Monday, January 22, 2018

8 Goals I’ve Abandoned Since Having Baby #2

Who doesn’t love a Buzzfeed-style list article? Here are 8 standards that are now hopelessly unattainable... because it’s important to know when to give up.

1. Arriving on time to anything

I’m proud if I manage to get out of the house at all. If we get to church before the Gospel reading, I believe it still counts as “Orthodox On-Time.”

2. Saying morning prayers in the morning

Morning prayers happen after we have all gotten dressed and ready for the day, which usually isn’t before noon. That’s if they happen at all, and I’m afraid I’ve been skipping them a lot lately. When I do say them, it might not be the prayers in the prayer book. It might just be a “Lord, have mercy!” muttered under my breath as I survey the chaos that has overrun my life.

3. Eating out with both children

If a restaurant doesn’t have a playground inside it, I don’t want to eat there.

4. Cloth diapering

Sorry, Earth. I can’t keep up with the laundry as it is, and I certainly don’t have time to add on a load of dirty diapers every day. Those Heavy Duty loads take like 2 hours on HE machines! The irony is that if I had a washer that was less “green,” I might be able to keep using cloth diapers. Hmmmm.

5. Strictly limiting screen time for the older child

Mommy needs you watch Daniel Tiger now.

6. Closely supervising the older child at all times

Sometimes my toddler runs off to another room while I am nursing the baby. Do I try to chase him down while the baby is still latched on? No. I figure he’ll be OK by himself for a few minutes. Probably.

7. Staying until the end of an event

This goes along with #1. Our strategy is arrive late, leave early. There is a vanishingly small window of time during which it is possible to keep a baby quiet and a toddler contained.

8. Maintaining respectable standards of personal grooming

It’s hard to find time to shower when you have two young kids. You could wait until both are asleep at the same time, but that’s like waiting for a planetary alignment. No, your best bet is to wait until the toddler is asleep (or watching Daniel Tiger in a toddler-proof space... see #5 and #6), and just bring the baby into the bathroom with you.

How long can you count on a baby to stay content in her baby rocker chair? Maybe 5 minutes? And what would you rather do with those 5 minutes: wash out the dried spit-up encrusting your hair, or shave your legs? That’s what I thought.

Sunday, January 21, 2018

The Agony of Dirty Dishes

It’s been awhile since I last blogged. In fact, I forgot I still had this blog. When I rediscovered it just now, I almost deleted it out of sheer disgust with the title. The Joy of Dirty Dishes. Ugh! Someone please slap the saccharine faux-humility out of 2016 me!

Actually, I think 2017 did a pretty good job of doing just that. Not that it was entirely a bad year. My son grew from a baby into a toddler. We got to know some wonderful people at our new church in Wisconsin, although my husband and I still missed our Western rite parish in Denver and struggled to adjust to the Byzantine style of liturgy and fasting. We gradually worked to turn our townhouse, the first place we owned, into a comfortable home that reflected our tastes. I started to find my place in a community of other moms with young children.

Then everything changed abruptly. Our lives pivoted around the trivial circumstances of a single moment. We moved, again. But we tried (with partial success) to see the hand of God in the midst of apparent disaster, and the forced change gave us the opportunity to move back South and live with family. I was six and a half months pregnant. Then came another totally unexpected upheaval: I had an episode of preterm labor, which resulted in three weeks of mandated bed rest. I could only lie back and watch as others performed duties that were supposed to be mine, including caring for my son. Yeah, 2017 taught me a lot about relinquishing control and accepting imperfection, and it was not always a pleasant learning experience.

My daughter was born on November 29th, just a day before her due date. Everything about her was a surprise: her gender, the timing of her birth, her head of dark hair. She has immediately shown herself to be a distinct individual, different from her big brother in both appearance and temperament.

I feel again, as I did after my son’s birth, that my old self has shattered under the pressure of new responsibilities. In order to survive, I must adapt. Last time, I had to give up a lot of self-indulgent habits and learn to work harder than I ever had before.

I’m not sure yet who I am becoming this time, but I think my new self will have to be a LOT more tolerant of imperfection. I am running up against the absolute limits of what I can accomplish in a day and still falling far short of my own standards of Minimum Acceptability. Last time, I had to become more disciplined; this time, I think I need to become more forgiving, of others and especially of myself.

When I named this blog, I had in my mind an idealized image of myself as a diligent homemaker who could find joy even in the humblest household duties. I imagined that the challenge would be the task of washing dishes in itself, learning somehow to enjoy it. No, no. The challenge is looking at a stack of dirty dishes and longing to wash them, but choosing instead to leave them there because there is something more important you must do. The challenge is taking a hit to your pride in yourself as a Good Homemaker by neglecting the very visible stack of dirty dishes, in order to perform some invisible duty that will make a greater difference to your family’s wellbeing. Sometimes the less selfish choice is to leave the dirty dishes and take a rest, because if you don’t you will be exhausted and irritable with your family later. That is the agony of dirty dishes.

What is the Joy of Dirty Dishes? I will let you know if I find it. I hope that I can, because I’m sure there are a lot of dirty dishes ahead of me in 2018.