Showing posts with label failure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label failure. Show all posts

Sleepless.

My sweet, totally precious little baby girl will not sleep. It seems to me as if there was a time when she did sleep. But I could be making that up. I mean, it's been so long since I slept like a regular person, I'm sometimes not sure what I'm remembering and what is wishful, wishful day-dreaming.

This moment, the smallest person in our family is lying flat on her face in her crib screaming the way I'd imagine I myself might scream if someone was trying to cut off my leg. She has been screaming like this for the last twenty-two minutes, save a brief respite during which I stupidly entered her room to make sure she wasn't stuck in the crib bars or that the ceiling hadn't fallen in on her or or that a giant sheepdog hadn't broken in through her window or that some other catastrophic even hadn't taken place while I was making the afternoon coffee that I need to stay awake for the rest of the day. It's a need, by the way, driven by last night's {this morning's} "feed-me-mama-I-need-you-party" that began sometime around 3 a.m. and lasted through until roughly seven-thirty. And what time did that sweet little bundle go to sleep you might ask? Just about eleven o'clock.

Right. She went to sleep at eleven, and slept until three. I think. Her Daddy might have walked her somewhere in the three hours between midnight (which is when we crawled in bed) and her waking, but I really don't have any memory of what happened then. I'd say I slept, but I think it was more of a passing out from sheer exhaustion kind of thing.

Today, she's had an hour long scream-fest in her crib - that's the time that's supposed to be her morning nap - and now, she's been in that bed for nearly an hour screaming again. I can't begin to calculate her sleep deficit, and she's only ten months old.

I know she's tired. And I know that she needs sleep to be a happy baby. And I - we- have tried everything we know how to try to help her go to sleep and stay asleep. This letting her cry thing is excruciating, and yet I fear that if we relent, we will end up with a baby who will only sleep if she's comfortably ensconced in our arms or leisurely suckling and snuggling in our bed.

As I finish this post, it is 4:40 p.m. EST. I put her in her bed exactly one hour and one minute ago. She just now stopped crying.

I think now it's my turn to start. Because I hear the sound of a Chinook. And it's gonna fly right over the top of our house.




0 comments Labels: , , , , | edit post

Unexpected encouragement

It's hard to be a good mother. I know some people say it's not hard, that it just comes naturally, but I disagree. No matter how much you love your children, no matter how long you waited for them, being a good mother does not come naturally.

It's not part of my natural state to wish to stay up for days without sleep, or wear someone else's stomach acid on my shoulders, or wash huge swaths poop out of teeny, tiny clothing. It's not part of my natural state to go for weeks and weeks with no solitary moments - no moments alone, not even a shower or a trip to the loo. It's not part of my natural state to remain calm when the floor I've just picked up for the eighth time is suddenly littered with cheerios or spilled fruit or toys or tiny clothes. It's not part of my natural state to give up nearly everything I want for people too small to know, understand or care. It's not part of my natural state to control my selfish desires and my short temper. It's not part of my natural state to persevere, to endure, to press on, when 'me' is the last person to get a break that lasts fifteen minutes, if that.

Sometimes I don't want to do it. Sometimes I just don't want to. Sometimes I don't want to hear my name five hundred times in a row. Sometimes I just want it to be quiet. Sometimes I just want it to be still and soft and isolated.

There is never a moment when I don't love my kids. Even in those moments of longing for alone-ness, I still love them, and I am still filled with joy at the thought of their sweet smiles, soft skin, and shining eyes.

But you see, it's the 'them' that I love. It's easy to love them. That comes naturally. The hard part comes in the 'service'. Learning to love the service part is the part that doesn't come naturally. And let me just say, from my perspective (which isn't much better than cloudy, so don't take it to the bank or anything), learning to love being a servant, learning to be a good mother, is h-a-r-d, hard.

Some days I do a pretty good job. Some days I don't. I do my best and try to remind my mind that I am an imperfect parent raising imperfect children. But in the middle of the job, it's easy to lose sight of the times I do it well. It's easy to only see the times I lose my temper or don't get the dishes done or keep them up way too late or skip reading a book because I just don't feel like reading about big bird one more time. And it's easy to get stuck in a state of disappointment with the me that is mama.

Today was one of those days. Until right around lunch. When the sweetness that is my three-for-only-three-more-days little girl asked me why I was looking down at the ground.

"Are you sad, Mama?" she asked.
"No," I replied. "Mama is just thinking about things."
"Oh," she said. "I'm thinking about things, too."
"What are you thinking about?" I asked her.
"Well, Mama," she said. "I'm thinking about you."
"Me?"
"Yes, Mama. I'm thinking about how kind you are and how good you are and how good you are at playing outside with me."

And with that, she went back to messing around with her horses and her pasta salad.

I just sat there wiping away the water that kept springing up in my eyes.

"Not to be served, but to serve". Love is an action, after all. Press On.





0 comments Labels: , , , , | edit post

Blocked.

Stifled maybe? Stuck? I don't know. I think drowning is the word.

The word for today. For this Monday. That's not really bad.

It's how I feel - creatively stuck in a mess that's getting deeper by the moment.

There. is. not. enough. time.

That's the gist of it. There's just not enough time.

Or.

I'm not good enough to manage it. Not talented enough for the undertaking.

It's a toss up at this point. I'm not out here in blogland seeking pity - only a release from the confines of my Adobe files and the lack of my own ability to pro-gress.

Take a break says my creative mind. Keep working says the other.

Can't someone just get me a few more hours?

0 comments Labels: , , | edit post

Getting it all done

Seems like the impossible task. The one thing that I can't do. Everything.

The logical me that I want to be:
Of course it's impossible. Nobody can do everything. Nobody can finish everything. Besides, what would you do then? When everything was finished? Relax? Why not relax now? Make it part of your day - your schedule. You know, include some downtime amid the moments you dedicate to trying unsuccessfully to be everything you think makes life perfect. After all, you know there's no such thing as perfect here.

Things are much better than 2 months ago. They are. Really. You're making progress everywhere - look at your living room. Look at your bedroom. The bathrooms are both relatively clean - not just clean, but disinfected. You've started to communicate some of the stuff you've been hiding for awhile. And, you learned how to operate the lawn mower. This is big stuff. This is good.

Stop worrying so much, and stop believing that you can finish everything on your growing list this second. That is not how life works.

The me that I am:
Sure, that's easy. That's the cop out, isn't it? "Nobody is perfect."

Of course - nobody is perfect. But lots of people have organized homes. Lots of people don't worry all the time about what's for dinner because they already know. They've taken care of it. They're on top of things.

They're wives with great marriages and happy husbands, they're mothers with happy, well cared for children on great sleep schedules, they're friends who have lunch and send cards and work out and have people over for dinner and go to church and take classes and have their hair and nails done and are happy.

Oh. And employed. They're making money for their families. For themselves.

And you? You are sitting here posting some emotional crap on a blog nobody reads while you should be finishing up any of the five hundred things you've already fallen behind on today. Plus, that relaxing stuff? Haven't you been resting long enough? Haven't you fixed yourself by now?

0 comments Labels: , , | edit post

Saving it

That's what I'm attempting to do, anyway.

I need to save the baby photos and videos. And I'm thwarted at every turn. Four dvd's wasted as the computer crashes in the middle of a burn. 10G of images, still need to come off, and as I burn, the computer starts to overheat . . . and crashes. Again.

Earlier, I tried to save the shower caddy from our master bath. It's somehow covered in rust. Something I just don't have the patience to try and understand. I mean, come on. It's a shower caddy - for the *shower* - where it gets wet. You'd think they'd make it out of something that doesn't rust. But, that's me. Anyway, trying to get the rust out of all those little wiry spots is like , well, I don't know what it's like, but it's hard. And I think I've given up.

And this morning, I tried to save the baby's clothes from the stains that appear to be beyond set in. No luck.

I suppose I feel like it's a good thing I'm not responsible for saving the world.

0 comments Labels: | edit post