Tuesday, May 1, 2012

No time for me

So much for a new phase in my life, where I have more free time than I ever have had as a mother.  Take this blog, for example.  I felt ready to commit to having a blog that I’d need to update regularly.  I was so excited to finally get this up and running, starting with a few posts that I really enjoyed writing.  I was so hopeful that I’d finally have time and energy to do something I really enjoy, that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time, but of course that time was while I was away from home and the five kiddos who occupy all of my waking and many of my sleeping hours.  Of course it seemed like a good idea at the time.

But it’s been a rough bunch of weeks since then, filled with very little that I can remember or would call extraordinary.  There have been school conferences, house cleanings, soccer games, gymnastics practices, house cleanings, grocery shopping, an unexpected trip to the vet, laundry folding, a spilled-on computer, (did I already mention house cleanings?)... No shortage of stuff to fill my time.  But it seems that the one thing missing has been something to fulfill me.

And the end result is that the house is still dirty, the laundry is never totally done, the kids always have someplace else to go and I am grumpy and overwhelmed.
Like most mothers, I’ve become so used to meeting everyone’s needs that it is now just what I do, but I’m beginning to realize that I need to make myself a priority.  As I have adjusted from single carefree woman, to a new stepmother of three, to a mother of an infant, to a mother of a toddler, and finally to a mother of an infant and a toddler and three big kids, I have gotten more and more used to doing everything for everyone.  One day I realized that things for me rarely made it onto my to-do list, and when I bravely started to add them, I found that they were the first to get knocked off.

But recently I decided to start asserting to myself that MY needs are important too, and it seems that is where all hell broke loose.  I realize that this, too, is a transition, and that one of these days I will skillfully balance everything, including my own stuff. 

But not today.  Time for me to sign off and deliver Katye’s forgotten gym shorts to school so she can try out for the annual track meet.  Never mind that it’s a Tuesday, and Katye doesn’t spend any time with us on Tuesdays.  I’m the one she called when she realized she didn’t have what she needed becauseshe knows I am the one who meets everyone’s needs, whether they’re on my list or not. 

Self, I promise that someday you’ll be a regular priority on my list.  Hopefully soon.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Just how did I get here?

 In college, I was a human development and family studies major, a long name that meant a little psychology, a little sociology and just a bit of anthropology.  But what it really meant was: “you can’t really do much with this unless you go to grad school.”  So for most of college, I assumed I would go straight into grad school, but early in the fall semester of my senior year, I found myself burning out.  The thought of grad school was more than I could comprehend, but the alternative of putting on a suit and interviewing for grown-up jobs was so far-fetched for me, that I couldn’t go there either.

And so I found a third alternative that seemed viable to me: I would take a year off before grad school, move to California and figure out life when I got there.  Done.  I had my plan.  Now I could enjoy my senior year.

And I did.  I had two fantastic semesters with my friends.  I took absurdly difficult classes and had intellectual discussions unlike any I can even imagine having today.  I went to bed as late or as early as I wanted to, and I regularly took two naps on Sundays, in between studying for tests and writing papers.  I had a blast on my first and last real Slope Day, in a way that I hope my children never repeat.  And I lived in the moment, grateful that I could enjoy that year for what it was, and not get bogged down in the details of my next step.

But one day that May, I graduated.  No more safety net, no more following the rules that someone else put into place.  I needed to start to think about that big next step, and make my own rules for my own life. 

At that point, I hadn’t traveled much, and had never even been farther west than Colorado.  This is the part that even I still can’t rationally understand.  I was born to parents who, to this day, have lived within 80 miles of the places in which they were born, so how this made any sense to me, I still don’t know.  I tried not to think about the fact that it was a more than a little crazy to move to a state I had never even visited, and instead I focused on just getting there.

And so I worked as much as I could that summer, probably to avoid worrying about this apparently-insane plan, but also to make some money.  I saved as much money as I could, and gratefully lived with my brother for free.  I bought my first car, and I set an arbitrary deadline: September 15.  I would head to California after the summer ended.  I made a plan with an invaluable friend, Barb, who I had come to know and love while studying during my junior year in Stockholm.  Barb had decided to move with her college friend, Kate, who had found a two-bedroom apartment in Pasadena, just outside of Los Angeles.  Thankfully, they were willing to take on a third wheel, so I had a place to call home, whenever I could get there.  

The summer ended, and September arrived, as it always does.  I began to plan my route, to pack my things, to even make a mix tape for the drive and I was fully prepared to make the journey alone.  But only a few weeks before my scheduled departure, my aunt Linda, my mom’s youngest sister, volunteered to go with me.  She couldn’t drive a stick shift, but we both knew I didn’t need help with the driving –– I needed a companion.  What a difference it made that I didn’t have to go alone.

It was a Sunday night, September 13, 1998, when I packed up my car, and readied myself for my 6:00 am departure.  And it was right before I went to sleep that my mother came in, sat on the bed next to me and said, “This isn’t going to be for just a year, is it?”  With tears in my eyes, I responded, “No.  It probably isn’t.”

So for those of you who were wondering, this was the first big step in the journey of how I came to be a mother of five, living in the small city of Claremont, 3,000 miles from the place I still call home.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Back to Normal

These last few weeks have been different for us, with Anthony away with some friends a few weeks ago, followed by a last-minute trip for me to spend time with my brother and finally, a wonderful visit from dear friends, who are heading out this morning on the next leg of their vacation.  I have been thinking about how nice it will be to have some quiet days, and get back to normal, but I am reminded once again that in a blended family, normal isn’t so normal after all.

Over the past few years, we have settled into the predictable routine of 50/50 custody, and our big kids spend every Monday/Tuesday with their mother, every Wednesday/Thursday with us, and we alternate Friday through Sunday. So for us, one of the biggest challenges is that our life has two versions –– half of the days, we are a family of four and the other half, we’re a family of seven. Before our two little girls came along, Anthony and I used the days without the kids to enjoy some quiet time and to connect with each other the way most newlyweds take for granted.  As a new stepmother, I was especially grateful for the calm days with only ourselves to worry about, and I relished those weekends when we could sleep in or go out to brunch or do pretty much anything we wanted to do. 

But after Delilah was born, calm days completely disappeared, and we discovered that the addition of three relatively independent kiddos didn’t make our routines a whole lot more challenging.  And once Mila was here and we had an infant and a toddler every single day, we began to extra appreciate the help and distraction that the big kids brought when they were home.

The little girls have always lived in this big family/small family situation, and for a long time, they never really questioned the fact that many days, the big kids weren’t home with us.  But as Delilah is getting older, she is starting to struggle a bit with the idea that her brothers and her sister aren’t with us full time. At this point, it is kind of an unspoken agreement among the four of us that the house is too quiet and boring without the big kids there.

So it seems kind of fitting that on this day that I am grateful for a return to normal, our big kids also come home.  Now a seasoned stepmother, I willingly admit that life doesn’t feel quite right on days that we’re not a family of seven. 

Friday, March 30, 2012

Pedaling

I have discovered that when you have children, life can be so busy, that you tend to settle into survival mode.  Whether you have one or five, I tend to see as shades of grey –– any number of children is challenging.  But when you have five, and some of them are very young, life is especially bare-bones.  As a mother, I have a finite amount of time and energy.  The longer I have been at this, the more impressed I have been with my own ability to frequently find more time and energy as needed, but ultimately, you hit the wall, you max out, you realize you have nothing left to give.

Just getting my family of seven through a day is a full-time job, and with an infant and a toddler, I found myself falling into bed each night, exhausted, simply having gotten through another day.  Nothing major had been crossed off the to-do list, and I couldn’t really quantify anything that I’d done.  I have thus long considered myself the busiest person I know who accomplishes absolutely nothing. 

But I have learned that parenting is perhaps the most extreme big-picture activity: it takes a really long time to see the results of anything that you do.  For me, it has taken years to catch a glimpse of how my daily investments are shaping five incredible children.  And to realize that in fact, when looking at the big picture, my accomplishments are already huge.

But it turns out that life happens in the small picture, and in that place, I have, for a very long time, seen myself as coasting.  You’re coasting when the bike is moving, you’re on a downhill, you have serious momentum and there’s not a whole lot to do except hang on and steer.  In my case, some of this is literal.  A substantial part of my day is spent driving my children to one place or another, or making sure they are going in the direction they need to go.  For me, my priorities as a mother have been to make sure my children are loved, fed, clothed, warm, busy and happy, not necessarily in that order.  Unfortunately, the little ones have needed more of my time and effort to get to those places, which has meant that the bigger ones have gotten a little less of my time and energy.  But now, the incredible thing is that all of a sudden I have time leftover after I do the bare minimum, and that I can begin to think about adding other priorities to my mothering.  And –– it’s amazing to discover –– to my life beyond mothering.

And so, I can hardly believe it, but I am ready to start pedaling again.  I can’t tell you how great that feels.

So far, in the past month, we have added three soccer teams and two gymnastics classes to our agenda.  We are painting and decorating parts of our house that we hadn’t yet had the time or energy to tackle.  And probably, most amazingly, I have taken a trip alone, by myself to visit my brother and his family –– something I haven’t done since long before I met my media naranja.  I have had three whole days here, where I have only had to worry about what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go.  And that has given me the time to finally start this blog and to write a bit about the stuff that’s been in my head for years.

Tomorrow I will go back home, and I will jump right back in, going pretty much straight from the airport to Ethan’s soccer game.  Anthony will stay on to watch AJ’s game, while I take the other kids and head over to celebrate the first birthday of our littlest boy –– our godson, Owen.  And by night time, I will probably feel as if I never left.  But I will know that I did.  And I will remember how great it was.  And I will start to think about what other new things my family and I are ready to do. 

It feels kind of awesome to pedal.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

And away we go!

These days, it seems like everyone has her own blog, and those of us who don’t have one think about what we’d write about if we did.  After years of thinking about blogging, I think it’s finally time to move into the “has one” category.

Why now, you may wonder?  I am a mostly stay-at-home mother of five –– the smallest of whom just turned two.  Five years ago, I married my media naranja (a Mexican saying for the other half of my orange, something that sounds less starry-eyed than my soulmate) and became a stepmother to his three small children.  We hit the ground running with this new family of ours, and a year after we got married, I got pregnant. A baby brought a new level of exhaustion and chaos to our already busy home, and when she turned one, we found out we had another on the way.  So you can see how it’s taken every ounce of energy I had, just to keep my head above water, with everyone healthy and pretty much happy.

But a funny thing happened a few months ago.  All of a sudden, it seemed, our babies were turning into children, getting more independent and needing less of my time and my energy.  As Biba turned two, I realized, “Holy cow.  I actually have spare time, and I even have some extra energy, since they’re sleeping a little better.  What does all of this mean?”

And so, five years after I first thought about blogging, it seems that I may finally have a chance to write.  What am I going to write about?  My family –– the good, the bad and the completely normal.  I have learned a lot as the mama of this big, blended family, and I hope that my experience can help someone find answers more easily than I did.

I imagine this blog will frequently go back in time, as I share stories of things that happened in the past, when I was just too tired to write.  But often, I’m sure I’ll just blog about things that are going on in our present –– there’s always something going on in a family of seven.

It seems that this would be a good time to make a quick introduction to our cast of characters. Anthony is my aforementioned media naranja.  A dedicated father and endlessly loving husband, Anthony is kind and charismatic, always up for a party.  No surprise, he has earned the nickname of Good Times Tony.  Our oldest, AJ, just turned 14 and is the compassionate leader of our close-knit bunch of children.  Eleven-year-old Katye is our mature, helpful daughter, who relishes having two little sisters and enjoys bossing around all four of her siblings whenever possible.  Ethan just turned nine and is our youngest son.  I have long thought he is a mini-Anthony, so it’s no surprise that he is happiest with in a crowd of people.  Our first joint production, Delilah is our family’s three-year-old dictator.  She is feisty and strong-willed and madly in love with all four of her siblings.  And then there’s Biba.  Officially named Camila, shortened to Mila, turned into Biba when the Dictator couldn’t pronounce her name, our baby is our most mellow child.  As Delilah’s loyal sidekick, she let’s Delilah have whatever she wants, and genuinely seems happy with the seconds. 

And then there’s me.  I’ve spent so long knee-deep in mothering that I’m not quite sure who I am anymore, beyond a wife and a mother.  Perhaps that’s another purpose for this blog, though, to help me figure out who I am, and to share what I find as I go along.  I can’t wait!!