Keeping perspective on life and maintaining a sense of humor are the two reoccurring ingredients in the recipe for me remaining sane and happy.
Keeping perspective has helped me with D.'s separation anxiety, V.'s absences, and the fact that my body is still not where it was pre-pregnancy. D.'s separation anxiety doesn't really bother me except for the fact that I cannot go to the gym. I go on weekends but when V. was gone for a month recently, then I found myself up shit creek without a paddle in sight. Perspective gives me a different view - he's my last baby, he's such a snuggly, happy, love-to-laugh baby so I really don't want to be apart from him anyways. Also, the "this too shall pass" perspective helps. V.'s recent month-long absence has caused me to venture into the land of bbqing and not only am I having success, I am getting downright adventurous. This is going to really be helpful during the warm months when I don't want to turn on the oven because it will heat up the kids' bedroom directly upstairs. Lastly, my body...hmm, perspective - I fit into my pre-pregnancy clothes but they just fit differently and I feel that. I notice it more now that I haven't been to the gym in over a month (thanks hubby!) but even before then I was only getting there on weekends when V. could be with D. It could be worse, much worse though considering that my little boy increased my waist size to 43" before he decided to come on out.
Humor - well, we'll just start with the body topic again since it's such a convenient bridge. D. and I are going to start swimming classes together plus we have our Palm Desert trip coming up so I realized I had better start trying on my bathing suits (I don't throw any of them away). On the upside, the bottoms fit fine on all three of them. The downside is that while I have gotten used to my milk producing boobs, they are larger than my past non-milk producing boobs. So much so that it was quite horrifying to put these bathing suit tops on. I would put them on and inevitably, my boobs would be lapping out of the outside edge. Easy enough fix, I thought as I pushed them towards the center, recontaining them within the cup. Then I looked in the mirror and was horrified to see a mass quantity of boobs congregating in the center of my chest like they were trying to close the gap or something. I kind of yelped when I saw them. All three suits were the same and granted, it's not like a nipple is hanging out or anything but still, it's not how I usually present myself. I don't think I'm going to fit into my maternity suits from last year (though I'm going to give them a try). I don't want to buy new suits either. To get ones that fit well, you have to spend a little extra. In Palm Desert we'll have our own pool so it shouldn't be that big of a deal (as long as I have had a good feeding with D. recently). And with the Mommy & Me classes, we'll make it through. I'll use D. as a shield or something and hope to God that there are no SAHD in the class.
Humor also got me through an afternoon fraught with tired angst with I. Honestly, that child is going to be a beast once the hormones kick in. I've got to make sure my parents stay in really good shape so that I can ship her to live with them starting at age 12. Just kidding. How we go from hugging and kissing at 12:30 pickup to whining, complaining, and drama within 10 minutes is beyond me. This is how I used humor. Every time she couldn't hear me or see me I would roll my eyes and mutter to myself in a sing-song voice, "Oh, this is going to be a GOOD afternoon, I can tell!" in a really positive tone. It made me feel a little crazy and somehow that made me chuckle a little inside and help let off some steam.
Perspective and humor, it seems to make the difference in my day.
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