Month 3: Motherhood

“Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.”
Meryl Streep quotes

March is the month where I really want to work on my mothering skills. I also want to take time to learn things from my kids.

"When our inner child is not nurtured and nourished, our minds gradually close to new ideas, unprofitable commitments and the surprises of the Spirit."
— Brennan Manning



Before I became a mom I had , what I realize now, was a delusional picture of motherhood. Much to my dismay no heavenly light shone down on me while I rocked my sleepy baby and no birds chirped sweetly in the morning to wake me after a restful night sleep. Instead there was poopy diapers, spit up, crying, dishes to be washed, and a house to keep clean. Life didn't stop just because there was a new member of our family. The other members still needed attention.

With this being said, I am the happiest I have ever been in my role of wife and mom. But there are still hard days, days where I have answered 500 questions , changed 10 diapers,said no 5,000 times and cleaned up 20 messes....all before 9am.

I know that I will still have the hard days, but I really want to work on an action plan so that I don't completely go insane during those times. I am going to take some of the ideas in Gretchen Rubin's "Happiness Project". One of the ones I am going to work on is waking up my kids every morning with a song. She noted that when they started the morning with a silly song the morning went better. So that is my goal for this first week.

As for learning things from my children, both Cameron, Reagan and Patience are unique in there own ways, so here are the attributes that I would like to incorporate into my life from them.

Cameron (age 4 1/2): His desire to know "EVERYTHING". I love to study, but don't make time for it. I have a couple of subjects I would like to know more about, so this month I am going to make that a priority.
Regan (age 1): Her ability to ask for what she needs. One of my characteristics that I would like to change is my need to do everything myself. I very rarely ask for help, and when I do, I feel like I am letting everyone down. Pride doesn't keep Reagan from making her needs known, I need to do the same.
Patience (age 9 1/2): I don't get to see Patience as often as I would like, but one of her qualities that I most admire is that she hands out compliments all the time. She always has an encouraging word, and I would really like to develop that in my life.