Motherhood
I’m considering taking a brief break from this blog until the musical I’m in is over, because it’s been a lot to juggle school, work, the musical, and being a mom. It occurred to me I could just post what I worked on for school this week, though. I got to work on a drawing from River’s book finally, (I made it be a part of a school assignment), and while I’m not totally happy with it yet, it felt good to do some art again. A critique partner I met with a couple of times after the children’s writing conference suggested that I rework my illustrations to make them look even more like a kid made them, since the book is written from River’s perspective. I picture something with actual crayons, and more mixed media elements too. I think that’s a great idea, but now I’ve done the sketches for the entire book, so I’m stuck with the dilemma of starting over with that new style in mind, or just continuing to work on the ones I have, like the one above. It sounds exhausting to start over, so I’m not sure what I will do.
Along with this drawing that I submitted for school, I wrote two little snippets about being a mom. Here they are:
Things I have googled this week: How to get your toddler to ACTUALLY PEE on the toilet? And, Why is my 2.5 year old randomly hitting other kids? Reddit tells me it’s all normal (thank god for reddit), but it still takes a momentous amount of internal deep breathing to get through the long moments of waiting for her to stop playing with the toilet paper and pulling it out of the cat litter (again), and running to stop the situation at the children’s museum before another kid is crying and another mom is looking at me like my child is the spawn of satan. But it’s all normal, right?
And these are only the moments in-between all of the sweet ones. Her demand for more hugs, more books, more bugs. Her deep obsession with skeletons, “Big guys” as she calls them, first inspired by the halloween decorations towering over her at Home Depot. The twinkle in her mischievous little eyes, the cackle as she says something she thinks is hilarious, as she climbs my shoulders to try to be taller, taller, to reach the sun.
Why is it so hard to brush teeth? A question most mom’s must have pondered at least once or twice. First, I told elaborate stories to get her to sit still. Then, when that didn’t work anymore, I pretended to be a horse, bouncing her on my knee while I, (not so expertly) attempted to scrub her molars. Tonight, first we tried sitting her on my shoulders (she likes to be tall), while her dad did the scrubbing, except she body slammed him and he gave up so I was left to dangle her upside down with one hand while once again awkwardly finagling the toothbrush into her mouth. All this for approximately ten seconds of toothbrush bristles on teeth.
Recently I pondered why, despite working less than I have since the first time I was in graduate school, I still don’t have any time to do graduate school. I realized that it’s because at least 50% of my time is still spent following a tiny gremlin around our yard as she searches for beetles. So as I sit and remember all the homework that I am not doing while she swings and demands songs from me, (I cannot begin to say how many reiterations of the wheels on the bus I have invented for her tiny demanding lordship), I try to remind myself to soak in the slow moments despite the undone dishes in the sink, the assignments that I will turn in half finished.
I remind myself as I rock her before bed for the 100th time singing to the tune of wheels on the bus “Mama siiings ew, ew ew, because River tooted, because River tooted…” While her body convulses into giggles in my arms, that in ten years I will miss the fingers wrapped around my neck, the demand for more songs, more time with mama. And it won’t matter that I didn’t finish my drawing in time.
The only thing that matters; this moment in time with her.
