It's 1:10 a.m. I'm tired. Julia's eating a nice midnight snack and all I hear is the clocks ticking and her breathing. You can imagine that the mind can wander in this situation. I thought I'd reel it in a little by blogging!
I've had a slow realization in the past few days...I'm new at this whole 'stay at home wife/mom' thing. I know that's pretty obvious, but I guess I haven't really recognized it before. I've been a little down in the dumps lately because I don't feel like I'm good at being a SAHM (stay at home mom...it took me many a parenting website to figure out what that acronym was for; and let me tell you SAHMs and WAHMs (work "" "") love them some acronyms - DH, DS, DD, LO, TTC, and more! It's a little much for me...typing words out isn't really all that time consuming.) So anyway, I wasn't feeling like an adequate homemaker and mother. The house is never as clean as I want it to be, and I just feel out of control like I don't know what I'm doing. In the past couple days I realized that IT'S OKAY! This has been like a major career change, and I should give myself some slack- something I'm not good at.
I've always been a really hard worker, and for the past 20 years I've either been putting my efforts towards being a nerd of a student or working for someone who was paying me for my time. It is so strange to be doing neither. I do have a very part time job just working a few hours a week, but it's not enough to feel like I'm working. Most of my days are filled with breastfeeding, changing/washing diapers, making non-sensical sounds at my daughter, narrating everything else I'm doing so my daughter can hear our language, grocery shopping, laundry, dishes, home finances, cleaning, reading about how not to screw up your kid, etc. This is so foreign to me. For YEARS my days and time have been ultra-structured. My schedule was everything- leave home by 8am so I can catch the 8:55 bus so I can be walking on campus by 9:15 so I can be on time for 9:30 class...things like that. And time at home was relax time. Nowadays I have to figure out how in the world to get things done when my day is totally reliant on the schedule of a 3 month old and reliant on my ability not to stare at her in awe every waking second of the day. This is a major change.
In retrospect, I should have double majored in homemaking and child development :) (sort of kidding...). Don't get me wrong, I loved my studies, and I'm glad I earned both my degrees, it's just that my daughter doesn't really care about exercise physiology (yet!). Even though adjusting to this new phase of life is hard, and at times I feel like I have NO IDEA what I'm doing, I know it's where I'm supposed to be. I'll get better at it, I just have to give myself a chance. She's totally worth it.
