motherhood.  it's been interesting.  of course i am nowhere near being a true mom or close to knowing everything a mom has to go thru for her children.  but this first month with you has been a trip.  some good stuff, some not so good stuff.  i had a very hard time with you the first week or so after we got back from the hospital.  honestly, i felt like you'd taken my life away.  there was no more emily.  there was mike i had to take care of...then there was you...then there was the rest of my family.  i felt like i had somehow lost myself and had to fill all these roles for other people....had to be a good wife to mike, a good daughter who cooks for the family, and a good mommy to you....but when would i be able to do the stuff i wanted to do?  and i had actually come to resent you a little and maybe thought twice about having you at the age i did.  and when i tried to be nice to you, all you would do is scream in my face and cry your eyes out.  i knew you weren't being a pain on purpose, that you were just crying because you wanted something, but i felt like i had tried everything with you and i was just tired and wanted to go to sleep.  you'll be a month old tomorrow and things are much better now.  i've gotten a little more used to the crying and have come to be okay with hearing you cry and not immediately drop what i am doing to tend to you.  it's still a bit nerve-wrecking going out with you in public....for some reason, i feel like people will think i am a horrible mother if you start screaming, although i wouldn't think the same if i saw another unhappy baby.  i am glad you are my baby...even though it's only been a month, it feels more like 6.  you are smiling a bit more, and even if it is just gas, i tell myself you are smiling for real.  i hope u know who i am by now...though i'm not sure if you just know me as the boob lady.  oh and just so you know, i don't regret having you when i did.  it's just taken me awhile to adjust to this change.  but it has been a good change.  :) 

some things i have learned lately...

-no two people have the same parenting style or tend to babies in the same way.  if you are going to complain about the way someone is tending to your baby, you might as well either keep quiet and let this person try in their own way, or you should do it yourself and stop complaining. 

-it's important to keep positive.  it is easy to feel like you've failed as a parent when you can't calm your screaming baby.  then you start feeling even worse when they scream so much that tears are running down their cheeks and they're gasping for air to breathe.  just keep trying...eventually they will calm down and it doesn't mean you are a bad parent if it takes you awhile. 

so a lot has been going on in my mind lately...  then while i was cooking tonight, watching the pasta boil and the sauce simmer...i thought to myself...simmer...that is the perfect way to describe my thoughts...they've been simmering... and i think they are overdone. 

life is funny...things happen for no apparent reason and we as people always want an explanation for everything.  like A plus B equals C, so therefore... okay that's as far as my math skills go, but you know what i'm trying to get at.  stuff happens in life and we try to explain it all or find a reason why this happened or this or this or this.  we get all hypothetical and try to find a good common sense ah-ha explanation for everything.  but most of the time it is just not that easy to find one simple explanation for the things that happen in life.  i was listening to someone speak at church...or somewhere, i can't really recall...and this person said something that has stuck in my head.  he said that instead of asking God why did this, this, this and this happen...instead we should be asking what is God trying to teach me in this experience?  how is God trying to change me and make me a better person from this? 

since my head has been on mommy mode for awhile, i quite often find myself thinking..hmm, how is this going to affect my future daughter?  lately, i've been coming across the theme of having a critical spirit...in myself, in others...and i've been trying to process questions like why am i critical, why are others critical, how will this affect my daugther, is it always a bad thing to be critical, is some level of criticism needed in order to correct/discipline?  things like that.  my father is a critical thinker...i don't mean this in a bad way.  what i mean is that he is a problem solver, he weighs his options and chooses the choice he sees as better.  and of course this is a useful life skill.  my mom on other hand,...let's just say critical thinking is not her forte.  she is much more naive so to speak, maybe too trusting or what some would call gullible.  so which is better?  is one better than the other?  or are they just different?  and which approach is better to have with my daughter?

in my experience, being raised by two pretty opposite and very different parents with sometimes counter parenting styles...i'm rather confused actually.  well, i can see the good and bad in both approaches.  but i've come to the conclusion that is it better to affirm and nurture, than to criticize and correct.  although you can't only have one and not the other.  i think whoever came up with that theory that for every 1 negative thing you say to your child, they need 10 affirmations was right.  criticism never motivates me to be better..it actually discourages me and makes me feel stupid.  but then you ask, how does a child learn then if he/she is never criticized or corrected?  i think that is where the tricky part comes in...how does one lovingly teach or correct his or her child?  even as a 27 year old adult, it still really bothers me when my dad spits out a careless word about how dinner could have been, or rather should have been made.  as lame as this sounds, it bothers me when he has told me twice now in the past couple of weeks that i use too much water to boil my corn.  it's my stupid corn!  you are not going to die because i used too much water to boil the corn!  yes, you might die if i pour this boiling water over your head right now!  if you want to boil the corn with the proper amount of water, then you can be in charge of dinner and boil your own corn yourself!  (and this is what we now called pent up anger, as all my exclamation marks are coming out!)  and what gets me is that i even tried to put less water than i put the first time because i KNEW he would say something to me if i did it TWICE.  but even when i put less water, it still wasn't the right amount.  anyway...bottom line is that i am going to try to bite my tongue when my daughter is trying to do something, but not doing it in the exact way that i would do it.  i am going to try to appreciate her efforts and praise her so she builds confidence in herself and feels good about what she does.  i know this is all easier said then done, but maybe if i ever look back at this entry when i am older and she is older..i will be like....yea, i shouldn't have been so hard on her, maybe i should go say i'm sorry....  alrite, i have lots of other thoughts on this, but i will save it for another time.  :) 

childhood memory of the moment:  i remember when me and my brothers were little and playing at our auntie susan's house.  i was the only girl cause she had three boys.  we were running around the house, playing nintendo or shooting rubberbands at each other, when jer said some not nice comment out loud to me in front of everyone.  my auntie susan raised her voice, which she never does, and said in a really stern voice, "jeremy, if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say it at all!"  it got all quiet and awkward in the room, but i loved her for saying that. 

two posts in one day, must be a new record!  i forgot to post about our 1-year anniversary!!  time flies, no?  i can't believe that i've already been married for over a year now and will soon have a daughter to prove it!  we didn't mean to get pregnant this early, but i don't regret any of it.  i was imagining what life would be like if i wasn't pregnant at this time and i know it would just be more the same routine stuff...well, for one thing, i wouldn't have moved back home.  mike and i would still be at the apartment with the guys...not that that was a bad thing.  i would only come home once a week on tuesdays for dinner and get to see the family for a couple of hours.  i would be cooking at the apartment the rest of the nights for mike...watching more sports center, more video games, more bruin games, more guy talk around the apartment.  it wasn't a bad life and at times, i do miss the guy humor and just the differences between the way guys live and girls live.  i will never forget the conversation/debate the guys had over the street fighter theme song.  but here i am, big belly and all, moving back home with the parents, younger brother upstairs, older brother and wife right next door, husband by my side...and i am a very happy camper.  it's like i got the best of both worlds somehow.  though the transition wasn't very easy and still isn't at times...less personal space, more sharing of food, more relationship dynamics..overall i'm happy with the change.  i started this post wanting to talk about our one-year anniversary but somehow got off track.  but i guess this is where life has taken me one year post wedding day.  to celebrate, mike took me out to one of our favorites...the melting pot. (side note: he tells me this is the night he had explosive diarrhea afterwards.)  he treated me like a lady, though he always does, and it sorta felt like date one all over again.

...happy one year & many more to come.  can't wait to share the rest of them with u... (so what i'm a cheeseball!)