I think sometimes the holidays/ special days get too much hype. My Mother's Day was not the idyllic "life as a mom is sparkling, wonderful, fairy dust" kind of day that you imagine Mother's Day ought to be.
My Mother's Day was a "life in the trenches, screaming, spit up, tantrums, crying, crazy" kind of day.
Other days in May were way better in terms of my feeling loving towards the kids, and our happy life together.
Some of this is not new to my facebook readers, but my day started off bad, had some good moments, got really bad, then ended nicely.
At 12:40, we both woke up to Grace screaming from a nightmare. Let me tell you, nothing gets your heart racing faster than that kind of scream from your child in the early morning hours. Blake gets her back to sleep, only for us to be woken up by Remington a short time later. The night ended with a second Remington feeding followed by a spit up.
I did have a nice breakfast with my mom, and after breakfast I did some shopping, but then I had the worst nap time in a long time, if not ever with Grace. Part of the problem, admittedly, was me. I was not staying consistent, but alternated between trying to be loving and calm, and trying to be firm and strict, trying everything to get her to just go to sleep. But because Blake was gone (car issues) on a Sunday, and he normally isn't, she was extra grumpy (and maybe I was too?). Long story short, we played the naptime struggle game from 1:30 or to till 3:50, when we finally got her to sleep.
Should I have given up earlier? Probably. But with that much time invested, I didn't want her to "win." Besides, she looked crazy tired, and would look almost asleep, only to wake up again and make sure I was there.
I was so frustrated by the time Blake got home, I started crying as I described my day. Awesome Mother's Day, right? Yet this is the whole reason that we mothers appreciate a day to be celebrated, because we have so many mixed moments. We love the ups- the laughter in the car, the silly stories, the requests for hugs. But to get those ups, we have to take our fair share of downs- the nightmares, night nursing, spit ups, tantrums, messes and all the other challenges of raising kids.
I will admit that I sometimes feel that I love the kids the most when I am not the one in charge of them. Like yesterday, Blake was in charge of the kids while I got ready to run, and yet, I kept being distracted by wanting to watch them play with him. But if I was the one having to play with them, I wouldn't have enjoyed it half as much.
But we did have a nice dinner with Blake's parents after her nap, rounding out the day.
I will probably have better Mother's Days in the future, as the kids grow up, but then, I might reminiscence about the good old days when they were little.
In other news, my baby is 8 months old today. He loves to get into all sorts of trouble. No longer is he able to just be set down somewhere and he just contentedly stays there. Not this boy, he has places to go! You put him in a sitting position, and within a minute he is off in crawling position, off to explore his environment. Then whenever he finds something of about knee height or higher, he pulls himself up to standing (until he randomly tips over) so I then have to scurry over to wherever he is at, and be ready to catch him when he randomly lets go.
If we are in the kitchen, and I open the fridge, he crawls as quick as he can to investigate the inside, and pull up to standing in there. Same with the dishwasher and the cupboards, and pretty much any restricted area. He is close to walking, though not there yet, and already a handful.
He talks all the time, sometimes with words we think we recognize. He is eating lots of baby foods, all homemade except for his rice and oat cereal. Recently, we started freezing them in silicon muffin cups, which worked great, and allows us to make his food in bulk.
He is generally a happy kid, with a sweet smile showing off his four teeth. I still have moments that I can't believe he is here, and yet he continues to be more little boy and less baby every day.
For the sake of time...no captions, just a bunch of pictures.
Grace ate beets :-)
