Kiss Your Miracle

Many things have surprised me about parenthood. Today while Sky entertained Adam and me with a doo rag (thanks Julia!), I realized how much our little girl makes us laugh. And once she realizes that she’s the one responsible for it, there’s no stopping her. She goes on and on and we end up laughing so hard our faces hurt. It’s quite the contrast from our pre-parent days. Sure, we laughed with each other then. But the sadness of infertility was always with us, even when we’d pushed it to the back of our minds. Home is a different place now – noisier and more chaotic and always on the messy side – and we love it this way.

At the same time, I’m nervous about having our second baby. I’m thrilled. But scared, too. Days when Sky demands all my attention I wonder how I’ll manage with another one. I wonder when I’ll sleep. Sky does great at night, but often naps an hour or less. When I’m up with a newborn at night and up with Sky all day, how will I function? I love sleep. I need sleep. For the first few months after Sky’s birth, I lived in survival mode. I knew overall that motherhood was just what I always wanted. But I still spent many of those early days at home fighting the baby blues, struggling to keep perspective. And when I really and truly remember that time I start to panic at the thought of doing it again, this time with a one-year-old along for the ride.

I feel funny admitting that. I hope I don’t sound ungrateful. And I know that millions of women all over the world cope with a lot more than two kids at once. My own mom has seven. My aunt has seven, too. Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with me. How can I want more children and still find myself intimidated by it?

But recently I discovered something that helps me whenever I start to get anxious. I picture my parents and my brothers and sisters sitting around the dinner table. I think about each person, and the way we’re all different, but how we still get along, and how much laughing goes on when we’re all together. I can’t imagine my family with even one person missing and I’m so glad my parents didn’t just focus on how exhausting and expensive it is to have babies. From the beginning they saw each of us as individual people, created by God to be part of our family, but with our own separate lives, too. And that’s how I want to see Sky and our next baby and any other babies God decides to give us – not as my full-time job or even just as my children, but as growing, changing individuals with a God-ordained destiny far bigger than simply enlarging my family. On days like today, when Sky makes us laugh and we get to see a little bit more of who God has made her to be, it’s not so difficult to do.

Earlier this week I had a break from my usual routine at home with Sky. My mother-in-law Terry volunteered to take her for the entire day so I could get some work done. I’m doing a three-week training session for an online grading job and I’ve also started writing articles on-line to earn a little extra money. But during a typical day with Adam at work, my only computer time is whenever Sky naps, which is sometimes just 40 minutes – barely enough time to get started. So when Terry offered to watch Sky at her house I quickly accepted. From 9am until 4:30pm on Tuesday I had the entire house to myself.

I think I’ve been home without Sky two times so far since she was born. It was definitely a weird feeling to walk through the door by myself after dropping her off with her grandma. But in my mind a clock was ticking and I didn’t want to waste a minute. I sat right down to work and just like that, three hours passed. I stopped for fifteen minutes to make myself a big, fat bowl of oatmeal and then went back to work. By 3:30pm I’d accomplished even more than I’d planned. I could also feel my brain starting to shut down, so I decided my work day was over.

I stood up and stretched. I cleaned up the kitchen, then straightened the living room. I looked down at Sky’s toys, still stacked in the corner exactly like they’d been at 9am. Suddenly, my mind filled with questions about her. What was Sky doing just then? What had she eaten for lunch? Had she pooped? Did she miss me? What should I do with myself for the next hour? For a while I just stood there. Then I decided to lie down on the bed and read. But I couldn’t concentrate. I looked at the clock every five minutes.

At 4:30pm Adam walked through the door with Sky in his arms. I immediately grabbed her and kissed her sweet face all over, asking her a million questions about her day. She squealed and squirmed to be put down. “Well,” I said as she took off running. “Okay then.”

Later that night as I prayed for her before bed, I realized how much less tired I felt than usual. It had been nice to have a break, nice to have the chance to miss my baby. And I found myself looking forward to tomorrow, when I’d get to have her all to myself again.

To all you stay-at-home moms without family around (thanks again, Terry!), I hope you can afford to splurge on a babysitter. And not just for a date-night with your hubby. But for yourself. So you can accomplish something you’ve been wanting to do without any interruptions. Or maybe just so you can lie down on the bed and read. It might feel a bit odd, but that’s okay. Motherhood is a job that doesn’t really have an end. Breaks are good.

Sky is currently obsessed with books.    She’s never been a sit-still kind of girl, and the only cuddles I usually get are right after naptime when she’s still half-asleep. The rest of the time she’s on the move. But lately when we sit on the floor for playtime, she’ll bring me a book and then climb into my lap. I typically get through about half the words on each page before she’s flipping to the next one, and our little “reading” session usually lasts about 30 seconds before she jumps up to grab a different book. But still, my little girl loves books. I keep telling myself that she’s only thirteen months old and she’s going to change a lot over the years. But for now, she loves books. And as a go-to-the-library-once-a-week, total book nerd myself, I have a question for all you experienced mommies. Is it too early for me to get really, really excited?

Sometimes fear is good. Of course we all want happy, secure children as opposed to anxious ones. But Sky’s at an age where she can be a little too fearless. Over the weekend we went to the Palm Coast with my in-laws. They own a condo there with an amazing pool complex; there are two levels of pools for adults and children, a lazy river, a mega-sized hot tub, a fake beach pool, and a massive waterslide. In the past Adam and I would spend hours lounging on cushy reclining chairs near the quiet adult-only pool, where people sip margaritas and read magazines all afternoon. Now we’ve graduated to the kiddie pool, which is an entirely different world. But I was still really excited to go swimming, just knowing how much fun our little water baby would have. And she definitely enjoyed herself.

I love that Sky’s not afraid of the water. She doesn’t cry when she gets splashed in the face or nervously cling to us when we take her out deep. But she also has no concept of her own limitations. After five minutes of floating around in her little baby inner tube, she’d almost figured out how to climb out of it. At the edge of the beach pool, she needed someone in grabbing distance every second because of her tendency to go charging off into the water, oblivious to the fact that at thirteen months, she hasn’t yet mastered swimming by herself.

Developing a little fear will be good for Sky. I guess the trouble is that so many people fly right past a healthy level of fear into anxiety, where fear is irrational but still somehow overpowering. As I watched Sky in the pool, it hit me that part of my job as a mother is to teach her when to be cautious and when to be bold. It’s funny – the further I go into motherhood, the longer my job description gets. It’s probably a good thing that most of us don’t quite grasp all that’s in store for us before we become parents. But I’m starting to see more clearly now why God tells us to live one day at a time. Raising Sky to be a secure individual who accurately evaluates risk – that’s a huge task. Way too big for me. But drawing boundaries for her at the pool – that I can do. Motherhood is a million tiny decisions that add up to something big: the shaping of a life. Thank God he’s always telling us to rely on him. Every day I’m more aware that I can’t do it on my own.

Today is the first day of school in our county and my thoughts are on Forest High School, where I used to teach. Someone else now works in my old classroom, and it’s full of students I’ve never met. Instead of rushing around making seating charts, talking through procedures, and trying to remember names, I spent this morning sitting on the floor with Sky reading Goodnight Moon over and over and helping her shove little pretend cookies into a plastic, singing cookie jar.

I was reading Heather Armstrong’s blog the other day and her topic was the career-minded mom vs. the stay-at-home mom dilemma, and how it’s a conversation that will probably never end because many women feel so passionately right about their position in the debate. She then wrapped up her post by asking for feedback from her readers. When I last checked it, she had 935 comments. Yes, 935.

Armstrong is the blogger of all bloggers, in case you haven’t heard of her. Her site, www.dooce.com, is one of the most visited blogs on the internet. She definitely doesn’t need any publicity from me, but I can’t help plugging her site a bit because it’s hilarious and well done and sometimes even touching, despite her frequent profanity. But back to my point – 935 is a crazy amount of comments, even for the champion of the blogging world. She’s right when she says that we sure do have our opinions when it comes to working and motherhood.

So I was thinking through all of that as I sat on the floor this morning with Sky. I’ve been a full-time at home mom for just over a year now and I can easily say it’s the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. I know without a doubt that I want to spend the majority of my day with Sky. But that doesn’t mean the daily reality of it is always enjoyable. I have to admit that I don’t usually lose track of time. In fact, I’ve been surprised at just how quickly I get irritated with the little things, and how easy it is to complain or lose my temper.

And that’s where the guilt comes in. So often at the end of the day I find myself wondering if I focused too much on getting things done. I hear Dr. Sears’ voice in my head warning, “It’s possible to be a full-time at home mom and only interact part-time with your child.” Then on other days I wonder if I’m spoiling my daughter. I wonder if she’s getting enough social interaction, enough outside time, enough healthy food to eat, and on and on. I thought being at home full-time would mean no guilt, but I’ve learned that it’s possible to second-guess yourself regardless of your working decision.

When it comes to the question of the ideal mother, I don’t have any answers other than it can’t just be one thing. I’m starting to learn that raising a child well will always require sacrifice of some kind. I feel no regret about my decision to give up my teaching position, but I do miss things about my old career. The good news is that I’m starting a new job in September, grading papers part-time for an online university. I’m also hoping to tutor a few students and develop my writing ability into something that might actually, eventually earn me a little money. It’s tricky – trying to find the balance between the work of motherhood and other work. But I’m hopeful that with time and plenty of trial and error, I’ll figure out what’s best for my family and for me.