Had a crummy day. It’s my own fault, really, since the bulk of my problems revolved around the fact that I got to sleep waaaaaaay too late last night and thusly only had a few hours of sleep. I’ve been sewing this shirt for the last couple of nights, and I could probably have been done by now except that when I take shortcuts, the results look like the work of someone who takes shortcuts. I was raised with the belief that it’s better to do the job right the first time so you don’t have to come back and do it again—kind of a ‘If you’ve got time to do it twice, you’ve got time to do it right the first time.’ kind of attitude. And I’m all for that.
Except that it tends to bring out the perfectionist tendencies in me. I worry about things that someone would have to open my shirt up to see. It’s as if I’m in the mode to be judged at the county fair every time I sit down. It doesn’t help that every sewing website and/or magazine that I look at (and I look at an embarrassing number of them) always spotlights someone whose ‘inner garment construction is as perfect as its outer construction.’ How am I ever going to think it’s ok to sew less than perfectly if I don’t ever see anyone else doing it?
Which is all a long way to go around to say that I stayed up too late sewing and so I snapped at my kid all day because of his natural exuberance. He got a full night’s sleep.
I feel really badly about being short with him, too. I mean, first of all, it’s my own fault. I can’t blame someone else for the choices I make. I try to instill in Harrison (and will when Laura gets old enough) a sense of responsibility for one’s actions. Nothing bugs me so much as to have my son say or do something deliberately and then when I call him on it, to have him say, “But it was an accident, Mom!” We have a lot of Bull Calls in the house.
I also feel badly that I wasted one of my last days with Harrison before school starts up and he enters Kindergarten. I know I’m giving this a lot more artificial importance than it probably deserves, but I can’t help feeling that this is the end of a chapter in his life. From now on, he’s going to be a kid in the public school system, for better or worse.
Robert thinks I’m crazy, but I always feel such sorrow when I think too much on how the kids are growing and developing. I know that Laura is much more fun now that she’s old enough to do stuff besides just sit in the swing or on the floor. She laughs, scoots and is starting to hold her own bottle a little bit. But deep down, I wish I could keep her a month old forever, always cuddly, always dependent on me, always young. I delight in seeing her smiles—she is the happiest baby I have ever seen and her smile lights up the room every morning when I go to get her from the crib. But I can’t help wanting to keep her tiny, even as I get tired of all the diaper duty, the feedings and the crying that replaces any real conversation.
And so it is with Harrison. I know he’s growing into this really awesome person. Heck, he’s already so much cooler a kid than I’ve ever seen. I just can’t control this impulse to want him to always be my baby.
I guess his teenage years will cure me of that.
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