Musings on Mommyhood

I haven't posted since October?! Yes, pathetic. There are some pretty amazing moms out there who are somehow able to blog monthly, weekly or even daily. And here I sit with months between posts. Sorry y'all.

I don't have anything earth shattering to share, but I just felt the urge to write, so thought I'd try and reintroduce myself to this blog. Nice to see you again, blog. You've been great to me in the past and I've missed you.

Since I last posted, we've hit some fun milestones. We had Lianne's first Christmas, which was really amazing and somewhat surreal. At that point, she was just shy of 7 months, so Christmas was more about ripping paper than the presents themselves. My mom, brilliant woman that she is, stuffed napkins in her stocking, knowing that they would be the most entertaining of gifts. We had a really lovely trip to Massachusetts and got to introduce Lia to lots of friends. We had a great time up there. And after so many childless Christmases, it was an amazing and at times unreal holiday.

Lia is now going on 8 months. She is sitting up and rolling around and laughing a lot and babbling in what sounds like an ancient eastern European language. In the last two days, she learned to clap her hands, which is totally adorable. She is doing a pretty good job (on alternating days) of eating -- she is building her repertoire of foods. This week, we're trying avocado and she seems to really love it! (Even for breakfast, with oatmeal - sounds awful, doesn't it?!) I love her like crazy and she is truly the most easygoing, happy peanut imaginable. She is rarely fussy and when she is, it's about 90% either hunger or sleepiness. So it makes deciphering her needs pretty simple. Yeah, I know that I'll pay for her being so awesome and easy when she's 11 and throws a full-on tantrum because I won't get her tickets to Justin Bieber's 25th birthday concert. (Is he still, like 10?!) But I'll take this happy lovie girl for now!

And how is Mommy? I'm up and down, honestly. I'm tired. I hate to complain about it because every parent is tired and I am probably getting more sleep than most. But life is intense with the juggle of parenting and work and trying to maintain a little social life. Bill and I rarely have time together and sometimes the wear and tear shows. I don't think it's anything catastrophic, but we do need to figure out some together time. (But why would I want to be away from Lia?!) And forget "me" time. I might need to book a spa trip now for when Lia gets to high school. That seems really hard to find. Again, though, this is nothing new for parents and I am lucky to have a spouse who splits the responsibilities 50/50. But I do think that in the long journey to parenthood I got pretty darn used to sleeping as late as I wanted, going out to eat most nights, buying anything I pleased, etc.

I did have an epiphany of sorts last night. Nothing that will sound terribly profound, but it was helpful to me. In my on head, I was going through the litany -- I'm tired, worn down, overworked, struggling, yadda yadda yadda. And then I really thought about the decision to be a parent. I didn't choose to be a parent because it's easy. I chose it for many reasons, some that I knew and some that I didn't. It's that having her makes me evaluate the importance of everything else in a way that is really helpful to me. It's that seeing her change almost daily brings me incredible amounts of joy. It's knowing that for parents, raising children is how we change the world. That we can support her, love her, teach her and help her become a woman who will be compassionate and kind and will do for others and as such might help bring more peace and stability to this world.

So yeah, I'll give up some sleep for that.