It’s a well known fact that I’m stubborn. This means that sometimes I refuse to ask for help and get myself so overwhelmed that I can’t do anything but sit and cry. For hours. You can imagine how much fun that is for jparks.

Since Truman’s birth I’ve been struggling over how to balance taking care of him, taking care of the house, taking care of my marriage, and taking care of myself. I wish I could say I’ve figured out the balance, but I haven’t and things like my sanity and marriage have been suffering for it. Jparks is fond of saying that it takes a village to raise a child and while I don’t disagree, I’m wondering what do you do when you don’t have a village to help you?

I often think about my grandmothers, who raised children while maintaining their homes and I can not wrap my mind around how they did it. All I can focus on is that I must be doing something wrong to feel this lost in motherhood. Jparks likes to point out that Truman is healthy and generally happy and that’s what matters most, but it somehow feels like not enough. I want him healthy and happy in a clean house with a mother who is not exhausted and a set of parents that lovingly sit down to dinner every night. Unobtainable goals? Perhaps, but for some reason it’s how I’ve decided life should be. I have friends that seem able to achieve this so why couldn’t I? What part of the equation was I missing that kept leading me to feel like such a failure?

I spent a few days really thinking about how I was feeling towards being a mother and decided that something had to give because the road I was headed down was not healthy. I decided that while I admire my grandmothers and friends that could do it all, I’m not one of them. The first step was to get the cleaners to tackle the pile of clean laundry and the second was to hire a babysitter. While I always knew I would use babysitters to watch Truman for date nights, the one I found will also be paying me visits during the week. It took awhile for me to admit that I need someone to come once a week or so, for a few hours so I can do what I feel needs to be done; wash some dishes, take a nap, write a blog post, get a pedicure, whatever. I figured that if it takes a village to raise a child and I have no village around me, then I would buy myself one.

So there you have it, I’ve been missing partially out of a lack of time for posting, partially because I’ve been so embarrassed by what I viewed as a failure at motherhood that I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, and partially because the lack of sleep has sucked the creativity right out of me. But I’m slowly coming back and from here out I refuse to see what I’m doing a failed attempt at raising my son. I’m doing the best I can and I won’t feel bad about needing help. I may not be super mom but I am being the best mom I can be and that’s good enough.

Recently a pregnant friend emailed me a list of name suggestions because Truman was included on the list. And while finding his name on a baby name list is nothing special, finding it on a list of yupster baby names is. After reading the description of a yupster, a blend of yuppies and hipsters, I had to laugh because despite what I think I am, a yupster pretty much sums up jparks and I.

And since I want Truman to feel like he belongs in this family, I did this to him:

Future Accountant, originally uploaded by whitneybee.

Don’t lie, right now you’re dying from the cuteness.

Saturday I packed up the breast pump and headed out for my first day away from Truman. Brace yourself for this next confession: I loved my day away from him. Don’t get me wrong, I missed the kid like crazy, but the day was super awesome fun. I went to BlogHer Food because you know, I’m nothing if not a food blogger.

Okay, so yeah, not really a food blogger in the slightest bit, but I do read an insane number of food blogs and a lot of the panels could apply to any type of blog, so I decided to go. This decision worked out really well as I learned quite a bit (mostly that I am a blogging slacker) and I met and got to get drunk hang out with some amazing people.

The day started with Tracy and I heading up from the South Bay together. Once we checked in, we found Whitney and Megan. And then, around lunch time, we picked up a fifth: Joy the Baker. This was an incredible group of people to spend the day with as I don’t think I’ve laughed as hard, or as often, as I did on Saturday in a really long time. By the end of the night, as we sat in the hotel room giggling over things that could only be funny to a group of drunks, it felt like we had all known each other forever.

I honestly think the reason I didn’t spend the day upset with myself for leaving Truman was because of the fun I was having with these girls. They helped me feel like my old self and at this point that feeling was really what I needed. Sunday and today I didn’t think about clothes or going to the gym. Today I was content to be at home taking care of Truman because I had been able to spend a day relaxing and just thinking of the glasses of champagne in front of me and not trying to remember when I had last changed a diaper or fed the kid. The day away from Truman did more to remind me that I am still myself than any hour on a treadmill ever could and feeling confident that I’m still me actually made me a better mom today.

I bought my conference ticket thinking I would go and hear some incredibly talented food bloggers talk and I did do that, but I also ended up making some new friends who really helped me feel confident as a mom. That alone was so worth the price of my ticket. Thank you BlogHer for creating a situation where I got to meet this ladies and thank you ladies for giving me confidence.

I woke up this morning feeling rather refreshed and decided to make a blog post. Then I opened my site and it was broken. Well, not broken-broken, just broken temporarily. (Was it just me or was the internet kind of sickly today? First my blog died, then gmail died, and then twitter died. Of course, twitter dies all the time but the other two things were really bothersome.) By the time my site was back up and running I was no longer feeling refreshed and blog post-y. So I’m caving to your cries of “Shut up about the broken fridge and post some baby pictures!” It’s nice to know that no one cares about me anymore, now it’s all about Truman.

This kid loves to wave his arms in the air like he just doesn’t care:

I took him to Target and couldn’t figure out how to deal with him and a shopping cart. I ended up putting him, in his car seat, in the shopping cart, leaving no room for the crap I wanted to buy. I figured out breastfeeding with no issues yet shopping at Target with a baby is baffling my mind. Here he is before I piled him under boxes of cereal and bottles of hand soap:

Whitney came over recently and took some pictures of Truman for me. Here are two of the ones she took, the others are going on his birth announcement and they haven’t arrived yet, so I don’t want to share and ruin the surprise.

Who would have thought that jparks and I would make such a cute kid?

Today was a good day, yesterday was not. Today jparks and I took Truman to Target and Whole Foods and not only did we shop, but we actually managed to eat a meal while out. I know this seems like nothing special but considering yesterday I spent most of the day either in tears or on the verge of tears, I’ll take any small victory that I can.

I knew bringing home a newborn would be difficult, but holy crap it’s really a challenge. My hormones are all over the place, I’m sleep deprived, and while Truman is cute, that kid has got some lungs on him. We’re working on getting him to sleep in his crib, but right now his limit there seems to be ten minutes. And did you know that it’s possible to go through three diapers in five minutes? And that one of those diapers will get used before you can even fasten its tabs?

But it’s not all bad. I’m fairly certain I can fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans. (only fairly certain because all my jeans died holey deaths around the start of my second trimester) A friend gave me a zappos gift card and whenever I feel completely overwhelmed, I zone out for a few minutes while staring at shoes. I’m currently thinking these might be nice to push a stroller in. Or these. Don’t judge me, I love heels and don’t plan on stopping loving them just because I may have to visit playgrounds frequently.

Here’s where I could say something profound about maintaining my personal identity while becoming a mother, but I won’t because that’s not really my thing. All I ask is that you bear with me through these first few weeks of all Truman, all the time and things will eventually begin to normalize around here. I’ll figure out how to easily leave the house to do things again. I’ll go back to whining about things I want, but can’t have. At some point soon jparks is bound to squarely plant his foot in his mouth and I’ll be there to blog about it. Just hang tight until I gather enough sleep to reach those milestones and you’ll be greatly rewarded. Until then, have I mentioned that child rearing is hard? Or that Truman is cute?