparently, all you have to do to get rid of morning sickness is to whine stream of consciousness style about it on your neglected blog.

about 15 minutes after i posted that, i guess i hit some sort of magical window (more than likely 13 weeks) wherein the epic nausea went away, replaced in favor of looking really fat (not yet pregnant, but definitely with what looks like an impressively earned muffin top--i don't know...) and feeling pretty achy and tired.  cue growth spurt, i suppose.

i am grateful.

maggie and i are sick again, which is SO annoying because we went 9 months with no sick, but daddy brought it home from the stupid music building, where apparently everyone just passes around the illness. mr. superimmunesystem succumbed himself, though not much, though when he gets sick i know it's going to be twice as bad for us mere mortals. 

so far, i'm not wrong.  maggie with a cough = she just gives up on sleeping by herself. i can't fault her. most of the time when i cough myself awake, i give up on sleeping too--and i have the benefit of pharmaceutical intervention, even while pregnant.  WHY CAN'T THEY COME UP WITH SOMETHING TO HELP BABY COLDS?!? i don't want them to ruin livers or anything, but come on. it's no wonder kids get like 3 colds in their first year or whatever the average is.  they never can bounce back fast enough to fight off the next one! poor kids.

so i don't know if maggie is trying to test my resolve, or if she's actually working on getting rid of her morning nap.  today was the third time, maybe fourth (though not in a row, i must add), that she has absolutely refused to go to sleep, preferring instead to party downstairs with her sick mom.  (party, here, being an entirely relative term, i hope you know.) she's a sneeze away from 11 months, which is pretty early for this, but she also crawled at 5.5 months, walked at 9, and is probably going to write her dissertation in molecular biology about the time that i was whining over geometry, so i shouldn't be surprised. 

part of my curiosity about it is entirely selfish. i don't think there is anything more frustrating that a kid who is basically asleep when you rock them, then up and partying in the crib.  feed them? same thing.  nap strikes are frustrating, so part of me wonders if it's just better for everyone to just decide that we're taking one nap and not two. i won't pull the trigger yet, but it's on the horizon. i've heard (i should really stop listening) that it's good to wait until they are consistently striking that first nap, but no one seems to have a definition for what "consistently" is. my kid is a crappy sleeper anyways, so i'm not sure it will really matter. 

i think i'm just deciding, little by little, that she's a big kid. like able to eat people food, go to the park, play with other kids, wander the halls of church with me tagging along behind her, take one nap, understand me when we have deep conversations big kid.  it's kind of cool. it's sort of amazing how she responds when i look into her eyes and tell her what's up.  she was fighting the 1 nap at 12ish today and i just looked into her eyes and said "i'm not holding you. you're feeling better. you can go into your bed. your bed is wonderful and comfortable. it's where you need to be."  and heaven bless her if she wasn't drowsy 2 minutes later and willing to go down in her bed right away. 

i don't get it. it's a weird sort of thing.  you would think that i would learn, then, that speaking to her rationally is what works instead of getting frustrated and being all "why won't you EAAAAATTTTTT?"  but no.

i blame this on what i have been thinking about for a while but finally crystallized in my mind when i was talking to my mom the other day on the phone. i am in total survival mode these days.  you know the drill--when you are operating on just what you have, with no real reserves because those get depleted when something else comes along (i.e. you get sick, your baby gets sick, you have a major deadline at work, your oven breaks, whatever).  periodically, you'll get your head above water and start renewing those reserves, but because of how much there is going on and pulling at you, you are never really able to renew them enough to REALLY renew them. 

i don't know if this makes sense to anyone else, but it makes perfect sense to me and it really helps me understand why things bother me now that never would have rankled me so much before.  things that aren't really any different now (though perhaps manifesting themselves in different ways) are just sending me into orbit sometimes. i know, when i can get the tiniest bit of distance, that it's me. i know that, in previous months/years/incarnations of me, i could have easily come up with some way to handle such situations with grace (or at least more grace).  but now?

i just have nothing.

everything i've got, every bit of introspective energy, is spent in trying to improve me in the right now: how can i increase my spirituality, even just a little bit, so that i make sure that i'm not leaving that by the wayside in the midst of the crazy of my daily life? how can i improve and streamline how things work around here so that they don't feel quite so overwhelming? how can i work diligently on work while also giving myself enough time to sleep and recover from my 14 hour days with the magpie? how can i make sure that i am connecting with and loving my husband the way he deserves? how can i increase my patience with my baby, who is growing so fast and is so exasperating sometimes.

(she eats books. it makes me nuts. everyone else might be zen about it. i AM A BOOK PERSON. it makes me nuts. i need to let it go. also, she's so tall that there is really no place that is safe from her. the dining room table really isn't anymore, unless something is in the middle.  also...i swear sometimes she knows when i'm saying no and just does stuff to see what will happen.  gah.)

these are the things that cause me to think, to ponder, to try to be better.

and once those are done, that's it. that's all i've got. i don't have the energy, literally, to consider anything else. 

maybe that's a bad thing. but i can't see how it could be, since it's reality for right now. and when i realize that, which it has taken me a long time to do (and before i did, i would beat myself up for not being able to do more, to think more, to contemplate more, to not be the me i was 3 years ago or the me i was even 1 year ago), i think that it's actually pretty dang extraordinary that i can still laugh, that i can still try to make every day pretty good, that i can still try at all.  in the midst of all of this really hard stuff, i can still be me.

that's pretty amazing.

but i am REALLY looking forward to the light that i see at the end of this tunnel, when my darling husband gets a job and i am not the only one responsible for working.  he's excited too, for lots of reasons, but one of them is, i am sure, that he gets to take some of the burden off of me because that's the kind of guy he is.

(i won the lottery with him. i really did.)

but until then, survival mode is where it's at.  and, for better or worse, it's what i can do.

that's good to know, really.  that's not to say i won't keep trying to make survival mode a bit better every day, but...it's nice to know that sometimes your best really is your best, even when it's not the best that would have been your best in previous times.

enough rambling.  that's where my head is at. 

pregnancy 2: ain't nothin' like it used to be.

i'm dying.

or most of the day it feels more like i'm dying than creating life (totally stole that from a babycenter comment, because it felt like truth). 

if i could stop eating, i would gladly do so. i would gladly just drink those disgusting chalky shakes three times a day that are supposed to keep old people from withering away or the kid ones that are supposed to replace the gaps in their nutritional sphere if it meant i never again had to think about what to eat, what might not sound disgusting, what i SHOULD eat versus what sounds remotely palatable, or had to deal with the inevitable consequences.

and i don't even throw up. so i don't even have that to deal with.

i just, with this pregnancy, have the most oppressive, long-lasting nausea i have ever experienced in my entire life.  i got pretty sick before i had my gallbladder removed. i think this is worse, though i remember the only thing i ever wanted to eat then was blueberry bagels and apple juice (both of which don't sound terrible now).  so maybe it's about the same. but at least then i could still go to school, make cogent and logical arguments, do my work.

right now all i want to do is sit around and moan.

not a viable option when you have a highly active (walking, getting ready to run, perhaps, climbing) 10 month old.  and a job. or a series of a jobs. and a house that doesn't clean itself.

but seriously.

SERIOUSLY.

when does it end?

like i'm praying for the 2nd trimester. in all earnestness. i don't even know what week i am. i think i'm in week 11 or 12. ISN'T THAT WHEN IT'S SUPPOSED TO END?

i'm sorry to whine. i know that my troubles are nothing in the grand scheme of things. i know that feeling moderately guilty for only wanting to eat corn chips dipped in plain sour cream is a totally first world problem.  i get that i am blessed. i totally get it.

but when you feel like you've been run over by the disgusting train for 12 hours a day (okay, maybe 10.  but seriously. it starts about noon and doesn't end until 10 or 11 at night), you maybe sort of enter the woe-is-me land. 

and then i had a stomach bug on top of it this weekend.

seriously. I'M NOT EVEN JOKING.

sometimes i just think Heavenly Father really has a whacked out idea of what i can handle.  but then i realize that, crappily as i might be doing it, i am handling it.

so maybe He knows what's going on after all.

this pregnancy is nothing like the last one. of course, i didn't have the 10 month old last time and i had the luxury of napping through the worst of the nausea (which has always, for me, been the best way to deal).  i get two naps a day if i'm lucky with maggie. she doesn't mind sleeping with me, and we at least sleep together for the morning nap. that usually gets me through. sometimes, if i'm entirely thrashed, i crash with her for the second one.

but mainly i spend the afternoon praying that my husband gets home soon so that i don't have to be jumping off the couch baby alert all the time and can lay down. or just moan in peace.

man. i'm a downer.

but this is straight up nausea-induced stream of consciousness stuff here.  gold, i tell you. gold. someday i'm going to look back and tell myself to suck it up, you whiny git.  that'll be a good day.

or else i'll look back and say "oh yeah. that was RIGHT BEFORE it all got better." (i hope. i hope. i hope forever and ever.)

this pregnancy is nothing like the other one.  which means either it's a boy or a girl who hates me.

either way, i'm in for it. 

back to grading things i couldn't possibly care less about. 

(you all totally want to hang out with me, don't you? i am a LAUGH RIOT.)

good grief.

there's so much to say.

new baby coming. edd: september 1st (and i totally called that due date, too).

i'm exhausted and stressed.

maggie is all kinds of developing. walking. nearly talking (she has her own language that makes me laugh. i'm constantly asking her "what does that MEAN?!?").  throwing hissy fits when she doesn't get her way. incredibly cuddly.  adorable and fun.  exhausting. 

my husband is amazing. i am in awe of him. he just...is wonderful. and the most wonderful thing about him, right now to me, is that he sees me exactly the way he's always seen me. the fact that my hair is greasy or that i haven't gotten out of my pajama pants all day or that i shower at odd times when it's an option or that i spend most of my evenings in front of a computer grading things or that i am just struggling and it shows in grumpiness or tiredness or just overwhelmingness...none of this seems to phase him.  we talked a lot on sunday. i am so grateful for him and for the priesthood that he holds. he is so wise.  and he does all he can for me. i think for a long time i tried to be superwoman and do everything myself.  especially since i've been pregnant, that just has gone by the wayside. i really just can't do it all myself and some recent events have taught me that putting everyone and everything ahead of me is actually one of the worst ways to try and take care of my family.  i never really understood that until recently. now i really do.

i'm sorry the blog is so silent, but i really don't have much screen time that's not full of random 2 minute facebooking or grading.  but i'll try to keep you up to date as much as i can. 

someday, i have faith that i will get it all together.  i'm not sure when that will be, but...it will be a someday. and that someday will be a good day.

in the meantime, i'm trying to make all the days inbetween good ones too. i have variable success.

today, however, was a hard but ultimately good day.  that's a good feeling, when you can fight through the bottle refusals and the hissy fits, cry some tears of frustration and think that Heavenly Father must REALLY THINK YOU'RE REALLY VERY CAPABLE OF LOTS OF THINGS, get things done and look forward to the next day's challenges. 

that's, i think, the definition of any mother's good day.

(don't ask me about the toys strewn all over the living room or the dishes in the sink or the laundry piled up in the corners of rooms. i have no comment about those. someday.)

steadfast and immovable.

[if you subscribe to my old defunct but now being resuscitated health/fitness blog, you know this got posted somewhere else. all i can blame is sleep deprivation. oyvey.]

so maggie continues to dally in the dark land of 9 month sleep regression/separation anxiety/co-sleeping and her mom continues to pray earnestly to figure out what the heck is going on with her.

at first, her nights went to heck in a handbasket but her naps were amazing. they had finally lengthened, we were down to 2, and her total was about 2 hours for both (so one was usually 1.25 hours and the other was 45 minutes). she'd wake up happy and chattery.  she was doing fine.

now we're back to supercrappy naps, many of which this week have been less than 45 minutes. she wakes up REALLY annoyed. if i let her, she will fall back to sleep in my arms. yesterday, she slept another hour plus. something is obviously stopping her from sleeping. do i know what it is? no. but the sharp protrusion in her back left top gum makes me think maybe it's a molar.

(really? REALLY?)

REGARDLESS.

(because while i would like The Answer to all of her sleep issues, i really understand that i am never going to find it.)

i have been praying.

in the midst of this, maggie got her first cold.  this is part of the reason why i entirely missed her 9 monthday on this blog and in real life.  sad, but true. so one night, a week or so ago, she was just not having anything to do with her bed. she was uncomfortable, congested, and just one big unhappy camper.  i was laying in bed with her, trying to find a position in which she'd stay comfortable and not screechy, and i was praying. i was praying hard. i was asking what we should do. i was asking if what we were doing was right. i was asking for help. i routinely beg for her to sleep, but these were different types of pleas.

i was at my wits end, to be honest, not knowing what else i could do and feeling like maybe we were entirely screwing her up (anxiety about sleep and sleep habits = this generation's freak out soup du jour). 

now if you asked me if you could really screw a kid up by doing what is necessary to get everybody (including said child) the best and most sleep possible, i would probably say no unless it involved drugging the kid or not giving that child the opportunity to sleep (i.e. keeping the kid up too late, not doing naps, not having a routine, etc.).  but if you're just trying to deal with what life has suckerpunched you with? no.

why do i think this? because somewhere down deep, despite the stupid chaos in my brain from everything i've ever read about sleep, i know that all kids learn to sleep. some kids are better sleepers than others. some kids are prone to nightmares. some kids sleep like the dead. some kids don't sleep the long stretches that they are "supposed to" but end up being 2 grades ahead of everybody in algebra.  whatever.  kids are kids and sleeping is a biological impulse, but it's also developmental. so...every kid learns how to sleep at some point.  and my guess? they do a lot of it themselves.

i think a lot of parents do something to help it along, but every kid is different and every situation is different. so, having assessed our situation, we have figured that what we're doing is what's right for our family for right now.  that said, i still wonder. i still doubt. in fact, i would say i am fairly well plagued with doubts at some points in our journey. 

so this was one of those nights. doubts, they were all over me. 

so i prayed.

and the answer i got was to be steadfast and immovable.

so i thought i knew what that meant. i thought it meant that i should have confidence in the answers that we have been given and in the things that we have decided to do. even in the hard times, i thought that meant that i should not waver.

tonight, as i was considering a very specific question about bedtimes (i've been wavering all over the map with this, hoping that at some point i would hit some magic time that would make her sleep for more than she is in a stretch), the same answer came: steadfast and immovable.

and i think i learned something profound.

answers to prayers are all-encompassing. and we learn about the nature of them as we continue to ponder and try to understand them.

i also learned that Heavenly Father is entirely invested in our success as parents. even when he gives us just what we need, not necessarily what we want, He is investing in our success. if He gave us everything, if He took away the tough stuff, how would we learn? while i understand this sometimes, it doesn't make it easier.

but in moments like tonight, when i was rocking in the dark and praying quietly, i realize that there's really so much more going on than we can ever understand.  yes, i would like maggie to sleep through the night again. yes, i would like that to happen sooner rather than later. but i also understand that she's on her own journey. she's doing what she's doing. maybe she's getting a tooth. maybe she's going to walk tomorrow. maybe she's still recovering from a nasty cold (her mommy is!).  maybe she's just more comfortable with us than without us.

it doesn't really matter.

all that matters is that we're doing our best to stay steady for her.  that we're showing her that she's safe, loved, and that all is well.  that no matter what happens, some things are constant.

we'll get through it. and in the moments when i think we won't, i have confirmation that we are known and loved.  that helps more than i can say.