Return to Church

I've started going to church. I went back to the church I was raised in. The one my mother devoted so much of her life to. The one I resented all those years, because it was violating my weekends. The one that I turned my back on the moment I turned 18 and had the choice. And the one that I delivered my mother's eulogy in, and had not been in since.

I was so torn about going back there. I couldn't imagine worshiping in any other church. But I was nervous to go back to the place where I had last seen and said a final goodbye to my mother. Granted she was in a closed casket, but through the powers of my grief induced x-ray vision, I could see her, beautiful, and resting in peace.

The first time I went, I was welcomed by so many people confirming how very happy my mother would be to see us there. I think our being there filled a void for my mother's church family, just as they did for me. One woman sitting behind me asked me if it was strange or comfortable to be back there. I said "it is strangely comfortable." That it was. I felt a noticeable absence without my mother sitting next to me in our usual seat (which I was so relieved to find seemingly reserved just for my return). And I even missed her embarrassing tummy growling at the most inappropriate moments that always gave us the very embarrassing and inappropriate giggles. But...she was there. I could feel her, so glowingly happy and proud to see me there by my own choice, with my own children. And I sat with a lump in my throat and tear brimmed eyes the entire time.

But I don't go just to make mom happy (although that makes me happy). And I don't go just because it is the one place I can go where NO ONE is aloud to speak to me for ONE WHOLE HOUR, other than God (although that makes me VERY happy!).

I go to God's house because it gives me a peace and calm and solitude that I rarely get in my own home which is bursting at the seams with children and their boisterousness. I pray for an ounce of this peace in my home...this week.

I go because I am blessed with a house full of healthy, happy, boisterous children. I pray for that to last...forever.

I go because I am exhausted and perhaps a tad resentful from slaving away at my thankless job as a stay-at-home mom all week. I pray for one thank you...this week.

I go to thank God for blessing me with the amazing man who loves me and works hard to provide for our family so that I may stay home and raise our children. I pray for the strength to be worthy of this task and to remain loveable to him...this week.

I go because only God could make sense of all of this.

I go because I don't have to explain myself to God. I don't have to whine and vent and complain for him to understand. I don't have to say a word. And yet he answers me:

"I know it's hard, giving everything you've got, every second of every day, and feeling like it's not enough. I know it seems impossible to handle all that you have taken on. I know that you want only the very best for the people you love so very much. I know that you sometimes feel neglected while you are struggling to love and care for everyone else. I know that sometimes, you just miss and need your mother. TRUST ME, I know that unconditional love can be very trying."

"I know that this world scares you sometimes. I But stay focused on your children, and I will stay focused on mine. TRUST ME, it scares me too sometimes."

"I know that you are under the spell of good intentions. Everything you do is for the good of your family. Even those screaming fits you have and instantly regret are only because you are momentarily convinced that repeating yourself LOUDLY and scaring the hell out of your children may have a better outcome than the first 50 times when you asked calmly and nicely. I get angry too sometimes. It's ok. TRUST ME, I know all about unruly children."

"I know that you are still the patient person you wish to be. But I also know that you are the mother of four, and you are only human. TRUST ME, I know that human beings are not perfect."

"I know that when you say 'Lord help me' a million times a day, it's because you genuinely need a heavenly hand, and not a sarcastic plea for pity.

"I know that when you ask one of your children 'WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD ARE YOU DOING?!' you know that even I may not have the answer to that."

"I know that you do not need to hear 'thank you' to know that they are thankful for you. TRUST ME, I know all about seemingly ungrateful children."

"TRUST ME, I know this parenting thing is hard sometimes. You are doing well. You are loving and you are loved. You are blessed and you are thankful. You are here today, and I am with you, always. And you've made your mother very happy. TRUST ME."

"Go now, in peace (at least for the moment)."

It's amazing what you can hear when there is no one around to ask you for some juice every 15 seconds. And somehow, I feel a little less crazy and overwhelmed, at least for the next few days, until we meet again.

Amen.

Llife of Leisure?

My manager at work has accused me of having a life of leisure. I know what you’re thinking (at least what my fellow moms are thinking); HOW DARE SHE!

Before I go on, I should explain that she is a wonderful woman whom I genuinely adore. And I’m not just saying this because we became Facebook friends just as instantly as we became actual friends and so she will probably be reading this. She’s otherwise awesome, really.

But she mistakes my lack of desire (refusal)to work more than two days a week with laziness, like I’ve grown too accustom to my “life of leisure”. I let her get away with this slander only once. The second time she made this accusation, I gently spoke up:

“Listen bitch, (I really did call her a bitch, but only because she really is my friend, really), I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about with this whole life of leisure bullshit! I have three kids at home! What in the name of God do think could possibly be leisurely about that!”

She’s a mom too; A single mom, with a daughter who is 2. So while I know she has her struggles with spending many hours working and away from her child, she is not capable of completely grasping full time mommy-hood with THREE children. . She doesn’t understand that I go to my part time job both to pay some bills, and to take a break from my full time job which doesn’t pay well.

She can’t really know that meeting the demands of my three children, as well as trying to maintain some order in our household, is actually a lot like her job of managing a restaurant and its feisty staff, who respects her but still loves to torment her, and it’s often impossible to please, demanding customers. Take her job, and multiply it by a couple of hundred, and we have the exact same job. She just makes more money than I do, and probably doesn’t love her job as much I love mine.

She may also consider me a “kept woman” and a little spoiled, not spoiled acting but just very well cared for. I am. I can’t argue with that. But I work very hard for my family and it is important to me that my loved ones feel as fortunate to have me as I do to have them. And THAT is why they come first. That is why I can’t work until 11 p.m. or later, four nights a week, just to spend the remaining three days and nights exhausted and cranky and unable to be the wonderful patient mother I strive (and sometimes struggle) to be.

I just sat outside all alone and dipped my feet in the pool for about ten minutes. I’ve done the dishes, did some laundry, cleaned the kitchen, played with children, fed children (twice), got children to sleep at the same time, picked up the broom, put down the broom, and went outside for a moment of SILENCE:

“Screw this broom! It’s my only quiet time of the day (naptime) and I am going to squeeze in one moment of NOTHING! I don’t think the world will end if I don’t sweep the floors right now so that they can be dog hair free for the next hour.”
It was blissful. Ten minutes of doing nothing, saying nothing and hearing no one! Blissful. And while I was out there, I had to chuckle at my “life of leisure”. She thinks I lay around, floating in my pool all day, and here I am wasting two precious minutes of my ten minute break thinking “I really should get up and sweep the pool…again.”

Baby #4-The Road Less Traveled

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

...Robert Frost

I came across this quote just a day or two after finding out that I was pregnant with baby #4. It offered great perspective, and a sigh of relief. I was always the handful, the problem child marching to the beat of a different drummer, blah, blah, blah. I was lost and my parents spent many sleepless nights praying for me to find my way. Little did I know that I was on the right path the entire time. Admittedly, it was a bumpy road and I stumbled a lot. But a smoother, shorter, easier path could never have prepared me for what fate had in store for me: FULL TIME MOTHERHOOD.

Years ago, pre-children, I always said “I want to have five kids, all boys.” It sounded like so much fun. Sure, boys are reckless and I would probably be mothering with my eyes closed, hands clenched and heart in my throat most of the time while they are racing motorized whatever they can get their hands on, jumping of the highest anything into the hopefully deep enough something, picking up the nearest anything and everything that may or may not resemble a weapon to use on the nearest whomever, etc., etc.. But at least they wouldn’t be so damn snotty, constantly challenge my every request, keep me up all night worrying because she’s too stubborn to pick up a phone, refuse to accept that the world just IS more dangerous for young girls, always demand the last infuriating word, etc., etc.! I hate to be so gender biased, but this was my experience with kids. Sorry Mom and Dad.

My first born was a little girl. It’s only fair. I had it coming. And she is exactly like me. I had that coming too. My mom spent my teenage years wishing it on me so it was inevitable. She’s six now, and has already begun paying me back on my late mother’s behalf (whom I often hear giggling from the great beyond). I’m hoping she’s getting it all out of her system before her teen years set in and I’m forced to pound it out of her (figuratively speaking, I hope). She’s still young enough to be honest about her antics; “I’ll try to be better Mommy, but I can’t pinky promise because it’s REALLY hard sometimes.” I find her honesty refreshing and I dread those teen years, again, when I will have to decipher every lie to find a clue to a morsel of the truth. I’m starting to sweat at the thought of it all. Maybe her three brothers (wishful thinking re: baby #4) can form some sort of road block when she starts taking wrong turns. My poor only brother wasn’t able to deter me all on his own.

So I am about to be a mother of four, a STAY AT HOME mother of four! Few people would choose this path. In fact, the news of my continued journey into motherhood leaves most speechless. But now, I understand that I could never decide on a career because my path, my purpose was already determined. This is my destiny. My success as a stay at home mom would be measured by my steadfast patience, my sanity, my SURVIVAL, the character of my children and happiness and values of my family, not my income. And as an overwhelmed, overworked, exhausted, underappreciated, underpaid, undervalued, jack of all trades, master of none, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy I could not be happier. It continues to be the bumpier, far more challenging and less traveled path, but it makes all the difference now that I know exactly where I am going and that I am paving the way for my four little passengers.

lost in translation

The other day one of my facebook friends responded to one of my posts. I don’t remember exactly what my post said but it’s usually something that my kids have done that was amusing, or that others may find amusing because it’s happening to me and not them. I usually find the humor eventually. I write it to vent frustration and then I read it for a laugh.

Her response was “awww, your posts always make me want another baby.” I was very surprised to think that my love for this motherhood thing was still somehow apparent through all of my venting/ranting; that my love for my children is not overshadowed by how crazy they make me at times.

Things are often getting lost in translation in my world. It’s inevitable when you’re communicating with children all day. Logic takes on a whole new meaning in their world. It still exists but on an entirely different level and one that is actually tricky to argue with sometimes.

I once told my mom that I had this “mom” thing all figured out (before I actually had kids, of course). My daughter is only six and I’m already stumped. The other night I attempted a very positive and upbeat lecture on how we both had responsibilities and one of my responsibilities is to teach her to be responsible, to be the best person she can be. It was my attempt to convince both of us (more so myself) that I am not a nag! I’m a mommy.

“You have to learn to do things for yourself so that you don’t always need your mommy to do EVERYTHING for you ALL the time. Wouldn’t it be funny if someone who was a grown up still had their mommy cooking for them and getting them dressed in the morning?”

“MOMMY! That means that you want me to die because you’re NEVER going to cook for me again and you want me to STARVE!”

How did we go from asking her to put her dirty clothes in her hamper to me wanting her to die? And how does one respond to this logic?

I find myself being equally as unreasonable sometimes;

“Madeline could you please pick up these books and put them back on the shelf.”

“No.”

“DON’T MISTAKE MY ASKING YOU TO DO SO AS A QUESTION! I’M NOT ASKING YOU, I’M TELLING YOU!”

I also vowed (pre-motherhood again, of course), that I would NEVER say “because I said so” to my kids. I always found it half-ass and infuriating when my mother “said so”. I have only said it once and Darren called me on it immediately (I forgot that I vowed it in front of him once). But it is ALWAYS on the tip of my tongue. And to be honest, I now understand its validity. Sometimes, it is a perfectly acceptable response to the 3 millionth “WHYYYYYY MOMMMY” of the day. I’m mean, by the end of the day of a stay at home mom, the mind and body just do not have the explanation and energy left to hold a conversation with anyone under the age of 30, never mind trying to reason with a two year old.

And it’s not like they don’t pull it on me;

“Leo, why do you NEED to put your jammies back on for nap time?”

“BECAUSE I DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Yes, they are evil little geniuses whose mission it sometimes appears, is to test my patience, something I had always prided myself on (before I had kids, of course). And I love them dearly and with all my heart, obviously.

My Fairy Helpers

We have fairies living amongst us in our house. They play with Madeline. They leave her little notes and trinkets. They play hide and seek with a special magic stone that we have been finding in the oddest places over the last three years (we haven’t seen it in a while though because the fairies have a short term memory issue and cannot remember their last clever hiding spot). They protect her (with the help of the family dog) from ghosts, goblins and strangers at night when she is in bed, and on occasion, they bring little reminders of Grandma down from heaven.
And sometimes, they work for me. Like the “Tidy fairies” who pick up toys that sloppy little kids leave lying around.
“Don’t worry honey, I’m sure they will bring your DS back when they think you are ready to be more responsible with it.”
The other day, my brother took his kids and my two oldest to the store and told them they could each pick out one thing. Madeline picked a bag of those nasty little conversation hearts (lumps of sugar) that you give to your friends of Valentine’s Day. It was a big bag filled with twenty or so little individual bags. On the front of the big bag were the words “classroom size”. This, however was not enough to convince her that the bag is intended to be shared with her classmate for her Valentine’s day party. She genuinely intended toeat the whole bag all by herself;
“I DO NOT have to share these if I don’t want to! And when I get home I’m going to hide them in my ‘Madeline hides stuff’ spot.”
The next morning while I was doing laundry I found the “Madeline hides stuff spot” behind her hamper.
Very shortly after she got home from school she ran into her room to get her stash, and quickly came stomping back out;
“MOMMY! Where is my candy?”
“What candy?”
“The candy I hid in my “Madeline hides stuff spot”!
“Uh-oh. I bet I know what happened. I bet the “greedy fairies” came and snatched it because you said you wouldn’t share.”
CUE THE MELTDOWN
“I WANT MY CANDYYYYYYYYYYYYYY! I HATE FAIRIES! I DON’T EVER WANT TO PLAY WITH FAIRIES AGAIN AND I DON’T WANT THEM IN MY ROOM ANYMORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
I’m a little taken aback at her over-reaction. For a moment I reconsider as I really don’t want her to hate fairies. But there’s no going back;
“I’m sure they would bring them back if you could convince them that you have decided to share them with your friends, and maybe even your brother.”
“NEVEEEEEEEEER!”
A while later (a pretty long while as she really had to think long and hard about it), she came back and told me that she told the fairies she was ready to share and was now just waiting for them to bring back her candy, which they did.
You know what they say about raising kids, it takes a village…of fairies.

The other night Darren said he didn’t care if the house was a little messy for a bit. I think he noticed that despite my very good and sincere efforts, I cannot keep up with the mess these days. He must have forgotten what happened when he told me that he didn’t really mind if my legs were a little hairy sometimes.

It’s so kind of him to notice that I try, and impossible for him to not realize that I’m losing the battle. And I wish I could just say f#$% it and let it go, but if it is this disastrous now, I can’t imagine what it this place would look like if I didn’t spend every waking moment trying to maintain some order. I swear, no matter what else I may be doing, I am always picking something up, wiping something off, putting something back…always. And yet, there is ALWAYS more.

It’s hard to not feel like I’m coming up short. As a stay-at-home mom, I certainly consider it one of my responsibilities to keep the house in order. But, as some sort of sick joke, it appears that it is everyone else’s job in this house to be the biggest slob they can possibly be.

The other day, just moments after a “please pick up for yourself” plea, Madeline asked me where her Spongebob bag was. I sent her down the hall to her brother’s room where she found the bag, and then walked back down the hall emptying all of the contents of the bag in a trail-like fashion thru the whole house.

It’s the nature of the beast (kids); if I don’t need it right now, I’ll just drop it where I stand and move on. And then I will demand that Mommy know where it is the next time I want it.

“Mommy where are my roller skates?”

“I put them away.”

“Away where?”

“Where they belong.”

“Well how am I supposed to know where that is?”

She’s got me there.

I resolve to make a better effort at being the cool, calm and collected mother I swore I was going to be before I had kids.
I resolve to spend less time screaming at my kids in frustration and more time communicating with them with patience.
I resolve to worry less about the toys scattered all over the house, and to sit down and play with them, and my children more.
I resolve to understand that my six year old, despite being a very capable little girl, is only six (and just like her mother), and all of my psychotic ranting and raving about lost mittens and shoes, a messy bedroom or a feisty little attitude is not going to change that, thank God.
I resolve to stop scolding my six year old for something and then laughing at my adorable two year old when he does the same thing.
I resolve to stop going to Target just because it's too cold to play outside and I cannot play farm and tractors all morning again for the eighth day in a row and I need to get of us out of the house before we all drive each other crazy.
I resolve to suck it up and go play outside more, even when it's a little cold out.
I resolve to spend less time wishing my children were perfect little angels, and more time enjoying the child in them.
I resolve to spend more time with the child in me.
I resolve to stop wondering why my children do the things they do, and to remember that I once did the same infuriating things.
I resolve to woman-up to the responsibility of helping my children become the genuinely good people they are meant to be.
I resolve to finish what I start, and to teach my children to do the same.
I resolve to write more; to stop using motherhood as my excuse for being creatively lazy and to rediscover my three greatest muses.
I resolve to cook more, maybe.
And in honor of my mother, I resolve to get organized (I just wish she were here to give me my annual day planner/organizer for Christmas this year, the one we both knew I was never going to use). I resolve to make us both proud.
I resolve to go easier on myself when, despite my best efforts, some things are left unresolved.
I resolve to be a better mom.