It Gets Better!

FACT: Being a mom is hard!
Also FACT: Some phases are harder than others

Here’s the thing the harder phases are different for every mom. We are all unique with our own strengths and weaknesses as are our children. As moms we try to warn and help other moms on their journeys, we might even feel lied to when one phase or another is harder than anticipated. But this isn’t always as helpful as we might think.

I’ve been “warned” by other moms that what is coming is worse. This happened to me when I was pregnant with my second child. I wrote an entire blog post about it here. Turns out I love the newborn phase 0-6 months is my jam! But being pregnant not so much. I didn't get the baby blues or postpartum depression. However all the “warnings” about what was coming, the “just wait till you have the baby and you don't get any sleep” made the depression I experienced during pregnancy worse.

For some pregnancy will be the hardest part of the 1st 2 or 3 years of your child's life, for others it will be the easiest. If your in a hard spot right now, then heck yes acknowledge how hard it is! And guess what it gets easier! Sure it will get hard again but you'll be stronger and more ready for the next hard thing because you made it through whatever this is right now. If you are struggling with a newborn, know that it gets better! There will always be someone to say “just wait till...fill in the blank”. Again many people said this to me with my 1st toddler. “Just wait till she’s 3, is gets worse.” Guess what it wasn’t worse. 3 was amazing! I’m glad I didn't believe them. I’m glad that I could see they didn't understand. They couldn't see how hard my 2 year old was for me. Yes for some 3 will be worse but for some it will be the best part of motherhood. Telling a struggling mom of a 2 year old that you better not hope for better in a year, is a bit cruel in my opinion.

Why am I writing this now, well because I need to remind myself that just because others say it gets worse, it’s not always true. I also happen to be in one of the better motherhood phases right now and I was “warned” about this phase too.

“Just wait till they are in school you’ll be so busy, I miss the good old days”

If someone says some version of this to you keep in mind two things:

1) They have forgotten some of the hard stuff (I know I forget hard stuff because there is no way I would have 3 kids right now if I remembered how hard pregnancy was every time)

2) Just because it was true for them does not make it true for you

Maybe having all the kids at home was an easier phase of motherhood for some of my friends. I didn’t know them then, I can't see there entire life. But guess what I do know me and I know that I am loving kids in school. The ups out way the downs 100%. This is the 1st week back to school and I already feel the difference. The funny thing is I still have one at home all day and I love the one on one time. I can love it and know i’m going to love when he’s in school too. I know there will be moms that the 1st day of school is a really hard thing but there will also be moms like me who love it, no tears, just pure happiness and most will be somewhere in between.

Today I want to say “STOP IT” to all the moms who keep trying to warn other moms about what's coming. “It gets worse” ...really how could you possibly know, you are not the Mom of my kids. Your strengths are not my strengths.

I am here to say it gets better! Maybe 3 years old is hard guess what it gets better. Maybe kindergarten is hard, guess what it gets better. I love my kids and I love being a mom and I go through really rough patches and it can be so hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel but I keep hoping it is there. And guess what, somehow I always get out of the tunnel. It can get harder to see the light when other moms are warning you of future hard times. So when your struggling as a mom and other moms say enjoy it now because it gets worse, don't believe them. It may have been true for them but its not true for you. They have good times too, and probably there good times happened to be during your hard times. Of course, being a mom is hard. I challenge the phrase “it gets harder as they get older.” Sure it will still be hard but it will also be different. I’m allowed to hope for different even while enjoying them now.

When I’m in a hard time I choose to look forward with hope to the different. I tell moms of teenagers all the time that I'm looking forward to having teenage problems. I also get a lot of pity looks and shaken heads with responses such as “sorry to burst your bubble” or “enjoy your little ones, the bigger they get the bigger the problems get”.

You know what I do enjoy my little ones! I love being a mom! I can enjoy them now and still get excited about when I’ll get to talk about boys with my girls and have more grown up discussions. I have a vision for the kind of mom I want to be when my kids are teenagers and I’m doing what I can now to help that happen. I also know that as they get older I will deal with hard things and big problems and I won't always be the super mom in my head but I still get to hope and dream because that pushes me to try my best now.

I’m writing this in a moment where I have recently made it out of a tunnel. So yeah I'm optimistic and excited and feeling like a pretty great mom. You better believe I know the next tunnel isn't far away so I’m writing now so when I am feeling like the worst mom ever and my house is a disaster and I don't have anything to pack in the school lunches I can know that it gets better. If I keep trying I will have a super mom moment again.

It gets better! This is coming from a mom who has been in a spot where she didnt take care of herself, she didn't workout, she didn't have food her kids would eat in the house, the house had sticky honey all over the floors, the children screamed and fought and the mom couldn’t get herself to get up off the couch to fix any of it. Yes I was that mom and the truth is I will probably be that mom again and that is OK because. I’ll know that if I keep trying it gets better, I’ll know that just because a good friend is telling me it gets worse that doesn’t mean it’s true.

There was an hour or more this afternoon with screaming and crying kids. As I solved one problem a new one would appear and no amount of calmly reasoning or helpful suggestions made any difference.

This is one of those good mom moments where I turned to prayer and not locking everyone in a room so I could go outside and have my own break down.

I didn’t have any new amazing ideas and my kids didn’t stop screaming during or after my plea to my Heavenly Father. And yet in those contentious crazy moments I kept my cool, I had the patients to stay, to hug whichever child would let me hug them. I didn’t have answers. I couldn't force my kids to be happy or kind but I could show them I loved them. During this endless cycle of calming one problem to have 2 pop up in its place I decided to text my husband to commiserate. As I did so the thought to turn on primary songs came to my mind so I sent a short text instead of the long winded monologue I’d planned and turned on music.

The next hour went smooth. I was able to hold laundry and my children played and even helped a bit, no big blow ups that needed my meditating or disciplinary skills. Then my son got a hold of my phone and inadvertently stopped the music. Not a big deal. I finished putting away the clothes then got my phone. I saw my husband had text me back, I let him know things had calmed down then had to figure out how to undo the damage my son had done and finally did get the music back on.

During the time the music wasn’t playing all of my kids had all found something to cry or scream about.Throughout these last few hours I have been trying to find a reason why all my kids are so on edge today... lack of sleep… hunger... sickness... all crossed my mind but none seem to fit today. Now we are coming to why I’m writing this experience down. When the primary music came back on I felt the holy ghost put thoughts in my mind. This is the text I sent my husband,

“After I messaged you and was trying to put music back on all of the kids cried for one reason or another. I want to say I guess it's just one of those days but as I type, I realize that maybe Satan is just working really hard on our family today, we need the primary songs to shield us, so the spirit can be in our home”

I think about the battles my kids will fight as teenagers and I’ve thought that all of the teaching I’m doing now is to hopefully help them to guard against the future battles they will have with Satan. But today was the 1st time I thought about the battles my kids and I are currently fighting. Satan isn’t waiting until my children are older he wants them now, and he hasn’t given up on me yet. Today Satan attached my family and I was ready! I’ve been studying the scriptures, I’ve learned how to turn to the lord for strength. Today he answered my prayers in the middle of contention and chaos and I listened to the prompting to turn on primary music and it is shielding us from Satan this very minute. The songs are helping the spirit stay in my home. Words cannot express the joy that has come from my relationship with my Savior today, or the gratitude I feel for an answered prayer.

Home-Centered Study Isn’t a Classroom, It's Just Life

So many thoughts words can’t do justice, at least not my words. So lets see if I can find someone else's word to get me started today.

“ President Nelson has acknowledged with gratitude how much is being accomplished as a result of your faithfulness to previous invitations. He and the entire leadership of the Church desire to bring greater gospel joy—to parents, children, youth, singles, the elderly, new converts, and those people the missionaries are teaching” -Cook

You are doing something right, I am doing something right, We are doing so many things right (the prophet says so)

“World conditions increasingly require deepening individual conversion to and strengthening faith in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and His Atonement. The Lord has prepared us, line upon line, for the perilous times that we now face.” -Cook

We are prepared for the perilous times head (so don’t stress it)

“Young people, God requires hard things of you.” -Brough

“Because of Christ, we too can overcome the world.” -Brough

During October 2018 general conference I picked out 2 themes. 1) LOVE and 2) Plan

I remember thinking I need to love and that is something I can do, I got a bit overwhelmed by the idea of needing to serve others but I could love and that is all the lord needs from me right now. Plan, I had impressions that I needed to plan more family gospel instruction. I thought I needed to put more effort into scheduling, lesson planning for my kids, and put more effort and time into my planner/calendar. Since the conference I have read and marked all the talks from the November Ensign. As part of marking the talks I decided to pull out the 2 themes that had struck me during the conference. So I began to highlight the word love in pink and plan in orange. Turns out I got the, love others thing right on the nose.

Plan however took on a new meaning. Here I thought I needed to plan more and plan how to teach my kids more gospel topics. I was wrong. As I underlined the word plan every single time it was apart of some version of Heavenly Father’s plan. The Lord hadn’t been telling me I needed to plan more he had been telling me I needed to trust his plan more.

What does trusting his plan more look like in my life. Well surprisingly it meant I have been able to embrace my lack of planning and see it as a strength. Planning hour long lessons for my kids to teach them about the Savior is not what the Lord had in mind for me.

No not even close.

I needed to trust the Lord's plan and make scripture study my top priority. The Prophet’s instruction to the sisters to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year did just this. I know that God has a living prophet on this earth today and my testimony of such as already been tried and tested it is a rock that will not move. So I trusted the prophet when he said “As impossible as that may seem with all you are trying to manage in your life, if you will accept this invitation with full purpose of heart, the Lord will help you find a way to achieve it.”  Having now done something I once thought impossible I can say from personal experience the prophet was right. I didn’t have time to plan when to read my scriptures I only had time to do it. A minute here, or 5 minutes there, with my kids sleeping, with my kids yelling in my face, with every scenario in between. I held to the prophets promise as though I was on the end of a rope hanging over a cliff. And you know what, the Lord pulled me up to safety, I didn't have the strength to climb. Because he did that I was able to help pull on others ropes. And that is far as that imagery goes. I found myself, I found a burden lifted I didn’t realize I was carrying.

Back to not planning lessons. I have learned to open my mouth and keep personal scripture study top of any to do list in fact it’s best to do it before you make time to write a to do list. Yes that means if I haven't read my scriptures yet then you can bet my dishes are still a mile high in the sink. Come follow me and home center study hasn’t been about planning killer family home evenings or Sunday school lessons for me or my family. In fact quite the opposite. It has been about sharing thoughts with family and friends about things I learned or pondered during my personal study. It’s been about regular conversations with my kids. It’s been about helping my kids understand the why of the importance of obeying mom and dad (still working on that one).

Scripture study has stopped being about reading the scriptures and more about learning what’s in them. When telling my 3 yr old the parable of the sower it wasn't about making sure I got the details right or knew the historical context or even understood it myself, it was letting the spirit into the conversation and telling the story of what I remembered reading then sharing it again and letting the 6 yr old tell me what Jesus was trying to say and learning from her insights. Than another day watching a video from the gospel library app about the parable of the sower. Home centered study isn’t a classroom is just life. It’s the unplanned one liners that come to my mind during disciplinary moments. It’s coloring a picture or putting a puzzle together with my kids and having conversations listening to them and trying to see what the world is like for them. It’s sharing with them the moments that are answers to prayers. It’s looking for answers together to all of our questions. It’s apologizing and forgiving and changing and acknowledging that it’s all possible because of Christ. It’s not planned, it’s learning God’s plan. It’s never anything big it’s always small.

A Day in the Life of Me

4:55 am:
I wake up to someone opening my bedroom door, there is a light on in the hall and a crying baby in the other room. After informing my 3 yr old that it is much to early to be awake I give them both a glass of milk and with a little luck I get to go back to bed.

6:10 am:
I am woken up again this time my 3 yr old is pulling on my arm and informing it is time to make pancakes. Since "the sun is up" I lose the argument that its too early to be awake so I allow myself to be pulled into the kitchen and bullied into making scrabbled eggs and pancakes.

FYI: breakfast at our house mostly consists of cold cereal. I hardly ever make anything as crazy as pancakes in the morning those are normally reserved for "breakfast for dinner" days. So the fact that I'm doing this on a Friday morning which happens to also be the one day that my husband is picking up donuts from a eagle scout fundraiser we ordered is just bizarre. Donuts will have to wait for tomorrow I suppose. 

6:30 am:
While I'm working on pancakes my husband comes into the kitchen ready for work and since I have breakfast well in hand he gets to go pick up the donuts and head straight to work...maybe I'll never see the deliciously unhealthy Krispy Kremes after all.

7:45 am:
Breakfast is over. Both girls have eaten and I have just finished the last batch of pancakes. I make small pancakes so I have 72 leftover. I'll freeze most of them so that next time pancakes are in demand I can pop them in the microwave and go back to bed (one can dream).

9:00 am:
Surprisingly both my girls and I are dressed in normal/cute clothes and the kitchen is cleanish. No, I didn't do the dishes yet, but the front room is clean and so is the girls bedroom. Wow I feel like Super Mom right now!

10:00 am:
I'm watching a friends little boy who is best friends with my 3 yr old. They are getting along and all is fine. Even if the Super Mom feeling has faded.

10:45 am:
My mom calls just to talk. Yay for adult conversation!

11:15 am:
Someone is crying so I hang up the phone and rinse hand sanitizer out of someones eye.

12:45 pm:
We are eating lunch and the Super Mom feeling is long forgotten. I'm trying really hard not to yell at my kids, and I need to find a pillow to punch. All the "mom, Mom, mom, MOM MOM MOM MOM" is on my last nerve how many time do I need to ask what before you stop yelling my name and tell me what you want, its not like I'm even in the other room or something I'm right next to you just spit it out child. The house looks like a tornado hit and Dad is not going to be happy when he gets home to find that 2 different versions of Risk have been intermixed because there is no way I'm going to figure out what armies belong in what box. Good luck babe, hope you enjoyed your donuts this morning.

1:00 pm:
I'm thinking up an earned to invent so that the minute my husband gets home I can make an escape and to give me something to hold on to my sanity with for a few more hours....but that is no longer necessary because at this exact moment my mother in law calls and asks me if she can take my 3 yr old out for the afternoon. I am beyond blessed to live just around the corner from grandparents. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

3:00 pm: My 1 yr old is sleeping, my 3 yr old is on a date with her Grammy, and I'm writing about my day because its helping. It will remain a mystery as to when my house will look as good as it did at 9 this morning so I will be content that who ever reads this will know that my house was clean once today and that is good enough or me.

here is some proof

Okay so my days not over yet but you get the idea, and I know if I wait to post this I will never post it because I wont take the time to finish it. I hope that you and I both have a wonderful Friday evening.
...maybe I'll clean my house a second time today oh and this time I can listen to the music I want to listen too...

Dakota's Lullaby

I don't consider myself a super creative person, normally most of what one might perceive as creativity tends to be traced back to something I saw on Pinterest. However motherhood brings out the best of me as well as the worst but lets stay focused on the positive here.

I have recently discovered I have song writing skills, well sort of. I made up a lullaby for my 5 month old this week. (She is 1 year now and I'm just getting around to finishing this post.)

Now before I go on let me give you my oh so unimpressive qualifications for song writing. I can read music. I played the flute in marching band my freshmen year of high school and I have plucked out a song or two on my family's piano with my music reading skills. I sing the hymns at church but have a hard time staying in key, at least I can tell when I'm off which happens a lot. Also I have the hardest time remembering lyrics to songs. I sing hymns at church on a weekly basis and listen to a lot of Disney songs over and over again but the list of songs I can sing without the lyrics in front of me is surprisingly few.
I often think I should really learn more songs so I can sing for and with my kids more. However this goal has yet to get promoted from the someday list. 

So there I was, singing the same old song that I don't even like all that much. I thought anything would be better then that song so I just started singing her name to no specific melody and then before I knew it I had made up a lullaby, how clever of me. It was easier then I thought and a lot of fun. Why hadn't I thought of this sooner. Of course it is a wonderful discovery and I'm so excited about its success I'm starting this post at 2 am.

... 5 months later. 

That lullaby I made up in the middle of the night months ago has become a part of our family and more successful then I would have imagined when I first sat down and wrote this post. From time to time if you hear the baby crying you just might also hear her older sister singing Dakota's Lullaby.

Now I hope I have you all curious about this song and I do want to share it with you, but I want to do it with style. So I'm currently looking into making a fun you tube video with it, or more more accurately I've asked my cousin to make one. Hes amazing! You can check out his YouTube Channel here. Hopefully someday you'll be able to listen to Dakota's Lullaby on his channel.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

My blog is always in the back of my mind. Not that anyone could tell since I never actually post anything these days. Today I thought I'd look at the drafts I've started and never posted and I found this gem. After rereading it I've decided that I want to post this today even if it is almost a year old because it putts a point across that I'm just glad I was able to capture in that moment.

May 2015

I have spent the last nine months growing a little human inside of me and it was really hard for our whole family. On paper or to a doctor this pregnancy was normal. average. boring. No medical issues that needed addressing and now I have a beautiful healthy baby. I could go on for a long time about all the things that made the last nine months so hard but I'm not going to bore you with details. I'm just going to share something that I hope will help me and hopefully you in any future pregnancies.

As my due date approached and then passed,

while I waited for the exciting moment when active labor would begin, 

I was worried. 

I did not want to be pregnant anymore! I couldn't wait for it to be over! But I also was having a hard time believing that it would all be worth the past nine months. 

A scary thought:

To be at the end and feel like it will never end and wanting it to be over, but not to be looking forward to it. My worries included that recovering would be just as bad as being pregnant, also not getting any sleep and so many more negatives things that are often talked of when having a newborn at home. 

I still had a small amount of hope. I couldn't remember how amazing having a newborn at home was but I remembered missing it and wanting a baby again and how excited we were when my husband and I found out we would be having a second baby. I tried not to entertain these negative thoughts but they were there in the back of my mind. 

So now I have a one week old baby and I can say that it was all WORTH IT!

Yes I have been uncomfortable and in a lot of pain as my body recovers from labor as well as the 9 months of pregnancy leading up to it. I'm still recovering, still very uncomfortable but I can feel my body healing and I know that it wont be long until I am going on long walks again, playing racquetball with my husband, taking my toddler to the zoo and on other adventures, and doing so many things I love to do, becoming healthy, active and fit again. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

And yes I no longer get anywhere near as much sleep as I'm use to. But I haven't once minded being awake at any odd hour to feed and cuddle with my baby. I find enough time to sleep so I can function and that is good enough. I love my baby so much and I love watching her older sister be such a helper. Yes life is hard and I have a lot of ups and downs, and I can blame some of them on hormones, but life is also wonderful beyond words. Would I do it all over again? Most defiantly yes I would! Do I think that as this baby grows into a toddler I'll want another baby yes and I know it will be worth another pregnancy, but maybe not for a while because I really do not like being pregnant but I really really love having a newborn in my home.

Sometimes you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel until your almost out of it. 

Preparing for Motherhood

Recently I've been thinking or more accurately wishing that I'd prepared better for being a mom. I always knew I wanted to be a Mom when I grew up so why didn't I put more energy and effort in preparing for motherhood. Even as I entered college I knew my ultimate career goal was to be a mother. So why did I not study Early Childhood Education, or Family and Consumer Science, or Family Life and Human Development? Yes I looked it up these are real majors that colleges offer. Instead I did most of my GEs and then decided to study Biology because I realized how much I loved learning about the human body. I always said if I didn't want to be a stay at home mom so much I might have become a doctor. Biology opened up options for other good possible careers if  my 1st choice didn't happen right away or ever. I didn't want people to think that all I wanted to do was be a mom (I mean I needed to find a man before that was an option anyways). Now that I have my 1st career choice I see that it was silly of me to be more focused on a "back up" plan then on preparing for motherhood. In my mind there was a stigma attached to majors like the ones listed above. Looking back I am guilty of promoting this stigma and I am more sorry for that then you know. Now I admire those who studied those fields, they where the smart and courageous ones. How did I let the "back up" plan become more important then the original plan. I wont go so far as to say I regret studying biology, because I don't. I loved it. I will say I regret not taking more then one developmental physiology class. Maybe I'd be a better mom, more prepared for the challenges I currently face everyday.

To be fair I probably did a fair amount of preparation for motherhood and am being a little hard on myself. I'm a great mom and I'm sure most parents have moments of feeling completely over whelmed from time to time weather they studied family relations or childhood development in college or not.

Now with all that in mind I was reminded of one of my strengths today. That even with 2 small kids I am often on time to things and well prepared with a packed diaper bag in toe. Yes sometimes I'm late and/or unprepared. I have strengths but I'm not perfect and neither are my children. So why is this a strength? Was is something I learned at college? This might surprise you but the answer is Yes. No, I didn't take a class on how to be prepared and on time with children in college. What I did was much harder then that, I played basketball.

What?
Here let me explain:

I remember hearing things like this beautiful quote here that I found using google search just now, and articles and speeches about how sports prepared kids for life. I believed it, but I never really thought that playing basketball was preparing me for motherhood. But it was!

Playing college basketball and everything I did to achieve that goal prepared me more for motherhood then I could have ever imagine. So there are many reasons and ways I'm a better mom because I played basketball but I'll get back to my point and not go into all of them right now.

Since my 1st season of basketball in the 8th grade it was drilled into me just how important being on time to practice was. "If your not 15 min early your late" if I had a dollar for every time I heard that I'd be rich. I remember going to a basketball game after I'd stopped playing and the only thing I remember is how amazing it was to walk into the gym just in time for tip off and not hours and hours earlier. Along with being on time it was also very important to have everything I needed. This Checklist here is no joke I was always making mental check list and checking my bag twice before leaving to be 15 min early to practice. I had nightmares of forgetting a shoe or my jersey. I always had extra socks and whatever else in my sports bag.

(Although there is one thing on this list I found on pinterest that seems out of place, knee pads, who wears knee pads in basketball I sure didn't but my knees were always a lovely mix of black and blue.)

So I can tell someone I'll be somewhere at a set time and I can get there with a baby and a toddler in toe and when they have a blow out or pee there pants or need a snack or its cold and they want a coat or a blanket I will most likely have what I need to fix the problem. No I don't carry everything around all the time in a Marry Poppins bag, but I do have a diaper bag. Every time I leave the house I have spent some amount of time compiling what will be needed and what could be needed so I'm ready. My diaper bag looks like any other diaper bag I'm sure. And because basketball is a team sport I like to be able to help out my fellow moms. I love the feeling of being able to fix a problem either for my child or for someone else because I have a solution in my diaper bag. I like being that person who can save the day because I'm prepared, because I've been on the other end and It stinks and sometimes there Isn't someone like me around to help and that's the worst. So thank you basketball.