Clutter...

I have to admit, I'm a little bit all over the place lately. It's re-contracting season at JET, and we decided to stay one more (and final) year. I'm happy about this because I love my job, but our upcoming vacation in NYC, the little hints coming from random family members, and my urge to settle down for good so that I could be at home with my daughter, all make my head a place of chaotic contemplation of various possibilities of the future.

Truthfully, if there would be any way to stay in Japan and make the same amount of money, but with James working and me staying home, I probably would jump at the chance. But that would make learning Japanese that much harder, and I really want to learn Japanese well enough to communicate with minimum mistakes.

Would I miss my job? Sure, but I probably would get over it. Though I do wonder if I could be as productive in a home setting as I am at work. I have on several occasions stayed waaay too late at my job because I wanted a job finished, but had not planned ahead properly enough.The job environment urges me to be productive (and stay late), which is something I won't have at a home setting.

I guess then it's a good thing that we're planning on moving to Hungary after Japan, where I hope to learn how to actually run a household from my aunts and cousins, and of course, my dad. I think that's probably what worries me the most, not being able to run a clean and sufficient house, with good home-cooked meals daily. I have this image in my head of how I'd like to be once I become a stay at home mom, and I'm a bit scared that I'm not going to be good enough or won't have talent for it. Because that's what I think homemaking is: self-motivation and a fair amount of talent. Neither of which I have much of.
Cleaning I can do and do it fairly well, though maybe a bit slowly (darn perfectionism), but I suck at decluttering and organizing, and so far haven't been great at planning meals either. By planning meals I mean meals that flow into one-another somewhat over days, so that we wouldn't have to buy little bit of every ingredient daily, making cooking a bit more costly than I'd like. Of course, Japan is the country of buying only a little daily, because it's fresh and there's no space to hold 5kg of anything in such a tiny house, except maybe rice.

On the other hand, the memory that popped into my head just now reassures me. When I was on maternity leave, around week 6 or 7, I started doing something that I haven't done in a long time: wash dishes. After getting through the first few weeks of taking care of a baby, settling into a routine, I found myself... well, I guess bored with a pinch of nesting. So instead of waiting for James to do the dishes when he wants to, one morning I just started to do them myself, because I had nothing better to do and wanted to do something nice for my husband, who has until then gone above and beyond to make sure Rini and I were comfortable. And the funny thing is, I didn't mind doing it. Washing dishes has always been one of those chores that I rather avoid given the chance, but to my surprise it was actually soothing.
So my point is, who knows what happens once I'm not working for long enough? Right now I feel like a couch potato because I'm tired from the rest of my week. But if there's no other work....

And now I feel like even more of a lazy bum... Thinking about all the other parents who work all week and still manage to keep a clean and organized house, with good meals to boost. Or is that just a myth?
Either way, if I could be anywhere close to as good as our neighbor is about running her household, I'll be quite happy. Maybe I'll ask her for some pointers before we move away.

This Year I Will...

...that's the title of a self-help book I've listened to recently that tries to help with keeping resolutions. Apparently, most people give up their New Year's resolutions soon after they make it. Here's the list of reasons the author, M.J. Ryan, gives why this happens:
 

   10 Resolution Pitfalls

1. Being vague about what you want
2. Not making a serious commitment
3. Procrastinating and excuse-making
4. Unwilling to go through the awkward phase
5. Not setting up a tracking and reminder system
6. Expecting perfection, falling into guilt, shame, regret
7. Trying to go it alone
8. Telling yourself self-limiting rut stories
9. Not having backup plans
10. Turning slip-ups to give-ups

My particular problem with resolutions, that is, the reason I end up giving up, lies mainly in two things I think. The first and biggest reason is me being a bit of a perfectionist. The second is reason #10 or as this quote from the book demonstrates it: "Once I eat one cookie, I might as well eat the whole damn box." So, once I miss a chance to do something I'm supposed to (whether it was my fault or not), it becomes much easier to blow it off next time, and the next, and by the fourth time, I give up completely.

Listening to books like "This Year I Will" and "Eat That Frog!" helped me realize how unrealistic it is for anyone to reach goals perfectly the first time, and being OK in something and doing it is much better than wanting to be perfect and not doing it at all. (You would think that as a knitter, this would have sunk in by now, but maybe that's why I like knitting: I can always fix my mistakes to make things perfect.)

Reasons #6 and #10 are not the only reasons for failing in my resolutions, however. I'm also guilty of #3, #5, #9... and if I'm really honest, probably #2 and #4 as well. That's at least 7 out of the 10 pitfalls. Sheesh...

So this year I will try my best to stick to my resolutions. Hey, isn't that a resolution, too? Anyways, I have a plan. I really love making plans. Plans are fun, and puts things in order. The first step in my plan was to get an app on my phone to track my progress on building my habits. It reminds me of things I want to do, then keeps track of whether I did something or not, how many times in the past, and on what days. A good thing about this app is that I can put in my results for the day before (in case I forgot to do so), but not earlier than that, making using this app another habit that I can't cheat on.

As for the resolutions themselves, the one I'll share here is one I made last year, too:

To write 52 blogs in 52 weeks this year.

So here's to a New Year with new (and old) resolutions, and keeping them.

Looking back...

As I look at my daughter sitting next to me playing with her blocks and her other toys, I'm thinking about what an incredible year 2012 has been.

2012 for me began in New York and almost 6 months pregnant for the first time. I'm enjoying a vacation with my family and friends, I'm comparing bellies with my dad, and eating sooo much delicious home-made food, I'm sure I've reached my weight-limit 3 months early. I'm enjoying every minute, every second of being pregnant. I'm excited, but nervous... I know I'm ready to be a mom, or at least I keep telling myself I am.

Now, my husband is playing with my daughter and I hear the most joyful of giggles coming from the bedroom, into which she crawled. She's 9 and a half months old, she can sit up, crawl, and kneel on her own, stand up as long as she has something to hold onto, and her first tooth just popped out 10 days ago, as a late birthday gift to her daddy. She's all smiles and quiet curiosity, and the best baby and child a parent can wish for.

I feel I have grown a bit, too. I think I've become more responsible, and I'm more at peace. Mostly, I think I've finally come to accept the circumstances of my daughter's birth as something that was out of my control.

I'm sure by now it's no secret how much I was looking forward to giving birth as naturally as was possible. I looked at giving birth as a sort of major accomplishment, that if I could do that, I could do anything. I could finally be proud of something. For someone, who believes she has scarcely accomplished anything in her life, this was a powerful motivator... 

But then circumstances led to a C-section birth, and a scheduled one at that, with only a day of advance notice. Needless to say, I was pretty much crushed. It took my all to get through the night before the surgery, and to try and muster some sort of positive outlook. The surgery itself was the worst experience of my life by far, and I believe the only reason I was able to get through it because my husband was sitting right next to me, holding my hand through the whole thing. (As a side-note, I cannot imagine in my wildest dream why any woman or doctor would choose a C-section over natural birth without a valid medical reason, like so many do today. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against C-sections in general. I think they are life-savers, when they are necessary. I'm only talking about/upset with C-sections without any medical reason what-so-ever, like doctor trying to get home for dinner, or woman hoping to combine it with a tummy-tuck.) I was so enveloped in my own discomfort that I almost missed the moment when my daughter was lifted out of me, and even that barely registered and tries to fade from memory. The only thing that saved me from being completely lost in self pity was being able to breastfeed her without problems from the start. 

Getting to know each other...

However, this wasn't enough to make me feel like I could move heaven and earth for this new little being, like I read so many other mothers did after giving birth and thought I was supposed to feel, too. The love I felt for my daughter wasn't earth shattering love-at-first-sight, but something very slow and gradual. From the moment I was sewn up and back in my room, I went into autopilot mode, feeding and changing her as she needed it, and generally taking care of her, letting her leave my side only while the kind nurses bathed her, so I could shower myself. Please don't misunderstand, I don't think I had the baby blues, and I definitely didn't not wish to be a mother, or anything like that. But I did not feel like a mother, and in fact for months I felt more like I was just babysitting. I was thinking that any minute now someone will come and thank me and pay me for my services, and take her away because her real mother was back, and I'd be sad.

It was not at all how I imagined this would go, and the first night back at home, a week after my daughter's birth, away from all the caring nurses, as I laid down next to her to sleep, I looked at her and I cried. I wanted her back inside me, I wanted to turn back time, I wanted to feel different, to feel more, to feel attachment. I think this was my first step of grief.

Add nine months to that day and little by little, through watching my daughter reach new milestones, through constant negotiations with my husband, through support and guidance of friends, and last but not least, through increasing job satisfaction, I've reached a level of confidence in myself, which originally I thought I could gain through giving birth only. I still hope that maybe with our next child I can give birth naturally, but if for some reason it's not meant to happen, I don't think I'll be as crushed as I was the day we got scheduled for the C-section. 

Snuggling.

It has not been an easy year for me. A month of (in my opinion) useless hospitalization, an emotionally difficult birth, the months of sleep-deprived exhaustion, the hardship of maintaining some sort of intimacy in my marriage, the heartache of missing Rini's firsts because I'm at work, all contributed to this fact. However, it is all worth it, when I hear my daughter giggle and see her mischievous smile. Or when she crawls to me just to kneel at my feet and look up, smiling, and when I pick her up, she snuggles real close, like she wants to melt into me and never let go. Over the last nine months I grew into a mother, and I'm growing still now.

I think I'm very lucky. Though the year wasn't a smooth ride all the way, I got what I've always wished for: a loving and happy family. I'm really thankful for that, and I'm looking forward to this upcoming new year.