Last weekend Carl took the girls to the History Center and they pretended to have a dairy-free ice cream stand. I love how Amy adapts her pretend food to be Sarah-friendly.
For their recent swim lesson the girls practiced saving each other by throwing a floating thingie into the water while holding the other end of a tether. They also wore their clothes in the water, and Amy even wore her shoes!
Yesterday Amy had her birthday party at an art studio. I was so glad we were paying other people to run the whole thing. The noise and organized chaos was almost too much for me, and I had to step out of the room often just so I wouldn’t scream at everyone. I made cupcakes for the party and each one was decorated to look like a cat’s face. Let me tell you, that is some serious muscle work!
7 years ago today Amy made her debut into this world, arriving on my birthday. She has been the best present ever. Birthdays can have a way of being simultaneously wonderful and stressful, at least in my experience thus far. It is easy to fall into wanting other people to make the day special and that that is somehow a way of gauging love. I know that isn’t true and some of my best birthdays have been the ones where I really just figured out what I wanted to do and I did it, without needing anything from anyone else. This year is feeling more challenging. I don’t even know if it is needing or wanting something from others. Maybe it is just that I haven’t figured out how to make it feel special for myself. Maybe it is feeling like I should make it special. I have scheduled the things I usually do to help it feel special and I’m excited about those things. Yet I still have a bit of melancholy hanging around lately. I don’t know if it is feeling eclipsed by Amy’s birthday celebration, even though she is the best present ever in the entire world, because kid’s birthdays just are more exciting than those of grown ups. I don’t know if it is turning 41 and thus feeling like I’m rounding a bend in life. I don’t know if it is because of how I’ve been struggling lately with self-judgement and body image so maybe my feelings have nothing to do with birthdays. I don’t know if it is that it is still winter!! I don’t know. I do know I’m going to attempt to just have a day and not need to make it anything extra. As soon as I say that then the things that are planned do begin to feel a bit more special. And really what is a birthday beyond changing a number and a way for people to show love to each other? One of the sweetest moments this morning was waking up next to Amy and giving each other snuggles and kisses as we wished one another happy birthday. Really, one cannot improve upon that. So today will be a day. I will carry the sweet moments in my heart. I will not need it to be the bestest day ever. I will continue to work towards more gentleness with how I see myself, my eating, my exercising, my either doing ALL of the Things that need to be done, or my doing NONE of the things that need to be done because I don’t want to put down my novel, my sometimes getting tense and mad at the girls. I will remember that I am also playful and kind and that I do at least a mediocre job of mothering. Whenever my mom tries to help me feel good about my parenting she runs into my strong “yes, but…” muscles so she has learned that the thing I will accept is to be deemed mediocre. That at least gets me to stop feeling that I am terrible and we have a good laugh together.
On a different note, I have been absolutely loving teaching. I’m teaching a neuromuscular therapy course for the first time and while I can be worried that I’m not doing a good enough job, I do think my students are learning and I truly love being with them each week. I am certainly learning things and improving. This week I also taught my first ever continuing education class on the Alexander Technique. It went really well and all of my students enjoyed it and found it helpful.
May you all have a day.
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