Summer's Gifts

Part One:

I feel like the last 2 months have been a time of enlightenment for me. The same woman who was feeling like the victim of illness and angry with her child all the time now feels peace and love and patience. Allowing my heart to be contrite and open to a paradigm shift about both my health and Blaine has brought forth an abundance of blessings.

Lately I feel like instead of being stressed about my to-do list, or the messes my children are making, I am just enjoying motherhood.

Some examples:

Instead of being mad that Blaine dumped out a whole basket of folded laundry, I felt proud of him that he took the initiative to get himself dressed. Instead of being frustrated that I had to ask my boys 6 times to fill up the laundry basket with toys and take it upstairs, I smiled as I watched them finally fill it up and carry it up together, singing, "Teamwork! Teamwork! Teamwork!" My heart felt light as I made the boys lunch while they marched around the house with flutes and maracas (a parade).

The ability to enjoy them in such a way is a tremendous change and blessing. Not to mention that my health is on a steady incline. And, as if those weren't blessings enough, suddenly I'm pregnant.

Part Two:

I wrote that on July 9th. I had yet to begin the barfiness and I-cannot-possibly-get-up-this-morning-fatigue of the first trimester. It was a peaceful time of relative ease. Then I spent most of July and August trying just to keep up, and failing. My furniture collected dust, my petunias got eaten by nasty caterpillars while I did nothing to stop it, and my toilets looked grosser than any rest-stop's. I struggled to find the balance between 'you are pregnant, give yourself a break' and 'stop being such a pansy and get up and go to work!' My sister-in-law, Melissa, says that when you get ready to have a new baby, you go into debt. In other words, you sacrifice certain things when you conceive, gestate, and then care for a newborn. And I'm finally learning what things to sacrifice and what just needs to happen, no matter how yucky I feel. Like clean toilets, those need to happen. Because that's just gross. But instead of giving handmade gifts this summer, I gave store-bought gifts. Instead of canning peaches and making blackberry jam like last summer, I sat at the pool with my boys every day. I'm finally learning to accept limitations and feel at peace with each phase of life. We'll be buying canned peaches this winter, and I'm OK with that.

--anne