Martyr Dearest.

What I am about to say is something that I neither admit easily or am proud of: I believe that I secretly make things harder than they need be so as to seem more {OK, at all} saintly.
Let me elaborate. I have a tendency to take on the whole world, and then some, and place it squarely upon my shoulders. One would think that being married to a kind and sensitive man such as my own, who asks to help out with said burden on a daily basis, would help with the crushing i sometimes feel from all of that pressure. You would be wrong. Instead, without being totally conscious of it, I tend to shrug off the offers of help with a "no, I have this taken care of" and in my head it appears as very saintly behavior to be taken as "oh look at that, my wife is AMAZING and can handle everything without any help whatsoever, she's so clearly super mom. The best mother ever!". This gets me nowhere that I want to actually be.
Because the truth is, I am no Super Mom...she doesn't exist, and even if she did - she wouldn't be me {i was in a bathrobe with my hair in a rats nest until 4:oopm yesterday}. I could use the help that's being offered! Why don't I just accept it? I don't know exactly. I suppose it's because, like most people born between 1960 and today, I have been raised in front of a television with make-believe moms who can do everything without any help at all {see also: June Cleaver, Marion Cunningham, Claire Huxtable, Carol Brady, Elyse Keaton}.
I realized last night at about 3:30am that I am doing myself a terrible disservice. Since we got back into town a week and a half ago we have been having trouble getting Amelia back to her normal schedule {throw in teething, and getting older and you have a recipe for disaster}, basically she has spent the last 9 days in a crying rage spiral and instead of sleeping from 8:30pm-7:00am she has reverted back to waking every 3 hours at night...something that I quickly got un-used to. All week I let the frustration of dealing with my screech monkey during the day without help {when Cheyenne is at the office}, cleaning the house, making dinner, putting baby to bed {i tell a better story so i usually put her to bed since I like her to have a few books read to her before she turns in}, and then the waking up at 12am, 3am, & 6am. Finally after an entire day of screaming {on Amelia's part, not mine} I finally let all of those frustrations burst and while we were eating a spaghetti dinner I started to sob thanks to a cry from the baby. The straw that broke the camel's back indeed. Cheyenne asked me to please share what was bothering me so much and i unleashed everything {i don't get sleep yet you get 8 hours, i hear her scream all day while you get to have adult conversations with colleges, i make dinner while you play video games} and {rightly so} I was met with explanations for everything {you asked to take the entire 8 hour shift since i had to go to work, you don't let me in the kitchen, you begged to be a stay at home mom} and the obvious bold truth - my husband offers help at every turn, and I always turn him down...of course those offers are going to slow. Seeing my tears, my husband did everything to calm me down then {once I was stable - fragile, but stable} he took the reins and cleaned up dinner, put the baby to bed, and poured me a glass of wine. Then when she woke up at 3:30am {of course the night that I ask for help is the night she only wakes up ONCE} without so much as a sigh from me, Cheyenne was up and on his way to take care of her. It was at that point that for the first time in over a week that i exhaled...and i realized how nice it felt. I'm lucky to have a husband who wants to help and is such a great man and father, I just need to let go of my dreams of sainthood and accept the help that he so readily offers..being able to take a moment for myself and just simply release that breath that I'm always holding feels too good to pass up.