Tom and Lila’s visit in March

I probably mentioned that my brother and his wife came to visit us in March, and we got to spend some time with them. It was so much fun!!

I finally got around to doing the scrapbook pages from their visit (I know, I know… you were WAITING, right?)

Products are all from Jessica Sprague’s Digi: in Deep class, plus her Echoes of Asia free downloads from the CK magazine site.

Not what I pictured

I’m not the mother I thought I’d be.

I don’t enjoy getting my hands dirty or sticky, so I’m not really interested in fingerpainting or playing with Play-doh and I don’t want to spend all day coloring.

Too much of my thinking is overrun by have-tos. I have to do the laundry, I have to cook dinner, I have to clean up from dinner. When I do sit down and snuggle and get down on the floor with them, I’m never sorry. But the have-tos don’t go away. They loom bigger and bigger and I’m overwhelmed.

I had a romantic notion of what being a mother would be. I thought about the snuggles and the kisses and the children in cute outfits, behaving in church, being polite and pleasant in stores.

I didn’t think of the grubby hands, the crayons on the walls, the sunscreen in the hair, the endless nagging and begging for anything and everything, the junk food crushed on the kitchen floor, the missing pens, and having to hide the scissors. I didn’t think of the graphing calculator that I really need that would suddenly go missing because of a curious four-year-old — and my husband WARNED me that she’d disappear with it but I didn’t listen… I didn’t think of the vegetables that will rot in the fridge because suddenly no one will eat green things except for me. I didn’t think of the flooded laundry room and the stained carpet and the piles and piles of nasty laundry. I didn’t think of the fights about what to wear to school, about what to watch on television, about brushing hair. I didn’t think of frantic searches for one missing ballet slipper or the banning of all things fruit juice after several times too many of mopping the kitchen floor. I didn’t think of a lot of things.

Before I had kids, I had this idyllic picture in my head about what kind of a parent I would be: always attentive, always loving, always calm, always caught up with the mundane parts of life so that I could treasure every second with my children. After all, I could juggle a full-time job and a house and a theatre rehearsal schedule with ease — how much harder could it be? And I judged people who weren’t the kind of perfect parent that I would be.

I feel like I need to apologize to a whole lot of people.

Meditation

Meditation

KPertiet staples, Dirty Journaler label, Botanist No13 Dirty natural paper (Designer Digitals)
AAspnes Web Challenge 05Apr08 and Ad Challenge 16Dec07 (DD)
ASO Alluring Autumn Solid Brown (ScrapGirls)
AMC Fruit Smoothie Blue Solid (SG)

Fonts are Chow Fun and Another Typewriter (dafont.com) and CK Ali’s Writing (CK Media)

Tagged: spouse

Stacy tagged me…

Isn\'t he cute?!

What is his name?
Jerry, but not legally.

How long have you been married?
10.5 years.

How long did you date?
15 months (including engagement time, but not including the first few dates a year before we really started dating)

How old is he?
39

Who eats more?
Me, dammit. Gotta fix that.

Who said I love you first?
I think I did, but he thought it first.

Who is taller?
He is, by 8 inches.

Who sings better?
Me, but mostly because he lacks confidence. He has a beautiful voice when he thinks no one is listening.

Whose temper is worse?
I think we both need to work on our tempers.

Who does the laundry?
We both wash, I fold and carry upstairs, we both put away.

Who pays the bills?
I do.

Who cooks dinner?
I do.

Who mows the lawn?
Ollie, God bless him. My first summer home from teaching, I knew that Jer was going to unintentionally going to expect me to mow the lawn without really meaning to. And I knew that was going to make me angry, because the expectation of it (since I was home earlier in the afternoons) had already started happening and I was already irritated about it. I went to Jerry and said, “You know… We have two choices here: get a yard man, or go to marriage counseling. A counselor is just going to tell us to get a yard man, so can we skip the middle man?” Ollie was hired, and our yard has looked amazing for 7 years now. Ollie’s magic helped sell our first house and whip the yard of this one into shape.

Who wears the pants in the family?
We both do. I’m the impulsive one, he’s the analytical one, so I nudge him along and he reels me back in. It’s a good balance.

Who will you tag?
Hmmm…. Ra, Kelley, and Sioux