Remember When part 2

Okay so walking down this sandy path to the beach is just about as wonderful as the boardwalk thing. Look at those sweet little girls...


This didn't take long... get those toes into the sand!

Rembmer When...

Remember a few posts back when I said I could never take enough pictures of my kids walking down boardwalks to the beach, and sleeping... I just uploaded these and needed to post them. I really can't get enough of these pictures.

Fig. 1--Owen trying to get a head start on Marin...


Every time I watch them run down the boardwalk to the sand and water, my heart just wells up so much it might burst.

Fig. 2--Marin catches up


Sweet babies, walking together, and look now you get a glimpse of the ocean out there. They can see it too, and they are starting to run.

Fig. 3--she waits for him (because his legs are still so short he just can't keep up)


Fig. 4--feet meet sand, all is well on this cold and blustery day on Amelia Island

Surrendering to Motherhood

I just finished the book, Surrendering to Motherhood by Iris Krasnow. Its a really good book, you should try to find a used copy somewhere. I came across mine for $.75 at our thrift store. The subtitle is; Losing Your Mind, Finding Your Soul. It was one of my best finds yet, for sure.

Iris Krasnow is a journalist who has a career other journalists would envy. And then she became a mom. She was still a journalist, but she was also a mom, and she tried to find balance in the two. Along with her pre-child esteemed career, she spent much of her adult life trying to figure out her spirituality, searching for something deeper than what she seemed to have.

I'm not going to talk about her spiritual journey much here, except for her it was deeply connected to becoming a parent for her.

Here is why I want to share her story with you. When I try to post my "real parenting" posts I don't want you all to get the impression that being a parent is a horrible thing. I just don't want to be one of those bloggers who always shows pictures, and tells stories that make it appear as though I have my crap together. I want to show both the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the highs and lows, the laugh until your sides hurt, and cry until you run dry sort of parenting things. And in this book I got a lot of that. This book is about a woman who had the most amazing career, that she loved and was really good at, and had to figure out how to make peace with it and children. Its about how difficult it is for women to "have it all" both a career and children. And its about her choice to put her family above all else. Its about her discovery that "When you stay to be where you are, then your life can really begin."

So that being said, I want to give you a few really great stories from her book.

Being There Fully is about loving someone more than you have ever loved anyone in your life. reaching a sublime state with children can come from just staring at them. When I watch my boys sitting next to each other on the couch, huddled under the orange quilt their great-grandmother made, Jack on Theo's lap, Zane's head on Isaac's shoulder, I am overcome by the realization that they all belong to me, that I belong to them...

Isaac frequently screams "Mommy" in a voice that should only be used if there's a fire and I come running to a sheepish toddler, who pleads in a whisper: "I just want you to hold me, Mommy." So I hold him and his head flops on my shoulder and he pats me softly on the back and I wish we could "put today on rewind," like Theo always asks me to do. (page 171)

Upon reading the morning newspaper headlining the Ron Brown plane crash and the arrest of the Unabomber she writes: All the while, my baby Jack was slapping the newspaper for my attention so I could read him the Lillian Vernon catalog that just came in the mail.
"What's this, Mommy? What's this, Mommy?" he asked over and over, as he flipped through the pages and pointed to building blocks and pottery and candles and windsocks. As I listed every item, over and over, I looked into Jack's pale green eyes rimmed with Jade. I thought about how he'll be small enough to tuck into my lap like this only for only a spell longer. And I was reminded of the innocence of the children I must soon let free into a world that may harm them, make them cynical, perhaps even make them bad. I let the newspaper drop to my feet and buried my face in Jack's neck.
This astonishing day is ours, and on this day we have been assigned as mothers the Hurculean task of Being There and Loving our families... We must lavish those we love with our time while we have them. Surely, they are deserving of more of us than our office gets... (page 173)

Sitting down to read Pocahontas with her boys (she has four, did I say that) she writes: In the beginning I am wishing that I had instead grabbed One-Minute Bible Stories from the shelf, but soon I am getting into it, as I point out each bird, each leaf, each butterfly, every color. When I get to the part where Pocahontas has taken John Smith into the forest I am reading to four gaping statues: "As they ran through the trees, Pocahontas showed him how all the parts of nature--animals, plants, the wind, the clouds, even people--are alive and connected to each other. Her words and the importance fo what she showed him so touched his heart that Smith was changed."
I looked at my boys hypnotized by their mommy and pray that nothing ever changes for us... When I close the book a full hour has passed and I'm thinking that whoever invented One-Minute Bible Stories must be one busy person.

Iris Krasnow has written a great book, full of encouragement to slow down and breathe in your children, while wiping banana off the walls, she appreciates her sitters when she has deadlines, but has learned to cherish the days when its just her and her boys. And she has put into words the importance of Being There for your family and her journey of seeing motherhood as freedom.

Its a great read, I think you would enjoy it.
Cheers,
Have a great Holiday

Snack Time

Go To Sleep

I can never take enough pictures of my sleeping babies. Never! There are two things my kids do that I can never get enough shots of, first sleeping (sleeping babies are magically beautiful) and second is running down the boardwalk to the beach, any boardwalk, any beach.

I wanted to make a post, or at least start one this evening. I had a few minutes after kids were put in bed to get this started. But as soon as my daughter got in bed she started coughing really bad, and needed some attention (a drink, Vicks etc...). Her coughing woke up the baby, and he needed some snuggles from daddy. By the time I got back to the computer my few minutes was up, and I no longer was going to be able to start a post. Now I am multi-tasking, watching a show with Todd and typing during the commercials. And that's not very nice of me, because then we can't watch the show "together" (because part of me has a computer on my lap) and we can't talk because I'm typing when we would talk.

But one thing I am trying to do more of these days is talk about real parenting. I love my sleeping babies. I love to go in after they have been sleeping for a bit and they are breathing really deep and making funny noises. I love to breath them in and smell their little smells, the baby smells like pie or graham crackers most times (I know where the graham cracker smell comes from, but I'm always confused by the pie smell), and my girl smells like fruity detaingler, sand, paint, marker, tooth paste (and I know where all those smells come from). I like to whisper things to them like, "I love you so much" or other things about how sweet they are, sometimes Marin says things back in her sleep. Sometimes I crawl in with them and listen for a while... and fall asleep and wander to my bed around 2am, oops.

But don't let me fool you, about the time dinner is over, and we clean up the mess, and get kids in "jammies" I'm ready to crash on the couch and check out for a bit. I don't even make it to the brushing teeth part, Todd has to do that. I like to read stories, but on my terms (I read on their terms all day), like laying down and only if they are scratching my back or playing with my hair. But other than that, I like Todd to take over bed time. I like to take a break in between giving attention to kids all day, dinner and then actually responding to Todd's questions, and telling him all the interesting things from my day, and maybe listening to his. I mean its nice to have face time with your spouse after a long day apart right.

So when I say, I love to breath in my sleeping babies, and while I do that most nights before I go to bed, I don't get to the point of them actually being asleep without having the thoughts, "Just go to sleep already. Are you kidding you have to pee again!"

I think many mothers might be like me, selfish with their night hours. I feel like I give all day, and I love giving to my kids. I answer questions all day, I wash little hands that fished in the toilet, I had patience when I washed oatmeal out of his hair, and off the wall, I laughed when I found it on my lap in the middle of a meeting, I make meals and snacks all day and clean up from them, I get stains out of those favorite pink and white striped tights, I kiss snotty faces, I wipe snotty noses, I wipe bottoms, I wipe tables and floors, and tears from falls and hurt feelings. And at night I am ready to finish that article I started a week ago, watch Parenthood on Tuesday and Survivor on Wednesday. I like to hear Todd tell me something without getting interrupted. All of this is okay. And after I get to have a bit of time alone with a book, Todd or TV I find myself creeping into their room to watch them breath and kiss their squishy sleeping faces. Then I come back out to the couch and while Todd watches the news I fall asleep and he has to drag my lifeless sleep talking self to bed... usually in my jeans and t-shirt (if I don't put on P.J.'s before the news there is a chance I might sleep in my clothes from that day... ewww I know).

Are you sleeping? I think there might be poop on the rug

Okay here we go, the reality of parenting. I would not call myself a mommy-blogger, but I suppose I am a mom and I have a blog so whatever you want to call me that's fine. But I'm setting out on a new blog series called, "Losing your mind, and finding your soul" or "Where did that come from?" or "Is that poop?" or "Mommy I love you can I have a cookie?" or something like that. But the point is that often in blog-land we get these pictures of people with perfect lives, who always love their children, never get frustrated, never have a messy house, never forget to take a shower, never have boogers on their jacket or a dirty diaper left in a hot car, never a sleepless night, those sort of things.

Sometime we get a glimpse of normal, but I think that a lot of times the blog post is about presenting what we want all the rest of our lives to look like: a picture-perfect sewing project and not the mess that got created when the mother stopped cleaning for one moment. Or on the cooking blogs, we see these really great meals and often think, "dang, why can't I cook for my kids like that. For once I want to have a meal on the table when my husband walks in the door." "If that mom with four kids can do it why can't this mom with two do it?" "How come she can sew and have a clean house?" "How come she can go hiking all day and still have a pot of chili on the stove?" "How did she homeschool 13 children and not pull her hair out, when I pull my hair out just trying to do preschool drop off some days?"

Okay back to the poop on the rug. Brace yourself, this is kind of a long story. So I have been coming down with a cold the past few days. I could feel it coming on and and was wondering if it was allergies or a cold. And then my baby got a little snotty and I knew it was a cold coming on. Yesterday I got up and got the house really clean. Meaning all those little Polly Pocket shoes that are sitting on top of every shelf and need to find their way back to the Polly Purse actually got put away. All those little hair bows and bands and clips were gathered and put back into the hair accessories drawer. All the cloth diapers got washed and dried, the floor got swept, Dysoned the floors (its a new word I made up for when you pull out the Dyson vacuum--if you have one you understand its magic), and then hand washed any sticky spots. Got all the dishes done from breakfast. I was on a roll.

Around 8:45am I got a call asking if I could watch a friends child - they had been ill all night and he was ready for a day of play. So J came over around 9:30am. He's really cute, and loves the elephant on my wall and did the sign/noise for elephant all morning. Around 10:30am another friend and her son stopped by to play and pick up some teething gnomes she ordered, and drop off Marin's birthday gift. We played outside on the swing set for a while and then came in to play. When everyone left at 12:10pm Owen took a nap and I worked on a few more gnomes at the sewing machine. It was not until 2:45pm that I realized all the work I had done that morning was undone.

Important sidenote: as a mom you can't be bothered by the mess that gets made when people come over with their kids. There are days you will go to their house and make a mess, or even break something, and you just have to know its part of getting to see friends. If you didn't accept the mess that came with a play date than you would be locked inside your house all day, and that's worse than messes. This does not mean you don't have rules at your house, but things will get played with and snacks turn into messes on the floor. I have a small house so I like to have only one or two friends over at a time. But my friend Lauren invites like 8 moms over with all their kids, and she always includes lunch (we all bring stuff to pitch in but still I know we eat more of her food than the stuff we bring). Then we all leave and her bathroom has had 5 potty-training toddlers go through, 8 moms, 6 diaper changes (half of which were really bad poo and I usually forget my wipes so I have to use her stash--at my friend Anna's I always forget to show up with a diaper too, sorry Anna). Her kids' rooms had like 12 kids pull things out of the dress up box, every toy gets chewed at some point, someone will need an ice pack, and to borrow a change of clothes, band aids, towels, an entire tissue box will get destroyed and a book might go missing and come back like three months later (along with the borrowed cloths).

But she still does it, she still has us over, and we all laugh and hang out and cry when we need to. That's the nice part of having a community of girlfriends you can parent with. You show up on a bad day, cry, have an ice pop, let your kids play together, and feel encouraged. You walk out knowing that today is not the day you will pull all of your hair out, and you might even enjoy the rest of the day doing something with your kids. Of you might get a call in the morning from a sick friend who needs you to watch her kids for a bit so she can recover or run to a doctor's appointment. And you say yes because you love your friend and know what its like to be sick with a small healthy child, and because you know that next week when you get sick or you have some crises she will hand you a cup of coffee, take your child off your hip and let you drive away for two hours of recovery. Its the way the mommy network works, and its vital to your survival, because poop gets on the rug and you need to talk about it, or walk away from it. Ok, back to the story....

So after we tried to recover the house, it was time to pick up Todd from work because we were having dinner with a friend (I'll write about eating out with kids later). After dinner, we ran by the grocery story to pick up a few things, and arrived home around 7:15pm. Just as Todd was walking into the kids room to put Owen to bed he said, "We need to round up all these little things all over the house and put them where they belong." As he shut the door and snuggled down with Owen, I thought "Are you kidding, I did that all morning! Can't you see there are no Polly Pocket shoes sitting around anymore?!?!"

By this time my cold was really starting to hit me and I needed to close my eyes, after both kids were in bed and I was "resting" on the couch, Todd came out of the bathroom and said, "Are you sleeping?"
ME: "No, I'm just resting I don't feel very good."
T: "Oh, I think there's poop on the rug in the bathroom."
ME: "Okay can you just put it in with the cloth diapers and I'll wash it in the morning."
T: "Are you sick?"
ME: "Yes"
T: "Were you sick earlier or did this just come on?" "Did you want me to do something with the rug in the bathroom?"
ME: "Can you just roll it up and put it in the bin with the cloth diapers and I'll wash it in the morning." "Zzzzzzzzzzz..."

Next morning:

ME (thinking in my head): "Hmmmm, I wonder why the rug is in the bin with the cloth diapers?"
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During the making of this post: no children were injured, one diaper was changed, followed by a bath because it was the only way to properly clean up from the diaper, one box of crayons was dumped on the floor, one sink of dishes went unwashed, one baby took a nap, and I ate a peanut butter cookie for breakfast.

I'm still here

Things have been a little busy around here. First we are trying to get some remodeling done. Its amazing how draining it can be to have builders in and out of your house, asking questions you have not thought of answers to yet. Or worse, not asking questions and just doing it their own way without asking, and having to keep track of what is actually going on. While we have been excited about getting our second bathroom finished and the guest room finally put together, I never knew it would really bother me to see a hole cut into my house for the new dryer vent, or the new tankless water heater. Seeing a hole in my hole-less house really was disturbing. I don't know why, but it somehow makes you feel a little less safe. You know like, there's a HOLE in your house. Logically I understand that windows and doors are holes, but I didn't see those being made so that doesn't matter. But when I walked into the carport to talk to one of our builders and saw a six inch hold in my house I almost started crying. I really could see into the house from the carport.

We finally got to a stopping point on the remodel and my Mom and her husband came in town for Marin's birthday, AND MINE! I exist too mom! Actually they came with birthday gifts for both of us, I got to do a little shopping and make the switch from boot cut jeans to the new famous skinny jean. So I'm in style now. I just want to insert here, the skinny jean was not created for men. Could someone out there please just explain the Hipster man skinny jean. Do they know they look like a woman in their pants. Anyways, I made the switch, but I'm not a man or a hipster so I can follow the crowd right :)

After my mom left I began to prepare for Marin's birthday. I can't wait to show you pictures of our Nature Explorer party. I'm not going to say any more about it right now. More soon on that one.

Along with all of that I also experienced some tragedy in the past week. The loss of a good friend. I will also tell that story soon. I just wanted you all to know I know my posts have been lame these days. I am coming back now that things are calming down a little.

I also want to tell you all that I am going to start a weekly post with some title related to "Real Parenting". One of the things that came out of this past week in loosing my friend, were many discussions about how we as mothers and parents need our community of friends to support us and to be real with. One of the things that blogs and social sites like Facebook do is create some sort of an identity for us, that may or may not be true. What I am trying to say is that there are tons of parenting, mommy, sewing-mama, photo-mama, natural-mama, hip-mama, homeschooling-mama, cooking-mama, you name it-mama blogs out there. And all of them, not always intentionally paint this picture perfect idea of what the writer's home life must be like. All those home decorating one's, please, you have cute homes, but where is the toilet paper your toddler pulled out of the bathroom, down the hall, into the kitchen and out the back door. We know you can't have dinner on the table when you have been painting that upcycled whatever all day. Or can you? I have been doing some "house project" stuff and on those days my kids don't eat all day (well cooked things, I just toss granola bars at them and tell them to stay near the table) the rest of the house is falling down and well, to hell with the laundry. If I don't just focus on the house all day, meaning I follow the kids around like a creepy shadow picking up every discarded item. If I don't pee all day and only fold and put away laundry, make beds, change diapers, wipe bottoms, drop off and pick up from preschool, clean up from breakfast, clean up from snack, clean up from lunch, clean up from snack, clean up from dinner (oh wait my husband usually does that one so I can't include that one) then, only then, does my house stay clean. I really am serious about the no peeing part. So anyways, over the next few months I want to expose the real work it takes to be a parent, not just the glamorous stuff that a lot of blogs focus on, not the Facebook posts that make my life look perfect, but the really stuff that goes on. Not to take the joy or love out of parenting, because I really do love my kids and I really do love parenting. But to take some time showing all sides of parenting.

Also I would love your stories. I would love to have some guest writers who are in the trenches of parenting, sharing the joys and exhaustion and watching them sit side by side on the same fence. So send me your stories. I want to hear them!