How to enjoy a rainy Saturday!

Another semester has come and gone. This was a rough one! I took three classes, taught one class, worked full-time and played mommy. Again it was such a blur I am not sure what I actually learned ..... grades will be out soon so that will at least tell me what I managed to convince my professors I learned. 

I had all sorts of plans for today, finally plant some flowers and clean the front yard were on the top of my list. After the winter we had my little flower garden and my strawberry patch are looking pretty sad (the pictures are of my garden seeing better days! If I took a picture now it would be a barren wasteland). But mother nature had other plans for me .... cold icky rain. This is probably for the best, because my body has just realized that a lot of the pressure is off and it just wants to sit on the couch and do absolutely nothing all day! 

How does one accomplish that with an active seven year old in the house? Sometimes it is ok for your child to spend a rainy Saturday doing nothing! This is something that parents today seem to struggle with. In a culture where life is so scheduled and we are told not to let them watch too much television or play too many video games we forget that sometimes it is ok to just chill. Right now he is on the phone with his best friend while they both play Club Penguin. I am in the other room having my own private Walking Dead marathon. 

One of the things that I have learned in my classes over the past two semesters is that we as a society have put too much pressure on our children at too young an age. Too many parents want their children to do everything that they think will give them an edge in adulthood - sports, drama, music lessons, church, academics, the right friends, every second of every day scheduled to the hilt. Add to that bullying, the isolation caused by social media, and an increasing acceptance of violence in our communities and what we have done is raise a generation of very young children with anxiety disorders, eating disorders and other mental health problems.

The conclusion I have come to is that it is ok to spend a rainy Saturday doing nothing. Allow your brain to relax, spend the day curled up on the couch watching Scooby Doo. Maybe bake a cake or do some coloring ... maybe not. And most important for a completely stress free Saturday .... stay in your pajamas! 

After I ended classes on Thursday (I handed in two 10-15 page papers, gave a group presentation & did an individual presentation) I got a massage on Friday. I have talked about this before, but I think it is worth mentioning again. If you have lupus or even fibromyalgia I can't recommend massage enough! While it seems counter-intuitive to recommend massage for people who have chronic pain and inflammatory disease I am convinced that my monthly massage is what has kept me going for these past 4 months of classes and craziness. 

I get my massages at Massage Envy and they are FABULOUS!!! What I like most about them is that they asked about my health history and my health concerns on my fist appointment and matched me with a therapist who specializes in working with people who have chronic pain. She asks me before each session if I am in a flare or if I am having really bad fibro pain and she adjusts my massage accordingly. Most of the time, 99.9% of the time, a massage makes me energized and focused and ready to take on the world! But yesterday I was in such rough shape that it just made me tired and I don't know if it was the sudden release of energy, but I actually ended up with a migraine. I only mention this because people with chronic pain who start massage therapy need to understand that every once and awhile you may feel worse after a massage the next day. This does not mean it isn't working, it just means your body is in a different place on that day. 

The last thing I want to mention today before I embrace my day of NOTHING is a blog that is worth the read. Still Life is written by my cousin's wife. I have had people tell me that the way I handle lupus is inspirational - I don't see it. When I think of someone who is an inspiration, this is the kind of person I think about - and when I feel like giving in to self-pity, this is the kind of person I look to. If you have the time it is well worth the read! 

So, here is to starting a summer full of inspiration ... gardens and sunshine and beaches and travels ..... with an occasional rainy Saturday of absolutely nothing sprinkled in the mix! 

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.

Being a proud failure on a Friday night .....

To say that lupus has reared its ugly head is an understatement. I went to the doctor today with what I knew was an attack of Pleurisy (which is very common in lupus patients). It started last weekend and I was convinced I had pulled a muscle and it would go away in a couple of days .... but it didn't. Now this is entirely my own fault. Since the semester started I have been going into work super early (7:00 am) twice a week to teach, then working my 35 hours, then one night a week I don't get home until about 10:00 pm because I am taking a couple of classes. Throw in a couple of work events, some Parent Teacher Organization meetings, soccer, homework, grading paper ... plus not eating right and you have a recipe for a lupus flare.

Now before you get all "I'm so sorry to hear it" I do not see this as a bad thing. It is my body's way of saying "Leann, what are you thinking?" And so for the weekend I have a Doctor's note which requires me to take it easy, and I will. The only thing that aggravates me is that I was really looking forward to the Boston Ballet perform on the Boston Common this weekend and I may not get to do that (my husband, the sweetheart that he is was going to go with me - but I think he would rather be bringing me avgolemo soup on the couch). Lupus is what it is. There is a great blog I follow called Despite Lupus. It is great for a couple of reasons - she reminds me I need to take care of myself & she reminds me how ok I am because her lupus impacts her life more than my lupus impacts mine.

So I have spent most of today sitting on what the boy calls the "love couch" and I should be grading papers or reading for class or something productive. But I have taken my Tramadol for the pain and my brain is a little too fuzzy to accomplish that at the moment. But I am pretty proud of myself. I have managed to do my nails ... nothing fancy just a little sparkly and purple (my signature color).

And this is the second blog I have written today (because I have to do something). I got watch a bunch of Walking Dead to get caught up for the new season and I plan on some NCIS episodes this evening. So while I am bored out of my skull I am proud of the fact that I have managed to go to the doctor and accomplish some stuff and I have managed to still be awake. Overall good day.

So the failure part. I have been surfing Pinterest and I have been searching for some new blogs to follow. And I have realized a couple of things:

Pinterest is designed to make average moms feel inadequate. Let's be honest - not a lot of men follow Pinterest. And what you find are things like:

• How to make your sidewalk chalk

  

  Pinterest nails - so much better than mine!

• How to make your own dishwasher pellets
• How to make your own pumpkin scented paint for your kids
• The endless ideas for Elf on a Shelf!
• How to make furniture out of found pallet wood
• How to make your own SportCream
• How to make your own natural house cleaners
• And don't even get me started on doing your nails!

It makes moms who don't have time to do all these things feel like failures - and add a chronic illness like lupus to the mix and I feel like spending my day sitting on my couch will completely destroy any chance my son has to grow up a well adjusted human being. Because let's face it - I am more likely to go to the dollar store if we need sidewalk chalk.

 

Then there was the searching of Blogger. I find the same thing in the blogs I am flipping through. Many of them written by stay at home, very religious moms. Now before I get a bunch of flack I have nothing against stay at home religious moms. Their blogs just make me feel like there is a utopian standard of parenting that I am just not living up to. And I have to wonder what is behind the blog. No family can be as perfect as some of these women claim their families are. In my sick twisted brain I am wondering what secrets hide in their closets and if I follow these blogs will I begin to see the cracks in the façade show.

 

Friends who know me and read this are apt to think I am crazy - when I have the energy I try and craft with my son and have him in the kitchen and go on nature walk adventures. More often then not however, I get a bunch of stuff to do crafts and it ends up sitting in my craft closet "until next time." I also like to have big, crazy parties - but what people don't know is that I spend the week before and the week after on the couch!

 

So now that it is Saturday morning and I have spent my time "resting" I have to get up and get ready for my day. It is birthday party day. No, I did not make a gift or a cute gift basket - I got my son's friend a Hallmark card and a gift card to the toy store. By the time I get home I am pretty sure I will be too tired to go to the ballet - but may be able to finagle some Halloween crafts before I get my butt back on the couch. In between I may manage to read a chapter or grade a paper. And in all likelihood it will be a pizza dinner - not with homemade sauce and dough, but delivered from Dominos, followed by some cuddling on the couch and a story before bedtime. This is our world, and really that is just fine by me!

Livin' the Dream

Tomorrow is Easter for the majority of the Christian community and for that I say Happy Easter. I am Greek Orthodox and go by a different calender so this year Easter is not until May 5th.

 



http://www.fullhdwpp.com/holidays/easter/kissing-bunnies

Growing up I always had two Easters. Tomorrow is what my Yia-Yia would call "American Easter" (which I never understood since it is celebrated all over the world). American Easter consisted of brightly colored eggs and the Easter Bunny. I have continued that tradition. Once this blog is done we will be coloring eggs and preparing for the big basket that will make the six-year-old smile come morning.

 

Greek Easter was all about the resurrection of Christ (I will write a blog about those traditions a little later).

 

But my blog today is about livin' the American dream. Sometimes you lose sight of what that dream is all about. But today is one of those days where it is apparent. We are by no stretch of the imagination wealthy. Every month it is a guessing game as to whether or not all the bills will get paid and it is a balancing act of what we can do ... and what we can do without. Having said that we are fortunate.

 

First - it is a beautiful spring day here! And after what seemed like an endless winter this would have been enough to make me smile - but it got better!

 

Got up this morning and felt good (another thing that is always a guessing game). Went and did a little shopping for the arrival of the Easter bunny. Came home and started cleaning out all the winter from the front yard. Cleaned out the strawberry patch, put up the new bird feeder, cleaned out the leaves from under the porch.

 

My husband was cleaning up the back yard. Getting ready for the upcoming house repairs (our house is over 100 years old and was "repaired" by someone who should not have been allowed to fix things so there are always repairs). Our house is "that house" on the street. The goal for the spring is to get siding done and some new windows so our house will be all one color (now it is three - the original color, primer and some unprimed shingles). But we have big plans for a lovely English cottage in the middle of the street.

 

The six-year-old was in the side yard with his scooter and his dog. Then we went for a walk to the park with the dog. Now back at home - the boys are playing on the computer, I am writing a blog and then we will color eggs.

 

This is livin' the dream! Not having the biggest house, not having the newest phone or the most luxurious car. It is about being happy with what you have and enjoying a beautiful day.

 

So happy spring everyone - live your dream .... whatever that may be.

UPDATE:
This year we decided to use the Wilton technique for coloring eggs. Not bad!

 

What they do not tell you about parenting ......

Grief:Noun \grēf\

1.       obsolete: grievance

2.       deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement

a.       a cause of such suffering

3.       an unfortunate outcome : disaster —used chiefly in the phrase come to grief

a.       mishap, misadventure

b.       trouble, annoyance <enough grief for one day>

c.       annoying or playful criticism <getting grief from his friends>

Synonyms: affliction, anguish, dolefulness, dolor, sorrow, heartache, heartbreak, sorriness, woe

When you become pregnant you begin getting all kinds of advice .... how to keep your children safe, what to feed them, the best schools, the best toys, discipline tactics, and on and on and on. And as your children get older there are books on how to parent toddlers, preschoolers, tweens and teens. How to get your kid in a good college - how to raise a good man - how to protect your children from bullies, drugs and bad influences. The list goes on and on.

And as a parent you are so caught up in the moment.

• PTO meetings, soccer games, basketball, day trip adventures, playdough and legos and hot wheels.
• Finding that one Christmas present they want more than anything in the world ... only to end up under the bed by summer.
• Kissing boo-boos, cleaning throw-up at 3:00am.
• Scouring E-bay to make sure all the school supplies have the same theme (at least on the first day).
• Planning birthday parties on a budget.
• Handing out discipline and responsibility even as the once loving eyes become daggers.
• Keeping track of playdates, music lessons, practices, doctors appointments, school projects.
• Remembering that you are their parent ... not the cool grandparents ... not the best friend.
• Overcoming your own fears so they can dream and grow.
• Going without so they don't have to.

Trying to photograph every moment because it is something new, or something special or something that makes you so so proud - even when they begin to refuse to smile.

Moments of a lifetime.

• Taking away the monsters in the dark .... mending the first broken heart ..... the first steps, first words, first sleepover, first school trip, first broken heart, first ride as a passenger in their car.
• Hoping that your child survives with minimal pain and heartache. Saving money all year for vacations that are fun - yet educational.
• The moment when your child poses with his diploma in hand.

But no one prepares you for that one moment. That one random day when you are getting ready for work and your child looks you in the eye and says "I want to take control of my life and I can't do that here." And at the end of the day he is gone.

• No one prepares you for the moment of grief and loss so strong you can't breathe.
• No one prepares you for the anger so strong you want to break things and hurt someone so they feel your pain.
• No one prepares you for the desire to grab your child and beg them to stay. The need to apologize for all the mistakes you know you made no matter how hard you tried not to.
• No one prepares you for the echo of the empty room or the empty feeling in your chest because your heart has been ripped out.
• No one prepares you for the sadness and the loss that turns again to anger because deep down you know they aren't hurting the way you are on their new adventure of freedom - the first real adventure without you.
• No one prepares you for the gut retrenching physical pain that makes your chest hurt when you realize someone else has taken your place.
• No one prepares you for the feeling of guilt - because logically you knew this day was coming at some point ... and you know he needs to live his own life .... but you are selfish and don't want him to go.

Where is the book that prepares you for this?

• Where is the book that prepares you for the overwhelming fear because you will no longer know if he got home ok?
• Where is the book that prepares you for the panic because you won't know if he is in pain - emotional or otherwise?
• Where is the book that prepares you for tears that come so hard you can't catch your breath or those moments that catch you off guard and you are crying for no reason?
• Where is the book that prepares you for the deep sense of loss so strong you are sure it will never go away?
• Where is the book that teaches you how to maintain your need to stay connected at all costs .... with his need to not talk to you everyday?

What is the grief process for a child that lives 15 minutes away ..... so close but so out of reach. The advice I get now is give it time. But I have had 18 years to prepare for this moment .... and it just wasn't enough time.

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.