My thoughts on parenting

Tonight we had such a wonderful time with my side of the family. The occasion: to celebrate my nephew's fifth birthday. We played in the pool, ate too much pizza and cake, and had a grand time. Afterward, I had to go to the Dodge dealership to pick up our minivan that got serviced today. On the way home, somehow I was tuned in to KSL radio 1160 AM. Rarely do I listen to the radio and even more rarely, in fact, never, listen to AM radio. The evening talk show was based around this article published in the New York Magazine called, "All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting" (http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/). On my solo drive back home, my mind was swirling, my emotions felt powerful and I really, really wanted to call in to the talk show and share. I didn't have my cell phone, left it with my husband by accident, so I was left to my thoughts. They kept getting stronger and I felt this emotional pressure that needed release. I stayed in our driveway for another five minutes to listen to the callers and hear what they had to say. I ran inside and gently forced my husband to hear what I desperately felt like I needed to get out, to release. First, I do not feel less happy now that I have children. Second, I do not feel like our marriage is more stressed now that we have children or that our marital bliss is much reduced since children entered the scene. And third, I am doing exactly what I have always wanted to be doing. While motherhood is painfully, gut wrenchingly hard, in fact, the hardest thing I have ever done, I would never, not in a split second, trade places with a woman who chose not to have children and lives a "happier, less stressful" life. My children do bring me joy, not just in the overarching scheme of things, but on a daily basis. While moment to moment I can't say I always feel inexpressible joy as I am mothering, I do on a daily basis feel pockets of joy throughout the 24 hour period. Today was a happier day than others, and other days can be miserable. The happiness of my day is usually based on my perspective and on my choices. It is how I chose to look at the situations I am faced with. Yes, it's hard when Jake has had little sleep and by the 20th whiny demand I have received by 10 AM, I am ready to stick him in his room and leave him there until dinner. That is where choice comes in. I feel joy when I find the inner strength to curb my tongue and my body to resist the urge to stick him in his room, but instead patiently and firmly say, "I would love to talk to you when you can talk sweet and nice." And walk away. I feel joy, when I can stop in a stressful moment such as when I catch my two year old spilling red nail polish all over the carpet and I lose my cool, and can come back and say to her, "I'm sorry mommy got angry. How are we going to clean this up?" And she throws her pudgy arms around me as I wipe her tears away and take her hand to find a rag and some cleaner. And of course, their are moments of joy that do not deal with my choice of thoughts and actions but just come from the personality and soul of each child. Like, the way Jake says things with a lisp, the way Michaela likes to be naked and run around the house (I just have to pinch her bum) and Caleb's smile and wacky sense of humor. I feel so strongly about my choice to be a mother, that I had to blog about it and get these feelings written down permanently.

I have to divert for a moment and address something the talk show host said. I can't quote him word for word, but I will summarize: He came from a family of seven children and thought that becoming a parent would be an easy transition for him. Yet, when they became parents, he was not prepared for the stress it put on their marriage and on their lives, basically how hard it was. I have to agree. The first two or three years of motherhood were not blissful for me. Caleb was a very difficult baby and I was not prepared for the demands a baby was going to put on me and on our marriage. And there were several days and weeks I would think, "Everyone out there that said parenthood was the most rewarding experience were LIARS!" I spent many nights crying. I wanted to go back to work and put Caleb in daycare because I felt like it would have been a lot easier to let someone else deal with his colicky behavior and I would only have to deal with it at night. But everytime I tried to do work out a plan to do this, I couldn't do it. My faith kept me going and Mike and I made it through. And we are BETTER people because of it. While life has seasons of peace, it also has seasons of turmoil that are beyond our control, but it is how we choose to respond to those tumultuous seasons that define us, that mold who we are. Mike and I could have had some tumultuous years in our marriage without children; he could have lost his job, for example, or contracted a debilitating illness. I could have spent many nights crying, then, too.

Well, it is time for me to go to bed and I need to end this post. I appreciate you readers bearing with me while I rant or express myself. It's nice to get it out how passionately I feel about something that is so dear to me. I feel like I have to stand up for motherhood, to defend a woman's choice to become a mother these days and even more for those that choose to stay at home. Yes, I feel like I have sacrificed my career, but I do not regret it. I sometimes yearn to be able to say, "I am a professor at such and such university" instead of, "I stay at home with our children." But that feeling is overpowered by the joy I feel from mothering and staying at home. I know I will never have this season of my life again. My goal is to try to seize the moments amidst some of the daily trudgery, and to often remember that what I am doing is far more important than any research I could be collecting or any lecture I could be giving.

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After getting ready for bed, I realized I failed to mention a key ingredient to the joy I find in mothering and that is that I was blessed to find a man that is a good father, husband and provider and is my best friend. Without him, I could not have written the post I wrote above. I love him so very much and am brought to tears at times when I think how blessed I am to be married to him.