It's not suppose to be this hard...

"It's not suppose to be this hard."
I cried, trying to get Nick to acknowledge my needs without taking a total breakdown.

It was the same old song and dance.
We would be fine and happy, until pressure mounts and I get fed up.
Maybe I yell, maybe I give him the silent treatment, either way, we go to bed not talking and wake up not talking.

I'm mad at him for not seeing my needs.
I don't know why he doesn't talk to me.
I guess he's mad at me for not talking to him, he needs me to talk.

We dance around each other all day, not speaking, being happy with the kids but underneath tired and stressed. It usually lasts 24-36 hours.

We will wake up the next morning, I will ask why he's not talking to me, I will cry and beg him to see my stress before it totally boils over and gets to this point.
Maybe then we could avoid this whole thing all together - I always think.

It's not suppose to be this hard.

This is the easiest we will ever have it, I'll say.
Two working parents on parental leave at the same time.

People look at my life and think how privileged and easy it must be.
And honestly, it is, I know it is.
But that doesn't mean its not also hard.

I'm the type of person who is always in competition with people.
I want to be the hardest working, the most tired, the one with the fullest plate.

My family always treats me like a spoiled brat, the kept women.
"You're so lucky to have Nick!"
"Nick is so hands on."
"You work? yeah, right."
Ha ha ha.

I don't know why they think that.
Maybe it's because Nick and I met so young so we've taken care of each other.

I was already working at the post office 4 months when I met Nick.
19 years old I was attending Dalhousie University,  worked retail in the evenings and worked backshift at the post office overnight.



Nick worked at McDonalds, having just dropped out of Community College for some electrical engineering or something, he was enrolled to start Business at Saint Mary's University in the fall.

It was July and I went to a party at a mutual friends house.
Nick was there.
We had attended the same high school, graduated the same year and I knew who he was but I didn't know him.

I thought he was cute so we talked and he walked me home at the end of the night.
I had to work the next day at all my jobs so I didn't stay too long.
I remember adding each other to MSN the following day and that was pretty much that.
We were dating.



As our lives ebbed and flowed, Nick would go back to school, I would continue working at the post office.

Backshift for 3 years, evening shift for a while, full time letter carrier.

Nick didn't love love Saint Marys, he decided to go back to NSCC (Nova Scotia Community College).

He finished his business program there, he applied to jobs and ended up getting one that took him to Saskatchewan for 6 months.

I had bought my first home at this point, was a full time "mailman" and would stay in Nova Scotia wait for him to complete his job training then we would move wherever his work told him he had to go.



That place was Newfoundland, Canada.

We were there for 5 years.

The first 6 months I took a leave of absence from the post office so I could wait for a post office job to open up near our small Newfoundland town.

This was the start of those kept women, pampered life jokes.

An opportunity did open up about an hour away from our home so I snatched it up and was back at work. Commuting over an hour each way was not ideal, those Newfoundland highways are treacherous, whether moose or winter, it's all deadly.




After a year of that commute we found out I was expecting Elliott.
And the morning sickness started.
And it never stopped.

I was letter carrying, which meant walking around all day with my barf bag in hand.
But that wasn't the hardest part, the worst part was trying not to puke while making my commute each day.

I drove around with a small bathroom garbage pail under my right armpit.
It wasn't safe and my doctor put me off work.

Que, lazy homebody, Holly's a kept women jokes.



Eventually we ended up back in Nova Scotia.

We had Noelle and it was a carbon copy pregnancy so I was put off work again.



2019 baby Nilah!

Our 3rd and probably last baby.

You guessed it!
I was put off work.

This was a tough year, Nicks dad passed away, we juggled a lot of balls.
I was pregnant and sick, 2 kids at home, Nicks family home had to be cleaned up and sold.
The Realestate market in Halifax was really hot so we started thinking if we flipped his family home maybe we could make a small profit and we could do something we had been dreaming of doing for the last 6 years...




Maybe Nick could take a paternity leave with me.

(Canada offers up to 18 months off of work to new parents, partially paid.)

I would take the maternity leave portion and then a year unpaid.
Nick would take the 9 months paid leave his work offers.



THIS IS A DREAM SCENARIO.

I know it is, and we are both so thankful for this opportunity.

Knowing now what we know, I'm not sure how we would have made it work any other way.

We are both at home all day, every day.
That means we can juggle the night time feedings, school, hockey, swimming, birthdays, meals, laundry, cleaning, bedtime, baths, WHATEVER.

You all know how crazy life is and we get to juggle it with 2 sets of hands.
All in, all the time.



So then..
why?
Why do we still have the silent standoff?
Why is life so hard when it's not suppose to be this hard right now?

Honestly, because it just is.

Life is not a competition.
I need to shake that thought.

You cannot look from the outside and think you know everything that goes on in someone else life.
You don't get to tip your scale because you worked 40 hours and someone else worked 38.
They took sick leave, you didn't.
They have help that you don't.

We are all struggling.
We all handle work loads and life loads differently.

Life is hard for us right now, 3 kids 5 and under is just. so. hard.

But I'm thankful for every bit of it.
And very soon Nick will be back at work, I will still have some leave left and although its going to be hard I'll figure out how to make it work.
Then we will both be back at work and we will figure that out too.

After all our relationship started off on MSN....
we've figured out every social networking, texting tool thrown at us since then.
I'm betting we can figure out almost anything.  ;)