tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6973118198247337542023-11-15T09:42:37.462-08:00Confessions of a Stay At Home MomCarriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.comBlogger50125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-33289313882936332112013-03-24T19:27:00.001-07:002013-03-24T19:37:18.590-07:00I Won't Give Up<br />
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My son’s asleep in his bed and my husband is working in the
basement. I’m alone in our bedroom. I hear the cold air and wintry mix slap against the side
of the house. The tree limbs outside
look like long arms that are just short of reaching inside our windows as they
try every once and while with a tap, tap.
The outside air even smells cold; like heavy snow. It’s the end of March and the cold weather
has overstayed its welcome but in no time,
the landscape will turn from barren and lifeless, still and white, the color of
nothing--to something else, something alive.
I inhale a deep breath of artificially warm air and it brings me comfort
for what awaits; that cold will turn into warmth, gray skies into sunshine and
the snow will stop. It always stops. The color green will rise up in sprouts all
around us, like it always does, as life springs into abundance; a surge of beauty
everywhere. We will step on with our
bare toes the freshly grown grass, and then we’ll cut it down and eventually
take it for granted. We’ll awake to the
first charming then suddenly intruding songs from the trees. We’ll feel all at once, as Dylan Thomas wrote,
the “force that through the green fuse drives the flower” in our blood, growing
in our bellies, until we ourselves burst with color and life so new that it
alters our world and everything around us.
I exhale with a sigh, a long awaited sign of hope that is echoed by the
universe and I say out loud “thank you.” </div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m pregnant. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Now excuse me while I throw up.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m going to get very personal, again. I’ll start by answering a question someone recently
asked me. Did I plan this? Heck yes I planned this. It’s been a stressful several months. Let me quickly explain that after my mom’s
knee surgery she suffered some pretty bad anxiety attacks that were brought on
by her imbalanced chemical reaction to pain and trauma. She took medicine, felt guilty about it,
tried to take herself off of it, had to go on more medicine because of it, and
the doctors couldn’t find the right balance to set her straight. A couple of months ago while my poor mother
was in the hospital suffering from what was eventually diagnosed as a nervous
breakdown, I had a revelation. No matter
how much I tried to help her, I couldn’t fix her. No matter how much I sacrificed for her, it
wouldn’t change this. No matter how much
you hurt for and with someone, it won’t fix their problems. Don't get me wrong. It's okay to help someone that you love as much as you can. But there comes a time when you have to let go and accept the fact that some situations can't be helped <i>by you</i>. I watched my mom, the woman who
always comforted me when I was in need, relentlessly pace the floor of the
hospital while begging me to explain why all of this was happening to her. I couldn’t.
I felt for her, but I couldn’t <i>do</i>
anything about it. An unreasonable fear had consumed her and all I could do was watch. Suddenly my own problems came into focus and I had another revelation. I wanted certain things in my own life and I had been putting off doing anything about it. I felt like my life was passing me by. Walking to my car
later that night, I got so mad. I
resented fear. I had had enough of
it. It was ruining our lives. It hit me like a bolt of lightning; I wasn’t
going to wait any longer. There was
something I wanted that <i>was</i> within my
control and I had to do something about it.
I wanted a baby. I know that
seems like a giant leap in logic, but, stick with me. As the Queen of A-ha moments Miss Oprah
Winfrey herself would say in one of her pedantic speeches, “Beloved, if you want
something, you have got to make it happen.”
So, sick mother or no, I was going to have a baby. Responsibilities or not, I was going to have
a baby. Stress, heartache, fear…I wasn’t
going to pace the metaphorical floor of my life any longer. I was going to have another damn baby.</div>
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So I gave my husband fair warning and told him “get ready,”
because I wasn’t going to give up until I was impregnated. I’m talking protein shakes and energy shots,
sit ups and squats, yoga and Sting…you get the idea. I was <i>ready</i>. Once I get an idea in my head can’t nobody
stop me. So we tried. I mean, we <i>tried</i>. In completely
barbaric terms and for your adult ears only: you know the Olympics? Yeah.
It was kind of like that. But
with sex. Oh, come on. I’m married, in
love with my husband, and talking about God’s beautiful gift of procreation
here, so suck it up. Just shake your
head and say, “Oh, that Carrie” like you’ve done almost every time you’ve read
this blog. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It didn’t take long. I
still can hardly believe it. And of
course, in answering another question someone asked me, yes, I’m a little scared. You can’t go through a miscarriage without
being hyper sensitive the next time you’re pregnant. This is a warning to those of you who’ve had
a miscarriage. It’s scary the next
time. You’ll put some unneeded stress on
you and your baby because if you’re like me, every time you go to the bathroom
you pray you don’t find blood. But trust
me, you’ll get over it. You will, like
me, surrender the whole thing to God.
You’ll sleep at night. You’ll
thank Him again and again and you’ll see the beauty and peace in a situation
that brings up painful memories. You’ll be encouraged by a solid group of
compassionate friends. You’ll be scared,
but you’ll be okay. I was scared that
maybe I shouldn’t be writing this, announcing this pregnancy so early. But you know what? Forget fear.
It will not dictate how I act. My mother is home and on the road to recovery and by the grace of God learning how to function through the fear again. So am I. Something huge is going on in my life and when something huge happens to
me, I write about it. I can’t be afraid
that if it ends I’ll be embarrassed, or ashamed, or right back where I
started. No. Not this time. You’re with me no matter what, right? <o:p></o:p></div>
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So what’s next? What
I hope will happen is that I’ll be happy, and fat, and moody, and fat, and uncomfortable,
tired, and fat. I’ll revisit my old maternity
clothes and buy new ones, because that’s one of the BEST things about being
pregnant. Say it with me, “stretchy
pants.” I’ll make my husband repaint the
blue nursery (because I’m crossing my fingers for a girl) and eventually accept
that I can’t control those kinds of things, or anything for that matter, and
I’ll be happy with whatever God gives me.
And selfishly, I’ll ask for prayer, because I believe in it. I’ll ask for strength to endure whatever will
happen over the next nine months and strength for the next time I get knocked
down, which hopefully won’t be anytime soon.
But if I do get knocked down, I’ll ask to be stubborn enough to get up
and try, try again. Right now, as I type
this, I’m looking down at my belly wondering what’s going on in there. Once again, because I can’t help it, I’m
making plans. I’m falling in love
again. I’m singing a sweet little song
to my sweet little nub,<br />
“…Even if the skies get rough/I’m giving you all my
love/I’m still looking up…” <o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m still looking up.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-40001609030671647902012-12-12T13:42:00.000-08:002015-03-01T19:12:42.802-08:00And I Feel Fine<br />
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Today after having an echo-cardiogram and while being fitted for
a heart monitor that I’ll have to wear on my body for the next month, my nurse
said to me, “Today is 12/12/12. Do you
think anything bad is going to happen?”
I looked down at the wires hanging off of my chest and the blinking
light on the cell phone-sized monitor. "Are you kidding me?" I thought,
but just shrugged it off. A little sensitivity and perspective is all I’m
asking for, people. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I guess I can’t blame her for being distracted by the hype that
the world is ending instead of being cognizant of how <i>my world</i> is being shaken up right now. I blame the Mayans. The Mayans predicted the end of the world but
they couldn't predict drought or the Spanish Invasion of the Yucatan Peninsula,
both of which are theorized to have led to their own civilization’s
demise. I don't give the Mayans the
credit that others believe they deserve because I know they aren't the only
ones who’ve come up with these doomsday theories. It probably started long before them, and it’s
been continuing ever since. Today of all
days, well, conspiracy theorists are jumping on the cliff-headed bandwagon and
everyone from fringe scientists to Christian "prophets" are
predicting a "major global shift" before the end of 2012. You too?
Well throw your hat into the ring because apparently it doesn't take any
credentials or scientific fact to come up with a doomsday theory. I know, I’ve heard them all and have been
living with the effects of them my entire life.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It started as far back as I can remember. Like any kid who grew up in a Pentecostal church I was deathly
afraid of the penultimate act in the book of Revelations, The Rapture of the
church. When I was a small child, we
watched a terrible b-grade movie on the subject in the basement of our church called
"Thief In The Night." I cannot
tell you the psychological damage it caused me.
Parents, don’t do this to your children.
Even if you believe the rapture is soon approaching, please believe that
your young children are going to go up with you. The Jesus I believe in doesn’t deny young
children, so there's no need to show them this traumatizing propaganda and
instill in them a fear so crippling that it will haunt them for the rest of
their natural lives. I used to creep
into my parent's bedroom at night just to make sure they were still there, you
know, in case the prayers of repentance of a six year old girl went
unanswered. Now that I've gotten older
and have had an opportunity to actually read and reflect on the book of
Revelations, I have to confess, I'm as confused by it today as I was back
then. The book of Revelations is the
biggest head scratcher in all the books of the Bible, with Song of Solomon taking
a close second.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A few years after I finally convinced myself that I wouldn’t
miss the rapture and I stopped freaking out every time I came home from school to
an empty house, I saw another movie, “The Day After.” We watched this in school. It was the story of nuclear war between the
United States and Russia. I laugh now,
remembering that Steve Gutenberg was the star of the movie, so how scary could
it have really been? But in the early 80’s
we were sure that we were as close to nuclear war as we’d ever been. I saw that “Doomsday Clock” on every news
story, and ever since I can remember it’s been at five minutes to
midnight. Scientists came up with this
clock. <i>Actual </i>scientists. I know this
because that is what my third grade teacher said. “Scientists predict that the world will end.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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Then in 1990, when I was in the seventh grade, some guy named Iben
Browning predicted a major earthquake on the New Madrid fault line in
Missouri. He said it would be an
earthquake unparalleled in its devastation.
<i>Some guy</i> predicted this
earthquake. I Googled him recently and one
site said that he was a “scientific generalist.” What does that even mean? Despite his lack of credentials and the fact that it's impossible to predict earthquakes, the people
of Missouri lost their minds.
I saw earthquake preparation boxes on sale at every major department
store. All of my friends’ parents had
begun hoarding canned goods and bottled water in their basements (but mine didn’t,
of course.) We had earthquake drills
once a week in school. I was twelve and
my sister had just died, so imagine yet another fear filled year, expecting at any given moment that I and those I loved would be wiped off the face of the
earth. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And of course, there was my last year in college when
mankind was on the brink of the new millennium but couldn’t enjoy it because of
theY2K scare. Most of you remember that
ridiculousness. I spent New Year’s Eve
that year at a church lock-in. Just in
case. And though none of the Y2K fantasies
actually came true, reality hit one year later when two huge jets crashed into
the twin towers. Ever since then, our terrorism
threat level is high and everyone is always supposed to be on “red alert.” I can’t
open mail, drink water from the tap, or go to a parade without a slight, nagging
thought in the back of my mind, wondering if this is the last thing I’ll ever
do. <o:p></o:p></div>
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No wonder I have freaking heart palpitations. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Needless to say, I cannot remember a time growing up when the news media and those around me didn’t believe in the
impending doom of the human race. No
matter what the reason, scientific or spiritual, it seems that “apocalypse
fever” spreads faster than the plague.
The doomsday prepping industry is seeing a surge in sales of emergency
supplies, generators, bunkers. I've read
"The Road" and the "Left Behind" series. I
don't want to be here after an apocalypse. I don't want to be a survivor. I’d
rather die and go be with Jesus.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The funny thing is, nothing that is supposed to happen in
the future is scarier to me right now than these heart palpitations that I've
been having at night, which are more likely to kill me than a meteor or a
nuclear weapon. I’ve laid in bed at
night while having them and thought, well, I guess I’m going to die. I wonder who would show up at my funeral. I wonder if my husband would remarry. I wonder if my son will grow up healthy and
normal without me. Terrible thoughts. And then I pray and confess everything to
God, again. I think, there’s so much I haven’t done, so much I need to do and
say and so many people I still have to forgive.
I have to give birth to another baby, someday. Don’t judge me. I’m sure when presented with a scary
situation you’ve thought of exactly the same kind of things and made some lists
of your own. Maybe you’re doing it now,
wondering if in a few weeks it will all be over as you stand and watch
everything burn as Sam and Frodo did at “the end of all things.” Being afraid to die has brought me to my own theory, why people buy into all of this end of the world stuff. I believe John Donne was right, no man is an
island. It’s easier to accept that the
world will end than to accept that your individual days are numbered. The thought occurred to me while watching <em>Toy
Story 3</em>. Towards the end of the movie it
looks like the heroes are going to be incinerated and as the toys plummet
towards a fiery furnace, they all accept their fates and join hands. Because they know what everybody knows: nobody wants to die alone. Even Sam and Frodo had each other.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is pretty heavy stuff and I’m not being flip when I
say to myself and to you, cheer up. Most likely these heart
palpitations I’m having are hormonal changes from being overweight and stressed
out. The world is probably not going to
end on December 21<sup>st</sup>. And the
same Bible that told me that Jesus is coming also reminded me that no one knows
when. So don’t be afraid. If it all ends tomorrow, which it won’t, but
if it does, I’m satisfied knowing that it meant something. I’m thankful I was given the opportunity to
live and love and have a son. If nobody gets
the opportunity to read this, I’m glad I wrote it. I for one don’t think God or the Universe is
out to get us. I think we live and then
we die. It’s the way of things. In the words of my dearly departed 102 year
old grandma, “I’m going to live until I die.”
And now, as I face a future that is
just as uncertain now as it was when I was six years old, I can take a deep
breath and without fear say the same thing. I’m going to live until I die. And you should too.</div>
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Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-49174574174864004522012-11-16T12:32:00.001-08:002015-03-01T19:17:33.609-08:00Everything Counts<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
There is a new trend on Facebook and I’m happy to report, it doesn’t piss me off and it’s one that I actually quite enjoy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m sure you’ve noticed that during the month of November our friends have taken it upon themselves to post every day what they are most thankful for in their lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, today is the 16th of November, so upon logging onto my home page I saw a lot of posts that looked like this: “Day 16: Today I am thankful for my parents, whose love and support have always been just what I needed to succeed in life.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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I am not cynical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve never been the type of person who hates something just because everyone else loves it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">50 Shades of Grey</i> being the exception.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know people who’ve refused to join Facebook just because everyone else is doing it, or refuse to like a certain mainstream band because of its popularity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think that’s beyond smug.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, get over yourself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You are not as cool as you think you are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because when I see these status updates from the people that I know and love systematically listing what they’re thankful for, I have to confess, I get a gooey buttery feeling inside of my heart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know some of the cynics are over it already and think that it’s just another jump-on-the-bandwagon maudlin display of gratitude, but I like it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll take it over your political rants and pictures of food any day of the week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I like knowing that I’m not the only person who feels so tremendously blessed and who over-sentimentalizes the people and things others take for granted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yes, I realize we are supposed to be thankful every day of the year and not just during the month of November.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But let’s be honest, if that were the case, we wouldn’t need a National Holiday to remind us to be grateful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Americans, it is called “Thanksgiving” for a reason.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It stopped being about celebrating the autumn harvest and conquering the New World years ago when we finally got politically correct and took the injustices suffered by Native Americans seriously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Try explaining to your four year old why we celebrate Thanksgiving while leaving out the weird, un-PC details of the first pilgrim/Indian dinner (because according to every historian it didn’t happen that way) and instead try to justify this brain fart of a holiday using a Sunday school type of lesson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said to my son, “It’s a day set aside to tell God how thankful we are for everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, our family comes together to eat dinner.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This explanation confused him slightly, since we do that very thing practically every night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We don’t take saying “thank you” lightly in our household.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you’re going to be anything, be thankful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a beautiful thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Not that long ago a woman complimented me on my Coach purse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She said, “It must be nice.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said, “It is,” knowing fully well what she was implying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That in today’s economy it must be nice to be so frivolous and shallow as to not only afford but have the audacity to purchase a two hundred dollar bag.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I deduced from her tone of voice that she had already made certain assumptions about my priorities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could’ve set her straight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could’ve told her that I bought the purse at an outlet mall in Branson on a trip with my husband.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I guess I could’ve told her that he bought the purse for me because we were eating lunch at an A&W and I told him a story from my childhood that almost made him cry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wasn’t fishing for a purse with my story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wasn’t even fishing for sympathy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(And I’m not fishing for it now, if that’s what you’re thinking.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The story goes, when I was about eight or nine years old, my mother and sister and I went on a church trip to Elephant Rock, a park in Missouri with, you guessed it, really big rocks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the way back, the bus load of church goers stopped at an A&W restaurant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everyone got off the bus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everyone except my mother and sister and I.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember crying and begging my mother to go inside so I could have just one root beer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had never seen the inside of an A&W restaurant and I thought it must be some sort of kid heaven; foot long hot dogs and fountains of root beer and frosty mugs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even at eight years old, I understood exactly why we didn’t go inside the restaurant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were poor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My mom had no money to spend on frivolous stuff like root beer floats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you’re a kid, you don’t see the big picture because your life is surrounded by the small things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Toys, candy, root beer…that’s the world you live in, not understanding things like electricity, mortgage payments, gas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know I added more fuel to the embarrassment of my mother but at the time, I couldn’t help it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I cried.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I cried for what seemed like forever while all the people were inside eating and drinking, and I cried all the way home after the loaded bus took off and the A&W sign got smaller and smaller.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even at eight years old, I understood what feeling “left out” meant. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I understood what feeling “less than” meant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t understand priorities, or pride.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But my mother did. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I imagine that out of an entire bus load of Christians that someone probably volunteered to pay for our sodas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But my mom understood what was important, and though at the time I felt like the victim of this story, I know it’s really my mom who wouldn’t take up the offer, she who suffered more than I ever had.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Don’t misunderstand my story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not trying to glamorize being poor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not saying that it’s given me any more depth of character or entitlement than someone who was raised privileged or even middle class.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I was growing up I would’ve given anything to be just like my friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know exactly what I’m talking about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I don’t care who you are or what your economical background is; you have a “thing.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A thing that at some point in your life has made you feel “less than” or “left out.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe your parents gave you everything you wanted when you were a kid but never paid any attention to you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or maybe you’ve been beautiful your whole life but never felt valued for anything else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or maybe you have a disability, or a birth defect, or a social disorder, or have been the victim of something awful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heck, I could go on and on but you get what I’m saying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trust me, I know a ton of people who’ve had it much worse than I have. In fact, I am friends with some of those people on Facebook and they’ve decided that this month, as cheesy as it might seem, they are going to focus on what it is they are thankful for and not what they’re sad about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like I said, it’s a beautiful thing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The lady who judged me so quickly for having a pricey bag didn’t know that just a few days ago as I was driving home from a play date I thanked God that I was able to take my son to Panera Bread Company afterwards with all the mommies and their kids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may seem like a small thing, based on who you are, but to me, it means something. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know why now. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m thankful for the big things and the small things, and everything in between.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This girl knows the value of a Coach purse <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> the value of a root beer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More importantly, I know the value of a good mother, for whom I'd do anything and give everything, who didn’t have the choices that I do now. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t take those choices for granted. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">feel</i> like that little girl on the bus, I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">am </i>that little girl on the bus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only now I can afford to go inside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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So, yeah, I’m thankful…<o:p></o:p></div>
Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-50948283904143266322012-10-30T16:21:00.001-07:002015-02-13T08:10:37.202-08:00Wicked Game<br />
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Remember the good old days of soap operas when Dr. So and
So's evil twin brother would come into town and trick his wife into falling in
love with him? Or when the rumored bad
boy with a scar and patch over his eye would be accused of a crime he didn’t
commit and turn out to have a heart of gold? Or the woman in a coma would wake up years
later to find that her sister and her husband had a baby together, thus becoming
an aunt to her own stepson? Those were scandalous and titillating stories of
their day and provided the necessary escape that housewives needed in their
unromantic lives. But then in the 80's,
like everything else, soap operas got super tacky. Something dark and twisted happened to those
story lines. At least one character on
every soap was raped. Worse, those same
rapists eventually won over the women they had violated, changed their ways,
and fell in love with them. If you think
I'm making this up, Google it. Or just
ask your mom, who could probably tell you all about it. You'll see that almost
every soap opera on television has had a rape story line at some point and nine
out of ten times the rapist and his victim fell in love. Which begs the question, ladies, what the heck
is wrong with us? </div>
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<o:p></o:p><br /></div>
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My theory is that soap opera writers foreshadowed the whole “Rihanna
and Chris Brown” love story with the "try to fix the guy who
loves you so much he hurts you" story lines, and in doing so crossed the
line from scandalous fun to seriously disturbing taboo. </div>
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<o:p></o:p><br /></div>
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Fast forward to 2012, the year of <i>Fifty Shades of Grey</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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No, it's not about rape, but it is pretty messed up. It has as many delusions as a soap opera, as
much depth as a thirteen year old’s diary, and more, um, "relations" than Cinemax at
midnight. And yes, I've read it. Which begs the question, Carrie, what the heck
is wrong with you?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Save your judgment, friends.
I've judged myself for this. I’m
not proud. But these are my blah
confessions, blah blah. I'm not ashamed
at the moral repercussions of having read such a naughty book. That’s between
me and God. I'm embarrassed because I
majored in Literature. I should know
better. I'm embarrassed that I read a
book that uses the phrase “My inner goddess” and I can't believe I'm admitting
it to the whole world. This book is
terrible. I don't just mean its
contents, I mean, it's terribly written.
The first person narrative is what I imagine Miley Cyrus's internal
monologue must be like: "He's so hot," "Holy cow," "Did
I mention this is so hot?" I'm smarter
than this book and yet I along with what, sixteen million people?, ran out and
bought all of them. And do you know why
I did? It’s not because I’m a pervert. It’s because I'm a stinker. I read a very self-righteous article written
by a woman who so indignantly said that she would never read <i>Fifty Shades of Grey</i> because it was
pornography, it would dishonor her husband, and because it wasn’t the
“Christian” thing to do. She looked down
on any woman, married or single, who read the book. That’s all it took for me. I thought, what's all the fuss about? Nobody's going to tell me what I
can and can't read. I’m an adult, I make
those choices. In the words of that librarian chick from the awful movie <i>The Mummy</i>, “It’s just a book. No harm ever came from reading a book.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ugh. I hate agreeing with the holier than thou. But yep, it’s porn for women. And unless you've been living in a cave in Pakistan
off the electrical grid, you've seen it on just about every talk show and on
the nightly news. My contribution is
just one of thousands of blogs, critiques and essays written on it. You can’t escape the panels discussing the
supposed pros and cons of this book. And
not just women are talking about it. Some
men have said it's been great for their marriages. Some men say that the unrealistic expectations
of the book have made their wives dissatisfied.
I have to credit EL James for finally accomplishing with men what the
Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition did for women; creating an impossible
standard. I’d also like to credit her
for revealing to the world what women have known for years, in the words of a
friend, “women won’t watch porn but they’ll sure read the heck out of it.” Move over the tame-by-comparison Jackie
Collins, there’s something meatier. EL
James’ books have found their way into our daily vocabulary and have contributed
to this decade’s zeitgeist. Everyone from
my mother to Michelle Obama knows about this book. I don’t think EL James is a marketing genius,
I think she got lucky. Real lucky.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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But more than that, I think she’s just another writer messing
with our heads.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’d like to point out all of the ways this book contributes
to the delusions of women who grew up watching fairy tales and now project the
image of Prince Charming onto a fictional, screwed up man with a stupid name
like Christian Grey. I’m sure you’re
smart enough to already know all of them, but, humor me. I have to have something to write about. Those of you mature enough to have read the
book and rolled your eyes at it, as I did (but continued to read it anyway)
will agree with me. Those of you who
haven’t read the book, well, I’ve lost you already, haven’t I? Those of you who’ve read the book and let it
seep into the dark recesses of your brain and…gulp…don’t be too offended, but
heed my warning. <o:p></o:p></div>
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#1: <i>The Broken Man.</i> You are not Ms. Fix It. The fantasy is, he’s screwed up and he needs a
virginal hottie to be a better man. I
get it. She will fix him because besides
having lady parts, she has the ability to exorcise the demons of his past. She is just <i>that</i> sweet and <i>that </i>desirable. Why are broken men hot? We need to stop this. Ladies, I’m going to shout at you: STOP
THIS. A guy who likes to hurt women,
manipulate them and dominate them is a big bag of hot mess that you should run
away from, not fantasize about. Ok, on
terms we can relate to, a guy who has never been able to commit, or a guy who cheats,
or a guy whose previous relationship messed him up is not the guy for you. In real life, screwed up guys don’t want
women to fix them. And bad boys aren’t
cool. They’re bad. Seriously, don't buy it. You’re not special enough to fix a
messed up man. You’re not going to be
the magic one that makes him change his mind about marriage, or kids, or
whatever. He needs to fix himself. Preach.<o:p></o:p></div>
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#2: <i>The Alpha Male</i>. Could the heroine in this book be more
annoying? She’s so...weak. Right? She rolls her eyes and bites her lip and pouts
and cries, a lot. This man likes to
dominate and control her, no, he <i>needs</i>
to dominate her. I’m sorry, I just threw
up in my mouth a little. He gets
territorial and jealous and he doesn't even like her friends. Since when did that become sexy? Last time I checked, women can vote and run
for President. The last thing we need
right now is another weak female lead character. She’s no Elizabeth Bennett, to
be sure.<o:p></o:p></div>
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#3: <i>The Obsession.</i>
Stalkers aren't sexy. They’re
weird. Guys don’t need you <i>that much.</i> If a guy needs you too much, take it from me,
it can get pretty scary. I dated a guy once
who actually showed up at my work after I broke up with him to show me his MRI
results and pointed to what could or couldn't have been a brain tumor. I was pretty sure it wasn't even his brain I
was looking at. But yeah, he thought if
he could get me to feel sorry for him then I’d forgive him for being a crazy
nut-job stalker. “Every Breath You Take”
takes on a whole different meaning when you've actually been cornered at work,
church, and at home by a guy you just can’t shake. Oh, and a guy who gets information about you
through any other source than what comes out of your mouth is not to be trusted. <o:p></o:p></div>
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#4: <i>The</i> <i>Rich Man.</i> The one percent are notorious
for being self-obsessed. Who really
wants to date a CEO anyway? These are
the guys who spent their bail out money on corporate spa retreats. Jerks. Rich guys aren't going to spend all
their money on you. They’re rich for a
reason. In today’s economy you’re lucky
to have a man with a job. No rich man
sits at his desk emailing and texting his girlfriend all day anyway. Presents are fun, don’t get me wrong. But fantasizing about a rich man is as much a
waste of time as cleaning up your kids’ toys.
(I had to tie in being a stay at home mom somewhere in this one.) <o:p></o:p></div>
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#5: <i>The Bump and
Grind. </i> I’m not even going to talk
about the, um, "relations" in this book because 1.) I have my limits and don’t want to risk
losing some of my readers and 2.) We’re familiar enough with the book to know the
hokey pokey (i.e. that’s what it’s all about) and 3.) It’s so unbelievable that
it’s laughable. I mean, <i>come on</i>.
As far as the rough stuff goes, I’ll just say this: it wasn't nearly as
disturbing as this one episode of “Taboo” on the National Geographic Channel
that featured something called “puppy play.”
DON’T GOOGLE IT. I mean
that. Don’t make me shout at you again. <o:p></o:p></div>
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#6: <i>Ok, Fine.</i> I've made a mix cd for every guy I have ever dated. I've made them for my husband. I've made them for friends and relatives and you know how many I've gotten in return? None. Zip.
Nada. Nobody’s going to buy an iPad
for you and download a meaningful playlist onto it. But dang, even I have to admit, she nailed
it. Out of all the “fantasies” in these
books: helicopters, handcuffs, penthouses…this one is the only one where I said
to myself, “Well, that would be kind of nice.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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If I've left any out, by all means, I’d love to hear your
contributions.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the meantime, let me offer you an alternative to the
absurd story lines offered in these books, one that I've learned to appreciate
more than the tie-me-up, tie-me-down fantasies about a severely damaged
man. For two weeks now my mother has
been recuperating from a knee replacement surgery. She’s had high fevers, tremors, blood clots,
fever blisters, nausea, you name it--and I've had to act as interpreter and
speak on her behalf to nurses and doctors, requiring me to be at the hospital
day and night with her. And do you know what I came home to the other night? My husband and son cuddled in bed together. As
my husband sang him to sleep, I crept into the room and as soon as he saw me, my
son jumped out of the bed and threw his arms around me and kissed me
goodnight. Later, my husband and I were
in bed talking and laughing and I had the mother of all mood swings and began
crying on his shoulder about how worried I was for my mom and how stressed I
was with the responsibility. Then I put my head on his chest and listened to
his heart. Precious reality, with all its
ups and downs, is where I rest my head at night. He’s not rich or damaged and he’s not
obsessed with me. And no, he’s never
made me a mix tape. (But I’m waiting,
patiently.) He’s my husband. He’s there for me. He takes care of my son and loves him with
all his heart and soul. He works hard everyday for his family. I trust him. Sorry, Christian Grey,
but you ain’t got nothin’ on my man. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Besides, who needs perverse fantasies when I have a hot bath, a
Reese’s peanut butter cup, and a Jane Austen book waiting for me? 18<sup>th</sup> century British social hierarchies
and manners? Now <i>that’s</i> hot.<o:p></o:p></div>
Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-57399361339746510402012-08-28T06:01:00.001-07:002012-08-28T06:01:40.583-07:00The Beginning and The End<br />
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So…where were we?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yesterday began as every other day. I woke up, fixed my husband’s lunch, poured a
bowl of Cheerios for my son, cracked open a few hard boiled eggs for myself and
logged in to Facebook. Don’t shake your
head at me. You know you do it first
thing in the morning, too. “Facebook
with coffee” is the new “morning paper with coffee” to us lazy Millenials. Some of us would have never known that
Whitney Houston had died or that Albert Pujols transferred to Los Angeles had
it not been posted everywhere on Facebook.
I <i>had</i> to know what had
happened to all of my “friends” since nine o’clock the night before, when I last
checked. My brain was flooded with random
information, pictures of babies and food, political rants and hard opinions, as
my husband kissed me goodbye and I waved him out the door. A few minutes later, coming out of my stupor,
I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to get the mail over the weekend. I’m very busy, you know. I literally sprinted out to the mailbox
because I hate going outside when I’m not wearing a bra. The chances of someone noticing that I’m not
wearing a bra under my jammies from inches away much less twenty feet away are
slim to none, but still. Blame my mother for my modesty. (And my small chest.) I hurried back into the house with handfuls of
the usual junk mail, ads, credit card applications, what not, but then, something
else. A big box marked “ENFAMIL.” Two free containers of the formula were
wrapped inside of a cardboard box that read “good timing” on one side and “mark
the milestones” on the other. My stomach
dropped. It’s not the first of these
types of “gifts” I’ve received in the past week. The first was a Carter’s catalog along with a
number of coupons and advertisements for newborn paraphernalia. The second, a
set of leak guard pads and a trial tube of barrier cream to use while
breast-feeding. And now this. I wonder if the next gift I receive in the
mail will be a lemon, you know, so I can squeeze its tart juice into my almost-healed-but-now-slashed-wide-open
wound. It appears that I was put on some
kind of mailing list last December, back when there was nothing but comfort and
joy. These lists miraculously get the
good news, but unfortunately, not the bad.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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I admitted to a friend of mine the other day that I have a
problem. Hello. My name is Carrie, and I like to know how
things end. It’s good to get that off my
chest. It’s why a few chapters into any
book I skip ahead and read the last ten pages before continuing reading. I look up online the spoilers to movies. I reassure my friends that no, you won’t ruin
(fill in the blank with the name of any movie) for me. I actually wanted to know that Bruce Willis
was really a ghost, that Harry Potter survived, and that Julia Roberts was
ultimately rejected for Cameron Diaz and didn’t get to marry her best
friend. (Still by far THE WORST ENDING
in the history of chick flicks.) My rationale
is this, why bother wasting time getting your hopes up if the ending doesn’t
pay off? My heart longs for resolution,
in all things, not just in movies and books.
In life too. About five years ago
I had a falling out with a good friend and I still can’t let it go. I need closure, or something, to know that
the journey was worth it. I’d like to
know that it all meant something. I
still fantasize about a tearful reunion, things going back to the way they were
before, as cheesy and unlikely as that sounds.
But I digress. Don’t get me
wrong, the journey, or what I call, “the middle stuff” is great, but I am and
always have been a “Where is this all going?” kind of girl. I’m not saying a good ending has to be a
happy ending either. My poetry professor
put it this way, “A poem isn’t sufficient unless it resolves itself, definitively
and as quietly as the sound of a box clicking shut.” But I’m a sucker. I like the sound of a box clicking shut as
much as the next guy, but I admit, I do like a good, happy ending every once in
a while.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m saying all of this because I have a story to tell. It’s one that I have been wrestling with
myself over whether or not to tell you for a good nine months. I want to do this topic justice. I have to say it right because the story I’m
going to tell you is not only mine, but could quite possibly be yours, or your
sister’s, or your friend’s or mother’s story. Women who, like me, have felt a
loss that only someone who’s had something this precious in the first place can
understand. <o:p></o:p></div>
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My beginning was early last December, when I called my
husband upstairs from working on the basement to come look at the plus sign on
a stick that I had just peed on. We
cried, laughed, kissed, and said a lot of thank you Gods. I figured I was about six weeks along then;
the baby barely the size of a bean.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The middle stuff happened so fast that I can barely call it stuff.
I told a couple of friends about the
news and how great I felt. They said
they thought as much, that I was glowing, and they were so happy for me. I was so happy for me too. I bought a couple of maternity shirts out of
sheer excitement, unknowingly submitting my name for those insufferable mailing
lists. We bought a t-shirt and an
ornament that said “Big Brother” for our son and stupidly, stupidly, gave him
the ornament to hang on the tree. We
told my husband’s family the good news the night we all went over to his mother’s
house to wrap presents. We were saving telling
my family for Christmas Eve, going to let our son announce the news by wearing
his t-shirt. We were in a delirium of merriment
and once again, it didn’t occur to me at all that I still wasn’t sick. Shoot, I even thought, I’ll have two more if
they are all like this.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I would like to tell you that I’m now the proud mother of a
newborn baby and that all the newborn stuff in the mail is being put to good
use. That I didn’t have to sit through
friends’ baby showers feeling jealous of those big round bellies full of life
and promise; healthy women about to have healthy babies. That holding someone else’s newborn baby in
the hospital just a few months ago wasn’t the most difficult and gut wrenching
thing I’ve ever done and that I didn’t go home and cry myself to sleep
afterwards. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But I can’t. No, my
story ended violently on Christmas morning as my husband watched me in the
bathroom, bleeding into the toilet, hunched over, convulsing and crying with
every passing clot. Later that day in
the ER there was more blood but no heartbeat.
And just like that, I wasn’t pregnant anymore. In writer’s terms, there’s not much falling
action after something like that happens.
Just a lot of internal monologues, external dialogues with God, and a
week of more bleeding followed by a week of diarrhea. I could use words like “empty” “despair” and
“failure” but I’ll save you from that. You
know enough of the gross details by now to know that the end was the end, so
there’s no need for an epilogue.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Nine weeks doesn’t seem that far along but you and I both
know, the minute you find out you’re pregnant, that’s it isn’t it? You’re a mommy. I talked to my bean, I sang to her, I just
knew she was a she. I wanted her so, so
badly. Since my miscarriage, I’ve had a
close friend and a relative who both went through the exact same thing. And as much as I tried to console them, tried
to empathize with and encourage them, I can’t lie. I myself am still having a hard time feeling
closure in all of this. I appear to be “over
it” because that’s what people expect.
Our fast paced society and even some of our friends don’t allow us to
grieve for very long. I know that sounds
cold, but it’s true. They look down on
you if you don’t quickly recover, as if there’s something wrong with your faith
or your sanity or your outlook on life.
But I say, give yourself the time you need. Screw everyone else. I mean, maybe there shouldn’t even be closure
to situations like this; maybe these types of things are always open
ended. These aren’t your normal stories,
not your normal endings. Maybe I didn’t
lose a child in the conventional sense, the way my mother did when my sister
died. I can’t even compare the two. But I lost something. The hope of a child. My baby was lost somewhere in the middle, and
had probably been gone for a while, maybe even as soon as it began, I just didn’t
know it. I never imagined it could have
ended that way. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Almost nine months have passed. Thank God, I did have a
certain amount of peace after it happened, the kind of peace I know only God
can give. I felt like at the time, I was given a choice: to fall into a pit of
depression or to climb my way back to normality. I climbed, tooth and nail. But I have to admit that sometimes, I don’t
know how else to put it except--my heart still feels it. That tiny, bean shaped hole that will always
be there. And despite having that
initial peace, I now have to come to terms with the fact that I also have a lot
of fear. I know that doesn’t make sense. If this has ever happened to you then you
know that it’s entirely possible to have a certain measure of peace about past
events but to also face your future with some fear. Who wouldn’t be afraid? Everyone, and I mean everyone, wants me to be
pregnant again. I want it too. But I’m really, really scared. I have heard stories about women having
multiple miscarriages and then finally having a baby. I don’t want to be one of them. If I get pregnant, I know firsthand that
there’s two ways it can turn out. Sometimes
I still think, if this is the way it ends, I don’t know if I even want to start
the journey. And sometimes I look at my
beautiful, blue eyed boy and think, but it can end this way too. Which really isn’t an ending at all.<o:p></o:p></div>
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If I’ve said this to you once, I’ve said it a million
times. I’m working on it. I think.
I’m honestly trying to prepare myself for anything, but then, how do you
do that? Right after it happened, a good
friend of mine told me that she dealt with her miscarriage by taking all of the
things they bought for the baby and putting it in a box, to always have a
reminder that this baby had a life, this baby mattered and still does. I loved the idea. I started to make a box of my own, with a bib
and the t-shirt that we bought for my son.
Last night I went back to the box and put the formula in it. When I closed up the box, I thought about
what my poetry professor said. A box
clicking shut. A quiet ending. But you know, not really.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Because my story, like all the best stories, goes on…<o:p></o:p></div>
Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-49604717065201921622011-11-08T13:44:00.000-08:002011-12-09T15:25:29.795-08:00Oops, I Did It Again<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">It was one year ago today that I uploaded a very personal essay I had written in the throes of the most stressful time of my life (thus far) onto something called "Blogger" and hoped that someone out there would read it, identify with it, and then offer some validation in the form of feedback. In other words, millennial technological naval gazing at its finest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know the story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was stressed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was sad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had lost some people close to me and I had watched others suffer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was taking on what I thought was too much responsibility for someone my age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was pretty angry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was insecure; trying to be the best mother I could be while trying to be the best daughter I could be while trying to be the best wife and woman and person I could be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wanted to cry, but I had to laugh too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wanted someone to laugh with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I failed, I wanted someone to say that she failed too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when I was alone, I wanted someone to say, “No, you’re not alone.” Hence, the mommy blog.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I’ve been asked, “What’s the point of writing a blog, much less a mommy blog?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who cares what you have to say anyway?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why would people read your blog?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve asked myself those questions too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You may not care at all what I have to say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You may be the one who asked me those questions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After laboring over those questions for a year, I have an answer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Because I said so.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I’m kidding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The truth is, I don’t know, dang.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know what the point was of writing my experience and putting it on the “internet” for “everyone to see.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know if anyone cares about what I have to say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I admit, the blog has taken a back seat to some other things going on in my life and I haven’t kept up with it as much as I should.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m sure you’ve all been hanging on the edge of your seats hungry with anticipation, anxiously awaiting any word on my son’s nose picking, winky touching, letter writing, poop leaking, gas passing (oops, that was me), binky loving, song singing, fit throwing phases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, haven’t you?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t even pretend that you do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not that naïve.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I will say this; I have a lot of fun when I write.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And what little feedback I do get from other moms satisfies a very specific longing in my scatterbrained, insecure mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You don’t have to agree with me or do what I do in order for this to work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We just have to be there for each other. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s how that works.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Not that long ago over coffee I told a friend of mine, who asked how my son was doing, that I am officially the mother of a pre-schooler.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I talked about my son for another thirty seconds before I somehow managed to make the conversation all about me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told my friend that I’m completely intimidated, once again, by the seemingly perfect supermoms at his school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My rambling was an echo to what I said almost a year ago when my son was in <em>pre-</em>preschool (and yes, once again, that is a real thing).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It went something like, “They drive shiny mini-vans or giant SUV’s that they must surely take through the car wash at least once a week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They wear tight yoga pants, as if all they do for the two hours their children are in school is work out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have perfect ponytails and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">no fly aways</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And get this, they flooded my inbox with ideas and assignments a month and a half before the classroom’s Halloween party, the party for which I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">had</i> to volunteer when the teacher cornered me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I volunteered to bring goodie bags, which was a huge mistake. Because now I feel all this pressure since one of the supermoms already brought goodie bags for her daughter’s birthday and I swear Martha Stewart made them…” I continued on with other examples of why I thought these moms had it all together and why, once again, I felt like I would never fit in to this suburban Stepford mommy culture, all because so and so’s mommy made cute birthday goodie bags.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My friend stopped me, “You think they are supermoms but you make this judgment call after seeing them a total of what, not even five minutes a week?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said, “But you don’t know what these women look like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You don’t see them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You didn’t see those goodie bags.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My friend said, “Don’t you think they could be thinking the same thing about you?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I laughed at that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Trust me, nobody thinks that about me.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Right?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then my mind flashed back to a conversation I had just a few days earlier with another mommy friend from church who told me she thought I didn’t like her when we first met.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Me?” I said defensively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She told me how she thought <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i> was “one of those moms” who only wanted to be friends with perfect moms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Me?” I said again in disbelief.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I laughed at that misconception and said, “That was before you knew me, right?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I then admitted to her that I didn’t like to eat around her because she is in very good shape and I thought she might be judgmental of my food options. We agreed that too often our own insecurities block us from seeing the truth about others sometimes and, flash forward.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told my friend that night over coffee that “You’re right,” which is really hard for me to do. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I see these women for about a minute twice a week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I never thought I was a judgmental person but I…me?...yes, even I judge people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Shut up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know you do it too.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I am trying to raise a son who will respect and appreciate differences, not be frightened by them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet here I was, intimidated and judgmental over what, a goodie bag?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who does that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Better yet, what has my life been reduced to?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What did I think, that the kids would line up the goodie bags and do some sort of American Idol panel judging of them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Katie’s mommy really made the bags her own.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Buddy’s mommy tried her best but overall the bags were a little pitchy, dawg.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Junior’s mommy should choose a different dream.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son doesn’t even wait until we’re in the car to tear into his goodie bag when he gets one and the contents of the bag last about two seconds before he’s gobbled them up, or stepped on them, or lost them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So if it’s not the kids I’m worried about, who then?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ah, the supermoms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t want to come in last place when I am judged in the great Mommy Beauty Pageant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, that’s all in my head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no pageant and even if there was, there are no impartial judges. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The expectations we have of ourselves far exceed anyone else’s expectations of us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s stupid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">In all likelihood, so and so’s mommy put together those goodie bags to show how much she loves her daughter and how special her birthday is to her, not to make the other moms in the class (i.e. me) feel bad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That must be her way of doing things, just like I have my own way of doing things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not worse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just different.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I post videos of my son saying his ABCs backwards on my Facebook page, not because I am trying to make other moms feel bad, but because, and let’s be honest, it’s difficult for even grown ups to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seriously though, it’s because no one loves my son like I do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am his mommy and I am proud of him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Plus, and I’ve said this before, he is a genius.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know if I can take the credit for his brains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s best to just give mad props to God for that.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">It’s easy to judge people when you are not walking in their shoes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just last night I watched a show on T.V. about a “working mom.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She and her husband enrolled in a new age baby class to learn the proper “peek-a-boo” technique (it was actually a pretty hilarious show) and her biggest nemesis in the class was a, <em>gasp</em>, stay at home mom who of course was portrayed as super judgmental and superior to the working mom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve seen this before, in another show, and in a popular movie that was just released.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is this what people think of me?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That because I am a stay at home mom I think my parenting is superior to others?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They don’t know me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They don’t know how insecure I really am and how goodie bags cause me anxiety.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’ve never read my blog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If they did they’d know I will simultaneously defend my decision to stay home and support their decision to work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the words of my dear husband, “I’m doing the best I can.” And I have every reason to believe that you are too.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Once again I have to say that I think if women didn’t compete so much with each other and just learned how to support one another we’d be so much better off, myself included.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have to always remind myself that it’s not a competition; I’m not going to come in last place and there is no first place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Insecurity holds us back and stops us from getting close to other women, women that could support us and lift us up if we’d only let them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re not “The Real Housewives of Fill in the Blank.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re real. I’m reminded of a friend of mine who is literally one of the prettiest women I know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Looking at her you’d never guess that she struggles with anything, much less with what the rest of us do, insecurity, self acceptance, parenting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before I got to know her, I actually thought that there was probably no reason as to why she would want to be my friend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now I’m glad that I overcame that initial intimidation and because of it, I think we are both benefiting from knowing and supporting each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It just goes to show, you have to go deeper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can’t look at someone and figure them out right away, especially other women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chances are you will have more in common than you think. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">…Which brings me to the big day of the Halloween party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was ready to prove that I was just as super as all those other supermoms. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I even wrote every child’s name on the foam pumpkin that was attached to each bag. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had curled all the ribbon that was left after tying perfect little bows on the bags after stuffing them full of play dough and bubbles, stickers and suckers and <strong>peanut free</strong> (I learned my lesson) candy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I walked in with the box of my most carefully packaged, kick-ass (if I do say so myself) goodie bags, an unusually tall blonde mom stopped me and asked me to carry in some balloons, which I gladly did, and she was very grateful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was wearing a witch’s hat and to my surprise, was prepared enough to bring hats for all of the moms to wear, which she thought “would be fun.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With our hats on and "The Monster Mash" playing, we all decorated the room and set up the crafts for the party and eagerly anticipated the return of the kids from outside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And for the first time, I actually talked to some supermoms and found out that most of them loved parties, had great senses of humor and were not so different from me after all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The blonde Amazonian supermom even complained about having to spend extra money on balloons because the dollar store doesn’t sell helium anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Yes, I know!” I said, shocked that someone who looked like her shopped at the dollar store.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I later found out she was the very same so and so’s mom and the designer of those trendy little birthday goodie bags.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And she was very nice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I left that party super impressed, but this time I was impressed with myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, I can still learn lessons, even in my thirties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i> fun to wear the witch’s hat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i> a great party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Supermoms are a myth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re all just moms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can support each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can learn from each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><em>Look, mom, I’m growing.</em></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The contents of my son's goodie bag are still rolling around in the floor of my car.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">A year ago I ended my first blog entry screaming at the top of my lungs, wondering if anyone was out there, if anyone was listening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that I’ve calmed down I know that, yes, you’re out there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thankfully, I’m a little less stressed now, a little less angry and sad, and only a little insecure (around party time).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m still in the middle of this very crowded landscape of mommy blogs but I’m not screaming anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve found that I don’t have to scream at all to be heard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just have to follow the very first rule my mother ever taught me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Be yourself.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Thanks for listening.</div>Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-83417800093493798512011-09-12T09:17:00.000-07:002011-09-12T09:17:43.352-07:00Boys Don't Cry<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">In a future blog, I will make sure to list in alphabetical order all of the things I hate about the McDonald’s <place><placename>Play</placename> <placetype>Land</placetype></place>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the sake of argument and time, I will just proceed with my story.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">A couple of weeks ago my mother-in-law took all of the grandkids to McDonald’s for lunch and I tagged along.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With five kids in tow we of course had to sit at the table right next to the <place><placename>Play</placename> <placetype>Land</placetype></place>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It smelled like feet, as most play areas do, and was full of bacteria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Feet-stink mixed in with chicken-nugget-stink made the place almost unbearable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My mother in law, ever vigilant and detail oriented, spent half the time pointing out all the kids who weren’t wearing socks and how the sign clearly states that <stockticker>ALL</stockticker> <stockticker>KIDS</stockticker> MUST WEAR SOCKS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She also noticed the neglectful mother/grandmother at the table behind us who was letting her son/grandson (we couldn’t tell which) run amuck inside the tunnels and terrorize the rest of the children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son was way too excited to eat and barely touched his Happy Meal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As soon as I said the word “go” he sped off and up the stairs and into those dreaded tunnels above us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On my list, “T” will be for tunnels, because I hate those things. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t see what’s going on or what tunnel my son is about to come out of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I understand they need to economize space but why do they put the tunnels above our heads?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t move my wide hips up the steps that lead to the tunnels much less fit through the tunnels themselves, you know, if I would have to find my son in the event of a freak out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><place><placename>Play</placename> <placetype>Land</placetype></place> was probably designed by a mother who couldn’t stand her children and wanted to lose them for a couple of hours while she ate twenty cheeseburgers in peace. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Listen to me, if you have a child below the age limit on the Play Land Rules, don’t send him up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s like a roach motel for toddlers, “Kids go up, but they never come down.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When my son was smaller it was like a game of Marco Polo to get him to find his way back to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On this particular day we had backup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Four of his older cousins were up there with him, so for once I wasn’t too terribly worried about him getting stuck, or lost, or falling out of a hole in the ceiling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew that they would keep an eye out on him and lead him back to safety should he lose his way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I love that about family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Just as I started to relax about my son being in the <place><placename>Play</placename> <placetype>Land</placetype></place> maze, all hell broke loose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have to understand that as my son gets older, his control freak tendencies (which he inherited from, well, I won’t name names but it starts with “d” and ends with an “addy”) are surfacing more and more every day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He does this thing now where he just sort of sits at the entry ways to tunnels or slides.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He does it at the park, at the mall, and anywhere there is a distinct “in” or “out.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think he likes to pretend that he’s the gatekeeper of a portal to the other worlds, or perhaps a bouncer at a trendy nightclub.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only the cool kids can enter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While it entertains him it can be very frustrating to other little kids who just want to crawl through the dang tunnels or go down the slide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that’s exactly what happened that afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some little boy wanted to pass through a tunnel that my son was blocking and instead of being polite about it he screamed right in my son’s face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was the same little boy whose mom/grandma was ignoring him and reading a magazine--as he screamed in my son’s face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not to be outdone, my son screamed right back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They screamed back and forth for a minute until I thought some punches might be thrown.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I perched on the edge of my seat, ready to grease myself up and wiggle through the tunnels to my son, the other little boy finally gave up and came down the steps. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son followed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I gently reminded him that he needs to move out of the way and to not block the tunnels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It wasn’t the perfect moment to gently remind him of anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could see that both the screaming match and my admonishment had hurt his feelings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son is a lot like me, he can’t get into an argument without crying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hate that about myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every time I fight I always have to cry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I feel too much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sensing that his feelings were hurt, I asked my son to come to me as I held out my arms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’m not cryin’,” he said, as he turned red and stuck out his bottom lip.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His face looked like it would crack if you blew on it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’m not crying!” he screamed at me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I neared him and tried to calm him down and comfort him, he said it again, “Mama I’m NOT CRYING!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And shortly thereafter, he started crying uncontrollably as I scooped him up and carried his flailing limbs out of McDonalds.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I don’t get boys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a time when my son would hold his arms up to me anytime he was barely hurt so that I could comfort him and hold him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That time has passed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now when he’s hurt, physically or emotionally, anger always follows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He throws a fit of anger and then follows it up with “I’m not crying,” which is my indicator that he wants to cry so badly that one wrong look will send him over the edge. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want to know where this machismo comes from. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It certainly wasn’t me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who taught my son that crying is unacceptable and where is that person so I can pound on him a little bit?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be fair, I don’t think anyone taught him to be like this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s a boy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, I’m finding out every day there are more differences between boys and girls besides the obvious one. Boys like to act like nothing hurts them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Girls get hurt if you cross your eyes at them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Boys don’t like to cry; girls make it their nightly entertainment (see: slumber parties for sixth grade girls.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I know all about girls, having been one myself now for thirty-three years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We cry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ok, I cry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Over everything</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that I have a child I have to confess that I have cried and probably would cry again at the following things: Oprah’s last show, the youtube video of the lion hugging its former owner, Folgers commercials at Christmas, John Wayne movies, the montage of neglected pets with those Willie Nelson/Sarah McLachlin songs playing in the background, the Coke polar bears, mother’s day cards, father/daughter dances at weddings, mother/son dances at weddings, the moment on Full House when the music starts playing, driving past my old house, homeless people, and against my better judgment, while listening to country music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I cry a lot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn’t take much to hurt my feelings either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’d think by now, having been through so much, that I would have toughened up, but my skin’s as thin as an Olsen twin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My husband is constantly telling me that I need to stop letting people hurt my feelings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t ask to get hurt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s be honest, people suck.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve been made fun of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve been rejected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve been ignored, laughed at, given dirty looks and insulted and I’ve cried almost every time it’s happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I laugh it off sometimes but when I’m alone, yeah, I cry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m a girl and I’m sensitive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As much as I try to toughen up, it’s just the way I am.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m easily wounded and I cry but in the end I survive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s kind of my thing.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">But boys?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still don’t get them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sleep with one and I’m raising one, but I’m still learning about them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you think there’s not much to them, you’re not paying attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son teaches me more than I will ever teach him.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">REM said it, everybody hurts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m fascinated though at how differently we all react to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Right now my son reacts to being hurt with anger, followed quickly by hysteria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With me, obviously, it’s crying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some people lash out at anyone in their path when they’re hurt and some push away the people they care about most.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s the healthy reaction?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>God only knows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, I don’t want my son to be a sissy cry baby, but I want him to feel like he can still be a man and cry when he’s hurt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t want him to have to convince me and himself that he’s “not cryin” when I know that’s exactly what he wants to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s only three years old for crying out loud, pardon the expression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want him to let it out now at <place><placename>Play</placename> <placetype>Land</placetype></place> so that later in life he’s not some tattooed, tobacco chewing tough guy who starts bar fights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because you know it’s just a few short steps between McDonald’s and the neighborhood tavern.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I counted.</div>Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-91911643004975407732011-07-28T07:06:00.000-07:002015-03-01T15:07:03.913-08:00...And Keep Your Hands To Yourself<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
I’m just going to come right out and say it.</div>
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What is up with little boys and their winkies?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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No.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seriously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son’s obsession with boogies and picking his nose has waned and his new obsession has proven infinitely more entertaining to him and, though I didn’t think it was possible, even more embarrassing to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A couple of weeks ago while I was on the phone with my sister I heard him say, “Oh, it fits!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s never a good thing to hear when your back is turned, as moms know all too well that “it” could be a number of things fitting into a number of orifices: bean in the nose, pencil in the ear, or anything from the floor in the mouth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I looked over from where I stood in the kitchen. (Why do these things always happen when I’m on the phone?)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son had pulled down his underwear and his pull-up and all I could see was his naked lower half.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He stood with his butt cheeks clenched as he pushed out his pelvis, all the while trying to slide a small play-dough tube over his, well, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you know</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“No don’t put that on your winky!” I screamed in a panic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My mind flashed forward to trying to explain this to an ER doctor:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’m sorry but we need one who specializes in winky tube removals.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said to my sister, “I gotta go,” to which she replied over her uproarious laughter, “Yeah, they never grow out of that by the way.”</div>
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I can’t help but think that this is all my fault.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Up until we started potty training he hadn’t paid much attention to the thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’d strip him down before a bath and let him run around naked, thinking it was a healthy expression of his natural state of being. In fact, it took him a while to actually <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">run</i> naked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the longest time he walked bow legged throughout the house, knowing <em>something</em> was down there but not fully understanding the what or the why of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was a hilarious, innocent time in his and my life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as we all know, a boy can’t stay in diapers forever and it was unavoidably time to go tinkle in the big boy potty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seemed like all it took was for the underwear to come off and a downward glance and poof, the world made sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he was in diapers he only reached down to touch it occasionally as we changed or bathed him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had no idea what it was actually capable of doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then all of a sudden he was being told to pay attention to it, nay, to focus intently on it and, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">oh boy</i>, point it at something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was like he discovered a new playground at the end of our street.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now the boy is constantly touching it, pulling it, opening his shorts to look at it, even bragging about it, “Look at my big winky mama!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(He doesn’t suffer from any confidence issues, to be sure.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d like to share in his enthusiasm over his newfound thingy, but because I don’t have one myself, I really don’t see what all the fuss is about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I pretty much feel about those things the way I do about the telephone poles in my backyard; I understand their purpose and I would like for them to work properly, but I don’t want to stand around and look at them all day. “Yes, baby, you tinkle out of there,” is all I can say in response to him, and then offer a distraction, “Look!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A bird!” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Please God, let’s go back to the nose picking phase.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll take big boogies over this any day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Are all boys like this?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> (Yes.)</span></div>
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Downtown at the <place><placetype>City</placetype> <placetype>Garden</placetype></place> as I was changing my son out of his swim shorts into some dry pants in front of God and the AT&T building, he looked down and said in a loud voice, “Hey, where’s my winky?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said, “Shhh!” which we all know works great when I’m trying to get him to be quiet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said it louder and with more punctuation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“WHERE’S.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>MY.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>WINKY.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>MAMA?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tried to explain to him quietly that it was just cold but he wasn’t buying it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“But it’s hot mama.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I couldn’t disagree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Come on guys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t sign up for this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d like to have a “pass” option and field all of these types of questions to my husband.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although, I wonder how mature that conversation would be since the man tells my son to “shake the dew off the lily” after each tinkle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the hubby is not around it’s totally up to me to explain these manly things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Grasping at straws, since “it’s cold” wasn’t an acceptable answer, I followed up with, “It’s like a turtle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will come out again when it feels safe.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thank God that he quickly forgot about that analogy because I don’t want him calling the thing a turtle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><em>Winky</em> is bad enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><em>Turtle</em> will for sure get him beat up in high school.</div>
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You guys, I have never in my life talked about winkies this much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm going a little nuts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Pardon the expression.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m so sick of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wish I could go back in time and tell the misogynist Sigmund Freud that, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">uh, yeah right</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are people who suffer from “you know what” envy and guess what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Those people ain’t women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><br />
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Or as Elaine from Seinfeld put it, "I don't know how you guys walk around with those things."</div>
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This may seem like inappropriate talk or taboo subject matter to you but it’s my life. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>God help me if I have more boys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Please don’t stop reading my blog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I promise to not write about winkies ever again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t mean to offend your delicate boundaries or your moral sensibilities, I just need to talk to someone about this. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We never, ever, talked about our private parts growing up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remember, my mother’s disapproval of all anatomically correct language forced me to come up with substitutes like “cookie” and “winky” in the first place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The woman called everything, front and back, a “bottom.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I never understood what, or where, she was talking about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is why she nearly had a heart attack when we were at an all-you-can-eat-pizza buffet and I gave my son a small ice cream cone for dessert and he said, “Grandma, my winky looks like an ice cream cone!” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heck, she’d have a heart attack if she read this.</div>
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I don’t want to shut down my son because I’m overly sensitive about stuff <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">down there</i>, but how do I get him to stop already?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once again I’m forced to walk a fine line of discipline.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Encourage a healthy appreciation for Mr. Johnson but not a clingy, stalker like obsession with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Make sure he knows that it’s okay to talk about it but let’s be careful to pick our time and place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Like, a blog that all of your friends from church can read, perhaps?)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think I’ll have to be as delicate as I can with this one. No overreacting but no giggling either, which will be and has been difficult for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every time I tell him to “keep your hands to yourself” I cringe…and then smile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I have a sneaky suspicion that while you might not admit it, you've probably done the same thing. </div>
Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-24811450964236264252011-07-01T07:15:00.000-07:002011-07-01T11:24:25.739-07:00'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I’ve spent every day for three years now with my son.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t care who you are, if your child is your pride and joy and your only reason for living in this world, or if you’re one of those mothers who can’t stand the sight of her own children, that is a heck of a long time to be around someone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I love him so much that it makes the whole joined-at-the-hip thing pretty tolerable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, his little idiosyncrasies have grown on me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of my complaints, if I would call them ‘complaints’, are the usual mommy grumbles: He won’t eat his vegetables, he doesn’t listen to me all of the time, he throws fits when he doesn’t get his way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know, the normal day to day stuff of raising any preschooler.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He provides me with more entertainment than annoyances, usually.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t mind that he wants to put the Barney <stockticker>DVD</stockticker> on repeat and watch the thing half a dozen times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And sure, he loves to listen to the same song in the car five times in a row.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He sings one song so much that I’ve woken up from a deep sleep singing it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He even knows what number the song is on the CD player, “Play number 8 mama.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I admit, there are times that I do get a little sick of the song but all in all, I appreciate his consistency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The kid knows what he likes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">My son, as you probably know by now, is a bit more precocious than the average boy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He sings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He dances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He brings his own microphone to our church worship service.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He loves to bang out rhythms on coffee cans, buckets, the backs of chairs; anything that could be a make-shift drum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Needless to say he loves music and probably has more rhythm than most other white toddlers that I know. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The next Justin Bieber?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He knows more song lyrics than my husband does, but that’s not saying much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My husband unintentionally figured out one of my biggest pet peeves a long time ago and since then, anytime we are in the car it seems like he goes out of his way to do the third worst thing a person can do to irritate the heck out of me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Honestly, I don’t know if he can help it, because he has a pretty terrible memory for someone who <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">designs databases </i>for a living.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My rule is, and always has been, this: if I don’t know the correct song lyrics, I won’t sing along.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes I think my husband goes out of his way to sing incorrect lyrics and in doing so, inflicts a torture on my ears similar to that of listening to Christina Aguilera sing the National Anthem. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because he doesn’t just sing the wrong lyrics, no, he sings them at the top of his lungs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He sings over what I’m singing which are usually the correct lyrics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He won’t stop until I call him out on it, which I do every time this happens and believe me, it’s quite often.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It’s not ‘Above the fruit and grain.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s ‘Above the fruited plain.’”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, come on, “<country-region><place>America</place></country-region> the Beautiful.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the dumbest American knows that one. At least sing "Something something plain," if you don't know it. "Something," to me, is a more respectable alternative because it at least indicates a playful self awareness.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Don’t judge me. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We all have our limits. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t tell you how much this thing bothers me. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m weird like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Curse at me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Call me ugly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Give me dirty looks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can handle it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But whatever you do, don’t sing the wrong lyrics.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">My son has picked up this terrible habit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like I said, I can stand a lot of his little quirks but this, I just don’t know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His childish vocabulary and a lingering mush mouth make for some interesting song lyric interpretations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I try my best to get his attention and gently correct his mistakes, but it’s just more fun for him to mess up the lyrics, just like his dada.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instance, a song that we sing at church that goes, “For the King has carried the cross, He is risen from the grave,” sounds like “For the key was carried to gob, he is ridden from the gay.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yeah, it’s all kinds of wrong.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">For being as uptight as I clearly am on this subject, I'm not fundamentally opposed to the hilarious misheard song lyric every now and then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A woman I used to work with swore that the lyrics to “How Will I Know” by Whitney Houston were “I’m asking you cause you know about feet stink.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s the same person I got into a week long argument over whether Wham’s “Careless Whisper” was “Guilty feet have got no rhythm” or “These two feet have got no rhythm.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I won, by the way, because the lyrics are totally “Guilty feet have got no rhythm.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I take song lyrics seriously, which is why I posted large signs all over her desk that said “GUILTY FEET.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was still finding them a month later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m also not above mishearing certain lyrics myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve had my own slip ups but I’m pretty resourceful when it comes to finding out the actual words to any given song.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And once again I have to apologize, because all of my song references are, of course, from my favorite decade. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My top misheard lyrics include the Petshop Boys, “In a Western Town with denim walls, the Eastern boys and Western girls,” and Paul Young’s, “Every Time you go away…you take a piece of meat with you,” and mine and everyone else’s favorite Manfred Mann tune, “Wrapped up like a douche another rumor in the night.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are funny misheard song lyrics that I will only sing out loud to be ironic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only for a short time did I believe these to be the actual words to the songs. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For about a second, I thought that the opening line to Billy Ocean’s “Caribbean Queen” went, “She Dutched by me and blamed it on James,” (Actual lyrics: “She touched by me in painted on jeans.”) or that the chorus to Toto’s “Africa” went, “I Dutched the rains down in Africa.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Heck, I don’t even know what the actual lyrics are to “<place>Africa</place>” and I’m pretty sure nobody else does either.) Was it possible that sometime in my youth I thought that the <country-region><place>Netherlands</place></country-region> had invaded 80’s Pop?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How did I make an entire race of people a verb?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trust me, once the 90's came around and I explored the World Wide Web, I found the correct lyrics to each one of those songs so that I and those I cared about would no longer make those embarrassing mistakes.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">(I invite you now to take a few minutes to look up those two songs on YouTube. <em>Listen.</em> It really does sound like "Dutched." Go ahead. I'll wait.)</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Ask my husband, I’m a bit OCD when it comes to lyrics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That, thank the Lord, might be the only thing I’m obsessive compulsive about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s because I believe that the writers of these songs took great pains to write them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would hate for someone to call my website “Confessions of a Staid Gnome Mom.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Call me crazy for respecting the original intent of the written and sung word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know not all song lyrics are poetry and more often than not, the actual song lyrics don’t make much more sense than the made up ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Surely Jimi Hendrix did not mean to infer that he dabbled in the love that dare not speak its name when he penned one of his most famous songs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thousands of people all over the world have gotten it wrong for decades now because they didn’t have mothers who were obsessive about correct song lyrics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But my son will be different, my son will know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Someday I’ll explain everything to him. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll teach him the things that really matter in life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And hopefully he will go on to tell others, or at least his someday-wife, “No honey, it’s ‘Excuse me while I kiss the<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> sky</i>.’”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Then my work will not have been in vain.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div>Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-5101591000684226622011-06-28T16:45:00.000-07:002013-03-28T17:24:25.531-07:00Goodnight Nobody<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
I’m really getting tired of indecisiveness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is it too much to ask that people make a decision and stick with it now days?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son is three, so every day I have at least ten conversations with him that usually go something like this:</div>
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“Mama, I want something to drink.”</div>
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“What do you want baby?”</div>
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“I want some apple juice.”</div>
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“Okay.”</div>
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“No, I want orange juice.”</div>
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“Okay.”</div>
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“No, I want milk mama.”</div>
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“Well, which do you want?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Orange juice or milk?”</div>
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“No, I want apple juice.”</div>
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This flippancy is enough to drive even the sanest of mothers insane.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I can’t very well blame society (yet) on my son’s daily battle with indecisiveness, I have to go ahead and blame human nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When presented with a myriad of drink options, my son is like a contestant on “Let’s Make a Deal.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If he chooses incorrectly, he’ll end up with some bogus prize like a pair of porcelain dogs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If he chooses wisely, he gets the whole showcase including the trip to <city><place>Paris</place></city> and the car.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ok, so he’s choosing between milk and orange juice, but still.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We humans are so afraid to make a choice and stand by our decision because we think about the “what ifs” or the “what could’ve beens.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oh, if only I’d have chosen the milk, I’d be so fulfilled right now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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Life is so hard for a three year old.</div>
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Every time this happens I want to say to him, you know buddy, the milk is still in the fridge, cold and ready anytime you want it, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ding-dong.</i></div>
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It is this same indecisiveness that prolonged the selling of my mom’s house in <city><place>Maplewood</place></city> and made three people back out of three contracts on the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I want it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t want it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ll close in two weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, I don’t want to anymore.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I felt like every time we were getting ready to close on the house that I was dealing with yet another three year old who couldn’t decide if he wanted milk or orange juice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A short sale on an as-is, fixer upper of a house which should’ve closed in a month took six months to finally come to an end, and all because of a stinker neighbor and three very indecisive, big fat babies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fourth contract was the charm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eight thousand dollars and five months later, an adult came along and finally decided that yes, I’ll sign the contract and see it through.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could’ve French-kissed the guy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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And so today I said a long overdue goodbye to my childhood home.</div>
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Technically, I didn’t say “goodbye” to the house. I more or less took a look around and said thank you God that I am done with this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hopefully the gracious and dedicated buyer who finally bought it will fix it up and another family will move in and have good times, or at least more good times than bad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My mother, on the other hand, actually said goodbye to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She needed to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She told me, “Well, this morning I let it go.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which, for her sake and for ours, needed to be done. We couldn’t have kept this thing going much longer. </div>
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For me, every milestone in my son’s life has been an emotional bowl of mixed nuts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sad, relieved, happy, embarrassed…I can’t feel an emotion without another conflicting one bubbling up every time something big happens in his life. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess it’s the same way for my own milestones. I feel like a huge burden has been lifted from my chest only to leave a small vacant hole, maybe for the rest of my life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s probably different for my siblings because apparently, before I was born, my parents moved around a lot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But since I can remember, excluding my current residence, it’s the only house I’ve ever lived in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t really know how I expected to feel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I certainly felt like I was ready to say goodbye to the place back in February, when we were scheduled to close with the first buyer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, I was ready to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kiss </i>the place goodbye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was tired of it, sad about it, and could only think of the bad things that had recently happened there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a burden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It wasn’t home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was something else, something sad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rooms inside that used to hold our holiday sing-alongs and the walls that could barely contain our laughter were cracked and chipped and stained with cigarette smoke.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The floors that we used to sleep on when we had slumber parties with thirty of the neighborhood kids had sunken in, held up by unstable two-by-fours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> My parents' </span>room, which used to be my safe haven in thunderstorms and where I'd sneak into when I had bad dreams was where I watched my dad take his last breath and then leave us forever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every time I walked through the hallway there was the pictorial from my sister’s funeral staring me in the face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of my cousins called it “the house of death.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It wasn’t the same house that I grew up in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a liability, more than any of us could manage. Any money that came from selling it was, disappointingly, just barely enough to get my poor mother out of debt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In many ways, yes, I was so ready to say goodbye to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in other ways, no, I don’t know if it’s even possible to say goodbye to something like that.</div>
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Saying goodbye to some<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thing</i> is probably easier than saying goodbye to some<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one</i>, I suppose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A house is just a place to make memories, but then, it becomes a part of you just like your own last name, a part of your identity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I haven’t been “Carrie George from <city><place>Maplewood</place></city>” since I’ve been married, but, I always felt connected to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Growing up I couldn’t wait to get out of it and now, I kind of miss it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess it’s time once again for me to grow up, to let go of some things and hold onto others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let go of the sadness and the memories of death and hold onto happiness and the memories of life…sleeping in front of the fire place on Christmas Eve and watching my parents sneak into the living room with presents; running up the front steps after playing all day and smelling fried pork chops and mashed potatoes; dancing and singing with my siblings when my parents were gone; spying on my sister’s goodnight kisses from the living room window and then finally being old enough to have my own goodnight kisses on the front porch; walking in from a date late at night and finding my mom praying and/or listening to Johnny Cash records; watching my grandma sing “Grandma’s little blue eyed boy” to my son; watching my dad’s eyes light up at the sight of my nephew, his first grandson; holding hands around the dinner table to pray; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
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These memories keep me balanced, you see, the yin and the yang.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or as an 80’s sitcom so aptly put it, “You take the good, you take the bad, you take ‘em both and there you have…” My life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A bowl of mixed nuts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know I won’t be able to shield my son from all of the pain of the outside world, but I hope our home is a safe place and the pain he feels inside of it is bearable. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope that someday he’ll think of his childhood home and choose to remember all the good times that are still to come.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for me, I think I’ll choose to remember the good too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess today I didn’t say goodbye to my childhood home, I just said goodbye to the house I now saw as an adult.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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I think I’ll hang onto my childhood for a while.</div>
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Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-83777410740513250992011-05-06T08:29:00.000-07:002011-05-06T19:46:05.455-07:00Mama Bird<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">It seemed like my worst nightmare was coming true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>About a month ago, I noticed some blood on my toothbrush while brushing and then later that day, when I bit into a bagel, I noticed that there was some movement in one of my teeth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A crown was loose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If any of you have crowns, you know that what’s underneath a crown is very scary and gross and if that crown were to actually come off in public you would probably look like a banjo-playing cast member of “Hee Haw.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My crown is right up in the front and center of my mouth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was no ignoring it, it was loose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The problem was that I had waited an embarrassingly long time to have my teeth cleaned, and in doing so ruined the chances of my dentist finding the loose crown before it managed to get too loose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean I had waited, like, a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">really</i> embarrassingly long time to put off going to the dentist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re talking full on neglect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could place all the blame on my son who takes up all of my time, but I know it was me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I lost track of time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After my son was born, I kept putting it off and putting it off until the morning that I woke up, turned around and he’s three years old and my teeth are falling out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am forced to deal with the reality of time, or as Ferris Bueller so eloquently puts it, “Life moves pretty fast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you don’t stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I used to count down to the minutes until my husband would get home from work when I was a new stay at home mom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The days felt like they lasted forever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The weekends were gone in a blink but the week stretched out for miles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I felt like I was running in sand, always working hard but not getting very far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s how the first year of my son’s life felt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I kept waiting to get the “hang of this thing” but that felt like it would never happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once it did happen I was too busy to notice, until someone pointed out to me, “You know, I think you might have the hang of this thing.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes I still question it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, I was so entrenched in the seeming endlessness of being a stay at home mom that I forgot that babies don’t stay babies forever and kids, you know, they grow up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that my head isn’t spinning I’ve adjusted my focus and at this moment, right now, my son is telling me all about his day at school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son wakes up on his own and comes into our room in the morning, ready to play.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son feeds himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son can drink from an open cup and sit in a regular chair to eat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son can pull down his pants and pull up a stool and tinkle into a toilet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When did this happen?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why didn’t I see this coming as I was working so hard to achieve it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know I was present for and even facilitated most of it, but how did it happen so fast?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And what’s next?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Don’t answer that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know what’s next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today he’s three, tomorrow he’ll be sixteen, and the day after that I’ll be weeping openly at his wedding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then what will I do?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For my son's first Easter my sister gave him a set of rubber duckies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One is a large mama duck and the rest are three little baby ducks that fit perfectly on her back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you put all three baby ducks on her back, the mama duck stays perfectly afloat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you take one of them off, or god forbid all of them, she tips over and floats on her side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Yeah, that sounds about right.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Oprah said that being a mom is the “hardest job in the world.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She wouldn’t know because she doesn’t have children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, five dogs does not equal one child, but I’ll take a grateful nod of recognition from the queen of all things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s right, it is the hardest job in the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is hard to carry a child inside of your body for nine months, take care of that child and devote entire portions of your life to that child and then, all of a sudden, to switch gears yet again, to switch purposes and realize your child is grown and doesn’t need that constant care anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m looking into the future of course, my son is only three.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But imagine when he leaves for college.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh, the identity crises that are yet to come, and after I’ve just managed to squeeze through this one. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moms, we are the special ops soldiers of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">At one of the most sentimental and emotional times in my life, I started writing a letter to my son that he could read later in his life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I imagined some profound mother/son moment as I hand him the letter, maybe at his wedding, or his graduation and we cry and hug and he says, “Aww, mom.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yes, I do get my fantasies courtesy of Hallmark, Folgers and the Lifetime Television Network.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nonetheless, I had a sneaky suspicion that time was going to get away from me, as it did, and as it will, and that I wouldn’t have a lot of time to talk to him about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">everything</i> that I wanted to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was fourteen months old at the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The letter starts like this:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><date day="26" month="7" year="2009"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">July 26, 2009</i></date><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’ve just put you to bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am sitting in the office typing this letter, listening as you hum yourself to sleep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You do this so often now that it’s hardly a novelty but I swear, it’s still one of the sweetest sounds these ears have ever heard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is merging with the sound of the crickets outside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a symphony of hums and rhythms and a new song, a song of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A celebration of you, my little songbird.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Earlier this evening we went for a wagon ride around the neighborhood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have a fixation with the American flag right now, which we think is possibly a phase.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You are far more patriotic than your mommy ever was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You must get it from daddy’s side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You held on tightly to that flag the whole wagon ride.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we returned home I gave you a bath and cradled your wet face in my hands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your eyes sparkle and widen to twice their size when your little head is wet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I love how the water sticks to your eye lashes; you are the most beautiful thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The world is perfect in our tub, with your boat and the mama duck and baby ducks that ride on her back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are all smiling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I read stories to you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I gave you milk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I rocked you in my arms and you made sucking noises with your binky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I kissed you for the hundredth time and put you in bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my head I am wishing a thousand sweet dreams for you, praying a thousand prayers, saying a thousand thank yous</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Just so you know, I inherited my tendency towards the melodramatic from my parents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let me share something with you that's even more personal but really cool.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not too long ago when we were cleaning out my mom’s house in <city><place>Maplewood</place></city>, I found a poem my mom had written for me when I was sixteen months old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m sharing it with you now because I think that, one, it shows how creative and wonderful my mom is, and two, to see if you can notice the similarities.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Carrie</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Butterball of love</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What a privilege to hold her in my arms</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">She says I WUV YOU in a sing song musical voice</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">She sings “Yes Jesus Loves Me” and lifts</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Her hands and praises the Lord because it’s</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fun and we clap</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">She sings in a soft high voice</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What could be more beautiful</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">She reads books in little nonsensical words</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">She’s into everything</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">She hates being alone</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">She has a dimple and waddles when she walks</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Like a baby duck</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">She’s my buddy</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Has a mind of her own</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Laughs when we laugh</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I LOVE HER I love her I love her</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">-MOM</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I cried when I read it, as any daughter would, and my mom and I had our much deserved Hallmark moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know my mom felt about me the same way I feel about my son when I hear his little voice singing songs that I know, and when he makes up new songs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s better than hearing the sweet voice of your reason for living?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">As Mother’s Day approaches, I'd like to say something really profound about being a mother, but I realize that I’m incapable of saying anything new to you moms out there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know how incredible you are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know that it’s the moms who carry the weight of the world on their backs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know you, like me, wouldn’t trade a second of it, even your most frustrated times, even when you had to neglect yourself to nurture someone else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know you soak in little moments, even after time gets away from you and you have only a second to catch your breath until the next one comes along.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know you, like me, have breathed in the scent of the top of your baby’s head as you rocked him and wished it would always be like this. And hopefully, you somehow found time to stop and look around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Hopefully, y</span>ou listened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moms, you are the caretakers of the little voices, the ones who bring the most beautiful music into the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we fill our little ones up with love, they release the sound of it back to us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> What a gift. </span>Little songbirds who, like the song says, “know the score.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">And to my own little buddy all I can say is, “I love you, I love you, I love you, like never before.”</div>Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-62982135646586902142011-05-03T13:41:00.000-07:002015-03-01T19:07:27.562-08:00Go With the Flow<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
I recently celebrated my sixth wedding anniversary with my husband.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We went out to eat on the same night that tornadoes touched down and destroyed several neighborhoods in northern <place><placename>St. Louis</placename> <placetype>County</placetype></place>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A tornado warning went off as we ate dinner and even more afterwards as we headed out to one of my favorite places to eat dessert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My always cautious husband heard the sirens and rolled down the car window as we approached downtown.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He looked at me and said with all seriousness, “Well, I guess we should probably go home.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I laughed in his face and then in the face of danger. “No way,” I said. “We are going to have a romantic night out if it kills us.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we sipped our chocolate drinks and ate our dessert, watched the wind and rain whip against the window right next to our table, we toasted, “To weathering the storm.”</div>
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It wasn’t an exaggeration. </div>
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Scenes of the devastation were all over the news when we got home from our date.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The next day we saw the destruction that the storm brought to some of the neighborhoods just north of where we had eaten dinner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I felt a little guilty for my statement made in jest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s just, we hadn’t been on a date in a really, really long time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t want to be home by <time hour="19" minute="30">7:30</time> on the night of our anniversary, not after the year we’ve had, especially since we already had a babysitter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And those of you who know me know that yes, I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">would</i> risk my life for chocolate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that good</i>.</div>
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We thought that the worst was over, but over the next couple of days the rain came down pretty hard and consequently flash flood warnings went up all over the metro area.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And while it didn’t affect us directly, I can say that to a certain extent, the flood gates were opened in our house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>Or, in other words, something big happened.</div>
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My son, my first born, my beautiful, now three year old boy, has officially gone tinkle in the big boy potty. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He peed, I cried.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t think I’m perverted, but I also thought it was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen, even when some of it landed on the floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As with sleeping in his big boy bed and getting rid of the binky, I had built this moment up in my mind to be something that would be nearly impossible to accomplish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It caused me such anxiety and stress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It didn’t help that all of my friends had two year olds who were almost or completely potty trained.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son hadn’t even gone in the potty once.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remember, he’s the one who screamed and cried every time I would try to even sit him on the potty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And once again, I had put unnecessary pressure on myself, feeling the heat of competition and wishing that my son wasn’t such a scaredy-cat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I felt so much pressure, even after hearing from several moms that “Your son will let you know when it’s time” and “Don’t even try to start until he’s ready.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This seemed a little ridiculous to me, that a toddler would know what’s best for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It kind of goes against every motherly instinct I have, to let him decide for himself when he’s ready.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I’ll be a son of a gun, that’s exactly what happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He just decided.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One night as he ran around naked, he paused and stood in a way that, if anyone has ever had a puppy, is recognized as “the pee stance.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s when my husband, God love that man, asked my son if he’d like to use the potty and I almost fainted when he responded, “Yes!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cue the waterworks, for both of us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, miracle of miracles, my husband showed my son how to tinkle <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">standing </i>up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And not in the little potty that his Gaga had bought for him (i.e. the Cadillac of baby toilets) because that would be too easy. No, my son actually tinkled in mama and dada’s toilet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is the porcelain king!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He skips the minors and goes straight into major league big boy potty training!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was much rejoicing and singing and dancing in our house that night; lots of squeals and as I mentioned before, lots of tears.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know I can’t experience this kind of relief without a hint of sadness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My baby is officially a “big kid now.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has gone at least four times a day on the potty since then and is reaping a great harvest of stickers and new underwear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are well on our way to overcoming this mother load (no pun intended) of all milestones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s not “trained” yet by any means and we have had our fair share of accidents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I see the finish line, and I am full of hope.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told some friends of mine that I am tempted to put down newspaper like I would for a puppy so as to not turn our entire house into one huge toilet, but I’m just kidding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am so proud of him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am so proud of my husband, and okay, I’m a little proud of myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let me promise all of you moms and dads out there that, listen, it’s not so bad.</div>
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Did you hear me?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said, it’s not so bad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s quite a different tone than I had in my last blog entry, to be sure.</div>
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My son says that a lot lately, “It’s not so bad.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess he picked it up from me after he spilled juice on the floor and I said, “It’s okay buddy, it’s not so bad.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now he says it after every bowel movement, “It’s okay mama.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not so bad.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After every fit, “It’s okay to throw fits sometimes mama.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not so bad.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And after every time he falls, he shakes his head with tears in his eyes and convinces himself, “It’s not so bad.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How reassuring and promising, that whatever it is he’s dealing with, he knows it’s…not so bad.</div>
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Lesson learned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I take his lead. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just have to relax and go with the flow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why does it take so long to learn lessons like this?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Time and again it’s been proven that if I am just patient and remain faithful, that most things will just work themselves out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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As if the miracle of my stubborn son peeing in the big boy potty wasn’t enough, we were told last week that the neighbor is going to cooperate with the prospective owner of my mother’s house and we are set to close, or at least try for the second time to close, in just two short weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I admit I am scared because of what happened the last time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I pray every night that this thing works out and please God, don’t let anything else go wrong, as if He was the one who let it go wrong in the first place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Silly, self-indulgent Carrie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this time, I see the finish line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am full of hope.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s just the way of life, I guess. Storms only last for a short time. You can’t worry about when the next one will come, just get through this one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> T</span>here’s hope.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rain will stop and the sun will come out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other day I saw a double rainbow and I thought, yes, there it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s my promise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now I can be grateful, which is what I should’ve been all along.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because honestly, if I didn’t go through all of this, I couldn’t look you in the face and say with all sincerity, “Hey, it’s not so bad.”</div>
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I promise.</div>
Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-30275431208934083382011-04-08T20:38:00.000-07:002011-04-08T20:52:01.030-07:00Running Up That Hill<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I’ve had a series of bothersome dreams lately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am talking with my dad and in mid-conversation I realize that he’s not alive anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say to him, “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then I wake up, disappointed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>A couple of days ago my son, who’s going through a phase now of asking for things over and over again, asked me fifty times in a row if we could go to grandma’s house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He followed me into the bathroom and said, “I want to go to grandma’s house.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a long process of first ignoring him, then explaining to him that grandma was at the doctor’s office, and then promising him that we’ll go see her tomorrow, I finally had enough and turned around and said as a matter of fact, “Yeah, well, get used to disappointment.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I shamed myself for teaching my son the word for when he doesn’t get his way, the feeling which is responsible for the fits of crying and the begging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now he knows what to call it; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">disappointment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>He didn’t understand what I meant and of course kept asking to go to grandma’s, but I thought, wow, so far that is the most cynical thing I’ve ever said to my son.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said that. Me...who is supposed to be an optimist.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">So bear with me.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">A friend of mine asked me recently when my next blog entry will be and I had to admit to him and now to all of you that I’ve hit a wall, creatively speaking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I like to keep my topics somewhat light, unless I’m obviously working through some inner demons and therefore devote entire entries to sad or profound subjects such as family members dying or Chinese mothers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lately, well, there just isn’t a lot of “funny stuff” going on in my life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I like the funny stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know you do too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We all know I like to laugh at myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I like to confess the most embarrassing things about my life because I’m naïve enough to picture another mom out there nodding her head in agreement and laughing at herself too, right before her own kid comes into her room covered in lipstick or missing a huge chunk of hair because she found the cuticle scissors in the dresser drawer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s something universal in laughter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we all laugh at ourselves, we are united.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are harmoniously telling the universe that this is our response to the seemingly random ups and downs that life has to offer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No matter what happens or how much crap we have to endure, our senses of humor will remain in tact, if only to make it through one more day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I like to think of it the way Matthew Wilder did, “Aint’ nothin’ gonna break my stride, nobody’s gonna hold me down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh no, I’ve got to keep on movin’.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only instead of “movin,” I’ve got to keep on laughing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I don’t have to tell you that life isn’t always like an upbeat ‘80’s tune.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If these are my true confessions, then I have to tell you something that you probably already knew but that I’m too stupid to admit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lately, I’ve been a little sad and disappointed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Isn’t that awful, that I can’t just come out and say that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am disappointed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve hit a wall not just creatively, but in my efforts to help and financially stabilize my mother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a year and a half now I have been working towards one goal, to put my mother into a new house and to sell her old one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> For a</span> year and a half we've been spending money, working with lawyers, worked our fingers to the bone, juggled the responsibilities of two households, family members have died and one had a stroke…and the night before we were supposed to close on the house and find some peace and resolution in this project, our realtor calls and tells me that it’s not going to happen. I’m not going to waste anymore space describing the details of how the selling of my mom’s house in Maplewood has almost altogether been sabotaged by her next door neighbor, but I will tell you that something has come up that was unexpected and has to do with about three feet of shared driveway space and that I myself am powerless over the situation. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I hate that feeling and that god-awful word,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> powerless</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you feel like your fate rests solely in someone else’s hands and that all of your hard work was in vain if all it takes is one person to ruin everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have none.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lately, this “not so funny stuff” is affecting my every day life. It's why I haven't written in a few weeks. I feel like a fake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I talk about joy and laughter and try so hard to be optimistic, but when I’m alone, I’m scared and unsure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am full of doubt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am disappointed so often now that it is filtering into my dreams and even my parenting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then again the dreaded pressure, which I try in vain to elude, creeps in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I feel like when I’m around people that I should try to laugh and tell funny stories. I feel like if I have nothing encouraging to say, then I have nothing at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also take it upon myself to be the optimistic and upbeat one in any given circle of friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t want to be so encumbered with my own business that I can’t take on the problems of my friends and listen to their stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is all in my head of course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve admitted so many of my failures and insecurities as a parent on this blog, why am I scared to admit my fears, as a person?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m still a person, in spite of being a parent, right?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m still an optimist in spite of being disappointed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Right?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Watching and reading the news lately hasn’t helped much with my feeling of disappointment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is keeping me grounded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My problems are so small.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I read an article on the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and now, the nuclear threat in <country-region><place>Japan</place></country-region>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A woman and her five year old son waited in an evacuation center as her husband was working to try to avert a nuclear disaster nearby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She said, “I cannot imagine the future at this moment.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My heart went out to the woman who stood next to her boy, her precious baby, as the world around her broke, drowned, and burned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mothers have to be so strong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Being a mother has made me weaker and stronger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Weaker in that now I have something huge at stake that relies on me to protect it and holds me accountable for everything I say and do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stronger for the same reason.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This poor woman had lost so much and was at risk of losing so much more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I felt her loss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I was disappointed in myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My problems are nothing compared to the suffering this woman is going through.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">I'd like to think that i</span>f I lost everything tomorrow, I'd still remain hopeful in Someone that is much bigger and greater than me and my circumstances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least I'd try to remain hopeful. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes I feel like it would be easier to not believe in God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I wouldn’t feel the misguided need to hold Him accountable when things go wrong just because I give Him the credit when things go right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It might be easier to not believe in Him, but for me, it just isn’t possible.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">So how do you overcome disappointment?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m trying, you guys, I really am.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m trying to listen for whispers of encouragement and keep my eyes open for signs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m trying to believe that the suffering on the other side of the world isn’t the result of a cruel or uncaring God, no matter what the cynics say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m trying not to ask the same questions as they do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m trying to believe that there’s a good reason that my father in law had a stroke after taking such good care of himself, and that there is more good that will come out of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m trying to believe that my good intentions to change my mother’s life will not fail after all of this hard work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m trying to convince myself that when I wake up from those dreams saddened that my dad is no longer alive, at least I can take comfort in my belief that he is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">somewhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>At least, I’m trying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the most, I’m...trying.</div>Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-85024905605454754822011-03-14T08:30:00.000-07:002011-03-14T08:32:43.473-07:00TIME TO GET ILL<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">In my teens, I thought that everything my mother said and did was an affront to my fragile self esteem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought that every time we were out in public she should adhere to my strict rules and not speak or look at anyone and sometimes not even move, because the woman brought nothing but utter humiliation to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that I’m older I realize that I was such a brat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had a super sharp tongue and a wall of insecurity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I took lessons from the Darlene Conner School of Smart Allecks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even though there are very specific instances where my mother embarrassed me, like when her slip fell down around her ankles on the steps of my high school surrounded by hundreds of people on the night of my graduation, I know now that she wasn’t trying to embarrass me and more often than not, I was just a terrible, defensive ingrate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My dad, on the other hand, went out of his way to save his most embarrassing moments for my friends and worse, my boyfriends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In retrospect, he was a novelty, a real one of a kind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But back then, as a self-conscious teenager who just wanted to appear normal, he was my kryptonite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dad laughed the loudest at his own jokes, which most of my friends didn’t get, and he always sang ridiculous songs at the top of his lungs and told the most absurd stories to my friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They politely appreciated his wackiness while I died a little inside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Now that I have a child of my own, I realize that anything my parents intentionally or unintentionally did to humiliate me as a teenager was just payback for all the things I did as a kid that probably heaped humiliation upon them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Kids are embarrassing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I’ve told you enough stories of the public meltdowns for which my son is notorious, but I’m finding out every day that there are deeper depths to this kind of embarrassment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son has been sick lately with a cold and congestion that probably started from seasonal allergies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a result of this, he discovered the joy of picking his nose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It started out as an occasional finger in the nose to clear out some of the crusty blockage from his cold but now he’s just camping out up there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His finger is always in his nose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He used to pull on his ear as a measure of comfort when he was sleepy, or when he was acting shy or put on the spot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now anytime all eyes are on him the finger goes up, you guessed it, straight to the nose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One time in front of my girlfriends when I asked him to spell “water” he raised his finger to his nose in slow motion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As they all laughed, he realized that not only did he enjoy a finger in his nose but others must enjoy seeing it there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That positive reinforcement was all it took for him to cultivate this gross habit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s gotten pretty good at pushing it up there as far as it will go and has even given himself a nosebleed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was cute at first, I’ll admit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I laughed along with my friends when he first started doing it, gently correcting him as I smiled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But now, well, it’s another thing that pushes the limits of my grossness tolerance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> His habit has evolved, as nose picking does, from finger, to nose, to mouth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And repeat. </span>The kid has boogers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Big ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">loves</i> them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s like winning the ultimate jackpot when he pulls out a big, fat, round booger, or boogie, as well call it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It thrills him to no end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s like a little golden nugget, which I guess is where the term “diggin’ for gold” came from.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His precious boogies are carefully scrutinized, as he inspects them, rubs them delicately between his finger and thumb and smells them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are monstrous things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who knew a little kid could have such huge boogies? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s proud of them, much like he is with his toots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Look mama!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My boogie!” he says anytime he pulls one out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And while I scramble to find a tissue to dispose of the nasty thing, sometimes I make it in time and sometimes I don’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes it’s gone by the time I turn around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I try not to think of where it went.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I was in Sears with my mom not long ago when my son decided to indulge in his new pastime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I was nearing the checkout line, I heard my mom say to my son, “Now,” which is how she starts a lot of her sentences when she is displeased, “Now then, don’t do that.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I looked around and saw half of his finger up his nose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“No buddy, don’t do that,” I echoed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Don’t do that,” he laughed, mimicking us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be fair, it is funny to an almost three-year-old to have two grown women tell you in stereo to stop picking your nose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then, it stopped being funny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Out came a boogie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A huge boogie on the tip of his finger; a golden nugget he was so proud of that he had to announce, “Look grandma, a boogie!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My mom pulled him aside and dug in her pockets, then asked me for a tissue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I don’t have one!” I said as I searched my bag.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I went to the next best thing, a wet wipe, but by that time my mom had already convinced him to shove the boogie in his pocket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s very resourceful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He did shove his hand into his pocket but when he pulled it back out, so too came the rubber cement like boogie, stuck to his finger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Look grandma!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My boogie!” he said again with all the joy of finding it the first time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As much as we tried, we couldn’t get him to “shhh” or “be quiet.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was getting the best of us and he knew it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, he’s smart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, I grabbed his hand and wiped his boogie and threw the wet wipe in my bag.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He cried and pointed to my bag, “My boogie!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Give my boogie back!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he told on me to my mom, “Grandma, Mama took my boogie!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To which the woman responded, “Ahh, poor baby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s okay.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>United front my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you-know-what</i>, she actually sympathized with the little booger, pardon the expression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s when my genius son did a little deducing of his own and came up with an ingenious plan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“That’s okay,” he said after some crying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’ll get another boogie!”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">And so it was.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I’m sure I did embarrassing things like this when I was a kid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m absolutely sure that my siblings have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve heard my family tell the story of how my sister asked for prayer in Sunday school for our mom because “my dad threw a coffee table at her.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That didn’t happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My dad never threw a coffee table <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">at</i> my mom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My siblings were terrible children and always getting into trouble.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The best story I’ve ever heard is about the time my siblings caught a bunch of baby frogs on a float trip down in St. James, Missouri and stuffed as many as they could into plastic ice cream buckets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They then put those buckets in the back window of the car and halfway home, when my dad had to slam on the breaks, down came the buckets and out came the hundreds of baby frogs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They hopped everywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While my siblings died laughing, I screamed and cried because I was still quite young and the frogs freaked me out. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My dad screamed and cursed and ultimately had to pull over on the side of the highway to exit the car and drop his drawers as tiny frogs leapt out of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Standing on the side of the highway shaking frogs off of you with your pants around your ankles in broad daylight pretty much beats any humiliation that I’ve had to endure so far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So you win, dad.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Payback comes in all forms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suppose one day the opportunity will present itself for me to utterly humiliate my son, whether I intend to or not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know me, and most likely I will intend to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One day something I wear around his friends, or say, or sing, or interpretive dance will be viewed through his eyes as “humiliating.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Will I take pleasure out of it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Will I go out of my way to pay back my son for all the fits in the middle of stores, all the times I’ve had to carry him in public kicking and screaming, all the “Eurekas!” of picked boogies?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, what am I working towards here if not payback?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That son of mine had better watch out for, in the words of Indigo Montoya, “Humliations galore!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Oh yeah, that will be part of the humiliation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will randomly quote ‘80’s movies and listen to ‘80’s music around his friends because by that time, the ‘80’s will not be cool anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They will be like what the ‘50’s are now.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Better yet, if my wildest dreams come true, he will be in a bookstore holding a copy of “Confessions of a Stay at Home Mom” and someone will say to him, “Did you know this woman’s son used to pick his boogies and eat them?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">He has no idea what’s in store for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, I learned from the best.</div>Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-4143849952840809562011-03-08T08:37:00.001-08:002011-03-08T08:37:57.291-08:00Mister Brightside<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">It is a nondescript Tuesday night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are taking yet another family trip to Target.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(We go there a lot).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We walk into the store and in order to cover more ground, and so I can have a few moments of peace in the makeup aisle, we split up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am alone and free, at least for a few minutes, to shop without my son. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am perusing the clearance rack of clothes on my detour to makeup, checking out a few cardigans and raincoats when I hear a faint scream that seems to come from the opposite end of the store.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I move down the rack to cargo pants and, listen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wait a second.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know that scream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I walk through the shoes, through the cleaning supplies, past the diapers, and into the baby clothes to find the source of said scream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My son</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Screaming and throwing himself on the ground in the middle of Target.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I look to my husband who’s smiling and who has obviously lost control of this situation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Is this funny?” I ask, “Why is he crying?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And why are you smiling?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My husband tells me that my son tried to pick up one of the red Target page phones and wanted to call Gaga.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(His Gaga, which is what he calls my mother in law, not Lady Gaga.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My husband took away the phone and that’s when the fit began.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My husband is smiling because he wants the people who watched the whole thing go down to think that he’s a level headed person and that nothing this child does bothers him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I see right through his mask.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Stop smiling.” I tell him, incredulously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I bend down and tell my son, “Do you want to go to school tomorrow?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Uh huh,” he cries. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Then stop throwing a fit.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he straightens right up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, I realize this bribe will not always work the older he gets, once he realizes that school isn’t all that great.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But for now, it works.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I look over to the smiling couple next to us, her belly ripe with pregnancy, registering for a baby shower.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I assume it’s their first and I laugh, “Are you guys sure about this?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They laugh nervously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I follow up, “Oh, it’s not always like this.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yeah, sometimes it’s worse. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Sometimes I can’t get him to stop.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Ever since I’ve taken away my son’s binky I’ve realized daily just how great a purpose it served.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anytime I wanted to plug him up (I could’ve used one in Target) I just whipped out the binky and crisis averted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also served as a filter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With the binky in his mouth, he observed a great deal more without actually processing it verbally. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I complained for so long when he wasn’t talking. All I wanted was for him to talk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now he won’t shut up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seriously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The kid will not shut up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything he sees and hears is processed out loud.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he learns a new word or saying, he says it over and over until I regret teaching it to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he sees something he wants he asks for it a million times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if it’s not given to him, or if he thinks you’re not listening, he knows exactly what to say and what to do to convey his dissatisfaction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have the overwhelming urge to shove something into his mouth, if only for a second of peace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I lament the binky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">As my son inches towards turning three, I keep hearing a friend’s voice in my head that said to me a while back, “The terrible twos are a misnomer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are really the terrible <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">threes</i>.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To which I balked, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yeah right</i>, because, come on, can it get much worse than two?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Hear me now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I’m kidding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kind of.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The funny thing about kids is that they learn so fast who they can go crazy on and just what exactly they’ll be able to get away with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s their jobs, to figure out the boundaries and then to push them as far as they can.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our jobs are to set the boundaries and enforce them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I get that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I don’t get is how quickly they learn the give and take.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t get it when I ask my son’s teacher how he is in school she always says, “Great, he’s so well behaved” and also that he’s “one of the shy ones.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Really?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The kid who had a roomful of people applauding him as he sang “Single Ladies” into a microphone last weekend at my mom’s house (that says a lot about my family, that we just have random microphones and amps lying around the house, just in case anyone has the urge to break out into song and needs some juice), the kid who danced around like a kid on “Glee” is shy at school?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The kid who throws himself on the floor at the mall when I announce it’s time to leave is well behaved for his teachers when they announce that recess is over?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s up with that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He learns so fast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your kid does too, probably. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He knows the difference between mama and the teacher.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He knows <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">very well</i> the difference between mama and dada.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh boy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He knows that I have actually followed through with some of my threats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not going to the park if he doesn’t stop throwing a fit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Taking toys away from him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not giving him cookies because he didn’t eat his green beans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least I try to set the boundaries and enforce them. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dada however is such a softy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He hates to see our son cry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not like I love it, but I think being a stay at home mom, I am a bit more desensitized to our little guy’s waterworks. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lately my husband appears like he doesn’t even know what to do when our son throws these fits, besides riding them out, ignoring them or laughing at them like he did in the store.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My favorite is when he responds to these fits by yelling out, “Carrie!” as if he’s sinking to the bottom of the fit abyss and has no choice but to cry out for a lifeline.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our son can throw a doozie of a fit, I know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they have gotten much worse in the last couple of months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s bigger now and it’s getting harder to just scoop him up and quickly haul him out of any public place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has my husband’s build so he’s all legs and they flail all over the place when he’s throwing a fit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This throwing himself on the ground thing is new too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Verbal skills, plus size, plus a keen sense of observation and self awareness equals a demonstrative attack on all boundaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But where I refuse to give in, my husband’s heart caves like a Chilean mine.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I’m not attacking my husband, don’t get me wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve learned a lot so far as a parent but I still feel like sometimes I have no control.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hate that feeling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I feel like I am a master of manipulation and can calm down or avert most fits with a simple “this” or “that” method.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son is pretty responsive to this technique. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t think my husband has a technique yet. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’ll learn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’ll have to. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He lets my son get away with so much more than I do, so when he tries to enforce inconsistent boundaries, he gets a huge fit like the one in Target.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I approached the scene the other night, I felt like the situation was out of control and then shortly thereafter, realized that I was the only one with control.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">And then it occurred to me that I<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>am the disciplinarian in my household.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When did <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> happen?</div>Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-18991235616656127632011-02-22T13:19:00.000-08:002013-03-28T17:29:58.359-07:00Big Girl, You Are Beautiful<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
I used to pet sit for my boss at the university once or twice a year when she took week long vacations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I loved doing it because it gave me some much needed alone time, since I was in my twenties and still living with my parents at the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My boss and her partner’s home was very nice, it felt like a little vacation for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Plus, they paid generously so I made some much needed extra cash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My grandmother had just moved in with us, my personal space was non existent, and I had to sleep on the couch. So going over to someone else’s house and sleeping in a normal bed for a week was worth catering to the cute but pampered animals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At that time my boss had two dogs and a cat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the dogs was a tiny, adorable and emotional silky terrier who would curl up and sleep next to me every night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other dog was a high maintenance, out of shape, overweight beagle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t always have to watch the beagle, eventually my boss gave her to another owner and she died a very expensive and drawn out death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I remember specifically that first night of pet sitting, when at about ten o’clock at night I came to the realization that I was all alone in a house for the first time in years, with only an out of shape dog who never moved and a super tiny dog who was afraid of anything that moved to protect me. I was kind of freaked out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I climbed into bed, turned on the t.v. and left the light on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The terrier was snuggled next to me on the bed and eventually, I fell asleep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Around <time hour="0" minute="0">midnight</time> I awoke suddenly to what sounded like a woman in high heels running across the hardwood floor in the living room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was coming closer and closer to my room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I froze in terror.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then the sound came into my room and all of a sudden, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">smack</i>, something hit the bed and moved it about six inches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sat up and looked down at the foot of the bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was the beagle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She walked back into the living room and lo and behold, galloped into the bedroom again at full speed, her nails clicking hard against the wooden floors and once again, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">boom</i>, smacked against the bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wasn’t sure what was happening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t know what to do, so I watched for a third time as the portly beagle ran from the front of the house into the bedroom and finally accomplished what she had set out to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She jumped onto the bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It took three times, but that fat dog finally got her fat butt up on the bed and slept with me the entire night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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This is the exact image I conjure up in my head when I think about my struggle with weight loss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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I have never in my life been called skinny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think only once in high school did anyone tell me that I needed to gain weight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve always had hips, thighs, and a sizable-by-comparison booty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t think I would have ever called myself fat <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">per se</i>, I knew what my body type was and I think I worked with what I had.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I put on some weight in college but a few months after I graduated, I was back to my normal, healthy weight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I met my husband, I was my most superficially confident self.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I maintained my weight with no problem, probably because I was so love sick. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t have too many issues with how I looked back then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, I thought I had never looked better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But after a few years of marriage, life happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One day my dad went in for a CT scan because he had a dizzy spell and in twenty four hours they were prepping him for surgery to remove an egg sized tumor out of his brain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember the day of the surgery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was towards the end of February, right around this time of year, and it was also Girl Scout Cookie time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The day of my dad’s surgery I ate an entire box of Tagalongs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s when I fell into a habit of eating to de-stress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ate anything and everything to get through those first couple months of shock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doctors had given my dad three to six months to live.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, he lived for three years after that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had gained about twenty extra pounds by the time I was scheduled for gall bladder removal surgery later that year, which of course I couldn’t have because I was pregnant. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, with all the extra weight already packed on from eating my feelings all summer, I played up my new role of “eating for two” with gusto. Only, I was eating for two full size football players.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And all I could eat were carbohydrates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ate them all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then I ate some more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you had some on your plate I’d eat those too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ate until I thought I might explode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I gained a lot of weight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was swollen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was miserable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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I don’t know why I thought the weight would magically come off after I had the baby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of it did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But not enough. I joined Weight Watchers and lost about twenty pounds, which was a good start, but then I gained it all back the months following my grandmother’s and father’s deaths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I quit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I decided after a few months to join up again, and a week later my father in law had a stroke.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I quit again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t think the universe was happy with my joining Weight Watchers. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not sure if I’ll ever do it again, afraid that the next time I join I might actually lose an arm or have a heart attack.</div>
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Life stresses me out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Being a mom stresses me out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On any given day, I’ll put my son down for a nap, grab a snack and unwind in front of the T.V. or with a book. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My biggest problems are sweets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t get enough of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m pretty self-aware and that's a problem, because I can’t say with a straight face that I might have some secret underlying reason for eating so I better get myself into therapy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know why I eat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It makes me feel good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s like a friend who calms me down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it’s a sick and twisted friendship, because my real friends would never make me gain weight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told a friend of mine the other night that I think I have an addiction to food.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hate admitting that, because it makes me feel like I’m a victim, to food of all stupid things, like it has a power over me and I can’t fight it off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am not raped by food.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could fight it off if I wanted to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I eat to de-stress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some people drink.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some people do drugs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some people paint pictures or take walks or do yoga.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I eat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pretty soon I’ll be all out of excuses and I’ll be done solving the problems of the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We close on my mom’s house in <city><place>Maplewood</place></city> tomorrow, and I feel like that might give me some much needed closure to this part of my story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe then I’ll be ready to deal with this food issue, or maybe not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told the same friend the other night that my husband and I are trying to have another baby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I joked, “I have a big belly already so I may as well put something useful in there.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was only half kidding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I find it futile to try so hard to lose weight when I’m only going to put it back on when I’m pregnant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m over thirty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My metabolism has changed dramatically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I try to lose weight, I feel like I have to get a running start and even then I feel like I have to work three times as hard as the normal person to achieve any results.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I feel like that fat beagle that just can’t get up on the bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Do not feel sorry for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s not the point here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t want your solutions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know what the decision has to be and when I’m ready for it, I’ll make it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I see women all around me overcoming their weight problems and it’s very inspiring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I love those women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also see women who pop out babies like vending machines and their bodies are not morphed into stretch marked blobs at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hate those women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They make me feel like I need to apologize for having my body type.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But guess what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s not going to happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know you thought that may be where this blog entry was headed, but it’s not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not going to apologize for myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I carried a child within me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m going to try to do it again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve been through a lot and my body has suffered for it, and when the time is right, I’m going to do something about it, hopefully before it’s too late.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may take a while and I may have to start from all the way in the living room, but eventually, I too will get my ghetto-fabulous booty up on that metaphorical bed, just like my fat beagle friend, Lord rest her soul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the meantime, I’m going to still love myself, take care of myself the best that I can, be proud of how I look and try not to shame myself when I enjoy a few cookies with my Wendy Williams.</div>
Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-59257295916497297442011-02-15T06:39:00.000-08:002013-03-28T17:39:15.860-07:00Hurt<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
When I was twelve years old, my seventeen year old sister died in a car accident along with her best friend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was spending a week with one of the families from our church and I was woken up very early in the morning by my friend’s dad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wouldn’t tell me why I had to go home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was an insufferably long car ride from <place><placename>North</placename> <placetype>County</placetype></place>, out by the airport where they lived, back to <city><place>Maplewood</place></city>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was supposed to spend the week with them; I did that sometimes in the summer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Disappointed that I had to end my week long sleepover three days early, I fantasized on the car ride home about a reasonable explanation as to why I would be called home so soon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only thing that made sense in my young mind was that my dad was going to drive over to <state><place>Illinois</place></state> to see his brother and I would accompany him on his trip.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We talked about going there almost every other week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I loved visiting my cousins, especially in the summertime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They lived in a small town with plenty of open fields and dusty country roads, with more than enough space for our imaginations to run wild.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I loved spending alone time with my dad on the drive over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’d find some crackling radio station that barely tuned in and would sing along to Randy Travis and George Jones, music I wasn’t old enough to appreciate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He always knew when I would start to get tired or carsick and I would lay my head down on his lap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’d drive down long stretches of corn lined country highway in his undependable, old pickup and at least fifty percent of the time we’d end up broken down on the side of the road, him tinkering with something under the hood before it would start again and we’d finally be able to reach our destination. My favorite part of these trips was stopping at the blackberry fields.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’d pick them at their ripest and bring them home and my dad would make the best, most perfectly bittersweet cobblers you would ever taste. A scoop of ice cream on the side and suddenly it was a beautiful, dark purple and cream swirled tribute to my favorite time of year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I even told my friend, who sat with me in the back seat of the car that morning on the way home, you know, I bet that’s what it is, I bet we’re going to Illinois.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I couldn’t wait.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just knew for sure that this was the reason I was called home so early. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I leapt out of the car and went running with excited ignorance up the front steps and into the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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I was stopped at the door by my dad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He grabbed me and pulled me to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In between crying he said some words, “dead” and “accident.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Was that it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My twelve year old brain wasn’t hearing him correctly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Death was a foreign word I never had to use before, it didn’t sound right in my ears. I couldn’t vocalize any of the questions I had at that moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I may have said “What?” a couple of times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I probably did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I barely understood what was being said to me. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I certainly didn’t understand that this was the turning point of the rest of my life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was the definitive moment of before and after, innocent and not innocent, secure and insecure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything before this was youth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything after was not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The forceful hug of my father was not comforting. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He hugged me more than I could stand and was unintentionally hurting me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I slipped away, walked through the house in a confused fog, and found my mother on her bed clutching a picture of my sister.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I crawled my way over next to her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The overly affectionate response of my father was brutally contrasted by the lack of response from my mother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wrapped my arms around her and felt her shake and sob but she didn’t feel me, so full of grief that her body just couldn’t respond or acknowledge me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I got up and left the room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t know what to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I couldn't find my other sister or brother. </span>I didn’t know what to say or where to go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I went to the refrigerator and poured a soda.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The house was full of familiar people whose faces I can’t recall, save one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our pastor touched me on the shoulder in the kitchen as I opened the soda bottle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’m sorry Carrie,” he said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t look up at him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d never been alone in a room with him before and I was embarrassed because I didn’t know how to act.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just focused on my glass, not wanting to spill anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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And that’s all I can remember about that day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t remember anything that happened after those brief moments until the night of her funeral a few days later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My sister died on <date day="9" month="8" year="1990">August 9<sup>th</sup>, 1990</date>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was twelve years old.</div>
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They say that losing a child is like losing a body part.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you lose a leg, or an arm, you experience what’s called phantom pain, as if the limb is still there and it still hurts. They say that phantom pain is worse than actual pain because there is nothing left to touch, and we mothers know fully well that touch sometimes helps to ease the pain. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know who “they” are, and I don’t quite know if that’s an accurate metaphor or not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know that when you lose a body part, you are incomplete but you’re still alive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t say the same thing about my mom that morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think for a while, she died.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She slowly came back to life later on because she had to, but I can honestly say that when I touched her that morning she didn’t feel me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that’s what losing a child is like, I think.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like you’re the leg that got cut off; you’re the piece that died.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know what else to compare it to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know what it looks like because I saw it, even in my youthful ignorance, that fateful morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I saw what losing a child looks like and it looks worse than losing a limb.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It looks even worse than dying because you <em>have</em> to live with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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There are other versions of this story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those who were in the room with her say that my mom picked up the phone, heard about the accident from the state trooper and collapsed, emitting a sound unlike anything they’d ever heard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My brother came home early that night, after partying with some friends, to a chaotic scene on the street in front of our house filled with screaming and crying teenagers: my other sister and her friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Being the youngest, I was always the last to know anything, and I was always given a loose version of the truth in order to protect me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m just now finding out about some things that happened in our house when I was a kid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I grew older, I was given more adult accounts of the truth as I probed my family history, but I still feel that my siblings go out of their ways to protect me, even now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can honestly say that I’m glad God spared me from experiencing the horror of watching my family find out about her death that night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was cruel enough witnessing the fallout in the morning.</div>
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As a twelve year old girl on the verge of my first “Are you there God? It’s Me Margaret,” moment, I think I was too self-centered and too young to be properly grieved at that time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I experienced the grief of her death in other ways, like, watching others respond to it. My family portrait had a hole blasted through it and while my face was still in tact, everyone else’s was torn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her absence in our household revealed itself dramatically to the rest of my family but slowly to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One day, our house was full of family and friends and the next day, everyone was gone. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew I was supposed to be grieving the loss of my sister, but I was grieving the loss of my family even more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s when I started going into my room and shutting the door right after school and not coming out sometimes until the next morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s when I started writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wrote god-awful, egocentric poetry to work through the inner conflict, the guilt, the grief, the self-pity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Somehow this was all about me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was depressed because it was expected of me, but no one knew that really, I was just lonely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was not the Judy Blume adolescence I was promised.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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I’m telling you this story now for a couple of reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One, my sister would have been 38 years old today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When my siblings and I talk about her, we agree that she would’ve been a great mom and probably would have had four or five kids by now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She loved kids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of the girls she ran with in high school have families now, some of whom started having babies while they were still in high school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We all agree that she probably would’ve started young.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was very motherly to me, being the closest to me in age but old enough to be protective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think about all the things she missed out on, all the things I was able to experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a weighty responsibility, this carrying on, making up for the time lost in others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s some guilt involved in it too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I promised a long time ago that if I ever gave birth to a daughter, she would be named after my sister.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not just because she had a beautiful name, but so the name would be associated with life and not just death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her name is an honor, a legacy, but also a commission. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><em>Go with this name and live.</em> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My sister’s been dead longer than she had lived.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today is the first time I’ve thought of that.</div>
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The second reason I’m telling you this story is because it’s important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe it will help you understand why I want to take care of my mother so badly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s also a moment I’ve thought a lot about since becoming a parent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s fear that comes with bringing a child into an unstable and unpredictable world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The minute your baby is placed in your arms you think, how can I possibly protect this child?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then you’re slammed with a cruel reality when you realize, you can’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know this firsthand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If there was anything my mother could’ve done to prevent it from happening, it was mulled over in her brain until it wormed its way into her heart and broke it, over and over again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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For months after my son was born I would hold him in the middle of the night after his feedings and think to myself that I didn’t want to miss out on anything he did with his life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t possibly die until I experience every major milestone of life with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t like to think of him living without me, but, someday he will have to do just that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he can live without me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know this from having lost a parent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I would die without him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s the natural order of things, that the parents die first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But sometimes, children die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s the part of God that I don’t understand; that life can be cut off so quickly as if it had no purpose at all, no promise of a future, and no guarantees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a mystery I hope I never understand until God Himself tells me why.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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I can’t fathom it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t go there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a fear in the back of every parent’s mind but you shouldn’t live everyday in it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There will come a day when my son doesn’t spend every waking moment with me and I’m sure the fear will creep in and overtake me at times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s taken me a long time to understand why my mom didn’t hug me back when I wrapped my arms around her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Didn’t she understand that she had other children who needed her?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course she did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s why she slowly came back to life and finally became my mom again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I never held it against her and I never will, especially now that I’m a mom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She did what I would do, what you would do, if it happened to us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Maybe you’ve lost a sibling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>God forbid you’ve lost a child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m sure you have your own story and your own way of reconciling your past to what’s going on in your life right now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had to go through that to get to where I am today, we all say, with a hint of skepticism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The truth is, we wish we hadn’t gone through it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wish my sister were alive and I wish her children would have been born.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wish I never had to see my mom lose her daughter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wish the fear of that loss wasn’t burned into my psyche.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I have seen it, it happened, and it changed me forever, as a person, a daughter, and a mother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At this point in my life, I'm bridging generations of my family together and am finally able to see my mother as the fragile but strong human being she’s always been.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a point in your life when, strangely enough, you see your parents as real people instead of just secondary, two-dimensional characters in the story of your life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It makes me want to thank her for coming back to life for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It makes me want to hug my son so tightly, until he’s uncomfortable, as tightly as my dad held me that morning, after he tried to explain what had happened and just…couldn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because who can explain such a thing?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had just lost one daughter and couldn’t let another one go, not even into the next room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He held onto me until it hurt us both.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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And now I understand and love my dad a little more, and I wish I could have told him everything that I’ve just told you.</div>
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Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-52379677594409092732011-02-14T13:30:00.000-08:002013-03-28T17:43:26.904-07:00Just the Two of Us<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
I feel like I’ve been dispensing a lot of advice lately at all sorts of events and I have to say, once again, that I feel very unqualified to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least twice last week my advice was solicited and I humbly complied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first of course was the email that my pregnant friend sent out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But just this weekend at a friend’s bridal shower, all of the attendees had to write down their best marital advice and give it to the bride.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think that some of my friends were expecting a funny quip from me, and while I really wanted to give them a good zinger about marriage, I ended up showing my true colors and ultimately wrote something mushy and sentimental.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess I could’ve pretended like I was a cynic, responding to an inquiry like, “What do I do when I can’t make spaghetti the way his mom made it?” with a, “Tell him he should’ve married his mom and feed him cereal.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the truth is, I love being married.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I believe in it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not in a Santa Clause sort of way, but I think God smiles upon it, the universe applauds it, that sort of thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure, my husband and I had a rough go of it over the past year and I can honestly say our determination, patience and even our affection for one another have all been tested but, I’m still confident that we’ve passed those tests and have come through still in tact, still in love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On this Valentine’s Day I feel especially grateful for the man in my life who seven years ago today proposed to me after nervously sweating his way through a dinner that he couldn’t even eat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said yes, of course, that day and every day since then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Shortly after we were engaged, someone asked me if I thought my soon-to-be-husband was my soul mate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought it was a very bold question that I could’ve taken offensively had I not known this person very well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I answered simply, “I don’t believe in soul mates.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not in the traditional sense, anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t believe that there is only one person perfectly suited for you out there in the universe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What a pain that would be to find your “perfect match.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What if he died when he was a kid?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No soul mate for you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> That's a cruel way to look at love. </span>And what is a perfect match anyway?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is it finding someone who likes the same movies as you, listens to the same music or reads the same books?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those are great qualities to have in a friend, but not necessarily enough to create a deep bond that will last until one or both of you dies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d like to believe that real love goes deeper than that. There is an undefined element of love that even the dating websites can’t calculate into their equations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They can match you with someone who looks great on paper but if “it” is not there, love doesn’t happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It” is an “x” factor, if you will, that matches your soul to another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that’s what a “soul mate” is to me, not the one person that will “complete you” or who is going to be an extension of your ego, but someone who does something good for your soul, someone your soul says “yes” to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because the truth is, there is not just one person out there for every person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are lots of someones out there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The responsibility shifts then from the grandiose idea of the universe bringing someone to you to the simple act that separates us from the animals, free will, or the act of choosing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that’s what marriage is, the great choice, saying yes over and over again to the same person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a choice that you have to make every day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Otherwise, you will end up a depressing statistic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why do 1 in 2 marriages fail?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because people stop choosing what is right in front of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t help but think it’s also because we are a culture that thrives on newness, because something better is always on the table, something exciting is always on the market.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of the couples counseling and sex therapy in the world won’t do you any good if you can’t look at your husband or wife and say, yes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want this.</div>
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And that’s essentially what I wrote as my advice to my engaged friend. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wrote that marriage is a choice and to keep choosing your husband, even when times get tough, and they will, trust me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Keep choosing your husband even after you have kids, when your marriage is strained, when your son demands all of your time and attention and he will, trust me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Keep choosing your husband even when all you talk about when you are alone on a date night is your little one and how he said the darndest thing and how cute the little buddy is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Because you will. Trust me.</span></div>
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There are other tidbits of marital advice I can think of, like, to go out as much as you can before you have kids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Go on vacations and go to the movies and dance a lot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because when you have kids you are so tired by the end of the week that you don’t want to go out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just going to bed early is exciting enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Recently a group of my girlfriends got together and while they were all excited to go out, I thought, eh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s okay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It means I have to put forth a huge amount of effort to make sure the baby is taken care of, my clothes are all clean and my hair is fixed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know, you’re thinking that I’m lazy but hey, a night out is a lot of work, and that’s when it’s just me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Forget about it if I’m taking my son and husband with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Going out to eat is a craps shoot where you have to be ready for anything, mostly a meltdown in the middle of a crowded restaurant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We've almost stopped going out altogether.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we do eat out, we have to give up the mealtime power struggle in public so we ourselves can eat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn’t make us parents of the year, but at least we get to enjoy our food.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s certainly not romantic, in any sense of the word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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My husband said the other day, “Remember when it was just the two of us and we could just go out and eat anywhere we wanted or take a nap together in the afternoon or just get in the car and drive somewhere?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I reminded him, “Yeah but now we have something better.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s the truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I look at my husband playing in the snow with my son, or when they’re in bed together taking a nap, or when he takes my son’s hand to walk down the street and it makes my soul feel good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s romance redefined, fulfilling in a way that flowers and candy never were.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have a living, breathing, walking, talking symbol of love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We love each other so much that it produced this beautiful life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And even though our date nights are scarce and you can guess what we talk about most of the time, we are more in love today than we ever have been.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all this time, we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">get</i> each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We get to have each other and we actually get each other, as in, he <em>so </em>gets me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the end of the day, I get into bed with someone who gets me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I get him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As long as we both shall live.</div>
Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-34265489800462319932011-02-09T09:03:00.000-08:002011-03-15T06:59:47.138-07:00You Dropped a Bomb on Me, Baby<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">There are certain taboo subjects that are simply unladylike to discuss in public.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I realize that what I’m about to tell you is, as my husband puts it, inappropriate and way too personal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also think some of you might find it juvenile, and that’s all right by me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know you will read this story with all the sophisticated judgment of a New Yorker cartoonist and congratulate yourself for not being so sophomoric in your humor as to find something like this amusing. But deep down, in the ugly places you don’t like to talk about, I hope that you too will laugh when all is said and done, even if you won’t admit it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because no matter how grown up you think you are, there are certain things that you will never outgrow. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even my saint of a mother laughed when I told her about a news story from <place><city>Fort Wayne</city>, <state>Indiana</state></place>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apparently, they are withdrawing an important ex-mayor’s name from the running in a popular vote contest to name the new government building.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are doing this because his name will most likely induce an “immature” response from the media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His name is Harry Baals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He does not pronounce it Bales.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’re giggling along with the rest of the nation now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The title of the article on MSNBC’s website was “Scratch Harry Baals off the list.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which proves my point that even when you work for a legitimate news conglomerate, you are still capable of telling jokes that appeal to twelve year old boys.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">That’s why I think it’s okay to tell you my story.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">It all began in early August of 2007.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I went to bed with an unsettled stomach after a dinner of spicy Spanish rice and sausage and, on top of that, ice cream for dessert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pain in my chest was unlike anything I’d ever experienced and around <time hour="13" minute="0">one o’clock</time> in the morning I made my husband drive me to the ER, certain that I was having a heart attack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I got to the hospital, I had to wait for a good two hours to be seen and by that time the searing pain in my chest subsided.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was pretty embarrassed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was suggested that I had a gall bladder attack and I needed to follow up with my doctor to have it removed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>A few weeks later I was preparing for my surgery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My doctor gave me specific instructions to take a pregnancy test before the big day since my husband and I were not being very responsible at the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wanting to be a good patient, I took three.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were all negative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The day of surgery I arrived to pre-op, put on the hospital gown and the little paper shoes, and peed in a cup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The nurse drew a few drops of blood and my husband and I were led to a room to wait to be carted up to surgery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The nurse that drew my blood poked her head in our room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She withdrew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She poked her head in again and asked, “Is this your husband?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Yeah,” I said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She left.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She came back in a third time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Is there any chance you could be pregnant?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“No way,” I said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I took three tests and they were all negative.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Oh,” she said, “Cause you’re pregnant.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">And that’s how I found out I was pregnant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was thrilled to be carrying a baby but not so thrilled that I had to keep my diseased and stone-filled gall bladder.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It made my pregnancy a real pain, literally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I couldn’t eat anything and because I couldn’t eat anything, I wanted to eat everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only foods that didn’t make me sick were carbs, so I ate them by the barrelful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was cranky and hormonal and it sucked big time, especially as the baby grew and began suffocating me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could’ve sworn that he was not growing in my uterus but in my lungs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It felt like he was sitting right under my chin (or chins, by that time).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was miserable.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">A few months after having the baby I rescheduled my surgery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This time I was going to make sure that I would not be pregnant and so I had a “hands off” policy with my husband starting about a month before the surgery was scheduled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No way Jose, not going through that again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All went well and my stupid gall bladder was successfully removed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was promised that in a few weeks all would return to normal and I would need to follow up with the doctor, just in case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Little did I know that just because one’s gall bladder is removed that it does not mean one can just simply begin eating normally, or that one’s digestive system will ever be the same again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t let me scare you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If your doctor suggests to you to get your gall bladder removed don’t be stupid, get it removed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I’ll tell you the truth, it took my stomach a good year to feel right again and my body still can’t properly digest certain foods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fried foods slide right through me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And anything with fiber, well, I can just forget about going out in public for a few days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The truth is that having your gall bladder removed leaves you vulnerable to two very gross things that us ladies never like to mention, diarrhea and gas.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">This brings me to the crux of my story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still can’t believe I’m telling you this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, have a laugh, on me.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">A few days ago, ready to tackle step one of potty training, I decided to get my son hyped up about going to the store and picking out stickers and big boy underwear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We first went to McDonald’s for a nice “buttering up” lunch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead of getting something healthy that would’ve gone over better with my stomach, I choose some nuggets and fries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> And I can't have chicken nuggets without hot mustard. </span>We ate lunch and had a great time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son was on his best behavior and seemed to appreciate the novelty of just us two eating inside the restaurant, instead of the usual driving through and taking it home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a good time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we were finished, we headed out to our neighborhood Target, which is currently being renovated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The big banner promised they were “open during remodeling” so we went in, in search of the perfect bribes of stickers and underwear and a few other essential household items.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It took longer than I had expected to find light bulbs, which we had run out of at home, and I found myself wandering around the store for a good twenty minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, I found the light bulb aisle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I turned down the aisle and that’s when it hit me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It hit me with a flush to my face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew what was coming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a lady at the end of the light bulb aisle taking her sweet time, being a good consumer and comparing the length and prices of extension cords.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I stared at the light bulbs and tried to concentrate on not doing it, I realized that my only hope of escaping certain humiliation was to move to the next aisle and pray to God that no one was there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I turned the corner and two people were standing there looking at batteries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I squeezed my cheeks as tightly as I could, but those of you who’ve ever been in this situation know that holding in gas only makes it worse and creates an even weirder sound when it finally does escape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that’s exactly what happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heading back into the light bulb aisle I thought, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">just grab them and go, just grab them and go</i>, but as soon as I turned the corner, out came the strangest sounding toot I’ve ever passed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a sort of high pitched drum roll.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course, it stunk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that’s when I did something that I’m both ashamed of and quite proud of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I totally blamed my son.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said, “Buddy, did you toot?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">My son laughs anytime he hears a toot sound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s a boy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also likes the word “toot.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Somebody who doesn’t know my standards taught him the other word for toot, and that day I found out two things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One, that my son says the “f” word (f-a-r-t) and thinks that it too is hilarious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two, that he is so gullible he will take the blame for anything I accuse him of doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said with confused pronouns, “My farted!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said it about ten more times and laughed hysterically as we picked up the light bulbs and high tailed it out of there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I caught the look on the lady’s face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She half smiled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have to wonder if she knew that it wasn’t true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If she knew that it was I who passed the gas and then passed the blame onto my innocent son, who heartily accepted it and was proud to claim it as his own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said to him later, “No buddy, we call it a ‘toot.’’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As if calling it something cute and seemingly more proper would cancel out the gross act for which he was willing to take the fall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I dare you to tell me with a straight face that you’ve never tooted and then blamed someone else for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I dare you to tell me that some part of my story does not ring true in your life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then I will prove to you that thousands of people have already voted for the <place><placename>Harry</placename> <placename>Baals</placename> <placename>Government</placename> <placetype>Building</placetype></place>, and that the runner up, Eugene Johnson, only received about three hundred votes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eugene Johnson is not a funny name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And you know that not only twelve year old boys voted for Harry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know that there are thousands of adults just like you and I who suffer from similar inappropriate senses of humor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Someday they will make a pill for that, I suppose, like they do for everything else, that will keep you from giggling at the sound of a toot or the mention of a good genitalia joke.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess for now, I'll just have to go shopping for another pill, Bean-O.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-72937871981828604662011-02-07T12:58:00.000-08:002011-02-07T13:26:37.022-08:00The Eye of the Tiger<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Yesterday I told a friend of mine how in just one weekend we’ve completely done away with the binkies in our household.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You heard me. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The battle of the binky is officially over with yours truly as the victor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Cue the confetti and the balloons.</span><br />
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While babysitting at another friend’s house, my son was forced to nap without his precious b-word (what we’re calling it now in our house, a word that’s strictly forbidden to be said out loud as to not give it any power).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It took a good forty-five minutes for him to fall asleep on their couch, mostly because he wasn’t tired, but he did eventually fall asleep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sitting in a chair across from him as he dozed off, I had a great revelation and thought to myself, why you little faker. You don’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">need</i> the binky to fall asleep!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew in that moment that I had stumbled onto something big and I wanted to keep the momentum going. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had to try it again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That night I put him to bed with no binky. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a complete success. And here’s the really strange part, he didn’t even ask for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, I thought, you little faker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was all the evidence I needed to do away with, once and for all, my son’s need for oral pacification.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you know it’s been four days and he and I both have survived without a binky?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you also know that he still hasn’t asked for it, not even once?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I feel like the underdog from the streets, the Italian Stallion, the great Balboa who just hit a TKO against that dreadful binky, the Mr. T a.k.a. Clubber Lang of enemies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m ready for the big fight now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The big time, baby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m ready to go the distance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m ready for (dun dun dun!) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the Russian</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, I’m so confident now that I’m ready to take on my next big opponent, the Big Boy Potty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m ready for my very own potty training montage which includes going to the store to pick out stickers, big boy underwear and M&M’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can do this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am as the song says “risin’ up to the challenge of our rival.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With all the strength I never knew I had, I can run up those metaphoric steps of the <place><placename>Philadelphia</placename> <placetype>Art Museum</placetype></place>, a mere 72 steps away from the Title.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m so close, I can taste it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eww, okay, I don’t really want to “taste” the victory of potty training.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I take that back.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">My friend was so impressed with me that she responded, “Pretty soon you’ll be the one giving out advice.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It stopped me in my tracks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, I can’t fully take credit for the binky thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A good friend of mine told me that it just took one time for her daughter not to sleep with a binky and that was it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She threw them all away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I took her idea, ran with it and made it my own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still, I can’t help but fantasize about how cool it would be if I actually came all this way as a parent and if I, a no-name kid from the poor streets of <city><place>Maplewood</place></city>, could actually qualify to give out parenting advice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still think I have way too much to learn to ever be taken seriously as a voice of authority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will, however, take this opportunity to give my best overall explanation as to why, for once, something I set out to do actually worked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Take it as “advice” if you so choose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I forgot to pack a binky for the naptime that I knew would take place over at my friend’s house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So it was by accident that my son slept without it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It just happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That part of it was out of my control.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then, I saw an opportunity for growth and I seized it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve been watching a lot of Dr. Phil lately. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I can only pinpoint one other time in which I’ve seized the moment as it so blatantly presented itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was after I bought Fridge Phonics for my son.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He became obsessed with the magnetic letters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I bought more alphabet toys and the more we played with them everyday the more he wanted to learn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then we started making games out of finding letters at random.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before I knew it, he had learned his ABC’s in and out of order.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is not yet three years old and can spell almost twenty words (increasing every day.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People have asked me if I’m the spelling Nazi, if I drill him all the time or if I smack his knuckles with a ruler when he misspells a word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That would be a no, no and heck no.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only explanation I can offer is that when I recognized his desire to learn letters, I ran with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s why he knows how to spell “yellow” and “princess.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s why just last night he added “e” and “v” to the letters he can actually write on paper with a pen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(And thankfully, not on the couch.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I saw that he loved letters so I surrounded him with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, I only take partial credit because he’s the one that started the whole thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Partial credit is better than none though, so I’ll humbly accept it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">A friend of mine who is having her first baby recently sent out an email asking all of her friends to give out their most sincere parenting advice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She wanted to know everything, what diapers to use, what bottles to buy, what songs to sing to her child for sleepy time and what she should do if the baby won’t sleep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought a lot about what she was asking of us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve asked those same questions myself when I was pregnant and preparing for my bundle of joy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thinking back to when I registered for my baby shower, I had no idea what to get or not to get.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I asked for friends’ advice too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I even emailed a couple of my superstar mom friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the truth is, because of them I registered for things I’ve never had to use and left off the list things I should have added.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> But t</span>hey are not to blame.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They couldn’t have known that my son would be too fat to fit into a Bumbo seat, or that he would break out when I used cocoa butter on him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fact is, no two kids are alike.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What one parent thinks is essential the next thinks inconsequential.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A new parent fumbles around in the dark and calls out to the voices of others for guidance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as that new parent knows that she too has an intuitive voice that might get lost in the noise of others if she's not careful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I asked for advice and help at every turn and milestone and, guess what, I still do sometimes, notwithstanding the unsolicited advice, of course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of it’s good and some bad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, you have to weed through the briars to get to the fruit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or something like that.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">That’s when I realized, I really have nothing of substance to offer this new mom-to-be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I almost did the most pretentious of all self-serving acts and said, “Read my blog. I now know how to get kids off the binky.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I resisted that urge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do have my own stories, my field research, but none of it qualifies me to tell her what to do in her specific situations. That’s something she’s going to have to figure out on her own, just like I did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> The truth is, </span>I feel extremely unqualified to give advice. All the internet articles, the books, the magazines and friends’ advice didn't help me at 3 in the morning, comforting a colicky baby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I thought about an honest answer to her question, what would really help, what I would like to hear another parent say to me, and after much deliberation, I emailed back my response. “My best advice is this, no matter what happens, don’t be hard on yourself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remember that everyone deals with the exact same thing you do and you’ll be fine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Say it over and over again until you feel it’s true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Say, ‘I’ll be fine.’”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that was my best parenting advice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">She wrote back the next day. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“That’s great Carrie, but what diapers do you use?”</div>Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-62631328470955891852011-02-05T10:46:00.000-08:002011-02-06T10:12:28.691-08:00The Year of the Cat<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I have a friend who unofficially runs a halfway house for stray animals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She didn’t choose this occupation, it chose her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is the only person I’ve ever heard of who can pull up to any street, anywhere in the city or county, on any given day and stray animals will literally jump into her car.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No kidding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This has happened to her more than once.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is a lighthouse to neglected or lost animals and her spirit unknowingly emits a foghorn that only cats, dogs, and more recently, squirrels can hear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is the patron saint of all lost-cause pets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She takes them into her home and puts the word out and somehow, she convinces people to adopt these forlorn animals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her generosity and openness are irresistible to animals and people alike.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So of course when I told her, without any agenda I might add, that I had to get rid of my cat, she made me promise I wouldn’t take him to The Humane Society or the <stockticker>APA</stockticker>, fearing that a four year old cat with “issues” wouldn’t be adopted out and whose fate would be doomed after a year or so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She said, I’ll take him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So last night, we dropped off our sweet kitty Pickles at our last resort, his very own kitty boarding house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I feel guilty having taken on the responsibility of a pet and then ultimately handing that responsibility over to someone else because I couldn’t deal with him anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I understand now why it was so hard for my mom to give up that awful no-named kitty squatter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I begged the universe (in a previous blog entry) to stop giving me anthropomorphic cats to deal with this year, I was actually being serious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But here I am once again, ashamed and upset over another one of those darn cats.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Pickles started out as our baby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is why all of the blame should be placed solely on my husband and I.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We adopted him about a year and a half into our marriage, when we were dreaming about having children but got a pet instead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We lavished him with attention and gave him all of our affection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was the king of the castle, the master of his domain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then we had a baby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He still received his fair share of attention and affection, though understandably not as much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He seemed okay for a good two years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then when our world flipped upside down, his did too, and overnight he turned into a nervous wreck.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A perfect storm brewed in our house, one which turned our sweet cat into one anxiety ridden tornado of bad behavior.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our son turned two and while becoming increasingly brave and mobile, would follow poor Pickles around the house for hours and corner him, get in his face, and try to grab him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pickles was used to having a certain amount of control over his environment and could no longer find any safe hiding places in the house to escape the unpredictable energy of a toddler.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all of the events of last year, my husband and I barely had attention and affection left over at the end of the day for one another, much less for the cat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The week that my father in-law had the stroke was what really set it all off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pickles sensed our anxiety and dealt with it like a lot of us do, he had abnormal bowel movements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only he pooped on the living room floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This seemed to be his favorite spot until he pooped under the dining room table, behind the couch and eventually, on the floor in front of the baby’s crib.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We took him to the doctor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then we tried to reason with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We tried to make him feel the proper amount of shame one should feel when one poops outside of one’s proper fecal boundaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Right now all of you cat people are laughing, because you know all too well that it was a futile attempt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cats feel no shame.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, a cat is a lot like a political radio talk show host, he’ll spew crap all over the place because he thinks he’s right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tell him that he’s wrong and he’ll just spew more crap in even more inappropriate places just to spite you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, our kitty was not ashamed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our kitty was very smart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was sending us a very clear message that he was not okay with the way things were going in our house (yeah, join the club) and the you-know-what figuratively hit the fan, but literally ended up in our bed and eventually in our son’s bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">He had to go.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I am proud that we’ve been able to handle and overcome a lot of stressors this past year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But one thing I can’t handle is a pet that poops in my bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">It was hard to let him go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were teary eyed as we said goodbye to him, our guilt mixed with worry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We worried how he would handle his first night away from his family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that’s what pets become, like family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he wasn’t pooping in our bed, he would sleep with us, nestled in the space between our legs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our first night without him was brutal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were no nocturnal kitty noises, no playing, no meowing at the first crack of sunlight and no greeting us with purrs, begging us to pet him before the baby wakes up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know, I know, he’s just at my friend’s house about fifteen minutes away, at the most.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can hop over there anytime and see him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he’s not here, in our house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s not a member of our family anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His presence is one that, even though was practically ignored before, is noticeably absent now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My husband swore as we left my friend’s house that we will never get another pet "ever again."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not as dramatic or resolved. I know someday we might risk it and adopt another pet. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there will only be one Pickles. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Our first family pet. </span>I will miss the little poop-smith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know that in the recently celebrated Chinese New Year, according to the Zodiac, 2011 is the year of the Rabbit but in my heart, it’s something else. You know.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">On the way home my husband recalled our night time prayer ritual with our son, who routinely thanks Jesus for Papa, Gaga, Mama, Dada, Pickles and the doggy next door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What are we going to tell him when he asks, Where is Pickles?” my husband lamented.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My answer was quick, almost too instinctual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We’re going to have to lie to him like all good parents do.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Don’t tell me you’ve never done it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to a study in the <country-region><place>UK</place></country-region>, the average parent will tell about 3,000 “white lies” to their growing children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“This hurts me more than it hurts you.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, it doesn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Santa Clause is coming to town.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Your eyes will stick like that if you don’t stop crossing them.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nuh-uh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You’ll go blind if you don’t stop touching that.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not even close.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The entire male population would need seeing-eye dogs if that were true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I told my son we gave away the cat because he pooped in the bed, I have a feeling he would be so fearful that he'd be constipated forever, literally scared poop-less.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>So far, thankfully, it hasn’t come up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess he just assumes that Pickles is hiding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or, maybe his easily distracted two year old self just doesn’t care about it today, since he gets to go play at the mall with Dada and Papa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I’m sure it will come up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m sure he will ask, “Where’s Pickles?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And here’s what I’m prepared to say, which ironically, is the truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Pickles is staying at Aunt (so and so’s) house for now.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I’ll really have to lie about is if I get asked a “why?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because the truth is, I don’t entirely understand the “why” myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I guess I’ll say something like, “Because he likes it better over there.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which I hope will turn out to be the truth.</div>Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-86977170332149133562011-01-27T14:15:00.000-08:002011-02-07T17:53:21.032-08:00Voices Carry<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Last night the dogged exhaustion of raising a two year old surfaced in my body earlier than usual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I crawled into bed at eight-thirty and decided to let myself take it easy for the night and to let my husband put our son to bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I flipped on the t.v. and skimmed over some family-friendly sitcoms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know the shows with the really fat but loveably funny guy who is married to a really skinny, beautiful but nagging wife?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hate those shows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They aren’t anywhere close to the realm of believability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I like how they desperately try to relate to us, with titles like “My Wife and Kids” or “Family Matters.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And some of it is funny. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s easy for me as a wife to laugh at Debra’s antics on “Everybody Loves Raymond,” because she is saying what any woman would say if she were married to that Kermit sounding buffoon of a husband.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We laugh at her unkempt house, her defensive rapport with her in-laws and of course, we laugh at the cartoonish face of Ray’s brother Robert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We laugh at all of these things but they have no relevance to what goes on in our own homes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every major problem finds a solution and is tidily wrapped up in thirty minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ray actually apologizes for most of the stupid things he does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in real life, Debra has had four plastic surgeries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This isn’t my life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These aren’t my problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">As I continued to flip through the channels, I stopped at something interesting: “E Investigates: Mothers Who Kill.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was struck by the salacious title and decided to park on this channel for a bit. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How horrific, I thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How could any mother do that, moreover, how could any human being do that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I couldn’t relate to “Everybody Loves Raymond” I certainly wouldn’t be able to relate to this show.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as I listened to story after story of women who reached their breaking points and snapped under the pressure of motherhood, a strange kind of sympathy arose in me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One story was of a Midwestern wife whose husband worked out of town and who was raised by a perfectionist, religious mother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She told her husband every time they spoke on the phone, “I feel like a failure,” but he didn’t listen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She attempted suicide twice, once by taking sleeping pills and once by slitting her wrists when her son was out of the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something in her soul wasn’t right, and her desperate cries for help were not being taken seriously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nobody was listening to this woman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nobody put her in therapy or tried to reach out to help her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I listened to the horror that followed, I felt an odd and unsettling connection to her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not that I would ever or have ever thought of killing anyone, especially my children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is unthinkable and unforgivable to me as a mother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what she said, “Nobody listens to me,” “I feel like a failure,” “I’m not a good mother,” “The pressure is too much.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I swear, I’ve said those exact same things at some point over the last two and a half years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then I really freaked out; I could relate more to these seemingly unimaginable stories than to the situations on “Raymond.” Because they were true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">And then the name Andrea Yates popped into my head. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remember her, the woman from <state><place>Texas</place></state>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her husband ignored desperate pleas for help and countless signs of serious depression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She turned into a psychopathic monster and systematically drowned her children in a bathtub.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I searched her story online, hundreds of others came up just like hers; mothers who drowned their children, abandoned their children, or drove their children into lakes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mothers who were broken, deranged, and passed a point of no return.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s easy to assume that these mothers were on the verge of psychoses anyway, so that just one wrong turn or one missed pill set them off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These women were capable of doing something horrific, but who’s to know that if somebody had just listened to them, maybe their fates and their children’s fates would have turned out differently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s easy to distance yourself from the gruesome acts of others when you are able to think clearly and make good choices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t get me wrong, I hold these mothers fully accountable for their actions. They had a choice and they chose wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i> far removed from me, because they had nothing to ground them and no moral center in their distorted realities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as I listened to story after story of women who were told that they were bad mothers, who confessed that they felt like nobody cared about them, and that their families and friends had let them down, again, I felt that there but for the grace of God…</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Their stories start the same. Nobody thought they were capable of doing it. They might not be as different as you or I.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> And then they snapped. </span>We call them monsters, and they are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But how many times have you felt like a monster, even called yourself one?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How many times have you spanked out of anger, yelled at the top of your lungs in the face of your child, or just plain felt like you had lost your grip temporarily on reality?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve lost count.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I'll tell you a story that I'm not proud to tell. </span>There was a day not too long ago when I had to call my husband to come home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> It was shortly after my dad had died. </span>It was on a Saturday and my husband was working on the house we were renovating for my mom. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He worked every weekend on the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was before I enrolled my son in the Parents Day Out program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t have any breaks, no free time, no alone time. Some of you mothers are snickering to yourselves because you don’t get breaks either, but I was used to them. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was used to my husband coming home every night and relieving me for a couple of hours. On one hand, the Romantic in me grew closer to my son and we bonded more during that time than we ever had before. On the other hand, I was alone with my son seven days a week, most nights too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every spare moment my husband had he spent working on the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We took on that project and we needed to get it done as quickly as we could.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That particular Saturday, my son wouldn’t stop crying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was losing it fast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had been crying for three straight hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The more upset I got, the more upset he got, and we went round and round.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is nothing more nerve wracking than an inconsolable baby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the end of my rational rope, I started crying uncontrollably and screaming, not at my son, just in general.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had to leave my son in his crib and literally walk outside to cry in the garage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I punched a wall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still crying, I thought, this is nuts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have to call for reinforcements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My husband didn’t want to be interrupted that day, but I made him listen to me and after some hysterical crying and begging, he came home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he got home he calmed my son down and he finally went to sleep. I was still shaking so badly that I had to go for a drive just to calm down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know if you’ve ever had a day like that, but that day in particular I felt defeated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I felt like I had come so far just to fail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I felt like I had to scream at my husband in order for him to hear the desperation in my voice, a voice that told him over and over, I can’t do this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I need help.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I have a group of friends who validate me, a good upbringing, a network of support from my parents and siblings, and a good husband who is willing to drop everything to come home to comfort me and my child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just think if I didn't have those things and a disastrous series of events occurred. I am faced with a stinging realization that I am just as susceptible to snapping like a fragile twig as the next mom.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Moms, we need to talk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need to talk about why nobody talks about this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is okay to be insecure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is okay to be unsure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is okay to be sad, depressed and lonely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is okay to hate your job every once in a while.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why is that so hard to talk about?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who said that if you complained about being a mother then you must be a bad mother?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Somebody must have said that at some point, because we are so afraid to talk about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My husband complains about his job, that doesn’t mean he’s not good at it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe you don’t know what I’m talking about, and that’s okay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But surely you’ve been sleep deprived and have said or done something ridiculous, even destructive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or maybe you’re on the brink of doing something intentionally destructive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not going so far as hurting your children, but maybe you’re thinking of hurting yourself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or leaving your husband.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or something else as equally damaging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Listen to me, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stop</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Find someone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Talk to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if you have to scream to be heard, scream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Open your windows and scream so loud that the neighbors hear you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Scream so loud that your husband hears you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So loud that your parents, in-laws, sisters, brothers hear you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You need to tell someone what is in your head before what’s in your head turns ugly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You need to tell your friends what you’re going through.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If they’re not going through the same thing, honey, they are lying and you need to call them out on it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need to let other moms know that it’s okay to voice what’s going on in our heads, even the terrible insecurities, because the consequences of not doing it are dire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need to stick up for each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When somebody tells you that pregnancy isn’t all that hard I want you to lift up your shirt and show them your misshapen belly and stretch marks. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When somebody tells you that it doesn’t take a brain to raise children I want you to show them your framed college degree, your <stockticker>SAT</stockticker> scores, your IQ chart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want you to challenge them to a battle of wits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want you to win!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When someone says that stay at home moms have it easy, bring up Andrea Yates and others like her who cracked under the pressure of parenting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have my permission to say to them with all your earned smugness, you wouldn’t be able to handle it like I do.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">This is why I started writing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had to tell you that I’m scared and I’m insecure. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Last year was the hardest year of my life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had to scream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And because I did scream, or write, as it were, and because of you and your reaction to it, I now feel like I’m starting to heal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Writing these stories has been more therapeutic than counseling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve loved telling you about my dad, my mom, my son, all of my defeats and some of my victories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I implore all of you mothers out there to do the same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do not stay silent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Start healing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Start a blog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Start a group.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Write it in a journal, or if writing’s not your thing, make time to sit down and talk to a friend, or a pastor, or a counselor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You might be surprised at what happens when we tell each other the truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You might find that there are others out there who just need someone to say it first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Be the first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We know and accept the beautiful and magical parts of being a parent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We never like to face what’s ugly about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Say it, “This is hard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is what I chose, but it’s hard.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You could be reaching out to someone who was on the verge of a breakdown. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Promise me you’ll talk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ll talk about this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then let’s sit back and be amazed at the results.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-9110402898777141752011-01-22T13:25:00.000-08:002011-01-22T13:39:56.295-08:00Dirty Work<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I just spent half an hour on my hands and knees cleaning our sofa because somebody (not me) left a pen in the living room overnight and this morning my son saw an opportunity to practice writing “W’s.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was on the phone with my mom and not paying the proper amount of attention I should have to my two year old son.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I looked over, I noticed he had stopped watching “Sesame Street” and instead was fixing his attention on the sofa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Big ‘W’ right there!” he said. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It took a few seconds for my brain to register what was happening, to quickly drop the phone and grab the pen out of my son’s hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By that time, big W’s covered the arm and seat of our sofa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, I was so impressed at his penmanship that I wasn't even angry. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I picked him up and showed him that pens are for drawing only on paper, not furniture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Mama is still pretty proud of your perfect ‘w’s’ though.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I laughed and thought, if these w’s don’t come out at least there is proof that my son is a genius.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll show it off the next time those Parents as Teachers reps come for a screening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then I pictured myself hanging the sofa on the refrigerator with magnets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“His first W’s,” I cry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Things like this happen all the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you become a parent your house will never look clean and fresh again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It won’t smell the same, either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The complete transformation usually happens the second your child becomes mobile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your carpets will never be spotless, your wood floors always scuffed, your walls never quite as white, or off-white, as in our case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we removed the metric ton of toys from our living room floor and into our son’s new room, we discovered so many spots on our carpet, some of which hadn’t seen the light of day since my son was at least six months old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our living room carpet is destroyed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s the only room of our house that is carpeted, thank God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I suggested to my husband that we replace it with new carpeting, he said, “Not until our kid and future kids are at least ten years old.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And even then, accidents always happen. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I’ve always thought of myself as a relatively clean person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say this because cleanliness <em>is</em> relative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My definition of clean varies significantly from my mother in law’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She has floors so clean that when my son drops a piece of food on the floor I tell him “Only at Gaga’s house could you still eat that.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d like to think I keep a clean house, but I’m sure those two mean British ladies with the white gloves who inspect homes on that one <stockticker>BBC</stockticker> show would disagree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have a cat, hardwood floors and long hair, the combination of which stirs up dust bunnies like you wouldn’t believe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I dust on a fairly regular basis but it seems that the second I’m done another layer has settled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I like things orderly, but I don’t freak out if I have a sink full of dishes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I don’t get to them today, they will be done tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They don’t stay in the sink longer than that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you come over to my house on the day that I just cooked a pot of spaghetti, don't gross out. I might have cleaned the pots and pans and I might not have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I haven’t yet, I promise, they will be clean tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s kind of how I operate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am proud of it, actually.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t have to run a tight ship and have a perfect house to feel like I’m a successful stay at home mom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As long as most things are put in their place and the flat surfaces are not overflowing with stuff, I’m good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not obsessive by nature and I won’t start now by obsessing over cleanliness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want my son to live in our house and not feel like he’s confined to a museum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t want him (or me) to have a nervous breakdown if he spills something on the floor or writes “W’s” on the sofa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most things come right up with a warm washcloth anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I guess it’s fair to label my house “clean enough.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I would also go ahead and label my son as a relatively clean little boy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He takes a bath every other night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would give him one every night, but he’s only two years old and he doesn’t get that dirty, especially in the winter months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wipe his butt and every other crevice “down there” so clean that the term “shiny hiney” is applicable every time I change his diaper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He hates to have sticky hands and always begs “wipe, mama” when he’s messy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He knows that it’s fun to make messes but doesn’t always like having the mess all over him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He will have the occasional stain on his shirt or the milk mustache that I have to wrestle with him to wipe off, but usually, he’s pretty clean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He loves bath time and only occasionally have I had to manipulate him to take one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After some negotiation he would go willingly after I’ve reminded him that “Buddy, it’s okay to stop playing with the toys in your room because you have some in the tub.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that’s an understatement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are a million bath toys in my bathtub.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seriously, take a look in there sometime. I counted them last night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Total number of actual bath toys, sixteen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are five boats, four ducks, two whales, a snail, a seahorse, a butterfly, and two flower shaped things that act as fountains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No kidding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know where to put all of these toys when I myself take a bath, which is rare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son has catalogued them in his brain so that if just one is missing, he will refuse a bath.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We never take any toys out of the tub but somehow, more and more are added.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The toys that took over our living room are slowly making their way into the bathtub.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soon my son will be a human island in a sea of bath toys, just the way he likes it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His bath time is such bliss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He loves to be stripped down and to run around naked before he gets into the tub.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once he’s in the tub any previous resistance is quickly forgotten.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He loves to stay in the tub until the last drop of water goes down the drain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His sweet little shiny butt stares up at me, “Five more minutes” he’ll beg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He sings in the tub.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He talks to his toys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He gets out after some coaxing and is wrapped up in the biggest, fluffiest towel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His pretty blue eyes peek out from under the towel and he clings tightly to his mama or dada to stay warm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sweet, sweet bath time.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Nothing ruins pure and innocent moments like these worse than the mention of the word that makes every parent reach for the Wet Wipes: germs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now I myself, being a relatively clean person, don’t freak out when it comes to germs. When I told my mother about how many bath toys my son has and how he can’t bathe without them, she gasped in horror as if I just told her he bathed in human waste.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“<city><place>Bath</place></city> toys have so many germs on them!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I heard that the water inside of bath toys is worse than urine.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, she did think I was bathing my son in human waste after all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mind you, this is the same woman who just a few days ago told me that she heard “Dr. Oz” say that it’s actually okay for kids to eat dirt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which reinforces that age old saying, God made dirt and dirt don’t hurt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apparently, a child eating dirt is okay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A child bathing with contaminated bath toys is reason for panic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course I bleach the bath toys every now and then but truth is, there is probably old water in them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t imagine what that water would look like under a microscope and frankly, I don’t want to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I don’t want to be one of those mothers that thinks of her children as germ carrying, infectious diseases waiting to happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t want to ever picture the microscopic creepy crawlies on the surfaces of all the things my son puts in or has put in his mouth. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I carry hand sanitizer but I admit, I don’t use the wipes at the grocery store to wipe down every inch of the contaminated cart before I sit my son down in it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I was growing up, I don’t remember Purell ever touching my hands and I’m sure that my son could probably live without it now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve heard reports that too much of that stuff will cause your kids immune systems to not fully develop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then I’ve heard that not using it in at certain times will leave them vulnerable to catching all kinds of illnesses. What’s a parent to do?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kids are okay to eat dirt but they can’t play in it because they’ll get worms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hand sanitizers help keep kids safe but at the same time hurt them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Good germs, bad germs, good dirt, bad dirt… it’s a good thing I try not to obsess over things, because the dirty work of parenthood is enough to make my head explode. If my head did explode, being the relatively clean person I am, maybe I’d clean up the bits of head today, or maybe I’d clean them tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The bottom line is this, kids are dirty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> And they make your house dirty. </span>Whoever said that cleanliness was next to godliness had way too much time on his hands and obviously didn’t have any children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He didn’t understand that God is in the small things, like spending a few extra minutes tickling and laughing, playing and singing, or five more minutes in a tub full of putrid water-filled toys, enjoying those moments before they are gone forever…and letting the dishes wait until tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-58848891168900819042011-01-10T15:53:00.000-08:002011-01-15T18:23:58.617-08:00Oh Baby, Just You Shut Your Mouth<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I recently read an online article from the Wall Street Journal at a friend’s urging titled “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thinking the title was in jest, I read it with an open mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I read how the author thought it was okay to call her child garbage when treated disrespectfully and how Western mothers spend too much time worrying about their children’s individuality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the time I finished reading the article I admit that I was super defensive and against my better judgment, a little racist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks Amy Chua.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remember when I said that women compete over everything, even the way we parent?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A woman saying, “Chinese mothers are superior to Western mothers” is sort of the antagonistic equivalent of an American man saying “My dad can beat up your dad.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why is it that these things bring out the monster in me, or as Sarah Palin puts it, the mama grizzly?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why can’t I just walk away and ignore widespread statements like that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(The obvious answer being, because then I’d have nothing to write about.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is it because anytime anyone claims to be “superior” I automatically delve into my hidden arsenal of nuclear defense and question all of their standards of superiority?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I claim to be so sick of it but I can’t seem to resist a good competition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m feeling a bit like Michael Corleone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I read the article and then re-read it slowly to make sure I wasn’t being too defensive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Surely, she didn’t really mean that Chinese mothers are superior to Western mothers, did she? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I realized that yes, that’s what she meant, I was ready for a good old fashioned throw down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because if you’re going to make such a challenge, girl you better bring it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back it up with more than just your children can play the violin and do math.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was hot under the collar, but I have to admit that some of Chua’s points were valid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like when she suggested that Western mothers care too much about developing their children’s self esteem, not realizing that self esteem is earned by hard work which is its own reward.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I get that. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I agree to some point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also think she made a good point about not letting your child give up an instrument or a project just because he or she doesn’t enjoy the required practice it takes to master it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She used her daughter’s piano lessons as an example, citing that hours upon hours of grueling, insufferable practice yielded a result of perfection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>True.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyone can be good at something if they are forced to practice relentlessly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No argument from me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And anyone not taught any other way of life can live comfortably in prison if they’ve never breathed free man’s air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But do they love that prison?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are they enjoying all that life has to offer and truly attaining happiness?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to Chua, who cares?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Attaining happiness is not important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Success and perfection will lead to happiness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Chua’s culture, the children live to serve the parents, not the other way around as in modern Western culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two are so vastly different.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Which leads me to this, when two cultures have two completely different benchmarks of success, who is to say which is superior or inferior?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If your measure of success is that Junior is a generous person who spends Friday nights feeding the homeless and he grows up to do those things, then your son is a success.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you measure success by how much money you make or by how well you can spell, then your son is a success if he can do those things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You don’t even have to be of different cultures to have different standards of success.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My mother thinks my son will be a success if he grows up to be a missionary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think a Pulitzer Prize winning author sounds more like it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chances are he will be neither of those things and I will have to love and accept him just the same.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">My first reaction to this article was to fire off a snide little comment, once again as if anyone cared what I had to say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said something to the extent of if I wanted to raise a bunch of robots then I would adapt this method of parenting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I were raised by a communist mother I too would mock individuality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would shove my expectations and wants down the throat of my son and strip him of his personality and force him to join the competitive (and I misspelled competitive) army of grey uniformed foot soldiers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a pretty stupid response.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact I can’t believe I’m repeating it now except that I told you before, these are my true confessions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I followed that up with apologizing for my misspelling of the word competitive and said, “If I were Chinese I would’ve spelled that right.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">While I disagree that Chinese women are better mothers, I don’t think we Westerners have it all figured out either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re not better, we’re not worse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Can’t we all just be on each other’s sides and say that what makes a good mother is if she is doing the best she can with what she has to work with?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s what makes our world so great, different cultures with different methods of raising children who grow up to be diverse and interesting adults.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s the beauty of the human race.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why do we as parents look to our children to validate our way of life?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s a lot of pressure to put on a kid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kids have enough pressure in this world without having to worry about making their parents look good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Besides, all children, even Chinese ones, blame their parents for all of their problems once they are grown which is why psychiatry is such a booming business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">My blog is meant to be funny most of the time, but sometimes, I get so knocked over by the need for some people to always out-do the next guy that I forget that I’m supposed to be leading by example and not entering the boxing ring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yesterday my pastor talked about leaving a legacy with your life, to use it for good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s how I want to raise my son.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I may never be a published author, or a contributing writer to the WSJ online, but I have a son that I simply adore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has all the possibilities of doing great things with his life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is a success in my eyes already.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is special if for no other reason than because he’s mine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t think that makes me inferior or necessarily Western.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most cultures want their children to feel strongly connected to their family legacy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I married an Italian so I know this firsthand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want my son to recognize his place in our family and to let it instill confidence in him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want him to know it’s not necessarily what he does with his life but who he is that matters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is a very specific piece of the puzzle in a very important place on our time line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He will say someday, I am Carrie’s son.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want him to be proud when he says that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t want him to respect me because I’ve beaten it into him or because I’ve scared him into it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want to earn his respect by being a person of character based on the decisions I make on a daily basis.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Of course I think it’s important to teach discipline to your children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I don’t think my son is my project.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is a human being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He will have to navigate his own desires when the time is right, and I will have to make sure that he doesn’t give up too easily and think that it’s okay to walk away from hard work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would love for him to play the piano and he’s so musically gifted already that it seems inevitable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I have to accept the fact that he might hate it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If he does, I’d like to think that I could back off enough to see what other talents he could be developing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Does that make me inferior?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe. What I’ve concluded is this; there is much to be learned from all cultures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> What I should've said in response to this article is that I respectfully disagree and leave it at that. </span>Life isn’t a competition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is not a dog fight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The term dog-eat-dog applies to dogs, not humans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I write all of this with no intended disrespect to the Chinese culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I fired off those stereotypes, again, because I am defensive to a challenge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have Asian and Asian-American friends that I love, and also have friends who’ve adopted Chinese children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have great respect for all mothers, in any culture, who are out there <em>trying.</em><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> And </span>I will try my best to teach my son better and try to leave the boxing gloves on the shelf.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is, until some other mom says she’s better than me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-697311819824733754.post-21148403374679728162011-01-07T13:30:00.000-08:002011-01-07T13:43:24.259-08:00Hit Me With Your Best Shot<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I’m simultaneously proud and ashamed to announce that my two year old has entered two new phases in his development.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Turning these corners of growth can cause such conflicting emotions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Exhilaration can quickly turn into frustration, as I’ve pointed out many times before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So first, I’m proud to announce that my big boy is now sleeping in a new bedroom and in his very own big-boy-bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can now fit most of his stuff in this bedroom and it feels like we’ve reclaimed some of our living space back from those monstrous toys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We set up the bed last week and after playing in there for a few days and mimicking our “Hey, nice roooooom” (we say it with a lot of emphasis on the o’s), he volunteered to sleep there all on his own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He slept through the first night with no problem except the occasional distraction by our cat, who also wants to sleep in the big boy bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once I figured out what was going on I quickly eliminated that problem by simply closing the door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Easy enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This seemingly scary transition from crib to bed was apparently no big deal to my son.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I’d like to take some of the credit for it and claim that I prepared him for this big move by hyping up the room and being such a casually cool mom, I have to say that my son deserves it all for being such a brave boy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s the cool one. While turning over this new leaf in his development, he has also started handing his binky over to me in the morning saying “Here mama, let’s put it up.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He still asks for it at bedtime but I think we’re finally over that hump as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have a misguided feeling that I may not have to fight so hard from now on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe potty training won’t be out of the question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then, I’ll teach him how to drive a stick shift.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, no, math first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I said there were two phases that we’ve entered and I’ve shared the one I’m most proud of first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no grace period when you’re a parent, no taking a breather, no time outs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was so proud of my son for being so nonchalant about sleeping in his new big boy bed that I let down my defenses for a split second and forgot that every rose has its thorns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(This won’t be the only ‘80’s rock reference in this blog entry.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This next phase is my least favorite of all of his phases so far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d rather have slimy poop in my cupped hands (and on my neck) than to have to deal with this crap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But here goes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has started hitting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know that some kids bite, and thank God, I never had to deal with that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re over those biting years anyway so I’m sure that will never become a problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know where this hitting thing came from, if he’s picked it up from other kids or if, God forbid, he’s picked it up from me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have admittedly swatted his behind a few times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I do it, I do it knowing that he is wearing a diaper and I only strike once, just enough to shock him into listening to me so I could properly scold and punish him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it’s worked, so far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This hitting thing started out as him not actually hitting but pulling back his hand in a threatening position and swatting the air close to me but not actually touching me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That lasted about a day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now he actually hits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yesterday he slapped my face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He doesn’t do it very hard, he’s only two, but it’s a direct hit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s like how my cat bites me when we play, knowing that if he bites down hard the game is over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son knows that if he takes it too far his little game is over because mama will go crazy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even though I don’t think he means for it to hurt, I feel like my son is hitting out of some pent up anger and I’m not sure why.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I tell him no, or stop it, it just makes him swing more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also makes him point at me and say “Stop it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> It's really cute and I try not to laugh. But the hitting thing is definitely not cute. </span>A few times I’ve turned into a hypocrite and swatted his butt and said “No hitting.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While that makes sense to an adult it makes absolutely no sense to a kid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s like smoking a cigarette while telling your kids not to smoke.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The kid smoking pot on the public service commercial from my youth screams to his father, “I learned it by watching you!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I used to laugh at that commercial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">So I’ve had to get creative once again and switch my methods and so far, I think it’s working.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When my son starts swinging, I grab both of his hands and get real close to his face, like I would a dog, and I calmly say “No hitting,” while holding his hands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I say, “Say you’re sorry and let’s kiss on it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first couple of times I did this he turned his head away, which is to be expected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s a pretty strong boy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m stronger. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wiggles to try to get free.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He feels trapped because I’m in his face and basically taking away all of his imagined power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My calm (okay, not all of the time, but I try to keep it cool most of the time) demeanor is an immediate juxtaposition to his fit of anger and it disables him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He squeezes out a “sorry” sometimes only in a whisper, but it’s a sorry, so it counts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We kiss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think that’s his favorite part of the punishment because one time he did it and then wanted a “kiss mama,” skipping the sorry part altogether.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope some psychoanalyst doesn’t think I’m raising a future wife beater who associates love with violence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Listen guys, I kiss him all day long, not just when he’s in trouble.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anytime he gets close to me I kiss those cheeks and those sweet lips.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I think you’re wrong, psychoanalyst.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I wish I could say the spanking thing has stopped completely but it hasn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This new, calm method of punishment is very new school and requires dedication and patience, something I tend to run out of by the end of the day. The words of Guns N’ Roses are so true; it’ll work itself out right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All we need is just a little patience. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No matter what your position is on spanking, you have to admit that sometimes it’s effective and sometimes it’s not. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know some people who are dead set against it and some who use it exclusively as their preferred form of punishment. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The verdict is still out for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I myself never received a spanking growing up, but I think it’s because my siblings were such horrible children that my parents were too exhausted to deal with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, just watching them get spanked was threat enough for me to behave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t think my brother and sister have any severe psychological damage because they were spanked as children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the other hand, I don’t think they are better citizens because of it either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, they are good citizens, just not because they were spanked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shut up Carrie.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">This punishment thing is harder on me than breastfeeding was, and that’s saying something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> It has even more potential to make me feel like an utter failure and a complete hypocrite. </span>I’m working through it, like I do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Right now I’m inconsistent because I’m trying to figure it all out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whatever I choose to do, I definitely need to follow through and be consistent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve figured out from the numerous trips through the check out lanes that lectures do not work on my two-year-old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My voice in his ears probably starts to sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My mastery of the English language does me no good when dealing with a kid who has a limited vocabulary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve also figured out that I'm not one of those moms who can ignore her child when he acts up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It completely goes against my nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t just ignore my son when he’s screaming at the top of his lungs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I definitely can’t ignore him when he hits me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess some children act out because they need attention, so not giving it to them ends the whole negative reinforcement thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am not one of those people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My son gets plenty of attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, he gets all of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s the cat who never gets any attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s why he poops on the floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m afraid my husband is going to start doing the same thing soon…</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I know that I have to be aware of this hitting thing and I must make sure my son knows it’s not okay to do it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also have to be aware of myself all the more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is uncharted territory for me, just like everything else I write about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s another great adventure, another lesson learned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a parent who wants to raise good children, I know I'll make some mistakes but I always mean well. In disciplining my son I know I'll have hits and misses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I’ll be damned if those hits are coming from my son. </div>Carriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02143911861356781551noreply@blogger.com0