Month: October 2011

Joy, Stay at home mom

If you want to know where your heart is look to where your mind goes when it wanders

 

Just over two months ago, I wrote about my unexpected desire to become a stay at home mom.

Since that post, I have been working on listening to what my soul wants–without judging it, without letting “rational” arguments push it away, and without letting myself veer off-course every time something awesome happens at the office.

(It’s so easy to keep saying “‘I’ll just finish this one really cool project and then I’ll make the move.” That could go on forever.)

At first, I would only tap in to my deep desires late at night, or when talking to a sage woman friend of mine who is almost twice my age.

When daylight would come, I would think back to all those silly thoughts I had the night before and shove them under the pillow. But as I’ve spent more time inviting in the “what-if’s,” it’s flipped–it’s hard to stop thinking about anything else but the new life I’ve committed to.

Sometimes the things our soul wants the most are the things we reject the strongest.

A friend asked me a year and a half ago if I wanted to stay at home. “Absolutely not,” I blurted. It was such a strong, immediate reaction that it raised a little flag for me. But I ignored it.

Besides, I rationalized, I was just regaining my strength after dealing with a mean blow of postpartum anxiety. Staying home with two children under two seemed far more terrifying than just going to work.

This summer that my husband posed the idea to me: What if you stayed home?, even then, I didn’t feel a big Yes! That’s it! But this time I decided to consider it.

“Considering it” for me means mountains of research, talking to the wise woman I mentioned, and trying to push aside all the external forces/judgements/”are you crazy” looks I get from friends.

Since allowing my thinking to shift over the past couple of months, I went from “absolutely not” to wanting it so badly that living in my old life has felt like wearing jeans two sizes too small–making me feel uncomfortable and antsy in my “old life.”

It’s like I can see my children’s babyhood disappearing right before my eyes, and if I don’t inhale as much of it as I possibly can, quick, it will be gone forever.

So I’m cleaning out my desk. We are interviewing people to help take over my workload at the office. And I’m promising my boys that soon, mommy will be home.

I’m taking the leap. Stick around for the new adventure.

 

image: whereisthecool

Toddler tricks

 

If you haven’t set your toddler up with one of these $2 hardware store gems yet, you will soon be sending me cupcakes and flowers. Especially with all the new time you’ll have on your hands. Seriously, the hours and hours (okay, minutes and minutes) you can buy yourself with this simple device is spellbinding.

Only some of the ways I’ve used this baby:

  • “See all those brown spots in the lawn? That means the grass is THIRSTY. Can you go give it water?”
  • “Can you squirt those ants over there?”
  • “Look! You can paint pictures on the cement!”
  • “Go squirt some water off the front porch.”
  • “You don’t want to go out in your stroller? How about if you bring your squirt bottle?”

My only caution is that if you have more than one child, be sure everyone has their very own spray bottle. You’ve never seen a meltdown like the one where only one kid has a “squirt squirt.”

 

Image: AlishaV

Advice (Unsolicited), Holidays

Let's spend christmas this way! And not in a hospital!

Last year I offered up “5 Mistakes I’ll Avoid Next Christmas,” in which I vowed to not wait until December for all my Christmas to-do’s.

If you share that goal, here are a few things to do before it gets too crazy.

1) Organize your photos

Each year I like to send out a photo calendar to close family members. I also like the idea of giving each child their own “best of 2011” photo book (not sure whether Christmas or birthdays is a better time for this, but we have a holiday-time birthday boy, so I’d need to get this organized either way).

  • Round up all the photos (your computer, anything that needs to be dowloaded from the camera, your iPhone, your partner’s iPhone, etc.)
  • Import everything into iPhoto
  • Put together a “best of” folder and upload to Shutterfly (This is the most time consuming step and I suppose you could always just skip iPhoto and upload everything to Shutterfly or whichever photo storage/printing service you use.)
  • Bonus: Start putting together the annual calendar and photo books

2) Plan your holiday card

Those superfamilies down the street are all booking photographers to come over and do their family photo for their annual holiday card. As much as I’d like to roll my eyes at this, we had professional shots done last November and it was well worth the time it took to plan it.

  • If you want a pro photographer, book now. (But remember this is not completely necessary, especially if you only plan on sending out a photo of the kids.)
  • Brainstorm some photography ideas, including wardrobes. (No khaki pants on the beach!!) Flip through Tiny Prints or Minted for some updated, gorgeous ideas.
  • Update addresses and add/purge people to/from your holiday card list.
  • Here’s a novel concept: Schedule a deadline for sending them out so they don’t arrive mid-January, like most of mine did last year.

3) Think strategically about gifts

During my children’s first couple of Christmases, I couldn’t wait to add all the loot to our playroom. We were new parents starting from scratch. Now we have an overflow room in the basement of toys. I want to think strategically about the “stuff” we bring into our home.

  • It’s a great time of year to do a toy purge, which will also help you assess what your children have outgrown and things you might like them to have more of (art supplies, anyone?)
  • Not everyone loves these, but I think Amazon Wishlists are a brilliant way for you to collect your thoughts about things you’d like your children to have–and hopefully their grandparents will agree. If anything, it should give them a better idea of the kinds of things your kids are into. The trick is how to GET them to the Wishlist…
  • Where do you stand on the volume of gifts you give to your family? If you want to do things a little differently this year, what criteria will you use?
  • I love this idea I read on Simple Mom (I’m still looking for the direct link): Each child gets 5 presents: Something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read, and something to eat. Not sure if I could be this disciplined, but I love the concept and it could be a great model for giving to a spouse.
  • I wrote last year that this Christmas, I won’t let extended family members get away with not telling me what they want. (Maybe that’s the way to get them to our Wishlists–have them create one for themselves!) I’m even thinking about suggesting we draw names so everyone gets one quality present they really want. (Instead of leaving them in our guest closets like my parents did when they flew home!)
  • Decide now how you’ll keep an inventory of things you buy along the way. Will you store everything in a little-used room in the house or basement? Keep a Google spreadsheet or list on Evernote? Don’t make the mistake I did and find stashes of little gifts hidden away–in January.

4) Decide what holiday activities are most important to you

And how you’ll make time for them in the midst of your already full family life.

Last year we didn’t go to a single Christmas event. Not one!

This year, I’d like to:

  • Be more plugged in to what my community is up to (the lighting of the village Christmas tree!)
  • Attend a church concert (how I love Handel’s Messiah)
  • Make at least a handful of the amazing crafts and treats I’ve pinned on Pinterest
  • Stroll down Fifth Avenue at night to admire the holiday windows (Bendel! Bergdorfs!)
  • Do an Activity Advent Calendar with the boys
  • Go to church at least a couple of times (first must find a church)
  • And a whoooole bunch of other things…But if I don’t look at the calendar and start blocking off some time, I know my family would just as easily stay home in front of the fire in our respective “comfy pants.” Which isn’t always a bad thing.

What else? What helps you prepare for the holidays?

Leave a comment here!

 

Image: US National Archives


Tough Days

The details leading up to it really aren’t that interesting–It was my husbands birthday last Monday. We were all at home that morning because it was Columbus Day. So instead of having the normal structure of a “mommy day,” we treated it like a typical Sunday morning–letting either mom or dad sleep in until the kids completely lose it somewhere around 10am.

Since it was his birthday and all, we gave dad the “gift of sleep” even though I was feeling like crap–exhausted, a little sick, and unsteady. When the deteriorating of the toddlers kicked in, the flareups came fast and furious. And I observed myself yelling at them not once but at least three times. At that point, it was only 9 am. I just couldn’t wake him up yet.

I am not a yeller by nature.

When I find myself giving in to anger by yelling, it means I have reached my peak of problem solving and am feeling completely out of control.

Many times danger is involved, like yell #3 that morning when one toddler was swinging on the refrigerator door while the other was wedged inside the fridge and I had a full pot of boiling water on the flaming gas stove just beside the stove.

It was ugly, terrible screaming because I was exhausted on all levels and wasn’t able to see what the situation needed to be resolved. (Baby gate, anyone??)

So often as mothers, our judgement is blurred by lack of sleep and lack of space.

Once I regained my composure (and averted danger), I shuttled the kids out to the backyard. This involved a whole mess of protests, tears, and flinging themselves on the ground as I tried to shove their little New Balances on their feet.

When my husband came outside around noon, I did my best to give him a bright Happy Birthday! before I hightailed it upstairs for a break. I lay in my oldest son’s room and melted into tears. Why was that morning so difficult? Why had I snapped so easily, so often? Why was I so frayed?

 It would be so easy to become a yeller and screamer.

It’s even sort of justified in the refrigerator/stove scenario above. But it makes me feel like crap. It is not at all the kind of mother I want to be. It is not at all the kind of environment I want to create in my home.

That morning, crying in my sons’s room, I read from Buddhism for Mothers, which actually has a whole chapter devoted to anger.

Among the many inspiring passages I found, one of the most helpful was the author’s perspective on the Buddha’s Discourse on the Forms of Thought in which the Buddha presents five options for dealing with disturbing thoughts.

They are:

1. Dwell on the positive

2. Consider the results of our thoughts

3. Distract ourselves

4. Consider the alternatives.

5. Use our willpower.

As the author points out, what’s so fantastic about this list is that they are options.

So while sometimes it might not be not possible to use a typical toddler distraction (“hey you hanging on the fridge handle which could easily plow your brother right into the open flame of the stove–how about a tickle?!!”). But it would be a useful exercise to think back to a less dangerous situation you didn’t feel so hot about and consider other ways you could have handled it based on the “5 Ways to Not Lose It” menu above.

I apologized to my children later that day.

Isaiah, my oldest, clearly remembered the incidents of that morning, and by apologizing I hope I am showing him that we are all human. And even if I was right (no hanging on the goddamn fridge), I didn’t handle it right.

Anger is such a fleeting emotion.

I can’t even remember the other 99 things I’ve yelled about recently. But the aftermath of giving in to anger sits in the home, like tobacco on a smoker’s wall.

Here’s to not giving in.