23Mar
I have a confession.
I get angry.
It’s my default emotion. Whenever something is off, whenever I feel anything other than normal, I default to anger. Yell now, ask questions later. Maybe I’m tired. Maybe I’m sad. Maybe I’m frustrated or hurt. Maybe I’m stressed. Doesn’t matter what the emotion is. Anything other than straight-forward happy and I immediately get mad. Then, I think it through after I’ve exploded and I decide, “You know what, I’m not really angry. I’m actually just really disappointed…or scared…or nervous…etc.”
It’s not a very flattering characteristic to have. Just ask Chris. Unfortunately, he is the one who gets the brunt of my anger most of the time. And that’s what’s been happening lately. I’ve been pretty pissy at home. He comes in the door and I immediately start snapping at him. Last night I picked and picked and picked at him until he finally told me to go away. So, I left him with dinner and Bean and I went and laid down on my bed. I stayed there for about an hour trying to figure out how my afternoon had gone so downhill. I’d had a pretty good day and yet here I was. Being sent to my room by my husband.
About that time, Chris brought Bean back to say goodnight to me. He was all clean from his bath and snuggly in his jammies and as soon as he said night-night and Chris took him off to bed, I started to cry a little bit. And then I realized what was going on. Turns out that I am incredibly frustrated that I can’t be there for Bean as much as I want right now. With my back still acting up and, quite honestly, being plain exhausted every day after working and carrying around this big ol’ baby, I’m just not able to do things like get down on the floor and play with him or even pick him up and hold him when he falls down.
Earlier this week, Bean fell down and skinned his knee and instead of coming to me for kisses like he normally does, he went to Chris. Because Chris is the one who IS able to be there for him right now. And it’s just not fair! I know that his little 20-month-old head doesn’t comprehend being fair with his needs. I know that he isn’t showing preference. He’s just gotten used to going to Chris when he has a need lately and so that’s where he went when he needed a boo-boo kiss. But in my 28-year-old head, it hurts my feelings and makes me feel less loved.
On top of all of that, I’m worried it’s just going to get worse. First, I’ll be recovering from my c-section which will mean that I’ll be even less helpful and available to Bean. And then there will be Gracie who will take even more of my time away from Bean.
I have these horrible thoughts that I’m missing this critical period of time in Bean’s development and now our house will be split. Gracie and me will spend our time together and Chris and Bean will spend their time together. And that makes me miss Bean so much already.
So, of course, I handle these feelings and anxieties and worries in a very mature way.
I take it out on Chris.
I get mad at him for no reason. I nit-pick at things he does. I nag and snip. And then 20 minutes later, I come crawling back to him for a hug and kiss.
To say this is confusing to him is a huge understatement. I’m pretty convinced he thinks I’m legally insane. But I’m not. I’m just a pregnant mother of a toddler. And I’m hoping that’s a realistic excuse. That these feelings are normal. That these feelings are irrational. That I’m going to get over them. That Bean will still love me. That I’ll be able to balance two kids. That I’ll be able to have a conversation with my husband soon that doesn’t involve erratic emotional outbursts.
Long story short? I am worried about having two kids.
The End.
*****
Today I am grateful for Bean’s daycare teachers.
08Mar
This past weekend we spent some time with my parents. I needed some down time with my back and there’s nothing like having your mom around when you’re not feeling good. While Mom, Bean, and I sat on the couch and shopped at Target in short stints, Chris and my dad played golf. That afternoon we all met up again for a bite to eat before we headed back to our house.
Chris is at that point in my pregnancy where he is starting to get excited about Gracie’s arrival. But unless you knew him, you’d probably not be able to tell. Chris loves Bean and he’s a great father, but he’s not the kind to gush about babies and children. It’s just not his way. Actually, for most of my pregnancy he has been standoffish, just like he was with Bean. For Chris, he needs to go through all the practical thoughts and plans before he can get excited. It was like that with Bean, too. It was kind of annoying at times, actually. Like, when I’d bring some cute little pink thing home and he’d just roll his eyes and say something utterly un-sweet like, “Well, how much did that cost?” or “We don’t need that, do we?” When I was pregnant with Bean, it drove me crazy! I felt like he was taking all the fun out of the pregnancy for me. But what I learned with Bean and what I’m seeing again with Gracie is that it’s not that Chris isn’t excited. He just needs to ask himself all those practical, totally un-fun, un-sweet questions before he can truly let go and be excited.
In the past two weeks though, I can tell that he has finally worked through all his nervousness and anxiety. I know this because he has suddenly become extremely close. He comes home early from work (a serious break in his routine) just because he missed me and Bean that day. He sits next to me on the couch and rubs Gracie while he watches TV. I’ve even caught him snooping around the pretty pink nursery recently. With Chris, it’s the little changes in his behavior that tell me that he’s made a huge change in how he feels and that makes me excited because he is excited.
So, this past weekend after a long day of being away from me, Bean, and Gracie, Chris pulled me into his lap as we sat around my parent’s house. And, as you can see from the picture, it takes some dedication to pull a pregnant woman into your lap. Then Bean got in on the game and before we knew it, we had dog piled on top of Chris – and he loved every minute of it.
Until I started laughing. I was sitting on Chris’s lap and my mom showed me the picture of us on her camera and we were dying laughing about how big I looked and how small my head looked in comparison with my belly. And if you’ve ever been pregnant, you know that any kind of sudden onset of laughter leads to one thing.
Gas.
The gas started pouring out of me like some kind of underground pipe leak. I had no control. And the more I farted, the harder I laughed, which only made the situation worse. At this point, Chris starts screaming for me to stop and he started trying to push me off of his lap. But I weigh 900 pounds. And I’m round. I’m not that easy to push right now. So the harder he pushed, the more I laughed. And the more I laughed, the more I farted. And the more I farted, the more he pushed. It was a vicious cycle.
By nature, Chris and I keep our bodily functions to ourselves. We’re not that couple that sits on the couch and burps in front of each other. We keep the door closed when we go to the bathroom. We walk around with our clothes on. So, this was a serious breech in marital etiquette for us. And as I tried to pick myself up off my husband’s lap, farting and laughing and farting some more, I couldn’t help but think how being parents has changed my relationship with him. In all good ways. In ways that bring us closer together. In ways that have made us better partners. In ways that have made us better communicators. And even in ways that make us laugh.
Pregnancy and parenting turn us into very different people. And I love that about us.
*****
Today I am grateful that Chris and I both love our jobs.
First, I’m going to apologize to those of you who tune in to my blog for things other than childbearing and child-rearing because those seem to be the hot topics here lately. But I can’t help it. Not only do I have baby on the brain, not only is it impacting my marriage, not only does it consume all my thoughts right now, but it seems like everyone I know is either pregnant or, more commonly, thinking about starting a family.
Chris and I were married at the age of 21. YEARS before most of our friends were even in serious relationships. Which means when we had our first baby, we were YEARS ahead of any of those friends again. Not that we minded. Chris and I have always kind of done our own thing. It doesn’t bother us to be different than others. And it has put us in the unique position of being the “experts” on the subject of having kids among some of our friends.
Chris and I as the experts. On parenting. I know…scary thought.
Anyway, in the past couple months I have been asked at least five times by five different good friends how Chris and I prepared financially to have a baby. When they find out that we spend $1,000 a month on daycare alone, you can see their eyes widen and hives start to break out on their chests. None of the couples could fathom ever having an extra $1,000 laying around for daycare, not to mention all the extra expenses that come with adding another person to your family. And so, each couple has asked us very politely, “How the heck do you pay for all that?!?!?”
First of all, I should tell you that $1,000 a month for daycare in our area is pretty high. We knew that. But we felt like if Bean was going to spend all day there, we wanted it to be the best we could possibly afford. So, while it strains us to keep him in such a nice center, we feel that is worth the strain. But even cutting the cost of daycare down to, let’s just say, $750 a month, it’s still a huge expense. And if you don’t need a daycare, there is still the cost of insurance, diapers, food, supplies, savings, and all the other little oddities that children require.
In short, kids ain’t cheap.
But I’ll tell you just like I told our friends, I don’t know one family who was financially ready for kids when they got pregnant. The truth is that (don’t freak out here…) kids cost so darn much there’s just no way to prepare!!! I don’t know if there’s a correct amount of money you should have in your savings account or if there’s an appropriate figure on a paycheck stub that says you’re ready. But I do know that when you say you are “prepared” to have children, what you really should mean is that you have a plan. You may not have it all together yet. You may still be working out the details. You may still wake up in cold sweats of panic in the middle of the night. But there IS a plan. That’s how we prepared financially for children. We made a plan and then we figured out how to stick to that plan as we went.
It would be a lie to tell you that we never had to cut back or cut down or cut out a lot of the expenses. Over the years since we were first pregnant with Bean, our spending habits have changed profoundly. We can’t simply just up and go out to eat, dropping $50 on a random Tuesday night meal for the two of us. We can’t simply drive away for a weekend because food, hotels, and gas all add up. We can’t splurge for no reason on things like ping pong tables and iPhones. But, it’s also not like we don’t ever get to do those things now because we have Bean, and soon little Gracie. We still get to do those things, it just takes a little more planning and strategy now. It’s not as convenient anymore to spend money.
And, you know, that’s not such a bad thing. Having Bean taught us not just how to be parents, but how to create, manage, and stick to a family budget. It taught us how to prioritize savings. It taught us to value things like health insurance and retirement plans. It taught us to look at finances not just as a day-to-day task, but as a long-term plan that we needed for our family. We needed to learn those lessons. We just happened to learn them because we had a baby on the way.
The funny thing about cutting back for your children is that you don’t even really notice it happening. I know that when we found out the cost of daycare, Chris and I about died. Where in the world would we find an extra $1,000 a month???? We didn’t have that kind of money. But little by little, we changed our spending habits and we cut out some of that extra stuff we had in our lives that we really didn’t need and by the time Bean arrived, the money was there and I couldn’t even remember what I had given up to make that happen. Because I was giving things up for my child, it didn’t feel like giving things up or sacrificing or even compromising. It just felt like we were sticking to the plan. It felt natural – stressful at times, but still natural.
Don’t get me wrong. There were times when it was really irritating and there were even more times when tightening our belt felt like tightening a noose around our marriage. I remember when we first got to Florida and I was unemployed and we were living in a terrible rental house barely able to pay our bills. For Chris’s birthday, his family sent money, like they always do. And Chris decided to take that birthday money and buy an iPhone for himself. He, of course, talked to me about it first, but then I just felt like a total loser saying to him that I thought he should put his birthday money in our savings account. But it had to be said. Here I was clipping coupons and driving all over town to find the cheapest groceries and he wanted to buy an iPhone! We had a huge fight about that one.
It’s not always easy to cut back and it’s not always painless. But what you get in return for that kind of drastic change in your spending habits makes it totally worth it. Sure, we can’t go out to eat every weekend, but this past Friday night Chris, Bean, and I sat on our kitchen counter eating pretzels, popcorn, and hot dogs for dinner. Then we sat on the couch and watched Nanny 911 while Bean brought us just about every book from his bookshelf and sang us every song he knew. There was no bath. There was no bedtime. And when Bean was just about to fall over asleep in the living room, Chris and I sat together with him next to his bed and took turns reading to him until he fell asleep. To me, it isn’t a sacrifice to give up a $50 dinner out somewhere to spend that kind of time with my family. It’s just part of our who we are. I’m happy to do it and, even more, I’m proud that Chris and I have been able to make changes like that so that our family can have what it needs.
So, if money is what is holding you back from having babies, let me tell you what I so eloquently told my closest friends:
Pashaw!
Money comes and goes. It always will. But you plan for the unexpected and you celebrate the expected. And then you cross your fingers, pray like hell, grab your partner’s hand, and jump in. It’s only money, right?
*****
Today I am grateful for my mom.
21Feb
Did you know Chris is a music fanatic? Well, he is. He loves all music. He appreciates the artistry. He isn’t musical himself, but he understands it. He gets music in ways that most people just don’t. He hears things that I don’t hear when music plays. And so a couple years ago, it didn’t surprise me at all when he came home with an old record player he found on eBay. He thinks that music sounds better on albums. “It’s the way you’re supposed to hear it,” he says. He listens to most things on albums now. Current music, old music, and everything in between. I didn’t even know music today was still released in album form, but you can find pretty much anything. And Chris does.
For Valentine’s Day, I gave him the Nora Jones Come Away With Me album because it’s our song. I spent a whole $12.00 and it was one of the most romantic, thoughtful gifts I’ve given him in a long time.
So, on Friday night after I read Bean’s last book to him and kissed him goodnight, I came out into the living room to find Nora’s lovely, familiar, rich voice filling our house. We opened the windows and let the cool air drift in and then Chris and I wandered out to the back porch and sat around our patio table. I kicked my feet up and Chris made dinner on the grill.
And we talked.
About our life now. About Bean. About work. About Gracie. About trips we want to take. About things we want to do. About whether changing our light bulbs to energy efficient ones had made a difference in our power bill. About family. About where we want to be in five years. About where we were five years ago. About Girl Scout cookies. About our taxes. About daycare for the kids. About golf.
We talked about everything and nothing.
And we laughed.
And while we sat there, just enjoying each other, our song floated outside and wrapped itself around us. Like an old pair of perfectly fitting jeans.
I get asked often how becoming parents changed my relationship with Chris. And there are lots of things that have changed. But I think some people worry that having babies will cause their relationship to become unrecognizably different. Sometimes that’s true, yes. But sitting on my back porch with my husband, the same person who has held my hand and kissed me goodnight since I was 16 years old, it didn’t feel different. It felt like us. Like the us we’d always been. And even though I sat there, feet away from my son and with a baby growing in my belly, even though we are in such a different place and living such a different life, even though we talked about parenting and taxes and homeownership, I was still sitting there in that place with my high school sweetheart – the love of my life.
I love my husband today because he provides for our family, because he is a loving father, because he is patient and kind and forgiving in our marriage. But mostly, I love him because he is the grown up version of the teenage boy I fell in love with. Our relationship has changed, our plans have changed, our life has changed. But our love? That’s still the same. Only a little sweeter, a little stronger, a little deeper because we’ve had children together.
*****
Today I am grateful for Chris.
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