Grace and gratitude

We'd had a rough morning. Honestly, it was a rough morning after a rough two and a half weeks. The morning was an exhibit in some of my less superior moments as a mother. Let's just say it was me who ended up getting the time out punishment this time. One thing that made it especially difficult was the rain that was keeping us trapped inside. So as soon as some sun broke through, it was like a race to see which one of us could bolt to the door first. 

We headed out for a nice long walk along a creek and through a neighborhood. Even with the sun, fresh air, and cool breeze, Sofia was still fussy and frustrated with me. But we powered through. The walking helped me to take lots of nice deep breaths. 

As we pulled back up to our driveway, I noticed our neighbor, Nan, across the street out gardening and we stopped over to say a quick hello. Perhaps the accountable eye of a non-mommy-person helped quiet Sofia's irritability, because she became still, calm, and alert. With things finally running smoothly, the quick hello evolved into a relaxing little visit in Nan's garden, where Sofia got to help do some digging, weeding, and general floral admiring. There were new trees, tiny birds, and more colors and flowers than Sofia had probably ever seen before, all in a shaded welcoming environment. It was just what we both needed. 

After a while, we bid farewell to Nan and headed back home for lunch. I sat Sofia in her high chair and busied myself in the kitchen getting our food together. Still in a bit of a tizzy, I sat down with her and started to feed her some food. But she stopped, clasped her little hands together, and said, "God." She halted me in my little whirlwind of culinary stress to remind me pray. This is the beautiful thing about creating family rituals, she holds me to it even when I forget! 

And so I said, 

"Oh yes, Sofia! Thank you. We SHOULD pray. What shall we thank God for?"

"Cracker"

"Oh, ok. We'll thank God for crackers. What else would you like to thank God for?"

"Nan"

I couldn't have said it better myself. Daddy got us some yummy crackers this week, we were both very thankful for them. And Nan really was our rescue that morning. 

"Dear God, thank you so much for these yummy crackers and for all our food. And thank you, God, for our wonderful neighbor, Nan, and for the lovely time we had in her beautiful garden together. You placed such great neighbors into our lives and we are very grateful. Amen."

And there it was. Our day officially turned around one hundred eighty degrees, not just by Nan, but by the moment where Sofia helped us to show gratitude to God for Nan. After that, we were able to get along so much better, show so much more affection for each other, communicate our needs to each other so much more clearly. Sofia helped me to embrace an opportunity for heart change. 

Dear God, 

Thank you for blessing me with a little girl who reminds me and teaches me to be a more grateful person.

Amen.

More, Peas

We had a blessed break from teething for a few days there, but it is back. I simply can not remember who suggested this to me, but feeding Sofia frozen peas is really doing the trick to provide some relief. Thank you, kind soul, for this great suggestion. Here is Sofia "eating" her peas:

#blessedmamaproblems

P.S. here's a handy resource on baby teeth my mom found for me. What I like best is that it tells me this is the last tooth to come in until her second year molars! Woo hoo!

http://www.mychildhealth.net/baby-teething-help.html

Coming and Going

Last week, Manny took advantage of his spring break to head back to San Diego to do some research and collaboration. I'm still too scared to go that long solo, so my parents kindly flew in the rescue me. The allure of time with Sofia sure doesn't hurt my negotiations. 

My parents decided while I was pregnant that they would be called "Big Mama" and "Big Papa." This may not make a ton of sense if you don't know them, so here's a good shot of them, relative to Sofia to give you a sense of where the name might come from:

very very tall Grandfather, very very little grandaughter.

The great thing about these names is Sofia can already sign and say "big," she even knows to associate it with my sister [who is also very very tall!], so it is like "Big" has become our last name, instead of Stewart. 

Weather was all over the map, so we got to enjoy all sorts of Maine activities. Visits to rivers, oceans, ponds, towns, shops, lighthouses. Mostly, we had lots of opportunities for grandparently bonding to successfully occur. Sweet memories were made like:

• Sofia finally assuaging my father's urgent need for her to love clam chowder, downing about half a cup on her own
• Playing ball in the yard
• Reading lots of books, old and new
• Video chatting with Dad [she kept trying to look at the back of the computer screen to see if he was hiding back there]
• Learning and expressing lots of animal sounds
• Meeting some of Sofia's little friends, including some that brought over a brand new birthday gift toy bird. My father very sweetly bonded with this little 4 year old boy by flying his bird with him, flying it right over our neighbors' fence and even up onto our roof. I'm just hoping Sofia didn't get any ideas watching my dad crawl our my bedroom window onto said roof to fetch and fly down the bird. 
• Sofia's first instance of convincing people to buy her toys she takes to in shops [meet "Bah" below]

#blessedmamaproblems : The horrible part of course is that at the end of the week they had to leave. I just can't seem to resign myself to this long distance grandparenting business. So spoiled I am to still feel so close to all four of my living grandparents, who lived in the same town as me as I grew up. It's just so hard for Sofia to be so far from my parents. She loves them and enjoys them so very much. It just stinks that we have to keep saying goodbye. 

Time was well spent, my love tank was refilled. I dare say Sofia's love tank is more than running over. And in the end, we got to say hello again to Daddy, and that was sweet and precious and good. 

Take a seat

Alright folks, I haven't been getting much good sleep lately, and I don't get to the computer until well after the window where my creative brain is still functioning lately, so you're getting a weird post today, but I need some answers, so I'm putting it out there. 

Every week, I get a smattering of emails from various services telling me about my toddler's development. I learn all sorts of things to look for, like first words, sudden fears of bathtubs, and such. That's how I knew to smile and nod recently when she started becoming obsessed with getting in and out of furniture. Totally normal new skill apparently, and a pretty cute one in my opinion. 

See, here is Sofia mastering her little rocking chair (and blowing a kiss at the same time):

And here's the afternoon when we went around the porch and she asked me to help her in and out of each and every chair out there, over and over again. As soon as she'd plopped down in one, she was pointing to another. 

Ok, fine. That's all well and good. But I need someone who knows something more about child development to explain to me why exactly she's so obsessed with sitting on things? I'm not talking about getting in and out of furniture anymore. I'm talking about exploring the world with the tool of her bum.  She sees a jacket lying around, the spreads it out on the floor, turns around, backs up, and plops down on it. Maybe she lies back and makes a few jacket-angles, gets back up, and does it again. Here she is one afternoon pulling cookie sheets and racks out of my cabinets so she could sit on those: 

How do little brains work?? It feels like every few weeks her brain must check for updates and receive new directives. "Current mission assignment : find object, sit on said object, repeat." It's not the first mission directive I've witnessed her accept. In the olden days, she had phases where she was doing compulsive crunches day and night for weeks. That eventually lead to sitting up, and rock-hard-baby-abs, which was cool. Even motivated me to do a few more crunches than I would have otherwise (which would have been none). So I'm curious to know what this one is all about. 

For now, I'm just witnessing the sitting-obsession and waiting to see how it plays out. I was doing just that the other night, but got bored, so I decided we needed to do some tumbling together. I started to show her how to do summersaults. She was super into it, eyes all wide. It was a blast. She was laughing, I was laughing, we were having a grand old time. And then when I'd tuckered myself out, I just sprawled out on the floor, laying on my back explaining to her, "Mommy's tired!" when she backed it up and sat right on my face. I no longer find it simply curious, I find it hilarious, and I really want someone to explain what's going on to me!  Any Lobsters out there that can help me out? 

P.S. Hey Emily - remember in college how we named our dorm room, "The Sitting Room" and spent a summer collecting chairs/couches/and making our own pillows? Maybe Sofia just wants to fit in to our club and show me she has superior sitting skilz?!

#BlessedMamaProblems

#firstworldproblems

Problem: 

I want to tie all stories up in nice pretty bows with happy endings that make my listener/reader feel happy, but sometimes, the story hasn't ended happily yet. 

I find the "first world problems" meme to be rather entertaining. It's snarky, yes, but I like how it keeps our woes in perspective. I have definitely felt frustrated by every single one of the above situations. If we really consider the bigger picture, life is probably not that rough. That's good to remember.

But here's another thing. Do you ever find yourself complaining about something that is really bothering you, and then trying to wrap it up with a nice and tidy conclusion? Like recently, I saw some people I hadn't seen in a while, and as we exchanged pleasantries, I tried to respond to the "how have you been?" question. I had been falling apart, honestly. I tried to be authentic, "Haven't really slept in over a week, Sofia's been sick and teething." You see their pupils widening and their leg muscles contracting so that they are ready to dart away from this Hot Mess and find safer, happier territory, so I wrap it up, downplaying my drama, "But other than that, we've been good, how are you?" Awkward social crises mostly averted. We really have trouble holding one another's unraveling, don't we? 

And let's be honest, we have trouble holding our own unraveling. I've found over and over in conversations with friends, even dear old friends that I love and trust, that when they ask me how I am doing, and they really mean it, and they really can hold my unraveling, I am not ready to tell them how bad things are unless I know I've found my way out of the woods or I've already discovered the moral of my story. This is true too when I'm considering blog post material. It is really hard to put myself out there in the midst of a moment that is still hard and that reveals that I don't have things under control. It's fine to be honest about not having had control, as long as that is past tense, and I currently have that problem dominated.

I need something that allows me to both be honest about my present Hot-Mess-ness, but also maintain a broader perspective, so that my present doesn't unravel me, and you can tolerate hearing some truth about where I am at. 

Proposition:

Instead of starting from the place of my uncontrollable problem and then artificially wrapping it up with happy thoughts, what if I start from a grounded place of gratitude and move to a confession that I'm nonetheless imperfect, emotionally complex, and maybe struggling with something at the moment? 

When he was having a bad day, our campus pastor at Westmont, Ben Patterson, used to reply to the question of how he was doing with the response, "I am fundamentally sound." In that, he was owning that his circumstances in the moment were rough, but his belief in the love of God was not contingent on things going Ben's way, he believed in a God that was bigger than his present circumstance and who would carry him through. I loved that mentality and have used that response many a time. 

That discipline was good, and I am also thinking of using a phrase that is a bit more specific to who I am. For example, as I was heading upstairs the other day to take my shower, I heard Manny and Sofia's laughter filling the house, and I felt jealous of the fun time they were getting to have together, and wished I didn't have to rush through the necessities of the day and miss out. I think this was a "BlessedMamaProblem." Of all the problems to have in the world, that was a pretty sweet one. And instead of pouting, once I turned it around to think about my identity as one covered in grace, I was able to admit that there were plenty of other things that made me sad/frustrated/confused/etc. but that wouldn't even come up if I were not first gifted with amazing things like an amazingly generous husband and beautifully spirited daughter, which is not to say that there is not still a sadness to them, just to say that it is contextualized within blessing. So then I can hold the hard stuff, and am I wrong, or does that make it easier for you to tolerate too, knowing that I'm sad, and I am grounded and so I'll be [note the allowance for future tense here, I'm not necessarily "ok" yet] ok? 

Maybe even more than that, I'm more free to admit to you that things are rough, and I am open to suggestions you might have, because maybe you know more than me about how to navigate this situation. And maybe you identify and haven't been able to admit it yourself? But when I tell you about my BlessedMamaProblem (BMP), we can maybe even laugh about it, even if we don't quite have a solution to something that feels like a problem? 

The other day I was on a walk with a fellow mom friend whose kids were sick. As I listened to her try to act like everything was fine, but between the lines it was clear that she felt like she was unraveling, I could hear and feel what I had just been feeling when my Sofia was sick and teething just days before. I admitted that in that hour, what I had been feeling I needed most was for someone to tell me how on earth to stop being mad at my daughter. What a horrible thought right? Sofia was in pain and suffering and so helpless to care for herself as I can by getting a cup of tea or something. But after days of that, I just felt angry when she would start to cry again because I felt so drained and frustrated and maybe even helpless myself. Of course rationally I can say things like "it is because I love her so much that the sound of her crying is painful, it is a deep empathy, I am mad at the pain, not my daughter" and such. But in that moment, I can't necessarily think clearly, and I am angry at the crying itself. I still don't know quite how to find the emotional strength to deal with that situation. I shared how much I love my daughter, and this nasty thing was true about what I was feeling. It was a little bit terrifying (honestly, I'm a bit nervous about even writing it out here) and alot a bit humbling to admit to a friend who seemed frustrated and yet still pulled together. But my friend exclaimed with her whole body, practically shouting gratitude at me for saying what I did because that was exactly what she felt too but the feeling was so unnerving, so unraveling, that she didn't want to admit it either, maybe even to herself. Without closure, we both had a fantastic laugh from the relief of knowing we were not alone, and, even in that unresolved mess, we are blessed. 

Instead of saying, "I'm angry at my kid for being sick, but I'm blessed to have a kid in the first place," I want to shift to saying, "I'm a blessed mama, and still, I don't know what to do when my baby is in pain and I'm out of energy to help her." Gosh, it is scary just writing it out for myself. But notice the shift from "but" to "and." 

Instead of minimizing, negating, or choosing to forget the suffering, I'm trying to hold it together with truth and perspective. I think this not only leaves room for the audience I share my BMP with, it also makes honest space for God to step into my mess and help me work past it. Even if I try to downplay my pain, doesn't mean I don't have the pain at all, I'm just suppressing it. If I can find the strength for  greater willingness to confess my mess, this will help me see how much bigger of a God He is, to remember His faithfulness in the complex and difficult moments. 

I'm going to try to discipline myself in this mentality. I'm going to try to maintain this posture more as I write for this blog, so stay tuned. You can also join my two other twitter followers (@zoefaithreyes) and see if I can craft some #blessedmamaproblems tweets, and maybe share some #blessedmamaproblems of your own (or blessed papa, or blessed human, or what have you). You can also leave your comments here and let me know what you think. 

P.S. Jeff Goins challenged writers to compose something that scared them, and hit publish. See his post here. Challenge accepted.