Safe Place

I am consistently running on an average of five hours of combined sleep at night. Not consecutive... oh no, definitely not consecutive. Double ear infections... twice... in a baby = screwing up his sleeping schedule. Thus inevitably affecting my sleeping schedule. I hear him cry and I feel my way through the dark to his room, running into walls and hitting my shins on the ottoman. When I cradle him back to sleep or pat his back, I'm half asleep and saying silent prayers that this last pat will be the magic slumber touch.

I also have a three and a half year old. As sweet and silly and amazing as she is, there are times that she acts so out of control that I feel at a loss as to what I can do to regain that control. I sometimes get screamed at and hit- and I get confused where that anger comes from and why it's manifesting itself with me. I've had family and close friends, other mothers where Montana has gone over for play dates, and even Marc tell me that she doesn't act like that towards them when I'm not around. We left Montana with my older sister and my mom for a week while we were in Hawaii. After returning, while observing how Montana was talking to me when our kids were playing a few weeks later, my sister informed me that Montana had not been that way with her in any way while I was gone. There were no tantrums, no fits, and rarely a reason to discipline. Initially, that revelation made me feel horrible. I love this little girl more than life. With every fiber of my being. I KNOW she loves me, but why does the worst of her come out under my watch?

At this point you may be wondering what the situation with my son and the situation with my daughter have in common. Well, as I tried to work through the sadness that I felt when I realized that my daughters "special" treatment was something that she reserved solely for me, I came to a conclusion that made all the sense in the world.

When I met Marc, I knew that he was it. Sure, I thought I had found "it" before... and I probably would have put money on that. But, with Marc, everything was always real. I could be myself with him- even if myself was the worst of me. He loved even the ugliest sides of me and that made me feel incredibly safe. I was free to be me completely and he would never judge me, never leave me and always be there to be my refuge from the rest of the cold, hard world.

Now, almost six years of marriage later, he's even more of that for me than I initially realized. I thought about our marriage and how when he has a bad day at work, or its my "womanly time", or when just something is getting one or both of us down, we tend to let it all out on each other.

The world expects you to always push through,

keep your head up,

be a man,

be a lady,

be on your best behavior,

keep it together,

don't show your hurting....

...but with each other, we can stop pushing, hang our heads and cry, be whoever we want to be, be on our worst behaviors, let it all fall apart...and feel the hurt as deep as we want to.

As therapeutic as that is, it's sometimes hard to be the virtual punching bag of another's emotions. Sometimes that's what spouses do- we take the hit for the build up the rest of the world puts on our spouses back. If Marc has a coworker or superior that has given him a hard time, chances are to keep up office etiquette, it's bottled up until the pressure is too much, and when he's feeling safe, the top blows off and I'm the one to pick up the pieces. Same goes for me- when the day is hard, the kids are crying, the messes I cleaned up already five times are being made yet again, the baby pooped out in the middle of Target...and he walks in to a war zone after getting home from work, the top blows off for me and he was just hit with a bomb of emotion he had no way of preparing for.

Now when I say this, I don't want you to assume that there is any physical or verbal bashing of any sort... not that any of you that know us would, but the patience runs short and often, that manifests itself with each other. There's just no more room, no more will power and actually not much of anything left in us to keep a strong face going anymore. We feel comfortable and so we let it all out... even the worst of it.

Marc is my safe place. And I am his.

With this realization, I came to the conclusion, that for Montana, for Carson... for your sweet babies... parents, WE are their safe place. We are there for them to be whoever they are and to love them unconditionally. We are the soft place to land when the world knocks them over. They only know how to be themselves with us. They only know that we are their friend, confidant, provider, caregiver... their everything.

So then, instead of feeling sad about the fact that Montana's worst comes out with me, I decided I love that she feels the closest with me. That I am her safe place.

I love that when she gets hurt, she screams and cries, "I want Mommy!" I love that tonight when Marc took her on a daddy daughter date, he said every five minutes she would say something about me.

And with Carson, I know when he buries his sweet baby face in the crook of my neck to relax and runs his little chubby fingers through my hair, that I am his safe place. I know that when he smiles at me, even though he smiles at everyone, there's a special sparkle in his eye for his mama.

So, I'll take the scattered sleep patterns and the tantrums any and everyday, because nothing feels better than being in your safe place, and I don't want them to feel that anywhere else but in the comfort of my arms.