Atomic Tonic

I'm trying to come to terms with this blog. I'm trying but all I get is silence. I'm certainly not the first person with a public blog to feel trapped by the...publicness of it all. Writing for no one holds no appeal to me but the possibility of anyone reading this scares me. It scares me because I want to have control over who reads it but that's impossible.

I bought this domain in 1999. I did this and that with it and started some forums. For a while it was more of a 'zine with contributors. Then it was...I have no idea. Then it was more and then it was less. Then I got pregnant with Matilda and for a long time I gave up posting here and posted somewhere else. Mostly because it was a pregnancy/kid/parent blog and my friends didn't care about that and our family did. Then I moved everything back here and it's still a parent/kid blog. My friends don't care and the family does. And because the family cares, I tend to only post about the kids. The surface of life with kids.

How Matilda cooks us dinner in her kitchen all the time and pretends the pizza is a cake and either way it's "really too hot." How she hugs Linnea and tries to pick her up despite our telling her to stop. How she wore her bikini all summer and loves swimming and band-aids and telling me she wants oatmeal for breakfast when 7 times out of 10, she doesn't really. How she dresses herself and currently will only wear 30% of her clothing, including a too small light pink short sleeved t-shirt. We fight over it at least once a week now that it's too cold for short sleeves.

How Linnea is sturdy and strong and laughs the hardest for Matilda. How she eats everything and bounces when she wants more. How she claps and talks and points and pulls her ears when she's tired. How she rests her leg on my chest when she's nursing and kneads my thighs with her feet when she's sleeping.

But the reality is hard. I'm 9 months post partum and still can't get a handle on myself. I still have 10 pounds to lose. I can't reliably run 20 miles a week. I missed the last race I'd signed up for and I'm not positive I'll make it to the next one. This morning I saw a photograph of a stranger running the NY marathon and it sent me into a tailspin of depression. Niclas tells me I spend too much time on myself and not enough on the kids and yet I feel totally overwhelmed with the responsibility of two children. I feel guilty that I want to run an hour a day and I feel worse when I don't run. I'm angry at Niclas for judging my parenting and angry at myself for feeling guilty. I'm angry at my body for taking so long to recover from this second pregnancy and angry at myself for caring. I've tried to count calories and I've tried to eat less carbs. I've knocked out sugar and then cooked foods. I've done shots of olive oil. I've given up and tried Margaret Cho's Fuck It diet. I haven't been on it long enough to stop gaining. I've lost 5 pounds more than once and then regained it in a second. I'm saggy and even after hernia surgery on my belly button, I'm soft and round and my pants don't fit. I look old and used and as much as I try, reading The Shape of a Mother is not making me feel any better. I love my kids but I hate what they've done to my body.

I hate how overwhelmed I feel. The whining of the two-year-old often melts my face before 8 am. It can take two hours to get out of the house and both kids almost always freak out when we finally get back home. I hate that there's always someone to make me feel guilty about something -- buying Christmas presents or not writing thank you notes or not making a decent dinner or being short with Matilda or not getting the kids out of the house often enough -- or tell me I'm doing it wrong. I hate how some days, it's all I can do to pick up toys. I hate how I'm desperately thirsty all the time but can't seem to keep my water bottle handy. I hate that I feel like I fail at everything. I hate that I curse under my breath when Matilda spills a hundred dried black beans on the floor. I hate that she drives me crazy sometimes and I really hate that Niclas looks at me like I'm terrible when that happens. I hate that I gloat when she drives him over the edge and I hear him growl at her. I hate that I resent him for hardly ever getting up in the mornings with the kids. I hate how our relationship has changed since we've had kids. How I feel like when we met he'd do anything for me and how now it feels like pulling teeth if I ask him to get me water.