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Posts Tagged ‘children’

Patience is a virtue

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 21, 2011| Leave a Comment »

and a life long quest.  Why do grown-ups forget to have patience with children?  More specifically, why do I forget to have patience with my sons?  Good grief, they are great boys.  I forget they are only boys…six and (a week shy of) eight years old.  They need time to process, formulate their ideas, and then share them.  I wish I were a supermom who always had patience, but I’m not.  I have moments when I don’t remember they’re only children and move through the moment or experience too quickly.   These experiences are often the annoying day-to-day activities, like running errands or working through the chore list, but they are still experiences that the boys can learn from.  What lessons do I want them to learn?

I want them to learn that chores are a good thing.  Chores help teach about work-ethic, the need to contribute to a household, church, classroom, or community and the importance of everyone who uses a space contributing to it.  I want to teach this without also teaching the very easy art of complaining, but I fail there too.

I want them to learn that some days we have to do things that aren’t fun, but we need to do those things before we can necessarily get to the fun stuff.  This is one part of the job of being mom I’d love to blow off.  I spend 50 of my waking hours at work.  That doesn’t leave a lot of waking hours to spend with my family.  I’d rather do the fun stuff with them than the boring errand type things.  How do I add more time to the day?  Jim Croce sang about this desire.  Oh, if I could put time in a bottle.  I try to apply the idea of epochal time to my waking non-work time, but it seems as though I’m better at epochal time at work and fungible time at home.  Staying up late to complete tedious chores only works so much.  I could have a spine and follow through on my plans of having the boys help me with the tedious chores, thus killing several birds with one stone. 

I did manage it today, sort of.  After mowing the section of the yard that I couldn’t get to before the rain, we weeded for a while together.  My sons are not used to work.  They were complaining, taking breaks, and avoiding work as much as possible.  We did get a decent amount of weeding done (the really tall ones along my curb are practically gone).  We had fun shouting about the heat (“It’s hot!…Did I mention it’s hot?” followed by our giggles).  They had to put  away toys tonight too, but again it was accompanied with whines and attempts to get out of it.  That all relates back to my lacking a spine (ironic, considering I’m married to the world’s greatest chiropractor). 

Each day I get a little better.  Each day I can have a little more patience, accomplish the tasks I need to do, and celebrate the epochal moments of life.  Well, I can try at least.

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My Lunch with Kenneth…third course

Posted in My lunch with..., tagged , , , , , , , , on August 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Third course…don’t really know what that would be, perhaps a cosmo for me.  I would now share with Kenny, yes, we’d be on a first name basis by now, an observation my husband once made.  Ken speaks “Shakespearean English” better than most people speak modern English (love their songs, but that’s a whole different blog).

Case in point—watch the scene in Love’s Labour’s Lost when he says the monologue about love.  On the dvd, the one scene is titled “It Kills Sheep” and the next is “Heaven”.  The two monologues sound, from Ken, like regular, everyday English.  It does literally come trippingly on the tongue.  “My melancholy and my rhyme…my rhyme and my melancholy”.  Oh, and the line about Hercules and the line about Apollo’s lute strung with his hair…leading to “And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony”.  Ah, pure beauty.

My sons wanted to stay up late last night and I let them as long as they were watching Shakespeare.  I put in Love’s Labour’s Lost.  After it had played for a few minutes, my one son asks, “Is this Hamlet?”  I told him no.  He said, “But that’s the guy from Hamlet.”  Yes.  He then asked, “Is this Love’s Labour’s Lost?”  How proud was I?  We’ll have to try Henry V tomorrow.

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Run away to the circus

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , , , on August 16, 2011| 1 Comment »

We went to the circus the other evening.  The Cole Bros. Circus under the big top was a wonderful, old school circus.  Amazing acts-the aerialists in particular-and the whole presentation was traditional.  This is their 137th season, impressive record in my book.   They still use the old tricks of diverting your attention with the clowns while they strike the one act and set up the next one.

They did a fantastic job of blending tradition with today.  The aerialists came out dressed in pirate costumes marching to the theme from Pirates of the Caribbean.  Imagine half a dozen “Jack Sparrows” holding the ropes for the trapeze artists.  The one was using the silks (or whatever they are called, I’m not wonderfully schooled in circus lingo) and the long white pieces of fabric looked like the sails on the mast.  Another was using a net and creating images of the sea.  The dozen or so worked together to create this flowing ship using nothing but fabric, netting, trapezes, and physical agility the likes of which I’ll never possess.  It was awesome.

The motorcyclists (including a 12 year girl!) braved all three of them in that metal ball thing and they kept going around and around.  Then amazingly, the ball separated and the girl was on the bottom with her father (?) and brother (?) in the top half, several feet of space between them.  My jaw hung open the entire time.   I always wonder, when and how do they discover they can do that stunt?

The clowns were good old fashioned clowns.  The cops chasing the clowns in the black and white striped clothes, the lady clown clearly using balloons for her endowments, the car separating, or clowns chasing a balloon while going topsy-turvy on one of those giant trapeze type devices. 

To go with the clowns, they had the pink poodles in the car and they did their dances shortly after the camel and horses did their dances.  The tigers were beautiful and did classic routines with just enough Vegas to keep it up to date.  The elephants were still as graceful and gentle as I remembered them from my childhood.  The three grey beauties did their routine and linked trunk to tail after each trick.

All of this was guided smoothly by the ringmaster in his red coat for the first act and his white coat for the second.  The popcorn smell that filled the air was delectable.  The light-up swords and glow-jewelry lit up the darkness of the giant tent like very active and very large fireflies.  The cotton candy was the BEST I had in years…the flavor was so delicious!

As the lights came up, and the circus hands started packing things away till tomorrow’s show, all I could wonder was am I too old to run away and join the circus?  I think if my sons asked if they could, I might say yes.

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Journals…the low tech blog

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , on August 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »

In my continuing efforts to purge my house and soul from clutter, I went through a large storage box containing my college journals.  Oh, gentle reader, I’ve been blogging for years.  Just did it using paper and pen.  I refrained from reading every single page since the point was to purge, not walk down memory lane.  But the pages I did read included the typical stuff of a woman in her early twenties, friendships, guys, the really cool shoes at the mall that I couldn’t afford if I wanted to eat that week.  Obviously, if I had been Carrie Bradshaw, I would’ve had the shoes.  I am more practical and have never had her bankroll to be less practical with.

But there was also heart on those pages.  College was an interesting time for me with a lot of personal stuff going on, much like many college students.  The problems I faced then were the largest problems I had faced to date and I miss those types of problems now.  I sweated the small stuff.  Yet at the time, it was not the small stuff.  That’s the interesting thing about that approach-it isn’t small when you’re sweating it.  It is only in hindsight that you can realize it was the small stuff.  I think I have gotten better at keeping perspective about what is big and what is small now.  My husband and sons will always be big stuff, but some of the day-to-day involved in sharing a home together is small.  To remember that and handle the small stuff with grace and patience is the key (I’m clearly still working on that).

I couldn’t dispose of any of the journals, even though I am aware they’ll never do anything other than sit in the box, but I did purge the old tax records from over a decade ago and “IMPORTANT” papers that have no bearing on my life now.  It felt good to release them and the emotions tied in with some of them.   It’s weird to be reflecting back on some major life events and realizing they don’t really mean squat anymore.

What does mean something in my life are things like my oldest son having had a great week at camp, learning archery, and focusing during vespers.  It matters that my youngest is now six and had “a really fun birthday”.  I watched Michael Jackson’s Thriller with him last week-Michael is his “favorite singer”.  I got the same goosebumps I did when I first saw it in 1983.  My son got goosebumps and declared that he wants to be “one of those zombies for Halloween”.  My six-year-old loved the “stomach bug germs” we gave him for his birthday, some of the guests didn’t quite understand it, but who cares.  My oldest taught me the “Addams Family” prayer he learned at camp.

These are the things that are important now.  That and helping my sons not sweat the small stuff too much when it truly is small stuff, compared to the larger parts of their lives.  There are still paper journals in my life.  I write in a journal for each of my sons regularly, so when they are older they’ll have a written record of their small stuff that was so big.

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Summer camp

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , on July 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Tomorrow I bring my oldest son to summer camp.  He’ll be there for a week.  I’ll be on vacation because my boss knows I’ll be a nut-case.  I’ll have a fun week with my youngest.  Last year the novelty wore off pretty quickly for him being an “only child” if only for a few days.  So we’ve got some fun plans for while his big bro is off having fun swimming, making crafts, and learning archery.

My baby…not so baby anymore.

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Joan Crawford has her place.

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , on July 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Apparently going Joan Crawford on their asses works…a bit. There was some progress in just one day, and a busy day at that.  My boys are wonderful.  I have spoiled them.  I will continue to softly spoil them, in a more balanced manner.  They are both wonderfully unique and learning how to navigate this world in their own odd ways.

Perhaps what worries me the most is seeing them struggle to “fit in” out of our home since they are not forced to be a square peg in a round hole at home.  I don’t think our younger son notices it yet, but our older son does notice the other children staring at him, pointing or whispering.  Fortunately, adults around him understand and younger ones aren’t allowed to progress to teasing or being hurtful.  I simply hope they both keep putting themselves out there to experience as much as they want to without worry about what others think.  That’s probably good advice for myself where they’re concerned.

That and remembering a dash of Joan every now and then won’t hurt.  If you could see me, I’m arching my eyebrows even as I type…

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Really?

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , on July 17, 2011| 2 Comments »

My sons.  I love them.  The disrespect flying out of their mouths today was enough to make me want to go Joan Crawford on their asses.  (Note–I said want to…I didn’t.  Before you get your panties in a bunch, there were no wire hangers involved.)  For years people told me, “you’re going to be a wonderful mother.”  Parents wanted me as their nanny.  Children (of ALL ages) I teach now say how much they love me.  What an awesome mom I must be.  Could somebody please tell my sons?

I don’t want to be their friend.  That’s not my job.  I’m their mom and I understand that a certain amount of dislike and a belief that I am the enemy is a part of that.  But the disrespect has ended.  They were literally shocked that I made them spend three hours cleaning their toy room.  Hello, the mere fact that they have a “TOY ROOM” says something.  We’ve spoiled them.  It’s us.  We did it.  Now we’re undoing it.  The only people unhappy about that are the boys.

I’d write more but I have to go arch my eyebrows.

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Chopped Liver

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , , , , , on July 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I don’t know how it happened.  I do know when it happened.  This is the summer of my discontent.  My sons have taken the first step to independence and I have become chopped liver.  Their world was parent-centric.  Now it’s play-outside-all-day-and-what-do-you-mean-I-have-to-come-in-centric.

Yes, I’m happy for them.  Yes, it’s means they’re growing up just like we want them to, with independence and confidence.  Yes, it means so many wonderful things.

But, first I’m going to have myself a bit of a pity party.

Where are my babies?

Okay, pity party’s over.  What an exciting time.  Yeah, yeah, for them, but I mean for me and my hubby.  We could pick up our hobbies again.  Heck, I’ve already been cast in a show.  I’m going to rehearsal tomorrow and the boys have to come with me, instead of me going with them.  My husband and I have had actual conversations in the recent weeks.  Conversation that were uninterrupted by “Mom, he’s touching me.”  I’ve been completing whole thoughts all at once.  I’ve been working on house projects, including catching up on Hugh Laurie and House.  I’ve done, dare I write it, reading for FUN and the book was a grown-up book with no pictures.  I’m current in the grading for my summer class.

While it is hard to think that the early childhood years have almost passed, it is invigorating to know that the early work took hold.  Our sons are getting it.  No, not perfectly-we really need to work on that talking back to your mother thing-but they are problem solving, compromising, sharing, thinking of others, and having fun with their friends.  They have entered that time of their life when they have secrets that mean the world that they forget the following week.  They make secret clubs and handshakes.  They can do anything, be anything.  It’s the time of youth when everyday objects hold magical powers, the days are never long enough, and the plans they make will really happen.   This summer marks the beginning of one of the best times of their lives and, oh my sweet sons, I am so happy for you.

It’s like the summer in It when the six of them first battle It.  Okay, I don’t hope that my sons end up in the bowels of the sewers battling a monster so hideous one can only call it It, but this is like that summer.  The summer of innocence when a child can still believe in monsters and the tooth fairy.  This won’t be their only summer like this, they’ll have four or five more, but this is the first one for them.  One of the boys they play with (an older boy, he’s 11) is in his last summer of innocence.  You can see it changing for him.  Some days he can completely suspend disbelief, other days he struggles and usually goes home.  The summers of suspension of disbelief.  They’re awesome.

My job now is to let them have their grand adventures.  To let them believe.  To quickly bandage their scrapes so they can back out there.  To hug them when their feelings are hurt and they’re never going to talk to so-and-so again (at least till they’re back outside talking to so-and-so again).  I’ve got to say, it hurts just a wee bit to let them have the space and time away from the “safety” of home.  But only until one of them runs in to get a toy, and pauses to come to me, wrap his arms around me, and say, “I love you, Mom.”  Then the hurt is not so bad.

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My Cup Runneth Over

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , , on July 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

My cup is truly filled with grace and happiness today.  Touching base with my first love, I have been cast in a show, a musical to boot!  It will wonderfully exciting to “move well” across the boards again.

My sons are having a wonderful summer, digging in dirt, spending the day with their friends, getting a treat from Mr. Softee.  They are filthy by the end of each day and it’s wonderful.  My sons, two of their friends, and I will be going to the local zoo tomorrow.

The weather is beautiful this week.  I’ve actually enjoyed some of it.

Vacation Bible School (VBS) has surrounded me with wonderful, talented, giving volunteers again.  I am very excited for it to start next week.

The class I teach is going nicely with a good group of students and an even balance in the classroom.  The class I’ll teach in the fall is looking full and happy.  My job is going well.  Friends are getting good news and enjoying good developments in their lives.

My house is getting cleaner.  My soul is getting cleaner.

Hugh Laurie and Robert Sean Leonard will be back on House.

Life is good.  I am thankful for the blessings of God’s grace filling my cup till it runneth over.

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Mean Mommy

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , on June 27, 2011| Leave a Comment »

My five-year old came over to the chaise, sat down, and said in that sweet little boy voice, “Mom, you’re the best mom in the world (pause) except when you’re being kinda mean.”

My husband then asked him, “when is Mommy mean?”

“When she uses her angry voice.”

“When does she use her angry voice?”

“When we don’t clean up or do what she tells us to do.”

Yep, I’m a mean mommy.  I am proud to be one.  I make my sons take a bath or shower when they are dirty or stinky or just because.

I make them brush their teeth (“yes, you have to brush more than once a day.”)

I make them go to bed by 8:30 during the school year.  I make them do their homework.  I make them apologize when they need to apologize.  I make them say please, thank you, you’re welcome, and may I….

I make them clean up-true, that’s a tough one and we are working on it, but we’re getting there.  I make them learn about taking care of the earth.  I make them think about other people’s feelings.

I make them go to church.

I make them brush their hair and wash their hands and clean their faces.  I make them put out the recycling and the trash.  I then make them put the cans away.

I make them learn responsibility, work ethic, and what it means to be a friend.  I make them practice patience.

Yep, I’m a mean mommy.  I will continue to be a mean mommy for as long as I need to be one.  I am not a perfect mommy and they are not perfect sons.  But we’ve come a long way and it gets better and better every day.

 

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