This and That. Plus a Rant About Certain Ideas of Motherhood.

I am now a woman who has her hair done did every six or so weeks.  If you had asked me even five years ago if I thought I would be like this I would have adamantly refused.  However, the lovely gray hairs I have received from my children and genetics, plus the fact that my hair needs a little more TLC now that I am older, have led me to become the hair girl I am today.  

And I like it.  I like it a lot.

I figure this is why I keep my editing gig - so I can pay for things like getting my hair professionally done.  I feel better about myself and my hair appreciates it.

So anywho, where was I?  Oh yes - today I decided I wanted lighter hair for the summer, so I got highlights.  I love them!  I'm not so in love with how big my hair dresser likes to make my hair, but that's okay, there are worse things.  (I've learned to just tell her I want my hair styled strait, but forgot to request that until she had already curled half of it.)

It was difficult to get a picture of how big my hair was.  (I felt like I had wings on the side of  my head.)  Trust me - it was large.  Texas large.

So I pulled it half back and feel much more like my normal, Maren self.

My kids just came home from school and nary a word has been said about the hair.  This is good, because I wasn't going for such a change that my kids would actually notice. (They don't notice anything unless it beats them on the head.)

What else?  Oh yeah, Lance is in Boston until late Sunday night, which means I will have all four kiddos to myself at church on Sunday.  As there is generally no middle ground with my children, this will either go extremely well or extremely badly.  Let's all pray for the good outcome, shall we?

I know this is ridiculous seeing as how the baby of our family will be three (!!!) next week, but I bought a new stroller the other day. I can't stand using the double stroller because then Cole DEMANDS to be on it and it's hard to push 70+ pounds of child around, no matter how great the stroller is.  And our cruddy old cheapo umbrella stroller gave up the ghost, so I splurged on a decent light weight stroller.

Cole was quite upset to learn that this stroller was only for Tess, at least until he figured out that she liked to be pushed around the house in it.

Hey, I figure we'll use it plenty when we go to DisneyWorld next year.  

Okay, so the other night I was at Mom's group and we were discussing an article about not losing yourself to motherhood and making sure to not compare yourself to other moms and yada yada yada.  I felt like we had covered all of this before and was not that impressed with the article. (Which I blame Kanien for.) ((Not really, but kinda.))  

Anyways, there was a question in the article that really bugged me: Do you feel like you've lost parts of who you are since becoming a mother? 

Lost parts of who I am?!

Okay, I kinda get where they were going with this, but the way the article implied that all women have to give up their hobbies and ambitions and desires when they become mothers? Well that just rubbed me the wrong way.

In becoming a mother I have found who I truly am: a daughter and woman of God.  I now truly know what it means to be a wife, a daughter, a sister. I am an organizer, a planner, a negotiator, a giver of kisses and a soother of wounds.  I'm a worrier, a patience-loser, an imperfect person striving for perfection.  And being a mother is helping with that.

Are there things that I used to do before I had children that I don't do now?  Good heavens, yes!  But do I miss those things?  No.  Because the hobbies/interests/whatever that were truly important to me stuck around.  In having children I matured and let go of those things that did not matter or that did not help me to become a better person.

One of my favorite quotes about motherhood fits quite nicely here:

"In raising my children I have lost my mind but found my soul." - Lisa T. Shepherd

Has motherhood changed me?  YES.  In so many good, profound ways.

This leads me to the second part of my rant.  It seems like lately I've encountered a lot of discussions about women "Having it all."  "All" in this case being a mother and having a full-time career.

Some camps answer with a resounding and optimistic "yes" and others with a realistic "no".

But me?  Well, I take offense with the question because even though I don't work outside of the home, I truly do feel like I have it all.  I am extremely blessed.  I am happy.  I have the life that I set a goal to have.  My life is not perfect - far from it.  But this is the life I chose through the choices I deliberately made. So please don't belittle me by asking if I want to have it "all", because I already have it.

Whew.  That felt good to get off of my chest.  Maybe some time we'll discuss what I think about when people ask me if I'm going to get a "real job" once all my kids start school.  Or the response I had in my head when someone was trying to convince me to agree to being hired to watch their kids because I was already "just" at home all day anyway. (Growl.)

But for now it's time to get off this cute little soapbox and get back to the work of mothering.  The work I chose, and, although I don't always enjoy every aspect of it, the work I love.