This makes me happy!

My sister put this on her blog, and I LOVE IT! It reminds me that I can do it all..in sequence. I think of how difficult life seems sometimes with 2 kids so close in age. I wonder how these moms who have 5,6,7,8 kids even breath. I am scared to death of being even more overwhelmed than I feel now. Until I can balance what I have now, I am not going to add to my family. This article however, is a reminder to me. This is where I am NOW. Do my best NOW, BE my best later. I am content with my 2 kids and I am going to learn to balance every aspect of my life better, and then, when I am ready for a new challange (like adding to my family) I will take it on full force. This is my "sequence" for the time being.

Mormon women can do it all -- 'in sequence',
By Tiffany Gee LewisTuesday, Apr. 28, 2009, Meridian Magazine.

I sat in the car recently with my husband and a colleague of his. Both are getting doctoral degrees in journalism. The two were talking about their latest publications in scholarly journals. In an attempt to include me in the conversation, my husband's friend turned around and asked, "So, what do you think of all this?""What do I think?" I stuttered. The question caught me off guard. "I find it fascinating. I was -- am -- a journalist." It wasn't coming out the way I wanted. "I'm just happy to support my husband," I finished lamely.It was the end of a long day with four little boys. My face was white as a sheet, the car littered with peanuts and mashed raisins. I was running on maybe three hours of sleep. What did I think of all this? That I would have loved to attend a day of lectures and hobnob instead of battle a 3-year-old over potty training and slap a million peanut butter sandwiches together.I had to remind myself in that moment that I was where I wanted to be because I chose this.It's a luxury my grandmother and previous generations of women did not have. In most developing countries, women still do not have that choice. But I chose to marry young, finish my degree and jump with both feet into motherhood.It doesn't make it easy, but it does make it easier, on those long days and during those long nights, when I watch friends and my own husband lap me in their educational pursuits; when I return thick Steinbeck novels to the library unread -- not for lack of desire, but simply because I never found the time to crack open the beloved pages.I chose this, right?I put aside tempting internships and graduate school and attractive freelance opportunities because I wanted to raise my kids the way my mom raised us. It was a choice -- a luxury, really. Then why, at times, do I feel so uncomfortable, and squirm a little, in this mothering outfit I picked?Is it my own pride, which looks at the social trend to: Get educated! Get rich! Then have kids; be as smart and strong and feisty as your husband. Or better yet, do it all: go to school, work, run a home business and raise a brood of children at the same time.I recently read a book called "Silences" by Tillie Olsen. Olsen delves into reasons why writers stay silent during certain periods of their lives. In particular, she focuses on women who are "silenced" by child rearing, highlighting the fact that before the 20th century, nearly all women authors either never married or were wealthy enough to afford child care. Olsen writes from experience, as she was "silenced" for years as she raised her four children.It was an uncomfortable read for me. I thought of my notebooks filled with first chapters of novels, half-written poems, and of the nights I squirrel away with my computer trying to eke out a few sentences of intelligible thought.Every spare moment (as spare as moments can be with four children) becomes a weighty decision: Do I fold laundry or write? Play Legos with my son or write? Read my scriptures or write? (Or, as I am doing now, type with one hand while a baby sleeps on my chest.)And the truth is, either way I feel guilty, as guilt is just par for the course in motherhood. I don't want my children to remember that their mother was always tucked behind a computer screen, but neither do I want them, as children are wont, to think that the purpose of my life is to orbit around the center of their universe. There is no pat answer to this.The only consolation I heard recently was a quote attributed to Brigham Young in which he said: "Mormon women can do it all, but they need to do it in sequence."For every woman, that sequence may be different. I have to tell myself that there will be years for reading books and writing novels and getting that advanced degree -- years when I will wait for little voices calling my name, and they will not be there. There will be a time when I will go to tuck small children in bed, and find that they have grown into able men. One day, every single Lego will make it into the box and stay there.For now I have to remember that I am not silenced, that I am simply in a stage of life that requires more hands on the ground than with a pen and paper. These are years for storing away memories of tiny hands, dimpled cheeks and the freshness of childhood. I can do it all, I tell myself. But, right now, I am doing this.