It's a Graham Life

52:2

Motherhood is:

LEARNING TO LOVE.

We are all  born with an innate ability to love and and a need to be loved. As a newborn, the feeling of love starts by having simple needs being met, to feed when hungry, to change dirty diapers and to just simply be held. As babies grow there is even more love to share by playing, kissing, laughing and spending time with them. Love is simple, a subconscious act, but how do we teach it?

At the age of three, the act and ideas of love seem to be coming up quite a bit around here. When something does not go her way (ie: “No you may not have a cookie before dinner.”) Giyana very quickly throws out “You make me sad mommy, you don’t love me anymore!” There are also times when she decides to take her love away. If it’s time to turn off a movie before nap time I get “I don’t love you anymore mommy”. While I always reply with “OK well I still love you”, I do wonder where she gets these feelings and words from. I can honestly say that I have NEVER told my daughter that I don’t love her anymore no matter how frustrated she can make me. So what is “love” to her?

Now that Giyana shares the love that mommy has with younger brother Jaxson, it’s important to me that she knows that the magnitude of my love will never change. I find my self making sure to have one on one time with her daily by doing things that she loves to do together. It’s also important to me that she love her brother unconditionally. Now I know, from experience, that growing up with siblings there will always fighting, arguing and yelling, but there MUST be love. This is why from the very beginning we have instilled in Giyana to Love her brother. “Always take care of your brother and love him because he is your baby and he loves you”. To this day, with all of the loving and not loving conversations, I have never heard her say anything negative toward her baby brother.

She loves him, and it is wonderful.

52:1

Motherhood is:

A JOB

And I love my job.

    While some people may criticize or “hate” on the stay at home mom, I wish for one week they could trade me places and actually see all the “work” that goes into staying home. If you are doing it right, staying home can be very challenging, and sadly we do not get paid for it. Yes, we do stay home and don’t have to get up and fight traffic to clock-in to a job, but we do have to get up and face our day like so many others and there really is no clocking-out. Through all the laundry, breaskfast, lunch, dinner, crying, more laundry, diapers, potty training, breastfeeding, tantrum throwing and more, staying at home is a job (if not a life-long career) and I want to be very good at it. This year I plan to set my alarm Monday through Friday, shower, put on makeup and get dressed just like anyone else would for their job. I plan to have schedules and to stick to them. Although some days may seem impossible (who doesn’t have a bad day?), staying home is definitely a blessing to me and our family and I am so happy I get the opportunity to spend this short and amazing time with my babies.

This picture was taken when Jax was only 1 week old. I just love how Giyana is looking at him like he is just the coolest thing since Mickey Mouse clubhouse! This is when my job changed from being a mommy of one beautiful baby girl to two adorable little babies. And boy, did staying at home get harder! More diapers, more laundry, more crying, but most importantly there was also more laughter, more joy and much more love.

OK, so I am three weeks late in starting this project but I am so excited to do it! One of my favorite blogs I follow is by what I like to call a “professional” mother. Now I know that a mom is a mom and technically we are all “professional”, but this mom seems to really have it all together. She is very inspiring to me and is the source for a lot of my motivation for actually doing this blog! Her name is Shawna and her blog is here. When I first started reading about her life, I came across a project she was doing that I will participate in this year called Project 52. Every week we will be taking a picture that responds to a phrase. I plan to answer the phrase “Motherhood is…”  making this project about the relationship I have with my babies. I think by the end of this I will have not only a better understanding and appreciation of motherhood but also I will be able to see all that I/we have accomplished as a family this year. Now, the ultimate goal of this project is to get me to take more pictures every week and get better on my photography skills, but just for this week I am using a picture I have already taken about 6 months ago. It is one of my very favorites and it just captures one of the first moments when I really felt like a real mom, now that I have two.

I am 3 weeks behind so I will be catching up in the next few days and from then on I plan to post every friday! Here we go!