Building Blocks for a Perfect Life

Okay, here we go:  my patented, million-dollar technique for keeping your life manageable, stress-free and successful in the face of children, parents, husbands, dogs, jobs, that extra 15 lbs, or anything else life may throw at you.  Believe me, I think it would really work if I actually would do it!

A few months ago, after we had been home with Ruby for a few months and were settling into a little routine with her, I realized that I had not fully carved out a place for her in my life.  That's not to say that there was not a place for her in my heart, or a place for her in the house, we had taken care of all of that stuff.  No, it was more like I just really didn't have time for anything any more.  Surprise, surprise, Ruby was taking up all of my time.  Aren't babies so fun like that?!  Between diaper changing, rocking it to sleep multiple times a day, washing its clothes (and yours more often that you could imagine, since there is always something gross on them), washing the actual baby, taking it to the doctor, taking things out of its mouth that shouldn't be there and trying to get things in that should be, playing a little bit with it, researching baby products and buying said products, cleaning up spilled milk, water, cheerios, legos, cat food, pans, folded laundry, etc, a little package of baby cuteness can really eat into a person's day.  And that's not even getting into breastfeeding, being up all night, ear infections, worrying that it might be allergic or autistic or too short or too tall.  Frankly, it's just a lot of work.

"But wait," you might be thinking, "she knew all of that already!"  I already had two kids and was doing all of that stuff already, so what's the big deal?  Plus, Ruby was already 16 months old when she came home, so some of the biggest life sucking elements (breast feeding, all night wailing parties, making your own baby food until you realize what a giant waste of time and energy it is) were not even applicable to our situation.  And to tell you the truth, not having to do all of that stuff again is one of the many reasons we went the whole adoption route.  When we first considered adding a third child to our lives, Gus was already 3 and Finn was 5, and I finally felt that I had clawed my way back from the brink of something very ugly.  Five years of sleep deprivation and no exercise and always finding things mashed beneath my toes if I couldn't find my slippers was five years too much.  An orphan, I wisely concluded, will not cause me these problems.  By the time we bring this hypothetical orphan home, I thought (ever the unrealistic dreamer), she'll be sleeping, eating normal food, close to being potty trained, and walking.  This would be good, I thought, because having a newborn or young baby would really put a wrench in my life.  I had finally started a fitness regimen that I really enjoyed, I was working on my house and was happy with the progress, Matt and I had more time together to talk and enjoy just hanging out, I was gardening and beginning to think about a future where I might do something creative and productive outside of my sphere as a mother (which I actually find very creative and productive, but in a different way).  I had some idea that a new baby would come on the scene and just fit into that picture quite nicely, without jostling all the other pieces around too much.  (Note to reader who may be horrified that I would feel this way about an orphan:  I also believed that Finn and Gus would just come on board as accessories to my life without causing much of a bump, but, of course, I was wrong.  You know how they say that some people never learn?)

Anyway, as it turned out, little Ruby wasn't as much like a goldfish as she was a real person.  She actually needed things and attention and nurturing and holding, and, like all little people, she left a wake of destruction in her path that required time and energy (always in short supply) to remedy.  But oddly enough, it took me a little while to realize all of that.  I persisted in the idea that it was so "easy" even while I kept banging my head against the fact that everything was not going according to my plan.  I kept going for runs most mornings, but felt frustrated that I couldn't go very far while pushing the jogging stroller and stopping every few yards to recover the cheerio case or the sippy.  I didn't step down from any of my volunteer obligations at the kids' schools and in the community, but I felt guilty every night as I went to bed for things I hadn't done yet that others were counting on me to do.  I felt guilty about what I was feeding the kids, how messy the house was, about not reciprocating dinner invitations because the idea of having people over to the house seemed so overwhelming, about how long it would take me to return phone calls, even how infrequently I was sending out updates and blog postings for all of the friends and family who had supported us so much along the way.  Basically, everything was coming a little unraveled, but I kept ignoring all of that and trying to do everything I had been doing as well as I had been doing it before Ruby came home.

So, as you might imagine, that didn't really work out.  I realized I was sucking at almost everything and that fact was really bothering me, so I started thinking about how I might change things up.  I thought about friends of mine who seem to be less scattered than I am, or more content in a way that I never seem to be.  I know people who don't seem to feel as much of a tension between how their lives actually are and how they think their lives should be.  So I thought to myself, what's the deal?  What's their secret?

Anyway, over the course of a few months of reflection, I think I have come up with the perfect formula for a happy life.  I will share it here with you, and if you end up using it and having a happy life, I just ask that you mention me on your tombstone, or in some other public forum.  I don't really want too much glory, but a little would be okay.  So here it is.  Imagine that your life is made up of blocks.  One block is your job, if you have one, or personal ambition, if you don't.  In my case, I was a lawyer before I had kids, but I've been "retired" for a while now, so that doesn't count as a job.  I do, however, have personal ambition to start a business (see previous blog post about dinners on the porch).  Another block is your marriage or significant relationship.  Another is spending time with your children and providing for them emotionally, educationally, etc.  Another is feeding said children healthy meals and ensuring that they are generally clean, etc.  Another is keeping yourself in reasonable shape by exercise, which seems to become more time-consuming with each passing year.  Another is personal appearance, meaning regular haircuts/highlights, clean and attractive, if not necessarily fashionable, clothing, wearing make-up at least some of the time, etc.  Another is friendships, which can take time and effort to keep up because, when you think about it, they involve nights out with the girls, a visit and a casserole to a bereaved friend, mailing a package to your best friend's child on his or her birthday, and so on and so forth.  One's social life can also fall into the friendship category, although I do know people who would need to devote a separate block to socializing as they are more "on the scene" than yours truly.  If you live near parents or in-laws, you know you have to dedicate a block to them because even if they are helping you out all the time, it's a two-way street.  General maintenance of the house, laundry, yard will be a block, unless you are someone with live-in help, and in that case I don't want to know about it, so keep it to yourself.  If you are active in your church or other volunteer activities, that could be a block.

The point being, you have your own assortment of things that make up your life, different from mine, but, I would argue, similar in the broad outlines.  And you build up this Jenga-like tower of your life with all of these different blocks nicely balanced in a way that pleases you, or at least in a way that you can manage, and you think you're doing alright.  And then you go and have a baby.  Or adopt one, but either way, you add a big, big block onto the stack.  But at first, if you're like me, you think that baby block will just sit on top, maybe rocking the tower for a little while, but ultimately the structure will hold.  In my experience, however, that is not how it works.  You keep trying for a while, pretending that it is working, and then the whole thing falls apart, or you fall apart, consumed with guilt and feelings of inadequacy over all of the things in each of the different areas of your life that you couldn't do well anymore.  Basically, you feel like an all-around failure.  I always seem to hit that wall after about three months with a new baby, and it's not pretty.

So my theory (untested by actual experience because I seem to be incapable of learning lessons) is that you have to completely get rid of at least one block with the addition of a new baby.  (Therefore, if you have twins, you will need to get rid of at least two blocks, and so on.)  Baby needs its own block folks, and there's no way around it.  But here's why it's so hard:  you can't get rid of very many of those blocks.  It really is like Jenga, because your choices are pretty limited if you don't want to topple the whole structure.  You can hardly argue that getting rid of your marriage or your parents will improve your life (at least I hope you can't).  And you can't stop feeding your family or doing laundry or working (unless you choose to stay home, in which case you have a new full-time job) or ditch all of your friends.  So that leaves you to choose between things like exercise, personal appearance, having a nice house, socializing, and volunteer activities.  All of the things that make life a little more fun.  So do you have to go around being an out-of-shape, frumpily dressed, reclusive outcast living in a pig-sty?  No, because don't forget, you only have to get rid of one (maybe two) blocks.  And not forever, just for a little while (like maybe a year, unless you do too much in the area of maintaining your marriage and end up pregnant again before you've gotten into a new groove).

The key is to eliminate whole areas from your consciousness, so that you no longer feel the pressure of them and therefore don't feel badly that you aren't able to keep up anymore.  People always urge new mothers to get more help.  What they mean is that you should somehow get enough help - housekeepers and babysitters - that you can keep on doing everything you have been doing up to that point.  Like you can have a babysitter come while you go get your hair done, because it's so important that your roots don't show when you're sitting home nursing a two month old baby or tearing up and down the aisles of Target with the rest of high society.  But that's just more pressure to keep up.  Instead, people should urge new mothers to be realistic and face the fact that you can't keep up anymore.  Trying to do so will only result in trouble, because no matter how many babysitters you have, there's just not enough time in the day for a new child and everything else.  You've got to just do major surgery on your life.

You won't feel guilty about things you aren't even trying to accomplish.  For example, it is a relief to me that I don't have to feel guilty that I've let my piano playing skills go down, because I never had them to begin with.  Likewise, I don't feel badly about not taking the children to bring meals to shut-ins, because, no matter how nice that would be, that was never one of my blocks.  You could just agree with yourself that you will not go to the gym for one whole year, no matter what.  And then, if you did take a nice brisk walk one day, you would just feel like a big winner for having exercised so much rather than like a loser who hasn't been to the gym in a month.  Or, you might rather give up trying to keep up with the house and just let people who come by to visit know that you have done so.  Maybe you would choose to completely quit your volunteer activities - it's the only time you can do it without looking like a flake, and they will always be happy to have you back later.

Whatever you choose is your choice, obviously, but I think it might really be the key.  A friend (mother to several, including a new baby) recently told me that she doesn't "do dinner."  It was a great lightbulb moment because I realized that you can just decide not to "do" certain things and no one can make you feel bad about it if you don't do it to yourself.  How much better to just give yourself a pass until things calm down.  Once the dust settles and you start having bits of time on your hands here and there, you'll know it's time to think about adding something back in - maybe one of the things you had to give up or maybe something totally new, like writing a blog.

Okay, enough already, you are welcome.  I give you my theory and hope that, unlike me, you will heed it.  I think I'm out of the baby business (having or adopting), so hopefully I'll not have to go around this particular merry-go-round again, but if I had thrown out some of those blocks, it might have made the ride a little less bumpy.