Tough Day

Today has been a really tough day.  It started when neither my alarm clock nor my husbands went off this morning and this is of course the morning my daughter slept until 10 til 7.  Once you are late it throws everything off.  I had a tough day trying to motivate my ninth graders to complete their work today.  To top it all of I got verbally accosted via text during my afterschool staff metting.  My younger sister sent me several text messages and the general gist of them all is that I am making it incredibly difficult for the family to see my daughter and I must not care if she is part of the family or not.  Eventhough I do not see them anyless than I did before my daughter was here.  This really makes me mad and frustrates me to no end.  I feel like I am doing the best that I can over here to try to accommodate everyone and actually get to spend some quality time with my daughter.  Its like no one understands how hard it is to be a working mom to a six month old.  They all assume that I spend all this time with her and just won't share but in actuality I get to spend very little time with her when she is awake.  I also am a terrible person because I told them it was too hard to make plans on a school night for my sisters birthday we would have to do it on the weekend.  Everyone is allowed to have a tough schedule to work around but me and when I do it makes me some aweful person.  Now I feel like maybe I am just bad at this.  I also don't have anyone to talk to about it my husband is so busy until football season is over, it seems that I have alienated everyone on both sides of the family, and then my two friends live nowhere near me.  I feel like I have no backup and no one is taking the time to appreciate where I am coming from.

They grow up too fast

My sweet baby girl will be six months old on Friday and it is amazing how fast she is growing.  Who knew that six months was all the time that I got to spend with the cuddly version of my baby girl.  She has gotten to the point where she doesn't wants you to hold her very much.  Not when she falls asleep and not even during the day.  She used to sit in the recliner with me or my husband for long periods of time even sleep that way, well that is no more.  She is also developing a fiercely independent streak which she inherited honestly from me.  I have always been my mother's most independent child and now it looks like my little girl, who is starting to look more and more like me, is the same way.  These are the moments that are bittersweet I am so excited to see her learn and grow everyday, to watch the wonder in her eyes every time she learns or does something new.  I am also so sad to know that my baby girl no longer wants to sleep on my chest at night particularly when she is sick.  These are the joys and perils of motherhood.

I am 26 and the mother of a little girl who will be six months old next week.  People keep telling me that I need to start doing something for myself or I am going to go crazy or crazier anyway.  Well this is my shot at something for me something where I can share my thought which I do so much better on paper or computer as it may be than in person.  Today I read an article a high school classmate of mine shared on facebook.  It was an article on whether or not to let your children go trick-or-treating and I always find these arguments so interesting so I read it.  The article was so much more the whole point of the article is that it shouldn't matter.  I agree as mothers (even I am guilty sometimes) we spend so much time judging each other for our choices that we do not keep the important things in mind.  What is really important is that for the most part we all love our children just the same and we are all trying as hard as we can to make what we feel like are the best decisions for our family.  As soon as people find out that you are pregnant they can be so critical.  They judge you based on how much weight you gain then after the baby gets here on whether you decide to breastfeed your baby or not, where they sleep, and even when you try to introduce solid foods.  And lets just be honest none of it is ever right.  Then I got to thinking about how wonderful it would be if  as a group we could try to stop judging each other for the choices we make and start supporting each other because lets face it we could all use a little more of that.  I personally would love it if I could have a group of mommy friends.  I have never been one to have many close friends but most people don't and right now I am at a point in my life where I am the only one of my friends with a baby.  That means that as much as we love each other we don't have nearly as much in common right now which doesn't mean that I don't want them as my friends anymore I just wish that I had a small group of other moms of a similar age to compare notes with after all this is now the best and most prominent aspect of my life.  No one understands you better than someone who is going through these major life events right there with you.  Everyone says that it comes with time as your children go through school but we shall see.  Motherhood is the greatest gift and the greatest challenge that there is.  It is the only thing that I have ever known I have wanted to do for my whole life and I love it more than I could even express, but that does not mean that it does not have its challenges.