The light bulb went off sometime yesterday: the hardest part of being a mom is that I’m still me.

I’m still impatient. I still demand my own way. I’m still rigid. I still value getting everything “right” over seeing the beauty in messes. I’m still too hard on myself. I still set unrealistic expectations. I still have latent anger. I still jump to worry as an initial reaction. None of that was excised when they cut me open and pulled out a baby.

Rather than extinguishing them, parenthood has a way of taking each of those characteristics and magnifying them to epic proportions.

So God, in his epic wisdom and sense of humor, made me the wife of someone whose stock response to everything from “Do you think he’s too warm?” to “Why is his spit-up purple?” is “I’m sure he’s fine.” The other day, when I had yet another meltdown (think Andy from The Office throwing wall punches over a missing cell phone), I told TH that maybe I need to re-darken my counselor’s doorway. He replied, “Or you could just pump a bottle and go to the mall.” TH is from California, where they apparently dole out mellowness in the hospital nursery, but he’s also just more of a positive person than I am.  Parenthood has a way of taking our differences and magnifying them to epic proportions.

Sunday, we were trying to leave for church. TH held The Kid as I tried to squirt his reflux medicine into his tiny mouth, and since he was wearing the Ralph Lauren onesie that a dear friend gave him, most of the Prevacid came back out and onto said onesie. Of course. I gritted my teeth and hurled out a house-rattling sigh, and I felt TH looking at me, taking in all my craziness. Which only made me more anxious. Because when I look at someone like that, I’m judging them.

What he does is look for ways to make things easier on me.

While uptightness is my currency, language, and constitution, he is calm and level-headed. He balances me out. And I like to think I do the same for him–I mean, who among us couldn’t use more crazy in their lives? But what I really like to think is that our balancing act will pass on to TK, who will not be afraid to get his clothes dirty…or put them in the washing machine later on the correct cycle.

I am a creature of routine, not adventure. But this pressure cooker of life with a newborn, and every day of life subsequent to it, is meant to be nothing less than an adventure. Which means that I get to be either the crazy lady on the sidelines of the game yelling out instructions to players on the field who aren’t listening, or I have to get dirty myself. Now that TK is here, and the three of us are a family, there is more than ever at stake. In his wordless silences, I watch his face and see the blank canvas that he is; I know that one thing he does not need is thirty-four years of cultivated anxiety heaped upon his perfect features. So I take deep breaths, and I ask others for help, and I pray, and I remember that a sense of humor can be life-saving–and I call to mind this scene. And I laugh and tell TK that, by God’s grace, I won’t put all my stuff on him. Then I remember that I will make a million mistakes, but that’s okay, because I’ve already made a million and not a single one has gone unredeemed. Which is how I got here in the first place.