Parenting
The other night, we’re doing dishes and watching the baby on the monitor, listening to our favorite band’s new album, and I turn to AA: Is this how you thought you’d live your life? He snorted and kept scrubbing the few plastic dishes we use that I refuse to put in the high heat of the dishwasher for fear it will ignite their secret BPA ingredients and kill my kids. Then he asked me what I thought my life looked like in theory versus practice, which is a way better way of stating my same question. No surprise. He’s definitely the brainier of us. And I’m more rigid. I explained my present life in my mind looks like this: Homemade food eaten by children wearing all clothing that I’ve made or sourced organically, while they gently play with their wooden toys and share kindly as I look on, showered, clothed, and knitting from a very comfortable yoga position I’ve mastered. Maybe I’m reading aloud from A Child’s Garden of Verse and maybe we’re all doing crafts. He laughed so hard starting with the part where the kids are only wearing clothing I’ve made and going all the way through. I joined in and we moved on to the greener pastures of intellectual discussion like how many shirts I needed to iron for his week at work. This got me to thinking, how closely am I living to how I’d like to live? How far off am I and what’s holding me back from actually living…
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“How can you say there are too many children? that is like saying there are too many flowers in the garden of God.” I listened to this song about ten times by watching the youtube video. I was crying, of course. Danielle Rose is a familiar singer//song writer to me through my Godmother, of all people. Danielle is about my age, I’m sure we have friends in common through the small Catholic world. But I hadn’t heard of her until my Godmother gave me her music where she’s singing the rosary when I was in law school. My Godmother, God rest her soul, was an incredibly sassy and saintly woman. I miss her warmth no-BS approach to life and still listen to that sung rosary and think of her. When I found out Danielle had gone to China to spread the word about this incredible group of people caring for abandoned disabled babies & children, my heart flooded with that warm love feeling. I’ve followed the work at Little Flower Projects for a few years now and their newsfeed on Facebook arrests my heart and my day when I see images of these beautiful babies and kids, being different, being loved. Being handicapped in China is a huge social stigma and abandoning your child who is is common, according to what I’ve read and heard from medical worker friends who’ve been there. Sigh. I’d like to think our wonderful culture which is inclusive and offers so many medical treatments and…
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Are you wondering if your parenting is inadequate? Well, I hate to be the one to tell you, but it is. You’re an inadequate mother. And I am too!! Nothing brings this realization closer than spending 12 hours with three children under the age of five. I know these are both the easiest and the hardest years of parenting, so I’m cool without the reminder that they will grow up so fast and just wait til she’s a teen. I also know that I only have three irrational kids so my friends with more–I’m on easy street. Let’s throw in that I’m not currently pregnant and therefore not throwing up everywhere all the day long. In an ideal world: we would all have a nice sleep, awaken refreshed, I would lovingly awaken and dress my children, and enjoy our breakfast in peace and harmony before commencing homeschool preschool. Back to reality: It was an agonizingly long morning pre-breakfast involving SuperBoy jumping into our bed forty-five seconds after his dad had bolted out the back door: so 6:30:45::: and me threatening, bribing, stage-whisper yelling at him to keep away from the sleeping BabyLoves who had casually sprawled his twenty pound 3 foot long 8 month old baby body all over the bed because that stinker had just gone back to sleep, complete with a 7:00am SweetPea shimmying her way in the door frame, past the gate that’s wedged there to keep our waring cats from each other’s furry neck holds, remarking loudly, I MADE A…
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Toddlers. So cute. So lethal. Cue the long exhale. When I was first a mom of a toddler I died a thousand deaths, each and every day. I agonized over what to do when he protested naps. I texted my husband a billion times If he doesn’t stop screaming I’m going to die//can i die from listening to his whining//breakfast for dinner again–we fought all day and I’m too exhausted to cook//will he ever grow up or will he whine at college?? It was so hard to accept that my toddler couldn’t accept the word “no” nicely. It was so hard to hear the streaming of whining emanating forth from his frothy mouth. My brain face palmed a dozen times a day. You see, I was still freshly off the working woman wagon, and I wasn’t fully immersed in kid world. I really thought I could control his behavior. I really really was wrong. I wrote a lot about my struggles. Two Year Old Terror. Tantrums Rule My Life. Emotional Voice Finding. Power Parenting Doesn’t Work. I read a lot. I talked in my mom groups about it. I cried to my mom. I whined to my husband. I vented to my sisters. And now that it’s my second go ’round with a two year old? It’s so much less frustrating! I do get irritated of course, but I rarely feel hot white rage of powerless agony. She’s different than he is, too. SweetPea is her own breed of spastic and has…
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It’s that most wonderful time of the year//New Year!!! Linking back to my blog posts & writings from the last year! I look at 2014 and my last New Year’s post and marvel. A third baby. Lots of blog and etsy momentum. Traveled quite a bit. Watched my husband tackle hard challenges at work and whomp them. Watched my son read! Listened to my daughter comfort her baby brother. Gaped while that baby crawl up the stairs much to my horrified pride. Tried out sewing on knit fabric, a totally scary leap for me, thanks to my sweet friend Grace’s encouragement. I also look at lots of home projects we did. The new bathroom. The features in Design Mom and Apartment Therapy. The articles for What to Expect, Verily, and I Believe in Love. A few fundraisers including one for the marvelous Monks of Norcia {oh I wish I could be a monk with their group! Such an incredible person is Father Cassian Fulsom and the kids are in love!}. New wall hangings by my friend Kelly and a more focused motif in both kids’ rooms. Many closets cleaned out and wardrobes turned over. But I also look at what I want to do better in 2015. Read books for me. Sew my mending pile. Clean my house more regularly. Sleep. Write better and edit more clearly for Blessed is She. Tackle healthy eating with my full attention. Let’s get specific. Right here. Right now. :: 1) clean bathrooms. I…
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A few months back I posted a pic to my instagram account of BabyLoves chilling in his Go-Pod. People asked what is that? where did you get it? how do you like it? Let me tell you: not only do I love the one I bought a few years back, but I LOVE that the president of KidCo agreed to give one to a lucky one of you. What a nice company! But first, allow me to tell you what it is not and what it is. It’s not an exersaucer that takes up your whole living room and has strobe lights. It’s not a walker (THOSE ARE NOT SAFE!!!). | | >>> see those spindly legs in the background? Not the potty toilet, the black plastic legs. That’s what the bottom of it looks like. There’s even a canvas down there to catch the spit up or other bodily fluids. It is a baby stashing device that also folds up and can be carried along anywhere or stored easily in your closet. Think: sports event chair. Canvas sack et al. Yup, same here. It is soft and comfortable so that they can either bear weight on their legs, or just laze backwards. It does have loops for you to latch a zillion toys to so the baby won’t go insane while you run to the freezer for some gelato. Or do laundry real quick. Or wipe your toddler. My sister originally told me about it years back. I used it sparingly…
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