Archive for the 'forgiveness' Category

Is Patience an Achievable Parent Virtue?

Published
by
Melissa
on March 9, 2010
in Mommy time, balance, centering, compassion, expectations, forgiveness, grace, patience (and losing it), practice and toddler tantrums
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When I was in seventh grade my health teacher, Mr. Phillips, told me I would make a good teacher because I was so patient.

I immediately declared that I would never be a teacher in the kind of bratty voice that comes with being nearly thirteen years old and not particularly fond of Mr. Phillips.

This brattyness, I believe, was not entirely unwarranted.   How much kindness can a middle school student be expected to show to a teacher who tries to cultivate some cred with the class by mocking the then-current ad campaign for Alien by saying, “In space, no one can hear you pass gas”?  I mean, come on.  If you plan on teaching a bunch of twelve-year-olds you should at least be aware that they will laugh at the word “fart” but will find “pass gas” squirm-inducingly square.

Nonetheless, ever since then (a shocking thirty years) I have considered myself a Patient Person.

It has been only recently — most often when I hear myself telling Lily to Stop Yelling At Me! — that I have thought maybe it’s time to reassess.

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H1N1 Pays a Visit

Published
by
Melissa
on November 3, 2009
in Mommy time, being in the moment, change, compassion, expectations, forgiveness, grace, illness, letting go, practice, school, structure and stuck at home with a child
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1 Comment

Actually, I don’t really know that it’s H1N1 with whom we’ve tangoed over the past week.  But I’ve been told that right now anything that looks like flu must be of the swine variety.

Like most of the H1N1 lore I’ve been hearing, there’s no telling how accurate this information I’m spreading around is.  But no one is going to confuse this site with the CDC’s and, besides, H1N1 makes for a timely and eye-catching title.

So, full disclosure:  No bodily fluids, no soaring temperatures, no stories about persevering despite record-breaking dehydration here.  Just trying times and trying to be mindful.  And yoga.

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High Winds with a Likelihood of Anxiety

Published
by
Melissa
on October 9, 2009
in awareness, bed time, centering, chattering mind, discomfort verus pain, forgiveness, letting go, practice, respecting your body, sleep, surrender and yoga class
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There are those (my husband) who will think me a little bit nutty for saying this, but windy days breed anxiety.

One might suggest that I am simply looking for something other than my mother to blame my anxiety on.  And that may be the case.  But I have it on good authority — my acupuncturist, no less — that I am on to something.  Windy days make us feel ungrounded, scattered, and, yes, for someone prone to anxiety like me, anxious.

If I require more proof — which I don’t — I need look no further than yesterday morning, when the wind rattled the maple trees in our front yard and rained bits of debris on the tin roof while I held my puzzled, hungry baby in my arms sobbing, “It’s not your fault!  It’s not your fault!”

Anxious.  Crazy.  Indeed

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Turn, Turn, Turn … or Not: What I Learned at Six Months

Published
by
Melissa
on October 2, 2009
in Mama instinct, bed time, breathing, change, communicating, compassion, daycare, expectations, feeding my child, forgiveness, illness, intentions versus goals, letting instead of making, sleep, structure, yoga class and you can't control everything
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3 Comments

“Yep,” Mike confirmed the other day.  “Lily’s acting like a normal baby.”

He said this after our first sunny fall day in the park.  After Lily and I arrived with her pouting in her stroller because I decided that much as she was demanding it I was simply not up to the task of walking to the park with her in the Ergo.  After yet another night of our power struggle over when she got to wake me up to nurse (as opposed to just waking me up) and how many times.  And after I summarily dumped her in Mike’s arms and walked away to chat with some other adults.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with acting like a normal baby when you are, pretty much, a normal baby.  You get to fuss.  You get to yell at your mother for not holding you enough, not nursing you enough, having the audacity to put you down on the floor so she can, say, put on her sweater for a walk to the park.  And you definitely get to refuse to sleep through the night and not care that the books say by six and a half months you probably should be doing so.

I know there is nothing wrong with all of this.  I know — I think I know, I tell myself I know — that just because Lily can be a little grumpy with me now and then it does not mean that she will come to hate me in thirteen or so years.  She will hate me then regardless of what I do right now.

What I’m having some trouble wrapping my mind around, however, is the notion that there is nothing wrong with me responding to her grumpiness with less than perfect equanimity and nurturing sweetness.  There is nothing wrong with telling a baby at one o’clock in the morning that you want to sleep and she should stop crying at you.  Especially if you are offering a tone of voice and a back rub that are a great deal more gentle than the words you are saying because you know she can’t understand them anyhow.

In short, I spent the past several days beating myself up because Lily’s crankiness made me cranky as well.

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Sometimes You’ve Just Gotta Cry (Especially at Four O’Clock in the Morning)

Published
by
Melissa
on September 3, 2009
in Mommy time, change, forgiveness, gratitude, letting go, potty training, sleep, structure and the bigger picture
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There are times — many, many times in the life of a mother of two children under three — when you know that whatever it is that is making you cry is a normal part of parenthood.  The incident that has driven you to tears of despair is, you could easily tell yourself, a positive sign that your child is developing properly.  No other parent has ever cried in similar circumstances, you may even lie to yourself, so buck up.

But you will cry anyhow, and you will feel good and sorry for yourself as you do it.

By all rights, my latest bout of tears should not have been induced by the simple fact of Lily awakening twice in one night.  Because who would cry over something most other mothers of infants I know take as a fact of life?  And what sort of ingrate would not be able to take a few days out of the five-and-a-half months of her daughter’s life when she loses a little more than a little sleep?

By all rights, in other words, I should instead have been crying when I was sitting on the dirty floor of a Target bathroom at eight o’clock last night, my baby strapped to me in the Ergo, the toilet paper dispenser empty, and my son’s brand-new Big Boy underpants, shall we say, soiled.

But I didn’t cry then.  In that moment, I could find quite a lot of humor in just watching myself.  It’s in the middle of the night that my outlook on life is more than a little bit less inclined toward laughter.

Continue reading ‘Sometimes You’ve Just Gotta Cry (Especially at Four O’Clock in the Morning)’

How Can You Love Me So Much When …?

Published
by
Melissa
on July 10, 2009
in Mama instinct, Mommy time, awareness, bed time, communicating, compassion, daycare, feeding my child, forgiveness, grace, opening your heart and social life
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0 Comments

Lily and I are having a bit of a love fest these days.  We gaze into each others’ eyes.  We smile and giggle.  I marvel at the double dimples in her elbows and the figure-eight temple dents she inherited from her father.

And then, after forty-five minutes or so of mutual adoration, I whisk her off to daycare and plop her in someone else’s arms.  Getting to do so doesn’t make me love her any more; it just makes it easier to spend forty-five minutes telling her so.

But much as my daily three-hour-break from my baby makes me, if not a better mother, at least a happier one, it is powerless against those “I’m exhausted and you are making my nipples sore” moments.  Which are relatively rare, but still all too common.

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What I Learned in My First Mommy and Me Yoga Class

Published
by
Melissa
on April 15, 2009
in Mama instinct, Mommy time, compassion, expectations, forgiveness, grace, inner beauty, letting go, nonharming, opening your heart, sense of self, social life, the bigger picture and yoga class
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3 Comments

I’ve had this day marked on my calendar for weeks.  My first Mommy and Me yoga class.

It’s been just two days since Lily officially reached the Age Where I Can Take Her Into Public Places, and the prospect of the class was even more exciting to me than Monday’s foray into Target.  Purchasing diapers and Z Bars I could live without for another month if I had to; the only thing keeping me from Mommy and Me yoga this past month were those pesky flu viruses still floating around Asheville on the chill winds finally chasing winter away.

What I was looking forward to wasn’t so much a practice for myself.  I can manage those at home if need be — and did for all of six sun salutes and five rounds of navasana yesterday before Miss Lily intervened.  What Mommy and Me yoga offered that I hadn’t before experienced was a practice for the two of us, a time to share something beyond our daily routine of eating, holding, taking the occasional walk, and greeting Jake’s boisterous evening arrival with joy (me) and cries of annoyance (Lily).  And, of course, I was very  much looking forward to the company of adults who speak in real sentences, even if most of them are devoted to talking about their babies.

What I found, however, was something different, a lesson I haven’t yet approached in quite the same way in all the YogaMamaMe time I’ve devoted to the relationship between me and my children and my Self.  What I found — as, if I’m being honest, I so rarely find — was forgiveness.

Continue reading ‘What I Learned in My First Mommy and Me Yoga Class’

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