Mother's Day and Mom Guilt

Mother's Day is supposed to be a day about celebrating moms. Somehow it's become more complicated than that.

A single mom I know just expressed bitterness about Mother's Day on Facebook (calling it just a reminder that no one appreciates what she does or goes through).

There are women who want to be mother's but aren't yet (because they're single or because of fertility issues). And though I've never experienced it, I can't imagine that "all women are mothers" can completely soothe that pain.

There are people who have lost their mothers. Father's Day is hard for me because I've lost my father--I try to focus on my husband as the father of my children, but the day is always tinged with sadness for me because my father is gone.

There are people with absentee mothers or who simply don't like their mothers (warranted or not).

And then there are mothers who don't like Mother's Day because they don't feel like they are or were good moms and it makes them feel guilty.

As long as there are mothers, there has been and will be mom guilt. It might be more exaggerated now. We don't just compare ourselves to the seemingly perfect moms in our neighborhoods, but we can now compare ourselves to the Pinterest perfect mom ideas and the carefully chosen pictures on blogs and Facebook. We can never live up to the ideals presented on the internet--and neither do the people who share them.

I love this post from one of my favorite blogs: Our Best Bites: A Few Thoughts Before Mother's Day. They address both comparing ourselves to the stuff we see on the internet (and show some truths of things that happen in their own homes) and their own relationships with their mother's (that were less than ideal).

Besides not nearly living up to the internet ideal of motherhood, I pretty much never live up to my own idea of the kind of mother I'd like to be. Sometimes I have a breakdown and feel like an awful mother. But I always try to pick myself back up the next day and do a little better. Without goals, I'd never do better. But I try to first be realistic (spending our summer with a newborn is going to pretty much equal the lamest summer ever, and I've tried to come to terms with that). And then I try to not feel guilty when I don't meet my feeble goals. It doesn't make me feel any better and it certainly doesn't make me a better mom.

In celebrating Mother's Day in our house, I think of it as a mom's day off. As much as it can be with small children who still need a lot from their mom. I don't cook or do the dishes. And I've learned to choose meals that I don't feel like I have to step in and help with.

Here's hoping that moms and those who wish they could be moms can find some peace this Mother's Day.

And a couple more blog posts I've appreciated about combating mom guilt:

How Does She: 6 Tips on Doing Away with "Mom Guilt"

Daring Young Mom: Drops of Awesome

Pregnancy is Weird

Pregnancy is beautiful, amazing, hard. Whatever. Mostly, pregnancy is weird. There are a million strange symptoms you could have because of being pregnant, and most of the time, no one knows exactly why. Some pregnancy symptoms could either be a sign of everything being perfectly normal--or a sign that something is terribly wrong. Like nausea or bleeding early on.

I read lots--probably too much--with my first pregnancy. I read a little bit with my second, because I knew that there were differences with a second pregnancy. But no one told me until I complained of it that your third is an entirely new battle too. Everything is already nice and stretched out and so there's a lot more pain and discomfort a lot earlier. Lots of women with three children tell me now that their third pregnancy was so much harder. Well, too late.

I've been more tired, more sore, and more uncomfortable a lot earlier on. Plus I've had weird symptoms that I never had before. Maybe I was just lucky before.

Swelling--I had minor swelling in my hands and feet before. But I never had my feet (or more often, just my left foot) swell up into marshmallows and get deep lines in them from wearing shoes. I guess it gives me an excuse to wear sandals everywhere. Those give me lines too, but at least I can slip them off when I sit down.

Bloody noses--This has seriously been a completely new and annoying one. I've gone weeks without a bloody noses, but then I'll have them in clusters. They come on suddenly and often last for twenty minutes. It's so fun to have a bloody nose in public. Or to have to pick up your daughter from school while holding your nose with a tissue. Or, my favorite, getting a bloody nose in the middle of the night and sitting in the bathroom pinching your nose at 3 a.m. instead of sleeping.

Baby activity--This probably has more to do with the baby than it being my third. I felt him move at 11 weeks. And unlike my girls, I don't have to be resting to feel him move. In fact, if you're ever sitting next to me, just watch my belly. It moves and wiggles frequently. I'm pretty sure I have bruises. Late evening is his favorite time and I timed him moving nonstop for more than an hour and a half. I'm excited to meet this child, but a little afraid of his activity level when he's a toddler.

One thing that has not surprised me is the tactless comments. At about 7 months along (where I am now) with all three is when people started assuming I was due any day now. Nope. Next they'll think I'm having twins. But as you can see from the pictures, I have a long way left to go. My belly can always get bigger. And thus far, it's never "popped."

Baby #3, 30 weeks

Baby #2, 40 weeks

A River Runs Through It

When we bought our house, we had no idea that we were purchasing river and lake front property.

I've lived in the desert where the thunder and lightning is spectacular. I've lived in the Pacific Northwest where it rains for days on end. But I've never seen anything like a Florida rain and thunderstorm. I took the video when it had slowed down a bit.

My Least Favorite Holiday

Can April Fool's Day even be called a holiday? There's lots of traditions around it, but no one is sure why it started or what the point is. I found an interesting blog post with facts about April Fool's Day: Twenty Interesting Things About April Fool's Day. And there are some funny and clever things on blogs like Make It and Love It--in previous years she's done posts like chocolate covered veggies and embellished disposable diapers on April 1. There's cutesy stuff to do for your kids like making a cupcake look like a piece of corn on the cob. But that's far beyond the kind of time I'm going to take on just about any holiday, especially April 1.

The real reason I don't like April Fool's Day is that for the most part, any pranks or practical jokes made on this "holiday" are at someone else's expense. It creates a mess or a problem for someone else, or makes them look stupid so other people can laugh at them. And any time a joke has to be at another person's expense, it's not really funny.

This sentiment has sometimes given me the label of "not having a sense of humor." Well, having a different idea of what's funny than someone else doesn't mean I don't have a sense of humor. And I wrote a published paper about that as an undergrad, so don't get me started unless you want to hear the arguments I made in that paper. (And no, that's not an April Fool's Day joke.)

Farm Fresh Produce

One of the things that surprised (and disappointed) me the most about Florida was the lack of farmer's markets. There are farmer's markets, but they are all a half hour or more away. And now that we live in a place where we don't have to drive that far for most things, we never got around to making it to a farmer's market.

A few months ago, a farmer's market store a few miles away. It's still farther than the stores, but it's closer than the farmer's markets, and it's hours are better because it's open seven days a week.

Today as one of our spring break activities, we went to the farmer's market store and bought all the produce pictured above for $20. The price is good, the produce is fresh. But best of all, is having my girls walk through and pick out fruits and vegetables they want to try.

On the way home, my four year old kept sniffing and saying, "Smells so fresh!" And my two year old said, "Mom, we got fruits and vegetables. They delicious!"

Spring Break

It's strange to think that last year, every week was like Spring Break week. We never had any school or any other regular obligations during the week. My oldest only does a half day of preschool now, but when she doesn't have school, she gets really bored. That on top of the fact that I'm trying to pack and clean a house, I decided I need a list of things to do during our upcoming Spring Break or my kids are going to watch way too much T.V. and end up cranky and fighting with each other.

Some friends are planning a day at the beach during Spring Break. And while Orlando has a ton of fun things to do, I know that I'm not going to enjoy a beach day alone with a preschooler, a toddler, and 6 months pregnant. So my list is a bit simpler and closer to home.

1. Visit the Science Center
2. Go to the library in the morning, then have a read-a-thon in the afternoon
3. Paint pictures
4. Go to a splash park
5. Play outside
6. Go on a walk
7. Bake something
8. Go to the farm market store
9. Ride bikes
10. Look at scrapbooks

With baby #3 due in June, I'm going to need lots more ideas of fun stuff to do at home this summer. What do you do with your kids during Spring Break and Summer Vacation?

Female Friendships

For book club this month I read The Girls from Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow. It's not something I would have picked up on my own, but it made me think and tore me in a few different directions.

One aspect I liked is that it made me think of This American Life where they interview average Americans and find that everyone has a unique story. If you delve deep enough, no one's life is boring.

The Girls from Ames is about a group of 11 women whose friendships go back forty years. They were (mostly) good friends through high school and kept in touch over the years. Now that they're in their forties, they meet together once a year even though they have completely different lives and live all over the country. It is inspiring how they support each other and how long they've kept in touch--even before social media was big.

On the other hand, as great as they treat each other, this kindness didn't always extend to outsiders--especially in high school. There is one girl in their group whom they gang up on and tell her all the things they don't like about her. She briefly leaves the group but ultimately forgives them and is accepted into the group again as adults. Many in their smallish town thought they were clique-ish and frequently excluded others.

As I read this book, I knew that they were girls I would not have liked in high school. And worse than not liking me, I would have been too unimportant to even notice. There's a character on the T.V. show The Middle. She's awkward and nerdy and unabashedly enthusiastic. And she's constantly having to convince people that she's lived there her whole life and isn't a foreign exchange student because they so rarely notice her. I was that girl, except that I was too shy to try to convince people that I did exist.

Today, I have exactly two Facebook friends who were friends from high school. I have plenty of "friends" who I barley know and haven't talked to in years. But I was important enough to two people in all my childhood and high school years for them to even bother "friending" me on Facebook where everyone has friends they barely know.

I do have some closer friends from college. Some who I can reconnect with even after years of silence between us. And there's a little comfort in that. But, I also have friends from college who I lived with for years and I thought we were really close even as the years have passed. And then they suddenly stopped speaking to me or replying to my messages. I don't really want to know what I did to either offend them or become so unimportant that I'm no longer worth the time to send a message to every few months. Now that I'm in my thirties, I wish I was beyond being hurt by such things, but it does make me second-guess myself and make me uneasy about new friendships. Do I dare get close enough to people for them to discover whatever unknown unlikable thing there is about me that has caused others to cut off years-long friendships without a word?

There are some bright spots in my close relationships with female friends (and if you read the book, as you age close female friendships are extremely important, even to your physical health). I have moved seven times in the eight years I've been married. And lived in five different states. But one of the great things about the church I belong to (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), is that no matter where you go, you have a built-in network of people who will befriend you and help you. Especially in the Relief Society, the church's women's group. Though I'm still a reticent person and take a while to become close to someone, almost everywhere I go, I have women who are willing to help me out. I've noticed this blessing more as my husband has had to leave the country on business for weeks at a time. His co-workers' wives have reached out to me and worried that I'm pregnant and have young kids alone in a new place. While I'm grateful for this and happy to pursue friendships with them as well, I've known that I am not as alone and isolated as they fear.

And the brightest spot, is my female friendships that truly have and will last a lifetime--whether they want it to or not. I have three sisters. We did not always get a long as children, we don't always agree as adults, but we love and support each other anyway. I turn to them for advice and ranting and de-stressing all the time. It was one of the things that made me desperately want a sister for my daughter.