It's an evolution of self in so many ways.
One of the things I've been thinking about a lot is patience. Patience is something I've never had a lot of. When I think of something I want or want to do, I research and buy it or I go out and do it. RIGHT AWAY. There is no waiting.
I once decided to disrupt my lovely, stable life in a state I had never left, where I had a career and plenty of money to run off to grad school in another state, thus rendering me fairly penniless (or at least $60k in debt from student loans for my MPH program). The whole decision period took about 3 days, and that was only because I was deciding between going to Michigan or New Orleans.
I certainly don't regret that decision because it landed me where I am today: with a loving husband and amazing son, with skills and expertise I wanted to gain, in a whole different state that's warm and has flowers blooming all the time.
But, motherhood, unfortunately, doesn't really allow for those sorts of abrupt transitions. Motherhood requires a great deal of patience. Patience that needs to grow and change as your children do.
My first lessons in patience were when Linus was about 6 or 8 weeks old and had a series of nights where he was in tears for hours because of bad gas pain. Before that, we could always figure out what was bothering him -- he was hungry, tired, or his diaper was wet. But, when the week or two of gas pains came, we had no idea what they were. So we did what we knew how to do best: love him. I'd walk him around the house and sing to him and rock him in my arms. Eventually, the screams would wear on me and I'd pass him to Jon who would do the same. We'd pass him back and forth between us until, eventually, he'd finally get some sort of huge burp up that usually involved a bunch of spit up, oftentimes coming out his nose because there was just so darn much of it. Almost immediately thereafter, he'd stop crying and things would be fine.
That was easy -- he was a poor helpless baby in pain. While a screaming baby isn't easy to have right next to your ears for hours on end, it's still not so bad because you understand that this dependent child can't do anything to ease his pain and it's completely up to you to take care of him.
As the months passed, though, the need for patience has grown. More recently, Linus has been going through the whole object permanence phase. For those of you who may not know, around 9 months of age, babies figure out that you exist even when you're not directly in front of them. Before that, if things left their sight, it was basically as if those objects didn't exist. But, at 9 months or so, they figure out that when you take something away, it's still available somewhere in the world and they just have to find it. This is the time of their lives when they become SUPER clingy.
I had a hard enough time adjusting to having a puppy who always followed me around. But, the baby thing has been a little harder. There are times during my day when I just need to get something done, and that usually involves, say, walking to the laundry room, or grabbing the vacuum from the garage, or taking the garbage outside. The hardest thing seems to be making dinner, though, because that often comes at the point of the day when Linus is sleepy. And when he's sleepy, he's extra needy. So, cooking dinner often means that I have a baby in my arms while trying not to splatter hot oil on either of us while stirring something on the stove. Or the baby is grabbing my leg while I'm trying to move around the kitchen to chop vegetables and wash dishes. It gets quite complicated and can result in overdone food.
So, with this phase of his life, I've really been thinking about my need to stretch my patience. There are times during my day when the dog is doing something obnoxious and the baby is crying and I need to get 8 things done and we're going to be late to something and I'm at the end of my rope. Well, of course, stressing out or yelling or anything like that doesn't improve the situation. It just makes the dog more annoying and the baby cry harder. So, I've really noticed times when I feel the stress level rise and I've had to really step back and take a number of deep breaths to be able to functionally deal with everyone's demands.
Earlier, I mentioned transitions and how motherhood is no longer a time for abrupt transitions. That also comes into play now. Linus is a sensitive kid in a lot of ways. He reminds me of myself in a lot of ways -- he's willing to explore new situations and try new things, but he has to do it on his own terms. And right now I am his safety net. So, he needs gentle transitions as he's going about his day. This means that it takes him 15 minutes to warm up to his jovial-self and get comfortable with the world when he wakes up from a nap. And it may take him a great deal of time to smile at, much less be held by, new people (including people he doesn't see daily).
I am slowly learning to expand my levels of patience to accommodate Linus and make him as comfortable and secure as I can. And this is something that we will be constantly working on. As he grows up, he may get himself into situations that make it tough for me to understand why he would have undertaken them. For instance, I recall a time when my then high-school-aged cousin and her friends got their car stuck in a ditch in the middle of the night on a cold, wet December night right before her family was leaving for Jamaica early the next morning. they did all they could to try to resolve the situation before calling her dad at 3am, but her dad had to go help them out and didn't get much sleep. All-in-all, things turned out fine for everyone and it was something to laugh about later. Oh, teenagers.
But, I just don't know what kind of things Linus will get into. He's a boy and he's already proving to be a bit of a trouble-maker. He's climbing stairs every chance he gets, and he makes a break for the outdoors every time the door opens. And, while he's very clingy and dependent right now, he won't always be. The best we can do is love hm and teach him all we know. But, getting a verbal lesson is very different from experiencing it yourself. You always learn best when you make your own mistakes.
That being said, I hope Linus makes a lot of mistakes. I hope he fails at things during his life. I hope he lives dangerously enough to push the boundaries of his comfort zone. Because he will learn an infinite number of important lessons from doing so. And, while he's making his mistakes, I may have to take a few deep breaths sometimes, or leave the room, or whatnot, but I hope to give him the patience, love, and support he needs to develop into a smart young man who gains worldly insight through living life.
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