Amen.

***I’m married to somebody that gets it and today I’ve been home alone all day. I didn’t even ask for this. But, boy, I’ve needed it. I’ve spent majority of the time writing blog posts that’ll post in the coming week, and editing photos. And it has been glorious. So glorious. I made the bed and started to to other housework, but then I promptly came back to edit my pictures. I really miss that creative outlet and today was a fantastic gift of TIME. If you haven’t yet, check out Annie Flavin’s poems. Thanks to Kelle Hampton’s blog for pointing me in her direction. And thanks to my hunky husband for giving me an entire day of being alone. I love you, but you already know that.***

A Gift Idea for Mother’s Day for Mothers of Young Kids

by Annie Flavin

MAY 10, 2014

No need for flowers
or breakfast in bed;
a handmade card will do.

What I want most of all
is for this day
to be different
than tomorrow.

I want the children dressed,
listened to,
fed,
and entertained
by someone
other than me.

I want the house tidied,
the toys put away,
the dishes done,
the food prepared,
the groceries shopped,
the linens changed,
the crumbs wiped –
and the butts, too –
by someone
other than me.

I don’t want
to buckle a car seat
and to rush someplace
that no one cares to be.

This Mother’s Day
I’d like to remember
that I am a mother,
but more,
that I am a person.
Will you help me with that?

I know that we have mothers to celebrate and thank:
my mother, your mother,
dead mothers, grandmothers, godmothers,
mothers who aren’t biologically our mothers,
but who are mothers to us, nonetheless.
Could we plan for them
on a different day?
Or, if it’s being with our kids that they’d like,
tell them that our kids
will be here with shoes and coats
at the ready
waiting to be taken
for a walk
or to the park
or for a bike ride.
They don’t sit long enough
for church
and brunch
and a play,
which means I wouldn’t be sitting
for any of that either.

Let me go to the bookstore
or the coffee shop
alone.
Let me look for a pair of pants
that fit
without having to chase a child
back into the dressing room.
Let me take a bath
and wash my hair
without playing
peek-a-boo
with a dripping wet shower curtain.

I love all that being a mother has given me,
but what I’d like most of all
for today
is to be a person.

If I could have that today,
then tomorrow –
or tonight, in the middle of the night –
I can come back refreshed
as a mother.

March 4, 2014

Faster Isn’t Always Better

I’ve found that I use the phrase “and we’ll go really fast” or “we’ll do it quickly” often and Maggie has started to tell me to ‘take my time’ and not rush. Rushing, no matter if intentional or not, is part of having a family, especially when the kids are young. Today I took Sydney and Audrey for a walk after I dropped Maggie off at school. It was rainy and enjoyable, once the Pug decided that she was fine tromping through the puddles. Audrey and I made it back home for a bit of time, where I finally got the clue that she wanted to play and I needed to stop doing things around the house. She loves to roll the ball back and forth and this morning we got two going at once.

Since Audgie and I spent time playing, it means that I didn’t finish cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast (pancakes!!), start the laundry, make the beds, go to the grocery store,blah, blah, blah. And I feel guilty for not having a tidy house, but I feel more guilty for not spending quality time with my kids. I can’t win and so when I don’t get things done, I start to play the ‘we’ll do it all really quick’ game in my head. And it takes my precious, worldly, smart almost-four-year-old to remind me to slow down.

After I picked Maggie up, I started to tell her that we needed to stop by a couple stores (see above about playing with Audrey) and that’d we be ‘real quick’ and then head home for lunch. I didn’t even realize I was feeling pressure and stress about not being caught up. So, from the back seat, Maggie tells me “Mama, we don’t need to be quick. We can take our time….”

And she is right.

Lesson learned.

For that moment.

We went to the store and took our time. Mags rode standing up and holding on and we played our standard “Anchor Up” game. We started at the lobsters, oohhed and ahheeed at the crackers and loaded into the car when we were all done. By the time we pulled into our driveway, I could hear the dialogue in my head telling myself that I’d be “real quick” about pulling up the recycle bin, unloading the groceries, and whatever else before I started to make lunch.

It wasn’t until I had lunch in front of both the girls and Maggie and I were talking about the rain that I really felt myself slow down, calm down and enjoy the time. I’m up for the challenge of truly taking my time, but boy…..it’s going to be a hard lesson to learn.

(As always, a sprinkling of photos from recent weeks.)

3g great grandpa maggie audrey sue birthday audrey-2

October 11, 2013

Like Magic

audrey bell-2 — Audrey Bell doing the double wave.

C.Jane, a blogger that I read from time to time, recently posed the question via her Twitter about the life of a Stay at Home Mother (SAHM) and if what we see on blogs, Pintrest, Instagram, Facebook, etc. is a true representation of the ‘career choice.’ First, I’ve never looked at choosing to be home right now as a career choice, but I realized that I do consider raising the girls a ‘job’. So, I guess right now my career is being at home.

I never knew that I wanted to stay home and be a mother until I had Maggie, and in the last 3.5 years, I have learned more about myself, my marriage, my friends, my life-choices, how I spend/value my time than I had in my previous 30 years. Adding a second, totally awesome, baby into the mix has brought me back to the basics of why I’m choosing to be home right now. Since Audrey was born, nearly 9 months ago, time has flown by at supersonic speeed. She’s about two-shakes away from crawling and just a couple days ago she started to wave. She’s been clapping for a couple weeks now. It’s the sweetest thing, especially when she busts out a wave and then claps for herself, as if she’s congratulating herself on the wave. These moments are why I feel lucky to be home. It isn’t about my latest craft project or how clean my house is, it’s about being a mom and being present.

But I digress, when I saw the series of tweets come through my feed, I had an immediate reaction of ‘Of course not!’ and then I realized that I’m guilty of writing/posting about the happy/easy/joy-filled times more than the ‘what the hell has happened to my life’ times.

I would never say that this mothering job is easy. Without a doubting bone in my body, it is the hardest, most challenging job I’ve ever had. It has brought me worry, dread, tears, and made those same non-doubting bones….bone tired. But it is also the most rewarding, thrilling, nerve-wrecking, humbling, and honest job I have ever had. Most importantly, it is also the job where I have experienced the most love (and I know this because as a first grade teacher, I got a whole ton of love from my students!).

I hardly ever want to share a picture of my messy house, crying kids or frazzled look. I’d much rather share a picture of us doing life in a way that is worth remembering. We’ve all got dirty laundry (and dishes) and nobody is ever going to forget that. The people that inspire me, other mothers, friends, writers, photographers, my family, are the ones that know how to say ‘ My God, this is hard, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.’

Does the image of the stay at home mother need to be correctly reflected by what we see in social media? At first I thought that we, the mothers staying home, need to be more real and share what it’s like, being in these trenches. But then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we do share and anybody that makes claims about the day-to-day life of raising children being easy, well, I’d like to know what their secret is.