One Year
I promise, I'll get the Cousin Camp entries up soon....but, things keep popping up like this:
I realized on Wednesday that I have been home with the girls for a full year now. On some days, it seems as if time has moved incredibly slowly, but for the most part, the year has flown by. My sister told me last week that she heard somewhere that the days are long, but the years are short when you have young children. I think that probably sums it up best. I've learned a lot in this last year....
The first few months that I was home with the girls were really difficult, mostly because my expectations were just too high. I thought I would be able to do all of these things with the girls and still have time to make dinner from scratch, keep the house spotless, work on my own long list of craft projects, and still manage to work from home 20 hours a week. I was, to put it bluntly, an idiot. The only way I could have accomplished even 1/3 of everything I wanted to do was to forgo sleep. And for about six weeks there, I pretty much did that. I was going to bed around midnight and getting back up by 4:00 a.m. I was working on some coursework for some classes that I teach and was under a deadline and the only way I could manage was to work when the girls were asleep. I met my deadline, but I don't think I was a very good mommy during that time - it was just crazy....
I tried for the first two months to keep the house as clean as possible. I remember thinking before I quit: Steve and I spend about three hours a week keeping the house clean now, so I should be able to find that time during the week. Ummmm, what I forgot to factor in was that we were probably only spending about 20 waking hours a week at home and evidently, what I didn't know was that for ever hour that a toddler and preschooler are at home, you need to spend an hour and ten minutes cleaning up behind them. You do the math...it's impossible. It took me a good six months to realize that I was fighting a losing battle. Now, our house is pretty much a disaster area, but I'm a lot more sane.
I spend a ridiculous amount of time in the bathroom. No, I haven't developed some kind of strange stomach ailment (although, there are times when I'm sure that my future holds at least one ulcer - between Abigail falling out of the stroller and swimming in the toilet and Gracie asking, at least once a day, when she will be old enough to fly to China on a plane by herself, I'm thinking it's probably a foregone conclusion
)No, my frequent bathroom trips have more to do with Abigail starting to potty train and Gracie having some kind of obsession with my makeup and my jewelry. There are days when I feel like I should just take a chair into the bathroom and camp out.
There are days when I don't want to do this, days when I do not want to be a stay at home mom. Heck, there are days I don't want to be a wife or a mother at all. I want to be 25 again and accountable to no one but myself. I used to feel extremely guilty about this and I used to think, whenever I felt this way, that I should just quit and go back to work...but when I sat down and was completely honest with myself, I remembered that there were days I didn't want to get up and got to work as a computer programmer either. Just because you genuinely love a job, doesn't mean you have to love it every day. The important thing is that you do it every day - you don't quit just because you have a bad day. Once I quit beating myself up for the bad days, they seemed to happen less frequently. Now, don't think I'm being Pollyannaish here, I still have days where I totally suck as mommy - on Friday, I shrieked at Gracie because she wouldn't make her mind up about how she wanted her hair done. As she went on and on about how the bow needed to be below her ears but above her neck, I could feel my head getting read to spin around. And the day that I got upset with both of them and threw all of their dresses on the floor in their bedroom is now legendary around here. But, those days are a lot more infrequent than they were eight months ago.
I think perhaps the most important thing I've learned this last year between play dates and trips and too many craft days to count is something that I didn't realize until last week when Gracie, Abigail, and I were sitting on the sidewalk in front of the Circle K eating ice cream sandwiches. The most valuable lesson that I have learned this year is this: parenting is not a spectator sport. I'm guilty, too often, of distancing myself from the girls, of leaving them to play while I clean the kitchen or cook dinner or check my email. Or of watching them play in the backyard while I make long lists in my head or even take pictures of them playing. I realized sitting there on that hot concrete, licking the melting ice cream off of my own ice cream sandwich that the very best days that the girls and I have are when I really make an effort be engaged with them, to actually play with them instead of watching them play, to sit down on the floor with them, and become a part of their world, instead of being a casual observer of it. Now, if I could only remember this more often
Here are the girls on their last day of daycare last year:
And, here they are, a year later:
Headed into orientation at their preschool on Friday
I can not believe how much they've changed in 365 short days.....And I can't believe how much I've learned in those same 365 days....
I realized on Wednesday that I have been home with the girls for a full year now. On some days, it seems as if time has moved incredibly slowly, but for the most part, the year has flown by. My sister told me last week that she heard somewhere that the days are long, but the years are short when you have young children. I think that probably sums it up best. I've learned a lot in this last year....
The first few months that I was home with the girls were really difficult, mostly because my expectations were just too high. I thought I would be able to do all of these things with the girls and still have time to make dinner from scratch, keep the house spotless, work on my own long list of craft projects, and still manage to work from home 20 hours a week. I was, to put it bluntly, an idiot. The only way I could have accomplished even 1/3 of everything I wanted to do was to forgo sleep. And for about six weeks there, I pretty much did that. I was going to bed around midnight and getting back up by 4:00 a.m. I was working on some coursework for some classes that I teach and was under a deadline and the only way I could manage was to work when the girls were asleep. I met my deadline, but I don't think I was a very good mommy during that time - it was just crazy....
I tried for the first two months to keep the house as clean as possible. I remember thinking before I quit: Steve and I spend about three hours a week keeping the house clean now, so I should be able to find that time during the week. Ummmm, what I forgot to factor in was that we were probably only spending about 20 waking hours a week at home and evidently, what I didn't know was that for ever hour that a toddler and preschooler are at home, you need to spend an hour and ten minutes cleaning up behind them. You do the math...it's impossible. It took me a good six months to realize that I was fighting a losing battle. Now, our house is pretty much a disaster area, but I'm a lot more sane.
I spend a ridiculous amount of time in the bathroom. No, I haven't developed some kind of strange stomach ailment (although, there are times when I'm sure that my future holds at least one ulcer - between Abigail falling out of the stroller and swimming in the toilet and Gracie asking, at least once a day, when she will be old enough to fly to China on a plane by herself, I'm thinking it's probably a foregone conclusion
)No, my frequent bathroom trips have more to do with Abigail starting to potty train and Gracie having some kind of obsession with my makeup and my jewelry. There are days when I feel like I should just take a chair into the bathroom and camp out.There are days when I don't want to do this, days when I do not want to be a stay at home mom. Heck, there are days I don't want to be a wife or a mother at all. I want to be 25 again and accountable to no one but myself. I used to feel extremely guilty about this and I used to think, whenever I felt this way, that I should just quit and go back to work...but when I sat down and was completely honest with myself, I remembered that there were days I didn't want to get up and got to work as a computer programmer either. Just because you genuinely love a job, doesn't mean you have to love it every day. The important thing is that you do it every day - you don't quit just because you have a bad day. Once I quit beating myself up for the bad days, they seemed to happen less frequently. Now, don't think I'm being Pollyannaish here, I still have days where I totally suck as mommy - on Friday, I shrieked at Gracie because she wouldn't make her mind up about how she wanted her hair done. As she went on and on about how the bow needed to be below her ears but above her neck, I could feel my head getting read to spin around. And the day that I got upset with both of them and threw all of their dresses on the floor in their bedroom is now legendary around here. But, those days are a lot more infrequent than they were eight months ago.
I think perhaps the most important thing I've learned this last year between play dates and trips and too many craft days to count is something that I didn't realize until last week when Gracie, Abigail, and I were sitting on the sidewalk in front of the Circle K eating ice cream sandwiches. The most valuable lesson that I have learned this year is this: parenting is not a spectator sport. I'm guilty, too often, of distancing myself from the girls, of leaving them to play while I clean the kitchen or cook dinner or check my email. Or of watching them play in the backyard while I make long lists in my head or even take pictures of them playing. I realized sitting there on that hot concrete, licking the melting ice cream off of my own ice cream sandwich that the very best days that the girls and I have are when I really make an effort be engaged with them, to actually play with them instead of watching them play, to sit down on the floor with them, and become a part of their world, instead of being a casual observer of it. Now, if I could only remember this more often
Here are the girls on their last day of daycare last year:
And, here they are, a year later:
Headed into orientation at their preschool on Friday
I can not believe how much they've changed in 365 short days.....And I can't believe how much I've learned in those same 365 days....
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