We are One

I was reading a book about mothering and it was mentioning the idea that some people have today regarding babies and their mothers. Many people have the idea that the babies are going to have to get used to mom not being there, because “he cant be with mom forever” or “mom cant always help you” or some other thing about how you are on your own in this world and need to learn to do things yourself and cant depend on others. I then came to the realization that we really aren’t alone in this world. That we really are together with others!

First, when a baby is young, he really is dependent on the mother. He really is part of her. While the child is young, he definitely lives in a world where the mother is always there. In Max’s case for example, I am always there. And there is no point in making him learn to go to sleep alone or be ok without me because while he is so young, he does need a caretaker at all times. He still needs me there. And there is nothing stopping me from being there. And by the time he is older, he will not need me anymore in the same way. But we always need a family, and I will always be there for him just as my parents are always there for me and Joel’s family is there for us too. We are certainly not alone. When you are young, then you do have someone there always, and then when you are older, your family should still be close and loving and helpful – you aren’t all alone and others do care for you.

Then when you get married, you and your husband become one. In which case, you aren’t living the lives of two separate people, but as a unit.

I have learned that I was trained to do Joel’s job, I went to school and value everything work and academic related. I was praised for making good grades, meeting deadlines, writing good papers, making good points in class, etc… All the other stuff, like bills, laundry, cleaning, etc… were at the back of my mind, and something I wished I didn’t have to deal with. Also something I didn’t have much time for while I was totally focused on the many things involved in my schooling.

It has certainly been a process in learning about motherhood, being a wife and specifically learning to value these important jobs, tasks, and responsibilities of the home and family. We are definitely not trained to value these things. But I am seeing now how vital a good home is to everyone’s happiness.

I realize now that Joel’s job is definitely to be valued, just as I learned, but that my jobs are to be valued too. And that is because they go together. When I was in school, I had to do all the jobs, and so did Joel. And I didn’t do them very well (place was never cleaned, didn’t cook good foods, late a lot on making calls to things like insurance or credit cards). So now that we are married and have a family, we are one, so it makes sense to split up the jobs. Since I don’t have all these deadlines, and students, and teaching responsibilities, then I do have the ability to focus on all the home stuff. Keeping things clean, keeping up with our money, doing laundry, cooking and generally taking care of Max. And taking care of Joel. I have learned the value to these jobs because they make life so much less stressful. There is so much more time for doing things that we love. And we feel happy and together. We feel like we cant live without each other. we both think, what would I do without you. He makes it so I can stay at home, because Max and I are one, and I make it so that Joel can go to work because Joel and I are one. So it’s great!

I realized that it is hard to do everything alone, but that when you join with a partner in marriage, you aren’t alone. You now have your family and both extended families to care for everyone.

I feel like one feminist idea today is to realize how separate we are, and I think that is leading us in the wrong direction. Because we are one – one with our babies, one with our husbands! We don’t need “time away” or “time off” or “alone time”.

So I am teaching max that he lives in a world where he is loved, cared for and part of a family. He has his mom and dad, and so many wonderful family members on both sides. Then as he gets older, we will always be there for him, and he will marry too. Then he and his wife can take care of each other and their children. In this case, you don’t have to be prepared for being alone because this life isn’t a lonely place!

First Year Of Being Parents

I haven’t blogged once about our marriage since Max’s birth. Things change when you have a baby. I always feel the desire to write about everything up to now, but that would take longer than I have time for, so here are a few thoughts about our first year with our first baby.

The birth was an amazing experience for us both, we both felt closer than we ever felt before. The few weeks after the birth were good, but we also started to have different roles and experiences. I laid in bed all day, breastfed, stayed home for 3 months, had all kinds of hormones, changes and feelings, felt the ups and downs, was trying to get used to my body, and wasn’t stressed but did have to go hours at a time without eating or peeing while I was home alone with the baby who was sleeping on my breast. Joel on the other hand, experienced a bunch of things to do at first, diapers, diapers, and more diapers, and had to get used to dealing with me and the baby, but didn’t have all the experiences of sleep deprivation and not getting to pee when he wanted to. He had to run all the errands (since me and the baby stayed home for the first 3 months) and he went to work. We tried to keep talking and sharing our experiences to stay connected even though we were going through different things.

The first few months got progressively harder, there were many times of us arguing or getting disconnected. We realized a few things that helped us work through our problems. For one, we didn’t touch much anymore, so we tried to work on touching more. We also just found that we both had very little time to sit around and do whatever we wanted, like watch movies, blog, read a book, etc… It was certainly an adjustment, but a good one since we loved the baby so much and we loved each other. I am so thankful that I married Joel since everything is so different now. My body is so different than before, and sex isn’t something that I am interested in and that makes me happy that our relationship doesn’t just revolve around looks or sex. Joel makes me feel like a beautiful person and makes me appreciate the changes that becoming a mother brings. I also had a lot of working through ideas regarding valuing what I do by staying at home. Joel has been a wonderful supporter of that too. I know that when I am doing is important and valuable, but I can get caught up in the current worldy values and forget sometimes. I am happy to become a mother because I feel like the experience does make you see so many things that you don’t see when you aren’t a parent. I feel like Joel and I have a more mature relationship with each other and we spend our time a little better and we think about important things more. Having a baby has helped us to not be so selfish. It also brings us more in a community, everyone seems to enjoy babies!

I feel like we have come a long way now, my ideas about so many things have completely changed, and my relationship with Joel has gotten stronger. I now cant fathom being apart from Joel. Thanks Max for making us better people! I cant imagine having a second baby right now though! I will have to watch how Steph does it since she is just about to have her second baby, then maybe I will feel like we can do it too! (we still want to have many children, and we will, I just cant imagine it! Haha)

"I'm Not Picky Today"

I am definitely pretty particular about some things, and it has been fun discovering what I am picky about. Since we have gotten married, we discovered that I don't like the way Joel pours the milk in my cereal: he usually pours too much and I don't like soggy cereal (unlike him), so I like there to be a lot of the cereal sticking out of the milk. So I'll ask him to pour me some cereal please, and then when he does, I don't like it!! Other things we have discovered are: the way he makes my protein smoothies. I don't really like the taste of the protein in smoothies, but eat them for the protein of course. So when I make a smoothie, I make it really small and thick. This is hard for Joel to make because it is really hard to mix it all up since it is so thick and it would be so much easier if I would just pour more liquid in there. So when Joel has made me smoothies before, I am pretty much never satisfied with it (they always have too much liquid). I like it so thick because it means I only have to consume a half a glass instead of a whole glass but get the same amount of protein.

Given that I am picky, I have finally quit asking him to make my things that I am particular about. But something funny happened lately. I asked Joel, "Will you make me some toast please?" (He was making some for himself.) Then he said something about how he might have messed one up, and I said, "Don't worry, today I am in a rare mood - I am not picky today!" And so I waited at the table while he made me some toast, and when he brought it to me, I looked at it and laughed. "Joel, I am sorry, but when I said I wasn't in a picky mood, I didn't even think you would give me this." Basically, when I saw Joel's toast, it looked yummy with butter on it, so I wanted toast and butter, and didn't think that could be messed up. But Joel wasn't finished making his toast when I saw it, he had put raspberry jelly on top (the sugar free kind with splenda). So I didn't even consider he would put the jelly on for me, but he didn't consider not to put the jelly on, because he thought I wanted toast like he was having it. So he had to eat 4 pieces of toast and make me another one, with only butter! He was like, here I was thinking this was such a rare event, wow, Melissa isn't picky, almost thinking can this be true? But I guess it can't be true!

Then just the next day, I asked him to "do my tea for me" and by that I meant only that I wanted him to remove the tea bag from the cup, I don't like doing it because it is hot and Joel doesn't seem to mind it as much. And I was planning on adding my own sugar and creamer because I like to put real sugar in mine and Joel likes to use splenda. But he took "do my tea" to mean take out the tea bag and put in creamer and splenda. So when he hands me my tea, I was like "Oh...well...Um, never mind, this is great! Thanks!" Because I feel bad for being so picky all the time!! But we laughed about it. And it is true that these last two occasions were more of communication problems. I have a picture in my head of what or how I want him to do something but I say it in such a way that you can hardly blame him for doing it the way he did it.

Cleaning Up Books Is A Dangerous Endeavor

As you might know, both Joel & I love books! We were moving the furniture around in our room, and one was a bookshelf. So we took all the books off, and moved the shelf, and then needed to put all the books back on the shelf. We were trying to get this done in a timely fashion, since we have a lot to do, but Joel says, "Oh, this is a dangerous project." And literally, it wasn't more than 3 minutes until we both had books open, in hand, sitting down!!! The part that made me laugh so much was that we didn't do this as a joke or to prove the point, we both genuinely became interested in a book we were supposed to be putting on the shelf!! And we both quit working! Since Joel is really the one in charge of the bookshelf move, I looked up from my book, said, "Get back to work!" and then put my head back in my book! He laughed and made me put up my book before he would do the same! We did finish our rearranging in the room, but it was funny, and true about how with us, cleaning up books is a dangerous endeavor!

Attachment Marriaging

I have been reading about attachment parenting since we are preparing to have our first baby. In general, I agree with a lot of the ideas, because I agree with the parenting philosophy behind it all that you don’t need experts to tell you things about parenting. Parenting “experts” have all kinds of misguided views, for example many are concerned with teaching you how not to spoil your baby or how to not let the baby take control of you or manipulate you. However, I don’t want to talk about parenting here. I want to talk about marriage. Joel & I have created the joke that we are practicing attachment marriaging because we like to be together all the time and do things together. Many people today think it is smarter to have your own separate bank accounts so that no one person, usually the man who makes all the money, will control the relationship. That might be necessary for some people, but not for Joel and me. We share it all and don’t have trouble with one person controlling the whole financial situation. We can talk honestly about wanting to buy things, and we help each other to not spend so much money on things we don’t need and to keep our whole financial picture in mind.

Anyway, so Joel likes his laundry done twice a week, and somehow I have really not taken part in making that happen. Even though we agreed that I am to do the primary cooking and cleaning, I just don’t seem to ever do the laundry. But now that we just had a baby shower, we had two whole loads of laundry that needed to be done for the baby. And I was so excited about it. I was like, Joel, do you have any laundry you need done? He was like Yes! And I happily did the laundry because I was excited to be washing the baby’s clothes. And while folding, Joel folded his and I folded the baby’s. I was telling Joel how much I loved doing the laundry for the baby, and how it reminded me of the first time I did my own laundry when I was younger and how I felt so grown up. And now with washing the baby’s clothes, I feel like I am growing up again. And then I realized, wouldn’t it be nice if I felt that way about doing Joel’s laundry? How much better would it be if I felt like, wow, I am doing my husband’s laundry, I am growing up! And this is going to make him happy and look nice and not be stressed about what to wear, etc… No, somehow I have protected myself against those thoughts. I think from the beginning, I have been worried about being taken advantage of. I was worried about Joel using me, or not being fair, or leaving me to all the unintellectual work. And I realize now that that is just what I am against with all the current parenting experts. I think their advice to me to protect myself from my baby’s manipulations would really keep me from really being attached to my baby. And I feel like with all the advice or worried I have about being married and not letting Joel take advantage of me has gotten in the way of our relationship.

There are some differences from parenting and being married. For one, adults are able to manipulate each other, and also Joel and I certainly do love each other, so its not like we have a big strain in our marriage. We are definitely attached. But I just realized that it would be good to work more on allowing myself to have the attitude of happily doing things for Joel because it does make our lives better and our relationship stronger. Some people really need to worry about being taken advantage of, but I am not married to “some people”. I am married to Joel, and I have definitely seen that he isn’t out to take advantage of me. And he only wants laundry done twice a week because he runs out of clean clothes and needs them for school. I know how stressed he is with school, and it really isn’t hard to do laundry so why don’t I do it? And why don’t I enjoy doing it? I think a part of me gets caught up in the idea that I am very smart and could be “working” so sometimes it is a challenge to feel like I am not wasting my good brain on being a housewife. But it is really important to sort through these feelings, because honestly, if I were working, I would have to do all kinds of things that I don’t want to do either. Such as paperwork, meetings, dealing with problems that arise, it wouldn’t all be fun and stimulating. There are certainly a lot of hoops you have to jump through. Joel had a lot of stress putting together the 16 applications that he sent out this semester for a full time position. That certainly took a lot of time, and he had to write various essays or answer questions and fill out forms and order papers, and have it all out by a deadline, and in the end, he didn’t end up getting any of those jobs. So his work was certainly thankless in some sense. Whereas, when I do the laundry, I get to see Joel’s smiling face or get to enjoy an absence of his extra stress in the morning when needing clothes. Housework is not always a thankless job. Maybe Joel won’t say thanks every time I do the laundry, but while I am doing the act of laundering, I know that someone has to do it, and I am making our lives better. I feel much better about doing our laundry than I do about filling out applications, I definitely hate those things. And it is not true that all I do is work anyways, sometimes I spend many hours on housework a day, and other times I don’t. But I have a lot of time to pursue my intellectual interests. And I have had a lot of time to read about and prepare for birth and parenting, by doing fun projects, meeting people, and reading. And I have the big and definitely fun job of preparing to teach our children in homeschool. That to me is the ultimate intellectual stimulation because I get to teach without all the aspects of the school system that I despise.

In conclusion, I have realized that I want to redirect my thoughts, actions and attitude towards attachment marriageing. I know that it will really benefit Joel & me and enrich our relationship.

Projects

Lately, Joel & I have been doing a few projects to prepare for the baby. We have come to a realization about our different working styles. Here is how things went with trying to make a stuffed animal for the baby.

We decided a few weeks ago to each make a stuffed animal for the baby. I chose that I wanted to make a cat pretty quickly, and Joel wasn’t totally sure what he wanted to make. So he researched stuffed animals online while I thought about how I wanted the cat to go. Then he decided he would make a snake to start off with, mostly because it would be a easier project to begin with. So step one complete, it took me about 2 seconds to decide my animal and no research, it took Joel a few hours of research to come up with his.

Then we went to the fabric store. At Wal-Mart, they didn’t have a great selection, and I hadn’t really thought a lot about what color I wanted to make the cat. I looked around at the colors, textures and prices, and decided that I liked this bright green receiving blanket material. It was soft and made for kids and looked good. Joel didn’t have as much luck the first time around because he was looking for felt, and they didn’t have a good selection of felt. He had decided he wanted to make a coral snake, so he needed black, red and yellow. I don’t think they had more than one of those in felt. We asked and heard that there was a Hancock’s Fabric close by. So we decided to go there for his material. I purchased a yard of fabric and Joel left empty handed. So step two complete for me, I didn’t have a specific thing in mind and was flexible about what I would make it out of (putting more emphasis on the wanting to make it today rather than on what exactly it will look like).

As it turns out, that day Joel was unable to make it to the fabric store because we came home, ate and then it was already time for him to go to Mass. So I dropped him off and went to the fabric store since it was right across from his church. They certainly had a huge selection there, but I couldn’t buy anything for Joel because I knew he would need to see it himself.

Later that day, I got started on making the cat while Joel did some more research online for what he wanted the snake to look like. Joel said, don’t you want to look up online a pattern or how you will make it? I said no, I can put it together in my head. Who needs a pattern! So I did some thinking for how to cut it and put it together, and got working. So step three for me, I began the process of actually making the animal.

Two days later, I was finished with the stuffed animal. So final step – complete!

I do have an advantage over Joel because he is busy during the weeks with his 5 classes, so he doesn’t have a lot of time to devote to making the stuffed animal. That is certainly one thing that contributed to his not getting to the fabric store until the next weekend.

We went to the fabric store and Joel didn’t find anything he really liked there. The prices were a lot more than Wal-Mart and he still didn’t find the felt he was looking for. So no snake this week.

The next week, he went to the Wal-Mart that is 40 minutes from us near a campus he teaches at. I don’t remember if he ended up buying fabric there. But I know that by the end of that week, he had decided to switch to flannel and he was able to get the red and the while fabric, but they didn’t have black. Luckily, we went to visit my parents in another city, and the Wal-Mart there had black. So finally, two weeks later, Step 2 of gathering materials is complete for Joel.

Then the next weekend, which was just yesterday, he began step three of making the snake. He wanted to use the sewing machine rather than to hand sew it like I had done. He wanted more even and nice looking stitches. I just enjoy making things by hand, and while he worked on the snake, I put together a heart shaped pin cushion. Joel looked online a little more for how he wanted to make it, and then he began the process. In just a few hours, the snake was almost complete. He had put together the whole body, and it looked great! All that is lacking is a head and the snake needed to be stuffed. Since the snake is so long, we need to buy a stick from Wal-Mart to push the stuffing way down. But as today is Monday, he won’t be able to finish it until next weekend.

So first observation is the time difference, Joel takes significantly longer to make a project than me. Even when you account for his teaching days, he still takes longer because he puts more time planning it, he wants it to be perfect and he takes his time getting started because he doesn’t want to make mistakes. I on the other hand, just jump right in, and get it done. We knew this about each other while we were in school because I would spend 4 to 8 hours writing a paper, and would complete the rough draft in one long go, where Joel on the other hand would sit for 4 to 8 hours in front of his computer ending in only a paragraph at most. If you watch him, he would begin to write a sentence, and then rewrite it, and then write five versions of it and then think on it for a while, and after an hour he might have decided on how he wanted that sentence to go. It drove me crazy watching him!! He was never late on a paper though, and always started early. And once his rough draft was complete, there was very little he needed to change to make it a final. He writes almost perfectly the first time! Unlike me, once my rough draft is complete, then I have about 2 to 3 major revisions just to catch all the grammar mistakes I made.

We know that just ultimately my way nor his is truly better, because they both have their strong and weak points. For my way, I get things done, and am less stressed about it and in the case of the stuffed animal, there are mistakes which I think add character and make it cute, but Joel & I both agree the stuffed animal looks great! For Joel, he will never finish too soon from the date he started, and he does stress out about it more. But we definitely both agree that his final projects turn out wonderfully as well, and with very little mistakes.

This has been important for us to realize about each other, because I always want us to do a project together and to finish it. Like when we plan to start a painting at the same time, but he is “researching” all up to the time I am done painting. And I get frustrated about it because I want to be painting with him, but he ends up painting a few days later! But I don’t know why I get so frustrated about it. I just need to recognize that about him and give him the time he needs. Because his art work is definitely beautiful!

But another aspect of the whole thing that I haven’t yet written about is what happens if we try to do a project together rather than doing separate projects. Yesterday, after Joel made his snake, we began making a sling together. Already at the beginning, I was ready to cut and sew, to get into it, and Joel needed more time to understand the project and what we were doing. He kept getting frustrated with my attitude for wanting to get going, and I got upset at his attitude for thinking we were going to ruin the whole thing by not knowing what was going on and that we would waste all the fabric. But we got started, more quickly than Joel would like, and after about step 3, we discovered that there was a problem and that it wasn’t going to work. We needed to start over. Oh that was just too much for Joel, he went and laid down for a little bit, and I got frustrated because this isn’t that big of a deal. We can figure it out, make adjustments and not all will be wasted. So I started over with a new piece of fabric and Joel was watching me sew, but trying to help me. I hadn’t used a sewing machine really at all, and I was having a rough start making the seam. I wanted to do it without Joel’s hands there so that I could learn but he didn’t like watching all the mistakes I was making in it. So he cut it off, and helped me sew a new seam. But when we picked that sling up, we realized that it is too long, and the one we made before was too short. Joel just couldn’t take it. We were a little unhappy with each other for a while, then he went to Mass, and I said I looked forward to seeing him come home in a good mood. While he was gone, I cut some fabric to add to the shorter one. I had to rip the seam we made, sew on the added parts and then join it all together again. I had music on, felt happy and relaxed and enjoyed making it. The seams weren’t perfect, but they were pretty good and I definitely got a hang of using the sewing machine. When Joel got back, he was happy with how it looked and we both tried it on and took photos. We had a short talk about how we are different, and how things work out great both ways of doing things but how we both cant stand to do it each other’s ways. So we agreed to never do a joint project basically. But its fun when you both produce something and you can see the differences in style and work.