No Bad Days For Me!

        News flash: Someone has finally discovered the allusive Parenting Manual!
         It's true. And somewhere, in that unofficial, impossibly hard to find parenting handbook, there is a rule about bad days.
       Apparently, when your a mother of more then one child, your not allowed to have a bad day. Seriously. No bad days ever. Because your a mom. Because you decided to have a child. You signed up for this. This role as mother was a choice, and you made it. More importantly then that, you chose to do it more then once. And if by some chance you forget that rule and have a bad day, the punishment will be that everyone, everywhere will automatically place all blame for your bad mood on your children.
      Proof:
     After a long week of one person after another coming down with the flu (including myself), after the tenth time cleaning up vomit, I allowed myself a bad day. A grumpy, don't get dressed or showered, screw doing the dishes kind of day. As someone randomly stops by for a visit, I hear my punishment being handed down. "Well, this is what you signed up."
      I know, I know. One random event doesn't prove that rule, right?
     As March rolls around, John and I join the millions of Americans, parents and non-parents alike, who begrudgingly start the process of filing tax returns. As I make a simple joke about the groans I hear from John who is working hard on his computer crunching numbers, my punishment comes flying at me out of nowhere, "How bad could it possibly be for you guys at tax time, you have 6 kids?!"
    Stupid me. Obviously I deserved that one.
    8 months after one of our little ones, who was still getting up every 3 hours all night long, I mentioned how worn out I felt. "At this point, you should know what to expect."
    The worst is really that anytime I mention being tired, the blame automatically goes to my kids.
   Why? Why is it automatically assumed that it's because of my kids that I am tired? Can't I be tired because I am coming down with something? Can't I be tired because I have a unnatural amount of weeds growing in my garden and spending a whole day hoeing wears a girl out? Maybe I stayed up too late watching every episode of Merlin available on Netflix? I am married to hot young Italian, maybe he chases me around the house all night long? Those are all reasonable assumptions! Why does it have to be blamed on me being a mom.
         I should be allowed to detest doing laundry. That hate came long before having kids, just ask my mom! It was one of my weekly chores. Quite frankly, as a sister doing her teenage brothers laundry would make any person hate doing the wash! I hated it before kids, I loath it after kids. Not my kids fault. I just don't like stinky drawers.
     If your one of those lucky people who happen to catch me in the grocery store with all my kids (which is always), that face I am making is not their fault. I have RBF. Google it. It's real and I have it.
Resting Bitchy Face.
      Again, not my kids fault. I blame my mom. And my Granny. Heck, I blame my great-grandmother. Great ladies, bitchy faces. It's genetic. We just naturally look pissed. We were born needing Botox and too smart to go get it.
  I could also be making that face because I just got asked for the tenth time that day "Are they all yours?" or the ultra pathetically sympathetic ,"God bless you"  with the head the head shake. Seriously?!
 This lady nailed it. I usually get all of these during one grocery shopping trip.



What kind of face would you make if someone asked you crazy personal and unnecessary questions in the middle of a grocery store?

 



And sometimes, my bad days are because I'm a mom.
   I am not a morning person. Never have been, never will be, and yet, somehow, I have been blessed with two little boys who think 5:30 (no matter the bedtime) is a great time of day.






Sometimes, cleaning up spit-up and poo isn't as exciting as it should be. Sometimes, I should be allowed to complain about having to load the dishwasher for the 3rd time that day, and not get told, "It comes with the territory."
Sometimes teaching long division to one child and the alphabet to to another while trying to ignore Daniel Tiger singing in the background and chasing your 2 year old up to the toilet so he doesn't spray all over the kitchen, and giving fashion advice to your super-sensitive child and giving the evil eye to the four year old for carrying the baby by one arm, and getting pelted in the back of the head with a Nerf gun, all while trying to pour milk into a baby bottle, is a little bit much.
     I'm allowed to have bad days!
Maybe it's just that people have forgotten how to give pep talks. Maybe people have lost their ability to sympathize. Maybe people haven't seen the movie Bambi.

My Two Dads part 2

      It took several years before things worked out and I finally got to meet my little sister. It felt more like several lifetimes, and it kind of was. We change so much throughout our lifetime that by the time I turned 27 years old, I had been several different people. Every experience in my life changed my outlook, changed the way I experienced the things 

that were happening to me and around me, and changed the way that I viewed the world. 

This piece of my life in particular has changed me the most. 

       At times growing up, I felt so lost and unloved and unwanted and broken, and other 

times I felt so strong and confident and so full of love and forgiveness for all the things that 

had happened. There were so many things in my past that I was part of, but had no memory of, no control of. Things that made me who I am today, but things that I felt so disconnected from. I wanted a chance to be able to prove my worth to the people that are my family, but 

who were really strangers to me. It's such a conflicting feeling to know that I have people out there who are part of me or part of my past, and who I want to be part of my future, but 

they are people I had never met. It's one of the most confusing feelings. I am not even sure 

there are words to describe it.

           Because I have two younger brothers that I grew up with, I am lucky to know the joys of being older sister. I love, love, love that role and the closeness that I feel to my brothers 

made it that much harder, knowing that I had a little sister that I was disconnected from. I 

felt robbed that I didn't get to talk to her, share life experiences with her, give her sisterly 

advice, and that I missed out on having all the memories of her growing up, doing the crazy 

things that siblings do together. 

    To top it off I have a father who I have wanted to meet, wanted to get to know, and never had that opportunity. It feels like part of my heart is sitting in a different place than the rest of my heart. There is still love and longing there but it's disconnected from the rest of me. Sometimes I would go through pictures and stare at the picture so hard hoping that there  

would be some kind of memory, or connection made just by seeing their faces, that I would 

know who they really were. I hoped that I would know what they were like, and that all the 

pieces that were missing by not having the time with them would be filled. 

      When things finally looked like I was finally going to get to meet my sister and she was 

heading towards the east coast, part of me started freaking out. I was so excited and I had all these ideas and plans in my head of how I wanted things to turn out, but not knowing what 

she was really like, I didn't know how to figure out what to do together. I knew that my 

father would be the one driving her out to meet me and I knew there was some reservations about how things would turn out. Understandable reservations. All the plans that were made for she and I to get together made sure that it was all about two sisters getting together and getting to know each other. 

        When she was finally on our way to my house she text me and let me know that my 
my father would like to meet me too. Every emotion possible flooded me. I had never felt so petrified in my entire life. I ran upstairs and wanted to scream and cry and yell all at the 

same time. I looked in the mirror, checked my clothes and brushed my hair again. I 

wondered if when he saw me, my home, my children, and my husband,  would he think that I turned out good or that I was a loser  I must have checked the mirror 50 more times 

before they pulled up out front. I felt like I was getting ready for a blind date, when you are wondering if you're good enough for the person stick around or if they're going to cut the 

date short because you were not what they were expecting. I wanted everything about me 

that wasn't good enough when I was a baby, to be enough now, but I didn't really know what it was that was wrong with me, and I had no way of fixing it to make myself  good enough for that moment. 

       I stood in my kitchen, watching out the window as my husband  and my kids went over 

to meet the two of them, shake their hands and bring them to the front door. I am not sure my heart beat a single time as I watched everything happening out front of my house. My 

little sister walks in the door and my heart fired off one hundred beats per second. I had so much love for the stranger standing in my front door, that it took a lot of self-control not 

squeeze her so hard that I'm sure her head would have popped off. Part of me wanted to 

bury my head in her shoulder so I could just enjoy that moment and not have to remember 

that there was another person standing behind her that I was terrified to meet. I wanted to 

just take in the moment and see beautiful she was, how sweet her voice sounded and how 

excited I was to be the big sister to this amazing young woman who walk through my front 

door. 

        I was expecting this huge wave of anxiety to hit me the minute I let go of her and had 
to see him face-to-face, but by some tender mercy, there was a smooth transition from 

letting go of her to being introduced to him and hugging him and somehow, there was not the

awkwardness I expected there to be, hugging a stranger. Every feeling of fear, anger, and  

uncertainty that I had felt for so many years disappeared for that moment, because I felt 

relief, and quite possibly love, from both of them. As we walked up to the living room to go 

sit and talk, I was again surprised at how smoothly things went. Even though they were 

my family, they were strangers. Every time that I was worried there was going to be an 

uncomfortable pause in conversation, I remembered that the two people sitting in front of 

me were the two people that I wanted to know more about then I could possibly fit in one 

day and that there would never be enough time for all the questions and information I was 

hoping to absorb from them. And even though the time together did not last near as long as I hoped for, the peace that I felt when they were with me made it worth it. 

     Through all of this, I have tried my best to be as objective about everything as I can. I 

wanted to go through each experience feeling each feeling and taking in each moment 

without too many expectations. As children we have certain needs and expectations of our 

parents, and every interaction we have together, shapes who we are. My children have been going through this experience with me. I have done my best to be honest without sharing too much and to open without putting their own feelings at risk. I have learned so much about 

parenting through everything that has happened. I have had a million different scenarios run through my head, trying to change what has happened and what might happen, trying to 

feel less pain, trying to cause less pain, and trying to make everything as simple as possible.        But..... Life is not simple. It's painful. It's hard. It's messy. 

     But..... The things that we learn from the pain and the mess can be beautiful.

    I will never stop wanting there to be more. More connection, more interaction, more love, and that will always put me at risk for more pain and hopefully one day, that love. What an 

amazing thing I can teach my children: That life will never be easy but that we KEEP trying, that some people are harder to love and harder to feel love from, but we NEVER stop loving, and that the bravery it takes to do those things not only makes us STRONGER, but makes 

life a worthwhile experience.   

Finding Role Models

                One of a mother's greatest fears is that we don't know what we are doing and that we are going to mess up. We worry that we are the only ones who either didn't get the secret "How to be an Amazing Mom" handbook, or even worse, that there is no handbook, and we are the only ones who have no idea what we are doing. Even after 6 children, I still feel clueless. As if parenthood wasn't hard enough, each child is so different that the parenting tactics that were so effective with one child are suddenly worthless with the next.
    But I found a secret weapon!
            As a teenager, I had a rather grim opinion of motherhood. I figured it was something women just did to be normal. It was just part of life. I wasn't able to see any benefits to motherhood but I could see a ton of negatives.
           There was a woman at my church who had eight children.  I'll call her Mrs. S. Her oldest was my age. With my bleak outlook on parenting as a whole, I had a rather poor opinion of her as a person. I figured that no sane person would purposely have nine children and that she must not have been educated enough to know about birth control. Fast forward four years and I was lost in the throws of motherhood, the only one of my friends married and the first to have a baby. When my daughter was 3 months old, Mrs. S had baby number 9. She called me up out of the blue one day and asked me to come over and give her some advice. Of course, I was very confused as to what advice me, a new mom, could possibly give to someone with so much more experience. When I arrived at her home and we finished oohing and aahing over each others babies, she told me about some problems she was having breastfeeding and wanted to know if I had any ideas.
           Over the last 8 years, Mrs. S has become one of my closest friends and greatest resources. I visit her weekly if possible. Every one of her children are not only well behaved, kind, and successful in their own right, but each one of them knows how much their parents love them.  Our girls have become best friends and even my son has found friendship with her sons. I soak up every bit of advice she has to give and watch her every move. I ask questions about about how and why she does things. I share my experiences with her and see if there is any way to put her parenting tactics to use in my own home. She helps me work through problems by giving me a spectators point of view.
           There are many other mothers in my life that I constantly preen advice from. I question all of them without judgement and take what advice I think will work for my family. I found that that is my secret "How To be an Amazing Mom", handbook: my collections of friends and their advice.
         That day eight years before had been more for my benefit then for Mrs. S. By asking for my help, Mrs. S had given me my first bit of self esteem as a mother. She made me feel that I had something to give, that maybe, just maybe, I might know how to be a mom. I hope to be able to pass on the favor.