Family Friday ..... well kind of ....

Things have gotten pretty crazy around my house. With the semester over I thought I would have some more time at home to hang out and chill. But not so much. I forgot about the one season of the year that stresses me out more than winter .... graduation season! 

It has been an array of evening events for the past several weeks, along with events to tantalize the new students we expect in September, student award ceremonies, new student networking, online orientations, all culminating this Sunday with a graduation I must arrive at somewhere around 7:30 am and summer session teaching starting on Monday. In between all of this I have started an internship as a clinical mental health counselor. So, on top of the orientations I have been conducting, there are orientations I am attending. 

Some days I feel like I am in the middle of a tornado, or the eye of a hurricane watching everything whirl around me, balancing oh so carefully so I don't fall in. Of course these are the moments that you need to make sure those around you don't fall in either. The husband, the kids, the parents. I have to admit, I have let a little bit of that go recently. At moments like this you run the risk of taking the people you love for granted, assuming they will always be there. But in the past year several things have happened that make me very conscious of this, a friend's suicide, a family members illness and the way in which she has dealt with it, the separation of a friend's marriage;  and I remind myself regularly to take stock of my life and my world, the people I have to be thankful for and try to, in a small way, let them know, that I know, I couldn't do this without them. 

May is Lupus awareness month. And each year I think to myself that I am going to do something profound to bring awareness and compassion to people with autoimmune disease and chronic (chronic what? stress, pain, exhaustion, frustration, misunderstanding, all of the above). It hasn't happened yet primarily because it coincides with graduation season I have not come up with or executed any grand plan. 

The good news is that I feel healthier than I have in a long time. I think this has more to do with keeping my mind busy, not having time to focus on the fact that I don't feel good as opposed to actually being healthier. The problem of course with feeling healthier and not actually being healthier is that you push yourself beyond what you're physically capable of and you crash - generally on a day you have something you are really looking forward to do. When your body tries to beep in and you ignore the call, eventually it will come to your door and knock until you answer. I am not always good at answering the call. 

For Mother's Day my seven-year-old wrote a poem and it included "mom's favorite thing to do." He answered, sit on the couch. This bothered me profoundly, that this is the way he sees me. I know that in time he will remember all the things we do together (I see that now with his older brother), he will understand why I rest when I can. But for that moment, it hurt (as parenting often does) and created another touch point for me to take stock and prioritize. 

The summer is coming and I tried to come up with a list of places we would go, or things we would do, and I got overwhelmed and tired just thinking about it. And then I found this  - anyone with 2nd grade kids may find this interesting. The Magic Tree House Journal is something you can fill out with your child all year. They have winter, spring, summer, fall scavenger hunts, and questions about what animals you can find in your yard, etc. It is like being on a Jack & Annie adventure. This is a priority over the next year. So next mother's day perhaps this will be on the list of mom's favorite things to do. 

In the meantime, I must get ready for my internship orientation, followed by an event tonight. Tomorrow consists of a family birthday party and errands, Sunday morning is graduation, then soccer, then visiting a car dealership with my older son who wants to buy his own car. Every minute carefully planned and penciled in my calendar. I will let you know how the execution goes! 

Family Friday ..... Mom Guilt

I completely understand that what I am about to write about is a 1st world problem. It is more than that, it is a 1st world middle class problem in a lot of ways. You see, I have choices in my life that other mommy's don't. My parenting choices are made by carefully balancing my needs and wants with the needs and wants of my children, while I also balance the reality that there is a mortgage to pay and food to purchase. There is a lot of balancing, but there are choices.

As I do most of the time I come up with a blog idea - usually based on something that I have observed in my own life, or a topic I am interested in -  I do some research. What are other people saying about this topic, is there something more I should know before I write my thoughts down, has someone said it better. More often than not something I read changes my perspective and makes me look at my idea in a completely new way. This is of course called learning and it is one of my favorite hobbies.

So, as I was about to lament about the time I have been spending away from home recently for work and for classes I came across more articles than I thought I would on Mommy Guilt.

First and foremost I had no idea there was an entire book about Mommy Guilt. I guess I should find solace that there are enough people in the world who have mommy guilt that they wrote a book about it. Perhaps when I have a moment to breathe I may even read it (of course by the time I have a moment to breathe I will be having grandmommy guilt).

Then I found the Working Moms Against Guilt blog. Which I perused for awhile. There were some good helpful hints and some funny posts, but I just wasn't feeling the connection. And then I found this post and I connected (I especially like the woman who would like to leave it all behind so she can hang out on a farm with her kids and raise chickens; and the woman with the list of 9 worries that can flit through her mind in a minute) and I grinned. I see it on the playground on those rare occasions I get the chance to pick up my son from school. We check each other out and you can almost see it in our eyes .... why can't I be as put together as she is or why isn't my kid as well behaved as hers, what would I have to add to their conversation?

I should say this now. When I raised the first child on my own I was working just hard as I am working now. I had the support of my parents but I was doing it on my own - working full time during the week, working part time weekends, and going to graduate school. And I don't remember having this much guilt. Maybe it is because he is on his own now trying to find his own way and I don't see him nearly as much as I would like to that this time around I have the feeling that I need to do it differently, that I need to do it better. Who knows. I am in graduate school again (because I have no idea what it is I want to be when I grow up) and I am taking a class on Life Span Development. We were talking in class about the "good enough" parent. That really we are going overboard with the idea of perfect parenting and that sometime it is ok to just be good enough. But I digress as I usually do.

So I continued my quest on information about Mommy Guilt and I found this blog entry: Jesus Canceled Your Mommy Guilt Trip. And I remembered my blog last Friday about being a "proud failure" and I thought, maybe this is what I am missing. Again, I admire people who have this kind of faith and I am not entirely sure that a little more faith in my life wouldn't be a bad thing. But I don't know if I can look at my day and not have pride in my child if it was a good day - or be angry with myself if it was a bad day. I just think trying to live my life in this way would make me more guilty because I would just fail miserably at it. And so I moved on.

I came across two articles in Parenting Magazine that caught my attention - one was Kissing Mommy Guilt Goodbye, which basically said we know you feel this way, cut yourself some slack, get over it and move on (great .... inability to move on, one more thing to feel guilty about .... check). But the other one I found more interesting - Mom's Dirty Secret. It talked about the things that mom's don't admit - sometimes we like one kid better than the other, or we aren't really happy with the person our teenager became, or my favorite, parenting older children is actually harder than parenting toddlers. I didn't see any of these really as secrets. Moms I know talk about stuff like this all the time. In the end we always end with the reality that we really do love our kids even if we don't like them all the time and really that is all that matters. And so I moved on.

I went to the Huffington Post - and I was amazed at the search results I got: 1 1/2  pages of links to stories about mommy guilt, and I started reading. This one caught my attention, Why do you have to work mama? I was really with her - wondering how do you explain to your child that work is more than just a pay check; that it is rewarding and fulfilling, without making him feel that you would rather be at work than with him .... until she started talking about the perks of her job that included free airline miles and points that got her family free vacations. That just made me angry because those free points and miles are one of the reasons airline tickets are so expensive and I can't go on family vacations and so I moved on. But post after post that I read were from really high-powered career women talking about problems that I just didn't understand, nannies and traveling and breast feeding in public. I would start reading and think ... ok, yup I am with you and then it would all fall apart because their mommy worlds are so far from mine. And so I moved on.

 

I went back to Google and started from scratch and that is when I came across this short piece that brought it all back into perspective for me: The Real Mommy Wars. And this led to my first paragraph and the reality that mommy guilt is a 1st world, middle class problem. I work because I have to, I am back in graduate school to fulfill my sense of self-worth, my career grants me opportunities that lower socio-economic moms don't have. It may not be free airline miles or nannies, but it is a flexible schedule when I need it, healthcare and a home.

 

So what brought me to this quest to overcome mommy guilt? Looking back it is silly really .... it was a field trip to go apple picking. When I sent in the permission slip for my son to go on the trip, I checked my calendar and had the day free from meetings and work responsibilities, so I happily checked the box that said I would chaperone. I thought notices were being sent home to confirm who was picked to chaperone and I had not gotten one. So I went about my business, scheduled several meetings for that morning and went about my week. When the day of the field trip came my son informed me that he forgot to tell me that I was chaperoning. I went into immediate panic. Why hadn't I confirmed whether or not I was chaperoning myself? Could I reschedule my meetings? And if I couldn't what irreparable harm was I doing to his psyche? So I logged into my e-mail, rescheduled what I could, cancelled what I couldn't and showed up at the apple orchard. It began as a great trip and he seemed genuinely happy to see me there. Until he stopped listening. Which of course frustrated me because I had scrambled to get on this trip, the least he could do is not require me to repeat the same thing over and over while he completely ignored my plea for him to behave. I knew he was excited and I didn't cut him any slack - which in retrospect had more to do with me than him (he really wasn't behaving that badly, just not listening). So the day ended with him sitting on a bench, not playing with his friends because he was angry with me. So instead of hugs and kisses when he was heading back to the bus I got "I wish you didn't chaperone." Ouch .... knife right to the heart and tears all the way to work.

 

He of course got over this more quickly than I did. This morning I got hugs and kisses because I sold enough candles for him to get the prize he wanted from the PTO fundraiser. And on Friday nights he gets to pick where he falls asleep; tonight he wanted to fall asleep in my room watching his favorite show Too Cute - and tonight I got hugs and kisses. I don't think I completed my quest to define, alleviate or conquer mommy guilt. I don't know if any women in our culture can. But we do the best we can with what we have and realize tomorrow is another day. A day in which the whole family is apple picking and there will be apple donuts, apple cider and laughter for all.

Family Friday .... Let's Talk Halloween

 

 

 

It is once again my favorite time of year .... crisp air, apple donuts, county fairs, no AC needed and still no snow! It is the perfect intersection of all my favorite things! But my favorite thing about this time of year is Halloween. I realized that I have written blogs about Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but not really about my favorite holiday of the year!

There are several things about Halloween that disturb me:

• It is the doorway to winter, once we pass Halloween it is all downhill from there.
• The commercialism - while I have to admit I am guilty of supporting the purchase of costumes, decorations and goodies it has come to the point of ridiculousness when a bag of 100 pieces of candy costs $9.00.

 

But let's put those annoying things aside for a moment. Last year we had a Halloween party for a handful of 6 year-olds. It was unfortunate that we planned our party for the same day that hurricane Sandy hit our shores. But the kids had a great time in the mist (it actually made it a little spooky which would have been great had it not been so cold).

 
Here are some pics from the big event:

 

 

 

These are the "body part toss" game. My husband made the coffin out of pallet wood and we purchased the body parts at the dollar store. We hung a scary face guy in the coffin and the kids tossed the hands and feet at it and then they came out of the bottom.

 

 

 

 

This is the "Frankenstein Toss" Don't ask me how mu husband made Frankenstein because I have no idea. But we made Jell-O brains and Jell-O eyeballs for the kids to toss in Frankenstein's head. The morning after Hurricane Sandy he fell over and all his brains fell out!

 

 
These are the kids searching through the coffin of guts (colored spaghetti & noodles) so they could find the key to the box that holds the goodie bags (and yes, my husband made these as well).
 

This is one of the Frankenstein Jell-O brains that got stuck in a spider web! LOL!

 

This is a cemetery made out of what usually is our garden.
 

 
And then the food:

 
 

 

And our puppy Bumblebee - who we dressed up as a Bumblebee (she was not pleased)!

 

 

 

So what can we do this year - I may have mentioned once or twice (or three times) that I am a Pinterest junkie. I have an entire folder of Halloween crafts and food and cool things to celebrate the dead and the harvest and the beginning winter. I have already purchased costumes for myself and the now 7 year old!



This is my costume



This is the 7-year-olds costume

So it is beginning to look like a really good Halloween. I have picked out the links from Pinterest below as definite things to do. I am really hoping that the weather holds out and we can have another party in our yard.



Meat Hand

Halloween Graves

 

Spooky Front Stairs and a Leg Eating Pumpkin ..... spooky

 

I know I am usually all about making vaguely profound observations of the world in which we live. My observation for today has to be that sometimes you just need to have some fun. Halloween makes me feel like a little kid again, especially when I go through the candy bag and pick out my favorites (don't judge .. you know you do it too!). Perhaps remembering our dead with carved pumpkins, and blue ninjas, and gory meatloaf was not exactly what the Celts had in mind 2000 years ago - but what would life be without this crazy celebration. Boring I think!



Family Friday ..... the words we teach our children

I have been thinking a lot about language. It started the other day when I heard a news report about Newt Gingrich referring to President Obama as the "food stamp" president and the implications that has on the topic of race in our country.

Then last night the 5-year-old brought home the greatest book "Wild About Books" by Judy Sierra. It was the greatest play on words and used "big" words in a way that children want to know what they mean. We read it so many times last night that my throat hurt:

"As the cheetah's new novel began to take shape,

He read chapters each night to the Barbary ape;

And although the gazelle couldn't spell very well,

Like everyone else, she had stories to tell.

Imagine the hippo's enormous surprise

When her memoir was given the Zoolitzer Prize."

And this morning a friend shared a blog on Facebook: "Being Retarded"

It really made me start to think about how we teach our children to communicate. I hear it everyday -

"That is so gay!"

"You are so retarded"

"She is such a douche"

And don't even get me started on the "N" word!

When I was a kid I was called a lot of names. I was different and sat alone a lot. There were a lot of reasons for that and I have gotten over them. But I remember very clearly coming home from school crying and my mother saying:

"Just tell them sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me"

I tried it and the name calling got worse because now they wanted to make me hurt. And words can hurt!

When I was a kid bullying was about hitting. It was about fear of being physically hurt. Grown-ups, school officials, the police were not interested in name calling. They were not interested in groups of popular kids communicating their disdain for the "weak" in hurtful words. I recently read an article on verbal bullying and it was interesting to me that we now have a word for it.

But the reality is parents allow it. Parents use those phrases. Parents allow children to watch "reality" television that use those words. Parents allow their children to use those words.

I heard a small child once call another small child a "dumb ass" and instead of reprimanding the child and telling her not to use bad words or call another child names; the mother giggle and thought it was cute. The child then ran around the table singing "your a dumb ass."

I believe in free speech! I am a liberal after all. I believe that when I am out with my children and I hear this type of language I can use it as a learning moment and explain why that is not appropriate, why it is hurtful (usually loud enough for the other parent to hear me - I admit to being passive/aggressive). I believe that I have the right to turn off a television show I find offensive. I have the right to not allow my child to watch a show I think has hurtful language and poor treatment of others. That is my job as a parent. It is a job that I love!!!

Parenting is a job that gets harder everyday ..... televisions, Internet, smart phones ..... we have less and less control over what information our children consume when they are not sitting directly in front of us. And then there are the children in school whose parents think it is cute to hear their child say the word "dumb ass." Those children have much more influence on my children then television ever will.

So I combat the language issue in my home - when we talk about each other, when we talk about others. I teach that words can be as hard as stone .... and they should be thrown about with caution ..... after all, we are all people who live in glass houses.