The Elusive Balance

Yikes! another pictureless post! I’m breaking my own blog rule. Sorry, I posted all the week’s pictures earlier. I’ll take more soon, I promise!

Tonight I realized how much I’ve been “gushing” about happiness and cuteness and goodness here lately. Then I turn around and call my longsuffering mother to describe a challenge (aka moan) and get a pep talk (aka sympathy). While I certainly don’t think that anyone who reads this (especially other moms) is crazy enough to believe that everything is always happy and perfect around here [as long as I’m not pregnant], I DO want to be REAL. I want to comment on all aspects of life in the White House, good or bad, preferably with a positive spin. It’s a trick to balance the sweet moments with the tough ones, especially when both often happen all at the same time!

Here’s an example of the sweet/tough paradox: Jay and Rose would NOT go to sleep tonight. They kept jumping on their beds, turning on the light, and escaping from their bedroom. It was the end of a long day and parental patience was waning. But every time I caught them escaping and told them it was bed time in a firm, slightly irritated voice, they wanted hugs and their cute little faces peered up at me cutely. Yarg. Paradox.

Another example: I cooked family dinner tonight for the first time in a while. Every Sunday we take turns cooking dinner for the whole family (us, Jeff’s parents, and Steph and Jasen). Cooking that dinner wiped my current wimpy body out. Jeff usually rinses the dishes and I load the dishwasher. But tonight I just couldn’t face any of it. I started doing my dish duty anyways, though, but I was moaning the whole time. Jeff marched me over to my chair and finished doing the dishes alone. It was so sweet of him to do the dishes, but I felt pathetic that I couldn’t just push through my pathetic-ness and help without complaining! Paradox.

One more: I keep expecting my body to just suddenly bounce back to its “former self” and it surprises and annoys me every single day when I feel exhausted after a small normal task or throbby after a little while on my feet. It is so hard to let myself take it easy. I can force myself to take it easy but then I grumble and feel guilty about it while I’m sitting in my chair “taking it easy.” Paradox.

Physical weakness is SUCH a weakness of mine! If I have any kind of pain or hunger or fatigue, my defenses are down and I am prey to any flash of irritation or cranky comment or negativity. It drives me crazy!

Well this has become whiny in spite of my good intentions of a positive spin. There are so many things to be happy about. It takes constant vigilance not to let the little things like my weak body or my mischievous children swipe my good mood. Like President Uchtdorf said in his conference talk today (paraphrased and personalized): we don’t listen to a piece of music anxiously awaiting the final note! We savor the melody and harmony and all the notes mixed together. My challenge is to let myself relax in my chair to enjoy each note and not let the little boy and girl banging on the end of the piano distract me from how lovely the melody is.