Mama Tells All

*My boys exploring our storm-created “pond” in our front yard this summer…

So I will admit that I am feeling a bit bummed as I write this. It is the last night of my summer vacation. I am a teacher, and while I love my job…I love my summers with my boys even more. And this summer has been one for the record books. Just completely awesome… My summer has been full of tons of fun and adventure with my boys…trips to the zoo and the cabin, endless playtime in our yard, and so many sweet moments that can only happen when our schedule slows down the way it does in the summertime.

The weather matches my mood tonight; it is stormy out, complete with lightning and thunder. The thunder is currently keeping my two year old awake. While I am normally irritated when I am “on call” after bedtime has begun (a mom has to have some time to call her own, and that’s normally after the kids’ bedtime), for tonight I am okay that he needs some extra snuggles.

I’m sure that is because I have the nostalgic feeling that comes at the end of a summer vacation, and looking back on all of the fun that we had…and right now I just want to stop and hold my babies. There will be another summer vacation, and another one after that…but not one just like this one. Not one where my boys are two years old and four and a half (that half is very important to my older son!). Next summer they might not delight in the same things…looking for rocks, catching frogs, eating popsicles in the grass…

My older son learned how to snap his fingers this summer. He has also informed me that next summer he won’t need his training wheels any more. He caught his first fish up at the lake. I know that next summer will bring all sorts of exciting “firsts” for both of my boys, but right now I’m completely wrapped up in reflecting on all of the good things that happened this summer.

I know that as soon as the school year begins and I meet my students, this will help to sweep me up in the momentum of another great school year. I hope that everyone who has school age kids are busy preparing them for another great year of learning! But don’t forget, in the hustle and bustle of getting ready for the next grade and the next great thing, to stop and look at your kids they way they are now. Next summer they will be different people.

As I rocked my youngest son tonight with the thunder booming in the background, I just stared at his sweet little face and tried to fix his image in my mind. This is one of the faces that filled my summer with joy. Soon my days will be filled with middle school students who will bring a whole different realm of things to my life – sometimes joy, sometimes not-so-much-joy. But I will try and remember that sometime, in the past, someone probably rocked those children on a stormy night and thought about how they didn’t want time to keep going. But it does, and there are always new things to look forward to and enjoy.

I would like to wish everyone a great start to the school year! To my teacher friends…I hope that your summers were sweet enough to carry you into the next school year with energy and enthusiasm. To my parent friends…good luck as you send your babies off to school, be it day care, kindergarten, middle school, or high school!

So long summer – until next year!

So I often find myself thinking things like “This only happens to people with kids,” or “Only during this time in my life are THESE kinds of things going to come out of my mouth.” (For example, “We don’t put apple slices in our ears” or “The dog doesn’t want the Ninja Turtle mask on him.”) This list could be hundreds of items long, but for now here are twenty signs that you have young children…

1. After eating a meal with your kids at their little table that is two feet high, with chairs to match…you feel that you might need to call your chiropractor for an adjustment.

2. There is a running dialogue going on in your house at all times about poop. Who pooped, when did they poop, what color was the poop…if it’s about poop, you’ve discussed it.

3. You sometimes eat kid food again. If you’re on the go with the kids and fruit snacks are what’s in the diaper bag, then fruit snacks it is. (And some of you are secretly happy to be reacquainting yourself with these fruity gems.)

4. You will NEVER be done cleaning or doing laundry. EVER.

5. Your child has asked during a morning cartoon, “Mommy, why is it still dark out?” That, my dear child, is because it is way too early to be awake. That’s why we’re watching the morning cartoon in the first place.

6. You text other parents when diapers are on sale. Diaper sales are a big deal.

7. You have friends (normally kidless) that can’t stand to talk to you on the phone because they don’t realize that you can talk to them and your kids at the same time. You have other friends that are telling their kids what to do while you’re telling yours what to do, and you still manage to have a fulfilling conversation. A mama’s gotta multitask.

8. You know the scene in “The Pacifier” when Vin Diesel has to sing that crazy song to hop through the maze so that he doesn’t die from a booby trap? That’s what it takes to get through your living room some days when you haven’t had a chance to pick up.

9. You have been addressed before not by your name, but as the maternal caregiver of your kid. “Hey, it’s Parker’s mom.” This makes you feel proud and very, very old at the same time.

10. Even if you picked up before company came over, your kids will proudly take out and play with EVERY SINGLE TOY that they own so that they can show off their goods. You wonder why you cleaned in the first place.

11. If you get to sleep past 7 a.m., that’s sleeping in. If you have wanted to go to bed by 7 p.m., that’s also normal.

12. You sometimes try to use your Kindle/IPad/phone behind a pillow or some other object that blocks its view from your kids so that you’re not battling with them for control of your own device.

13. Sometimes you have two choices. You can either go grocery shopping or go to Target by yourself…or you can sign yourself up for therapy for shopping distress syndrome. Going shopping without the kids is like a mini vacation.

14. If you have a dog, he knows when to hide from the kids. He also knows when to come out and sit under their chairs in order to catch a special “these-kids-are-so-clumsy-I’m-going-to-get-a-great-snack” treat. I may or may not have had to pick out dried rice, Cheerios, and corn from my dog’s fur. Sorry pup.

15. Holidays are still cheerful, but they are also extremely exhausting. I have a new appreciation for my parents after seeing all that it takes to make a holiday special for kids.

16. When you take your kids to church, some of your prayers revolve around just hoping that you can make it through the service without anyone melting down or saying something inappropriate too loudly.

17. You have more meaningful conversation with your spouse in one dinner date than you have had the chance to have all month.

18. One stall in your three stall garage is devoted not to a car, but to kid paraphernalia: wagons, bikes, strollers, sidewalk chalk, squirt guns, bubbles, etc.

19. You know the Frozen soundtrack by heart.

20. You sometimes go hide to eat chocolate after just telling your kids that their afternoon snack has to be fruit. Hey, a mom’s gotta do what a mom’s gotta do.

Feel free to add your own to the list in the comments section!

I sometimes have a love/hate relationship with parenting. That might sound bad… (*gasp*…What mother could hate anything about parenting??) …so humor me as I explain…

I think parenting is the greatest job in the world, but I’m also going to state that I think it’s the most difficult. My day job is teaching reading and English to sixth graders. There are days at home with my two boys that FAR exceed in difficulty even the most stressful middle school day. I wouldn’t trade being a parent for anything…but it doesn’t mean that I sometimes don’t want to hide in my room with a glass of wine and pretend that no one needs me for five minutes. When this first example listed below happened, the “love” part of it made me laugh out loud. It made me think about how I can almost always find something to love about the little things that drive me crazy.

Here is what I mean when I say I have a love/hate relationship with parenting…

• I hate when I’m planning on accomplishing things while the boys nap and one of them decides that he just doesn’t need a nap today.

• I love when it’s because my toddler is practicing his personalized rendition of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” over and over and over in his crib. (The volume increasing every five minutes or so, until 30 minutes later when I decide that the nap is a lost cause as his singing reached a happy fortissimo…)

• I hate waking up in the middle of the night to a crying child. I am a woman that places a high value on my sleep!

• I love that my simple presence in the middle of the night and my arms around my child can have the calming effect that my child needs to drift back off to dreamland.

• I hate when I tell my child the same direction over and over, feeling like he will never listen to me and that I must somehow be the worst mom on earth with the naughtiest child ever.

• I love when the broken record effect finally works and my son actually does what he’s supposed to without me telling him – YEAH!! Even my youngest has finally started to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ without being prompted. Not bad for someone who is two!

• I hate when my older son starts “parenting” my younger son by repeating everything that comes out of my mouth thirty seconds after I say it.

• I love that he is actually hearing what I say…maybe he will start to listen to some of it himself?

• I hate when I’m supposed to be serious and say that something is wrong or not appropriate, and all I want to do is laugh at the boys’ antics. In the picture above, my son had just figured out that he could climb on top of this table. The look on his face made me want to bust out laughing, but I tried to say seriously “We don’t climb on top of tables.” Oh, the things that come out of my mouth these days…

• I love that they make me want to laugh. I want my boys to have a sense of humor and adventurous personalities!

So I have come to the conclusion that I can find something to love about almost every aspect of parenting. Doesn’t mean that I don’t hate parts of it, or that parts don’t drive me crazy, but I can put a positive spin on it. Parenting is yet another example of the cliché quote “It’s all about attitude.” If you can’t laugh at yourself as a parent and put a positive spin on things, you might find yourself more frustrated than you need to be.

I hope that you are able to find something to love the next time you get annoyed with something you “hate”…turns out there may be a silver lining to that problem after all!

(If you look closely, our froggy friend is perched on my son’s thumb! Surprise find during our Super Soaker fight!)

I will be the first to admit that my children have WAY TOO MANY things. (Except for books. We have loads of them, but there is no such thing as having too many books.) But we have too much of everything else. Too many toys, movies, games, etc… Most of these things were gifted to us by well-meaning friends and family, and our boys did of course love getting all of these things. I would guess that we have at least thirty toys that either light up or sing or both!

There are a few problems with this. One, my living room always looks like Toys R’ Us threw up in it. No matter how much I try to keep things organized, inevitably we have a few crazy days in a row and I can’t keep up. Then it becomes a game where you should win a prize if you don’t step on a Lego as you cross the floor. Bonus prize if you step on a  Lego and manage not to swear in front of the kids.

Two, I’m not sure that my kids always appreciate what they have. I do my best to teach them about being grateful, and I realize that as they get older there will be more and better opportunities for helping them to understand just how lucky they are that they have what they have. But still…when kids have an abundance of toys, many get forgotten about and neglected. Which means that there were too many to begin with…and that I should also get planning a donation to the local thrift store.

And third, the problem that I have realized the most this summer, is that sometimes we forget (adults and kids alike) that fun can be had with NOTHING! Or with something simple. My boys have done a great job this summer of reminding me that we can have fun with simple things.

I cannot even begin to count how many hours I’ve spent this summer doing this small list of things: blowing bubbles, riding bikes, playing with sticks and rocks, and catching frogs. I think if I had packed up most of my boys’ toys for the summer, but left out their bikes and some bubbles…we would have been set. I have blown bubbles until I was literally dizzy from blowing too much. (This means I’m old…ouch. A cheap bubble machine from Target fixed this problem. No more light-headed mama.)

Playing with frogs has been really fun too. And it didn’t cost us a penny. It has unfortunately cost the world a few frogs. My son is four, and we have had several conversations about being gentle with frogs because they are living things too just like us. Sometimes though, when the frog is not moving anymore, and my son proclaims that the frog is “just resting” (with Jesus, as it turns out…RIP Mr. Frog), we have to have an impromptu frog funeral. But my son has learned a lot about being gentle with creatures and then returning them to nature. Most of our frogs now go back to the wild a bit dazed from playing with a four year old, but alive and well.

So between bubbles and frogs and sticks, it has been nice to get “back to the basics.” I hope that my boys will always understand that joy can be found in the simplest of pleasures. I know we’ll never return to the good ol’ days when our parents had to yell for us to come home instead of texting us, but it doesn’t mean that parents can’t teach their kids about enjoying simple things. Not everything that is fun needs a battery, a plug-in, or a remote.

Here is to simplicity and summer. If you have a great activity that you do with your child that doesn’t require much and costs less than $5 (or is better yet free!), please post it in the comments section! I’d love to put together a list to share of all the great things that we can do to simplify fun and make great family memories!

So I am at the library today, and my kids are playing on the library’s computers. I am sitting next to my younger son, and my older son is at another computer down the table from me. In between us is a mom and her son. The mom is very busy on her phone, and she is not paying attention to her child AT ALL.

Her son goes from playing his magnetic puzzle nicely to poking my son in the face with the magnetic pen!! I wait a second for the mom to say something to her son, but she is so involved in her phone that she doesn’t even see this happen. I nicely say, “Please stop poking him.”

The mom now lifts her head up and says “He’s poking him?” She thinks that I am talking to my son, and that her son is getting poked. I calmly say (even though I want to scream and pull her hair all while berating her for not stopping her son from being mean) “No, your son was poking mine.”

Her response: “Oh.” And without saying anything else, she leads her son to a different puzzle at another table…and then turns back to her phone. (No apology from her or her son. Guess they both missed that life lesson about apologizing when you do something wrong.)

There is a whole lot of WRONG with this scenario. I hate having to say something to someone else’s child who is misbehaving, but even more so when the parent is right there. I am a middle school teacher, so I have to deal with plenty of misbehavior while I’m working. I don’t want to deal with it when I’m not at work too!

Another thing that I hate is wondering how that parent is going to react when I say something. This mom essentially did nothing…sometimes when I’ve said something, the other parent gives me a nasty look or makes a comment.

This mom’s son also learned that he could do what he wanted because his mom was otherwise engaged, and that there was no consequence to him being mean to another child. Perhaps if his mom had actually watched the situation play out, she would have done something to stop it. Or at the very least made him apologize for his actions.

But guess what? If you’re not going to get off your phone and be a parent, someone else will have to do it for you! I think that this is a growing problem in today’s society. Too many parents think, “Where can I take my child so that they are occupied…and where can I sit on my phone/laptop/Kindle/device with few distractions?” I have watched parents not even bother to look up at their children in a variety of places…the library, the park, indoor playgrounds, the movie theater…you name a place, and you will find parents blissfully ignorant of what their children are doing while they are nose-deep in their technology.

While today I am mostly irritated with these tech-obsessed parents because of my library run-in, there are also days that I feel sad for them. Sad for what they are missing while they are checking Facebook. Sad for what they didn’t see their child accomplish on the playground. Sad that while they were texting their friend, their child had a moment to be proud of…but no one saw it, because no one was watching.

I was at the park one day with my boys, and another little boy kind of played near us. He was clearly desperate for some sort of interaction and didn’t want to play by himself. His dad was sitting in a swing, busy with his phone the entire time they were at the park. At one point, the little boy climbed up to the top of a piece of playground equipment, and said “Dad, look at me!” His dad’s first response was “Just a minute.”

I watched the little boy wait there at the top, and again he shouted “Dad, look!” Without looking up from his phone, he said “Nice job buddy!” But that little boy was watching his dad NOT watch him, and seeing his face fall and the smile disappear from his face was enough to make me think this: I don’t ever want to miss the special moments in my children’s lives because I’m too busy doing less important things, like updating my Facebook status.

I’m definitely not a perfect role model for not ever being on my phone. But when it’s important, my phone is down and my kids are the focus of my attention. I read an amazing book called “Hands Free Mama” by Rachel Macy Stafford that is all about letting go of distractions to “grasp what really matters.” I would highly recommend it if you sometimes feel sucked in by the day-to-day rush of things in a way that keeps you from fully participating in your own life. She talks about not giving up technology, but limiting its use. There is a time and a place for everything. Make sure that you realize that the next time you pick up your phone.

So I would say to all parents: make sure that you are a PRESENCE in your child’s life, not just merely present. You are not really doing your child any good at his baseball game if you are checking out Pinterest rather than cheering his team on. You aren’t really present at your daughter’s tea party if you’re scrolling through Facebook while she serves you cookies.

Decide what matters most to you, and then put your attention there. Your child will thank you for it someday. And you will probably thank yourself, because you won’t have missed your child’s life behind the glow of a screen.

*I challenge you to spend at least three evenings (dinner until bedtime) in a row with your kid/s and have all of your devices put away. I have done this, and it’s amazing what you will discover about your kids and/or your reliance on electronics/social media. If you try this, let me know what you discover in the comments section!

In honor of August being National Breastfeeding Month, below is something that I formerly published about my experiences breastfeeding. The picture is of my boys “playing” with “Mommy’s toys.” If you’ve ever breastfed, I hope that this picture makes you smile…

A mother with perfect makeup and great hair sits lovingly holding her baby to her chest, smiling down at her breastfeeding infant that she holds in her arms. The baby is silently eating, and the mother looks like she could not be happier. Cue the soft lullabies in the background, and the sun shining in through the window…

If this is what breastfeeding really looks like, then I somehow missed the memo. Feeding your baby in sweats and a nursing tank top, wondering when you last showered, is more like it. I would like to share a few of my observations about REAL breastfeeding. Caution: These experiences would NOT be put on a Medela commercial. My experiences include feeding my first son for 10 months(a barracuda of an eater with unceasing hunger) and my second son for 9 months.

When I was pregnant with my first son, I went to the breastfeeding class offered by my hospital. It was a good class, and I would recommend taking one if you are a mommy looking to breastfeed. Bring Dad too…Dad needs to know how much work this is going to be for you, if only so that he brings you flowers or chocolate on occasion for sacrificing your body for your little cherub once again after already giving up your bodily rights for nine months.

I should say before I continue that I am a huge supporter of breastfeeding, and all of the many benefits that it is supposed to provide. Higher IQ, less sickness, easier time digesting food, less smelly poop… Without a doubt, I knew that I wanted to give that to my children. However, here are the things that I wish someone had told me before this milky journey began…

* Your boobs are no longer your own. They are functional milk-producing units that belong to your baby. You thought you were tied down by rules while pregnant? Just wait until you figure out that your little one doesn’t like it when you eat green peppers or that you still can’t take most medicines. Baby still rules.

 
* Your new best friend should be lanolin cream. This MAY save your nipples from cracking, bleeding, blistering, etc. But don’t be surprised if you are still so sore at first that you don’t want a slight breeze to blow past your chest…

 
* If you pump, you may very well hear your pump whispering things to you. Whether this is because the pump is actually talking to you, or it is just a hallucination brought on by too many late night feedings and not enough sleep, I will let you decide. However, I can tell you that my pump has told me to “let it go” and “let it out”…and most would deem me a pretty sane person.

 
* Don’t be surprised if you cannot find a bra that fits right to save yourself. Your boobs will be various sizes throughout the day, and your left lady might be bigger than your right one. Or vice versa. No guarantee that your girls are equal opportunity milk makers.

 
* You very well may “wet the bed.” I have discussed this with several other mamas (to make sure that it wasn’t just me), and here’s the sad fact. Many of you will not be able to sleep on your stomach, or even side, while breastfeeding. I once dared to lay on my side in the first few months of feeding, and woke up with a soaked top. And sheets. No one warned me about this. I thought I wasn’t going to have to deal with wet sheets until potty training! Think again.

 
* Lastly, do not be surprised if someone else’s baby crying causes torrential letdown for you…while your baby is content. I distinctly recall sitting in the emergency room (being treated for mastitis…another potential joy of breastfeeding), watching my hospital gown soak through, because a baby was crying a few doors down. Call it mother’s sympathy pains or whatever you want, but it was annoying.

I don’t tell you all of these things to scare off those of you interested in breastfeeding your kids. I am simply letting you know some of the truths of breastfeeding, so you’re not sitting at home wondering, “Is this happening to anyone else???” Yes, it is. You’re not alone. They just didn’t tell you this in class because they didn’t want to frighten you while you were still anticipating the fears of delivering a baby.

If I ever had another kid, knowing all that it would entail, would I choose to breastfeed again? Absolutely. In the midst of all the crazy stuff, there are the quiet moments of bonding that make it all worthwhile. And the ability to just “whip ’em out” and feed your kid any time, any place…that can be convenient too. There are perks. I can’t deny that. I was actually a little sad when my first son suddenly weaned himself, and when I last fed my youngest son. There are benefits and joys to being a lactating lady.

Just don’t say I didn’t warn you about the rest of it.

So this week has slipped by and I’ve been so busy being a mama that I haven’t had time to write. I’m officially declaring this week as my “summer vacation” from my blog. I will return next week! Hope you stop by to see what’s new!