Get the Funk out!

Hey friends. Just wanted to drop a shorty short note and let you know that I haven’t forgotten about you! I forgot my phone number, my address and my kid’s birthday, but not about you! Ha ha! just kidding, mostly.

We are just winding up our school year and it’s crazy how it seems to go faster the closer we get to the end. I don’t get it, it never seemed to work that way when I was a kid!

I’m also dealing with some feelings of nostalgia. A funk, really. My son, my oldest, my most precious first-born is finishing elementary school today. I can’t believe how quickly the time has gone. They have been wonderful years and they’re coming to an end. Next year he’s in middle school. And on top of that, we’re putting him in a private middle school, which is um, less than appealing to him. The public school in our district is a very good school, my problem with it is the fact that 14 elementary schools come together in one building for a class of approximately 1100 kids, PER GRADE. In one building. Yeah, can you say ginormous? We don’t want him to fall thru the cracks or feel like he’s not worthy or good enough. The school we’re putting him in has 35 kids in the 5th grade right now, in two classes. It goes thru 8th grade and then feeds to one of three private high schools. It has been a very difficult decision to come to and it’s a serious commitment for the next 7 years and beyond. I think the part of it that’s the hardest for me, besides the end of elementary school, is seeing him unhappy. He so does not want to go. One of his classmates will be going to this school, and he knows a few other kids there (it’s connected to our church in the way that Catholic schools are part of a parish I guess) so it won’t be a sea of unfamiliar faces. I think the reality’s setting in and it’s a major change. Even though I’ve told him it will be a major change either way. Agh, it’s tough being a parent sometimes.

And of course, in the midst of all of these mixed emotions, some numbnuts computer genius managed to get his stupid malware virus on my laptop, so it’s at the IT guy’s right now getting a thorough cleaning. Grr. If those ppl would use their brains for good, think about what a world we’d live in!

So, please forgive me for not posting any new recipes for a bit. I’ll be back next week with some delicious offerings. Think about roasted Vidalia onions, tomatillo salsa verde, and Tuscan chicken to name a few. Come back next week and see what’s new!

Responsibility is hard on a 10 year old

My husband and I have always tried to teach our children responsibility. To be responsible for their things, their actions, just your basic overall life skills.  My sweet boy got a hard lesson in it yesterday.

Last year toward the end of the school year, my son’s class was learning about 3 different animals: fiddler crabs, millipedes and some kind of frog. At the end of the lesson, the children were allowed to keep a creature of their choice, with parental permission of course! My boy wanted a millipede. they are unobtrusive little critters that would be kept in a closed habitat, so why not? I’ll let him learn about caring for a pet. Not only did he get one, but he got two and he was thrilled! I got him a container that was big enough for them and told him that they were his. He was responsible for their care and feeding, not me. I have enough to do with the care and feeding of the humans in our family!

He did really well with them this summer. They are low maintenance bugs and only need to be fed about once a week. At the beginning of the school year I would remind him about once a week to feed them and he did it. A few weeks ago,I told him that he should write himself a reminder on his calendar because I felt he’s old enough that I shouldn’t have to tell him every time.

I knew he hadn’t fed them and asked him last week if he had. No he told me. Last night I asked him if he had fed them. No, again. So now it’s been two weeks since these creatures have been fed. That’s a long time for an insect to go without food or water. At bed time when he decided he needed to feed them, he found one of them had died. He was very upset and distraught. It was so hard to see him that way. We tried to remind him that we didn’t know how old they were, but that also, this is the thing that happens when we forget to take care of our pets. I told him that we could bury it in a flower bed today and it will become part of our flowers and that helped a little.

 It’s so hard to step back and allow your kids to fail, but that is what we need to do as they grow. That is the only way they will learn responsibility, is by actually experiencing it, it’s not something that’s easily taught. He will learn that his actions, or lack of, affect others and in a potentially negative way. If I were to take over and feed his pets, he would think that I would always do that and he didn’t need to worry about it because mom will always take up the slack.  I’m sorry if I sound like a hard-nose mom, I’m definitely not. I’m trying to help my children learn the skills they will need when they move on in their lives and I”m not there to pick up the pieces.  I love that child more than anything and to see him that way was heart wrenching, but I really feel like he’s going to learn one of those lessons that we all have to get the hard way. I’m just glad that the stakes werent’ higher. I’d rather him learn it thru losing a millipede than doing something completely irresponsible and ending up in jail, or wrecking a car, or something else much more devastating.

Now, it’s time for me to go and hug him and tell him how much I love him.

Is 7 too young to be a drama queen?

Heaven help me. My beautiful baby girl was such a sweet and easy-going baby. People were amazed at her and how good she was. She was a joy to be around.  She was very solemn most of the time and would study people, as if deciding whether or not she would engage in any kind of communication with them. She didn’t cry very much, slept well and was just precious. I couldn’t believe my luck, to have two sweet and easy-going children. Well, ha ha! the universe said. When my girly was about 22 months old, it was as if someone flipped a switch and she went from a laid-back sweet heart, to a full-blown two-year-old and never looked back. She would throw a fit and I would look at her and say, ‘Who are you and what have you done with my baby girl?’

There is almost exactly 3 years between my youngest and oldest, the oldest being my son, who is still my sweetheart, my caring and funny boy. My girl, well, anything her brother does, she will do twice as much. He gets two tickets for good behavior in class, she’ll say she got 10!

She’s got quite the temper and sometimes can’t really control it, no matter how I try to calm her. So yesterday, we’re getting ready for school. I normally allow her to choose her own clothes, with my approval of course. Yesterday was a different story. She put on no less than three outfits! She’s in SECOND GRADE! I was so frustrated with it, I told her I would be choosing her clothes from now on because there’s no need for that kind of thing. It’s not like she’s preparing for the Oscars or prom. it shouldn’t be this hard to get dressed for elementary school!

Let me just say, I am not a dramatic person. I am not high maintenance and I’m pretty even-keeled, so where this is coming from, I’m not quite sure. I know I was a handful when I was in high school, but we’re not there yet.

Today, well, today was a rough one. I reminded my girly that I was going to be the fashion police today and pick out what she wore. You would have thought I told her  we were moving to Siberia. She went off on me and was very upset and said some really hurtful things, the kind of things that moms definitely don’t like to hear from their children. After she’d cooled down, I explained to her how what she had said hurt me and asked how she would feel if I had said them to her. Then she got it. She cried, apologized and snuggled in my lap. I told her that when she’s angry she can’t just say what pops into her mind because you may say something that you’ll regret later. I try to make everything  a teaching moment, I just hope she learns from it and doesn’t do it again. I know, I know, and there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but I can dream, can’t I? Just let me have that for now!

The first decade

Ten years, a decade. The blink of an eye for some, a life time for others, literally. For me, it’s the whole drop in a bucket thing, I can’t believe ten years have gone by. My son, well, that ten years have been his lifetime, and I think it seems to be dragging by for him.

I’ve been reminiscing about my life ten years ago. You see, my son, my first-born, will be turning 10 tomorrow and it’s made me reflect on the events of that summer.

I just have to say that I never expected how becoming a mother would change me. I feel like I”m more compassionate, I think of how my decisions will effect my children before I think about how they may effect me. I never thought I could love two people so much it hurt sometimes. I never cried over those stupid Hallmark commercials, or at most movies for that matter. I feel like I”m doing a really big job, like I’m part of something bigger than myself. Every night when I say my prayers, I just ask for guidance and patience (extra!) so that I can be the best mom for my children. It is such an honor and a privilege to be their mother and I want to do everything I can to guide them and help them find the right path for them in life.

Motherhood is one of those clubs that you really can’t understand until you’ve jumped in feet first, planned or not. Kind of like trying to describe a color to someone who was born blind, words can’t really describe it.

My husband and I had been married two years when we found out we were going to be parents. We were overjoyed and couldn’t wait for his arrival. Although, when I looked at the calendar, I have to say I was less than thrilled about being pregnant in 100+ temps. I made the mistake of expressing my displeasure to an elderly lady. She paused, looked at me very pointedly and said, ‘When I was pregnant in summer, we didn’t have air conditioning.’ Um, ok, I”ll shut up now! That comment made me re-evaluate my thoughts.

Being a natural health care practitioner, I had a very definite idea of how I wanted the birth to go, and it had nothing to do with a germy hospital, needles in my back, or invasive procedures. We were going to have a nice, calm, home birth with a doula and a very experienced midwife present. We had everything planned out.

Yeah, that’s where I figured out that I really don’t have the control over my life like I thought I did. At 38 weeks, dangerously close to the end of my roundness, we discovered my boy was breech. What? We visited an OB/GYN that the midwife worked with  for an ultrasound, that confirmed what she told us. Great. So doc says, here’s what we can do: n A. schedule a hospital room to try to turn the baby (why hospital vs his office? Because many times this procedure ends up triggering labor, or worse. yay.) or B. you can try to turn the baby at home. Well, you know which one we chose. I had heard nothing good about when doctors try to turn the babies. We turned on some Beatles down low by my pelvis, I lay down on a stack of cushions so my head was lower than my feet and my husband talked to the baby and massaged my belly to help him move. Guess what! IT WORKED! We were all surprised and I was afraid to lie down in bed to go to sleep that night for fear the little beggar would flip back around!

Nope, he stayed where he was supposed to stay and about two weeks later we thought we were getting a baby. I’ll cut this short, because it’s a very long story. The abridged version is labor started Friday evening, stopped and started back on Saturday afternoon in earnest. We thought we were getting a baby. Well, that’s what we get for thinking. At 7 or 8 Sunday night, yes, that’s right I said Sunday, we finally threw in the towel and went to the hospital. My plan went right out the window. The only part of my plan that worked out the way I’d wanted it to was  the beautiful healthy baby we got to take home.

I remember so vividly that feeling of falling head over heels in love with this little person. I couldnt’ stand to put him down. I would hold him, rub his soft little head and just stare at him for hours, in complete awe and amazement at the gift God had given us. His birth really brought home to us the fact that while we may have choices in life, we arent’ really as in control of things as we thought we were. Today I look at my boy and I am so proud of him, so proud and honored to be his mother. He’s very bright and sweet, and loves to make people laugh. He’s very caring and loves animals.  I’m excited to see him as he continues to grow and change.

Happy birthday honey, I love you! Here’s hoping the next decade is as good as the first!