Keeping Score

Here's a Fun Fact before I dive into a semi-heavy topic: I just sawed off and consumed about four cookies worth' of dough that I had mixed up and frozen in a roll for later use. And I... I don't feel sick at all. It was delicious and now I'm also a little Awake! I feel like it probably says something a little worrisome about the state of my stomach that that much raw dough did NOT make me queasy.

So now the semi-heavy. Last night Jim and I got into- well, not an argument, just a discussion that turned into a discussion using somewhat prickly and sharp voices. It started with him remarking, not for the first time, about how nice it would be if I would actually feel compelled to get up with the alarm in the morning, so that I could help HIM get up with the alarm instead of slamming it on snooze, zombie-like, over and over again. He is a very deep sleeper. Deep like I often worry about burglars and fires and medical emergencies that would require him to wake up suddenly. He is fully capable of getting up, walking to the dresser to turn off the alarm, having a conversation with me about how he really must get up now, while still remaining technically unconscious.

But. I don't HAVE to get up until the kids do, and so I usually don't, because while I am not AS deep a sleeper as Jim (ever since the days of babies and nursing,) I am still by no means a morning person or a naturally early riser, and neither are my offspring. They have never been up at the crack of dawn like most kids- they usually wake up between eight and eighty thirty, so that's when I get up, too. The downside of this is that they're usually not fully settled into bed for the night until eight thirty or nine, which is, like, HOURS later than a lot of kids I know. However since I am not at all a morning person and never feel like it's really morning until the sun is up, this late-waking, kind of late-to-bed schedule has always worked out for me pretty well and I've never felt compelled to change it.

In the beginning I thought it was the good mama thing to do, because all the books about nursing on demand said to find the baby's natural rhythms and let them dictate how your day goes, if possible. And for me it WAS possible, so that's what we did. Both my baby's natural rhythms were to stay up kind of late and wake up kind of late. But now I realize that the days of internal infant timetables are kind of over, and it would probably be best for us all to be waking up and starting our day together. It would also be good for Addy to get used to waking up around seven if she's going to go to preschool in the fall.

I've had this mental conversation with myself many times- as well as actual verbal conversations with Jim- about how I REALLY MUST get up earlier and get our day going sooner so we're not still in pajamas and washing breakfast bowls out at ten AM. And how it would really help Jim to feel a sense of "Hey! It's morning time!" if the rest of the house was getting up too. But I guess the morning me is much more selfish than the daytime, rational me, because I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've actually followed through on those conversations.

So Jim has a very reasonable point and it is not a wholly selfish request at all. Yet my immediate response was to begin listing the things I wish HE would do for me that often go undone. My list included more intangible requests, like more compliments and praise and more cuddling and physically affectionate gestures (um, of a non MARITAL nature- I'm talking about snuggling on the couch here, people.) And these were also not completely ridiculous or unreasonable requests- affection is important to me, and sometimes it's hard for me to FEEL loved, even when I know quite well, mentally, that someone loves me, without the little romantic gestures more often observed between dating people than people with children and mortgages and slowly leaking pipes in their laundry room. (WHICH HAHA HA THERE'S A WHOLE 'NOTHER POST!)

What's bothering me about my response is that it's so SCORE KEEPY. Why can I not just hear a request/complaint, especially one that is not really accusatory or mean and certainly not unfair or unreasonable, and just try to meet the need, if possible? Why do I always get so defensive and then feel the need to make sure the other person knows what THEY do wrong, too? My points may have been valid, but they weren't things that I was feeling any urgency about discussing until HE started a discussion about an area in which I could be more supportive of him. SO what? Have I just been mentally storing up every little slight and wrong to have on hand for ammunition in just such a discussion? That's... not cool.

You know that passage from Corinthians that lots of people have read at their weddings? The Love Chapter? I'm pretty sure there's a part in there that says "Love keeps no record of wrongs."

Guess I need to work on that a bit. Dang it, I resolved not to make any New Year's resolutions and yet they just keep smacking me in the forehead.