Parenting
Watching my beloved train for a marathon that is THIS WEEKEND! since April? May? means I’ve cheered, encouraged, cried in frustration, jumped up and down for joy, and been schooled in stamina and sacrifice. It also means I’ve learned to make space. Make space for him to do something he’d love, even though it’s not always been convenient or fun for me. Where’s the sacrifice and growth for me if it were easy for me to encourage and support him in his training? If it’s easy, I’m probably not learning much. And this past 5 months or so have not been easy for either of us, but we’ve both learned sooooooo much. AA has been a serious runner forever. As a middle schooler & high schooler, he broke and set all records for his long distances. He was asked to run for a fabulous college. He lived, slept, ate, breathed running for a very long time. In the decade between his peak collegiate running and us having kids, he ran regularly. Add kid. Add long hours high stress job. Add more kids. Running had fallen to the wayside. Despite the wife encouraging and nagging, it took him finding his own visceral need for it again to bring forth: marathon training! I listened as he gauged and researched and poured over his laptop for races near by and far from the Twin Cities before he landed on the big TC Marathon. When he announced he thought he’d sign up to run…
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photo by the talented Emily Rumsey–more where this outtake came from! complete with my attempted replacement ones. Because I really really am working on being a better wife. And a more loving wife. And a more kind one, too. Because I could really use work on this, I thought about all the things I say to my husband that I really cringe when I hear them aloud. I read an excellent book called The Power of Habit. Part of breaking a habit and shifting your behavior is replacing versus simply stopping cold turkey. Here’s my swap-out list of phrases not to say combined with those which are perhaps a sufficient replacement. As a preface: My husband is a great guy. He’s a wonderful and present father. A doting and kind husband who never ever yells. And right now our marriage is in a good place. These lines might not work if you feel like you’re unevenly yoked or wanting to get insight from an outside counselor for deeper marital or personal challenges. I have great recs for one or three of those if you need them! 1) Didn’t you wash their hands and brush their teeth yet? Using the accusing form of the verb: the one that says, you’re an idiot and I can’t believe you haven’t done a simple task that you should know you should do. It’s so easy to be demeaning to your spouse. It’s so horrible to say that, and maybe it’s just me. Small children…
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This past week, I actually had an in-real-life moment that mirrored what I’m always encouraging other moms not to get worked up about little kids are just like this, right? At moms’ group, my daughter had a complete screaming fit while grabbing ahold of me, in front of everyone, while I was taking notes on the white board. I love cheering and encouraging the young mom on. I’m often thinking about the problems we face, and blabbing about it on Facebook. Or snapping a really real pic of my house’s messes and screaming kids for instagram just to say, hey, it’s okay, we are all in this hard time together. I had to cheer myself on a little bit. Because every now and then, be it at swim class or at mom’s group, or anywhere that isn’t in her comfort zone, my three and a half year old SweetPea can really lose her s*&t. And so it happened the other day. I was embarrassed, a little. I was kinda glad it was my kid and not someone else’s because I wasn’t that embarrassed. Maybe I should have been. I scanned the crowd and figured the ladies with older kids thought that looks familiar and the ladies with younger kids probably thought what the heck is her problem and why isn’t Nell doing something about it. Buckle up for a long narrative. Ready? Here’s my overwritten version of the aforementioned meltdown. 1) It was going to be a busy day. A busy, driving around, balancing boxes of napkins…
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I’m a sucker for lists. Three kids in and now I have a very strong sense of what I love in kids’ decor, clothing, utensils, you name it, because I’ve wasted a lot of money and time figuring it out. Sometimes you learn by experience. And sometimes you get luckily gifted something that you fall in love with. I’ve written my brain dump on registering already, and five items that make parenting easier, and nine toys for the first year, but let me foist yet another list on you because a girlfriend is expecting her first and asked me if I had to only have five things in my nursery, what would they be?? (Also listed allll my Whole Parenting Goods crib & wall & party banners up in the shop! Free shipping through the weekend FREESHIPPING code. Really original, right?) But back to my list. 1) Disposable Diaper. We cloth diaper by day and use a wonderful local service, Do Good Diapers. They also retail my favorite favorite favorite disposal diaper because this third baby wet through every combination of night diaper out there. Naty are fully compostable and indeed, Do Good will do that for you, too! They hold more pee than anything else I tried. They never ever break open. And they aren’t bleached or dyed. They also make my favorite wipes. 2) Brooklyn Herborium Infused Coconut Oil. Maybe biased because my sister’s organic skincare line makes these but I love it. I still try to give a quick rub down massage to…
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She never ceases to shower her children with unending, personalized attention without fatigue or Jim Weiss. They engaged all day long with things like a detailed painting project wherein the child ne’er slides their paintbrush OVER ALL THE FURNITURE IN SIGHT whilst the mother is rummaging through the pantry after the toddler discovered the grandmother’s green food dye and now everything on lower shelves has to be moved. She never shrieks at them to please LEAVE HER ALONE at the swimming pool changing areas, only to emerge and discover the two older had strewn their clothing, wet and dry alike, all over the changing room. All the whilst she was not struggling to get her wet clam-like suit off over her not untanned, unwaxed legs. Whilst she had been getting into said swimming suit, her daughter had asked her “is it supposed to be so tight?” 😐 She never escapes to her sewing studio, and certainly would never perform 90’s dance moves (alone, upper body only) to Uptown Funk (at a volume of 10 out of 5) because her husband is home and she would never need to have a loud longer term break from her darlings. She never prays for silence inside her own never ending mind list real. She never cries in the bathroom on the phone to her mother over literally nothing. She never ever would think of complaining to her girlfriends (because her friends are lady friends) about her fill-in-the-blank. And most importantly, this mother would never…
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I can’t actually throw any towels in because they’re almost all in the laundry pile. In the basement. In the basement whose carpeting is about to be ripped out because MOLD {delights of Monday discoveries} where the leaking dishwasher led to a partially ripped out ceiling that promptly shed small nails that went into my husband’s foot. The piles of laundry are slow going because I simply cannot haul the tot down there with me to change it over because of ^^conditions and the only place I can safely corral him is his crib on the second floor of the house but that needs to be lowered like yesterday because it’s on the middle rung and I think he’s going to catapult himself over the railing if I leave him in there to cry for as long as it would take to hoof it to the basement, sort and insert laundry, and make it back up. Hey, I wasn’t a sprinter in 10th grade track. I was a sad-sorry-hurdler-that-was-really-mediocre <–that’s being kind to the ghost of runner’s past. This morning AA stayed home through breakfast. Hold it. He has run every single morning for 4 months in prep for the Twin Cities marathon! Mostly this means he is living on a runner’s high and I’m reaping all the benefits of the runner’s wife {happy husband!! happy husband!! did I say happy??}. The only tiny downside is that some mornings {almost every} the tot will awaken right after AA leaves circa…
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