Whatever Works

Youth gone mild

These days, I've been thinking a lot about growing up.  Since I haven't officially given myself license to do so, I've been having some serious conflict with myself.  One side of me gets tattoos without a care in the world because I'm 37 and don't need to answer to anyone.  The other side of me is afraid to tell my parents about them.

But I'm sitting here at 1 AM - sick as a dog with some stupid virus or something- feeling like I'm 87.  Old words like salve and ointment and hot water bottle are flowing through my head making me think I need them all right now.  This is the first time I've felt old in years.  But still, I want my mommy.

My thirties are so peculiar.  When I was a kid, people who were 37 were ancient old.  They were our parents' age.  They were NOT cool.  They had grey hair and drank white wine spritzers.  But now I'm 37 and I feel pretty darn young.  It's a strange feeling.  I sometimes just stare at my kids in awe, wondering how it's possible they are mine since I'm only 12 at heart.  I still like to climb trees and ride bikes.

Hey.  No matter what your age, you're only as old as you feel.

I've come to a conclusion:  I'm not old and I never will be.  I might not be as spry as I once was, but I'll certainly try to be for as long as this body will let me.  I have come up with an exact description of how I feel.  All of us thirty-somethings who still rock out in the car with the music blasting and windows open and still can't believe we have driver's licenses , we are the Youth Gone Mild.

 

Are you threatening me, Time magazine?

At this point, we've probably all seen the photo of the mom breast feeding her son on the cover of Time magazine.  If you haven't, it's a picture of a very pretty young mom standing next to a chair that holds her son who's feeding from her breast.   It's not provocative or anything.  Besides the fact that the young boy's slumped shoulders are telling everyone he's had enough and wants a nap, the picture's really no big deal.

Over time, I've seen several magazines showing women breast feeding their children - National Geographic and  Vanity Fair to name two.  I think it's beautiful and wonderful.  That picture isn't what's bothersome.  If that mom on the cover wants to breast feed her baby until he's 45 years-old and has a milk mustache on his real mustache (I stole that from a Facebook comment I had read because it is awesome) that's her perogative.

What makes me so mad I could spit fire is the headline that goes along with it:

'Are You MOM ENOUGH?'   - with the "mom enough" part written in huge bold bright red letters.

All day today, I've been bothered by this headline.  It's made its way under my skin.  It's festering in there with all the other terrible back-and-forth bullshit that comes along with differences in parenting opinions.  It's making me itch.

I don't care how you raise your kids so why do you care about how I am raising mine, Time magazine? Oh wait...you're not a parent.  You're a magazine.  You have no soul or feelings.  You can just throw out insults with no repercussions, because you're not human.

Since you're just a pile of paper held together with staples, I'll fill you in on how humans (specifically moms) think.  If you throw out a question about the way we do stuff, it makes us wonder why you're asking.  It forces us - without wanting to- to question our abilities and compare ourselves to others.  We constantly want to be sure we are doing the right thing.  Even if we act like we don't care, we do.   Not because we need to be better than other moms, but because we need to know that we're doing right by our kids. 

There is no tell-all manual that lets us know the real rules of parenting.  There is no end result where we can sit back and say, "WOW!  I did a great job on that kid."  Sometimes we use outside sources to give us an idea of our progress - children's school report cards, well visits at the doctor's office, happy compliments from strangers... things like that.  Otherwise, we have to just keep plugging along doing things the best way we know how, with no knowledge if it's the right way or wrong way.

So when you slap us in the face with a bold bright red question like 'Are you Mom Enough?' it feels like a threat and it hurts.  Mom enough for who?  For you?  As stated before, you're a magazine.  What kind of answer are you looking for?  It seems you're not looking for an answer. You're just looking to make a few bucks by riling up your audience so they'll buy your magazine.  You're trying to instigate debates between moms who believe in different ways of parenting.  You're trying to cause fights.

It's a shame, too, because apparently the article that goes along with the picture has some good information in it.  I'll never know, because I'm not going to read it. Instead, I plan on having a wonderful Mother's Day with my family who thinks I'm mom enough.  Whether you think that's the case is none of my concern.

 

 Here are a couple more opinions from some awesome moms I know:

Stephanie at moderndaydonnareed.com shares Are You Mom Enough?

Kelly at theturnipfarmer.com also shares Are You Mom Enough?

I wasn't going to write about this, but...

..I'm finding it nearly impossible to write about anything else until I get this off my chest: I got a new tattoo this week.  No, it wasn't a quick decision or some sort of dare.  It is something I've wanted my entire life.  I have others which also have meaning to me, but this one holds the most in my heart. 

I've always had a thing for trees.  They're strong, beautiful beings that can withstand a ton of horrible weather and still grow beautiful leaves, flowers, fruit.  Their roots hold them in place and keep them grounded while letting them blossom into the tallest, widest thing they want to be.  It's completely understandable to me why they symbolize family in a lot of situations.  Family trees, finding your roots, etc. 

My husband knows about my love for trees- red maples to be more specific.  He gave me the most beautiful red maple as a wedding present almost 11 years ago.  We planted it at the house we lived in at the time.  It was such an organically symbolic gesture of his love for me...  I didn't ever have any doubts about marrying him, but when he gave me that tree I felt like nothing could stand in our way.  We were unstoppable.

Our marriage was just beginning.  We traveled.  We had parties. We always laughed a lot.  Soon later our daughter was born.  We played in sprinklers near our tree.  We took pictures and held the tree as part of our family, too.  Our daughter knew how much we loved her.

Soon later, I became pregnant with our second child.  This time, it was different.  Something didn't feel right.  I was happy to feel another baby in our future, but I had these terrible feelings that it wasn't meant to be.  I was afraid the entire time.  I visited the doctor several times with these worries.  Everything was fine, he said.  Until it wasn't.

We lost the baby at about 9 weeks.  I thought it wouldn't bother me, because it was "only" 9 weeks.  Bullshit.  Not only did it bother me, it crushed me.  I felt like a shell.  I remember mindlessly going into the kitchen for a snack and picking up one of those prenatal mommy bar things.  I opened it and took a bite and immediately broke down on the kitchen floor.  I didn't have to eat them anymore.  I was no longer pregnant.  

My daughter was little when it happened.  She was OK.  She was sad for Daddy and me, but she wasn't really sure why.  She knew the baby had gone back up to God, but she didn't really have a handle on what that meant.  I'm glad for that.  

It took me a while to feel comfortable in my own skin again.  I was afraid to go through that type of empty pain another time.  My loving husband patiently waited.  I finally accepted the emptiness and learned to use it positively.  2 1/2 years later, we had our son.

The four of us make a good team, I must say.  We don't all like the same things all the time, but we live in harmony.  We're like different parts of the tree.  Our pasts are our roots which got us here.  Trunk, branches, leaves, flowers, fruits... it's beautiful.

Soon after our son was born and we decided to move, a strange thing happened.  We had just decided to sell our house when we noticed part of our little tree was dying.  We tried to take care of it and nurse it back to health, but it couldn't be saved.  But the strangest part was, we weren't really sad.  It felt like it was supposed to happen.  The day before we packed up to leave, we looked outside to see a couple tiny saplings under our tree.  Of course, we dug one up and brought it to our new house.  It's planted outside right now and doing great. Our first tree moved on, just like we did.  But we were able to take a part of it with us onto the next chapter of our life.

Back to the tattoo.  As you can imagine, I got a tree.  It's as symbolic as you can get when it comes to tattoos.   I drew it to represent my family.  It's my family tree and I love it.

Do you see what I see?

I'm sure every parent thinks this way.  My kids are different when we're alone.  They let go and act natural with me.  They take off their shoes and walk barefoot through the house with relaxed shoulders.  They graze the fridge for interesting snacks like black bean dip and carrot sticks.  With others, they straighten up and speak quietly.  They smile and act shy.  They open up only on occasion.

I wonder which version is truly them.  Is my son's snuggly human crack-up disposition the real deal?  Or is he being true to himself when he's at school and I can't see?  Does his best friend in the world know him better than I do?  Does my daughter sing the Star Spangled Banner with feeling as she walks to the lunch room?  Am I the only one who can read her mind? 

They're still little so I think I'm seeing them in their truest form.  They still feel at home when they're at home.  I know they are growing and soon the tables will turn.  My arms could soon repel them as much as they attract them now.  I'll only think I know what their favorite colors are or what type of music they prefer.  I'll undoubtedly find out how wrong I am with some snippy backtalk or cold shoulder.

So right now, I'll just ponder it and not really worry too much about what my kids are like when they're not with me.  I don't need to be a fly on the wall.  I'll save that worry for their first dates and job interviews.  Hopefully, they'll both still come home and tell me all about them, too.

When it all goes to poop

  I grew up as one of two girl siblings in my family.  My sister and I weren't sterotypical girlie girls or anything, but we were girls.  For the most part, we didn't either break or fit any mold.  We were just people.  We liked both nail polish and playing manhunt in the back yard.  As a matter of fact, I don't think I ever really noticed the difference between boys and girls until I was in school and started chasing a boy named Anthony around the playground to kiss him.  Otherwise, the difference between boys and girls was just a matter of what type of bike you rode - you either had a bar across the frame, or you didn't.

But now I have a boy of my own.  Boy, oh boy, do I have a boy. 

My daughter came first.  While it was hard to get used to having a child, I didn't realize how EASY she was until my son came along.  Having a boy has opened my eyes to a whole different world.  He's a good kid and makes us all laugh every minute, but man...the POOP jokes!  Ever since he learned to talk, it's been about poop: 

He likes me to check out the bowl when he's done to see the cool shapes he's made. 

"Look, Mom!  I pooped out a castle!"

He likes to point out how certain things look like poop.

"Wow, doesn't the picture on that lady's shirt look like it has poop on it?"

Anything that doesn't smell like marshmallows or cherry ice pops smells like poop.

"Mom, what are you making for dinner?  Cuz it smells like poop."

He uses it as a term of endearment.

"I love you, Poopymommy."

He uses it when he's upset.

"Aw, poop.  I dropped my cherry ice pop."

He compares every word to poop.

"Hey!  Ice pop sounds like ice poop!" - (I almost chimed in with a comment about poopsicles, but I decided I'd better not.)

He removes words from sentences and replaces them with poop - like the Smurfs do, only much less smurfy and much more brown and icky.

"It's so poopy out today.  Let's have a picnic."

He laughs at himself saying the word poop.

"Poooooooop!  HAHAHA!!!  Poop!  POOP!  Hahahaha!  ... poop."

Thank goodness he's the cutest thing alive.  I just want to hug the poop out of him.

Big Grandma's piano

Going to my grandma's house was always a big ordeal to my sister and me when we were growing up.  She didn't live close by.  It would take up an entire day that could have been better spent wearing our play clothes, getting dirty and smiling.  We had to be proper at Grandma's.  We had to be ladies.  We ate cream of pumpkin soup and roasted lamb with mint jelly.  We used the correct fork and didn't put our elbows on the table.  We did NOT ask for seconds during dessert.  We did NOT ask to be excused until everyone was finished eating. 

We wore our Sunday best to Grandma's because we thought she expected it.  We treated those visits as pure torture.  Don't get me wrong, looking back at those days I can see our error.  But we were kids...we didn't want to sit in the parlor drinking tea.  We wanted to be outside exploring the possibility of fairy houses and mud pie eating contests.

The one thing that kept the visits bearable was a beautiful baby grand piano that my grandfather bought as a gift to Grandma before my dad was born.  We would sit there on the bench pretending to know what we were doing.  I'd hit two low keys back and forth imagining Cinderella running down the castle steps as the clock struck midnight.  We'd  look through the piano books and find 'On Top of Spaghetti' and sing at the top of our lungs.  We'd open the piano bench and find tuning forks and pitch pipes and more books with foreign musical languages in them.

Once we found a book that had the song 'Yesterday' by the Beatles in it.  Immediately, we were drawn to it; wondering why our proper grandma had a book with a song by a rock band in it.  It was mesmerizing. 

When my sister and I became adults, my grandmother aged along with us.  My grandfather had passed away long before and she had lived alone for most of my life.   But as time went on, it was becoming apparent that moving in with my parents would be a good idea.  We all wondered how it would be, considering we always were so proper during visits with Grandma.  She would see how we (gasp!) really live. 

It was undoubtedly uncomfortable for a little while.  Not just for us, but for my grandma, too.  She was so used to having such privacy at all times.  At my parents' house, she was constantly in the company of another person.  At the time, my sister's first child was toddling around doing normal kid stuff.  We tried to get her to understand that Grandma was her great grandma, but that quickly translated to my niece calling her Big Grandma.  When Grandma seemed OK with it, that was the first time I realized how wrong I was about her my whole life.  She started watching Spongebob Squarepants with my niece and nephew.  She said "yeah" instead of "yes".  She wore pants.

She had always been an enigma to me up until she lived with my parents.  I was always afraid to be myself around her.  I honestly don't know why.  When I would visit her at my parent's house, we had the most wonderful talks about marriage and God and the world... she loved me so much more than I ever understood as a child.  We just didn't know how to communicate it well when we were both younger.  As we both moved on to different parts of our lives, she became more like me and I became more like her.  She let go of a lot of mannerisms that she held onto, and I snatched them up to keep for myself.  Yin and yang, I suppose.

My grandma passed away 5 years ago and I miss her every day.  The things she taught me have stuck.  When my kids slop around their dinner plates with their napkins on the floor, I think of Big Grandma.  I explain to the kids how to properly cut their steak and where to put the knife when they're done. 

And I play her piano that now sits in my front room.  She gave it to me at one of my biggest turning points in life.  My husband had just asked me to marry him, and we had bought a house - far away from my family.  I was scared and nervous, even though I didn't mention it.  That piano soothed me then, as it does now.  I'm not a piano player.  I took lessons as a child, but never became good at it.  I just like to sit there and play the three songs I know...re-thinking all the time I spent at Grandma's house.  Wishing it all back again.

Just a couple reminders as to why your life is good

1. You have the abililty to make a hockey game out of paper and straws.

2. You can navigate away from this blog and find knowledge and beautiful pictures of ANYthing you want to learn about or see right here online.

3. Just think about a little kid doing a belly laugh.  Or eating something crunchy.  Try not to smile.

 

4. It's almost Spring which means it's park season.  No more spending money at indoor places to keep the kids busy.  They can run outside in the FREE air!!!  *Bonus*- They might start taking naps again.

5. If when you're doing laundry, you notice that the clothes you're putting into the washer still smell pretty good...you're pretty blessed.

6. You might be the person who figures out why yawns really are contagious.  Think about that!

7. Someone loves you.  You probably already know that, but in case you didn't - there it is. 

8. If you really want to, you can do anything you want today.  You really can.  Don't think you can't.

9. Your kid might be the one to change the world for the better one day.  In fact, he or she might already be doing it RIGHT NOW.

10.  Going to the movies still exists and the popcorn is fantastic.

11.  You have the ability to make people smile.  Doing something goofy or just smiling yourself will do the trick.  Make sure you laugh at yourself, too. 

12.  EVERYTHING is funny.  It might be hard to see sometimes, but find the humor in everything you see or do.  It will make your good life even better.

13. We didn't get burned up yesterday from the solar flare everyone was talking about.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.  And in case you're curious, I'm one of the ones that loves you. :-)

The longest shortest week ever

It's been one of those I-can't-believe-it's-only-Tuesday kinda weeks.  But at the same time, I can't believe it's already Friday.  Isn't it funny how time can feel like it drags on endlessly, but then you can't seem to find it?  I swear I was just sitting here trying to figure out what snacks we have for the kids' lunches this week, and now it's over.  I'm a little worried, because I don't remember a lot of it.  Sometimes, it gets so busy that I just go through the motions until there is nothing left on the schedule.  Then I sit down and usually fall asleep before whatever show we're watching is over.

I don't like it.

Looking at the calendar of this past week, it was jam packed with TONS of really exciting stuff.  Sunday we had dinner to celebrate my father-in-law's birthday.  Monday I found out I'd be doing my first real interview with a real person in real life and basically drove myself batty reasearching him.  Tuesday I celebrated my friend's birthday with her in Atlantic City, came home to interview the real person, then went back to my friend's house to witness a singing chicken telegram that her mom got for her.   Wednesday I worked on the story that was to accompany the interview.  Thursday I cut out 25 Lorax mustaches and made 40 cupcakes that looked like Truffula trees and Things 1 & 2. 

Even writing that was hard.  All because I can't remember it.  I rushed through all those things without stopping to see how wonderful it all is.  I made it into 'work'.  Making dinner, packing lunches, getting the kids ready for bed - that's supposed to be the work.  Those exciting things were supposed to be the extras.  The fun stuff.

Thank goodness today is Dr. Seuss's birthday.  Time to stop.  Time to reflect on the greatness of being able to DO all these things.  Time to cut loose and be a little a lottle Seussical. 

I made my kids green eggs and ham today.  My daughter dressed up like the Cat in the Hat for school.  I revisited the cupcakes I made yesterday and made them SHINE.   I went overboard when I didn't have to -  I needed to.  I needed to see my kids smile because of something I wanted to do for them. 

Now I can sit here and think back to this crazy week - singing chicken and all - and know how blessed I am for all the good things in my life.  And how absolutely fun it all is.

Letter to my daughter on her 18th birthday (about 10 years from now)

Dear sweet almond-eyed beauty,

I'm writing this to you now, while you're still 8 years old because I love you.  Of course, that will not have changed by the time you turn 18, but I'm currently experiencing a wave of pure joy and wanted to let you know about it.  I can picture you at 18... possibly in your college dorm or maybe still up in your room... either way laying propped up on your elbows on your bed - feet swinging up in the air while you read this.  You're probably biting your cuticles, too, just like you do now.  Old habits are hard to break.  I know, because I'm 37 and still bite my cuticles, too.

As I write this, you're 8.  You are beautiful and in full charge of yourself.  You know what you like and don't like.  You listen to Daddy & me.  You have insight.  You have humor.  You have a smile that melts me every time I see it.  You are a perfect mix of both extroverted and reserved.  You have wonderful friends who complement you to a tee and vice versa.  

I hope when you are reading this, that you can remember what it was like to be 8... play practice, going to church on Sunday & CCD on Monday to prepare for communion, soccer practice, your little brother annoying you and at the same time looking up to you with his huge blue eyes, reading Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary, eating spaghetti tacos, roller skating in the driveway...

I hope you look back happily at it all.  Because I have to admit something to you -  I don't know what I'm doing half the time.  You're my first shot at being a mom.  I hope I don't mess it up.  One of my biggest fears is that you end up hating me because I didn't do something right. I know you'll end up having bouts of disliking me from time to time because of you might not like my decisions.  What kid doesn't hate their mom sometimes?  I have agreed with myself to accept those times as long as you know that I tried my best.  I promise you I always will.

I can't see the future, of course, but I can tell you this:  if you stick to the life you're leading now, you're going far, my dear.  You are kind and smart and love to learn.  Don't ever change those aspects of yourself.  You can ALWAYS learn something new.  You can ALWAYS be kind, even when others aren't.  Being smart is a gift - don't ever pretend you're not.

I want what every parent wants for you.  I want you to be happy and successful.  But I REALLY want to stress that 'happy' part.  It's so important.  I hope you're reading this with a smile on your face.  I'm writing it to you when you're 8.  You're reading it when you're 18.  Either way, you're young and beautiful with your whole life ahead of you.  I'm SO proud of you.

I love you love you love you... you are the moon and the stars.  You are my girl.  Always.

Love,

Mom