Seasons

Habit: a dominant or regular disposition or tendency; prevailing character or quality. Change: 1. to make the form, nature, content, future course, etc., of (something) different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone: to change one's name; to change one's opinion; to change the course of history.

2.	to transform or convert

I am having trouble. This is nothing new. My whole life, I have been overly concerned with finding a balance between the things I "have" to do and the things I "want" to do. I worry that I haven't done enough of the "have to"s to have earned spending time on the "want to"s, and when I do feel like I've earned some leisure time I often panic about what, exactly, to spend that time doing. Eating? Sleeping? Scrapbooking? Trying out some new art supplies? I'm not a complete mess anymore; I generally have some idea of what I want to do, and it occurred to me a while back how far I've come when I realized what I use babysitter time for. When Matteas was about six months old Aaron started encouraging me to hire a babysitter. Jack wanted my attention all of the time and he was still working out his relationship with his little brother, so it was tricky for me to do things that required me to have my back turned, like the dishes. I don't know why I waited so long, but I finally gave into Aaron's requests and called Madeleine. I was tired of having to be on guard while cleaning, tired of having to rescue the baby with soapy hands, of getting interrupted in the middle of trying to make progress. It worked out really well, and when I saw how much the boys loved playing with Madeleine I wondered why I waited so long. No matter how nice your babysitter is, it's hard to ask someone else to be with your kids but sometimes it's even harder to be with your kids 24/7. Everyone has moved on; Madeleine is in college now and her younger sister Grace has taken over. When she comes, I usually don't clean. I work out or run errands, or both. Those things seemed like total luxury items back in the sleep-deprived days of Matteas' infancy, things I didn't even have the capacity to think about doing. Luckily, babies grow up. I still have a lot of the same struggles, but the hard parts aren't as hard. Matteas still doesn't sleep through the night, but he sleeps a lot better than he did. My house is still messy more often than it's clean, but both of the boys are able to help clean up their toys instead of me having to do everything. Babysitting time is used for "want to"s more than "have to"s. And yet, it's still hard. I don't expect it to ever not be. What scares me is, there isn't much real trouble in my life. No one I love is in the hospital, my husband has a job that pays the mortgage, my kids are strong and healthy; yet some days, my life still feels overwhelming. I feel like I'm constantly adding to the list of things I need to get to, and the list grows longer everyday. The boys, while perfectly capable of playing independently, want me to be with them constantly. I realize this is normal, but I also realize that I would be doing them a major disservice to grant their non-stop requests for my attention. I want them to know how much I love them, but I don't want them to grow up believing the world revolves around them. I want them to have friends and nurture their relationships, but I don't want them to be unable to spend time alone. I remember very clearly a talk I heard given by Alison Bernhoft, years before I had children. She said(and forgive me Alison for paraphrasing) that it was important to her that her children learn to spend constructive time by themselves so that when they chose to be in the company of others, it would be out of a genuine desire to have relationship with a specific person rather than the mere avoidance of being alone. I was years away from becoming a mother, but I filed that bit of wisdom away for later. I'm so glad I did, and I'm finding that it applies to me as much as to my children. I need time alone, and when I get it I'm a better mother. There are seasons in life when alone time is hard to come by, but I've found it helpful to remember during those times that nothing lasts forever. The trick is to know what season you're in at the time so you can respond accordingly. Sometimes you need to call a babysitter just so you can shower and dress by yourself. Other times you can take a week off and go to New York alone. Sometimes your baby will need your constant attention, and someday your baby will grow up and what you both need is for him to learn to play alone. What I'm gradually accepting is that I will probably never be in a fixed place for very long. I'm learning that, more important than being able to figure out precisely where I am is the ability to be flexible about it, to discern what about the moment I am currently in is really important and what can wait until later. Right now, Jack is watching PBS and Matteas is sleeping. The kitchen sink is full of dishes and the living room rug needs vacuuming, but I decided that blogging would be more restorative to my soul than cleaning. My husband and I don't see totally eye-to-eye on this subject, as he feels it would be more restorative to his soul to come home to a semi-clean house after a long day at work. It has occurred to me lately that marriage and kids should come with a built-in nanny and maid; two adults doesn't seem like enough. I spend my whole day taking care of other people. Messy, needy, poopy, whiny people. I think my kids are of an average neediness, but they still have a lot to learn about how to be people and I'm the one who's supposed to teach them. I find it really exhausting to be patient and gentle about this, and get particularly frustrated when I feel like I have to teach them something obvious, like that it's not okay to poke your brother in the eye because he won't be a dog with you. Or that it's not okay to poop on the living room floor and then drive your cars through it. Or that it's not okay to hold onto my skirt in church so that when I stand up and you stay sitting down you give the guy behind me an eyeful(yes, that happened). Or that it's not okay to sneak cleaning solution, shampoo, oatmeal and tampons into the bathroom and fill the sink with "potion." Use your words; respect other people's bodies; that only goes in the toilet; we don't eat chocolate for breakfast; you may not unwrap all of Mom's "special bandaids;" eat your dinner; please use your inside voice; it's not okay to hit when you're mad; that is not an appropriate way to use ______(a hundred different various things); please climb out of the dishwasher; it's rude to sit on your brother's head when you have a poop; I get tired of saying this sort of stuff. When I do get a break from saying it, it's hard to muster the enthusiasm to clean up the messes that have been made in the process of all that stuff especially when I know I'm going to have to fight two eager little "helpers" to do it. I know it's important for kids to help; it's how they learn. But it's not always possible, like when I need to clean up dishes from making dinner and there was raw chicken involved. I don't mind cleaning; what I do mind is having a screaming toddler attached to my leg while cleaning or two boys going head-to-head over the same toy while I'm trying to scrub the toilet. So a lot of the time, I don't. This is where I have not yet learned where the balance is. This is not one of those posts where I have a neat little conclusion at the end. I haven't figured this one out yet, but I'm pretty sure at least part of the answer is going to involve some marriage counseling. And possibly professional cleaners. My suspicion is that both Aaron and I have unrealistic expectations about how much mess is reasonable. On the one hand, our kids are two and four; those are really messy ages. On the other hand, I know I have a particularly strong resistance to change; once I get used to doing something a certain way, it's really hard for me to do it differently even if the circumstances change. So I get very defensive when Aaron says he thinks I could keep the house up a little better. I don't like that he is asking me to do something different. It implies that I am not perfect in my current condition. It implies that I have flaws. It implies that he would like me to change. And change is hard. But recently I have had to ask myself, why not? I could have everything in my life ordered exactly the way I wanted it, make only foods I like, listen only to music that I like, spend time doing things that only I want to do, if. If I wasn't married. If I lived alone. If Aaron and our boys weren't in my life. So I had to ask myself: if I refuse to change, why the hell did I get married? Did I really think that I could merge my life with another and expect everything to stay the same? If I don't change, what does that say to my husband? That he has had so little impact on my life that nothing has changed, that change has not been warranted by his presence? That's not what I want to say. What I want to say is that I love my husband so much that he has affected every part of my being, that my love for him is so great that my life would not be the same without him, that he is so important to me that all other priorities take a back seat. And all those things are true, so long as he doesn't ask me to change. Anything but that. I'm trying. We both are. In small ways, we are learning. I know that he doesn't like feta, so I buy goat cheese. He likes big cups of coffee, but pours mine in a small cup because he knows that's what I like. He likes colored lights on the tree while I prefer white, so we use red and white lights. We do some things differently because of the other person, because we love each other and we want to have a life together instead of just living in the same house. Habits persist, and change will come slowly. But hopefully, if we work at it long enough, we can make a habit of change for the better.