Quitting my job ended up saving my marriage

Three months ago, it all began to change for us. I remember the breath I took as we pulled away from our apartment on June 23rd. I knew with that breath my life would never be the same. The three of us in the car, me forcing everyone to look at the screen of my iPhone to take a "first photo," my husband sighing because it was the first of thousands, our son in the back seat with his penguin hat on being, well, himself. There was no prediction as to what the next couple of months would bring for us. Before this day we knew so much had to change, and the months that lead up to it, so much had already changed. Most of it beyond out of our control. So I gave it all up. The full time job. The money. The title. The security. I left it all for one summer of the unknown to find something that we knew was missing.

As we drove over the bridge out of NYC, we cried. Our son cried because he was already bored and wanted the iPad. We cried because we knew that from that moment on we would start to heal, from so many things. While my initial decision months ago to leave my job started off for creative reasons, we both learned that wasn't just it. It was an opportunity to change for us all. Sometimes a rhythm works, sometimes it doesn't. Our love was always strong but our rhythm never seemed to sync for too long. We were giving up, falling into a new rhythm that worked only to keep our family together.

I get when people say they are marrying their best friend. It's your other half, the one who knows you better than anyone. And while my husband feels like my other half, he wasn't my best friend. We had only known each other five months before we got engaged. A whirlwind of a year later we were married. Ten months later, pregnant. Now we were partners in parenthood and it began to feel like that was it. Because of work, we barely saw each other. Because we're completely opposite people, we began to just do our own things. It worked. I got to experience what I love to do, as did he. We would share our worlds sometimes, but mostly to just support one another. And then we’d raise our beautiful son together.

Even raising a child together we sort of did separately. I was off weekends (sometimes) and he was off during the week. We have completely separate interests that we relate to our child with. While it’s great that our son can grow up passionately about the local baseball team, sharing that with dad, and takes weekend trips hiking parts of the Appalachian Trail with mum, our worlds involving our son are so different. We infrequently share any moments as a family of three. Even though it has worked for us, it began to make me sad that all my husband had of my weekend adventures was picture messages I’d sent him from our destinations.

Then came the affection. We have continuously told each other we love the other, but now it came as “I love you, but…” The moments we would get together, we began to argue more about what the other wasn’t doing at home or with our son, that all of our conversations quickly turned to aggression. We didn’t chose to fight. It just happened. When you get 45 minutes to speak a week about absolutely everything, the subject of why dirty dishes are still in the sink is going to rule that time. It was always me. I never washed the dishes. I was never home. And when I was, why would I want to wash dishes? I never realized how big of a deal this small thing was. I sort of wish I realized it a while ago.

So, after talking for a couple months about it, we decided I should quit my job. Not to stay at home, but more so I could just be home more often. It would also allow me to become creative again, a part of me I thought I was losing and so desperately needed to get back if I was going to be happy. We aren't rich. Ha! We barely make the middle class bracket. But for some reason, we thought it would be smart for me to leave the security of a job and steady pay check. It also gave our son a chance to stay home for the summer with me. He had just completed his first full year of school, and we thought giving him the summer off would be a good idea.

Things I never realized would change from me being home, did. I was happier from not having the stress of my full time job. I felt free. I took the summer to stay home with our son. Those ten weeks of sun, beach, traveling, exploring, were healing to both of our souls. Also, surprisingly, I got tan. Another thing I didn’t expect was the self-confidence I would get from being free and happy. I felt better about myself, opening up so much more for my mind and body. Gained self-confidence can lead to attraction. Now that we had more than 45 minutes a week to talk, we were able to enjoy time and each other more. From simply being able to watch a movie together, or putting the kid to bed early so we could “head to bed” early too (*wink wink*), those extra moments a week made a huge difference.

Dishes didn’t rule our conversations anymore. Even though it might still not be solved, we had time to do chores together, to help the other out. We also were available to give each other alone time. After being home all day with child, my husband would come home, give me chocolate and let me binge watch Netflix in the bedroom while he put our son to sleep. Early in mornings, he would sleep in while I made breakfast and entertained our early riser. These little moments helped each other relax, and completely helped me appreciate the partnership part of parenting even more.

Small simple changes made life-altering differences in both of our lives, apart and together. Our issues began to plateau. There wasn’t a feeling of steady descent anymore. In the past three months, I have felt more present in my marriage and life than I have before. While I’m not suggesting everyone should go out and quit their jobs, that life will be perfect and you marriage will flourish, I am saying it has begun to work for us. There are always complications with any big life change. Bills are eventually going to need to be paid, and hopefully this whole writing dream will also work out for me. But the foundation of family that I will always have to fall back on needs to also be strong. And now we're learning together what that all means. 

A letter to my best friend and soon-to-be mama

Dear best friend,

You are pregnant! The whole world is excited!! I don't think anyone on this earth deserves to be a parent more than you. Since we were little, you have always had the most compassionate personality. With everything you have been through to bring you to this day, you have conquered it all so gracefully. When it felt like everything was against you, you still smiled and pushed through. My love for you has 26 years of your unconditional friendship behind it and I cannot thank you enough for that. For all of these reasons and so many more, you are going to be an amazing mother. 

Now I know I started this blog writing about some of my aggravations with pregnancy and parenthood. But this letter to you is from one mumma's heart to another. 

First, through these last couple of months, resist the want to punch anyone in the face that tells you "Sleep now because you won't be after baby is born." You won't sleep normally through the last few months of pregnancy, or after he is born, or ever again. And after a couple years you'll get used to it and it will be ok. It'll actually be great. The reason you aren't sleeping is because this little guy you created needs you. He needs your help, your love and your comfort. He will eventually sleep through the night but you still won't. Remember that book our moms used to read to us as kids, I'll Love You Forever? Yeah well you will be that mom that even after he falls asleep, will crawl into his room, hold him just for a couple extra minutes. Why would you do that? Want to sneak into a sleeping child's room, risking the chance that you'll wake him? Because you're sleep deprived and can't think straight. And because you created this little human and it is the best feeling in the world and every chance you can get to give him love, you will.

Another thing, don't be disappointed when labor goes nothing like you had planned. I really wish someone told me this. I ridiculously, but whole heartedly, thought I could actually have control of all of that. And well it killed me that not even the smallest things worked out the way I had wanted. But now two and a half years later I can write this letter to you and say don't waste your time planning any of it. Whenever and however that beautiful newborn gets put into your arms, smile and let everything else go. 

A baby changes your marriage. It does. No one told me this either. You're no longer just husband and wife. You're mama and daddy. This may seem like a pretty obvious thing, but it's a bigger concept than, well, a new parent can wrap her head around. You and your family of two are no stranger to hard work as a couple. You have both defied so many odds that this could be something you both just laugh at. But when sleepless nights get the best of you, or your parenting skills of a little defiant toddler seem to be drastically different, or any part of this journey into parenthood makes you two scared,  it is important to remember you're not in it alone. And it's important to keep reminding yourself that too because sometimes we all forget. 

The heartache from anything you have ever felt in your life with be nothing compared to your child's first big booboo. Oh god. It still hurts. It will hurt you more than him. But you're both get through it. Him sooner than you. 

There is no such thing as a perfect mama. You're going to make mistakes, a lot of them. You're going to sometimes have no clue why your baby is crying and have no way to help him. This is ok, mostly because he probably doesn't know why he is crying either. And when he gets older, you're going to make mistakes too. There are days where you will have 100% energy to be a super mom and take on his crazy little imaginative world and fill him up with even more important emotional tools for life. You will take him places and teach him things. You will show him the many different worlds outside your home. And these days will be beautiful.. but exhausting. And there will be days where you don't have that energy. Where the tv will be on all day and all he has eaten is animal crackers. You've accomplished nothing except maybe showering, and he has watched the same episode of sesame street for past three hours. You need these days. Even though your guilt may overcome you about not being a "good" parent, remember, you need these days. Life is about balance. So is parenting. No day is perfect. We wake up not knowing what it will bring. The same is with being a parent. Part of being a great parent is finding the balance in between all of the days. 

One last thing. This has been my proudest one to conquer (mostly because all of the above that I have written, in one way or another I'm still dealing with).  Don't worry about your body, now or after. Because you're gorgeous. You always have been and always will be. Every boy wanted to be your boyfriend when we were younger and now the two best boys in the world ((well one to be coming into the world soon)) have you!! Even if you never get back to "pre-baby body" it doesn't matter. The one thing I have let go of is that goal of being back to pre-baby. And I couldn't feel better about myself. Dude, I made another human being, I can keep on these few extra 25 pounds. I've earned that! 

So here is my letter to you. Of crazy, emotional, mama things. I think this letter was more for myself than you, but I am so excited to watch you on this journey. The love you have in your heart is no match for what is about to come. Some days it will fill so much it hurts. And some days it will just hurt. These are all good things. I love you so much and cannot wait to be this very lucky baby boy. 

Finding my balance

Well it is 6:30 am on a Saturday, and because my mind is on auto alarm for 5:20 am for the week, I am awake now while everyone else is sleeping. So I am deciding to write.  But to be honest, I'd much rather be sleeping. 

So maybe I will start off this "Saturday Morning Insomnia" post with a look into the other person who is on this WTF-am-I-doing ride that we call parenthood.

Michael and I celebrated 4 crazy years of mah-widge (the Princess Bride was to say it is the only way to say it) in December. Four friggen years! It's crazy to me. This may seem like a small feat or even still the honeymoon stage to some but for me, well I have a problem committing to absolutely anything. So, high-five, Hubby! Looks like I am on the right track! But to be honest, he makes it really easy..

A few things about Michael (my husband, not my dad -see other post- now we're back to this weird Freudian thing again):

I am married to a rock'n'roll singing, dish washing, best dad in the world shirt owning, dinner cooking, house cleaning, laundry doing, converse wearing all-star. Seriously. I'm spoiled. 

In my completely right-side-of-the -brain-parenting technique, I cannot be a good mom without completely destroying our apartment. I'm not kidding. I am worse than Vedder. A mom who makes more of a mess than her two year old son. Our lovely dining table is permanently covering in paint from various projects. We are still finding confetti glitter around the apartment from new year eve sensory bottles. I have a half done chalk mural on V's wall in his bedroom ((see earlier comment about not being able to commit to anything)). 

When I come home from work during the week, dinner is always ready. Always. Sometimes when Michael comes home on the weekends, he's lucky if his son has even had one full meal the whole day, nevermind a full dinner being cooked. Not that he always keeps his cool about all the mess, but who would? I even want to punch me in the face sometimes for half the crap I do. However, he does know he married an ADHD self-proclaimed artist who cannot commit to change long enough to make it stick. But I guess that's what made him fall in love with me, right? My beautiful free spirit? The way I can just go with the flow? Or my amazingly creative brain? 

No, it was none of that. We met on a blind date. The reasons he fell in love with me was alcohol and the fact that I have a big butt and nothing else. 

So here's a big THANK YOU! to the man who absolutely and willingly deals with my crazy antics and scattered brain. Thank you for teaching Vedder how to do things like hang up his jacket while I teach him about how we can open the window and take all the snow off of the sill to play with it on the kitchen floor. Thank you for putting us both to bed at night. Thank you for creating such balance in my life. And thank you so much for truly loving me through all of this craziness that you have fully committed to. 

You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. 

The weekend we just lived.

I like to think I'm a good mom. I make time each night after work to sit and play, read or even watch TV with my son. I teach preschool during the day and then at night bring home exciting surprises like ABC flash cards to play with or play dough for of course fine motor. (Neither of these things does he truly care about but someday my future Harvard Grad will thank me.) On weekends I get no housework done because I would rather take Vedder all over the city discovering new things. We go to music class, the park, museums. I snap photos of our every adventure and post our moments on instagram and Facebook. Then the "likes" and comments come rolling in and I smile that people think these moments are as beautiful as I do. This past weekend was different. My last post was of a very happy toddler hamming it up in his car seat ready for his first official getaway with just mumma and daddy. Last post at 8 pm Friday night, goodbye new york and your busy streets. hello vermont and your amazingness, read the caption.

Now for some of you you're probably thinking "And? So you went a weekend without posting on Facebook? So what?" Others know how hard that task actually is. (I do have to admit, I did sneak in one instagram post on our car ride home Monday afternoon) I'm not an addict. I could probably go a week without posting no problem. But for my husband who believes I truly have an addiction, I made a promise not to post or even check Facebook for an entire weekend. I never thought it would actually have a serious impact. But it did.

Instead of instantly sharing funny, beautiful, or aggravating moments with my family online, I just lived them. I looked for no comments or likes or any sort of gratification via social networking. I just lived the moments, still snapping pictures, but it ending with that. Then I continued living.

In one moment, I tried to capture the perfect family photo and got aggravated because I couldn't stand the way my husband was unenthusiastically smiling and the way my face looked because the wind was blowing my hair everywhere. Vedder continued to just sit there smiling his ass off and of course looked perfect in every picture. This session ended with me and Michael screaming at each other and Vedder teaching himself how to hit the button and run to the couch before the timer finished and the camera flashed. This lightened the mood and we lived on.

Maybe it was the wine tasting earlier in the day mixed with the beers we were drinking, but in another moment I forgot about me and was just Mumma. Sitting at a table at Long Trail Brewery while having dinner, I bent towards Vedder, and he ran his car from my shoulder over my head back and forth creating a tangled mess. He laughed hysterically as I made obnoxiously exaggerated squeaks of "What are you doing to mumma? There's a car on my head!" I remember reading a mom's blog about getting in the picture. No matter that she hadn't lost the baby weight or didn't have makeup on or her hair done, she got in the picture with her son. This is exactly what I thought of as two matchbox cars rolled over my head, back and forth. When I would usually sit back and quickly fix my hair and find something else to entertain Vedder, I instead just sat there, with cars in my hair. Vedder isn't going to remember what my hair looked like, and to be honest, probably won't even remember the moment at all. But in the moment he laughed "haha mumma! Cars!" repeatedly and I will never forget it.

Our last moment of our family vacation was definitely less than perfect. As we settled back in at home, unpacking and getting ready for the work week, Vedder got ready for bed. Michael asks me where Ted (Vedder's bear that goes absolutely EVERYWHERE) is. As we begin to search, we both get a bad feeling. He was left in the rental car. I frantically called Hertz while Michael continues to search the house. No one was answering. There was a few inches if snow already on the ground and the wind was whipping more snow around. Not to mention it was freezing out. No hope. What if he fell out in the street while we unpacked the car? We went out to search. He had to be in the car. NO ONE IS FUCKING ANSWERING!! We were freaking out. Vedder was just sitting watching Backyardigans, having no clue the chaos and stress going on around him. Michael put his shoes and jacket on and walked 28 blocks in the snow to the rental car company. I put Vedder to bed trying to distract him with a bottle, a few bunched up blankets and other stuffed animals in hopes that he would be to distracted to notice Ted was gone. Five minutes later "Is Ted? Ted? Is Ted?" I called my parents and cried. After an hour or so waiting at Hertz, Michael called. "Got him!" He was found outside the old rental under inches of snow. I was so happy I cried again.

Three days of traveling, eating, playing in the snow, shopping, cooking, taking pictures, laughing, loving, loosing Ted and then finding him. Three days of living together as a family of three and nothing else. In all its craziness it was perfect.

And now as I share these moments on my blog, Facebook and twitter, you're probably thinking? Well what's the point, you just contradicted yourself by writing this entire post. The point of my weekend wasn't giving up ever sharing photos and stories. It was just giving up instantly sharing them. This weekend allowed me to live the moments, appreciate them and reflect on them. And then share with the world :)

Me became we, then became he.

While I did dedicate this blog to writing about the good and the bad that comes with parenthood, I don't think I realized just how hard it would be. To write I mean. I have kind of settled with the reality of how hard actual parenthood is. I have many saved drafts of posts that I just cannot seem to finalize. And the one below I think has taken the most time, and is still a difficult learning challenge we are living with daily as parents now.

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Me became we, then became he. 

The past six months have been, for lack of a better metaphor, a rollercoaster. From the highs of seeing our infant grow into this babbling amazing personality-filled baby, to the lows of post-partum and hormonal change, it has all been an experience. However, no one told us that we would lose ..us.

Since the day Vedder was born my heart has never felt so full!! At the same time, I have never felt such heartache. Michael and I found that we were no longer husband and wife. We were Mama and Daddy. Our conversations about life were only about Vedder. Even though they were great conversations about how we cannot imagine life without him, they were only about him. Then there were the fights. I am a Leo. I am stubborn and loud and always right. I think fighting in a relationship is just as important as loving. Both very passionate emotions and with enough balance are essential to a passionate relationship. However, after a baby the fighting definitely out weighs the loving. I resented my husband for being able to leave every morning to go to work while I was on maternity leave. He got an hour to himself on the way to work and an hour on the way home to listen to his ipod, read the newspaper, or just be alone. I was never so happy to hear his keys in the door so I could take ten minutes to shower. The sleepless nights, the heartache of not being able to breastfeed, and the pain of a healing c-section were all so hard to deal with. Then I would look at this absolutely beautiful life we made and feel so guilty for all the bad feelings. Then again I would look at Michael and blame him, regardless if he deserved it, for me feeling so emotionally messed up!!

Then one afternoon while the baby cried and changing, feeding, and rocking didn't work, and Michael got aggravated and I yelled, we finally realized it. "Now I know why people get divorced," Michael said. Now reading this you may be thinking Oh no!! That's so sad. However, that isn't what I thought at all. I thought, "yes, you're right!" Don't jump to any conclusions. We are NOT getting divorced. Not even close!! If anything this revelation we had actual cleared things up and put us on the path back to husband and wife. It was then that we realized we had lost our way and needed to make changes as parents and spouses to avoid the "D" word.

Now as Vedder nears seven months, we are not completely back to normal. Nor do we think we ever will be. We have changed as individuals and as a couple since our little chunk came into our lives last summer. We have accepted that change and are now embracing it. Getting back to the new us is an everyday effort. The challenge of starting a family, raising a child, and keeping a marriage is huge but totally worth it. Moments like right now. Me curled up on the couch typing my blog with Michael and Vedder playing on the floor in front of me. All of us are smiling and life feels full.

Me plus He and Baby makes Three.