I've started and stopped blogs a few times in the past two years. Starting is the hardest part. Where do you start when it's like you're blogging for no reason at all?
Right now, there are no big changes in my life, and I'm very happy with that. I don't work. I'm not expecting. I'm not moving. Heck, I'm not even planning a real vacation for another 2 1/2 years. So what is there to say?
I guess I'll start by saying, I never figured out who I was before I leapt head-first into motherhood. Well, maybe that's not quite right. I think it's not that I didn't know who I was, because I certainly tried my darnedest to "find myself" for years, but more that I'm just not very interesting. Or rather, that I have very few interests.
I constantly found myself flitting from one interest to another; throwing myself into something for a brief period of time, only to see it fizzle away. Sure, there were things that were constant. I've always (always, as long as I can remember, and I have a great memory) loved literature and writing. I've also always loved art, both the studying of it and attempting to create it. I've also had a lifelong fascination with religion, but I'm not religious, despite trying to be for many years.
Ah yes, and then there was the interest that would change my life forever: children. I always liked kids. Even when I was a kid, I liked kids younger than myself. I didn't really do well with my peers, but younger children liked me, and I liked them. By high school, I knew I wanted, no, needed to work with children. I took all the child development courses my school offered (more than once, receiving no credit the second time through, doing it just for the joy of it). I took education courses in college. But during my shadowing, during which I shadowed a former teacher of mine, I became discouraged. She warned me that certain policies had taken a lot of the joy out of teaching (specifically, teaching English, which was now very rigid).
As with so many of my pursuits, I fizzled out. I went into grad school for professional writing, but went to work as a teacher's assistant. It was, hands-down, the greatest job in the world. I loved going to work everyday. I loved the kids there. The pay was terrible, and a bit insulting, actually, but the sheer joy of the job made it a moot point to me.
But there was this nagging feeling that wouldn't leave me. I had been married for a year, when I started badgering my husband ("Mr Headless") about having a baby. As a teen, I was (mis)diagnosed with a medical condition that I was told would render me infertile, or at the very least, sub fertile. Even though I was later shown to be clear of this condition, and it's not something one can be cured of, so no issue of it "recurring," I couldn't shake the fear of infertility. I longed to be a mother, I didn't want to miss that chance.
Three months after our one year anniversary, I was blissfully pregnant. I was also a bit naive. Although I had worked extensively with children, I had never, ever held a baby. Or spent time with a baby. I had literally no baby experience. My forte was with toddlers and preschoolers. I was screwed.
"Lil G" entered our lives in March 2009 and tore up the place. The girl had a presence right from the start. She was bizarrely alert and aware for a newborn. All the doctors kept saying, "she's so aware!" It's really draining to have an "aware" baby. Mr Headless and I always said that it was like she hated being a baby. We have all these videos of baby Lil G, and she keeps trying to do things that a newborn can't do, and she couldn't do them, but she really wanted to. Needless to say, her inability to do the things she wanted to do made her miserable. Lil G was a screamer. She just cried and cried, and never slept and had severe reflux and couldn't eat. Oh, and then I got PPD.
So, that first year with a baby taught me that I'm not a baby person. When she finally started sleeping, and talking (instead of screaming), things got better. My PPD lifted, only to be replaced by really bizarre PTSD that manifests itself when Lil G cries at night, or when I convince myself, as I'm falling asleep, that she is crying, and then I have a panic attack. I do this routine every night. I convince myself I hear faint crying from the monitor as I'm drifting to sleep, have a panic attack, and then talk myself down and fall asleep. I think it goes without saying, Lil G will be an only child.
Now my sweet little girl is almost 2 1/2 and time is slipping through my fingers. She gets more amazing by the day. Her laugh is infectious, her voice is adorable. I could kiss her constantly all day long, and it wouldn't be enough. I'm smitten.
So, that's where I stand. My life revolves around a 2 1/2 year old firecracker. My sweet husband, who I have loved for almost nine years, is still my very best friend in the whole world, followed by my mother. I'm a very simple woman. I just want to be happy, and I can safely say that I am. And that's all that matters.
