big long entry so Husband will be appeased

Husband has recently railed against me for not posting enough on this blog. Personally, I think his posts are either 1. so blasted cute or 2. so blasted educated, that I just bring the blog down with my uneducated, uncute self. But nope, Husband is actually angered at my blogging lack, so I will regale you with a post, inspired by the fact that Solei's 2nd birthday is approaching in less than a week - I give you:

My Tribute to Heavenly Father's Plan Especially Involving Motherhood

The first thing I understood about the Plan of Happiness was that families were Heavenly Father's classroom. I don't where I got this idea, especially since I have always known that I didn't not particularly want to be a mother - prossibly due to the fact that I know how genuinely rotten I was to my own mother and was quite worried that I deserved a little horror just like me. But as I learned about the Plan of Salvation - how we came to this earth to learn, to make mistakes and to grow and how we can all return to live with our Heavenly Father again - it just occured to me that nowhere else did I learn anything as valuble or as important as the lessons I learned interacting with my family - watching my father and mother serve others, in the church and their children - learning to love my brothers despite how much I wanted to kill them - and learning about our heritage and feeling gratitude for the sacrifices my ancestors went through to bring my family the blessings of the freedom of this country and the joy of the gospel. So in my mind, the only way I could ever think of a family was as a classroom.

After I was married, I prayed that perhaps my dislike for mothering would disappear and that I'd love serving my family. I did get pregnant and had a beautiful, healthy litle girl- but the dislike did NOT disappear. I wanted to love her, and I really wanted to love being a mother, but the postpartum depression was more than I'd anticipated, and suddenly being in intense pain all the time from giving birth and trying to nurse and not getting any sleep made me wish every day that one of us would not be there in the morning. Those first few months, I didn't bother getting dressed in the morning, I'd just sit in our house trying to get Solei to eat, to sleep, and try aiming her away from me when she threw up. She was not a happy baby - she was appalled at the lack of control she had of her body and appalled at my lack of compassion or skill. The only time she really came alive was when my Brasilian sisters would come over and hold her. I watched them intently, trying to learn what they knew - how to love this creature that was making my life so miserable.


This is where I learned my first lessons of motherhood. Most of all- I learned empathy for Solei. She was a full grown spirit stuck in this strange body and strange place where she couldn't communicate or understand anything. I felt exactly the same way, so far from home, sick and unable to speak the language, and I learned to try and give her comfort like my Brasilian friends would comfort me. Slowly I began to see her personality shine through when she was given the things she needed to feel at peace. I saw myself in her smiles, because I understood why she cried so much more.

Coming back to the States I learned different lessons. I returned to my home country, but as a completely different person with different needs and responsibilities than I had before. And I hated it. I was living in someone else's home, I couldn't be free do do anything easily because of Solei who was constantly demanding more freedom and trying to jam her timy fingers into light sockets or crawl down staircases. I didn't know how to get her to stop, so I watched other mothers with children and tried to teach like they did. I learned that watching for examples to teach her is invaluble. We are taught by our Heavenly Father by others examples, and I learned that He will always send me friends who are much more competent than I to teach me.

And with her age - and all the boundaries I worked so hard to set and all the rules I've tried to teach her - every month, she has become more of a person, and I've been able to starting seeing fruits of all those difficult labors. There's the genuine love she has for anything that moves, the way she will say please and thank you, the way she'll hug my neck when she knows she's been naughty and cry "I so sorry mommy!!" I guess I'm a results kind of person, and those long months where all my best efforts were met with hysterical crying and being covered in vomit made mething that none of my efforts were good enough. But seeing my toddler fold her arms, bow her head and thank her Heavenly Father for SpongeBob SquarePants has taught me that I just had to be a little more patient, and my blessings would come.

Before I got pregnant and was praying that if I did have a child, I would be able to learn to love them, I had a dream. I had given birth to a little girl and I was not quite sure how I felt about her and the whole motherhood thing. I went to visit her in the hospital, and all the nurses were around this bright, blonde haired little girl who was laughing and charming the socks off of them. She made me smile,a nd I watched how she made every person who met her smile, and it made me fall in love with her right there in the dream. The dream gave me hope, and I felt like I had enough courage to think about getting pregnant.

When Solei was born, she had dark hair and was as uncharming as a newborn can be. I was confused and wondered where the little girl from my dream was. The dark hair eventually gave way to blonde curls and a few months ago, I caught Solei laughing at herself in the mirror - and realized that she was now the little girl I'd seen in my dream. I don't know if I had anything to do with bringing out her bright personality, but it had happened. She does indeed amaze and charm everyone who meets her. I learned that blessings will come from everything if I don't expect them in my timeline.

On that vein, I've been aware that I should think about expanding our family, and terrified at the thought of Solei seeing how dark pregnancy and new motherhood made me. I've felt like I should at least try because I'm supposed to, but have had very little hope of it being different from the first time. And as I've waited, I've become more aware of how much I have grown to love what I have now, despite the hardship it began with. I don't know if Heavenly Father will send another soul to our family to live through what Solei had to endure for so long, but I don't worry about that. I'm so thankful He knows me and loves me enough to have sent me the most perfect-for-me spirit He had. I still pray that if I become a mother again that I'll learn to love them, and I also ask that I not have another until I am really ready. I'm so thankful that I've had the last year to really get to know the spirit inside her crazy body, and to learn to fall in love with serving another person this much. Every day I spend with just her, I feel a gratitude I never expected to feel and I don't want for anything else.

One thing I detest is when people say those common phrases - "You'll never have another good night's sleep again!" or "Say goodbye to having an adult conversation again!" or "Say hello to a sagging tush - you'll have have that pre-baby body back!" I heard so many of them before I had Solei and thought they were all true, and I sobbed on the delivery table, unwilling to push because I didn't want this horrible change everyone had spoken of to happen to me.

2 years into motherhood, I sleep like the dead, my relationships with my friends and husband are stronger than ever, and my body is as fabulous as it was pre-Solei. I wish I hadn't heard so much negativity, and I'm so thankful I've learned not to believe the naysayers. My Solei has proved to be the exception to every rule. True, she does drive me bonkers, but with every day I've known her, I've learned how to diffuse her, to redirect her and to get what I need. Lessons that I couldn't have learned anywhere, but right here with her her every day.

I'm so thankful for this this classroom. With every lesson I learn and every roadblock overcome, I am more and more aware of how much my Heavenly Father knows and loves me. And I couldn't have learned it any other way.