A cracked pot

I've been restless lately. Missing dancing, wildness, spontaneity, freedom. I have been wondering what this was about and today I hit on something. Giving birth was one of the most wonderful blessings of my life, and Malachi has honestly been such a joy. But having him cracked me open. I can only describe it as feeling like Humpty Dumpty laying on the ground in many pieces. This year has been one where I've been fully connected to my new role as mother, along with wife and house manager. But that's not all of me, and I'm missing my other pieces.

I was asked today if we were considering having another child. My first thought was I'm not put back together yet. Last week I was out with some girls here and was talking about Malachi, and one of the women said "But tonight you are out. Without him." I was hurt at first, but then I thought, "have I become the woman who only talks about her children?"

Don't get me wrong. I love my son and bragging on him. He gets more and more fun every day. But I am more than just his mother. I feel so disconnected from my teacher self, mentor self, professional self, sexy self. It's hard to know how to hang on to all these pieces in the midst of mothering. I realize that each will have its time in the limelight in certain phases of life, but I am missing these parts. They are valuable aspects of myself that I treasure.

So I have hope. Now that I realize the issue, I can start putting Humpty Dumpty back together. I'm not relying on the all the king's horses and all the king's men to put me together; I've got to get back to relying on the King.

**I began this post many weeks ago while still in Dayton. Some time away with my husband in Maine and chances to be away from Malachi have reminded me how integral those are to me remaining my whole self. This is so much more important to me being a good mom to him than I ever realized. It's like realizing that you've been breathing shallowly for months. So now I'm taking some deeper breaths, remembering who I am and beginning to figure out this new puzzle of who I am. I just had the thought that it's like having a 75 piece puzzle that breaks apart, and all of a sudden as you are attempting to piece it back together you now have 100 pieces. Crazy. But good.

By the way, my experience of mothering is so fully colored by the fact that I gave birth in a new place where I knew virtually no one well, and then moved several months later to another new town. So I realize to some I probably sound negative about parenting, but my parenting experience has been extremely overwhelmed by all the changing circumstances and stressors of my life in the last two years. So allow me the space please! Thanks to all for reading, and if you have any additional words to speak to this issue let me know! I'd love to know how others have dealt with this.

Good friends

This past weekend we had our good friends from IL come to visit. Jen and I went to graduate school together, but really became good friends afterwards. We were pregnant together, and her little girl is 8 months old (just 4 weeks shy of Malachi). It was so fun to see the kids together and enjoy our adult time after the kids went to sleep. Ice cream, Spades, movies, the pool, and talking...how much more fun can you get?

I know in my earlier post I spoke about community, and this is a couple we love dearly. We laugh so hard with them, and yet have deep conversations. They are one of the reasons I miss IL so badly!

Mr. Independent

I'm sure this happened with many of your children, but it seems like Chi has just taken off with feeding himself this week. Watermelon, strawberries, blueberries, grapes, mango, green beans, chicken...you name it he is eating it. And heaven forbid Mommy help him out.

Here we go

To the several people who have asked for my return to blogland, I thank you. I have no idea who reads this at all, but am going to attempt to keep up here as well as on FB. So here we go, update:

First order of business, we are moving to Abilene, TX in a few weeks. We are excited about the move, especially as we have really good friends in Abilene. The southerner in the house (that would be me) is looking forward to the warmer weather, even if it is TX heat. We also just rented a house with a fenced yard, which we are ALL looking forward to! Luther will not know what to do with himself, and I can't wait to let him out without a leash. Trees, two-car garage, sunroom...lots of things to look forward to.

And I really am. Looking forward to this move, I mean. This year has been so full of extreme emotions that I am ready to see it end. I think one reason I have strayed from blogging is that I am not sure how to make sense of this year. I have learned many things about myself that I haven't wanted to spend much time with, aka, some ugliness I didn't even realize was in me. Having Malachi was by far the best aspect of the time here. But having Malachi also opened us those ugly parts of me via sleep deprivation, frustrations with parenting, fear of failure and a desire for perfection. None of which are helpful in any way for mental health.

I struggled with post-partum here. Never in my imagination did I see myself as the mother who would hit walls or beat the crap out of her stove with a dish towel. Or the woman who stepped out in the back yard just to scream because the depth of the emotion could not be expressed any other way. Thank God for meds, a wonderful mother and supportive husband. Oh, and the child who finally began sleeping through the night.

I struggled with loneliness here. Leaving IL was one of the hardest things I have done in my life. When I left AR many years ago, I remember sitting in my apartment crying for a few months. When Laura left for the mission field, I watched "Raising Helen" nearly every day for a month because it helped me cry and grieve the loss of her being stateside. But I didn't grieve this move well. Maybe because I was wrapped up in the excitement of pregnancy? I have no idea. What I do know is that I miss my friends and community. Our church here has been wonderful for Sunday morning worship. But I have no small group in any way since my Bible study group in the fall. I have learned deeply that I cannot function without accountability and partners in this spiritual life. I am mean, judgmental, and lost without it. TRULY. Jonathan and I both have learned that church service without community is really not much at all. We both need community much more than we realized.

Honestly right now I feel pretty unemotional spiritually. Numb. Dry. I am in a transition phase where everything is about moving, getting ready, limbo and I am finding it difficult to sit and pray or read or focus on anything. Not to mention I am a verbal processor and without people to talk about faith with, I struggle. Not my best quality and certainly not my favorite thing about myself in phases like this. But it is me. I love God, but I don't feel like I do. I choose him. But I'm not choosing actively right now. Meaning that I am not being active with him right now. The best it feels I can do is get through my days attempting to live in a way that is honoring to him, and communicates to my son that no matter how we feel God is present and we need to be as present as we can to him. Spiritual treading water.

I apologize if this re-entry to blogland is a bummer for you to read. But I really want to be honest about where I have been this year. I am excited to move, excited to find some settled ground. We will be stationed in Abilene for 3 years, which is plenty of time to make solid friendships. The military has been good to us in many ways though it requires sacrifices that were not obvious to us in the beginning. But I constantly remind myself to trust that we really believed God led us here and he has purposes far beyond us in it.

Other than these things, I am also applying for licensure in TX to practice and looking for a job. I certainly welcome prayers!

On to the fun stuff...MALACHI! We went for his 9 month appointment this past Friday and my boy who started off so small is now a hoss. He weighs 22 lbs 7 oz and is 28.9 inches long. He is in the 85th and 81st percentiles respectively. To me, he doesn't look chunky but is totally solid. If you stand him up on your lap, the boy will go to town jumping away for what feels like hours! He loves to jump. He is army crawling everywhere, and loves to climb up over us to get to toys or Luther's bones. Malachi's latest favorite game is to push something away from him (ball, water bottle, anything) and then go chasing it. He is rolling the ball, saying Momma, and feeding himself much better as each day goes by. We are so enjoying this stage with him! We go to visit Jonathan's family soon and can't wait for Malachi to get to know this side of the family. I will post some pictures post-trip and move.

In the meantime, I will attempt to keep up with blogging. Thanks to all of you who care about what is going on in our lives. I do actually keep up with all of you through Google reader but don't always comment. Guess that makes me a blog stalker :)

Who do you think he looks like?

My MIL brought a picture of Jonathan the day he came home from the hospital 31 years ago, and when I first looked at it I thought "Malachi doesn't have that outfit.." It was stunning to see the similarities!

What I've been up to lately

Malachi just started pushing himself up with his hands as of today. Once he had something of interest in front of him, he was like oh this is easy Mom.

I bought this shirt for Chi last summer in FL while shopping with my stepmom. Just in case you can't see, it says Born to Ride! It's a perfect shirt for him to wear with his daddy.


Luther has been doing really well with Malachi. He still doesn't like that he has been outed and that there is less space for him where he can't go, but overall he is doing really well. Malachi has begun to watch him as he moves around the room, but other than that, they really just ignore one another. I have a feeling that will change when mobility enters our lives...

The Adventures of the Ann Taylor Loft dressing room

After our outing yesterday to the Washington National Cathedral, Sara and I were on our way to dinner with our hubbies. But since we got there early, we decided a little shopping was in order and proceeded to find the Ann Taylor Loft. Now I do have to say that shopping has gotten exciting again now that I'm back in my regular clothes! But I really wasn't intending to buy anything...until we saw the clearance racks. So we went into the dressing rooms with a few items and I laid Malachi down on my coat still halfway into the Bjorn carrier. He laid there so content, and I was singing his praises about what a good baby I have. A few minutes later, this huge poopy noise comes out of his diaper area! He's smiling up a storm, and I'm just laughing because already this is not what I was expecting when I went in there. So while I'm changing his diaper...

he begins to roll over from his back to his stomach. His arm got in the way of him going all the way over, but otherwise he was mostly rolled over. What in the world??? I yelled for Sara to come look at this outstanding maneuver my son has nearly accomplished. Well by then my son decides that between the diaper and this exercise, he has worked up an appetite. So he begins crying and I'm thinking we aren't going to make it to meet the guys down the street for dinner!

So I begin nursing him in the dressing room, letting the lady back there know that if I need to move I will. I thought I'd feed him on one side and then go the restaurant and finish there. Well, no that didn't happen either. So I changed a nasty poopy diaper, watched this new trick of Malachi's, and then ended up nursing him all in this dressing room. I believe it is the most time I've spent in any changing room!