Before you have a child, you have expectations about what being a parent will be like and about what you will be like as a parent. Everybody's expectations are different but they are there nonetheless. Needless to say, to those of you who have children, once your first kid arrives, your expectations are generally obliterated by the tiny little bundle of need you end up with. Now, I'm willing to concede that there are some, particularly here in the great state of Utah, for whom motherhood is all they thought it would be and more. But I would still be willing to bet that even their positive expectations were surpassed by their newly discovered capacity to love and be needed. However, that is not the focus of my experience--I prefer to focus on shattered expectations for the time being.
This is not to say that you should expect a bummer experience by reading further...I simply like to be up front with people as to what they should not expect. What you should not expect from reading this is the upbeat "Mormon mommy blog" who has dinner ready each night after a day spent crafting felt puppets for my kids, redecorating the formal living room on a $20 budget and fashioning a quilt for the young couple in the neighborhood who just welcomed their 5th child.
I recently told, or rather wrote, a friend that, "It is tiring painting motherhood as a perpetually rosy, exalted state of being." The bottom line is that life is hard. Being a wife and a mother makes it harder. My life is messy. A lot of times I'll complain and my husband and I fight and my little guy drives me nutty and because of the social pressure I've considered it a failure on my part, a failure to thrive. Well I'm taking life back. I'm not buying into this crap where I have to be perfect and cheerful and happy and satisfied with a clean house and a perfect marriage and amazing genius children (well I do have a beautiful genius child but he still bugs me sometimes).
So here it is, a (partial) list of things that are symptoms of my failure to thrive:
I am a shopaholic. No really, it is bad. There is potential to hit hoarder level.
My house is never clean. Never. Sometimes there are paths to move from room to room.
I swear. A lot. Sometimes at work in front of people who are offended by swearing. I do this on purpose. It is like I have no damn control.
I think punctuation is nothing more than accessories to the fashion of my words. Well....actually....I'm not ashamed of this. It is just how I roll.
I'm mean to my hubby. Working on that one. However, if you were in my shoes, you might at least occasionally think he deserved it.
Maybe we should leave it at that for now. The take away from this rant is...I have a blog. I'm going to write about my life and my family and shattered expectations. Not all families are perfect. Not all being who become mothers instantly develop entirely new personalities and the selfless skills sometimes deemed necessary to thrive in super mommy land. That said, I freaking love my kid and I am grateful for my life, for the good and the bad, and the hard and easy and the ugly and the attractive pieces. Maybe learning to appreciate it all is the key to thriving?
