For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully & wonderfully made, your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Psalm 139:13-14
Huge thank you to Katy Scanlan for the beautiful pictures. If you live near us please check her out, she does beautiful work and was SO great to work with. The kids warmed right up to her and her husband which made the entire photo shoot fun & easy.
CLICK HERE TO SEE HER SITE (and more of her beautiful work)
Check out my friend Jessica’s amazing post on finding a church home. Really inspired by her thoughts.
My reality this week? The fact that I can’t seem to get these Monday posts going on a regular basis. I have dreams of posting on my blog regularly, maybe even having an actual theme when it comes to this thing. Like motherhood, perhaps? I think I’m a decent writer and might be able to appeal to a lot of imaginary internet people…but I just can’t make it happen. In talking with a few people who know me quite well lately, I’ve had an epiphany and I think there may be a reason this blog is so neglected. Are you ready for this amazing revelation? It’s pretty epic, pretty shocking….
I. Am. Busy.
I’ve never thought of myself as the type to over-commit (I hear you laughing out there you people who know me better than I know myself…shut up!). Apparently I am not nearly as self-aware as I once thought I was because newsflash self: you absolutely over-commit. Currently my weekly schedules consists of working 3 days, Bible Study Fellowship one morning, teaching the junior high Sunday school class (with no curriculum, so I do am creating that as I go), facilitating a community group at church, something called “young family group” we attend twice/month with the kids, keeping up with running 3x/week, and being married to the unpaid worship director for our church so that our church day is 4+ hours long. And those are just the non-negotiable commitments. It doesn’t account for caring for my 2 small children, cleaning my house, caring for my flower beds, grocery shopping, or the social commitments I make like play dates.
I’m exhausted. Most of these commitments have a pretty big pay off, and I am grateful for each of them in different ways, but being a mother of a 2 small kids is exhausting all by itself and I think it’s time I start considering scaling it back a bit. I realized recently that I have unrealistic expectations of myself as a Mom (don’t we all?). I was raised in a home with a Mom who stayed home full-time, and I try to model my life after hers and the other full-time stay at home Moms that I know and respect so much. But when you work 3 days out of the week you just can’t do all of the things a SAHM can do. I can’t have play dates every week. I can’t go to 4 different grocery stores to find all the best prices. I can’t be solely responsible for cleaning the entire house every single week. I can’t do a super creative awesome craft with my 2 year old every day. The list goes on, and it often depresses me.
But there are some things I can do. I can play with my kids when I’m home. I can work hard to support our family. I can keep our home nice with a little help from our nanny and my husband. That list goes on too, and it reminds me that I need to keep my priorities straight. Saying yes to everything that comes my way is only going to hurt me, and my family, in the long run. It’s time to learn to think before I say yes. Time for my first response to be “Let me think about it.” and then actually THINK about it. Time to….are you ready for this?….say NO sometimes.
So do I want to have an awesome blog a la Dooce? Yes, of course. But I won’t. So I’m telling myself NO. I will try to keep up with these Monday posts as often as I can, and I will not feel guilty when I can’t. What would be the point of having a blog if it’s just one more thing making me feel like a failure?
As a Mom I of course love it when others tell me how sweet, fun, well-behaved my children are. I beam when I pick up Charley from nursery and hear nothing but praise of how great it is to have her there.
But there is a darker side to those wonderful compliments. It’s called pressure. I wonder if I am the only Mom who sometimes wishes people liked my children a little less. That they would be more difficult, less obedient. I know that sounds insane, but as a result of friends saying how perfect my children are all the time I realize I often put pressure on them in subtle ways to keep it up.
Charley, for example, tends to be a people pleaser. She responds well to positive reinforcement and loves to be praised. I use that to my advantage at times, but I also want to be careful. I don’t want Charley to start believing that her worth, her value, is attached to her obedience. I want her to know she is loved when she makes good choices and she is loved when she makes poor ones. And I have to work hard to not make parenting choices based on public opinion.
A great example. When Charley is playing with other kids she is generally a pretty easy going kid, but she is also 2 and struggles with concepts like sharing. I am often tempted to force her to share anything and everything no matter what, to always be the “bigger person” and not fuss when she doesn’t get her way. But that is totally unrealistic! She shouldn’t always have to give up a toy she wants to play with, and she is allowed to express her frustration (in ways that are not harmful to others) when things don’t go her way. And if another parent thinks less of her or me as a result, I am trying hard not to care.
I want to put her first, not other people’s opinions. And the really sad part, when I’m being honest with myself, is that I feel like her behavior is a reflection on ME. So yet again this wonderful thing called motherhood drags more of my sinful, selfish tendencies to the surface. Being a Mom seems to be the fire God is using to refine me, forcing me to face my selfishness in ways I never have before. It’s amazing, humbling, and sometimes it just plain sucks.
I wanted to end this post with a statement about how I spend a lot of time praying that God would help me fight this urge to pressure my kids into performing…but this is a reality post and that would be a lie. So resisting my urge to sound uber spiritual I will instead say that writing this out has inspired me to spend more time praying for that. And really, I need to spend more time praying period.
I should have written about this last week, after a particularly horrible day at church, but I didn’t. And then yesterday was bad too and I decided it was time to use it as fodder for a great Reality post. Big. Sigh.
Andy & I are Christians. Not “we go to church because we were raised to do that” Christians, but actually Jesus Freak Christians. We just love Him. And we’ve always gone to church as an outpouring of that love & thankfulness for what He has done for us. When we first had Charley I was pleasantly surprised that church wasn’t as difficult as I had worried it might be. Then we had Matthew and things were still very manageable. Then Matthew stopped sleeping for the entire service and Charley turned 2 and things got interesting.
Our service starts at 1pm. Could there possibly be a WORSE time of day to take my children somewhere and expect them to behave and even be interested in what is going on? No, there really could not be. Let me give you an example of just how bad it is for us (really? ME.)
Two weeks ago we arrived at church at our normal 12pm time. Oh, did I not mention that we only own 1 car and Andy has to be there an hour early to practice the music for service? Because he stands up front the entire service and leads worship? Yep, that’s right.
I then coral a very tired 2 year old who is sensitive and emotional and fidgety for an hour while keeping an eye on my 8 month old who needs to fall asleep but won’t. This hour is extremely difficult for me, but often other families straggle in early and Charley gets distracted by play mates which is a big help. Then church starts at 1pm. Somehow, every single week (EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK.) the 55 minutes before service drags by and the last 5 minutes that I need to get my children into the pew with all our “luggage” zips past me and I’m running to my seat, 2 kids in tow, no husband to help because he’s playing his guitar up front.
Then Charley sits with me and Matthew for the first 15 minutes of service. After that Andy is allowed to leave his post because it’s time for the sermon so he grabs Charley and drops her at the nursery for the rest of the service. I usually sneak out to nurse Matthew at that point also. Well, last week we made it about 5 minutes into service. Matthew was whining/half crying the entire time desperate for sleep. And Charley would not sit still. She was up, down, trying to go under the pew, over the pew, whining for her snack, for her juice, mad I only had water, and then when I was fed up and exhausted and beyond my limits of self-control I spoke too harshly to my sensitive girl and she started crying. Loudly. Very loudly. So with my 22 pound 8 month old under one arm I reached out and grabbed her forcefully around her stomach and literally dragged her out of the service (okay, not literally since technically I was carrying her). She was so shocked by my loss of sanity that she was totally silent (small blessings?) on the way out.
Out in the foyer she lost it, sobbing. I snapped at her (yes. literally. I snapped at my daughter like she was an animal or something…there is no bag big enough to put on my head) and quietly but very harshly said “Charlotte! Enough!”
Ugh. Oh my goodness. That phrase. I H.A.T.E. that phrase. “Enough”…I felt horrible. She ignored me of course, and I sat down in front her, put Matty next to me (who was also silent…likely wondering if Mommy had lost her mind and if so he’d better just stay quiet so I don’t notice him) and cried. I only cried a little, and quietly, so that no one would notice. But I told her how sorry I was, I gave her a hug and I asked her to forgive me. She’s 2, so you know, she didn’t really get that last part, but she stopped crying and gave me a kiss so I took it.
She went happily to nursery after that (get me away from that woman! is likely what she was thinking) and I spent the rest of service outside with Matthew sleeping in his stroller trying not to cry. I went and hid during communion. I was so sad, angry, bitter, and frustrated I couldn’t even take communion. Talk about real.
Church is hard y’all. With 2 tiny people and at the worst time of day? It’s HARD. But I keep going. Every week I go and thanks to a wise friend, now every Sunday I just say “Jesus…I need good church today.” and I believe that some weeks He will answer me. I know He is there, faithful to me and loving me even when I’m lost, angry, depressed, frustrated…He’s there, waiting for me to come back to His table.
So say it with me Mommy’s who read this and thought “I’ve been there.”:
Jesus, I need good church today. Amen.
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It’s that time again. Monday! This week there was no racking my brain for a topic. It came to me quite naturally while at the zoo with my family on Saturday. We were enjoying a lovely morning at the zoo when I realized it was time to nurse Matthew, who is 8 months old. I figured I’d find an out of the way spot and use my nursing cover a la bebe au lait when lo and behold I realized: I didn’t have my cover! I didn’t even have a blanket! I had nothing with which I could cover myself to feed my son.
There was a time, when my daughter was an infant, when I would have panicked. Or more likely I’d have had my back up bottle and formula and fed her that instead of nursing her. But Matthew has never HAD formula (and no, I don’t wear this as some kind of badge of honor or mark of my “better mommy than you” status, I promise, I’m simply stating the fact).
But I still thought perhaps I’d find a bench behind a tree or in a closed exhibit (see headline: Nursing Mother Arrested at LA Zoo for Illegally Entering Closed Elephant Exhibit!). As I wandered around the immediate area I found a bench no one would really be walking by facing a building that held a closed exhibit, hurray! Except it was in the sun. Like, I’d be sweating and blinded by sunlight. There was another bench around the corner that was in the shade, with a back to lean against, but it was right in a thoroughfare where lots of people would be passing by. Hm… So I had to feed my baby, in public, and I had do it, well, rather publically.
So I sat down and got down to business. And of course Matthew wasn’t just latching on quietly and doing his thing quick & easy. Oh no, Mr. Busy Pants had to squirm and cry and latch and look around and yell at me and squirm some more first. This is a very important part of the nursing an older baby process, or so my son tells me anyway.
But heck, it had to be done so we did it. At first I sat there feeling very self-concious and thinking I might be able to will myself into invisibility. But the longer we sat there nursing (aka wrestling) the more I started channeling the strength & wisdom of my mama friends who have btdt (been there done that). I held my head up, I looked at people as they walked by, realized what was going on and looked away quickly. I thought “You have a problem? Screw you!” (Uh, this is a REAL post, right?)
Okay, so I wasn’t really feeling that aggressive, but I was feeling confident. This is how you feed babies. This is what breasts are FOR. Breasts have been nourishing babies for far longer than they’ve been plastered on billboards and playboys. THIS is their true design and function so everyone can just get over it already.
I felt quite powerful in fact, a la my imaginary friend Camille. And you know what? I felt very, very REAL.
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Since becoming a mother I have noticed an interesting phenomenon. We Mom’s, we take things personally. If I am talking to another Mom and say something like “My daughter just loves Dora!” (that’s a TV show character for those without toddlers.), and this other Mom responds with something like “Oh, my kids don’t watch any TV.”. I feel deflated. I feel judged. I feel like a loser mom. Now, this “Other Mom” didn’t say “Wow! That’s horrible! I can’t believe you let your daughter watch TV! You’re rotting her brain!”, she simply stated a fact. And it’s a very appropriate thing to say since it explains why her child wouldn’t know who Dora is, right?
And it works both ways. My husband & I chose not to circumcise our son. This decision was based on our own research and discussion that this was the best thing for him. It was difficult for some friends & family to understand and at first I wasn’t sure why. Then I realized that it is a lot like the TV incident. The logic goes like this:
I did not circumcise my son -àI believe circumcision to be unnecessary and possibly even wrong -àYou did circumcise your son à I believe YOU ARE WRONG.
And this is why it’s hard to be friends with parents if your parenting choices are really different. The same thing goes for choices about vaccines (we do), spanking (we don’t), organic food (a little), and all of the other difficult choices parents have to make every single day. There is a part of me that believes we should live and let live. As long as you are making these choices based on your love for your kids and what you believe to be the best thing for your family then it’s none of my business.
Now I might still think that there is an ideal, or that the way I am choosing to do something is better than what another Mom has chosen. But I might be wrong. The reality though is that as much as I don’t want the choices I make for my family to be a judgment of anyone else, it kind of is. That “Other Mom” doesn’t let her kids watch TV because she believes it’s bad, or a waste of time, or harmful to them…so she disagrees with my choice. What I am working on, what I think we all need to work on, is separating our choices as parents from who we are as people. It is possible that I am making a bad choice. That does not define me as mother, or a woman.
My hope is that I can convey that to my mommy friends. That I would be a friend who is compassionate, encouraging, and willing to hash things out when big decisions need to be made, even if we don’t agree in the end. And it’s okay to disagree, because it needs to be okay for me to think your choice to spank is wrong and it needs to be okay for you to think my choice to let my kids watch TV is wrong. Because this is my new motto:
I am more than sum total of the choices I make. I am wonderfully & fearfully made, and am grateful that my children have a heavenly Father who loves them more dearly than I ever could.
“I am bigger than you, therefore you have to do what I say. So there.”
Does that sound like something a 5th grader might say to a classmate? Yes, it does to me too. Which is why it’s pretty embarrassing that I often find myself parenting as if this were my motto. Charlotte is 2 years old and yes I know the old saying “Terrible 2’s!” but we really haven’t found this to be the case. Charley is basically a very compliant child who is eager to please and help. Despite this propensity toward obedience we of course still have our “moments”.
Ideally, when Charlotte is making a poor choice and choosing not to obey I stay calm. I use tools like playfulness or offering her a choice to help her obey. A great example is when I tell her it’s time for her nap and she says “No Nap!” shaking her little finger at me. So I say “Charley, it is time for your nap. But here is your choice! You can walk to your room OR I can carry you! What do you choose?” and I make it sound like the most important choice ever. And shockingly, this stuff WORKS. She feels good for making a “good choice” and I feel good to have helped her do that.
But. Yes of course there is a but. There are days when I am too tired, too frustrated, too mommied-out to work that hard. There are days when I want to just pick her up and take her to her room ignoring her frustrated cries.
I had been thinking about this MOR Monday post over the weekend and wasn’t sure what topic I would choose. I was feeling very uninspired and then last night, voila! I royally screwed up and here I am with a great post…unfortunately.
It was time for Charlotte to go to bed, which she was not protesting. We had finished her bath and I was just starting to brush her teeth. As I started to sing the alphabet song and brush she clamped her mouth down and refused to let me brush. I said “Charlotte, open wide. Mommy has to brush your teeth.” She refused.
I interrupt this story for some background information: Charley has never minded having her teeth brushed. Our routine is that I brush them for her while singing the alphabet song then give her the toothbrush and she brushes them for one round of the same song. This last week she’s wanted to skip my “turn” and do it herself, but with a little coaxing/reminding she lets me brush her teeth.
So this behavior was very unusual for her. That SHOULD have made me stop to think “Why is she doing this?”. But it didn’t. Because I already KNEW. She is a TERRIBLE 2 YEAR OLD!! She is being DISOBEDIENT! So I squeezed the sides of her cheeks to force her mouth open and started brushing. She yanked her head away from me (almost falling off her stool) and started crying big crocodile tears. She was shaking head saying “No teeth Mama! No teeth!”. I was just about to put her in a head lock because I AM THE BOSS (seriously, this was my thought process…in my head I sounded like a 2 year old) when I noticed that the toothbrush in my hand was pink.
Yes. It was pink. With blood. My child’s blood. My heart sank into stomach. I put the toothbrush down and gently asked her to show me her teeth, promising “No teeth”. She obeyed now that offending weapon was not in my hand. Her K-9 teeth are coming in (something I knew!) and the toothbrush had caused some bleeding at the spot where one is just breaking the surface.
Big sigh. I apologized, I gave her a hug. The thing about Charley is that if you say “I’m sorry” TO her she says it back. I think because she thinks you’re telling her to say it, but it’s so sweet because her sorry includes a gentle touch on your cheek. Now I wanted to cry.
I sang her 2 songs at bedtime that night instead of our usual 1 and gave her an extra snuggle.
This Mommy gig is hard. I didn’t write this so anyone would say “Oh, that’s not a big deal! You’re a great Mom!”. I just want other Mom’s who read this blog to know that sometimes I screw it up. Big time. I’m sure there are screw-ups in my future that will make this seem like no big deal…I’m absolutely sure of that. The thing is, I truly believe I am the best Mom for Charley. God gave her to me and I trust in Him to help me raise her, screw ups and all.
It’s Monday! Okay, no, it’s actually Tuesday and yet again I am late at doing something. But when I explain the title of this post you will see how appropriate that is!
Some good friends of mine have started tossing around the idea lately of “ministry of reality”. It started with this lovely gal and then another lovely lady had the idea to make it a blog series where we all participate. At some point we’ll get organized and link all of our blogs together.
So, what is Ministry of Reality? I think my friend does a great job explaining it so I will leave that to her and just jump right in.
What appealed to me most about this blog series idea is probably the overwhelming, nearly crippling at times, feeling of inadequacy I get when I read other mommy’s blogs. I read about the crafting, the cooking, the cleaning; the sewing, baking, gardening; the wonderful marriage that seem so blissful and the children who are memorizing Bible verses and praying for Haiti unprovoked. It sounds amazing…and it also sounds nothing like my life.
So I started talking about this with friends. I wondered if I really was the worst mother on the planet. And guess what I found out? I’m not. I’m NORMAL. I try hard, I fail hard. I try again. That is life. And I figure we all probably feel pretty inadequate at times and I never want to contribute to another mother’s struggle to “achieve” and “perform”. As women and mommy’s we are in a position to support each other in such unique ways and yet we so often hide our struggle and show only our shiny happy face to the world all the while hurting inside and if you’re like me feeling like you deserve a giant FAIL sign over your head most days.
And since I’m doing my first “Ministry of Reality Monday” on a TUESDAY you have an excellent example of an area in which I struggle. I often have grand plans for things (for example my plan to compete in a triathlon this year…um…that isn’t happening) and MORE often fall quite short of my own expectations. I am sincerely hoping my plan to participate in this weekly blog series is not one of those things…
Being the parent you are called to be…
First, thank you for all of the comments on my previous post! I enjoy reading others thoughts, especially since I know all of you and a little about where you are on your parenting journey. From single with no children but surrounded by them at work, to a Mom with twin toddlers it is certainly a wide range of people weighing in. And I think that’s important. We need to talk about these things. Good parenting doesn’t “just happen”. It takes thoughtfulness, weighing options, observing other families, and a lot of self-evaluation.
That last one is the most difficult for sure. As I parent my two young children I am constantly reminded of my own inadequacies and failings. It’s important, though, that I am realistic about who I am and how that will affect my parenting and my children. For example I know that I am a very passionate woman in many ways, that my emotions are volatile and always at the surface, apparent to everyone around me. This includes a quick temper and because I know that about myself I choose even more adamantly not to spank my children. I, very realistically, understand that for me, allowing spanking the “right way” will likely lead to me using it a very wrong way also. I work hard to embrace the parts of who I am that make me a great mama to my kids, and to try and change or improve the parts of my personality that can be harmful to them. But I am gentle with myself, because I am who God made me and while there is always room for improvement, I have to work within the boundaries of the woman God made me to be. I’m reading Eat, Pray, Love right now (by Elizabeth Gilbert) and I think she said it well here:
“God isn’t interested in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion you have about how a spiritual person looks or behaves.”
For this reason I have to also take a moment to express thankfulness for my husband. Andy is a wonderful father to our children. He’s playful, compassionate, affectionate, and completely interested in them. But what truly impresses me about my husband is that as we have started to deal with some defiance and boundary testing from Charlotte he has to work very hard against his natural inclinations in responding to her. When she cries desperately, her little heart broken, over some small (to us) injustice he WANTS to say “Oh, what a faker you are!”. When she defiantly plays with something he’s asked her not to, or looks at him and say “Do!”, he WANTS to maybe spank or put her in a time out. When she wakes up crying for the 4th time in the middle of the night he WANTS to ignore her.
But he doesn’t do any of those things. He chooses instead to validate her feelings and help her move forward (calling on his strengths by eliciting laughter where there once were tears), he gets down on her level and helps her to obey him with a firm but gentle tone and redirection, and he gets up, for the 4th time, to go and comfort her. He does these things because he, and we, believe that these are the choices that will help our daughter grow into the woman God desires her to be. We’ve made these choices together, and even when it’s harder to get up than it is to ignore, or yell, we agree that it is worth the effort. That our kids are worth the effort.
Both Andy & I realize that we, and our children, benefit from us having a realistic view of ourselves. So while we sometimes have to work against a bad habit or something that was modeled for us in childhood, we also work to encourage each other in embracing the strengths we have. Andy is wonderful at making Charlotte feel safe, and making her laugh. He’s also endlessly patient when he’s teaching her something and always gently encouraging her to try something new.
Now we are not perfect, we fail constantly and our kids are the ones who suffer most often from our failures. But we ask for and offer forgiveness, and we just try and do better next time. That’s all any of us can really do.
(disclaimer: I do not believe that choosing to use spanking as a parenting tool and being an active, involved, loving parent are mutually exclusive. Please see my previous post for more on that.)