This is just a phase

One thing about me that feeds my depressive tendencies is a bent toward thinking that the current state is the permanent state. In other words, all that is wrong with my life will always be that way.

One of the best things about having a second child is being able to be confident that everything is a phase. I feel like I should make a t-shirt that says "This is just a phase" or paint it on my walls, or something.

Something I've recently started to do is to nap with my 2 year old. She always* takes naps and I try to as well. Turns out she falls asleep faster if I lie down with her and I really enjoy that time with her. I know this is just a phase. She'll grow out of it soon enough.

DW is in a super charming phase. He smiles back when I smile at him; actually he beams. He's been army crawling and on our tile floor he's shooting around like a bat out of hell. Since he drags his body around, he's also mopping up his own spit up as he goes. I know this is just a phase. He'll be crawling properly soon enough and we'll have to make sure to watch the slippery spots on the floor.

As I mentioned last time, toilet training has been a drag. I know this is just a phase, but it feels like forever. When, O Lord, will she get it all in the toilet? And DW, while he sleeps better, when will the night feeds be over? I feel so close to a full night sleep and yet so far away. I know this is just a phase, but man it feels so long.

I've been thinking about the fruit of the Spirit lately. It's a list of qualities that the apostle Paul says results from letting the Spirit of God rule our lives rather than our own selves.

One of those qualities is patience, something I have been sorely lacking lately. I've been short with my children, my husband, with myself. It's been very, very hard to set aside "now-ness" and trust in a timeline other than my own.

Advent started yesterday and for many believers marks the beginning of the Christian calendar. It's a period of about four weeks of anticipating the birth of Jesus celebrated on Christmas. Early Christians were encouraged to fast during Advent like during Lent. This deprivation brought the anticipation to a visceral level.

It seems apropos to kick off Advent with a meditation on patience. What I love most about the notion of "fruit of the Spirit" is the implication and promise that the Spirit of God is the producer of the good characteristics. I want to be more patient. I want to be characterized by patience, but I cannot accomplish that, but God's Spirit in me can. And that is something I can anticipate hopefully.

Making stuff up as I go

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
~Paul's closing instructions to his friends in Thessalonica

I love these instructions because they seem so hopeful, so truth-full. But if there's one current life situation that I don't know how to be thankful for it's potty training and our 2 year old. I won't go into the gory details but it's one gigantic ARGH!!!! in my life. Frustration, despair, anger, shame, guilt, I've got it all.

But today, I'm going to make up a list of stuff to be thankful for about this situation.

My thanksgiving poop list:

1) I am thankful that my daughter has well-functioning excretory system.
2) I am thankful for disposable diapers that pull down easily when she does want to sit on the toilet.
3) I am thankful for toilets and modern sewage systems.
4) I am thankful for the bits and pieces she does get:

• "Poop goes in the toilet"
• Taking clean diapers to her teachers when she's soiled hers
• The times she does let someone know she needs to go

5) I am thankful for the cluttered poster of stickers that represent the times she has used the toilet

6) I am thankful she's only soiled the carpet once (or twice).

7) I am thankful for my mother's help getting her to the toilet when DW was a newborn.

8) I am thankful she's never had a UTI.

9) I am thankful for all the times my husband has cleaned her up, especially the morning of "the incident"

10) I am thankful for the opportunity to learn humility, patience, and gentleness*

As I said, I'm making this stuff up as I go. Mostly, I'm angry and bitter that this process is not done and over with. I hate poop, but I'm learning to be thankful.

*I'm a really slow learner

Thankful for the screams

I hate baby screams. My husband says I take them personally, so it's been a rough couple months with our infant son, although the past week has been a dramatically wonderful turn around. He hasn't been colicky; he just hasn't slept the way we expected him to be sleeping and our lack of sleep made, well, lots of things difficult. Among those things were being pleasant, grateful, and compassionate.

But yesterday I was talking to a mom whose 2 y.o. got a stomach bug so virulent that after a couple days she stopped walking. My similarly aged daughter darts around. It's hard to imagine her awake and not moving around (unless there's a TV on). But I remember when she was in the hospital in April and how lethargic she was as well. And this reminds me that as cranky as sleep deprivation made us, our son's crying was well within the healthy baby range.

Not only that, for a period, they were appropriate indicators that he wasn't getting enough milk. Now it took us a number of weeks to seek help and figure that out, but at least we had some kind of warning. How heart breaking would it be to have a weak, listless baby?

As we head into Thanksgiving week, I want to take a look at some of the things I've been bitter about and re-examine them. So first off, I want to be thankful for the cries of our son; instead of really mad that I'm not doing what I want to be doing which is usually sleeping or resting.

Redefining what counts

It's disorienting to be in new spaces; moving to a new place, moving to a new job, moving to a new stage in life. Having done all of those in the past 2 years, I've had a lot of time to be disoriented and to think about it.

A friend recently moved from East Africa to the States and discovered that her expert malaria-prevention skills are useless, kind of like my parallel-parking skills and my turning-left-on-red skills. Instead I've been boning up my navigating-the-medical-industrial-complex skills and taking-the-kid-to-preschool skills.

My sister-in-law is a newly minted mom and bemoans her days of "getting nothing done." Actually she and all moms do a lot, just none of it counts. It's a particularly hard adjustment if your previous life had easily identifiable to-do lists. She's a pharmacist and there are obvious pharmacist things to do and patients to not kill. I was a teacher and grad student. I had specific hoops to jump, lessons to deliver, and papers to grade.

The new mommy check list is woefully short: Keep baby alive and clean. When possible, rest and feed yourself. So I was very encouraged to read the exhortation to find "quiet ways to love and serve others without applause" That really sums up new motherhood, particularly for stay-at-home moms. There is tragically little applause and lots of demands.

However, the more I walk this Jesus journey the more I think this is the call to all Jesus followers. Flash and bang, shock and awe should be the exception not the rule. This is something I so value in my husband, his faithfulness in the ordinary. Actually, it can be irritating because his service can appear to be inflexible habit, but he's so consistent about it; doing the dishes, taking out the trash, closing up the house for the night, tending to our electronics, tending to the church electronics, tending to the neighbors' electronics and so forth.

My bent is to think that things you could proudly tell a stranger are the things that count; publications, projects, travels, etc. Changing diapers, burping babies, taking out trash, and fixing computers are not things you would discuss and do not count. And that's crap. All those hidden hours of love and service count, and they count in the eyes of the one who matters most, our Creator.

No regrets, you have been worth it

Dear Children,

I have been fairly public about this process of transitioning into motherhood. It's taken me a lot longer in my head to become a mother than it took for me to biologically become one. A big part of the process has been grieving the loss of my previous life and a change in my perspective and understanding of how my time should be spent. I think it's been important to document this journey because 1) there's this belief out there that becoming a mom is this easy, breezy, feel-good thing for everyone, and 2) there are two camps of thought on women and working. Some think work and children coexist well, and some thing work and children cannot coexist. Whichever way it is, there's an emotional cost that must be paid. These are the things I'm trying to document.

I worry, however, that you may believe that I regret your existence. Don't do that; you would be believing a lie. You won't remember these early years together, but let me tell you that I have not covered myself in glory. I have been selfish; I have been removed; I have been uninterested. But slowly, slowly, slowly, by the loving grace of God, with every nursing, every hug, every diaper, every song and every giggle, I am becoming less selfish, more connected, more attentive. You are already an irreplaceable part of my life.

I have deeply grieved the loss of opportunity to pursue a tenure-track professorship. You may be tempted to think that I would have rather taken that path. Even though I grieve that loss, I count it a privilege to be with you made possible because your father can support us on his own. It is precisely because you are so precious that I willingly give up something that I value dearly.

I have no regrets about these past two and a half years with you, L and half a year with you, DW. You each have been supremely worth it.

I love you both,

Mom