To the new Mother

I know it's been forever since I've posted. But there are times when I feel advice I'm giving to one person, could really be given to so many. This post is because I love hearing honesty from people, especially other moms. It helps me feel normal, and that's my greatest wish for a new mom, so here it is:

You are in a state of what I call "new normal". Being a new mom is totally and completely overwhelming to EVERYONE. Most women WILL NOT TELL YOU THIS, and I bet you've been beating yourself up over thinking and feeling it, because we think we are expected to be natural mothers, and as we look around, what we are seeing and hearing is women who are in love with being a mom, and are happy. It is totally NORMAL to not be happy about your baby, and to have a hard time feeling like you love your baby all of the time. This is because having a baby can at times be stress beyond our capacity. Of course, you love your baby it's normal to have hard time with this sometimes, and you are still a good mom.

It is a MYTH that parenting is easy, fun, exciting, and joyful at every moment. Thank heavens our Heavenly Father loves us, so he OCCASIONALLY gives us cute, fun, moments with our kids that make it all worth it. Other than that, parenting is a lot of sacrifice, it's hard, stressful, and chaotic much of the time. When you see a woman who looks like she's doing everything right and parenting is easy to her, it's a myth you're telling yourself to guilt yourself. Women have a hard time admitting how hard parenting is. We are all afraid of failing at this. There's so much pressure to hold everything together. But the TRUTH is it's a struggle for everyone.

Motherhood gets easier... very slowly, but it really eventually does get easier. This should bring you hope. :) After having my first two, I started telling people to just get to 6 weeks. Before they're 6 weeks old you feel like you've been hit by a train. Sleep deficiency does crazy things to us (on top of all the other stuff like healing, hormones, producing milk, sometimes our baby won't eat, or cries too much). But I felt like once I hit 6 weeks I learned I could live without the sleep... and I was going to be ok. Even though you are tired and overwhelmed, you know you're going to survive.

GUILT Happens. Guilt SUCKS!!! We all have it. It's a mom thing, you can't get rid of it as hard as you would like to try. So you're just going to have to deal with it the best you can. There isn't ANYTHING in the world that is exempt from making you feel guilt. You forgot something, you dropped something, you're five minutes late feeding baby, they have a red bum, anything and everything you do will at some point cause you guilt. Women convince themselves that they single handedly are going to kill their baby somehow and they guilt themselves every step of the way. You cannot control everything in you or your baby's life. When guilt is overcoming you, try to think of all the things you did right in the day. This will never go away. I do it too, we ALL do, it's a woman thing. I wish I had a pill to make it go away. When we figure this out we will sell it and make a billion dollars! :)

Every Baby is DIFFERENT. I spent so much time reading books about some other kind of a baby. Some advice is very helpful, and you will shout for joy for anything that works for you and your baby. But there are so many things people will say and do that are NOT so helpful to you. Try not to let this start into the GUILT!!!! I'm telling you, it will sneek in whenever and however it can. One minute your baby is the best baby on the block because they are sleeping through the night, the next your baby is the slowest baby on the block because they are not sitting up or crawling when the slower baby on the block is already! As much as you will want to guilt yourself for this, try not to. This is totally out of your control! It does seem to me that the world ultimately is pretty fair. The smartest baby struggles socially, if you're amazing at math you're not very athletic. Or whatever it is. We all have strenghts, we all have weaknesses. Try not to let yourself be convinced that you're behind. It seems to always turn out ok in the end. Find what works for you and your baby.

DON'T DOUBT yourself. For some reason pregnant and post-partum woman are total air heads. What is it when we are lucky to remember our own names some days? I remember feeling so stupid sometimes. However, when it comes to your baby, you know them so much better than anyone else. If you are feeling strongly about something, don't let other people (even doctors) talk you out of it. You might call the doctor's office 12 times in a three day period. They may be intentionally making you feel silly to get you to stop. This will probably really be nothing, just like they said it was. But if you are feeling strongly about something, be persistant. I am still playing the guessing game of "what is wrong with my child" and they can all talk and tell me what hurts. Stick with your gut, and don't doubt yourself.

Mothers need other mothers. We need to love and support one another, and to build each other up. You will feel the pressure from other mothers in the store when your baby is crying. Try not to let your perception of what other people think get to you. We are all weary. We are all exhausted, just trying the best we can to get through another day. May we be the mother in the store who lifts another. Who forgives another. Who gives the benefit of the doubt. Because we all need someone to do the same for us sometimes.

This kid's dream come true

This was an event that had to be blogged about for my family to see.

This shirt came in the mail just a few days ago. It is signed by many of the BYU football stars of the upcoming year. W is a sport guy... and certainly a BYU sport guy! You can imagine the excitement that this kid had, and has about this treasure!!! My sister-in-law's sister just married a BYU football player, who was sweet enough to recognize W's passion for the sport, and had the team sign a shirt for him. This kid has been on cloud 9 ever since. It's a dream come true. For anyone who knows this kid, you know that this kind of a smile doesn't come across this kid's face very often!

Got the Project Bug

So every once in apparantly 10 years I am a little "Martha Stewart". A close friend (who's a Relief Society Pres.)asked me for a favor... the favor being to find something worth $8.00 for her to give to 5 of her most trusted women in the ward. I, knowing that these woman do so much for me, and my fellow ward members, really wanted to find something spectacular to give. I got the idea of those super cute, chic, and spunky aprons that you find at boutiques. Of course, I couldn't afford those aprons, so I decided to make some myself. I wish you knew each of the women that the aprons were given to, because I bought each woman fabric that I thought was suited just for her. If you think these are cute... call me in 10 years. Who knows, maybe I'll get creative again!

My Favorite Guy

This is just a shout out to my favorite guy in the whole wide world. I had a little girls weekend with some of my favorite friends, and B was the one who made my wonderful weekend happen because he got us the hotel room, took over for me all weekend, and did it with a smile. It not only allowed me to have a break, but it refreshed me as a mom, and I was able to appreciate him even so much more than I already did. My husband is the best, even though I like to remind him that he's not perfect, he is pretty near perfect. I love, love, love this man so much (even now that we are wrinkled)! Thanks babe!!!

Just a Mom

The older my kids get, the busier I get. Moe and W both have homework, and a couple extra cirricular activities. At the beginning of each new school year I find myself completely overwhelmed and stressed out with all the things I have to manage in a day. Sometimes it's a miracle it all keeps going. A couple weeks into daily homework with both kids, everyday piano lessons, chauffering to music and dance, school, being a cheerleader and nanny for the coach at soccer, I began to wonder why it feels like I'm the one doing all of this again. How did I become a student again??? Then I started to wonder why it is that when I'm talking to a friend who has a degree and a nice full time job, when asked what I do,I say "I'm just a mom". Why is this? Because JUST is just not really giving my title the credit it deserves. As an army seargant, caregiver, nurse, cook, chauffer, counsler, shrink, teacher, costume designer, tutor, cheerleader, who's had to learn to be patient, understanding, loving, relaxed, flexible, happy, and selfless, it doesn't feel like a just kind of a job. And the only thing you're given for this awesome JUST of a job is not a nice fat paycheck, it's a dirty look and a judgement call from a stranger at the store.

And that's just the life of just a mom.

yes...we're still alive somewhere out there

We are still here and doing so very well. We couldn't be more content with life, well maybe we could, but, we are finding joy in our everyday life. We are enjoying the fingerprints (sometimes we-meaning I-need to stop enjoying them and clean them). But we are indeed so happy. We are so glad about our latest addition to the B household... a boat. Who buys a boat so late in the season... yeah... we do... so we got as much enjoyment as we could with the time we had left in the warm weather. The kids are so extactic!

We are grateful for what we have, praying for those without, and giving as much as we can to help out.

The American Escargot Experience... or the bad thing about being married to me

So... while we were in France and Spain it came to my attention that my husband is a HUGE escargot fan...which was not a known fact before "said" vacation. I was teasing him about the snails by mentioning all the similarities between the garden snails at home and the lovely french and spanish snails (called escargot...like it's better when said in french:))that he was enjoying. I told him I would gather up some snails at home to cook up for him AS A JOKE. So one morning my friend Heidi Vee happened to mentioned the million annoying snails in her garden. I asked her to please bring me all her snails so I could cook them up as a joke to my wonderful husband. All of you who know me well know that I am very SERIOUS about my jokes... especially when it's a good one. You should've seen how excited my kids were to get the snails cooking. Suprisingly they smelled pretty good once they were sauteeing in the garlic butter. They should've been ready for enjoying just as B got home from work, but of course, I got side tracked by an unexpected guest and they totally burned... ruining the very funny, drawn out, snail joke. So B got home, the house smelled like burnt popcorn, and the joke was on me. How does it always end up that I'm the only one who thinks I'm funny???

At least me and Heidi Vee had a good laugh out of the experience! :) Thanks Heidi (and R and Skyler).