update

I've heard it said that being a parent is a juggling act. You've probably heard that, too. Some of you know that from experience. People without kids think they know it until they have kids. Then they understand.

For me its not so much balancing work and the kids because I don't work. Yeah, yeah, I know. I work. I have the hardest job in the world. Blah, blah, blah. I don't work outside the home. Sometimes I wish I did.

Those times that I wished I worked outside the home are often followed by feelings of guilt.

My balancing act usually revolves around guilt. I don't suppose I should feel like I have to have any guilt in my role as a mother but it seems to come with the territory. Stay-at-home moms feel guilty for not contributing financially to the household and working mothers feel guilty for not "being there" for their kids.

Since I had such a very rough time after Gavin was born I decided it would be in every one's best interest to make sure there was lots of relief in the first few months after the baby was born. Even though I'm an open book I don't think many people knew how bad off I was after Gavin was born. Bad. I usually make light of my crazy moments but there wasn't much to make light of the post partum period with Gavin. I cried every night as the sun set. I lived in fear of something awful happening to him. I lived in fear of me going over the edge. I didn't realize how bad off I was until my 6 week check up after Theo was born.

Sitting in the midwifery office this time taking the depression screening (not labeled as such but pretty obvious what it was) I was able to give a positive answer to each question (do you feel sad, do you cry, do you feel hopeless....). No, no, no. As I was answering the questions I thought back two years ago when I was giving 'yes' as an answer to all of the questions. It made me sad for the new mom that I was then and really happy for where I was this time around.

Seeing how happy I was made me realize hiring someone to come help in the mornings was a very smart move. An expensive move but a smart one. Of course it also helped that I had almost three weeks of help from Ryan's mom, my mom and his step-mom. What lifesavers!

All of that above brings me back to my point about balance. I feel spoiled. How many moms of newborns get time to themselves? How many moms can take a nap because someone else is in the house to watch the babies? How many moms can go to the gym or go grocery shopping or take a shower or *gasp* dry their hair after the shower and put on make-up? Really?

When I'm put together I feel more confident in myself as a person but less confident in myself as a mom. Does that even make sense? There is a war going on inside between the rational person and the person who thinks moms are supposed to be harried and stressed out.

A week or so ago we made an event out of a trip to the grocery store. Grocery shopping is usually something I like to do by myself. Ryan and I are especially bad at shopping together. It's not that we fight; we are just entirely to permissive when the other holds up something that we probably shouldn't buy and give the "eh? please? doesn't this look yummy" eyes. We end up buying lots of snacky foods and little else.

At the time of this trip I was feeling particularly dejected about my skills as a cook which are minimal. I try to lay blame every where but on my shoulders for my cooking woes. My kitchen is too small. There is no prep space. But my friend Heidi has a kitchen that is the size of my kitchen sink and she makes wonderful food. It's the recipes that I find on-line. Oh, but the recipe had 1,238 glowing reviews. It's the Betty Crocker recipe I used. Oh, wait, she's Betty Freakin' Crocker! So there I was moseying down the frozen food aisle looking for their yummy Indian food. I turned to Ryan and said, "They don't have it! Why would they take it away?!" He just looked at me and said, while pointing to a case I passed at least 3 times, "it's right there."

I looked at my two favorite Indian dishes and just like every other time I turned the box of my favorite one with basmati rice over to make sure it still had 21 grams of fat per serving. Drat. Still loaded with fat so I put it back and grabbed by second favorite Indian meal and tossed it in the cart. I kept grabbing and tossing until the cart was quite full of them. Ryan just kind of looked at the pile of frozen entrees then me and back to the food. Pointing to the frozen meals with one hand my chest with the other I said, "Best housewife ever."

Really. What kind of Hausfrau am I? I'm not so good at keeping the house tidy. Although in my defense I do have a little help in that department. My little helper is a little over 2 feet tall, weighs 30 pounds and is just about the cutest thing ever. He loves to help keep the couch clean - any freshly laundered and folded clothes sitting on the couch get swiped and knocked to the floor.

As mentioned above I'm not a great cook. I make killer jambalaya and white chicken chili. That's about it. Oh, and home made mac 'n cheese but I don't count anything where one serving has enough fat to completely occlude a blood vessel. Anyone can make anything tasty with enough butter and cheese. That's cheating. Oh, and I can make some fun salads but really - salad? Snooze. Sometimes I accidentally make good stuff. Once I tried making a tomato based stew using quinoa. It turned into a big fluffy tomato based bowl of ? It was good but I didn't know what to call it. I brought it with me to a function where everyone liked it - I ended up calling it a salad.

Now as I write the latter half of this post a few things have changed from when I started this about a month ago. The biggest change is sleep. Theo is not the sleep champ he was early on. We stripped him of any and all medals we gave him. The categories he medaled in (and has subsequently been stripped of) were, but not limited to:

duration - sometimes 6 hours

ease of transferring while asleep - pick him up from bed, swing, bouncy chair and lay him in his crib without him waking up

frequency of naps - long morning nap, long afternoon nap, long evening nap

Here it is 2:56 in the morning and I'm in the living room writing this. Theo is sleeping in his swing. I really thought we wouldn't be doing this again. Me sleeping on the couch and the baby in the swing. The little turkey has been waking up around 1-ish and thinks he needs to be all cute and smiley. It's so annoying. Annoyingly cute!

Even in the dark I can see his eyes wide open staring at me trying really hard to engage me. As your eyes adjust to the dim light coming in from the street lights you see that his mouth is wide open in the cutest toothless baby smile. Oy. It is unreal how cute it is. Which, of course, makes it even more annoying.

Now that he is asleep I'm going to attempt to turn off the annoying swing music, mobile and the actual swinging.

Wish me luck!