This morn­ing, at my MOPS group, our speak­ers were a local cou­ple, and they talked about inti­macy in mar­riage. I know that when many peo­ple think of inti­macy, they think of sex. How­ever, this cou­ple talked about inti­macy out­side of sex. They talked about being open, hon­est, and vul­ner­a­ble with each other. They talked about spend­ing time together as friends and just being. It was great to see a cou­ple mar­ried 31+ years dis­cuss these issues. They also dis­cussed their ear­li­est mem­o­ries of inti­macy as being with their par­ents (her with her mom, and him with his dad).

The more I thought about inti­macy in rela­tion­ships, the more I thought about nurs­ing and breast­feed­ing. It’s a very pri­vate, inti­mate, and open rela­tion­ship that a child and a mom have while nurs­ing. Look­ing at my rela­tion­ships with both K and A, I can say that I really see a close­ness in my rela­tion­ship with K that I don’t have yet with A. Hav­ing spent at least a cou­ple hours a day nurs­ing him almost every day for the past 2 years has def­i­nitely devel­oped that rela­tion­ship. I also see an inti­macy in my rela­tion­ship with A that I didn’t have with K. Because A has been such a high-needs baby, I have so much time with him. It’s also been pretty intense time over the past seven months.

After hear­ing the cou­ple speak today, I began to think about my boys’ future rela­tion­ships, and I hope that in some way, hav­ing this rela­tion­ship with me will be the begin­ning of a life­time of expe­ri­ences that allow them to expe­ri­ence inti­macy (in many ways) with those in their futures.

It seems like I always have 4 or 5 great ideas for blog top­ics while I shower in the evenings. Then, I get out of the shower and *bam* they’re gone! Instead of one of those great thought pro­vok­ing blogs, you get this tonight.

Since A was born, I can say that my errand run­nings and gen­eral out­ings have decreased. Some had to do with weather, but a lot of it has to do with the logis­tics needed to get two kids ready, nav­i­gate nap and lunch time, and get in and out of the carseats sev­eral times.

So, I needed to go to the post office. I had three pack­ages to send. I needed to return some books I bor­rowed from a friend, send some cloth dia­pers to a friend, and return a bag I bought on Etsy. First, we went to Tar­get. That went rel­a­tively well, but my hands were pretty well frozen by the time we got into the build­ing. K was coop­er­a­tive, and A tol­er­ated the stroller bet­ter than expected. We got back into the car and went to the post office. I felt like I was in a com­pe­ti­tion at the post office. I had to address the pack­ages, pack the stuff up, and seal it all. Then, I stood in line, and paid for all my stuff and the postage for it. Just as I was fin­ish­ing up, A decided he had enough. He started to com­plain. Luck­ily, I was able to wheel my stroller out to the car and get him in there before he started a full protest.

I thought I deserved a mocha or a latte from Star­bucks for all my work, but since I’m still dairy free, I decided to pass. Mak­ing them with soy milk doesn’t hit the spot in the same way as whole milk does. I guess know­ing that we did it and we all sur­vived will have to be my reward.

About a month ago, Jason, my hus­band started run­ning on our tread­mill every other day. He started off run­ning two miles and is up to three and a half as of Sat­ur­day. Now, I have never had much desire to run. Occa­sion­ally, I lose my mind, and it sounds like some­thing I would enjoy. How­ever, in my saner moments, I know that it is not some­thing I want to do. In fact, I almost shud­der when I think about it. Even though I would find read­ing the dic­tio­nary to be eas­ier and more enjoy­able, I’m really proud of him for mak­ing this com­mit­ment and stick­ing with it. Ever since my par­ents have known Jason, they have said over and over again how he is the most patient per­son they’ve ever met. One con­ver­sa­tion that I recall with my dad hap­pened after a long, hot game of golf. I think that his patience plays a big part in his abil­ity to be ded­i­cated to a goal that he has. Me, not so much patience and not so much ded­i­ca­tion, unfortunately.

Recently, one night when A wasn’t sleep­ing and Jason was get­ting ready to go run, I got grumpy about his run­ning. I stood in the shower and stewed about it. I had myself con­vinced that he was being self­ish and choos­ing his own desires over being with me or the boys. I was pretty mad at him. In fact, by the end of my shower, I was ready to sit him down and let him know that right now we just don’t have the time for him to be run­ning. He needs to spend all of his evening time with me, with A, or doing work. (How ter­ri­ble does that sound?) Sud­denly, I real­ized just what I was going to tell him. I really felt like God was ask­ing me to dig deeper and fig­ure out where my feel­ings were com­ing from. So, I spent some more time think­ing about it.

I came to the real­iza­tion that me being mad about his run­ning had noth­ing to do with him. Not so sur­pris­ingly, it was about me! I was mad that he was able to stay so ded­i­cated and com­mit­ted to run­ning when it’s some­thing that is very hard for me. I start new projects and hob­bies quite fre­quently. I’m cur­rently cro­chet­ing and quilt­ing blan­kets. I also have terra cotta pots and paint in the garage. I have tons and tons of unread books. I have a blog that I don’t update nearly as often as I should. I have also started read­ing my Bible-in-a-year at least 4 dif­fer­ent times, and I could go on and on! Per­sis­tence is not one of my strengths unfortunately.

My first instinct when I fig­ured out why it was both­er­ing me so much was to go out and make some big com­mit­ments to prove to myself that I can in fact stick with what I start. I’m not so sure that’s the wis­est thing to do though. After some more thought, I think what I’ll do is take some time decide where I really do want to spend my time and energy. Then, I’ll com­mit to doing those things instead of jump­ing onto the next fun idea that comes by.