c l i m b i n g i v o r y
A little blog of Catholic wifehood, motherhood & dreams
Today . . . October 18, 2022, Tuesday, Feast of St. Luke
Under the sky . . . Glorious blue, a full brisk wind, bronzing leaves, neighborhood wind chimes coming through our cracked-open living room window. Under our roof . . . A veneer of semi-order hiding bigger disasters of disorganization . . . ones that naturally come, I guess, with having a two-year-old and a seven-week-old. Please don't look in my closet, through any of the kids' clothes, in my pantry, the laundry room, or any drawer in the house. But there are fresh flowers, though. And we have fresh groceries and both the kids got bathed today! So I won't weep! I'm wearing . . . Maternity jeans that, unlike the rest of my clothes, don't really fall into either the too small or too big category. These actually fit ok! Black and purple socks. Nursing tank and a thin sweatshirt proclaiming "TODAY: it's a good day." My watch, the hands of which have decided to run two and a half hours behind for the last week. Time to get a new watch. Hair in a clip, no makeup because of this itchy sty in the corner of my left upper eyelid. A hopelessly tangled scapular . . . I would really really love a new scapular but keep failing to remember to find/get one! Dinner starring as . . . Hamburger steaks with mushrooms and onions, potato wedges, zucchini and squash sautee. We are determined to not eat out so much, the last and steepest vestige perhaps of the survival mode we've been bobbing in and out of for almost two months. A mood in three words . . . Tired, previously-discouraged-but-now-placid, thus-pensive A favorite . . . The scene and sounds of Adrian eating blueberries. That kid loves blueberries pretty much more than me. Hidden thoughts . . . The house clutter and our laundry situation in particular were really getting to me recently. After a very full day yesterday I sat down and (rather foolishly) planned that today I was going to get A LOT done on the house and fix these persistent messes shoved behind doors and organize everyone's clothes (our master closet is a disaster) and switch out seasonal clothes/clothes Rose has already outgrown and then go shopping for new clothes for my burgeoning toddler (I already went a week or so ago and then came home to the realization that he needs way more than I got!). Not to mention I needed to bathe them, make calls to figure out weird bills and debit card fraud (and does anyone ever really want to do that sort of thing when they're already feeling overwhelmed)? Enter my big boy this a.m. whose every emotion is dialed up three extra notches today; combine it with my own growing fatigue and I realized within the first hour that I was going to have to make a major expectations shift for the day. While I was fine with it at first, by the end of lunch I was in a little pond of frustrated, overwhelmed tears. I took the kids on a naptime drive and, as always, it lifted my mood. The wife in me . . . We're imperfect people and our marriage is an imperceptible daily kind of process of climbing but then you occasionally pause and realize you're standing under an unusually beautiful branch or in an especially pleasant patch of shade that wasn't part of your tree before, or was smaller once and now more matured, and you can see how your tree is growing and how you know and love one another more than you did before, in a quietly stronger kind of way, not perfect but there's a richness, a slow richness that you notice every once in a while and thank God for. I wrote this a few daybooks ago (read: a year ago) and it still rings so true. I love what these past two months, this growth into a family of four is doing to our marriage, both the beautiful and ugly parts. We have been forced to grow even more out of ourselves. Sometimes we are bone-exhausted, sometimes we are impatient and angry, but sometimes we are laughing ourselves into a stomachache and sometimes we are filled up with the tenderest love and pride for our two little kiddos. As I'm trying to slowly wean myself from social media after the craziness of the past few months (to be detailed in subsequent posts) where I succumbed to scrolling IG after a rather long time off of it, I've been trying to read more constructively. In particular I've been focusing on the accounts of widows, or mothers who have lost children. You really can't find more gifted writers and I have found no deeper and more poignant reminders to take none of my precious family for granted. It is so hard in the fatigue and adjustments we're undergoing to not get resentful in my marriage. Hyper-focusing on his perceived shortcomings, the differences of our opinions, temperaments, love languages etc. etc... A productive conversation about annoyances is a good thing, but muttering a list of grievances to myself in my brain all day is something I hate so much but have certainly been guilty of, and once I give it a foot in the door it refuses to rest and feeds itself without end. Reading the writings of women who would give anything to see their husbands again and not to be solo mothers chastens me to my gut and inspires me to put my big girl pants on and give my beloved husband a break from my interior nitpicking, to flirt with him instead, and to pray for those heroic women. The mother in me . . . needs to stop, stare and snuggle my babies and be at peace with my house. The child in me . . . wants Rotel cheese dip and anything with dairy (can you tell I'm not eating dairy? ;) Gratitude . . . for our beautiful family . . . and that Adrian loved and accepted his new thrifted jacket!
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MaryWife to my best friend. Mama to a gregarious 3yo boy, a determined 18mo daughter, a darling baby boy due in late July, and a miscarried child we gave back to God. (photos are from Unsplash unless I note they're mine :)
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