Tag: motherhood

About Me

Restless

Autumn

I always confine myself for awhile after giving birth, mostly to protect my baby from THE WORLD and all the diseases that come with it — a mild cold for an adult can be a hospital trip for a newborn, after all. So, baby’s first month is always spent in the safety of home.

This time though, I feel like I’ve been “lying in” since March (y’all know why). I’m already feeling restless, and I really want to go out and buy some fabric, or something. I’m not really picky, as long as it’s different scenery. Even *I* have my limits.

Which is making it hard to think clearly.

But I’m not taking a tiny baby OUT THERE. Especially not this year.

I can’t help but suspect that this restlessness is the reason why I can’t stop rewriting the same paragraph over and over with my fiction. It always feels wrong, and I just can’t commit to it. So I delete the words, type new ones, and decide I don’t like those either.

Ugh.

Maybe I can get my husband to take us all out on a long drive this weekend.

About Me

Hello, again

Autumn

We had another girl, born at 7lbs 13oz, and she’s a perfect, princess-angel-blossom in every way.

Highlights include: sending my husband out for donuts during labor, because I had a mad craving and I knew there was still plenty of time; my first water birth; and, remembering that newborns really are that tiny.

Even though this is my fifth baby, it’s still amazing that I created a new person. I also still frequently wake up to check if she’s breathing. Some things never change.

I’m thoroughly enjoying my “baby-cation” of lazing around and snuggling, but I’m also getting a liiiitle bored of watching movies. I’m not sure how coherent I am at the moment, but I think its time to get back to creativity despite that. That’s what editing is for, anyway, lol.

About Me

AWOL

Autumn

This is the worst pregnancy brain I’ve ever experienced. I can’t remember being so forgetful before … har har.

To give me some credit, this is also the most children I’ve ever had, and between waking up early with the kids, trying to get quality time with my husband in the evening, and spending the night being pregnant, I’m probably not getting as much sleep as I need. Trust me, I’m trying, but for some reason everyone in my family loves me and wants to be with me. LOL.

So I’ve become horrendously absentminded with everything.

ANYway, as I’ve stated before, I’ve been planning on going AWOL while I prepare for my new baby, and with everything that’s happening ‘n all, it’s especially important for me to retreat right now. The last thing I need is to absorb all the stress and anxiety that’s going around right before I go into labor.

So, I won’t be on the internet for awhile.

I have a stash of yarn, a recipe book full of desserts, and a lawn chair with my name on it.

If only I could remember where I put the sunscreen.

About Me

Vacuums

Autumn

Long story short, there were some sparks and part of my vacuum melted. Uh oh.

With 4.8 kids, vacuuming is very much a daily chore, so I decided to meh it and buy a cheap one at Walmart to tie us over while we figure out what to do about repairs. At this point, I’m pretty certain I have some sort of curse in regards to vacuums, so I didn’t care enough to be picky when the darned thing is probably going to explode anyway.

I never go anywhere during the busy times, so it was life as usual when we set out at ten in the morning. We walked past a masked employee on our way into the store. I think she was counting people, but she didn’t say anything and hid off to the side. No awkward Walmart greetings.

It took some meandering to find the vacuum section. No one stopped us to interview us about our TV watching habits (or rather, lack thereof in our case).

I spent a moment wondering if I cared about the length of the power cord. Everyone who walked past gave us a wide berth, probably because of our horde of virus vectors freely releasing germs into the air with every breath. It was beautiful.

My husband and I came to a decision without having to constantly remind the kids to be considerate of others. I’m starting to wonder if a number of people were deliberately going out of their way to passive-aggressively treat my children like they were an inconvenience. It wouldn’t surprise me — I’ve gotten some pretty nasty criticisms over having kids, but I’m not at all sorry that I have single-handedly set women back 5000 years by choosing to give birth. I like these little people of mine, and it’s my life.

We picked up a couple more odds-n-ends, since we were already there and we had some space to think of them.

Self-checkout. I couldn’t tell the employees from the people who are just wearing masks, but no one came close anyway. Didn’t bag anything, because plastic bags are yucky.

Left without a single person asking to check our receipt.

Almost makes me want to go to Walmart more often. Almost. But I’m still bitter over Shopko closing.

And I’m back to vacuuming every day. It hasn’t exploded yet, but the curse still has plenty of time to kick in.

About Me

Easter, et al

Autumn

We survived Easter.

There’s about a million things happening this Spring, and throwing chocolate rabbits and jelly beans into the mix resulted in absolute pandemonium with the children. O. M. G.

But we miraculously survived.

Phew.

Naturally, the kids immediately started counting down the days until the NEXT EVENT, and I couldn’t help but groan inside. Better than sitting around bored, but I wouldn’t mind slowing down the pace somewhat. Just give me enough time to catch up on the dishes? I can’t move very fast anymore.

Honestly, I’m rather enjoying lockdown. We got bored of movie theaters and the mall years ago, restaurants lost their appeal because the quality was going downhill, and public celebrations were unpleasant with all the people pushing my children out of the way to get a better shot on their phones. Not to mention, we discovered that ‘social distancing’ is a fantastic way of avoiding certain personality types without coming across as overtly rude.

It’s nice being able to breathe without everyone getting up in my business — and the grocery store is still only a few minutes away. Win-win!

I don’t expect the lockdown to end any time soon, so I might as well be open-minded and adaptable; it’s probably better to have the children climbing trees instead of playgrounds anyway.

I miss being the sort of person who straps a newborn to my chest then hikes up a mountain.

About Me

Even Moms

Autumn

I sat down to work on writing my story.

I had the 1.5-year-old solidly in my lap, flailing a balloon around and giggling.

The 8-year-old was listening to her favorite song on repeat.

The 4-year-old and 6-year-old were running around the darkened living room with a flashlight.

When all of a sudden it hit me that I was actually pulling it off.

Oh sure, my story wasn’t exactly progressing quickly, considering that I had to periodically move a balloon out of my face and all, but it was progressing. Despite all the chaos, I was actually getting some writing done.

And all I can feel is an awestruck sense of, “Wow.”

Once upon a time, I used to pray for the planets to align with nap times and quiet hours, then struggled with frustration when day after day refused to turn out the way I wanted it to. Finally, while my third was still a baby, I decided that I had enough and set my mind on writing Light Eternal, rain or shine.

That was late 2016. I finished the second draft a year later, then hung on to it for awhile out of indecision before officially publishing it in 2019. Phew.

In 2018 I had my fourth baby, and shortly afterwards started telling The Black Magus to myself during all the hours and hours and hours that I spent nursing. It wasn’t long before I figured out how to keep baby propped up on the pillow so I could write it down while the other children played video games. I am currently finishing the final proofread.

Some days, I have a harder time tuning out the noise and distractions, and having all the kids around probably isn’t helping me produce the highest quality of writing, but I have become a strong believer in persistence (and editing). It may take me forever to finish a novel, but progress is progress.

I’m blogging about this because I want other moms with small children to know that they can still have hobbies, without hiring a nanny or enlisting an army of babysitters. Guess what? You can still feel like a person with hopes and dreams, even with all the vacuuming and diaper changes.

You just need to find your zen, so to speak. Honestly evaluate what you’ve got to work with, and let go of the perfect scenarios that just aren’t going to happen. Find the spare time in between activities, and utilize it instead of killing it.

And I know: it’s hard. It took me eight years to get to this point, but I did it. Don’t ever give up.

About Writing

Back to writing

Autumn

Now that the holidays are (mostly) over, my delusion is that I’ll be able to jump back into writing and finally finish that novel I’ve been working on for the past 18 months. If I religiously devote just an hour a day, I should have the rewrite done by the end of January.

You know, provided that the sky doesn’t randomly open up and start raining killer sharks or anything like that. Life knows how to be a bitch, so I’m always reticent to make any sort of announcements about the future, only to follow up with a “Lol, jk.” I guess this reflects how many killer sharks I’ve dealt with over the last umpteen years.

But anyway, tentatively speaking, I should start “promoting” in February, and let slip what all my vague references were about all along. That way, this novel can be over with and out of my hair so I can have my new baby in peace.

And start my next novel during all those hours I’ll be off my feet with a newborn. What can I say? My mind is always brimming with stories to tell, and sleep deprivation is a fantastic channel for inspiration, lol.

About Me

Journal

Autumn

Christmas is looming ever closer. We’ve started the official countdown.

Finally feeling ‘second trimester-y’, which means less gagging and more energy. And baby wiggles.

Wanted to make coffee this morning, but discovered that we forgot to clean out the french press from . . . forever ago. Yuck. Chai tea instead.

Spent the entire weekend making gingerbread houses with my husband and kids. Still haven’t cleaned up the dining table. So. Much. Candy. We had tons of fun.

Christmas sewing. The pants I made for my son are absolutely perfect and very dapper. I’m not sure why I decided to do puff sleeves on the girls’ dresses when I have such a tight deadline, because going sleeveless would have been considerably faster. Maybe because puff sleeves are just too adorable. With any luck, I’ll get them finished in time.

Child #2 came down with a fever. I’m expecting everyone (myself included) to get sick before the end of this week. Might throw a wrench in the works. Curse you, cold and flu season!

At the very least, the next eight days will be interesting.

About Me

Christmas Shopping

Autumn

It’s my tradition to take the kids out for some one-on-one Christmas shopping. It’s a rare occasion when I get to focus on just one child at a time, so the trips are quite special to me.

Naturally I can’t stand the crowds or the traffic that come with the Christmas season, so I always aim to get it done in early December, during the week and before noon. You know, when the people who have jobs are working, those who don’t haven’t gotten out of the house yet, so my main companions are sweet old ladies looking for presents for their grandbabies. Yep, those are my people.

As a side note, in elementary school I used to spend summer vacation practicing embroidery while watching Matlock, so my husband likes to tease that I’ve always been a little old lady at heart. I also climbed plenty of trees and played with plenty of dolls, but that retiring aspect has always been a part of me.

Anyway, it doesn’t really matter how many times you explain to a three-year-old that we’re shopping for others and not ourselves, they will inevitably shout something like, “Mom you’re stupid!” when you leave without purchasing at least one of those super mega awesome toys that they wanted for themselves. It always makes me laugh when they do. Those moments of disappointment can be so big and overwhelming when you’re still so little, and childhood is precious. I don’t take it personally — I try to help them constructively phrase their emotions instead. No biggie if it fails, because sometimes you just gotta be upset for awhile, and that’s okay too.

Hopefully, my children are learning that giving to those you love is just as important as receiving, and to do their best to get something that the other person would actually enjoy instead of being lazy about it. Maybe 60 years from now, they’ll be the sort to go out on a Tuesday morning to buy toys for their grandbabies.

But don’t go thinking that I’m some sort of sainted angel. I also make sure that my husband takes the kids out Christmas shopping for me too, because motherhood shouldn’t be all self-sacrifice and nothing else. With how much I bust my butt to make Christmas special, I earn those earrings and scented candles.

About Me

YouTube Kids

Autumn

I don’t let my kids watch YouTube.

I used to.

Once upon a time I had a three-year-old who liked to let herself out the front door and go on grand adventures down the street, until her panicked mom came running to find her. Those “baby proofing” door handles didn’t cut it, and I needed to keep her occupied so I could shower or wash the dishes. Enter YouTube.

I found a bunch of children’s music videos that I thought were cute, so I pulled them up whenever I needed turn my back for a few minutes. It didn’t take her very long to figure out how to navigate to other videos, and before I knew it “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” had turned into overly-hyper people playing Roblox.

I let it be for awhile. It wasn’t until the kids started finding Elsa x Spiderman videos that I started to feel uncomfortable, especially the ones that featured “pregnant Elsa.” Something about them really didn’t sit well with me, so I stepped in and put an end to it. I mandated that the kids were only allowed to watch YouTube as long as I was there with them, and they had to get my permission before they clicked on a video.

Shortly afterwards, I learned that a number of those Elsa x Spiderman videos were being used to imitate porn and other questionable activities. That further solidified my decision to never let them watch anything unsupervised. (See Elsagate)

Thankfully, by this point my daughter had stopped letting herself out of the house, so that little problem had become a non-issue and I could shower in peace.

However, the more I watched YouTube with them, the more intense my anxiety about it grew. To top it off, the kids were turning into materialistic little snots, and I was growing tired of constantly explaining to them why we were never going to buy them any of the toys they saw on YouTube. I felt that I was becoming a paranoid nervous wreck, so I eventually declared that the kids were only allowed to watch one channel.

As time went by, I realized that the children were much better behaved when they didn’t spend any time at all on YouTube. They slept better, fought less, and listened more. My husband and I decided to block YouTube entirely on our main computer, and our children settled down into manageable little monsters instead of psychotic tyrants.

I’m a crazy strict mom amongst my peers for it, but that decision has improved our lives. I strongly believe that it would benefit most families if they “unplugged” more and started interacting with each other and the real world instead of being constantly glued to the Internet. We need to teach our children how to fully engage with life, instead of dealing with parenting issues the easy way. I had to learn that through experience, but I’m glad I figured it out.