Well, it's almost here, Emma's 4th birthday, not commonly referred to as my 4 year anniversary of motherhood.  However, perhaps it should be.  My friend just had her first baby and started her first mommy blog.  It struck me how four years of motherhood has impacted me and how I've changed along the way in discovering who I am and how I want to parent my kids.  Of course it's important to celebrate our kids on their birthdays, but I never really realized how it's also a chance for my own reflection on my life as a mom.  Hmm, maybe I should be giving my mom a gift on my next birthday instead of the other way around? 

My blog and my interaction with my friends's blogs represent my feelings and an evolution throughout my parenting experience.  When I first started blogging, I spent a lot of time dealing with the details of Emma's routine and baby milestones because that was all new to me.  Of course, with it comes discussions about the places where battle lines of newborn parenting are drawn concerning crying it out, nursing on demand, co-sleeping, nap schedules, bedtimes, organic foods, homemade baby food, juice or no juice.  Looking back, it's all a bit much the way it rules your life and the way the discussions can be so passionate.  I think with my second child either I've given up on half of it or I've just loosened up.  My kids are as different as night and day.  Emma was a champion sleeper from the get go and I still felt tired and sleepless a lot of the time.  She got sick all the time.  She had diaper rashes all the time.  She did not sleep well when we traveled and we had to travel a lot.  Jesse is not a champion sleeper, but he's never sick, he's never had a diaper rash, and he's slightly better about travel and sleep.  I am pretty much convinced at this point that there is no magic formula for a perfect kid or a perfect newborn and that even if there were, subsequent kids would make the formula nearly impossible to carry out.  I'm also convinced after seeing two opposite kids come out of me that the personality you've been dealt is one of the biggest determiners of how your kid will act as a newborn.  Sure, you can make things harder or easier on yourself, but it does not mean a particular schedule will correct all the issues. 

Maybe I'm being overly intuitive, relying on my intuition to parent and to handle my newborn.  I probably am since I am not very sensate in how I make decisions.  It may be obvious to you that I take this same approach to the mothering side as I do to the children side.  I think each mom is different, and while we are all responsible for being good parents, that looks different for different people.  I think it still bothers me when SAHM is revered as the best possibility, like it's something we are all trying to get to and would if we could.  (I'm saying this in a time in my life when I am the closer to being a SAHM than ever.  I am only out of the house and away from my 8 month old 7 hours a week.  He only gets a bottle three times a week and that for only 10 weeks so far of his life.  He's only had like 30 bottles in almost 240 days, in which he ate more than 1920 times).  Equally, I should note that it is bothersome to hear people talk about having a "career for myself," or somehow elevating women who have careers outside the home as more intelligent or more educated or more accomplished.  I want to be satisfied with my job, but I don't work to satisfy myself.  Anything I do, whether SAHM or working outside the home or the combination of both that my husband and I have long juggled, I want to do it because I feel a sense of God's calling, God's blessing, and of God writing the story of my life and our family's life together.

It's part of who Jeff and I are, individually, and as a couple, but I believe we make decisions based off values and that we are trying to parent out of a set of values rather than prescribed or previously modeled forms of parenthood (not that previous models would be bad at all, it's just that Jeff and I by personality are guided by values questions).  I've been wanting to put together a list of our values, but I have not had time to think about it much.  Nonetheless, I'm going to start a post that deals with those things.  

Every year seems to bring so much change and surprise and new things.  It's nothing I could have anticipated if I had tried to predict my future.  Even after meeting and marrying Jeff, I pretty much assumed that we would more or less stay in the Ann Arbor area our whole lives.  I mean, if one of us wanted to go back to school, we had a huge university in our backyard.  Clearly, that is not how things turned out. 

My life is so incredibly different from my parents' young adult lives.  They married into families that were similar and both from Metro Detroit.  They settled in Metro Detroit.  My dad has worked for the same company since I was just learning to talk.  They have owned four houses in 32 years all within about 17 miles (starting in Detroit and moving due west three times).  My brother even went to the Catholic high school my dad graduated from.  My sister went to the same college as my dad.  That's the kind of family I am from.

So here I am in California asking myself questions like, "I wonder who we will invite to Jesse's first birthday party," and "When is the next time I will be in the same state as ____________?"  It's not a primarily unhappy feeling, but it's just strange to a girl who pretty much stayed put for the first 27 years of her life. 

This is what I reflected on during the first day of 2010, these strange, unfamiliar realities that I am coming to know as my own.

You were not my favorite year.  You brought us a bouncing baby boy, and we are grateful.  However, you also brought us lots of headaches, lots of waiting, umpteen transitions.  2009 was marked with difficulty for lots of our friends.  We are glad to say goodbye.  Who cares that I turned 29 in 2009?  I'd rather be 30 than repeat this year.