We're in a series of Dark days around here, friends. Remember last month when Ella was surviving on Canned Tomato pasta based food? Those days are long gone. If it is set before her, it is almost immediately picked up and thrown into the floor beside her chair. I'm at my wit's end. WIT'S END. I suppose I should be grateful, because I know some mothers dream of a fruit and veggie based diet for their children, but I would be thrilled to see some protein make its way into ours. She will not touch chicken. Absolutely refuses it or any other feathered friend. She will not eat beef. She will not eat beans. And I'm just kind of in a place that I stare at her while she slurps back another cucumber and think to myself, "How did I get here?" Sometimes the four walls of our sweet little house feel like a posh little prison, and the guilt trip that accompanies those feelings is even funner to deal with. I know how blessed and fortunate I am to stay home with our babies. I wouldn't trade it for the entire world, but man is it overbearing sometimes. Sometimes I would give just about anything in the world to do things on my own time. A shower that doesn't involve peek-a-boo. A cup of coffee that doesn't require reheating. Exercising my bowels without a guest. Cleaning a kitchen without somebody taking dishes out of the dishwasher, or putting my cleaning supplies in the pantry. Eating lunch whenever I feel like it, instead of looking up at the clock at 2:30 and thinking "Oh wow! I fed Ella but forgot to eat during the battle!" Are there simple solutions to some of these? Yes. I could make it a habit to make my lunch first, then Ella's. I could be okay with her sitting my lap eating her lunch while stealing bites of mine... but I feel like you get the gist. It's like sometimes I'm stuck in this unpredictable monotony. What an oxymoron, but it's true! We never live the same day twice, we never have the same schedule twice. Sometimes I think that if I could just get her to take a nap at the same time everyday, I might be able to have just a tiny part of my day to look forward to that I don't have to share. But, we're not there yet. So sometimes I take a nap with Ella, because pregnant, and other days I gobble down lunch and rush through whatever chore is deemed most important that day. We do the same things every single day, but never at the same times. Unpredictable monotony. Somedays, I miss the financial freedom that my paycheck provided. I miss eating out for fun instead of date night, and maybe even just not checking the bank before buying something. These are the facts. These are the woes of a stay at home mom. These are the hormones of a pregnant woman running on very low fumes. This is a simple rant that I cry through once every couple of months. But right now, at this very second, Ella just walked up to me and said "Hi, Mama! Juice!" and started playing peek-a-boo through her cup. And I laughed out loud and picked her up and kissed her cheeto face without thinking twice about it. These are the days that will drag on until they're over and I'm left reeling through what just happened. I celebrate my daughter's life, and I celebrate the life of the baby growing in my belly, wiggling in annoyance at my current sitting position. I am so thankful to be the one she brings her juice cup to, and to be the one that my next baby will grin at every morning. I would love to have my paycheck back, but I would choose my babies over any other convenience in this universe. Someday I'll go back to work, but until then, I will sing Frozen at the top of my lungs and imagine the crowd cheer when I accept my Tony Award for Outstanding Female Vocalist in the Broadway adaptation of the film, where I would wear makeup that cost more than whatever was on sale at HEB, and have hair that doesn't have another human's snot in it. I would throw my money up in the air carelessly and find a random SAHM and say "Hey, I've been where you are." And throw a roll of 100's at her....
Whew, you lost me there for a second. This imagination gets worse as I teach Ella how to use hers. Dark days are a part of the gig. Some days I text pictures and videos to my family every two minutes because she's so precious I can't stand it. And other times I get a text that says "Um, we haven't seen a picture of Ella in three days..." And I have to reply with a picture of her crying hysterically over something that I'll never understand. These pregnant hormones don't help ANYBODY. It would be the world's largest understatement for me to say that I'm emotional this pregnancy. With Ella, I had my days, and I had a temper. This pregnancy, I'm known to cry at just about anything. Disney movies, country songs, "Remember the Titans," and most any Matt Redman lyric come to mind. And that's on a good day. Right now, at this phase of my pregnancy, tears are my way of communicating. When I hit my daily limit with Ella, I cry with her. When I get that crazy baby to close her eyes for the night, I cry in my recliner because the day is done and I'm happy that it's almost time for me to sleep. When my husband brings me a rose from the bush outside, I cry. When my dinner doesn't taste the way I thought it would, I cry. Tears are kind of becoming a new language for me, because sometimes they just fall for no reason at all. I've hit a few walls this month, one involving calling my sweet husband and saying "If you don't come and get her right now I'm going to lose my mind. This is not *voice breaks* a joke! I can *sob* not deal with her another *sob* second!" And that wonderful man came and got her. And I turned off all of the lights in the house and curled up in my recliner and watched "Gilmore Girls." After I cried through the guilt trip I gave myself. Hormones. Hormones all around.
It's not all bad. It's really not, but sometimes we go through phases as mothers where we kind of throw our hands up in the air and say "DONE! I am DONE." And prepare to live a life of having "that" child because every ounce of good qualities that you're trying to teach them are seemingly giant wasted efforts. It is so, so hard to throw every fiber of your being into something and fail to see the results of your time. And that's not just motherhood... I think we all encounter something in our lives that is so much bigger than what we feel capable of. But I also think that those are the things that send us running to Jesus friends. For the tear filled prayers of "I am absolutely failing. I don't have anything left to give this child without making her my identity." Those are the days that I look back on journals and count how many times I've written "YOU ARE ENOUGH!" in giant, bold letters. Hint: It's a lot. It's also hard for me to remember sometimes that she's fifteen months old. She doesn't know any better. She can't communicate her needs with me in the way that I expect her to, so I can only imagine the frustration she must feel. She thinks that she's so much older and bigger than she really is, and I think it'll probably be a battle that we fight until she's eighteen years old. I know that because she gets it from me. It's a trait that was at the root of every "major" fight I had with my parents. "Ya pay fer yer raisin'!" Blah Blah Blah.
All of these little things become very big things in my pregnant mind, thanks to the baby growing in my belly. This baby is the easiest and hardest part of my life right now. It is a baby that moves with a fury I didn't know babies were capable of this early. It wakes me up out of a dead sleep, which never ever happened with Ella. There are so many similarities between the two of them, but it's absolutely true that every pregnancy is different. I've said it before, I think, but I'll repeat that I'm so thankful I didn't have this pregnancy first. I would have been a baby making machine, and a pregnancy like Ella's would have absolutely wrecked my world, especially if I had to chase a fifteen month old around. Our Anatomy scan went wonderfully, baby measured right on time, but weighed several ounces more than expected... Which is great, because I love dimply fat baby thighs. The tech made a remark about giant marshmallow cheeks, which made me so happy, because Cody had the sweetest puffy cheeks as a baby. Ella had big cheeks, but I so hope this one is a "fat" newborn. She was so scrawny and tiny that I couldn't find any clothes that fit for the first month of her life. Preemie was too small, Newborn was too big. It was so frustrating for me as a mom with a closet full of sweet baby dresses. Which I now have to find homes for. Wah.
I think that sums most of the last month up! We're tired, and might cross the finish line on fumes, but we're gonna get there. The holiday season is creeping up quick, so I know the rest of this pregnancy is going to zoom by! Here's a bump picture from 20 weeks!
