Lishalogs

[lishalogs]

Ready or Not

Three months.  It’s what I know to be a standard period for maternity leave.  Prior to giving birth, it seemed like an adequate amount of time.  Over the course of the first few days, weeks, and even months, it seemed like an eternity.  Now that it’s nearing the end with just a week and a half left, it seems like it all flew by way too quickly.  It all hit me, so unexpectedly, yesterday while I was feeding Logan.  Everyone told me it would be a difficult day, and for whatever reason, I thought I was stronger than that.  I didn’t anticipate having a difficult time parting ways with my son for the day, to leave him in the care of a babysitter while I went to work for a few hours.  And yet, just as everyone said, I’m already trying to prepare myself for that day.  

As much as I complained, as many hours of sleep I’ve missed, as hard as it’s been staying home caring for a newborn, and despite the many times I’ve proclaimed that, “I’m ready to go back to work”, it’ll probably be one of the hardest days to come.  

As hard as it’s been, it’s such a privilege to be Logan’s mom.  

[lishalogs]

Attitude of Gratitude

While scrolling through Pinterest yesterday I came across a quote which lead me on a pinning spree of gratitude affirmations.  A positive mindset is so simple yet equally easy to forego.  I have a tendency of getting caught up in the daily ish and find myself dwelling on the negative when I have so much to be grateful for.  

“Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect, it means you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.

Yesterday was a rough day.  Logan didn’t sleep much and instead cried most of the day.  In addition, he woke up every two hours to feed last night as opposed to the four hours we were growing to know and love.  The crying, the fussiness, the lack of sleep, and feeling of hopelessness quickly add up.  In spite of it all, I decided to wake up this morning happy.  “If you want to be happy, you have to be happy on purpose.  When you wake up you can’t just wait to see what kind of day you’ll have, you have to decided what kind of day you’ll have.”  Choosing to be happy this morning, I already felt better.  Rather than focus the sleep I didn’t get, I decided to focus on what I have.  I have a perfectly beautiful and healthy baby boy.  I have a job that enables me to be at home to care for him, and spend time with him.  I have an amazing husband who works full-time and comes home and helps me care for our little man.  This is an extremely short list of the things I have to be grateful for, and these things alone already prove that I have so much to be grateful for.  With so much to be thankful for, it should be difficult to be unhappy.

“Gratitude can turn common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.”

[lishalogs]

Some Days are Better than Others

Today was a hard day.

You can read all the books, and listen to all the advice from moms and dads who’ve seen it all, but you’ll never really understand what it takes to be a parent until you’re there.  You’ll never understand the value of never waking a sleeping baby until someone carelessly wakes yours, or why the mug of coffee you made at 5 in the morning, remains on the kitchen counter, untouched, at two in the afternoon, or how this tiny human can sleep for 18 hours of the day and yet leave you completely exhausted.   

Today was a hard day.  Logan cried all morning, decided not to eat a full feeding, and instead take half feedings every hour, while spitting up after every feeding, and almost always refusing to be put down peacefully, then needing to change his diaper at the exact moment that he did.  It’s times like these that can easily drive a person mad.  It’s times like these that you wish they could talk, so they could tell you exactly what they needed.  

But it’s moments like these, when they are content, when you get a moment to yourself to reflect, when you can finally drink your cup of coffee, that you realize it really wasn’t all that bad.  

[lishalogs]

Firsts & Kindness

I've contemplated the idea of blogging, regularly.  I gave it a good effort (read: xanga) in college, and looking back, always thought it was a nice way to reflect on my one and only year living in the tundra that is North Dakota. There were also a couple failed attempts at gettin' back at it, between then and now, that for whatever reason fell by the wayside.  Perhaps it's a need to aid my goldfish memory; or maybe it's much needed relief for my heart, mind & soul, over the fact the I internalize everything; or a simple craving to express myself through words in a way that I used to know and love.  While most likely a combination of those things + a million others, today was the day my thought became a thing.  Just five days shy of my 29th birthday.  My final year as a twenty-something - frightening, and equally exciting.

This particular post was inspired by an article from the LA Times,  Kind Over Matter.  It was originally posted back in 2008, but I recently became aware of it after seeing Josh Randor (aka Ted Mosby / the author of the article) on Ellen.  He writes, "It really shocks me when I encounter people who think kindness doesn't matter. Because I think it's pretty much the only thing that matters. [...] It's not about being "good" (a loaded concept, to say the least) or "nice," which is really just a social convention that often has to do with worrying about being liked (occasionally masking real deviousness). It's ultimately about compassion, recognizing that all of us are going through it all in our own particular way, no matter our social status.  It's not our job to play judge and jury, to determine who is worthy of our kindness and who is not. We just need to be kind, unconditionally and without ulterior motive, even—or rather, especially—when we'd prefer not to be. For me, it's simple and not entirely unselfish: When I'm kind, I feel good; when I'm not, I feel horrible." 

Such simple thoughts that are so important to remember, and even more important to live by.  Quite frankly, while I try (most times) to be nice, I may not always be kind - and it never really dawned on me how different those two things are.  It's definitely altered my thinking, and hopefully, moving forward, my actions.

With that, here's to "firsts" and "kindness".

<3lisha