intro/extro

I've always known I'm an introvert. I enjoy the quiet. I withdraw into myself sometimes, not unhappily. I didn't have a good definition of introvert/extrovert, though, until talking with Alex's cousin Claire this summer. She said that extroverts gain energy by being around people, and introverts...well, just don't.

This is me to a tee. (A T? A tea?)

Sometimes social engagements are really daunting to me. It's taken me a long time to even get comfortable around my best of friends. (Just ask Aspen. And Alex and I took about a thousand years to come along.) I'm bad at returning calls and answering emails and facebook messages. I hate it, and I know about it, but I'm still just bad at it. This doesn't mean I don't think about all these people I'm not seeing, I am, I swear I am. I'm thinking about every one of you. There's just this mental block against...social interaction. I know. I'm really really really weird. (See also: socially awkward penguin meme)

And none of this is to say that I don't like hanging out with people. I do! I really do! It's just...harder for me. I think. Maybe. I mean, I don't know how easy it is for other people, but I imagine it to be harder for me.

I saw this graphic on Cup of Jo, and it made me smile.

(Comic by Pleated Jeans)

This weekend was miles of fun. It was just Lena and I, and we went to two birthday parties, but boy, was it exhausting. I'm still recovering from it. I haven't even been able to relax and watch a movie, because I've been so exhausted that as soon as Lena falls asleep I fall asleep. 

Next weekend has the makings of the same: two birthday parties, two potential holiday parties. I love it, and I'm looking forward to all of them, but I have to work at it. It's a fine line, and I'm not sure I'm explaining it quite right, because it's not bad work, it's just, work, but even then work isn't the right word agghghhhhhhh. 

Ok. Back to work.

Out of our league

Today Alex and I decided we needed a hobby that included cardiovascular activity.

So we went out this morning...and bought inline hockey skates.

I got a Mario Lemieux stick, which is going to make me play like Mario Lemieux, natch. (Alex is going to be Sidney Crosby.) Both of us realized that the image in our heads of how good of skaters we are does not match reality. This should be fun. (I'm currently watching youtube videos on how to stop.) This should be interesting. And fun.

Later, Lena attended a princess party.

She decorated a crown.

Then she had her picture taken with Belle. 

Oh, and I also experienced the question "Oh, so you work?" for the first time. 

Yep, out of our leagues. 

Runner

without even noticing

“I would like to beg, dear sir, as well as I can to have patience with everything  unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language. Don’t look for the answers which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing, live your way into the answer.” 


– Rainer Maria Rilke


















Sometimes I find myself very lost, and I think to myself that I must be the only person in the world that has ever felt this way before, and then I realize how silly and self-centered that is, to think that I am the only person who has ever felt this way. 

Thankful

Today I am thankful for:

Lena thinking that heffalumps are huffalumps.
And Alex thinking huffalumps are hufflepuffs.

It's a great place to be.

To the Parents of:

Credit

Being a parent has got to be one of the funniest, mind-boggling roles to play. It defines you--if someone is 'a parent' you know what that means--they have a child, and they take care of a child. When I became a parent I struggled so hard with this. I wasn't sure whether if wholly defined me, and taking care of Lena, especially at the baby stage consumed so much of my time and energy, that it was hard to remember that I was still me. And it took me a until a year after Lena was born to finally remember that I had an identity outside of parenting.

It's easy to put "a mom" at the top of the list of things that define me, and it's harder to recall life before this. I wrote poetry. I traveled. I worked in a restaurant, and I just about lived at Open Eye Cafe. I did a lot of things that I'm really proud of, but I sort of forgot about them when Lena came along.

I haven't talked to a lot of parents about this phenomenon, so sometimes I still wonder whether it is just me, or whether it doesn't apply to people who are starting families a little older than I am, who are actively choosing this identity change. When I think this, I then immediately think, I can't be the only one. I can't at all. But that's the thing--I as a parent, and a young single parent to start out with, I got stuck in the trap that everyone else has their shit together but me. And the thing I'm learning now, every day, is that gloriously, this isn't true.

I'm learning a lot by talking to other daycare parents. I'm branching out, I'm getting better at small talk, (Does anyone else do this thing where they're talking to a person and then all of the sudden realize that they have not asked the other person a single thing about themselves? That's me completely.) and I'm discovering that everyone has their own issues.

For instance, I used to think that I'm such a "bad parent" because on Sundays my parents let me sleep in and they take Lena. What other parents do this! I'm a horrible person! But bit by bit I'm learning that, this is ok. I'm ok. One of Lena's friend's mom's told me that her and her husband drop their kids off at their parents house for one night a weekend, so they get a whole night and morning off. How luxurious! And hey, we as parents are allowed this luxury.

There are so many types of families, so many different circumstances. There's no one right way to be a parent, and whatever works for you as a parent, allowing you to give your kid enough love and allowing yourself the time to grow as a person, whatever allows for that is the magic way to parent.

I can't believe it's taken me this long to realize this, to become more confident in the parent and the person that I am. (And then I start beating myself up again for being insecure--such a great cycle of second guessing oneself!) But I'm starting to get it, I think I'm finally starting to get it.

Good Weekend

Easy weekend, Lena was fully recovered from being sick last week, I got a lot of writing in (I'm doing Nanowrimo this year), fun time with the entire family at the NC Museum of Art, for brunch and the Rembrandt exhibit.

If only, if only, the weekends were longer.