I heard it going into having a baby, but I didn't have any concept for it: the first six months of new parenthood is ridiculously hard. There were times when it wasn't that bad, sure, but it seemed like there was way more time spent going "oh, crap, I can't do this."
Maybe I'm just a bad mom. I don't know. I've never been a mom before, I have nothing to compare this to. But I felt like I was going to lose my shi* often. Speaking of shi*, I have sworn more in the last 7 1/2 months than I had in the entire 23 years previous. It's just hard. I like making lists, so here's a list of what is so hard.
1. Sleep. I feel I covered this extensively in the last post, so I will move on.
2. Being needed. Constantly. I think the time after you move out of your parents house and before you become a parent is some of the most me-centric time your whole life. I seriously did what I wanted 98% of the time. Yes, I was going to school and working, but when I got home, especially if the husband wasn't home, I did whatever I dang well pleased. If I wanted to take a nap, I napped. If I wanted to play video games, I played video games. Etc. But I feel like so much of my life is dictated by the needs of this small human. I mean, I can try to do something I want to do, even if it seems like it might work out for a minute. But it doesn't really last. Baby always needs something, it seems. In the past month or so, James has started napping consistently enough that I am able to shower while he sleeps. This is a huge accomplishment. Having the opportunity to shower every day, before noon! Wow. That is wild stuff. So freeing, except when I think about the freedoms of pre-baby life.
3. Expectations. They kill everything, but they especially kill the fun of having a baby. I knew from my Child Development classes that newborns slept approximately 17 hours a day. So I assumed that he would just be sleeping constantly. And he sure seemed to be falling asleep constantly, but dang, he never slept for long. And he sure liked to be awake at 1:00 AM those first two weeks of his life. But the expectations continue to kill you even after you start realize that you have become a walking zombie and that's probably how things are going to be for a while. Like expecting him to cry less as he gets older. Or expecting that bedtimes will get easier as he gets older. Or expecting him to like green beans because you like green beans. Or expecting him to sleep through the night at 4 months because many babies sleep through the night at four months. Expectations basically just set you up for failure and make you feel like you have done something wrong, when the reality is you are just responsible for this little being that hasn't been a part of the world for even a year and has no idea what the paradigm of life is out here. It's cool. He's just a baby.
4. Being a stay-at-home mom. This is obviously not applicable to everyone, nor should it be. Some families do it differently, and that is fine. It made the most sense in our family for me to stay home with James. And I am glad I do, and I don't miss my job much at all. But it is trying stuff. I get to deal with the fussiness and the poop and the spit up and the changing clothes and the too-short naps and all the like, every day, all day. There isn't a ton of opportunity for breaks. And it is hard to change the working woman mindset to one that is okay with feeling accomplished doing things in the home. It is hard to have so many hours at home spent talking to a baby and myself. Yes, I talk to myself. I kind of have to. I have too many words not to.
Okay, we'll call that a decent list. But I am here to say one thing today:
It has gotten so much better. I do not want to say that it was like we hit the six month threshold and, all of a sudden, everything was wonderful. I just slowly realized "hey, this is easier than it used to be." Maybe I am just getting better at dealing with things, or maybe James finally learned to sit up and entertain himself for longer periods of time. Or he is learning how to put himself back down when he wakes up at night. Or he stopped waking up so much after 45 minutes of napping. Whatever, it doesn't matter, it has gotten easier.
One thing parents do to each other than is unintentionally cruel is say things like, "I'm sorry things are hard right now, but just wait until he gets to [insert arbitrary age here] and things will be so much better." Because I heard those things and hit so many of those supposed "milestones," and nothing changed. (It goes back to why expectations suck.) But I do want to get the point across, that at some point in time, it will be easier. I don't know when. I think it is different for every parent-baby combination. It probably took a long time with us because the thing that I struggle with the most was dealing with sleep deprivation and the things James dealt with the worst was sleeping well. So the combination was explosive. But thank goodness, things have gotten better.
I also want to say that just because those six month were so incredibly hard for me doesn't diminish the fact that I love my baby tremendously. In fact, loving my baby was sort of a mantra to help me through those rough times. "I do this because I love him. I do this because I wanted to be a parent and raise babies and this is what raising babies looks like. I do this because I wanted this baby. I do this because I love him."
So, all in all, being a parent is wonderfully, exquisitely sucky. And, oddly, worth it. Thankfully, the suckiness does seem to diminish. Even if it never completely disappears.
Friday, June 6, 2014
Thursday, June 5, 2014
My little man . . .
I guess the appropriate beginning to my return to the blog would be talking about James. He's my baby. He's kind of awesome. Of course, any mom is probably partial to their own creation, but I do love my James. He is a fat, happy, giggling, cuddly (sometimes), loud, soft, sweet baby, who is growing up way too fast. Here are all the good things about James:
~He loves to laugh. And be happy. And smile. And all things that are good. This is one happy baby. Not necessarily always "content" (he is a wiggler), but he is pretty easy to keep happy. He is also ticklish, which is adorable. He really doesn't cry much at all.
~He loves all the things other babies hate. Bath time. Getting his diaper changed. His car seat. His crib. Etc. This baby is just so . . easy. I have seen so many other babies scream at the very notion of getting bathed or changed, and I feel so blessed that James is totally cool with so much of the things we have to do.
~He is a good eater, and has been for a long time. Not necessarily forever. But after about week five, he totally got the hang of breastfeeding and decided he was going to be a totally awesome eater. The same seems to be true for solids. He was a little hesitant at first with the solids (and rice cereal doesn't agree with his belly, but we moved on from that), but he eats really well now. Except green beans. But everyone is allowed to have something they don't like, food-wise.
~He goes down so easily for sleeping. This baby was HAAAAARD to sleep train (and I use that word referring only to conditioning a child to the circumstances under which you would like them to sleep. I am in no way referring to cry-it-out. Let's get that straight.) But all our work and effort has paid off beautifully and this baby is a dream to put down. Just a little bit of holding for a nap, and for bedtime, you can pretty much just drop him in the crib after he is calmed down and he will just fall asleep 100% on his own. Pretty bomb.
~His amazing ability to make everyone around him happy. I don't know if I have ever seen a baby that has quite this level of therapeutic capabilities. I mean, many people like holding babies. And a lot of people smile instinctively whenever they see one. But this boy, he just seems to bring people joy. Pure joy. He is so generous with his smiles and laughter that he puts people at ease. He helps people feel better when they are having a bad day. I have a therapy baby.
~The cuteness. Seriously. It is just too much:
Now, the thing that is not-so-great about James. Yes, I said the thing. As in singular. As in, I have had one bane to my existence for the last seven-and-a-half months, but, thankfully, only one. Sleeping. Yes, I realize I previously stated that this baby went down easily. Which he does, and has done so relatively well for several months. It is the staying asleep. I think we had about three months of normal, consistently getting better sleep habits. I daresay that we even had a few seven or eight hour stretches there. Before things got bad. Really bad. Like, what-the-crap-is-wrong-with-this-baby bad.
It just started one night. Just totally out of the blue, no warning. He woke up. So I went in and put him back down.
And he was up again an hour later. And an hour later. Every hour.
All night long. And it just kept going.
Every night. For months. And months.
Until I though my brains might explode out of my head from exhaustion and frustration and fatigue and desperation and all of those terrible, awful emotions that exist in so many mothers. The emotions that make you feel so guilty for feeling them, because they are about a small, helpless child that, despite all the awful things that happen, you still love so much, somehow.
So, I say that it continued for a very long time, but it did gradually get better. Bit by bit. I mean, in the grand scheme of things. I could look back on a week of his nights and see no improvement, but over the course of a month, there was a general ease of the exhaustion. It got easier for him to go back down at night. And it happened (maybe a little bit) less often.
But of course, this bane of my existance could not be a complete bane without disruption in all facets of his sleep. So about a month to a month and a half after the sleepless nights came, so did the sleepless days. Again, I am not referring to difficulty in putting him down. The ease in putting him down for naps has been consistent for a very long time.
I am talking about the 45-minute intruder. And intruder is the nicest term I can think of because it really deserves a lot more vicious label. Because it is a life-ruining monster of death and destruction.
Basically, it goes like this. James goes down for a nap (any nap, it doesn't matter). Then I go down for my nap (because let's not forget his night time sleeping is still awful and I am still tired, too). Then, right around 40-45 minutes into the nap, he just inexplicably wakes up. Sometimes he would be chatty and happy, sometimes it was like someone flicked him and he was very unhappy. Either way, it would always result in an overtired, unhappy baby and an overtired, unhappy mama.
I half-heartedly fought the battle to try to get him to go back to sleep. This was hell on earth. Sometimes I would be in his room for an hour and a half, just trying to get him to sleep, or stay asleep longer than five minutes, just to run out of time for a nap and have to get him up to feed him. Ugh, I shudder to remember those dark days. Worst.
Fortunately, we are at a happy place now. The best possible thing I did for his night-time sleep was stop feeding him in the night. I don't think I could have done it any earlier than when I did, because he was still taking a generous feed until we started him on solids at six months. Then he didn't seem to be eating much in the middle of the night. When I cut him off, he had a couple nights of a lot of waking up, but then he snapped right out of it and it became the norm to just have him wake up once or twice and just need a binky and a pat on the chest, then off again to dreamland.
The naps drastically improved after we dropped the third nap of the day. Again, I don't know how I could have made that work any sooner. We started doing that after his solid meals were getting enough inside him (instead of just on his face) that he was getting enough to make whole meals out of solids and not a combination breastfeed/solid feed.
Now he is pretty reliable. We even got to the point, after much trying and crying (me crying, not him) that he goes back down for naps pretty easily if we wakes up too early.
So, yeah, a little rant about the most difficult thing about James. But things are pretty good now. I will continue talking about things being good in the next post :)
~He loves to laugh. And be happy. And smile. And all things that are good. This is one happy baby. Not necessarily always "content" (he is a wiggler), but he is pretty easy to keep happy. He is also ticklish, which is adorable. He really doesn't cry much at all.
~He loves all the things other babies hate. Bath time. Getting his diaper changed. His car seat. His crib. Etc. This baby is just so . . easy. I have seen so many other babies scream at the very notion of getting bathed or changed, and I feel so blessed that James is totally cool with so much of the things we have to do.
~He is a good eater, and has been for a long time. Not necessarily forever. But after about week five, he totally got the hang of breastfeeding and decided he was going to be a totally awesome eater. The same seems to be true for solids. He was a little hesitant at first with the solids (and rice cereal doesn't agree with his belly, but we moved on from that), but he eats really well now. Except green beans. But everyone is allowed to have something they don't like, food-wise.
~He goes down so easily for sleeping. This baby was HAAAAARD to sleep train (and I use that word referring only to conditioning a child to the circumstances under which you would like them to sleep. I am in no way referring to cry-it-out. Let's get that straight.) But all our work and effort has paid off beautifully and this baby is a dream to put down. Just a little bit of holding for a nap, and for bedtime, you can pretty much just drop him in the crib after he is calmed down and he will just fall asleep 100% on his own. Pretty bomb.
~His amazing ability to make everyone around him happy. I don't know if I have ever seen a baby that has quite this level of therapeutic capabilities. I mean, many people like holding babies. And a lot of people smile instinctively whenever they see one. But this boy, he just seems to bring people joy. Pure joy. He is so generous with his smiles and laughter that he puts people at ease. He helps people feel better when they are having a bad day. I have a therapy baby.
~The cuteness. Seriously. It is just too much:
Now, the thing that is not-so-great about James. Yes, I said the thing. As in singular. As in, I have had one bane to my existence for the last seven-and-a-half months, but, thankfully, only one. Sleeping. Yes, I realize I previously stated that this baby went down easily. Which he does, and has done so relatively well for several months. It is the staying asleep. I think we had about three months of normal, consistently getting better sleep habits. I daresay that we even had a few seven or eight hour stretches there. Before things got bad. Really bad. Like, what-the-crap-is-wrong-with-this-baby bad.
It just started one night. Just totally out of the blue, no warning. He woke up. So I went in and put him back down.
And he was up again an hour later. And an hour later. Every hour.
All night long. And it just kept going.
Every night. For months. And months.
Until I though my brains might explode out of my head from exhaustion and frustration and fatigue and desperation and all of those terrible, awful emotions that exist in so many mothers. The emotions that make you feel so guilty for feeling them, because they are about a small, helpless child that, despite all the awful things that happen, you still love so much, somehow.
So, I say that it continued for a very long time, but it did gradually get better. Bit by bit. I mean, in the grand scheme of things. I could look back on a week of his nights and see no improvement, but over the course of a month, there was a general ease of the exhaustion. It got easier for him to go back down at night. And it happened (maybe a little bit) less often.
But of course, this bane of my existance could not be a complete bane without disruption in all facets of his sleep. So about a month to a month and a half after the sleepless nights came, so did the sleepless days. Again, I am not referring to difficulty in putting him down. The ease in putting him down for naps has been consistent for a very long time.
I am talking about the 45-minute intruder. And intruder is the nicest term I can think of because it really deserves a lot more vicious label. Because it is a life-ruining monster of death and destruction.
Basically, it goes like this. James goes down for a nap (any nap, it doesn't matter). Then I go down for my nap (because let's not forget his night time sleeping is still awful and I am still tired, too). Then, right around 40-45 minutes into the nap, he just inexplicably wakes up. Sometimes he would be chatty and happy, sometimes it was like someone flicked him and he was very unhappy. Either way, it would always result in an overtired, unhappy baby and an overtired, unhappy mama.
I half-heartedly fought the battle to try to get him to go back to sleep. This was hell on earth. Sometimes I would be in his room for an hour and a half, just trying to get him to sleep, or stay asleep longer than five minutes, just to run out of time for a nap and have to get him up to feed him. Ugh, I shudder to remember those dark days. Worst.
Fortunately, we are at a happy place now. The best possible thing I did for his night-time sleep was stop feeding him in the night. I don't think I could have done it any earlier than when I did, because he was still taking a generous feed until we started him on solids at six months. Then he didn't seem to be eating much in the middle of the night. When I cut him off, he had a couple nights of a lot of waking up, but then he snapped right out of it and it became the norm to just have him wake up once or twice and just need a binky and a pat on the chest, then off again to dreamland.
The naps drastically improved after we dropped the third nap of the day. Again, I don't know how I could have made that work any sooner. We started doing that after his solid meals were getting enough inside him (instead of just on his face) that he was getting enough to make whole meals out of solids and not a combination breastfeed/solid feed.
Now he is pretty reliable. We even got to the point, after much trying and crying (me crying, not him) that he goes back down for naps pretty easily if we wakes up too early.
So, yeah, a little rant about the most difficult thing about James. But things are pretty good now. I will continue talking about things being good in the next post :)
Catching up . . .
It has been almost nine months since I last posted something on this blog. An ironic length of time, considering the biggest reason I have been too distracted to write anything. Baby James is almost eight months old now. There were many times that I wanted to sit down and write something about being a new mom, but I just didn't have the time. Or the energy. Or the ability to recall a list of things I'd like to do.
So, I think I am about to do some catching up. Post about some things I have been thinking about in the past eight months. Sadly, no birth story. Although I enjoy reading other people's birth stories, I think that eight months past the birth is a little outdated to post something about it. Also, I kind of like the idea of keeping it off the Internet and in my close-knit family circle. Which is where it probably belongs anyway.
So, I think I am about to do some catching up. Post about some things I have been thinking about in the past eight months. Sadly, no birth story. Although I enjoy reading other people's birth stories, I think that eight months past the birth is a little outdated to post something about it. Also, I kind of like the idea of keeping it off the Internet and in my close-knit family circle. Which is where it probably belongs anyway.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Being a woman . . .
Let me start out by saying that I am not a feminist. There are very few points from the feminist viewpoint that I agree with, and generally I feel like their approach to the world is not how I would go about doing things. But we do have one common opinion: I hate chauvinists. Any man who thinks he is metaphorically bigger and badder than a woman can only hope he can remain so blissfully buried in self-delusion because it takes a hero to navigate being a woman successfully.
More than anything right now I am thinking about surviving life within this womanly body of mine. It is difficult. We can skip over all the fun stuff a female deals with during the maturing years and just go straight to being an adult. It is still difficult. I am so sick of hearing about how "emotional" women are. This tagline comes with the connotation that there is something I can do about it. There is not. A better term would be "hormonal," as my body is so full of raging hormones that may never be totally harmonious with one another and I am occasionally at the mercy of said hormones. (Granted, my husband is at the mercy of me when I am at the mercy of my hormones, so really everyone suffers.) Growing up in a family that didn't excel in showing healthy emotions, I can tell you that it is an extremely frustrating thing to feel like my emotions are out of control. I hate that every once in a while, I just plain feel like crying. I can't identify a reason; there is no problem solving I can do to make it go away. I must cry. And not only do these feelings exist inside of me, but I must also continue to live my life as normal while doing so. Speaking from the perspective of society, crying is bad, but working and being productive are good. So onward I must press.
I am also thinking about another biologically-based aspect of womanhood that does not get the recognition it deserves: pregnancy. Yes, some men do applaud their wives for the "great miracle" of being able to create life. It is amazing, but beyond that, it can be very difficult. Most women experience some degree of misery during their pregnancies. Most women will tell you how ill they were during their first trimester. I was very fortunate in having a relatively smooth first trimester, but right now I am in the throes of my third trimester. And it sucks. I can't sleep. I can only eat a little, but everything gives me heartburn and the thought makes all food sound terrible. Sitting, lying, and standing are all uncomfortable. My feet swell so bad that my ankles cease to function properly. My back kills from holding my massive frontside. I feel winded all the time because my lungs are smashed. Basically, I don't feel good. 100% of the time, I don't feel good. But, again, I am expected to work and function and get ready for baby. Straight up misery. And I haven't even gone through childbirth yet . . .
Basically, any man who thinks he is "strong" because he can bench press a cow or whatever can kiss mine. You don't know what strong is. You don't know what it's like to live inside this body.
Speaking of this body, I have destroyed it. Over the course of nine short months, my body is stretched, distorted, and completed sacrificed to the developing of my baby. And yes, my "hot" body is now gone. Forget bikinis, forget lingerie, I will never look good in any of them again. I built a human being inside me, and I have paid the price of forever being condemned as "ugly" by the world. Even after I lose the weight, my stretch marks and saggy boobs will remain. So I am sorry, men of the world, that I don't appeal to your tastes any longer. But I brought a life into this world, and the vehicle that brought it here will always show signs of the journey.
So there is my rant. I am tired of being considered weak. I am tired of being seen as pathetic and helpless. I have been brought here to complete tasks that a man can't, and I am proud that I was strong enough to do it.
More than anything right now I am thinking about surviving life within this womanly body of mine. It is difficult. We can skip over all the fun stuff a female deals with during the maturing years and just go straight to being an adult. It is still difficult. I am so sick of hearing about how "emotional" women are. This tagline comes with the connotation that there is something I can do about it. There is not. A better term would be "hormonal," as my body is so full of raging hormones that may never be totally harmonious with one another and I am occasionally at the mercy of said hormones. (Granted, my husband is at the mercy of me when I am at the mercy of my hormones, so really everyone suffers.) Growing up in a family that didn't excel in showing healthy emotions, I can tell you that it is an extremely frustrating thing to feel like my emotions are out of control. I hate that every once in a while, I just plain feel like crying. I can't identify a reason; there is no problem solving I can do to make it go away. I must cry. And not only do these feelings exist inside of me, but I must also continue to live my life as normal while doing so. Speaking from the perspective of society, crying is bad, but working and being productive are good. So onward I must press.
I am also thinking about another biologically-based aspect of womanhood that does not get the recognition it deserves: pregnancy. Yes, some men do applaud their wives for the "great miracle" of being able to create life. It is amazing, but beyond that, it can be very difficult. Most women experience some degree of misery during their pregnancies. Most women will tell you how ill they were during their first trimester. I was very fortunate in having a relatively smooth first trimester, but right now I am in the throes of my third trimester. And it sucks. I can't sleep. I can only eat a little, but everything gives me heartburn and the thought makes all food sound terrible. Sitting, lying, and standing are all uncomfortable. My feet swell so bad that my ankles cease to function properly. My back kills from holding my massive frontside. I feel winded all the time because my lungs are smashed. Basically, I don't feel good. 100% of the time, I don't feel good. But, again, I am expected to work and function and get ready for baby. Straight up misery. And I haven't even gone through childbirth yet . . .
Basically, any man who thinks he is "strong" because he can bench press a cow or whatever can kiss mine. You don't know what strong is. You don't know what it's like to live inside this body.
Speaking of this body, I have destroyed it. Over the course of nine short months, my body is stretched, distorted, and completed sacrificed to the developing of my baby. And yes, my "hot" body is now gone. Forget bikinis, forget lingerie, I will never look good in any of them again. I built a human being inside me, and I have paid the price of forever being condemned as "ugly" by the world. Even after I lose the weight, my stretch marks and saggy boobs will remain. So I am sorry, men of the world, that I don't appeal to your tastes any longer. But I brought a life into this world, and the vehicle that brought it here will always show signs of the journey.
So there is my rant. I am tired of being considered weak. I am tired of being seen as pathetic and helpless. I have been brought here to complete tasks that a man can't, and I am proud that I was strong enough to do it.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
One year . . .
I was just thinking about how different my life is than how I thought it would have turned out one year ago. Last May, I had just graduated with my Bachelor's, Jacob was done with sitting-in-a-classroom schooling and was preparing to student teach, and we were both working the same jobs we had been working since before we were married.
We were looking into graduate schools, trying to decide where we could both go, and if we could both go. Although our program choices had changed since the previous year, we were both sure that we would both be applying shortly for Fall 2013 enrollment. I signed up to take the GRE and enrolled in an online class to meet a requirement for admissions.
At the end of summer, we got our first surprise. Jacob's choice of grad program, education, would not accept applicants who did not have a Level 3 teaching license, i.e. the license you get after teaching professionally for three years. Sooooo, Jacob can't go to grad school until he gets a job. Okay, we can deal with that.
Second surprise: I felt terrible about applying for grad school. By September, I had taken the GRE, was almost halfway done with my online class, and had printed out the requirements to apply to my dream program: Master's of Social Work at BYU. And I couldn't get anything done on it. There was so much doubt about how in the world Jacob was going to get three years of teaching done in a very specialized program with few job openings if we set ourselves up for going to one place. My immobilization turned into complete disinterest and finally we agreed that I would skip applying for yet another year.
Third surprise: Jacob gets a job. Not only did Jacob get a job, but he got a full time job in his field TWO DAYS after he finished student teaching. They basically head hunted him for it, and within a month's time, we had gone from not knowing what the crap was going to happen to with our futures to having one pretty much handed to us. The only catch was that he had to do such a bang-up job and get so many students interested in taking German that they wouldn't cut the program come spring. Okay, some direction. Finally.
Fourth surprise: We get pregnant. The decision to try to get pregnant is totally personal and complicated and anyone who thinks I give a crap about their input on our decision to start our family can kiss mine. But I have to admit that it was kind of a whirlwind chain of events that lead us to make the decision, and I second-guessed myself more than once. Once again, our lives changes dramatically in a very short amount of time. It kind of made sense - Jacob would hopefully be able to keep his job for many years to come and that was more important than me going to graduate school immediately. Still, it was only a few weeks where we went from "I have no idea to when we will start our family" to "We're starting our family." That mind-blowing decision was only intensified when it took us a shockingly short amount of time to get pregnant. And just like that, over the course of a few short months, our futures had changed again.
Fifth surprise: They're cutting Jacob's program. This was a heartbreaking week. When Jacob got the news that they would be cutting German, we both spent the whole week in a kind of distant fog, a little on the verge of tears. It was a little bit of a slap in the face, to get pregnant and almost immediately find out that we have no income prospects for the upcoming year. We were both thinking, "What are we supposed to do now?" but talking about it was too uncomfortable and raw to really get anywhere. (Let me add that it was not due to Jacob that the program was being cut. Jacob did an amazing job getting students talking about how fun German was, and students were dropping French and Spanish to take it. With only around 100 student currently enrolled, he had 167 sign up for next year's program, more than enough for a full-time teacher. The program was that with Canyon View's overall enrollment dropping, the state would only allot a certain number of teachers they would pay for. With Jacob being a long-term sub and every other teacher being a contracted teacher with the intent to return next year, Jacob made the most fiscal sense to cut.)
Sixth surprise: They're not cutting Jacob's program. After we talked about it and decided that staying in Cedar and having the baby here was a better option than moving to Virginia or somewhere crazy far away where they were actually hiring a full-time German teacher, Jacob went to his boss and let him know that if they were to offer German part-time, he would be willing to stay. It only took a couple of days for the news to come that they would offer German part-time. Mostly due to some extra funds that the school was able to secure, but I think in part due to the fact that they knew they would have an applicant for the position. And so our life is set a stir again. We will [hopefully] have a job, but it won't be much, and there won't be benefits. Something we can work with. We're very good on living on a tight budget.
The seventh event was not so much a surprise as it was a confirmation that we were going in the right direction. Jacob got the part-time German job. Against one other applicant, but still. It's the best news we've gotten since we found out we were expecting.
So we are now at a place very different from where I had imagined we would be. I thought this summer would be spent scoping out apartments in the city of one of our grad program's schools, packing up our crap and hitting the books this fall. How very wrong I was. Instead, we will be prepping for a baby, living as cheaply as we can, and praying that Jacob's program can go full-time as soon as possible. Crazy how life throws us around and puts us where we need to be.
We were looking into graduate schools, trying to decide where we could both go, and if we could both go. Although our program choices had changed since the previous year, we were both sure that we would both be applying shortly for Fall 2013 enrollment. I signed up to take the GRE and enrolled in an online class to meet a requirement for admissions.
At the end of summer, we got our first surprise. Jacob's choice of grad program, education, would not accept applicants who did not have a Level 3 teaching license, i.e. the license you get after teaching professionally for three years. Sooooo, Jacob can't go to grad school until he gets a job. Okay, we can deal with that.
Second surprise: I felt terrible about applying for grad school. By September, I had taken the GRE, was almost halfway done with my online class, and had printed out the requirements to apply to my dream program: Master's of Social Work at BYU. And I couldn't get anything done on it. There was so much doubt about how in the world Jacob was going to get three years of teaching done in a very specialized program with few job openings if we set ourselves up for going to one place. My immobilization turned into complete disinterest and finally we agreed that I would skip applying for yet another year.
Third surprise: Jacob gets a job. Not only did Jacob get a job, but he got a full time job in his field TWO DAYS after he finished student teaching. They basically head hunted him for it, and within a month's time, we had gone from not knowing what the crap was going to happen to with our futures to having one pretty much handed to us. The only catch was that he had to do such a bang-up job and get so many students interested in taking German that they wouldn't cut the program come spring. Okay, some direction. Finally.
Fourth surprise: We get pregnant. The decision to try to get pregnant is totally personal and complicated and anyone who thinks I give a crap about their input on our decision to start our family can kiss mine. But I have to admit that it was kind of a whirlwind chain of events that lead us to make the decision, and I second-guessed myself more than once. Once again, our lives changes dramatically in a very short amount of time. It kind of made sense - Jacob would hopefully be able to keep his job for many years to come and that was more important than me going to graduate school immediately. Still, it was only a few weeks where we went from "I have no idea to when we will start our family" to "We're starting our family." That mind-blowing decision was only intensified when it took us a shockingly short amount of time to get pregnant. And just like that, over the course of a few short months, our futures had changed again.
Fifth surprise: They're cutting Jacob's program. This was a heartbreaking week. When Jacob got the news that they would be cutting German, we both spent the whole week in a kind of distant fog, a little on the verge of tears. It was a little bit of a slap in the face, to get pregnant and almost immediately find out that we have no income prospects for the upcoming year. We were both thinking, "What are we supposed to do now?" but talking about it was too uncomfortable and raw to really get anywhere. (Let me add that it was not due to Jacob that the program was being cut. Jacob did an amazing job getting students talking about how fun German was, and students were dropping French and Spanish to take it. With only around 100 student currently enrolled, he had 167 sign up for next year's program, more than enough for a full-time teacher. The program was that with Canyon View's overall enrollment dropping, the state would only allot a certain number of teachers they would pay for. With Jacob being a long-term sub and every other teacher being a contracted teacher with the intent to return next year, Jacob made the most fiscal sense to cut.)
Sixth surprise: They're not cutting Jacob's program. After we talked about it and decided that staying in Cedar and having the baby here was a better option than moving to Virginia or somewhere crazy far away where they were actually hiring a full-time German teacher, Jacob went to his boss and let him know that if they were to offer German part-time, he would be willing to stay. It only took a couple of days for the news to come that they would offer German part-time. Mostly due to some extra funds that the school was able to secure, but I think in part due to the fact that they knew they would have an applicant for the position. And so our life is set a stir again. We will [hopefully] have a job, but it won't be much, and there won't be benefits. Something we can work with. We're very good on living on a tight budget.
The seventh event was not so much a surprise as it was a confirmation that we were going in the right direction. Jacob got the part-time German job. Against one other applicant, but still. It's the best news we've gotten since we found out we were expecting.
So we are now at a place very different from where I had imagined we would be. I thought this summer would be spent scoping out apartments in the city of one of our grad program's schools, packing up our crap and hitting the books this fall. How very wrong I was. Instead, we will be prepping for a baby, living as cheaply as we can, and praying that Jacob's program can go full-time as soon as possible. Crazy how life throws us around and puts us where we need to be.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
A follow up . . .
Wow. That last post was pretty depressing. I have to admit I was in the gall of bitterness at that point. Not all days leave me feeling that bad, but one or two days a week, it really gets to me. I admit it, life is not amazing right now. Working 50 hours a week, every week, freaking sucks. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays usually consist of 12 - 14 hours of work. It's gotten pretty bad.
I have always known that my personality is not the type that does "all day, everyday" very well. I really can't handle doing one thing all day. This includes working. I get pretty down when the only thing I do during my waking hours is working, or, in a slight variation, going to and coming from work. It gets to me when I have those 8:30am-11:30pm work days (okay, I had an hour break, but still).
But I am feeling a lot better today. It is General Conference in my church, and, fortunately, I made it a priority to squeeze that into another work day. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf is so great. He has the tendency to speak to things that I really need to hear. Today was especially pertinent. He talked about making time for the important things in life, not whittling away all the time doing things that don't do you any good in the eternal scheme of things.
I realize that this is not happening too often in my life these days. Sometimes I see Jacob awake for half and hour the entire day. And while so much of that seems like it is out of control, it kind of isn't. I have a serious problem always saying "yes" to people. "Can you cover my shift?" "Can you handle that many hours?" "Can you come in early?" Yes. Yes. Yes. WHY? Just because I can doesn't mean I should. In fact, just because I can doesn't even mean it is in my best interest to do so. The physiological effects of my work schedule is becoming more and more evident everyday. How so? By all the stupid things I do and say that my brain wouldn't do if I had gotten enough rest! It needs to stop. I need to start saying no.
The second point that came up during President Uchtdorf's talk was that we need to be happy, no matter our circumstances. This was so good for me to hear (and my husband was totally like, "See? I've been telling you that the whole time!") because I have been the queen of complaining lately. Everyday I count up how many hours I am working and boo and whine about how much it is. It. Needs. To. Stop.
I have so much to be grateful for. I have such an amazing family. Especially my husband, who has been so patient with me lately and has been so loving, despite the minimal amount of time we see each other. I had the rare opportunity to be with my parents, brother, sister-in-law, nephew, and niece yesterday. It was so great. I am so lucky to have such a great family. We have so many blessings in our lives. We have food in our fridge, an apartment to live in, cars that run, bodies that stay healthy (even when we aren't giving them all the sleep and rest they need), and so many other things that many people in the world go without. Even the very thing I complain about the most, work, is a blessing. How lucky am I that I have two jobs?! Some people can't even get one!
So I am going to try to be better. President Uchtdorf, you really inspired me to try to make some changes. I think they will make me better, they will definitely make my life easier.
So here are my goals:
1. Stop saying yes to everything. Say no to people. They are not your responsibility.
2. Spend more time with family.
3. Be happier. Appreciate everything you have.
4. Stop complaining (so much).
This will be the difficult part.
Hoping for a better week next week! And so excited to have Sunday off tomorrow.
I have always known that my personality is not the type that does "all day, everyday" very well. I really can't handle doing one thing all day. This includes working. I get pretty down when the only thing I do during my waking hours is working, or, in a slight variation, going to and coming from work. It gets to me when I have those 8:30am-11:30pm work days (okay, I had an hour break, but still).
But I am feeling a lot better today. It is General Conference in my church, and, fortunately, I made it a priority to squeeze that into another work day. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf is so great. He has the tendency to speak to things that I really need to hear. Today was especially pertinent. He talked about making time for the important things in life, not whittling away all the time doing things that don't do you any good in the eternal scheme of things.
I realize that this is not happening too often in my life these days. Sometimes I see Jacob awake for half and hour the entire day. And while so much of that seems like it is out of control, it kind of isn't. I have a serious problem always saying "yes" to people. "Can you cover my shift?" "Can you handle that many hours?" "Can you come in early?" Yes. Yes. Yes. WHY? Just because I can doesn't mean I should. In fact, just because I can doesn't even mean it is in my best interest to do so. The physiological effects of my work schedule is becoming more and more evident everyday. How so? By all the stupid things I do and say that my brain wouldn't do if I had gotten enough rest! It needs to stop. I need to start saying no.
The second point that came up during President Uchtdorf's talk was that we need to be happy, no matter our circumstances. This was so good for me to hear (and my husband was totally like, "See? I've been telling you that the whole time!") because I have been the queen of complaining lately. Everyday I count up how many hours I am working and boo and whine about how much it is. It. Needs. To. Stop.
I have so much to be grateful for. I have such an amazing family. Especially my husband, who has been so patient with me lately and has been so loving, despite the minimal amount of time we see each other. I had the rare opportunity to be with my parents, brother, sister-in-law, nephew, and niece yesterday. It was so great. I am so lucky to have such a great family. We have so many blessings in our lives. We have food in our fridge, an apartment to live in, cars that run, bodies that stay healthy (even when we aren't giving them all the sleep and rest they need), and so many other things that many people in the world go without. Even the very thing I complain about the most, work, is a blessing. How lucky am I that I have two jobs?! Some people can't even get one!
So I am going to try to be better. President Uchtdorf, you really inspired me to try to make some changes. I think they will make me better, they will definitely make my life easier.
So here are my goals:
1. Stop saying yes to everything. Say no to people. They are not your responsibility.
2. Spend more time with family.
3. Be happier. Appreciate everything you have.
4. Stop complaining (so much).
This will be the difficult part.
Hoping for a better week next week! And so excited to have Sunday off tomorrow.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
It gets better . . .
I can't sleep. I slept in too long this morning to go to sleep by midnight. But I also have something on my mind. Something I would like to talk about with someone, but no one has the time to hear it. Nor is it something enjoyable to hear.
What happened to my life? I don't even feel like I am living one right now. I am just drearily moving on from one day to another, one task to the next. I don't think I could remember how to have fun if I even had the time to try. Everyday is just wholly consumed with work. Since I got my second job, I have worked more 50 hour weeks than not. I just get up in the morning, go to work, work all day long, then come home and do nothing because I am too freaking tired to do anything else or because it's midnight and Jacob wants to go to bed.
I thought these were supposed to be he best years of my life. I thought I was supposed to spend every waking second with my husband just consumed in lovey dovey bliss and live a life of absolute carefree joy until we decided to grow up and have kids. What a load of nonsense that is. Every passing moment just seems to get busier than the last. There is so much to do; I am barely keeping my head above water.
I am totally at a loss as to what to do. I can't quit one of my jobs, and Jacob can't just stop student teaching. And unless he can find a new job in this terrible economy, he is just going to keep working those same horrendous hours at the restaurant.
I realize people go through rough patches. I realize that people get busy. But does it ever get better? I don't hear of people getting less busy. I just so desperately hope that there is something more fulfilling out there than this. I can't imagine spending the rest of my life just completing tasks on a checklist like I do now. My whole brain is consumed with thoughts of the next shift and the next work project, I never think about anything else. I don't know how much longer I can live like this. I feel so unfulfilled my life is just a meaningless list of tasks with no pleasure and no enjoyment. And I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel assuring me that it's going to get better. I wish I had something like that to look forward to, but, to be honest, I don't have anything to look forward to in my life right now.
Sonething's gotta give. I can't live this life anymore.
What happened to my life? I don't even feel like I am living one right now. I am just drearily moving on from one day to another, one task to the next. I don't think I could remember how to have fun if I even had the time to try. Everyday is just wholly consumed with work. Since I got my second job, I have worked more 50 hour weeks than not. I just get up in the morning, go to work, work all day long, then come home and do nothing because I am too freaking tired to do anything else or because it's midnight and Jacob wants to go to bed.
I thought these were supposed to be he best years of my life. I thought I was supposed to spend every waking second with my husband just consumed in lovey dovey bliss and live a life of absolute carefree joy until we decided to grow up and have kids. What a load of nonsense that is. Every passing moment just seems to get busier than the last. There is so much to do; I am barely keeping my head above water.
I am totally at a loss as to what to do. I can't quit one of my jobs, and Jacob can't just stop student teaching. And unless he can find a new job in this terrible economy, he is just going to keep working those same horrendous hours at the restaurant.
I realize people go through rough patches. I realize that people get busy. But does it ever get better? I don't hear of people getting less busy. I just so desperately hope that there is something more fulfilling out there than this. I can't imagine spending the rest of my life just completing tasks on a checklist like I do now. My whole brain is consumed with thoughts of the next shift and the next work project, I never think about anything else. I don't know how much longer I can live like this. I feel so unfulfilled my life is just a meaningless list of tasks with no pleasure and no enjoyment. And I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel assuring me that it's going to get better. I wish I had something like that to look forward to, but, to be honest, I don't have anything to look forward to in my life right now.
Sonething's gotta give. I can't live this life anymore.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)