I'm Moving!

I've decided to try some new things in 2016 for my blog, and moving to WordPress is one of the first.  If you're a subscriber (Thank you!), or have a link saved to this blog, please join me at my new home, smwhereinthemiddle.wordpress.com

Once I have everything moved in (it is) and in a set-up that I like (it's not), this location in Blogger will no longer be used.  I'm extremely grateful that you've read my posts at any point over the last four years, and would love to see you at my new home.  Expect some new topics along with more of what I know best.  

Hope to see you soon!

12 Things I Learned In 2014

The end of the calendar year inevitably brings many retrospectives, lists, and best-of's.  I have not been posting much in 2014, with most of my focus spent on two not-so tiny twin girls and their big brother.  So this list of things I learned seemed as good a way as any to summarize where I've been.

I learned, in no particular order because my memory could never chronologically sort these, that:

1) I love instant win games.  Not the lottery type, because you have to buy a ticket specifically for the purpose of winning, but the type that says "Hey, you bought something anyway or are a member of our group, please enter for a chance to win!"  I didn't win much more than some fries and a free movie rental this year, but the chance that I could makes me feel like a kid in a candy store.
2) Raising twins is just as hard as I thought it would be. Sometimes in life I fret and worry over something that ends up being smooth and easy.  This would not be an example of that.
3) If you enjoy photography like I do, especially the editing and printing part, do not wait a year to process your pictures.
4) Losing a pet plain old sucks.  My first and only dog so far died abruptly in May, after 11 years of trailing after my heels and being awesome.  It still doesn't feel right around here.
5) Even at this stage in my life when I have seen a few rodeos and am responsible for the lives of three little people, I am still susceptible to fan-girl tendencies.  Exhibit A: The Divergent Series books.  See also Theo James, acting in the movie interpretations of said books.
6) Sometimes the hardest part of having twins is having a five-year-old too.  Poor guy had his whole world change pretty abruptly.  Sometimes he wanted to love them too much, sometimes he wanted more of his own attention, sometimes he was just plain old tired of the crazy here.
7) Related to #6, mommy guilt is the worst.  I'm doing the best I can, and because of that, I compare and second-guess and stress and worry that it's never good enough.  I know I'm not alone here, but it is still the worst.
8) I read a lot of young adult fiction this year. I figured out that I could navigate my e-reader while pumping during my nursing stage, so I was able to read a lot of books in 2014.  When I looked at my Goodreads year in books, I saw a whole lot of dystopia and escape from reality.  Why?  See #2.
9) Having twins, while being a lot of hard work, is a gift from God in so many ways.  One that I've reflected on a lot this year is the fact that a hard pregnancy and a crazy first year has made me SO very ok with being done growing our family.  This could have been a difficult time of my life, having to transition from family growth to family stability, but instead, I thank my lucky stars that I am moving forward.  Next time I get to enjoy this stage is when they are my grandchildren.  Minus the whole pregnancy and nursing thing.  Sweet.
10) I am happiest when my personal email inbox doesn't require the use of the search bar to find what I need.  Which never happens.
11) I am of the age, along with being a grown-up and parent, where current events make my heart hurt.  Everything is more.  More evil, more dangerous, more overwhelming, more sad, more enraging, more frightening, more divisive.  Stories of children in harm's way bring me to my knees.  Growing up we just didn't get it, why adults argued over politics, and read the paper every day, and cried over bad news half a world away.  I get it now.  Lord, have mercy.
12) Parenting young children is my most important life's work, but I miss things.  I miss pondering, creating, exercising, remembering, sleeping, blogging, gardening, relaxing, watching, cooking, organizing, baking, decorating.  A lot of "-ings".  I know from having my first child that this changes, and I have about another year before I start getting more consistent time for those "-ings".  Halfway there.

What did you learn in 2014?
May the next year bring you all the "-ings" you wish for, and maybe a few that are unexpected as well.

Sixteen

I can't remember my sixteenth birthday.  Is that weird?  What girl doesn't remember their sweet sixteen, either for how great it was, or how awful it was instead of how great it was supposed to be?  Granted, that was 21 a few years ago, I have three kids, and I feel lucky that I remember to put shoes on some mornings, so I'm not entirely surprised.

I do have a strong memory from the day before my seventeenth birthday.  I was riding somewhere in the back seat of the car, "Jack and Diane" was playing on the radio, and I heard the lyrics "Hold on to sixteen as long as you can / Changes come around real soon / Make us women and men."  I smiled at the irony of hearing that line on that day, and then quickly went grim as the fear of that being true took over.  I had missed 364 days that I should have been holding on to sixteen, and here I was on the last day without ever even noticing that they had come and gone!

I suppose the next day wasn't any different than the day before, but the point had been made.  Now I am many years wiser and I can agree with Mellencamp (Cougar?  Not sure what he goes by these days) that there was a significant amount of change in the next sixteen years to follow.  Thank goodness.

*this post was inspired by the Wordpress Daily Prompt*

I get by with a little help from my (online) friends

This post is a part of a blog carnival with the new online community mom.me, and is sponsored by P&G.  Head on over to the mom.me site to take part in the discussion about motherhood and online communities, and you will be entered to win one of five P&G gift baskets valued at $250.


How the online world has helped me as a mom


As a kid, days lasted forever.  The time from any day of the year until Christmas felt like an eternity.  Summers lollygagged along, hours of the day were spent doing nothing and being perfectly content with that.  Impressions of the world were permanently stamped on my brain, and are ones that I can actually recall as an adult.  Fast forward to today, and it seems that if I blink too long, a month will have passed and I won't even remember what I had for breakfast.

The pace of life as a parent is hard to describe to anyone who has yet to experience it.  You hear the snide remarks about never sleeping in again, trading in Foo Fighters for Twinkle Twinkle, losing softball for little league, and the ever dreaded "You think that's bad, just wait!"  But I know now that I never had a complete understanding of just how easy it is to fall into a fast and furious whirlpool of scheduling until I had my own child to revolve around.  He is about to turn three, and it took until about six months ago when I finally popped my head out of the water to look around and realize how much me and my life have changed.

My husband and I have never really lived quiet lives.  We worked, played sports, had far-reaching circles of friends and family, were active in church, and generally lived in an on-the-move schedule.  Once my son was born, that schedule hit a brick wall, got swept up into a bag and shaken around, planted, and grew into something even bigger and faster than I ever knew existed.  Calm is preferable. Busy is ok.  Overwhelmed is not.  The lines between each of those is very fuzzy, but with help of a friend's perspective (thanks!) I'm finally understanding what an important determining factor is:  time to ponder.

When I have time to think, reflect, and absorb the happenings going on around me, I have a sense of calm.  Even if it is busy, as long as I can carve out that time for review, things feel in control.  I have a handle on what is going on.  I can enjoy, or not, and react.  When the to-do list is so long that I am blinded to everything other than getting the tasks completed, discontent sets in.  It might sound counter-intuitive, but the time I have spent online, when handled correctly, has helped me to ponder.

When I had an infant and was in a state of complete sleep deprivation and a daily schedule merry-go-round, Facebook kept me connected to the world I felt so far from.  I could share with my friends and family, keep up on some of their lives, all without the worry of the stains on my t-shirt and whether my brain could even form a complete sentence.

When I had a toddler and was completely perplexed on how to handle that new little person, I started reading websites geared towards parents.  I was interested to read the developmental milestone information, different tips and theories, any tools I could find to navigate this stage of parenting.  That's the time that started to notice the negatives of too much of that type of reading.  Comparing parenting styles can be a very judgmental, self-depreciating, negative thing if you aren't careful.  Parenting ideas are as different and varied as the kids being discussed, and it is easy to question of you are making the right choices.  Being a mom is hard enough, there is no need to add extra imaginary pressure to make it worse.  Once I figured out that I knew best how to parent my son, just as everyone else their own children, it was a much happier place to be.

Enter blogging.  This blog was started to chronicle the journey of doing things I enjoyed again, in addition to parenting.  I never realized how much I would like it.  Writing gives me that time I need to ponder.  The activities that I am blogging about all seem to do the same.  Exercise clears my head to make room for reflection.  Reading helps me think in new ways.  Gardening, cooking and photography are all deliberate, quiet hobbies and give me calm and time to reflect as I do them.  Along with writing my own blog, I've also started to spend more time reading other people's blogs. There are the incredibly beautiful, brilliant, hysterical  authors that I don't know but want to electronically hug.  There are authors that frustrate me, that I don't agree with.  Both help me shape who I am and how I think, and I appreciate them both.   Would I have been the same mom without the internet?  Probably.  Did it make it a little easier? A little more fun?  Yes.  And no matter how big or small, I will take every bit of help I can get.

Check, check, and check

I read an article today about the positive effects of artistic expression, specifically art, music, and writing.  It mentioned a few different studies that have been done, but didn't cite any directly, so I unfortunately can't share more details for anyone who is interested. I certainly don't have to be convinced that these effects are real; I have long been a proponent and benefactor of being involved in the arts.  But in this article, the piece about writing caught my attention.


"Writing seems to curtail symptoms associated with chronic disease, promote immune response, and lower stress, according to various studies.....Not only does it de-clutter thoughts, it can relieve tension, inspire problem solving, and offer insight into psychological and emotional burdens that stifle wellness."


If I step back and look at my blogging experience so far, I can see all of those things happening.  Well, I can't really speak to curtailing symptoms associated with chronic disease, talk to me in 20 years and I'll let you know how that is working out for me.  Also, I don't have any objective evidence to support a strengthened immune response, because I haven't really been doing this long enough for any point of comparison.  But for all that other stuff, there is no doubt.


My first blog rattled off a list of things I wanted to do.  At the time, that list seemed massive and unattainable.  But I have accomplished at least a start to quite a few of those things.  And really, really, enjoying them.  Writing about what I want to do and then writing about doing it is both a motivational tool and positive reinforcement to keep doing more.  I was really bothered by the lack of all those wants/needs being absent in my life, and writing has provided a path to change that.  


I have even noticed the negatively-overachieving part of my personality starting to creep back and poke questions into my happy little hobby nirvana.  Meals are being cooked, chores are being completed, errands are being run, parenting and fun is ongoing, exercise is slowly increasing, bills are being paid, to-do lists are being worked on, and I'm still finding time to enjoy hobbies I haven't paid attention to in a long time.  Yet I am still always wondering if there is something I am forgetting, some task, some project, something that is going to fall apart or explode. Then that little overachieving gnome is going to crawl out of the shadows and smugly say, while waggling a pointy finger at me, "See?!  SEE?!  I told you so.  You can't possibly have time for you, LOOK at what happened!"  I recognize now that sending that gnome back to the shadows every now and again is a good thing.  Until recently, he constantly sat on my shoulder whispering endless checklists as the soundtrack of my day.  So if that's not "insight into psychological and emotional burdens that stifle wellness," I don't know what is.

So I write.  Sometimes I'll have no choice but to abandon ship and go back to the check-lists and the stress.  Somebody just make sure to keep the gnome patrol on speed-dial.

I think I want to write a blog

I am inspired.  I am surrounded by people who balance endless tasks and roles in their life, and yet they find time to do amazing things for themselves.  Exercise.  Write.  Create.  Volunteer.
When I get time to myself, I tend to all of the sudden discover that there is a "me" that has gone dormant during my day-to-day.  A "me" that isn't a mom, isn't a wife, isn't an employee, a "me" that is just, well, me. A "me" that isn't distracted and lost within the many, many tasks I try to cram into a day. And my brain tries to run though as many thoughts as possible while it has my full attention.
I sat today and worked on putting pictures into albums, and my mind wandered to how blogging might be fun, but thinking I didn't have a lot to share, pondered what I could write about. I thought it might be interesting to do a little write-up about any books I read or movies I watch during the year, and then look back as a reminder of what I had done.  But I seriously questioned whether I would actually have time to read books, or watch movies, let alone time to write about them.  And then I thought about all the things I want/wish/need to do.
I want to be the best mom and wife that I can be.  I need to pray more.  Need to read more scripture.  Want to bake more.  Want to cook more good meals.  Want to spend more time in the garden.  Want to read.  Need to exercise to be healthy.  Want to paint some walls.  Want to hang more pictures.  Want to see more amazing nature.  Want to take better pictures.  Need to keep in more constant touch with friends and family so every conversation isn't catching up over the last several months since we last talked.  Wish I could do it all.  And by my rough calculations, I have about 60 hours a week that I am not working or sleeping to accomplish it.

So that's what I'm going to write about.  My quest to find the time to be and do all those things.  And if I accomplish any of them, a little more about each one. Or to write about how I've failed.   But with a list like that, if I can accomplish at least a few of them, I'll consider it a success.