shoulda woulda coulda

Last week, Jem had his 4 year check-up. We are about 4 months behind due to an insurance issue but that is another story. Anyway, after the nurse was finished taking his blood pressure and temperature, she told him to strip down to his underwear and socks. The Dr. came in shortly thereafter and I sat there while she and Jem chatted. They played "I spy" with colors and shapes. She had him draw a square and a circle. She asked him if he drank his milk and ate his vegetables. He had to hop on one foot and then bound across the room like a rabbit. And as I watched this process the most insistent voice in my head wasn't saying, "Wow! He's doing great. He's answering every question." It wasn't even saying, "Gee, I hope this is over soon." Nope. The loudest voice in my head was shouting at me, "Man, I wish I would have put him in tighter underwear this morning."

perspective

Last night we took the kids to Chic-fil-a. There were plenty of families there; parents coming for the indoor play area more than anything else. And there was a mother there with her three children. I wouldn't have noticed her except that her oldest child, a girl, came over to our table. She was drawn by the sight of Caia's car seat as so many children are. There aren't many kids who aren't interested in babies. But as she came over I quickly realized that something was different. It was in the way she stood, with her body pressed up against the car seat. It declared itself in her quick, impulsive movements as she grabbed for Caia's toys. And it was there in her quick speech and lack of eye contact.

Her mom rushed over and apologized. I assured her that is was fine. She said thank you and apologized again while telling me that her daughter had autism. And I watched this mom lead her daughter back to their table. I watched as her daughter tore apart the flower that was on their table for decoration. I watched as she crouched in her seat to reach that hanging lamp above their table. She swatted it with her hand sending it swaying erratically back and forth. And her mom never once lost her cool or seemed embarrassed. She was calm and firm and loving and it was a beautiful thing to see.

Too often I worry about my children’s behavior not because of what it says about them but because of what other people might think it says about me. If I can’t control my kids then people will think that I’m not a good mom. No one wants to be that mom; the one whose kid is throwing a monster temper tantrum in the store or running around not listening. But for most moms, that stage passes and there are new issues to deal with, new lessons to teach. And then there are those moms who are raising a child with special needs. Moms who might not know when or if any particular stage will pass but who soldier on doing their best as they love their children. Perspective can be a much needed thing.    

fail

Yesterday, as I was changing Tru’s diaper, he looked at me and said, “You’re always mad at me Mommy.”

Yikes! No mom wants to hear something like that from her child. I am not always angry with Truett. But I am often frustrated by his willfulness and disobedience. And while I do my very best to keep my cool, I don’t always do a good job of reassuring him that I love him no matter what. Apparently, from his perspective, I’m doing a terrible job.

And here’s the thing. I love that boy fiercely but I allow myself to get so bogged down in the behavioral issues that I forget to communicate that to him.

It’s a tough road, a tough balance. He needs to learn that there are rules and consequences. He also needs to know that I love him no matter what. 

There are the times when my human nature gets in the way. When I’m so focused on taming my dragon that I forget to enjoy him. Here’s hoping I take those painful words and allow them to make me a better mom.

i blame mario

Jem has recently been asking to watch me play video games. He doesn’t play himself because he hasn’t quite mastered the art of using a controller, mostly because I rarely let him try. I’m not ready to lose my boy to video games just yet. But every once in a while I will play an old game and let him watch. I will admit that there are probably much better ways to spend time with him but I have fond memories of playing video games with my brother growing up so I let the nostalgia take over.

One of the games he likes to watch is Super Mario Brothers 3. I grew up playing it but haven’t revisited it in years. And I’ve discovered something. I’m a little rusty. I make silly mistakes and I die a lot. And I wish I could say that with age comes patience and the ability to laugh at those mistakes. But I can’t. What I can and did say was, “I don’t want to play this anymore. I’m not any good at it.” It just came out, and as I was saying it the grown-up part of my brain was saying, “No! You can’t say that to your 4 year old! Think of what you are teaching him.” But it was too late. The perfectionistic twelve year old in me grabbed control and spewed out her nonsense.

Today, Jem asked if he could watch me play a game. I said yes and he chose a different game while saying, “This one is easy Mommy. You can do an easy one.” Great! My child thinks that I only want to do easy things and that I quit when things get hard. I’m sure it will come out in therapy years from now when he has quit his fourth job in 8 months. Curse you Mario Brothers!

photo by Darkhilt  http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkhilt/6755544671/

currency

The other morning I went into the boys’ room to discover that they had pulled all of the clothes out of the closet and thrown them around the room. This is not the first time that this has happened. Sometimes it is the clothes in the closet. Other times it is the diapers from the changing table. Truett has even pulled curtains down. I made them clean it up and then told Truett that he would need to sleep in the baby’s room that night by himself.

When bedtime came, I put Truett down to sleep in Caia’s crib. He laid down and then asked me, “Where is Jebby?” (his name for Jem) I told him that Jem was going to sleep in his own room and Tru fell apart. Crying, screaming, jumping up and down and flailing around. He didn’t want to sleep alone. He was scared. This lasted over an hour and since my husband, Sam, wasn’t home that evening I was left to deal with it on my own. It made for a long, tiring night.

But even though I was exhausted I was also ecstatic. I had finally found his currency.

Truett is that child who doesn’t mind time-outs, who laughs after a spanking and who isn’t phased by missing a tv show. I don’t have many disciplinary methods in my arsenal and none were effective on him. How do you teach a child to behave when he thinks being disciplined is no big deal? My mom kept encouraging me to try different things. That I just needed to find his currency. What was the thing that would feel like a punishment to him?

Last night, Truett was allowed to try again in his own room and this morning when I went in to wake them up they were both still in their beds. Nothing had been pulled out of the closet or the dresser or off of the changing table and the curtains were still attached to the curtain rods.  Cha-ching baby!

haiku - sort of

I am drowning in

inch deep dishwater. A slow

preventable death.

photo by ricko  http://www.flickr.com/photos/ricko19/364225587/

wonderman

Last week one of our cereal boxes came with a miniature comic book about the justice league. I gave it to the boys and they have been asking us repeatedly to read it to them. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to read a comic book to someone but it is fairly awkward. They don't seem to mind though. Truett just likes to see the page with the giant octopus fighting a giant crab. Jem likes the whole idea of super heroes.
The other night, Sam had just finished reading it to Jem and asked him which super hero he would like to be. He pointed to each one on the cover: Batman, Superman, Aquaman, Flash Gordon and the Green Lantern. Jem said, “I want to be that one Daddy,” and pointed to the comic book. Sam promptly replied, “No buddy. You can’t be that one.” See if you can figure out who Jem wanted to be?

 That’s right. My rough and tumble boy wanted to be Wonder Woman. I can’t say that I blame him. In this particular comic book she is the only one who seems to have a legitimate weapon. She has a cool golden whip and she flies. The other characters just seem to run around a lot. Plus, he spends 90% of his time with me so he is in that stage of wanting to do what I do. Not that I fly or have a golden whip.

This of course freaks Sam out. I just figure its normal, all part of the growing up process. Soon enough Jem will figure out that he wants to be the hero not the heroine. And if I can get a rise out of Sam by putting bracelets on Jem and telling him that they are called pretties or clipping a barrette in Tru’s hair and telling him how pretty he is, well then. It just makes my life more interesting.

mrs. johnson

Mrs. Johnson* was my elementary school art teacher. And she was one of those teachers who would erase half of your picture and then redraw it for you. There was no, “This is a great start. Have you thought about trying this or that to make it more realistic?” Nope. It was all eraser and sighing and muttering. It didn’t take long for me to figure out two things. 1) I wasn’t good at art. 2) It didn’t matter because Mrs. Johnson would do my work for me.  But in junior high, my art teacher expected me to do my own work. I had long ago surrendered myself to Mrs. Johnson’s opinion of me and I was unable to suddenly convince myself that I was capable of drawing a picture. After 8^th grade, I never took another art class again.

And now I have this little boy who loves crafts and coloring and creating. He is constantly asking me to draw things for him. Today it was a sea serpent eating a fish. And as I attempt to create these things for him, I find myself qualifying it. Telling him that I can’t draw well or that maybe he should ask his daddy because he would do a better job. It’s the truth. The truth that was taught to me by Mrs. Johnson. But if art is subjective then that was just her opinion. That was the truth of my abilities as she saw it. I’m not saying that I could have been a great artist if I had only been nurtured. I have no illusions about the fact that God didn’t bless me with those abilities. But maybe I would have been more willing to try. Maybe I would have been better able to accept my failings with grace rather than with embarrassment.

 And the real truth is that my son has no idea that I can’t draw. So why do I feel the need to tell him? Why am I qualifying my work to my four-year old? Old habits die hard but that isn’t what I want to teach my boy. I want him to be able to say that he did his best and to be proud of the effort he put in even if his picture doesn’t look like everyone else’s. And when he meets his Mrs. Johnson, I want him to be able to take his picture back and say, “No thanks. I like it the way it is.”

*Name has been changed mostly because I can't remember it.

ease up, matt damon.

A few weeks ago I saw a preview for We Bought a Zoo. In it, Matt Damon’s character says something about only needing a few seconds of courage in order for great things to happen. The idea of that really stuck with me and I’ve found myself returning to it over and over. I couldn’t remember the exact line so I decided on 10 seconds. All I need is 10 seconds of courage and great things can happen. And it’s true. I think of things that scare me or make me nervous and the reality is that I just need to be brave enough to step into those things. To say yes to a request, to go up and speak to someone I don’t know, to tell someone that I’m writing a blog.  It’s getting past the initial fear and that only takes a few seconds of bravery. Once you’ve said yes or taken that first step you are pretty much locked in and then it is just a matter of seeing what happens.

After talking about this idea with several people I decided to get online and watch the preview again. I was tired of guessing at the amount of time, thinking that maybe 10 seconds was a little long. Maybe he had said 5 seconds or even 3. So yesterday I watched the preview again. And the actual line is, “All you need is twenty seconds of insane courage and, I promise you, great things will happen.” What?! Twenty seconds! That’s almost the same amount of time my electric toothbrush wants me to spend on one small section of my teeth and that feels like an eternity. And not just twenty seconds of courage but twenty seconds of insane courage. No thanks! I think I will stick with my ten seconds of ordinary courage and settle for really good stuff happening. Baby steps, Matt. Baby steps.   

photo by FlungingPictures  http://www.flickr.com/photos/flungingpictures/4123440242/

roid rage

Yesterday morning was rough. I walked into the boys’ room to discover that Truett had, yet again, pulled diapers out of the changing table and thrown them around the room. After doing a time-out and picking them up, I sent him to the bathroom to brush his teeth with a warning to leave his brother’s toothbrush alone. I went to check on him and saw Jem’s toothbrush lying in a different spot. When questioned, Tru said that he had sucked the toothpaste off of it. I told him he needed to go sit on his bed.

  At this point, he ran out into the hallway and turned to look at me. His face got red, the veins on his neck stood out and he pointed his finger at me as he screamed, “You can’t make me little boy.” If he was a full-grown man I would have been scared of him, of his anger. Thankfully he is a roided-up raging maniac trapped in a two-year old’s body. And I found myself fighting back laughter.

Will he ever grasp the truth that he is smaller and weaker than me? Does he imagine himself to be a giant or that the volume of his “no” will change the outcome? I scooped him up and dealt with the defiance and disobedience.

As I look back on it now, I can see myself in him. My belief that I can change God and His plans. This idea that I’m bigger than I really am. And the thought that God looks at me with love and is possibly trying to hold in a chuckle. Saying to Himself, “Someday she’ll get it.”

i'm going as bozo

I can’t wear lipstick. I try again and again. Different brands, different shades. With gloss, without gloss. It just doesn’t work on me. I don’t know if it is my skin tone, the natural pigment in my lips or the shape of my mouth. Whatever it is, when I put lipstick on I look like Bozo the Clown heading out for a night of street work.  I look in the mirror and all I see are lips and not in a good way. And I get so frustrated. I have this idea in my head that lipstick completes the look. Sophisticated, grown-up women wear lipstick and I’m still putting on my Burt’s Bees like a 12 year old.

But the other day, as I was looking at my pile of Bozo channeling lipsticks, I heard a different voice vying for attention. This voice said that there are probably women out there who wish that they didn’t have to wear lipstick. Applying it over and over because they feel exposed without it. This small voice was urging me to see the blessing instead of the curse. And for that moment I chose to listen to that voice instead of the other one as I closed my make-up drawer and went to find my chapstick.


photo by HeartlanderPD  http://www.flickr.com/photos/28596302@N04/2712560846/

the start

How do I begin a blog? It seems odd to just start writing as if people know me and my life. Then again, considering that my mom will most likely be the only one who reads this, that really doesn’t matter. I had no intention to start a blog. It seems like everyone and their mother has a blog so who really has time to read one more? They’re all too busy writing their own. But I’ve been strong-armed into it by a friend and out of love and respect for her I’m willing to give it a shot. I’m just hoping it won’t turn into one of those American Idol auditions that you watch saying to yourself, “Why didn’t anyone tell them that they can’t sing?” Maybe it is only in my head that I’m a “writer” and this is really just a muddled jumble of nonsense that only my mother will approve of.

But back to the original issue of how to start this thing. An introduction seems like a good place. I’m a stay-at-home mom to two boys (the dragons) and one girl (the princess). But this won’t be one of those super mom blogs. I’m not crafty.  The idea of scrapbooking makes me break out in a cold sweat. I do not decorate cakes or sew costumes or even plan birthday parties. I do not have angelic children who always mind their manners. And I willingly admit that there are many days when bedtime is my favorite time of the day.

This will just be a blog about life; this life that I am stumbling through while doing my best to extend grace to myself. I’m trying to find beauty and humor in the ordinary, sometimes even ugly, parts of my day.  I’m not afraid to admit my weaknesses and share my mistakes. And maybe that is the point.

This one’s for you mom! J