Remember a few weeks ago when I wrote that post about how motherhood had given me peace? About how since becoming a mother, my life had become simpler? Purer? About how I finally came to understand God’s love and sacrifice?
Well, that was all before Halloween.
On Saturday night, Chris and I had friends and their kids over for dinner and to go trick-or-treating. I was so excited. It was our first time hanging out with other parents as parents doing something for our kids with other kids. I was beaming. I laid out Bean’s costume, I baked a casserole, I Febreezed the dogs. I was ready.
But nothing could have prepared me for the chaos that comes with four small children, a couple costumes, and pumpkins filled with candy. There is just no preparing for that. There is also no recovering from that either. In fact, as I write this it is Sunday afternoon and I am still hiding in my closet, rocking back and forth, whispering, “The children! Stop the children!”
I don’t have many pictures of the actual dinnertime because I was busy catching flying tater tots and spears of broccoli.
That’s right. I served broccoli. To children. On Halloween. And as little green rockets went flying by my head, I realized that maybe that wasn’t such a great idea.
I also don’t have any pictures of the actual act of trick-or-treating. But that’s because Bean couldn’t walk, so I was carrying him while we waited for the other kids to go door-to-door. And because I was still on the look out for flying spears of broccoli, so I was sort of distracted.
But we did have a little photo session outside my house before The Great Candy Adventure of 2009 commenced…
It looks like Bean is sitting up on his own – and he is! – but only because the tail on his costume helped him balance. I don’t think that technically counts as sitting up for the first time…
Beanosaurus
“Rooooarrr!!!”
Twirling. Its a princess thing. You wouldn’t understand.
You know, before we had Beanie Halloween was always a crazy holiday. Full of grown women dressed like tramps and grown men dressed as nuns. The candy may not have been flowing, but the beer certainly was. And tricks and treats certainly had different meanings. I thought nothing could be as crazy as a college bar on Halloween night.
I was wrong. Suburban Halloween is crazier than drunken college Halloween any day of the year.
01Nov
For Halloween this year we gave out Double Bubble gum. We got a big bucket of it at BJ’s. Chris was bummed that we didn’t give chocolate, but I figured it was safer to keep leftover bubble gum around the house rather than leftover chocolate.
I emptied the bubble gum into my big candy bowl for trick-or-treaters and I was just about to throw the bucket away when I thought maybe instead I’d see what Beanie thought about it.
At first, he didn’t know what to do with it. It was as big as he was, if not bigger, so he couldn’t wave it around like he does his other toys.
So he did the next best thing…
He chewed on it. Did it matter that he couldn’t fit it in his mouth? Did it matter that there wasn’t really a flat surface to sink his teething gums into? Not one bit.
The kid chewed like a puppy on a new pair of shoes.
After chewing on it, we tried standing in it. That was good for another 15 minutes of yelling and babbling and laughing and mainly just telling me what a fun mom I was for planting him in a bucket.
What can I say? My Bean has low expectations when it comes to having fun.
After chewing ON the bucket and standing INSIDE the bucket, he managed to turn it so that he could yell into it, making it echo. This became his next favorite trick with his new toy. Yelling into it.
He thought it was hysterical.
So, I figured since he liked that deep, hollow sound when he yelled into the bucket, maybe he’d love the sound of yelling with his head inside the bucket…
He wasn’t sure what to think at first.
But eventually, he got more into it. He started yelling inside there, too. He’d give one good, quick little yell and then sit there. Waiting. And so I’d pull the bucket off really fast and yell, “PEEK-A-BOO!” And he’d died laughing.
Some people might say that putting a plastic bucket on your five month old baby’s head is horrible parenting. Some people might think that its a form of child abuse or poor judgment.
I like to think it was one of my more brilliant moments as a mother…
One of the things that I’ve always loved about my relationship with Chris was how easy it comes to both of us. We may not have too many elaborate gestures. We may not be the most romantic people in the world. But we have always been comfortable and natural together. We have a natural rhythm to our marriage that keeps us balanced and centered. When things are a little off kilter, we both usually sense it right away and it doesn’t normally take a whole lot for us to get things back on track.
We’ve never been the kind of couple who sits down for hours and talks about our relationship. Even when things have been rough for us – and trust me, in college things were rough – but even back then when drama and emotions were at their peak, we seldom had really earth-shattering, life-altering discussions or events. We seemed to take things in stride pretty good. And we took them in stride together.
Since we’ve become parents, I’ve noticed a little bit of a change in that part of our marriage. Its not that marriage is any harder necessarily or that we struggle any more now than we did before. But it seems that now it just takes a little bit more effort to keep things on an even keel. When you’re tired and cranky, you can’t just retreat to neutral corners. When you’re angry and frustrated, you can’t pout and give yourself time to get over it. As parents, you’re sort of in this mess together – no matter what’s going on in your marriage. And because of that, there seems to be more strategy to marriage when a baby is involved.
Take dinnertime. That’s a pretty easy example. For as long as I can remember, Chris and I have eaten dinner together. And not just on the go or standing up in the kitchen. We fix a good dinner and we sit down together to eat. Its not something we plan and its not critical to our marriage, but its just a part of our routine and our relationship. Its the time of day when we can sit down and talk to each other without computers and phones. Its our time.
Well, dinnertime is now right in the middle of Bean’s bedtime routine. Around 7:30 we start baths and pajamas and last bottles and rocking and all that good stuff. For a while, we tried to work dinner around this bedtime routine, doing a few things with Bean and then stopping so that we could have some downtime together. But Bean was tired and ready to bed at this time of day and the dinner hour became really hectic and chaotic. Some nights I think we ate in shifts. We’ve learned with time that once the bath is over for Bean, Chris goes downstairs and cooks dinner while I give Bean his last bottle and then rock him and put him to bed. And then we meet up to sit down and have dinner together, just the two of us.
That’s the kind of effort I mean. Nothing huge. It just isn’t as easy anymore as the two of us sitting down to eat dinner together. When a baby is involved, there’s an added element of planning that is necessary to keep our marriage on track.
I’m not gonna lie. Sometimes, that extra effort - no matter how small – is really irritating. Wouldn’t it be great to just sleep in together one Saturday morning? Wouldn’t it be great to just go out to dinner one night because we have the urge? Sure. But Beanie doesn’t wait on Saturday mornings and babysitters don’t sit around waiting for you to call them at the last minute. Its not that these things can’t happen. It just takes a little more effort to make them happen now.
A couple of weeks ago, I read the article in the New York Times about the Obama’s marriage. The article had nothing to do with politics. It was instead about the way they manage their marriage in the context of something as demanding as the presidency. Between you and me, I’m not a huge fan of President Obama. But I’d love to have he and Michelle over to my house for dinner. And after reading that article about their marriage, I decided that if they ever came over to my house for dinner, I’d serve them on my good china. That’s how impressed I was with their values and principles in marriage.
The central theme of the article to me was that their marriage was a priority. And no matter where they were in their political lives and career paths, they had to adapt those other priorities around their marriage. But sometimes, that meant that their marriage had to adapt, too. They had to learn how to be married to each other in every phase of their life.
And that spoke to me.
After I read the article, it stayed on my mind for days. The idea of truly making your marriage a priority and keeping it fluid and flexible enough to adapt to whatever situations you find yourself in. And the more I thought about that idea, the more I realized that as great of an example as Mr. and Mrs. Obama are to the American people, the greatest example of this to me was my own parents.
This January, my parents will have been married for 30 years. And I guess its no surprise to me that I find my own happy marriage to come so naturally because I grew up in a house where my parents made marriage look easy. But as I got older and especially after I got married, my parents told me over and over again that marriage takes work. It takes dedication.
“Marriage is a decision that you make every single day,” they would tell me.
I think I only half understood that before I had a baby. Before Bean, what that meant to me was that you made the decision every day to be active in your marriage and relationship. And that is true. My parents were great examples of that. But what I’m learning as a parent is that making the decision every day means that every day your marriage might look different than it did the day before. And its probably going to look different the day after that, too. But I am learning that the real secret to a happy marriage in the midst of parenting is committing every day to be in the marriage, no matter what might be different about your relationship that day.
So, if it takes a little more effort now for Chris and I to maintain a happy, healthy marriage, that doesn’t mean that marriage is harder. And it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. You give a little more effort some days because that’s where your marriage is right then.
When you love someone, every day is worth whatever effort it takes.
04Nov
I try to keep this blog upbeat. If I had to classify it, I’d hope that it could be considered a humor blog. One of my main goals in writing is to show that sometimes life is sticky, yes. But its always a fun ride. And 99% of the time, I feel like I get close to that goal.
But then there is that 1%. Those times when life hands you situations that just aren’t funny and certainly aren’t fun. Chris and I are in one of those situations right now. I’m not going to go into a whole lot of detail because the issues and problems that we are working through involve people outside of me and Chris. As much as I share about our lives, its really not my place to share information about other people’s lives. But the gist is that Chris’ family is having a rough time right now. And if we were honest, I think we’d all admit that they’ve been having a rough time for a couple years now.
Families are funny creatures, aren’t they? God gives them to you and you’re left to find some way to get along with them for your entire life. And its only natural that sometimes some families go through situations that strain their relationships. Maybe its a fight. Maybe its an illness. Maybe its a change. Maybe its a little of all of those. Or none of those, for that matter. But every now and then all families come to crossroads.
Chris’ family came to those crossroads this week.
His dad was hospitalized for longtime health issues that have finally caught up with him. It has been really scary and stressful. He was in ICU for a couple of days, but he has been moved back to a regular room at the hospital tonight and we are hoping that this is the beginning of him coming back to normal.
Medical scares have a way of bringing people together when is seems like nothing else would have been able to do it. Its awful that this is what it has taken to pull his family together again, but I am so glad to see healing – both physically and emotionally – finally start to take place.
In some marriages, the spouse considers themselves part of their partner’s family. In our house, I do consider myself part of Chris’ family. But there are times when only blood can fix something and so this week my role has been to support Chris while he works through this difficult time with his family. Its hard to sit on the sidelines and watch Chris hurt. He comes from a family where communication is not exactly open and I come from a family where you can’t get us to shut up. So, its only natural that I just want to pick up the phone and tell everyone what they should be doing. But Chris knows his family and he knows how to talk to them. And I have to tell you that I have seen him step up this week in ways that I’ve never seen him step up before.
I think I’ve seen him as an adult for the first time this week. I’ve seen him take the lead in mending relationships within his family. I’ve seen him speak out and call situations for what they truly are. I’ve seen him cut through the crap and get right to the heart of matters in a clear, concise, mature way that I’ve never seen in him before.
When you’re a young adult and you get around your parents, there is the tendency and habit to revert back to childhood. They still fix you meals. They still make your bed. They still slip a $20 in your pocket as you run out the door. But in these past few days, I’ve seen Chris become the adult in his family. With his dad being sick, he has naturally slipped into the father role and I can’t help but wonder if he’s able to do this better now because he is a father.
Your health is so important. Your family is so important. Your relationship with your children – at any age – is so important. And sometimes it takes a really tough week like this to strip everything else away and leave what is truly important exposed.
I hurt for Chris and his family because they are my family, too. But this week I have seen glimmers of where that family can grow from here and it can only get better. But more than that, this week I’ve seen Chris as a man that I’ve never seen him as before. Strong and calm. Mature and focused. Forgiving and loving.
If this is what its like to watch your high school sweetheart grow up, then I am proud that I married mine.
