There’s a poem I came across quite a long while ago that seemed to really resonate with the people I’d shared it with.  I don’t know where it originated, or who wrote it- but it’s lovely and uplifting.  I’m choosing to share it here now, because times are tough for a lot of folks.  Lives are ending, marriages dissolving, homes foreclosing, jobs being lost, and many other trials in between.  It’s important not to lose hope, because it will pass.  Just as other difficult times have.  So this post is for everyone going through something difficult, including myself and my family.

As many times as you’ve been down and out, tears falling from your eyes, and grappling with the harsh realities that have befallen you with heart heavy in chest, you made it through.  Recall the occasions that came next.  After the tears have dried, and the pain diminished, came laughter, smiles and hope.  Brighter days followed, whether it was soon after, or a long time coming.  It got better. 

No matter what sadness, hurt, disappointment, anguish, anxiety, or stress you felt- none of it lasted.  Time moves on, and with it comes light and happiness.  The birth of children, the mending of relations, and opportunity of new jobs, new loves, new friends, new homes, new happy experiences and memories…

New lives evolve out of the situations we endure and conquer.

You grow from the adversity you experience.  Insight is gained, maturity honed, lessons learned.  In the end, everything is A. Okay. Even if it's difficult to believe right now at this moment you find yourself in. 

Here’s a lovely, rhyming reminder of just that:

Don't You Quit

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,

When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,

When the funds are low and the debts are high,

And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,

When care is pressing you down a bit-

Rest if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,

As every one of us sometimes learns,

And many a fellow turns about

When he might have won had he stuck it out.

Don't give up though the pace seems slow -

You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than

It seems to a faint and faltering man;

Often the struggler has given up

When he might have captured the victor's cup;

And he learned too late when the night came down,

How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out -

The silver tint in the clouds of doubt,

And you never can tell how close you are,

It might be near when it seems afar;

So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit -

It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

Our Halloweens, Past & Present ☺

And if you want a reminder of just how quickly change happens all around you, just take a look at children....

This is Halloween 3 short years ago... My little Lion and Scarecrow in our ensemble of the Wizard of OZ. 

(Yes, that's me in the background, Dorothy.  And no, that was not a wig- but my Real Hair.  I went through a red phase...  Shouldn't every gal? 

My Tin Man Husband was busy painting his face Silver in the bathroom, and this shot was taken pre the crying and screaming that his scary face caused in the children.  They had no idea who he was and in turn suffered frightened meltdowns before heading out to Trick-or-Treat.)

 



Halloween 2009:

We were each an element that makes up a S'more...

Our Marshmallow...

& Our Chocolate Bar.... 

(And you can assume that my husband and I were each Graham Crackers.  So sorry we have no family pics on our laptop files...  as they were taken my my mother with her own camera.)

This is them as a Vampire and a Pirate from the same year, for their aunt's Halloween Bash....

Finally, last year they broke away from our "Family Ensemble" and chose their costumes based off of what they found most interesting in a Walmart aisle....

The Magician and his Bunny Rabbit. 

(A little too big to be pulled out of the hat, but cute as a bunny just the same. ;-)  You should see the view from the back, his tail was the cutest part!)

And this year, Halloween 2011, the kids will dress up as their favorite super heroes.  (And Dad and Mom will join in on the fun again, as the villains!):

Our Brave Spiderman and Batman.... 

I will dress as (a very less sexy) Cat Woman-think kitty ears, a tail and drawn on whiskers with black sweats.  And my hubs will dress up as The Joker.

Even our new pooch will join in on the fun this year...

Super Dog Rocky, at your service!!!

Hard to believe these are the same kids...  they grow so fast.  And each Halloween comes around more quickly than the last!

So cherish every moment- the pumpkin pickin' and carving.  The dressing up.  The decorated spooky treats, and rooms.... Knocking on cheerful neighbors' doors. Bonfires (with S'mores, of course!).  The Halloween movies, scary music, and sugar highs!  The whole nine yards!  These are memories that both kids and their parents alike will recall and cherish for years to come. ♥

*Added:

The family photos on our buffet table.

At least you get a sense of how big and scary the Tin Man was for these little kids.  :)

Unpredictable Chaotic Bliss

You never know what the day will bring.  Even with the predictability of being a stay home mom of two toddlers, this is true.  While I must admit our “adventures” are limited.  (Say like… to the park, grocery market, or nearest Chic fil A play area.)  There are still a plethora of places and situations one can find herself in when she’s running around with little kids as sidekicks.  The randomness of being a parent of young kids is constant.   You wake up thinking you’ll scramble some eggs and bacon, and instead its pancakes and sausage they want.  Sure, this is one miniscule example.  But this is just the first five minutes of your day.  You believe you’re ahead of the game with their outfits picked out the night before, only to be met with pouty lips, and watery eyes because it’s the wrong shirt you’ve chosen.  (You pick and choose your battles, but with just fifteen minutes left to get to preschool, I’d be willing to bet you’d swap that striped shirt for the Batman one, too.   You’d probably also feed your kid whatever it is (within reason) that will get him to eat, just so that you can follow through with brushing of the teeth and the hair, doing the dressing, the putting on of the socks and shoes, the back pack, etcetera etcetera etcetera – just to get out of the freaking door!)  Then….. someone’s got to poop.  ALWAYS!  Poop never ceases to come at the most inopportune times!  Just before the movie starts at the theatre, right as you’re about to stuff that fork full of pasta fasul into your mouth, and always when you’re rushing out the door to get somewhere on time!  So, after doing his business and, attempting to wipe the tushy himself, he flushes the poo along with twenty pounds of toilet paper, causing the toilet to over flow- soaking more than just the floor.  Time to pick out a third shirt, and grab your good towels to clean up the stinky, soaking wet mess happening on the bathroom floor.  (Because the good towels are the closest to you and because the only things you care about right now is trying to NOT be locked out of the preschool building.)   All in a weekday morning!  See?  Hectic situations ensue on a daily basis with these tiny, chaotic people.  Schedule things?  Ha!  The very idea of scheduling laughs in my face.

How about you’re rolling along the highway at 60 miles per hour heading to a doctor’s appointment, when one of your kids projectile vomits.  The flowing liquid in the rear view mirror catches the corner of your eye, and the screams or horror from his sibling next to him render you so off guard that it triggers your foot to slam on the brake.  In doing so, the airborne mass of disgustingness propels forward at an even higher velocity, covering your face just as you turn backwards to see what exactly this disgusting looking levitated matter is.  Now you’re swerving off the road, where you vehicular manslaughter a baby turtle, and narrowly miss a billboard sign for some kind of erectile dysfunction medication in the middle of Interstate 95, wondering what the heck happened, and how the hell you’ll ever be able to afford the nine hundred dollar ticket for reckless driving you now have because the cop who came to your aid is single and childless and has no sympathy whatsoever for what you’ve just gone through! 

No.  This did not really happen to me.  But it’s entirely possible, give the fact that kids are so damn unpredictable and have a knack for making things happen that you couldn’t have possibly foreseen in a million years. 

And oh the questions I’m faced with explaining to these inquisitive boys and the things we get into because of those incessant inquiries.  It’s a domino effect, and there’s no end in sight!  This morning, for instance, I found myself answering the question from my four year old as to why some people call the beach the desert.  Undoubtedly a question brought on by some cartoon episode I had entertaining the kids while I attempted to cook breakfast.  (Who says tv doesn’t teach?)  Out came the laptop, up came the Google screen, and in a nano second there was a map of the US, which aided me tremendously in my explanation of how sand without the ocean is not a beach.  ….Whiiiich brought us to finger painting pictures of the sand and surf per the kids’ requests.  A filthy kitchen, two color-covered little dudes, and a whopping mess of paint, papers, brushes, toilet paper rolls and plates later…. I’m exhausted, and I’ve spent my whole morning and afternoon doing something that I didn’t anticipate I’d be doing when I awoke this morning.  This, of course, means that I got nothing else of any importance done today. Like, organizing the bills (Me?  Organized? Ha!), calling to have some erroneous charge removed from my checking account (PI work, aka those dang websites claiming free trials to look up legal documents on people but who really jip you by charging ANYWAY, costs money), making one single bed in this house (Oh well, we’ll just mess ‘em up in a few hours again anyway), or finishing any one of the hundred unfinished house projects that have remained unfinished for months (What’s one more day?)…. But to be fair, making a mess painting with two lil cuties in the kitchen is way more fun than doing adult chores.   Any day.

Point is: 

If you’re an anal retentive, scheduling crazed, orderly, clean, hectic-life-hatin’, methodical, precise person- do not have kids!  Or.  Have them anyway and embrace your newfound chaos.  You’ll be kissing goodbye this idea of an actual clean and structured lifestyle for a good long while.  But if anything is worth it, kids are!

End note:  Literally, just as I was about to post this, my four year old came running out from his bed screaming "Bloody nose!  I got a bloody nose!"

I couldn't make this stuff up.....  Unpredictable, indeed.



Guilty Mama Generation Syndrome

I love my kids.  No.  I looooooooove my kids.  And I love doing for my kids.  Genuinely.  I want them to have it all and experience it all, similar to how most parents feel about their offspring.  However, I do so much with them and for them, that I’m beginning to wonder if anything’s even special anymore.  Is all of this just a huge double edged sword?  My fear is that doing for the children so that they feel enormously loved, lucky and cherished (hoping that an added side effect to this is that they'll have cozy warm memories of their rose colored childhood for the rest of their lives) might only result in the meaning behind it being lost in the excessiveness of it all?   Oh, the excess- in toys, in day trips, in play dates, in activities.  I cannot help but question if all this attention and adoration being bestowed on the kids will even stay with them.  I mean, there’s so much going on all of the time, even I am having trouble recalling it all.  (Thank goodness for cameras, to capture the 1,734,882 “memories” that have managed to stay on my computer's hard drive!) 

I don't mean to complain.  But it's just so over-the-top now.  Both of my parents worked, and I've got many memories of entertaining myself with my barbies and baby dolls.  I played a lot with my sis, our cousin and a neighborhood friend.  Even though we didn't have set up play dates, or tons of fun planned outings and toys, I was by all accounts very happy.  And the fact that those things were in moderation, makes them that much more special and memorable.  

I love having this time with my kids.  I know this may come as a bit of a paradox from pro women’s independence me, but I think a mother’s place is at home raising her kids.  At least, for me this is true.  I’m well aware of the fact that many women wish they had the benefit of spending the first several years of their children’s lives with them, at home.  So I don't want to sound like I'm griping and taking it for granted.  I DO love it.  And I’m lucky.  But man is it hectic!  The demands are never ending, and because there’s no outside work, I live with perpetual guilt that I’m not doing enough, or performing this mom gig perfectly. Yes, I'm aware there is no such thing as perfect.  Which makes it all even crazier….

And though I know that I do a whole lot more with the kids than I ever remember my parents doing with me, still I suffer from “GMG Syndrome”; the relatively new Guilty Mama Generation Syndrome, as I call it.  Where I feel so guilty and depriving if I don’t cater to every request or whim of these demanding little dictators.  This is NOT to say that I do.  I couldn’t possibly take them to their buddy Jake’s house at the drop of a hat without an invite, buy them each three Halloween costumes because they just can’t make their minds up about which super hero they want to be, or bake them homemade cookies at their immediate request if I don’t have the ingredients in the house.  (Yes, all very real, very frequent requisitions.) But still.  You get the picture.  The requests for this and the desires for that are relentless.  I know it’s over-the-top, unnecessary, and that the source from which these requests come from are little people so small that it’s hard as hell for them to see pass their own immediate desires.  Duh!  Point noted.  So, Why. The. Guilt.!?  I give them my time, and attention, energy and love all day long, every single day.  How come I still question my “score” as a mother?  And why do seemingly all of my mommy friends and acquaintances do the same? 

We gals tell each other “Give yourself a break!  You’re doing great!”  We’re quick to respond with the positive quote or cheerful compliment to one another under a distraught facebook mommy post from one of our friends in the same boat as ourselves.  Well, that’s just wonderful that we’re all so damn supportive of one another.  Regular Positive Pollies, we are!  Meanwhile, in the chaotic, toy covered, food stained, homes we reside in on a daily basis with these miniature self obsessed offspring of ours, we’re each big fat fakes.  We’re kidding no one…  Hello Pot, I’m Kettle.