After leaving teaching to do... I don't know, something?? I have had to get used to this whole stay at home mom thing again. So here I go. But if it weren't for these adorable kids, this job would be pretty boring.
Blink, and you'll miss a milestone with the girls these days. It always seems to me that they have big mental growth spurts around the same time. And the intellectual/emotional ones are all I really care much about. I mean, I'm excited that Pants can ride a bike. But that she is writing-- sounding out letters and making sentences-- WOW. I am LOVING that. It amazes me. What a smart kid!! I'm so lucky. And Brain is keeping up with her, in a lot of ways. She comes up with all sorts of ideas and stories and imaginary things (even imaginary words and people) that it is fascinating, at least to me. Or when she memorizes stories and reads them back to me-- almost word for word. I didn't know kids do that!!! Whoa. Great stuff!
I have spent the last month figuring out all the schools here in Raleigh that are options for us, which has been no small task. (Because with Christmas coming up I needed something else to keep me busy.) I have spent a lot of time staring at the computer. But I haven't really noticed the chaos that happens when toddlers are left to themselves. Yeah, their room is messy, but they are not destroying things.
I repeat: I CAN LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE, and no one sets the house on fire.
(Angels sing. The sun is peeking out of the gray winter sky. Is that a bluebird? The air smells better.)
Yes, Our yard was TP'ed by our own dog. Thanks, Bleemer.
NOW, if only we could get BLEEMER to be as manageable.
I like healthy. Right now, looking at me-- tired, overweight, under-exercised, bad eating habits-- I don't *feel* like that, but I have been letting myself go.... Halloween was rough. Lots of candy. Stressful schedule-- I had a VERY busy October, and kind of finished up a lot of things that had been on the top of my "To-Do's" for a while... so I feel like months of not taking care of myself have kind of CRASHED down on me. SO now I am in charge of getting de-stressed, re-budgeting and revising my EATING habits and exercise routine, and taking care of myself and my family for a little while. It happens to the best of us.
I stumbled across this sheet which prioritizes the ways to reduce pollutants in your body and your home and live a more healthy life. I know a lot of families out there are trying very hard to make sure they raise their kids on cage-free eggs and organic produce, BPA-free water bottles, but another and even bigger task is reducing pollutants that aren't EATEN, but still find their way into our bodies. We check for BPA-free and phthalate-free products, but also keep in mind that some of these pollutants get tracked into our houses, or are in products we give to our kids. This flyer from Healthy Child Healthy World (www.healthychild.org) outlines the chemicals we need to avoid, which foods --especially foods you eat the outside of and dairy products-- are more important to focus on organic and hormone-free. My philosophy with this stuff is that the cost is negligible and you don't add to your stress, go ahead and make the change. Because if the effort of a healthier environment kills you from the stress, what good are you doing for you or your kids? I started with cutting down on plastics and hormone-free dairy (except milk, which we go through so fast I'd have to have a trust fund to buy organic there-- it costs TWICE as much!!). We eat a lot of cheese and yogurt, so we try to stick to Kraft and Stoneyfield. We use a lot of plastic dishes because the girls set and clear their own table, so I try not to use those in the microwave and I look for BPA-free for the stuff I store food or drinks in. (Sometimes I'm slack on this, but I try). We are even slowly switching to cloth napkins and composting napkins as much as possible, and we have drastically reduced our paper towel consumption in the last year, which is saving me MEGA bucks, which makes me the happiest! And I stopped using air fresheners, which is extra important because my little one has respiratory issues. So it's a good start, and it hasn't changed my life.
Strange stream of consciousness this morning, while I took a long hot and relaxing shower... (Benefit of going to see my in-laws: no one barges in and says: SHE STOLE MY CRAYON AND SO I HIT HER AND NOW SHE"S CRYING SO LOUD I CAN'T HEAR MYSELF SINGINGGGGG!!!!)
You know that moment between when you spray the shaving cream and when you smear it on your leg? When 3 out 4 times it falls on the tile and you have to start over or decide you don't have time for shaving cream this morning...? So today it fell on the foam alphabet letters in the floor of the tub, and so as I scooped it up I thought to myself-- Hmm. This is cool. This shave is brought to you by the Letter F. F!! And visions of foam Fs punctuating the action, a la Sesame Street.
Quick post tonight, and I'm sure I'll have something to write about soon, but I gotta get over to my OTHER blog tonight-- sorry dudes.
Just wanted to post a link to a really cute Jack-O-Lantern site. Share any other great Halloween sites please! I LOVE Halloween and I love Jack O'Lanterns, so I am going to plan out my pumpkins to carve this weekend! Happy Halloween folks!!
This a quote I read on the Parenting with Love and Logic homepage. I feel like this is something I hear all the time, adapted to various roles; "Teachers are unsure of their role as effective teachers. Parents are unsure how to be effective parents. Teenagers are unsure of their roles, college grads are unsure of theirs... People are unsure of how to be effective people." Why is NOW such a time of uncertainty? Did we just know what our roles were in the past, automatically, and never waver from that? Or did we just start thinking a generation or two ago? I read all of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books as a kid, and NEVER did she say, "We were unsure of what our roles as pioneers were." They just got in a wagon and forged westward, and it was pretty damn tough! SO what has happened that is making us question every. single. aspect. of. our. lives???
I can say with very little doubt that our lives have gotten easier over the last several years. But at the same time, we have what seems to me like more people making more mistakes-- or maybe it's more opportunity for mistakes, and therefore everywhere you turn someone is doing stupid things. Things have gotten cloudier. We have more choices, more visibility-- everyone knows my 4 year old daughter has found her betrothed because it was on my Facebook status tonight. I see mothers posting their "Hey, it's BEER-thirty! LOLOL!!" statuses at 1pm, and as the daughter of a recovered alcoholic that makes me sad. On the other hand, no one knew when my dad started to drink earlier in the evening (even before the magical hour of 5pm) because I didn't tweet it. I can order a Netflix so my girls don't understand the drop in happiness when they get to the video store and Strawberry Shortcake is not on the shelf. And with all these CHOICES everywhere we turn and exposure to the 90th degree, our lives have gotten mixed up in the mire and are quite a lot more difficult. I read 1 or 2 parenting books a year, but am I a better mom than my mom was? The jury is out on that. I''ll bet as the years add up I will make just as many mistakes as her. But with all of this extra going on in our lives, we have lost track.
So what do we do when we are not sure if we are on the right path? My natural instinct is to go back to where we started from, and I see some moms trying really hard to simplify their lives. But without a simplier world, I just don't know how we are going to do that.
Yeah, I really think I should consider canceling my DisneyOn-Demand channel. For $3 a month I get thirty minutes a day that my kids are getting the highest entertainment value. That might actually be a bad thing.
I was walking from my massive pile of laundry (yeah, this is gonna be an exciting post) and I told the girls (toddlers, so I was thinking as I said it I knew it was an unreasonable expectation), that they should pick up their room and take off her pull-up because naptime was over... and then this terrible thought popped into my head.
At what point do give up and become bad parents? I feel like with all the chores getting behind, yelling, rushing my kids when my inability to get anywhere on time effects them, expecting too much and helping too little... my lack of coddling, oooooing and self-esteem building--- am I doing enough to be a good mom, or do I really suck? Some much of the time I feel overwhelmed and like I don't have enough me time or me and hubby time. I love spending time with them, but sometimes.... I just don't want to be talked to or touched. Seriously, that is not what *I'm* like at all, so it's kind of weird to say that. But then the other side of that is being distracted by cell phones, chores and computers while I am trying to create two thoughtful, kind, and responsible adults and sometimes I feel like I am letting them just raise themselves and I follow their lead... so at what point does this create a person who is really really anti-social in one way or another?
I have been reading the book Parenting with Love and Logic and in some ways I totally see having a hands off YOUR child's responsibilities. Sometimes it's hard to say, "Hey, are you sure you want to close your sister's hand in the car door??" when you feel like saying, "Oh my God, you are about to close her HAND in that DOOR!!!" And so I think I usually go with the second. They are currently mixing together one anothers' shepherd's pie and salad, and all I said was, "No, I am not going to look at that. I don't WANT to look at the food you mix up." And so they ruined their dinner and I continued typing. (Duke is at work tonight so I broke the computer at the dinner table for just one night so I could finish typing and then clean rooms.) But to myself I knew I was just ignoring it because I was doing something I wanted to do, not because I was trying not to micromanage their dinner. But I noticed I am spending a lot of time these days sitting back and watching them instead of having an active role in everything they are doing. Are they being independent or just tired of asking for attention and I am not paying any...? How do I tell?
I just feel like a bad mom these days. I feel like I am slipping into a lackadaisical parenting style, and that is walking a fine line towards not raising my kids AT ALL. A lot of it is I am spending so little of my afternoon hours at home that I am not getting any of my house-wife work done, and so I kinda feel like I haven't really been doing a great job here so why do I ask for all this freaking help all the time? I'm not super busy. I just feel like I need to slow down a little and try to keep myself less stressed if I want to really focus on being a better mom, not yelling all the time, and doing all the stuff that makes me like this "job." Maybe I just need to suck it up, understand I am going to be stressed until these girls leave the house and I have to find another way to cope with it all.
On the other hand, My four-year-old has gotten the three-year-old ready for bed (but not herself) while I finish this, so that we can read bedtime stories in three minutes. So can I really complain? Even if they are raising themselves, Jesus, they ARE getting raised.
Teen suicide is something that is serious, it is devastating, and it is preventable. Sadly, their have been several cases recently that have gotten a lot of attention, and many of them are a result of cyber-bullying.
Sadly, Rutgers University Student Tyler Clementi was one of these kids, an eighteen year old freshman living in the dorm with a new roommate and adjusting to college life. This is supposed to be an amazing, scary, tumultuous, but happy time in one's life. I remember this as a time I was forging friendships and yeah, I did engage in the occasional teasing. My friend's roommate was a miserable jerk to us, talked down to us, and always tagged along with us. So I picked on him, trying to get him to move out. Now that I'm an adult, No, I'm not proud of the teasing I did as a child. But I still feel guilty about this boy, about *Brendon* (not his real name) from my ninth grade class, who it turns out was "weird" as a victim of physical and sexual abuse and no, of course he didn't talk about that, so how was I supposed to know? I wasn't, but I should have known better.
And Ms. Wei and Mr. Ravi: I hope you realize, you will never live this down. If you have an inkling of a conscience, you will see the smiling face looking into that webcam for the rest of your life. The word "webcam" or "Twitter" will come up, and you will think of Tyler. Instead of making a friend and accepting someone who might be geekier, skinnier, not as popular, or gayer-- you did have a hand in his death. And we forget that the internet can have that sort of effect on someone. But now you sure have learned that lesson the hard way.
Now, as a parent-- I feel a compulsion to help this poor boy. As a friend to other gay men, as a family member and a church member to other gay people, and a sympathetic person and a mother, I want to help this young adult to be part of a world that loves him for who he is. But the only way we can help now is to talk about it. Tyler is gone-- who's next? We need to do what we can to help them, for Tyler's sake.
Parents can talk about bullying with their kids. Teens only see the internet as a place of immediate attention and quick fixes. They can put something up, they can take it down. Tell a kid, "Your Facebook page is cached" and their eyes glaze. Nothing is permanent to a teen, so place limits on them. Monitor their behavior. And even as little babies, preach a value system that accepts everyone as a human being no matter their race, sex, religion, lifestyle, appearance... everyone is a whole person, and never ever take that away from them.
Every generation things like this come up that make us open our minds a little more. We are less narrow-minded than the ones who came before us, and they were less so than their parents. We accept bi-racial couples and single parents, and our parents were accepting of African-Americans and some of their parents even were accepting of Jewish people before that. As twenty-first century citizens it seems odd to think of these people as different but not so long ago mingling with those groups may have been taboo. But now that we do have a melting pot in our society-- or maybe more of a mixed salad, as many people like to see it-- we have to make sure that any prejudices earlier generations had do not get passed down. Because I'm betting Ravi's parents didn't go to sleep at night, thinking: "Gee, we have done a great job teaching our kids to see everyone as a separate soul with feelings and belief and things to give to the world. We've done a great job teaching him to love his neighbor as himself!" Now most parents can't say that, because we are not that selfless. But why can't we at least try?
And as a mother, my heart aches for the mother of this young man. I could never fathom the pain of losing a child. I just hope my child never makes the wrong decision that leads to another child's death. That may almost be worse. All I can do, though, is to make sure my child is raised with most open-minded and caring parents we can be, and never accepts "bullying" as a fair way to treat another person.
I am a little nervous about this school year, and it's kinda silly to me because when people complain about their kids going of to school I am always like, Huh?!?!? But this year, these kids, THIS is different. And I am totally exaggerating, I'm sure, but hey-- I tend toward the dramatic.
On top of both my girls being in a new class and having things be very different, I just found out my unemployment is OVER, and so I figure I have 1/2-1 year left before I have to really truly be doing something productive. Ugh. But I had so many plans of things to have done before Francie started kindergarten! I was going to apply to grad school, figure out a system for keeping up with the laundry, write a book, start a career, cure cancer.... okay, I know I can't do that last one, at least not on my own. But you get my drift.
That's the thing, though. That list is RIDICULOUS. Laundry?!?!? Fo' real? I'm a mom. I'm a procrastinator. I'm a daydreamer and above all that, I am LAAAZZZZZY. I don't ever get anything done.
Recently a friend told me that one week, the theme of the sermon at her church was, "What is your anchor?" So I pontificated on that for weeks. We were talking about a house that's for sale in the neighborhood and I asked why she didn't move there, and so we got on the subject of why they had to move out of their old, too-small house. She said having 4 children in a house that they couldn't have their space was their problem. But it's funny to me hearing this because she is the most with-it, calm and unstressed momma I know. I have never seen anything phase her. I, on the other hand, am stressed and nervous and grumpy. I have mulled several things over and tossed them, but they weren't anchors. I just feel like I need something that makes me feel productive and not merely a mom. Not quite a Supermom, because I'm not that together.
So I'm wondering what my anchor is, and I feel like maybe is that could possibly perhaps be that I need an outlet besides mommy-ness. I do volunteer work, and that helps, but honestly, sometimes I think I need a real live job. I just feel un-grown-up, a financial drain, overly dependent. I need to do some soul-searching, and then take some action.
Okay, so I was doing the dishes, and I was thinking about how lucky I am that I have people that help so much with my kids, and so that has made it feasible that I wouldn't drown our family by staying home instead of working this past year,
But tonight I was talking with Duke about an article I'm currently reading in National Geographic about King Tut and his mummy relatives, and some of them thought they were real live Gods, and so they built these giant pyramids and filled them with riches and dead bodies and internal organs in embalming jars or whatever, and they had SO much and all they did with it was rich folk stuff. Okay, I don't think everyone should give their wealth to charity, but there are people out there who are really, truly embracing the philosophy of you can't take it with you. They are helping look for cures for malaria and AIDS and cancer, and if everyone who had wealth, all the way back to King Tut, felt a personal obligation to their fellow man... what would things be like today? I am the queen of saying I don't have enough, and I know things have been pretty tight considering I haven't worked in a while, but I had my unemployment for a while and I have family that, not only makes sure the girls are living comfortably, they have bent over backwards to show generosity to my kids, and they have encouraged the girls to have an open, caring, charitable attitude towards the world. The girls took Watotoo boxes to my in-laws church last Christmas, and they had a ball picking out toys to give to children in Africa, which they bought with the money from their piggy-banks. We're running out of room in the piggy banks again and I was trying to help Francie decide who to give to besides the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. And she was so excited about the ideas I threw out, just off the top of my head. She loves giving things!
So I'm just feeling really grateful for the ways I have been blessed, with family, children, a not-perfect-but still- functioning planet to hand over to the next generation, and so I always feel like I should be giving more to the world. But I guess, as long they learn these morals, I am giving what I can.
I am by NOOOO means a femi-nazi (no offense to feminists, I am just an old-fashioned girl, and have nothing ideologically against it) but I am posting for Ada Lovelace Day because she was a smart woman who was a successful mathematician and the world's first computer programmer, which I am so in awe of. (I got stuck in Algebra I twice and finished with a 55 in Algebra III, so anyone who can define the word algorithm, or give an example of one makes me stare in wonder.) So in honor of Ada Lovelace Day, here are some fun ideas of ways to make your own daughters enjoy MATH and SCIENCE lessons-- without them knowing that's what you are doing;).
Cooking: Young girls will love helping you measure out ingredients for a batch of cookies or a cake. For older children you can do percentages using the daily allowances, and use these numbers to help them decide how to make smart food choices.
Chores: Sorting and organizing are a great way to get helpful toddlers involved in math, and it'll help you get some stuff done around the house.
Grocery Store: Your kids might like playing kitchen, but give them some play money or monopoly money and set up prices for food and charge each other! It'll be interesting to see how they try to figure out what to spend their money on or if they have enough to buy sissy's produce.
Puzzles: Logic & geometry are very important math skills that can really be started early-- get wooden knob puzzles for children as early as 6 months, and make them available for clapping and smacking.
Reading a Clock: We forget the importance of this sometimes in a world with digital everything-- but what're they going to do when they get to Big Ben and the clock is ANALOG? As soon as they are able to read numbers, you can start teaching them with digital clocks and then around 4-5 years old, start explaining the analog clock. Once they've learned the hours, they can start with the minutes and they already know the fives multiplication table! So now that your 3 year old knows to stay in bed until the clock says SEVEN-Oh-Oh, you can thank me.
Music: Studies show that students who do study music also excel in math classes. The rigor and responsibility in becoming really, really good at an instrument can be applied to other studies and the success in this subject will bolster her self-esteem, since it really is a skill that people will commend her for. So if your child is struggling in math but likes music, encourage her to rock with the band!
Art Too Can Help: Manipulating mediums to see shapes and patterns, designs and spatial relationships will help her when she is learning geometry skills, and if she goes into any sort of artistic career, she will have to have some pretty strong computer skills down the road. Explain to her how they are related, and a child who is determined to be an artist will feel a stronger urgency to pick up a mouse.
Any skill that boosts her self-image and self-motivation also can play a big part in being a Math/Science babe. You want her to feel confident enough in the math classroom, because at an early age, when girls are learning the foundational skills for math and science, ofttimes boys are louder or more rambunctious, and get a lot of attention from the math teachers. She had to be willing to ask for help in math and get the teacher to show her how to do things sometimes, because sometimes girls really don't want to speak up. And remember-- this is a world where girls can do whatever they want, so try not to sex-type her, but if she wants to be a girly-girl, don't discourage her and cut down her self-worth. You can use her girly play as a means to teach math and science too. And if she wants to go to the park and collect bugs, Yay for that too. She can do it!
Duke informed me last night the wretched beast has reared it's head in our household. I am afraid I now need to make more deliberate, careful remarks to the girls, for fear they are keeping tally in their poor little heads. (Mommy said I'm good at this and you're good at that.) This is an apple of knowledge I was not ready for, and it is going to upset our little Eden, for sure.
Let me go back and point out some wonderful things about Francie, my precious four-year-old. Just like any firstborn, she constantly surprises us with things we can't believe she is grown enough to understand, accomplish or articulate. As soon as she could speak in full sentences, she was fully capable of empathy and awareness that you don't often see in one and a half year olds. Not long after that, my brother-in-law passed (I was pregnant at the time, also). The typical toddler would struggle in such a stressful and saddened environment, surely. But Francie was a spot of sunshine for everyone around us. I feel that her love and gentle sympathy really solidified into part of her psyche that summer. Without her I'm sure the hole in our hearts would not have healed as cleanly, as much as can be healed after losing someone so young and so close.
Francie is a very sensitive child, and has always been in tune to the world around her. She observes everything. She is an amazing artist, and although some of that is just god-given talent, I think some is from really watching everything that her eyes can see for four whole years. I describe her often as a daydreamer, but she is a special variety of daydreamer; she is so in-tune to the world, that she often has to just stop and think. You can look at her and see when she is taking it all in.
Last night she had one of these moments, and then turned to her Daddy, who was watching little sister do a puzzle. Jane is a speed-puzzler-- she puts them together as fast as she can so she can move to the next one. Jane was doing this and as Francie watched, she mentioned that yeah, the puzzle was only a hard one for two-year-olds, but NOT for big girls... Francie realized her sister had a unique talent. One she did not herself possess.
Oh Francie, I want to scoop you up in my arms and show you all the beauty and intelligence you DO possess!! because you are an amazing creature, a child with the innocence and heart you only see once in a blue moon! But as a young girl, abd a sensitive one at that, I fear your heart is going to be hurt, and you will not see the forest for the trees. Or perhaps you will, and you will paint it with the beauty that you express with such ease, you won't understand how amazing that talent actually is.
Okay-- so to pick up where I left off...One thing I have gotten bad about these days is not going to bed, so I keep waking up with my finger on the touchpad of my laptop. I'm gonna click on some weird stuff one day...
Jane has had a rough go at it this year. And the year before this. And you know, it was kinda tough for her as a baby too-- She is quite a kid. Amazing. She started out with allergies (milk mostly, but everything else too). She also has frequent ear infections, and is on her third set of tubes. This last time, though, we took out the adenoids so we hope we have fixed that issue! She knocked her teeth up into her gums last summer also, so he had to have those pulled and replaced, and of course, since this is Jane, she broke those and will have to have it put back in. Uggh. Hey, break? Where you at? You mind cutting one for Jane?
She is many many things-- Drama Queen, Opinionated, Miss Prissy Pig Pen, Live Wire a total Firecracker. She is quite different from her sister. Francie is really easy-going and agreeable. She is usually described by people as a sweetheart, darling. As a young toddler, we fretted and worried and consulted all the manuals. The biggest problem her panic-prone parents had to worry about was the constant fluid in her ears one winter, leading to a set of tubes when she was learning to speak, and then a bad case of croup early one summer. But that was so easy, we had Jane. We could take anything, we thought. So when Jane came along everything was a big deal, and this time it wasn't just new-parent hypochondria, it was allergies, it was ear infections, RSV, torticollis, umm... what else? Teeth. Right. And what next? We will see.
But, it might seem difficult. No, maybe just trying. And it is. But everyone who has ever met Jane will tell you she is an amazing child! These two are quite a precocious pair. They are kind, helpful, beautiful, charming children. So despite the heartache we have had waiting in waiting rooms (the worst of all was her eye surgery the other day) we are happy. Tired, anxious, but really happy.
Tomorrow is the day we've been waiting for!! Jane's last surgery (knock on wood). She is have surgery for strabismus and ambylopia, two eye conditions that lead to torticollis (head tilt) and one eye squints sometimes to compensate for her not having binocular vision like you and I have. Without being corrected, she would slowly lose sight in her less dominant eye. You want to know what we did 4 weeks ago? She had ear tubes and an adnoidectomy. Last October? Teeth pulled, new partial put in. Those teeth had been damaged when she fell in my shower.
Now it is actually the day of... I fell asleep typing this last night.
I will post more when I get home from surgery today.
My life is hectic. I have two beautiful and precocious girls, a very busy husband and a lot of different hobbies. I am a reader and former teacher. I raise red worms in my backyard, I volunteer for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Honestly, I miss teaching a lot, but mostly because it challenged me intellectually. I love to learn about all sorts of subjects, and especially media and parenting and culture and education and just about anything else out there. I am currently reading 3 books on my Kindle and one by the tub, and I also read 2 or 3 magazines a month, and that is kind of how my brain works-- do 4 things at once but don't do them very quickly :). I am sort of at a crossroads in my life, as I am currently staying at home with the girls and so when my unemployment runs out I will have to decide do I want to go back into the classroom or find something more in tune to being a full-time parent? But as of now, I've been looking since I left the classroom and nothing has come my way, so the girls are my main job. So here is a page about the things I am learning chasing these two wild ones down.
I am hoping to address life as a SAHM from my own point of view, and topics I think other moms are interested in. This is a pretty vast topic, but in case I find that some ideas are better for my personal blog or my reading blog, those posts will be on those pages. (Check out my profile for those links.) Hope I can keep you entertained and happy to read along!
