Show me a mom who enjoys spending 24/7 with her kids and I'll show you a mom with a closet full of empties

I have a question.  No, please, hear me out….

When exactly did it make you a bad mother to admit out loud that “I need a break from my kid”?

I am not a mommy blogger.  I am no longer a ‘mommy’ I am now Mom and that apparently is pronounced A-T-M.  But I read mommy blogs.  A) Because there is an over abundance of them and B) there are few blogs written by moms of teens, or at least there is not a noticeable niche for them. (Note to self.. there is your corner of the internet, go forth and claim that unchartered territory.)

I read about Stay-At-Home moms, Work-from-home moms, Work-outside-the-home moms, single moms, married moms, new moms and pros (I’m not stupid, no way was I going to say OLD MOMS..DUH).  And it seems there is an underlying theme.  Society has deemed us horrible mothers if we are not dying to spend every single waking moment with our beloved children.

And I say, that is bullshit.

Before we were mothers, we were women

Before we had kids, we had our own lives.*   We had jobs, friends, a social life, boyfriends, husbands, shopping, manis and pedis, movies, cocktails.  We had me-time.  Now, that’s not to say that we had to give all that up when the kids came along.  There are plenty of moms who have jobs, and husbands, and friends, and shopping, and cocktails, and all of that.  But society has made us feel guilty for stepping out and doing something for us. Without the kids.  Having children does not mean exchanging the awesome you for the mom you.  They don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

There is nobody else in our lives we are expected to spend every single minute of our lives with

We are not expected to spend all day every day with our significant other, with our friends, with our extended family, so why is it just because we gave life to this little person we have to be constantly tied to them?  When and why did it become taboo to want to pursue your own hobbies, interests?  Mothers are expected to push out a baby, and then give up their entire life to that child until said time that child can be safely ensconced in school for 6-7 hours a day.  And even then, if you’re not a work-outside-the-home mom, you’re expected to be room mother, and field trip mom, and teacher’s helper mom.

Taking a break from the kids actually makes us better moms.

[Insert joke about how if I had to spend all day every day with my kids I wouldn’t be a stay-at-home-mom b/c I wouldn’t have kids anymore here]  I think it’s good for us necessary for us as mothers to step away from the kids, and pursue our own interests.  I’m not saying all day, or even every day.  But it’s important to remember we are our own person.  There is more to us than MOM.  Remember when we were first dating and we fell in love hard with Mr. McDreamy and our entire life revolved around him?  We thought about him eleventy billion times a day, tingled when our phone rang, checked our text messages every 3 seconds?  And remember how our parents or friends told us “It’s unhealthy to be that attached to someone.  You need to maintain your own life separate from him too”?  Why should it be any different with our children?  Trust me, the children will not hate us, and we will not be the worst. mother. in. the. world. if we leave the kids with Dad or Grandma for a couple of hours and go shopping or meet a friend for coffee, or get a mani/pedi once in a while.

Give yourself a break

Frankly, who cares what society says?  Is society there helping with the crying, demanding, two year old with the temper tantrums?  Is society there watching Yo Gabba Gabba (Please tell me that’s what kids are watching these days… I don’t know) for the 80 billionth time?  Is society there entertaining your child so you can take a shower in peace without having to explain to your curious child why your body looks different than daddy’s?  Is society there changing the diapers, doing the laundry, cleaning the house?  Is society there entertaining you? Preventing your temper tantrums?  NO? Then tell society to keep their damn opinions to themselves.  You’re doing the best you can, and if the house is still standing and the kids are still breathing at the end of the day then you’ve done a good job.

Now, have a glass of wine and relax.

*Yes, I understand this is a blanket statement and may not hold true for every mother out there. I can’t run around taking into account every single possible scenario.  I’m busy trying to become a big deal.

Seven Years

I found my divorce papers this past week.  I was cleaning out closets and desks and stuff that had been, well, just stuffed, when we moved in a year ago.  I looked at the dates on the papers.

July 2004.

We were legally married for exactly 5 years, 1 month, and a few days.

That’s not the point.

July 2004 means I have been doing this parenting gig by myself over 7 years now.  Four of those years have been here, 2 hours away from my family, and theirs.

Seven years.  That’s half of Meredith’s life, and more than half of Megan’s.  The girls have known us in separate houses, as long as they knew us in the same house.  They remember the former more clearly than the latter.

Seven years.

I wonder though, if I would have been a different parent if I hadn’t had to do it alone.  If I’m honest, I would tell you our house is a strange but working mixture of sorority house (without the boys and mostly without the alcohol) and boot camp.  A lot of the decisions in this house are made by joint committee.  There are arguments, there is a lot of stealing of my sharing of the clothes.  We keep a huge desk calendar hung on our fridge to keep track of everyone’s schedules.  And we shower in shifts.  At the end of the day, though, I am the disciplinarian.  I am the one who makes the rules, enforces the rules, and doles out the punishment.  Sometimes that’s hard for the girls to reconcile in their heads.  Sure they *know* it, but when you’ve just been laughing and playing around with mom, for her to switch gears and actually BE MOM, wow, I forgot you were in charge here.  I get to be good guy, but I also have to be the bad guy.

Being a single parent means you have to be there, for all of it.  The good and the bad.  You get to be there when things go right in their life, and when things go wrong.  I get the luxury of being the only parent in the house, so I don’t have distractions.  I get to focus my attention on them, whenever they need me.  And sometimes when they don’t.  The good news for me is I know what’s going on in their life.  The bad news for them is I know what’s going on in their life.  At least for now, I haven’t crossed that line that separates the cool concerned mom from the control freak stalker mom.

I have an edge their father doesn’t have.  I have a vagina. I understand female hormones. I remember what junior and senior high were like.  I can help navigate their journey. Also, I now know what bipolar was like, and I watch ever so closely for signs that maybe, they need to talk to a doctor.  I don’t want them to suffer like I have.  But I also don’t want to jump the gun.  So I watch what they do, how they act. I listen to what they tell me, and sometimes to what they don’t.  I talk to them about school, and friends, and boys, and teachers, and classes and homework, and practice and games. I pretend I don’t hear what they are telling their friends when they think I’m not listening. I let them live their life and experience all there is to experience, all while standing in the not so far off background.

Their dad has an edge I don’t have.  He has a penis, and he can tell them exactly what those stupid boys are thinking and why they are acting like total idiots.  He can tell them “Tell that numb nuts to back off or I will drive the 2 hours it takes to get there to have a talk with him.  And if I have to drive 2 hours, it won’t be to have a coke and a smile.”  He can tell them to be aware, to be careful, but not too careful.  He can teach them how to be safe.

I wonder if we would parent the girls as well together as we seem to have managed separately?  I wonder if we would have been able to play to each other’s strengths, and compensate for each other’s weaknesses or if it would have always been a power struggle between us leaving the girls lost, confused, and unguided.  I give them city life, I give them excitement and opportunities and entertainment and fun and flash and pizzazz.  He gives them small town country life, he teaches them loyalty, and family, and hard honest with your hands kind of work.  He teaches them to give to others what you can when you can’t give anything but yourself.  We both have taught them it is possible to provide a safe, warm, full of love home, as single parents.  We both have taught them “You are enough on your own”.

My Our girls both have a strong sense of self, they have moral compasses that they trust and believe in and stand for.  They know exactly who they are, probably better than I do today, and definitely better than I did at their age.  Their looks, their brains, their sense of humor? their father and I have long ago agreed they got those from Target.  But the rest? I’m not sure.

I want to hope it was from both of us.  Separately.  And together.

Parenting by the books. You're doing it wrong, which, ironically is right

Have you ever been to a bookstore and looked at how many parenting books there are? There are books for every age, in fact there are books for what to expect BEFORE the child gets here.

So basically, we’re piling on the you’re doing in wrong guilt three weeks after the stick you peed on turns blue.

There are all these decisions to be made from the time the child is conceived. OB-GYN or midwife? Hospital or birthing center or home birth? Epidural or natural? (I recommend the drugs, almost from the time the pregnancy test comes back positive) To video the delivery or not.  (the answer to that one should always be NO unless you can get a stunt double for Mom then maybe.)

After the birth there are the important questions, cloth or disposable diapers, breast or formula, daycare or nanny, gin or vodka.

No matter what choices you make, no matter the reasons, no matter your thoughts or feelings or the fact that you were the one screaming as this wrinkly red screaming person was pushed from your hoo-ha, there are those out there who will tell you, You’re doing it wrong.

Because they know best.  Clearly.

The thing is this. Unless you’re beating your child, feeding them crack, buy them a pole for their third birthday, you’re doing it right.  You’re screwing them up just like the rest of us.  Our parents screwed us up, their parents screwed them up, and our kids will screw up their kids.   It keeps therapists in business.  My sister (who is not a parenting expert, clearly. She just plays one for the purpose of this blog post.) has said of her two sons, “I’m not saving for their college education, I’m saving for their therapy.”  It’s the circle of life.

Our parents managed to raise us without eleventy billion parenting handbooks. They did the best they knew how to do with what they had, and guess what? Most of us turned out fine.  There are the exceptions (Miley Cyrus, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan), but most of us…OK.  I think the basics are, if you are present in their life, spend time with them, not at soccer practice or dance class, but them, and if you let them know they can talk to you about anything, well, then, you’re doing a damn good job.

My sister said in a text message to me today “Every kid is like a new car. It’s going to get dented/scratched. You’re better off taking a hammer to the fender on the dealer’s lot so that you can enjoy the car rather than being all freaking stressed constantly about avoiding the ding”   While we don’t advocate taking a hammer to your child, the thinking is, “just like a car depreciates in value as you drive it off the lot, and nothing is perfect forever, you as a parent are going to blow the ‘perfect” thing by the end of day one.” It’s easier and less stressful if you just accept that somewhere along the line you’re going to screw things up, but look at them not as mistakes, they are character building activities.  And their therapists will thank you years later.

Parenting kids is only hard if you make it that way. Yes I know this will piss a whole lot of people off.

Yesterday on my way home, I was once again listening to my favorite afternoon radio show. They were talking about the newest scientific study results released from No Shit Sherlock University.

Apparently, one of the studies showed that the majority of parents, given the choice, would go back and opt not to have kids because being a parent and raising kids is just too damn hard.

Really?!?

They have people call in about this.  The first guy said “Raising kids is way harder than I expected because we have soccer practice, football practice, the games, dance lessons and recitals and we are on the go every night when I get home.”

Uh, ok, Dude, excuse me for a minute, but your idea of parenting is hard BECAUSE. YOU. MAKE. IT. HARD.  You schedule your kids for all of those extra curricular activities.  You agree that your kids can play soccer, baseball, football, dance class, girl scouts, and boy scouts. You are not parenting your kids at all.  You are chauffeuring and funding your kids, but not parenting them.

Do you realize that you are scheduling your kids recreation!?  Play dates, and soccer games, football practice, and dance class.  You have scheduled your child’s recreation.  Does anyone else see the irony in that bullshit?  Micromanage much?

I also take issue with the parents who buy their kids everything under the sun.  There isn’t an 8 year old in the world that needs their own laptop.  Until they reach junior high, the family computer should suffice.  At least on the family computer parents have control and know exactly what their child is doing.

Gaming systems? Keep them in the family room (not the kids bedrooms) so that you can monitor how long they are playing games.  And you can make sure homework is done first.

I don’t claim to have all the answers.  And I don’t think my parenting style is better.   My girls are allowed one extra curricular activity.  Tate chose cheerleading. During the week she has practice until 4:30.  Friday night is game night.  We eat dinner together every. single. night.  I go over their homework.  I know the girls’ best friend’s names and their parents too.

I know that what works for some, may not work for others.  I know there are probably parents out there who can make the jam-packed social schedule for their kids work.   I’m not one of them.  I believe that parenting your kids, means being present in their life.  Not on the sidelines watching.

They're always thinking of me

Last night, after picking up the girls from their dad’s early because he wanted to watch the Super Bowl. Meh, what do I care?  I’ll pick them up early.  Not like I was watching the game.

We get home at a fairly decent time, and by decent I mean Oh my god I still have hours before it’s time to go to bed even though I could drop right now and sleep the sleep of the dead.  I decided to have a snack, you know because nothing is better than eating when you really just want to go to bed.

I’ll have some cheese and crackers and finish off that half bottle of wine in the fridge that I started the other night while watching the second season of Sex and the City.

I go to the kitchen, open the cabinet, grab the box of crackers, pop it open, reach in and Hello (hello hello hello) (those are echos for those of you who aren’t hearing this post narrated in your head like I am as I type it)

The girls?  Had helped themselves to some cheese and crackers (but not my wine, thankyouverymuch) while they had been snowed in.  Fine. I’m ok with that.  The cheese and crackers?  For everyone.  The wine?  All. Mine.

I reach in the box, thinking WTF?  There, at the bottom of the box….

2 1/2 crackers.

Not 3.

Two and a half.

I slowly turn to the girls and ask them “Did you seriously put this box away with only two and a half crackers left in it?  Why not just EAT the two and a half crackers?  There’s still plenty of cheese left, so I know you didn’t run out of cheese.”

The best answer they could come up with?

“We wanted to save some for you mom!”

Gee.  Thanks.

It's that time of year again

It’s that time of year again. You know what I’m talking about.  Every radio commercial now has a Christmas song playing in the back ground.  I swear there is a jewelry store ad with “Away in the Manger” playing in the background.  Seriously?  When did the Sweet 8 lb 6 oz baby Jesus sell out? There are hundreds of pieces of paper laying around the house all of them titled “My Christmas Wish List” and all of them with a list of at least a dozen different things each of the girls wants.   And yet, whenever anyone in my family asks them “What do you want for Christmas?”  Their standard answer?  “I don’t know.”  Or worse yet?  “Clothes”.

Of course it’s this time of year I start looking for places to sell my soul to pay for the items the girls want for Christmas.  Although there isn’t much of a market for a slightly over used 42 year old beat all to hell soul.  Surprisingly.

I am almost afraid to ask for anything this year because lately so many things have been going my way, I’m afraid to overtax the system and crash the Good-Things-Fairy.  Not that I’m superstitious or anything.  (Knock on wood).

A few months ago (Like back in April) a promise was made.  A promise of a ring. Of course there was the whole take care of a few things, blah blah yada yada.  At the time I glossed over the take care of a few things, and rushed right on through to THE ring.

Turns out, he was pretty serious about that shit.

Know what? Apparently so was I.

Only I didn’t know it at the time.

Taking care of my legal issues?  Done.

Find a better place to live.  Done.

Due to an agreement with the girls’ Dad this week, I will be financially able to stand on my own two feet if I am really careful with my money.

That was another thing on the list of things that needed to be taken care of.

I don’t know where this is going.  I’m just rambling here.

The point I’m getting at, I think, is back in April I would have gone through the motions, checked things off the list, whatever it took to get to that damn ring.  Somewhere along the way?  The ring became minor.  I got the satisfaction of living my life, making a good life for me and my girls.  In the process of making a better life I found some pride, some self respect.  All of which you would think I would have already had at age *cough*42*cough*.   Apparently not.

Last night Tate cheered at her first game.  Last night I saw myself in the roll of cheer mom.  I never thought I would be one of *those* moms and yet, here I am.  And I couldn’t be more thrilled.  I was so proud of her last night.  (I am pretty damn proud of all three of us to be honest.)  She has games Monday and Tuesday this next week, and that means our nights are going to be busy. Really busy.  And I relish that.

So, Christmas… my girls have their wish lists scattered all over my living room.  On my wish list?  I sort of got it already.

Happy Birthday Newt!

I have sat here staring at a blank screen all weekend waiting for my muse to show up and grace me with a fantabulous topic to blog about, but the bitch never showed up.  So, my blog sat ignored all weekend long.  Which isn’t such a bad thing, after all, the internet is closed on weekends. Right?

So then we come to Monday.  Today. Columbus Day in the States and Thanksgiving for our neighbors to the North.  Either way, it’s a holiday and that bitch muse of mine? Still MIA.

That’s ok.  I’ll just take this time and space to say that 11 years ago today I got the best surprise of my life.  11 years ago today, my youngest, Newt was born.  She was a surprise, as in I was done having kids but some higher power had other plans for my uterus for 9 months.

She has always marched to the beat of her own damn drum, bending rules, doing things her way on her schedule and making me proud.  She has guts and gumption and a fearlessness I never possessed at her age or even at twice her age.  She knows what she wants and what she doesn’t.  She is sure of herself and I am jealous.

She is brilliant and witty, hilarious, and helpful, she’s beautiful in her own way and while she doesn’t appreciate it yet, those of us who know and love her do and trust that she will too in time.  She shares my early mornings with me, often sitting in the bathroom with me while I get ready for work.  Early mornings have always been our time, and even now, 11 years later, they still are.

Happy Birthday Newt.  You have brought much laughter, love, sunshine, smiles and fun into the past 11 years, I can only imagine what wild ride the next 11 years will be.

Things about blog archives that are kind of gay when you think about it.*

Because I am an uber dork, I subscribed to my own blog feed in my Google reader.  I did that basically because I wanted to see what the feed looked like to readers.  Now, I am glad I did.  With the exception of a few months when, for whatever reason, the feed was truncated, I have a complete record of my blog saved.

Having said that I have spent the day copying and pasting from my reader and re-posting everything to my blog again.  Even back dating the posts to the original date, therefore recreating a fairly accurate history of my blog.

So, for those of you new to the neighborhood, there actually are  posts to read from my past.  Not a lot.. and some of them may not make a whole lot of sense out of context, but there is a bit of back story to read if you so choose.

The girls start school tomorrow.  I think it’s a cardinal sin to start school in the middle of August. Oh don’t get me wrong, I am glad they are going back to school, because I’m tired of trying to find things for them to do for entertainment while I’m at work every day, but still. August?  It’s so early.  Clearly there are SAHM’s on the board of education.

I did change the layout of my blog yet again.  I truly love this theme, just because it’s so easy to change around when I get bored.  But that’s the problem, it is so easy to change around when I get bored. Clearly a problem.   I’ll try to keep the redecorating to a minimum.

My blog is now on Facebook.  I hope you’ll go ‘like’ me, because, well, I’m insecure and need to know that you like me, you really like me.  That and I’m a huge attention whore.

Hope you all enjoyed your weekend.  For all you parents with school bound kids in the AM… pop that cork, it’s time to celebrate!  We survived the summer. And so did they.

*Blog title generated randomly by Linkbait generator.

I could never be a helicopter

Today, on my way home I was listening to my favorite afternoon, take-my-mind-off-the-ever-loving-idiotic drivers all around me in the rush-to-get-somewhere-more-important-than-where-you’re-going traffic radio talk show.  (That has got to be the most descriptive, most run on over use of adjectives ever in a sentence.  This is a close second.)

Anyhoo, on my way home the radio host asked his listeners a question he genuinely wanted the answer to.  He is 45, on his 2^nd marriage and has a 5 year old daughter who is the most beautiful little girl in the entire world.  She is his entire world. (Wonder what his wife has to say about that.)  He’s obsessed with her (His words not mine).  He went on to explain that he is utterly terrified to let this precious most beautiful little girl of his out into their fenced back yard to play by herself.  There are 150 children abducted by strangers every year, and he is convinced that she is one of those 150.  That anyone who laid eyes on her would want to snatch her away.  He admitted to going so far as to sit in the back yard with her, watching her play, eating his dinner, with his firearm on his side, hand almost on the gun.

His question?  Am I a freak to be this concerned and over protective?

Uh, dude, I don’t know that freak is the right word.  Over protective is an understatement at best.  I mean who sits out there with their child fully armed, afraid that someone is going to jump your 5 foot fence?  Or just open the gate and take their kid?  You are not just a helicopter parent; you haven’t yet cut the umbilical cord.

One of the callers actually agreed with him, and went so far as to say her daughter could not go to her friends’ houses if the parents allowed the children to play outside in their fenced yard without being out there with them the entire time.

I get that we grew up in a different time.  We were blissfully unaware of the dangers around us.  We were allowed a childhood free of worry and evil.  We were out the door right after breakfast, caught lunch where/when we could, and were back home for dinner and back out the door until it was dark.

And no one ever took us.

We learned how to solve problems, we learned how to get out of a jam, we caused trouble, were up to no good, and solved our own trouble praying that our parents never found out what we had been up to that day.  We learned how to settle arguments, we learned how to appreciate difference of opinions, we learned how to forgive and forget. We learned how to be responsible for ourselves, and to ourselves.   We learned the fine art of negotiation and trade agreements.  We learned how to live in the world around us without fear.

Kids today have been taught to fear everyone they see.  They’ve been taught every stranger is dangerous; everyone is out to hurt them or take them.  They have lost their imagination because they aren’t allowed to exercise it or even use it.  Out of fear that rules this world we live in, our children are missing out on some very important life lessons that only they could learn on their own. Lessons that would serve them well in their adult life.

I was never a helicopter parent.  I can tell you that at every single family gathering the second the car doors were open the kids were off and gone if they could walk, if not there was always someone willing to pick them up and take them around.  There were times I wouldn’t see them again until it was time to eat.  They were off playing with cousins, learning the same lessons I learned.

Even at a family gathering at a city park, the kids ran free and nobody took them.  Even now, the girls are allowed to ride their bikes to the city park or the library by themselves without me hovering.  They go almost every day and they come home every time they go.

I guess what I’m asking is, who’s the ‘freak’ here.  Is he the freak for hovering over his daughter and watching her every minute of every day, or am I the freak for not hovering, and allowing my children to ride to town without me there every minute of every day?