Now Playing: Baby Einstein's Baby's First Moves
Isabelle loves it.
The weather is looking quite dreary. Apparently it's going to rain for the next week at around 0°C the entire week. Hey Mr. Frost, if you're going to get that cold...for fucks' sake, you might as well snow.
This year (like every year), Christopher and I made our resolutions on New Year's Eve. His was to be a 'better' husband and to lose 50lbs by the end of the year. Mine was to practice 'Affirm, Accept, Criticize, & Control'. Yes, the quote actually came from this Christian book of Devotionals that I got from my mother in law for Christmas. I guess the idea/directions of that quote are basically to Affirm; to listen without judgement and to support or find the good in what your spouse is trying to accomplish, and to Accept. We all know how hard it is to accept ANYTHING our spouses do sometimes. I mean, we're women. Typically, 5 million things could be going wrong at the same time and we still can manage to feed the baby, stoke up the fire, answer the phones, and follow what's going on between Derek and Meredith on the TV. We just know that guys don't work that way and it's hard not to enable them to 'do better' or 'do what's right'.
And honestly, what is right? Nowadays, I'd be damned if I knew. Like we're able to discern if we're 'right' and they couldn't be (or something).
I guess that segways the next two: Criticize and Control. These are things that both Men and Women (believe it or not) both are at fault doing. Women just seem to have a tendency to abuse 'the privilege'. There is a fine line between constructive criticism and controlling by manipulation and plain criticism. The main difference seems to be the subjective implication of negativity. Most people aren't able to discern the two very easily causing arguments, emotionally hurting someone, etc.
Anyway, my current solution is to, screw the whole criticizing: positive AND negative. I pretty much just avoid the chance of a negative confrontation just tell the truth. This is what's bothering me. 'I'm upset that the wood chips have been collecting in front of the wood stove because Isabelle goes around in her walker with bare feet. I don't want her to be hurt.' Even though I know it's because HE wears his GOD DAMN shoes in the EFFING house - he doesn't need to hear that. I'm sure he knows that already and just bringing up this idea probably makes him feel bad. Reducing the amount of redundancy just to make someone feel bad about it seems to make the situation a bit lighter.
I'm not a rocket scientist...I'm just a Mom.
Anyway, the baby is a stirrin', so hopefully I'll be able to finish my thought process later. Until then, Ciao. :)
