by Alicia Dowell

I don’t know about you but when I hear the phrase “I want it that way” I fondly start thinking back to my teenage years. I couldn’t tell you anything about any boy bands besides maybe a song. But I have been mulling over this month’s theme wondering what could I talk about. Then like a bell the other day in Michael’s it hit me.

Hubby, Glitter, and I were walking around looking at all the new Spring items. Hubby really was hoping I wasn’t going to buy anything so don’t let him tell you any different. As we rounded the corner, three teenage girls were talking loud like teenagers do. The youngest, maybe 13, popped off this gem: “I want to DIY my life.   You know Do It Yourself.”  My heart went out to her. Does she not realize those awesome Instagram shots just the highlight reels’ people show? Then I literally stopped in the middle of the aisle and broke down in my own head. As I excused myself to an aisle I thought “I do that. I want my life that way. How am I any different?” I have been guilty of looking at the curated pictures and think “How perfect so and so’s life must be. Why can’t my life be this amazing? Only if I had the contacts so and so has, I could do so much, have so many followers, how I could quit my job and do something I love. It would be amazing to have it that way.

As this was going on in my head, I came to realize doing to same thing trying to make everything the way I wanted. I am not saying trying to make your life the way you want is a bad thing but rather basing your life on the curated views of someone else’s life is not cool. My life based on someone else’s is not how I want it.

Today the phrase “I want it that way” means, taking cues about not trying to base my life on so and so’s and remembering to share life even the not so curated parts.

By Adria English

As my pregnancy progressed and my due date loomed closer, I felt nervous and scared. I had no idea how my birthing experience would play out, but I was pretty sure there was no such thing as an easy labor. I especially dreaded the recovery period to follow, not knowing what to expect from my body and afraid I might be unable to resume an active lifestyle or keep up with caring for my home and family the way I wanted.

And so I plotted ways to make my immediate postpartum life function smoothly. My sister Leslie had recommended I stock up on non-perishable and frozen food items, food that wouldn’t require more than a microwave or oven, and suggested making a few meals that I could freeze. I prepared cinnamon rolls, enchiladas, poppyseed chicken and chili, freezing pans or storing ingredients with cooking directions for my husband Garrett to follow later. I stayed on top of housework and laundry, increasing the frequency with which I completed regular chores so there wouldn’t be much time for housework to accumulate. As much as possible, I tried to keep the house, refrigerator and pantry in a ready state, thinking that would make the recovery period easier for us.

“I just don’t like not knowing when the baby will come,” I complained to Leslie one evening as I regarded my hospital bag, which I had constantly unpacked and repacked as days and weeks dragged on and I found myself needing items from it. I wanted sympathy and consolation, and maybe some secret sister intuition into the timing of childbirth. Instead she replied, “You better get used to that. Children make your life unpredictable.” With a pang I foolishly realized she was right. Planning and preparing would only get me so far—I needed also to relax my expectations and surrender my desire to control.

After wondering for weeks if the baby would come early and then accepting we could be as much as three weeks late (“early” and “late” being relative terms), I went into labor on my due date. To my amazement, mere hours after delivery I was able to walk around the room, holding and rocking my baby. I could nurse her and change her diaper. Not only was I able to do these things, but it was expected and demanded of me—demanded by a set of tiny lungs and a little scrunched up face that depicted a world of anguish until appeased.

I was exhausted when we returned home with the baby. Over the next few days I turned a blind eye to the unmade bed, dirty floors, unpacked bags, unsorted paperwork and mail, cluttered counters and food past its prime in the fridge. Garrett prepared meals, shopped for groceries (often deviating from the list I provided) and washed baskets of laundry (the tiny baby is quite the producer of dirty laundry!). Life did and does go on, quite happily, except now I find my personal desires and preferences supplanted by the needs and wants of the baby—and I want it that way.