Sunday, March 9, 2014

Messy Chaos

I have always been the kind of person who lives in organized chaos. Saying my room was messy growing up isn't even the start. I have never been good at being organized. Now that I have three children I am finding it harder to function this way.

So how do you become an organized person having NEVER been one? How do you start to change those daily habits? Where does everything go?

These are the challenges I am constantly facing. I have never been able to keep a "surface" free of clutter.

I have been "researching" how to be an organized person. I understand the whole "put it in it's place or toss it" idea...but that is just it. To me it feels like some kind of foreign idea that looks great on paper but I have no real way of putting it into practice.

I feel like I should develop a 12 step program to getting organized:

Step 1: Admitting you have a problem

"Hello, my name is Yadira and I am a messy person. I can't keep an open surface clean of clutter."

The truth is that being like this is really frustrating. I love looking in home magazines and seeing these beautifully staged living areas. I would love for my children to learn to be more organized. I want to be a better example for them.

I am not really sure what my step 2 would be, but I know what I am going to do: this week is Spring Break and my husband has taken the week off. I am going on a serious purge!

Wish me luck!!!

Friday, March 7, 2014

Quiet Time

Two days a week I have some alone time. My older children are in public school and my youngest goes to mother's day out. The few hours of alone time I have on those two days is PRICELESS!!!

I have come home after dropping the little one off and just stood in the house enjoying the quiet. There is something wonderful about being able to take a shower with the door closed and take as long as I want. I can pick up a book and become absorbed in another world without fear of distraction. Then there are the days I come home and play some music really loud...like really loud. Usually it is music I don't listen to with the kids: Disturbed, Korn, Rob Zombie. (I LOVE these bands.)

When my husband and I got married, we had already talked about the number of children we wanted. Our magic number was 3. I knew I wanted to have them close together so that they would be able to share experiences. (I am the oldest of three myself. My brother is 3.5 years younger than me and my sister is 16 years younger. My little sister felt more like my child than a sibling.)

What is life like with three children under 7? Chaotic, hectic, LOUD, exhausting, wonderful. Having known we wanted three children close together means that you will never hear me say raising them is "hard." I am the kind of person who carefully thinks about big decisions so that I know what to expect. Of course having three small kids is hard, but then again, so is life.

Life is only as hard as you make it. I have found that often if I just change my focus or switch the way I think about something, it will be different. Sometimes even just giving myself permission to let something go and put it in God's hands is enough to turn it around.

I enjoy my quiet time. I enjoy being able to read, watch what I want on TV, look at Pinterest, or even take a nap. I enjoy quiet time more because it is rare in our household. One day my kids will be older and I will have more quiet time while they are home. I think this will make me a little sad; to know that my children are home but want nothing to do with me. I cherish this time while my children are young knowing it is all too fleeting and rare. After all, children are only small once in their lives.



Thursday, March 6, 2014

Migrains

In early April of last year I suffered from an "almost in the ER" migraine. The only reason I did not go was because I have 3 little kids. I laid in bed, in the dark, trying to hold my head together. The next day, I still had a really bad headache. The day after, my head still hurt. For the next 3 months, I had a headache every single day!!! Some days it was a dull throb, others it was piercing. Every single day I was also a stay at home mom. My husband would go to work and I would have to take care of getting 1 kids off to school Monday thru Friday, getting 1 off to Pre K Tue, Wed and Fri and then having a little one everyday. 

I can tell you that during that time, I never felt like myself. In January I had started going to the gym 4 days a week, sometimes 2 times a day. I felt great. I was loosing weight and conquering stress. When the migraine hit, the gym was not an option. I would try walking on the treadmill and my head would start to pound so hard it would make my right eye twitch.

In June I went to see a neurologist. He scheduled a scan and gave me a prescription. He said that the medication had helped other people with a lingering headache. He told me I probably wouldn't really notice any changes for a few weeks. He was right. It took almost 6 weeks before I woke up one day with the slightest of twinges. Then the next day my head didn't hurt. I took the medication for months and then started weaning off.  My medication is not the kind that will make a headache stop; it is the kind that will prevent a migraine when I start feeling it coming on.

By the start of the school year, my head felt better but I felt bad. I had gained back the weight and felt bad. I was drinking a 2 liter of diet Dr Pepper a day. I kept telling me the caffeine was helping me keep the headaches away. I was eating anything I wanted as I continued to give up on myself.

Now it is March, almost a year later. I gave up my soda obsession a few months ago. I found that I felt better if I just focused on water and tea. Now I am working on my diet. I am giving up sweets. I love candy and what I call "sweet breads" (donuts, cake, brownies, basically any sweet carb) but I am giving them up as well. I need to get back to me.

Part of why I feel so lost is that I feel like I am living in someone else's skin. I had begun to love working out. I would go to the gym in the morning for over an hour of cardio. My husband would accompany me to the gym in the evening to do a little bit of cardio and then some strength training. The kids liked the gym play area and never complained about going. We where on a roll and loving it. Now I am terrified of going to the gym and triggering a migraine.

I have a new understanding of suffering. I know how horrible it is to wake up every single day and be in pain. I know how much work it takes to keep going, to keep functioning. I know how frustrating it is to hear people complain over trivial things when all you want to do is crawl back into bed and cry. My husband once asked me what my average, on a daily basis, pain was. I told him an 8. He said that an 8 should mean you are in such pain you want to cry. I just looked at him. YES, I did want to cry, EVERY SINGLE DAY. Yes, it did hurt at an 8 most days. I was lucky to wake up at a 5. Feeling my pain at a 3 was what I considered a good day. This is what scares me and I know I will have to conquer this fear.

For now I am taking baby steps. I will eat better and then begin to work in a little exercise at a time.


I guess it's one step at a time!!!


Oh, here is the pain scale I found the most useful to illustrate my pain: (I could not get the image to upload so here is the link)
http://forums.thebump.com/discussion/8262113/pain-scale





Monday, February 17, 2014

Blog Title Explained

This blog is not about how unhappy I am in my life, it is not about how miserable growing up was, it is more about finding the person I have become without really trying to be "anything" in particular. This blog is my journey to become the best "me" I can be, the grown-up me that matches the ideal in my head.

I am:
a wife - married for almost 13 years, to my high school sweetheart
a mother - my 3 beautiful children are what I always wanted
a stay at home mom - I always thought I would work but life had different plans
overweight - I have a love affair with food...I love it and it loves to hang around my midsection
bad at keeping house - I hate laundry and washing dishes...and cleaning floors
a little bit of a loner - I have never had a giant group of friends I can't live without
scattered - I want to do a dozen things at once...which leads to the bad at keeping house above
a person who sings in their car - really loud
a person who has a happy dance
a lover of music, movies and reading
a sufferer of chronic migraines

What I want to work on:
loosing weight/being healthy - I hate that half my closet doesn't fit me.
being more organized in my mind and in my life
finding my place in my faith - I was baptized Catholic but that was all. I would like to see if my place is in the Catholic faith or perhaps elsewhere.


I believe that being able to evaluate oneself honestly is important. I don't want to take a passive stance to who I am "growing-up" to be. I want to become the driver in my life, not the passenger.

Overall I am a very happy person. I laugh easily and enjoy my life. The things listed above that I want to work on are the areas of my life that allow the shadow to fall over my sunshine. They are the areas that can give me the blues. For someone not used to having the blues, it is really frustrating.

I probably have more things I will think of that I want to work on, but for now I think 3 areas is a good number.

Here is to the scary first step to finding out about me...my strength, my fears, my sadness and my happiness.


Yadi