Emergencies

Mom's have to be prepared for everything. Maybe that's why I have so much in my purse and my mini van. There's lots of things to keep life running smoothly. Everything from gum to maxi pads for those things that crop up.

However the one thing that they need the most in every occasion and the one thing that never ceases to rip you apart is your love. I don't think we fully appreciate our own mothers and the very lifeblood they give us until our own has been poured out of our veins and into our children's.

It can leave us hollow and empty but our faith lifts us and carries us on. It is these emergencies of our own, the ones where we are in need of being carried instead of one who carries, that we have to call on a strength greater than our own to get us through.

And remarkably that strength can be found back in our children. As Ethan plays the piano and squeezes me in a tight hug, as Carter shares a joke and rests his taller than me head on my shoulder, as Olivia leaves me a fallen bloom from a flower under my pillow and wants to read me a story:

I find strength.

FREEDOM!!

*Edit as of September 13...I had embedded George Michael's video of his song FREEDOM off of YouTube, but the image was a little pornographic on the freeze frame so I took it off*

OK forget that this is a weird image to start off my post of how I feel about all my kids in school. In fact don't even watch this weird video...Turn around and do something else for a minute while you listen to the chorus and picture me dropping off my van load of kids (minus Picker and Puker this year) every morning while the happy words, "Freedom!" sing through my head!

On the second day of Olivia going to school last week, I was at a salon and the lady working on me asked me if all my kids were in school.

"Yes," I replied. "My youngest went to Kindergarten yesterday."

"Do you have a job yet?" my aesthetician asked.

Yet? I thought.  YET!! Did you hear she started school yesterday? was I supposed to pound the pavement the very minute she closed the van door and find a job?

I explained that I also have a high schooler and a mere 5 1/2 hours from the time I drop off the little ones until he gets home.  Without morning or after school care, I hardly even count for a part time job.  I also explained that with all 3 in school and all of our activities I can hardly catch my breath from 3-9 pm and that is hard enough.

"Maybe you can get a job as a morning TA at the school or something," she continued.

Did you not here what I said? Besides, I hate volunteering once a week in the classroom (which is exactly why I did not sign up for it this year...I HATE sitting there for an hour listening to kids who can't read, try to read.  There I said it.  It's out there. And the ONLY reason I did it when the boys were in elementary school  was I had to do it so I could get the teachers I wanted and so those teachers would do what I needed for my kids.  I am now in a school where I don't have to kiss butt to get that because it is a better school.  Therefore, you will not see me do class parties, or read I Am Sam books, but I am happy to do other things. Sometimes. Besides, the classes all have full time aides already there [I told you, good school]...how do they need me?).

So that makes me being a TA in the morning completely out of the question. And I say this politely to my stylist.

"But you have a teaching degree, right?" she asks.

"Yes, but high school is ever so much different than elementary and frankly, I am not even sure if I want to work right now."

I have had to justify this to lots of people I come in contact with lately. Everyone seems to think that since all my kids are in school I have nothing to fill my time with.  Oh there is plenty, and since this blog often posts my crazy insane schedule let me give you a rundown of how yesterday went, and so far is fairly indicative of how my days go most of the last week and a half since Olivia started school.

8:30 leave to take carpool kids (3) plus my 2 to school
9:00 met with Ethan's teacher
9:30 get back home (with the Diet Pepsi I stop for daily and must admit doing this by myself is priceless and usually when I sing George Michael's song in my head).
10:00 after unscrewing the front window our of my front door to take to Lowe's with me, the Costco coupons, and check on Carter, who is home sick, I head out again.
10-11:30 Lowe's doesn't have my window, Target errands done, and swing by the yarn store to get a skein for upcoming birthday present knitting project.
11:30-12:30 Maybe spent too long in the yarn store but head home after an hour. (freedom song singing softly in the background)
1:00 made the half hour drive home but didn't get to Costco and pick up Carter from home for a dentist appointment.
1:30-3:15 sit in the dentist office while Carter's cavities were filled.  I know he was sick, but since he already felt like crap I figured he may as well only feel like crap one day instead of two, if I rescheduled.
3:45 kids home from elementary school with the carpool mom dropping them off.
4:00 It was my day to pick of kids from the high school for the Fall Play they are rehearsing for and since the other two mom's worked on Tuesday, I had to go back and get the kids even if Carter wasn't there.
5:00 home and dinner thrown together.
5:45 off to Back to school night for both the Kindergarten AND the high school.  Good thing they are next door to each other.
8:45 home and got kids to bed by 9:30
10:00 asleep.

I am not sure I see much time for a job in there.

I am also not sure I see much free time in there.  In fact, I shamelessly admit I want more.  See on Monday I did selfishly take a 2 hour hike up Baldy, a popular hike here in my area.  I video-ed me at the top, but I mentioned too much personal information about what  I could see below me in the town I live in so you have to be my friend on facebook to see it.  (There are some pictures at the end of this post).

It was heavenly.  I did it all by myself.  I enjoyed my own thoughts and my own pace and the sheer and utter silence at the top. I came home and had a shower all by myself and lunch and ran a couple of errands by myself before picking the kids up from school to get Olivia to ballet at 4.  I got home from that at 5, made dinner, had family home evening and the whole time I wished I was back on the top of Baldy, looking at the clouds and getting a sun burn.

So no. I do not want to get a job, I do not want to come in to your class every week. I have plans.  Plans that included painting my front door (done last Friday a lovely shade of Teal that my kids don't understand is an ACCENT color designed to have an impact on our front yard but now I need a new window to go in since I can't get the yellowed plastic window frame painted white).

I have been on a cross country run on my beloved ski trails and finally saw what they look like in the lush green vs. the crisp white.

I have been to the gym and not had to pay child care.

And this winter I plan on skiing my heart out.  I have years of photos to put in albums and the years since we moved here that need printed off and put in albums.

I have a new niece on the way and she needs a quilt.

I have another new niece or nephew that will need a quilt as soon as I find out what it is.


I am going to see what I need to do to get my teaching license here in Alaska and keep that in my back pocket for a few years.

And I am going to write and research an idea I have for a story.


I am going to maybe take downhill lessons at Alyeska and get good enough to keep up with my 5 year old on the slopes this winter.

But know that come 2:30 I start homework and taxiing and refereeing fights and turns and calls of who sits shotgun.  I pay bills, take kids to the doctor, the ortho, the dentist and get prescriptions.

I do not want to pay for nor turn over the duties of my life before school or after school to someone else.  I will pack lunches, sign permission slips, brush hair, bathe, fight over what clothes get worn,  and if we all need jackets (we live in ALASKA children. The answer is, yes, you need a jacket!).

I will listen to my own child (only) learn to read, pass off math facts, edit papers on the Odyssey, solve the Pythagorean theorem and build dioramas and book reports.

I will wash sheets, fold jeans, match socks (to the Nate Berkus show, not Caillou [insert Freedom song here too]) vacuum stairs, clean out closets and throw away toys I know you don't play with any more (shhh) and scrub toilets.

I will help a friend who through her back out this week and is bed ridden for several more weeks.  I will go to lunch shamelessly with other mom's with all their kids at school.

No I am not "working." Yes, I am A) choosing not to and B) blessed enough not to need to and I thank my Heavenly Father for that daily.

Mt. McKinley.

Anchorage

Enjoying my Freedom.

A response to Kolbi

First: the chandelier came from Restoration Hardware... 

My cousin Kolbi, wrote a post about being prepared for motherhood.  It was really good.  But when I started writing a comment to her it turned into an essay.  I thought I would expand on that comment here in my own blog...

As a stay at home mom who never wanted to be one, I have been at this now for 14 years.  That is almost half my life really, when you think about it.  Oh the first 7 years were really really hard.  I thought I would go crazy with nothing to do but kids and mess after mess after mess.  I hated it more than I loved it for sure.  Like really hated it and got angry that this is what life dealt me.  That this is what I chose and quite frankly I would like what was behind door number 2 or 3 or 4...

Then something clicked. I think it was school.

I cried sending Carter off to Kindergarten. I figured he would love his teacher as much or more than me and was insanely jealous of her sharing that pedestal with me.  And  he did put her up there with me, but as I got him on and off the bus every day I saw so much change in him.  I loved that he was coming home with new ideas he was testing and new independence and confidence he was building.  And by Christmas of that year my baby Carter was gone.  Completely gone.  Instead I had little boy Carter who would never be the same and continues in never being the same.  They grow and change so fast.

While I missed and still sometimes do miss going to work and feeling fulfilled and feeling like I am contributing to society/the world/whatever, I have also learned that I don't multitask well.  I have 3 different to do lists for each child already in my head. Sometimes those lists coincide (like dinner for all 3 usually is the same thing) but mostly each has different needs/wants/demands that need met each day. There is 3 different sets of homework, and after school activities, and campouts for scouts, and talks at church, and shoes that don't fit and dolls that need fixed and rooms that need painted and TV shows that need monitoring and video games and chores and all at different levels and constantly running through my head! Combine that with my own obligations to my church calling, my extended family (it takes a bit of work to keep in touch with everyone but that is a post for another day), and a list of things I want to do that I try to squeeze in. Oh and I do have a husband who is amazing at helping with all the daily mechanics of things (he is a whiz at dishes and folding laundry) but he has his own schedule and needs (no not always those kinds, but even that is still on the TO DO LIST!).

Can I even think of working and adding yet another list to bounce around this brain of mine?

When the kids go to school I am so glad that I am home when they are sick. I am so glad JaDee and I do not have to have the "whose work is more important not to miss" exchange when someone wakes up with a fever. I am so glad I volunteered at the school not because I liked listening to 25 kindergartners read the same story to me over and over again (MIND NUMBING) but because it gave me leverage with the principal when I needed to get my kids into the good teacher's classroom, or to get the teacher to meet the needs of my kid when I actually see what is going on in her classroom.  Because nothing brings out momma bear in me more than a crappy teacher or a crappy situation at school and I like to know what is going on with my kids for 6 hours a day.  Plus I go on field trips and get to know the friends and the friends' moms too (again, I can think of a thousand different ways I would rather spend my days most of the time, who really wants to go dissect cow eyes).

(I recently found an ally in one of Carter's friend's mom who agrees with me that Xbox live is nothing we need in our home.  This was while the 5-6 boys he hangs out with at school were sharing with us some of the funny things that have happened while talking to strangers on-line in these games and one of the boys admitted to being propositioned by a man who claimed to only be dressed in butter).

So glad I went on that field trip!

It is a huge amount of work to stay home. I know Kolbi did not even begin to hint that staying at home was not work, and I know she knows I end every day as exhausted as she does, but all in all I am glad I chose to stay home.  I am glad I chose to put the bulk of my effort into my own family.  With any job there is crap to put up with.  It may be a co-worker or a project or a boss. But at least I can say at the end of the day, I actually LOVE the people I work for.  I may not always love what I do, but I love who they are and I like to think that my efforts are what they need to be better people.

A recent exchange with one of my boys has lead to them being more and more aware of what it takes to raise them and as a result, they are ever more grateful too.

"What!  I didn't get a Slurpee!  How come she gets a Slurpee and I don't" You would have thought I took Olivia to Disney World without them the way they carried on.

"Well," I answer slowly.  "Olivia got to come with me to Costco for 2 hours to buy groceries, since we were completely out. Then waited in line with me at the post office while I picked up a package that happened to be the boots I had to order you. Then we washed the car since it was filthy and you were yelling about how the road slime got on your church pants, which we washed by the way and have them hanging in your room.  And before we came to pick you up from school, I saw I was out of gas and Olivia never got lunch, so we went in and got a granola bar and a Slurpee before picking you up. I think she deserves a Slurpee."

"Oh." Is all they can say.  And ever since that exchange, and a few others like it, I get great big hugs from the boys who tell me thanks for coming to get them when they are sick. Thanks for this delicious dinner (tuna fish casserole?? who knew they were so easy to please?). Thanks for buying my science fair plants (that is on today's list) while I am at school because I have a campout tonight.

Those thanks are cool.

So in the end, the mindless days of Elmo, and figuring out what the heck I am going to do with this toddler until dad comes home, and being a nap-Nazi just so I can hear my own thoughts for 60 minutes, have paid off.  I have worked hard and I still work hard and there is always more work to be done.

And I will be here to do it.

my season

It is cold, snowy and I should really put a sweater and slippers on so I don't freeze at this computer. I always get cold at the computer.  I haven't figured out why that is, but I do.  The ice in my diet Pepsi isn't helping either.  But oh well.

Last week I was in McDonald's play land with Olivia (usually anther freezing cold place) but the sun was out and it was coming through the glass and making me down right toasty so we stayed for like an hour.  I had not brought a book or my phone or my iPod and so I had a lot of time to think (I did have my knitting).  And what I thought about was how I am loving this time of life.

Ever since I started having kids 13 and a 1/2 years ago, and they placed Carter in my arms, I started looking forward to the day when they would all be big.  Big but not totally grown. The time when all my kids were home, and we were busy making the stories that would someday start with "Remember when we were kids and we did__________?"

Well, we are at that stage.  And it is great.

I love this stage so much because I realized something about myself a long time ago... I don't do well with change.  Part of the reason I feel like such a basket case with my small children is all the change that goes on from birth to age 5.

Now don't get me wrong.  I love the new born stage. The tiny babies that cuddle close and mold with you.  It's short and fleeting and is followed quickly by the tumultuous world of MILESTONES.  All of which create their own brief chaos in life.

Here's a few quotes from some of those chaos creating milestones:

-"They're getting the first tooth and they aren't sleeping well.  And/or having diarrhea and runny noses with it."
-"So and so is eating solids now, so we are adjusting the nursing schedule."
-"We just moved them up to size 12 mo and now nothing fits!"
- "Oh that bump on his head was from trying to crawl up the rocking chair!"
- "He doesn't like to be laid down! All he wants to do is stand up and see everything."
- "She just runs away from us at church and she is too young for nursery."
- "He climbs on everything these days."
- "sick..."
-"rough night..."
- "potty training..."
- "switched to whole milk..."
- "No more binkies..."
- "No more bottles..."
- "No more sippies..."
- "Out of the crib..."
- "table food..."
- "Allergic to..."
- SHOTS!!

The only thing that is constant IS change!  Which I know is par for life, but really every other week for the last 13 years I could use any one of those quotes for the title of how my week was going.

I am aware that there are still many changes to come too.  Driving, puberty, voice changing, taller than mom, taller than dad, high school, seminary, kindergarten, first dates, but I think I am going to have more fun with this than potty training!

So for the next 5 years, before Carter goes off on his mission, we are going to be busy making Remember When stories!

How you know

One summer, a few years ago, Sherie and I were at the Perry 4th of July Softball tournament.  I am sure we went for the Perry Ice snow cones more than the actual game, but while I was there I had a revelation.

Olivia was about 20 months old.   I had left her home with JaDee and the boys to go with Sherie to the snow cone..er.. Softball tournament.   Much of the rest of the town was there and Sherie ran into someone she knew who was showing off the latest grand baby.  The baby was tiny, just brand new and congratulations were passed along and we headed up to our seats in the bleachers to gossip...I mean watch the great Softball Tournament.

The new grandma took her latest bundle of joy down to the seats several rows in front of us.  I leaned over to Sherie and said, "You know, when I see a cute little baby like that, and they are all tiny, and scrunched up and sweet, it makes me want-----TO VOMIT!"

That was how I knew I was done having babies.

Further confirmations came to me when Olivia was 3 and my friend Ranae had a baby.  She delivered in the same hospital I did and as I was buzzed into the maternity ward I seriously almost turned around and left.  I came this close (imagine me holding my fingers a mere half inch apart) to leaving my gift at the nurses station and bolting for my life. I was having nightmares of being back in the same hall recovering from an eventless, easy birth.  I knew again I was done.

I rarely hold anyone else's babies unless I am related to them.  And since I live in Alaska I don't get to do that very often.  In short, I know I am done.

Then on Sunday a couple came to church with their new twins.  In Sunday School they both started to squirm and fuss in their carriers and I had a familiar pang in my heart.  As the twins' mother reached down to cuddle one close, I could feel the comfort that the baby settled into as her arms cradled him.  I wistfully and even longingly remembered when that was my job too.

But Olivia is almost 5!  There is no way I am "baby hungry." In fact there are some very permanent reasons for me not to be baby hungry.  Permanent solutions we prayed about and are positive were the right thing for me, my health and our family. Why am I feeling the NEED to grab a baby?

Here is what I came up with as the answer to that question.  I may not want another baby, but I love being a mother.  And with bigger kids the ways to envelop my children in the comfort and safety of me have changed.  I no longer cradle them in a fuzzy blanket and feel their heartbeat and smell their smell.  I laugh at jokes, make special trips to video game stores, and help with homework.  I encourage talents, discourage bad feelings, and run out for secret treats at the gas station.  I come to games, watch plays, drive to early morning band and teach home pre-school.

It isn't as easy as it once was to provide this comfort. There are bullies and bad words and innocence lost (Ethan recently learned where babies came out of.   He thought they came from your belly button.  Oh and it was Olivia who told him the truth) and tears over bad grades and hard work and tough choices.  I can't make it all better by simply pulling them onto my lap and brushing my lips on their forehead anymore.

I was missing that simple time I had with my babies. That time when the world seemed to stop while I breathed in my baby's smell and marveled at that little mouth in the biggest of yawns.  I was so happy for the new mom that she got to be the comfort for her own babies and thankful for the divine responsibility I have to my own.

Even though its different now, it is essentially the same.