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I have three fabulous children and a terrific husband. I was recently laid off and have decided to try the stay-at-home gig. We'll see how it goes!

Friday, June 29, 2012

Was it an accident or negligence?

Was it an accident or negiligence?  That's the question my husband asked me after I told him that one of our children had broken the television.  I didn't want to tell him it was our son.  He has a tendency to break things and has gotten in a lot of trouble lately.  Of course he knew who did it, but I tried.  My son was playing around with one of those rubber exercise bands and when he twirled it, the handle hit the TV.  While nothing actually broke, apparently he hit some pixels or something and there is literally a web pattern on the screen that looks like broken glass. 

So, was it an accident or negligence?  My son did not mean to break the TV and he wasn't trying to hit the TV, so yes it was an accident.  However, where was I?  Shouldn't I have kept the whole thing from happening?  I was in the other room trying to get some exercise.  First of all, he should not have had the exercise band and second of all, I should have been watching him.  So there was definitely negligence on my side.

The next question is, what should the punishment be?  While it was an accident, he has been told not to play around the TV especially when he's throwing something around.  But he is only three.  Obviously he's not allowed to watch TV and that may be the case for quite a while because we can't afford to replace it right now.  Then I come back to how much of it was actually my fault.  I know I can't be around all the time and I can't stop everything, but isn't it just as much my fault as his?  The crazy thing is that I'm not really that mad at him.  It was an accident and I feel I'm as much to blame as him.  I should not be allowed to watch TV either.  Oh wait.... I can't.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Can I close my ears?

God made us so we could close our eyes and not see what's going on around us.  Why is it that we can't close our ears?  I know I can cover my ears or even use ear plugs, but that doesn't always work and sometimes you need your hands for other things.... like driving.  My children talk A LOT.  And by a lot I mean non-stop.  It's like their heads will fall off they have to experience even 30 seconds of quiet.  I've heard that boys are usually pretty quiet.  My son never closes his mouth, at least at home.

Today while we were on our way to drop my daughter off at gymnastics camp I decided to time how long it took for some one to talk.  It takes about 15 minutes to get to the gym and in that time they were quiet for no longer than 25 seconds!  I couldn't believe it.  We often have conversations in the car, so it makes sense that we wouldn't have long pauses, but today it was just random.

This is pretty much how it went:

Son:  Mom can we play outside when we get home?
Me:  Sure honey.

Daughter:  Mom, I love gymnastics camp.
Me:  I'm glad.  I hope you have fun today.

Son:  Mom, can we watch Elmo's Potty Time when we get home?
Me:  Yes we can.

Daughter:  Mom, is my friend going to be there today?
Me:  Yes she is.

Son:  Mom, are we there yet?
Me:  Yes.
Son:  Mommy, no we're not!
Me:  If you know we're not there, quit asking me.

Daughter:  Mom, if my brother had friends that smoked and they came over for a sleep over, would you kick them out?
Me:  What?  No, I wouldn't kick them out.  They wouldn't be allowed to smoke in the house.

Son:  Mom, can we watch Elmo's Potty Time when we get home?
Me:  Yes, honey we can.

Daughter:  Smoking is yucky.  It makes you smell bad.
Me:  You're right.

Son:  Mommy, listen to me!
Me:  Yes, honey, what do you want to tell me?
Son:  Mom, I just want to tell you.... uh... uh...
Me:  Tell me what?
Son:  Can we watch Elmo's Potty Time when we get home?
Me:  Yes, honey.

Daughter:  Mom, did you pack crackers for my lunch?
Me:  Yes honey.

Son:  Mommy, I want to go to gymnastics.
Me:  I know honey, but you're not quite old enough yet.
Son:  Oh pickles!

Daughter:  Yeah, you need to be bigger.
Son:  I wasn't talking to you!  Just Mommy!
Daugher:  I was just letting you know.
Me:  Honey, don't speak to your brother that way and son don't yell at your sister.
Son and Daughter:  Sorry Mommy.

Son:  Mom, can we watch Elmo's Potty Time when we get home?

I could go on for quite a bit longer, but I think I've gotten my point across.  At least when we're at home I can walk into another room if I need some quiet, but in the car I'm trapped.  When my kids were babies I waited anxiously for the first time they called me Mommy and now they start every sentence with "Mommy".  I still like hearing it, but if I only heard it 5,000 times a day instead of 10,000 I wouldn't be upset.

To sum up, my daughter had a great time at camp and yes, my son got to watch Elmo's Potty Time.  At least the first 15 minutes.  After that he wanted to watch something else.

Monday, June 25, 2012

More or Less?

Transitioning from being a working mom to a SAHM has been an exercise in balance.  For me, being a working mom meant having more money and less time with the family.  Staying home has meant less money and more time with the family.  Oddly enough staying home has also meant less time for me.  When I was working I felt like I had more control over what I did all day long.  Currently I feel like my life revolves around everyone else's needs and wants.  Not that my life should revolve around me, but it would be nice to have some control over my day.  I know some of the imbalance comes from having a third child.  A baby requires a lot of attention and your schedule is dictated by them.  But when what's left of my life is dictated by the rest of my family it's just too much.  Some days it feels like the walls are closing in around me and there is no escape

It has been very tricky to maintain the balance between household duties and family.  For example, today I was finally able to get all the stuff laying around the house put away and was able to sweep and vacuum.  My house finally felt clean.  I felt great getting all that done, but I feel like I ignored the kids all day; even though I took them to the library, read them books and just spent some good quality time with them.  Reciprocally, when I spend most of the day playing with the kids I feel guilty that I haven't done more around the house.  It's ridiculous.  I'm my own boss and I'm dissatisfied with my job performance.  What is wrong with me?

While I have less time and patience, I do have more mess.  It is unreal what my children can do to a house in one day.  They have always been good at making a mess, but now that they are home all day everyday, it is out of control.  When I go upstairs to nurse the baby, I just pray that the house will still be in one piece when I'm done.  The other day there were literally toys littering every surface of the house.  No room was spared!  There were blankets hanging off doors, crayons on the floor and stuffed animals all over the place.  I stepped on cars, doll clothes and found Play-Dough in places no one should ever find Play-Dough.  And somehow they managed to do all that BEFORE quiet time.  I managed to get the kids to clean it all up, but it looked just as bad by the next afternoon.

I am working on finding a balance that works for my family and me.  Progress has been made, but there is a lot of work left to be done.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

I'm Back Baby!

Oh yeah baby... I'm back.  After months of barely being able to move, crippling foot pain, peeing every 20 minutes and making snails look fast, I finally feel human again.  I have been feeling weird all week because I haven't been visiting the restroom enough.  The last couple of weeks I have been working out and this Monday I was able to give 150% on the elliptical.  The sweaty grossness felt awesome!  My son and I had a great 20 minute wrestling match after a 5 month break and to top it all off I was able to lay out on the floor, on my stomach, and reach all the way under the couch, to retrieve a long-flung pacifier.  I still have some weight to lose, but it feels so great to get back to my old self.

The best part is the lack of stress.  I'm not saying it's not tough to be home with three kids all day, but I don't have to worry about what I'm missing at work, or what I'm going to have to do to catch up at work.  The stress I have at home is the only stress in my life.  If I had to go back to work in 4 weeks, I would be losing my mind.  Juggling our home life and work would be incredibly overwhelming for me.  I love that I can spend time with each of my kids.  If I had to work I would only have about 3-4 hours total each night and I would be making dinner, trying to get baths taken and piano practiced in that time.  Now I have all day to get my job done and play with the kids.  It's great.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Second Time's the Charm?

I must confess that this is technically my second time being a SAHM.  My first experience was when our oldest was about 7 months old and we moved out of state for my husband's job.  I was just finishing graduate school and wrote my thesis during the first few months in our new home.  Technically I was working because I was writing my thesis, but really I was home taking care of our daughter. 

I had our daughter during our last year in graduate school and fortunately we were able to work our schedules so we didn't have to put our daughter in daycare and thank goodness.  A friend of mine and had her son a few months before me and unfortunately, she had to put her son in daycare by 8 weeks to go back to work.    When our daughter was 8 weeks old, I looked at her and began to cry at the thought of having to take her some place for some one else to look after and raise for me.  My husband and I had already talked about me being a stay at home mom, so we thought the move was a great opportunity to try it out. 

After I got the house unpacked, I was BORED OUT OF MY MIND!  We had no money and no friends.  I couldn't even afford the gas to go to the park and forget about walking around the neighborhood.  We were surrounded by businesses  on a busy street with no sidewalks.  Our daughter wasn't difficult  to take care of either.  She was a very good natured baby who required very little attention.  In fact, most of the time she preferred being left alone.  So I spent most of my time cleaning and inventing things to do with her, but there's only so much a person can do with a 6-12 month old.  During the week I had a pretty strict schedule.  I still remember it.  My husband would get up about 7 to get ready for work.  After he left, I would shower and our daughter got up around 8.  She would have breakfast while we watched the Today Show.  We would then vacuum and sweep and mop the kitchen floor (yes I did it everyday).  We would then play in her room for about 30min, have a snack and she would go down for her morning nap.  Then came lunch, a walk around the block, dusting and cleaning the bathrooms (yes, everyday).  I would start dinner while she was having her afternoon nap and watched "The Nanny" and "MASH" reruns.  I saw every episode of those two shows in order about 4 times.

The best days were Thursday and Friday.  Thursday I would do the laundry, so that gave me something different to do.  I actually enjoyed ironing just because it allowed me to mix things up.  Friday, my daughter and I would meet my husband for lunch and then we would go grocery shopping.  I would take 2 hours, just because I needed something to do.

To make ends meet I  had to get a job at Kmart as a cashier.  It wasn't the most glamorous job in the world, but it helped pay the bills and was less stinky than when I cleaned locker rooms at a local gym while in high school.  The best part was I worked evenings with a bunch of teenagers who were a little goofy and just helped to make the work experience a whole lot better.  Luckily, my husband's company relocated us to an area where I could get a post doc.  And after 7 months as a SAHM, I was ready to go back to work.  Six and two kids later, I am back at home.

My second experience as a SAHM has been completely different.  As a mother of three, I don't even have time to breathe, much less get bored.  It used to be that when my husband was out of town the days seemed to creep.  My husband was recently out of town for 2 weeks and it felt like the blink of an eye.  I am honestly moving from sun up to way past sun down.  As my children get older, I'm sure things will get less chaotic, but right now I can't imagine going back to work.  I can barely keep up with what I need to do now.  To throw work and all the stress that comes with that into the mix just might send me to the loony bin. 

While I have managed to get a shower every day, I have to admit that my hair does not always get done and sometimes my children are in their PJs until lunch time.  This is only my 5th month as a SAHM of more than one child, so I am still getting situated.  It does get a little easier everyday and I do have a family routine worked out; I just need to implement it.  Maybe tomorrow.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Bad Side Effect to Good Parenting

I know my kids have way more than when I was a kid.  They have more toys, more house, more clothes, more activities.  They also have more of mine and my husband's attention.  We are constantly talking about our parenting and what we want to do and how we want to raise our kids.  We are very purposeful and have chosen to avoid corporal punishment.

We really don't want our children watching too much television and we've been pretty good at limiting it.  For that reason, taking television away has become a great punishment for bad behavior.  Much of what is on television is highly inappropriate for younger kids and even commercials can be questionable, so we've gotten in the habit of never watching "grown-up" shows while they are awake.  Today I discovered that by only watching children-appropriate programming that our kids choose, we have inadvertently taught our children that they control the television. 

Last night my children were out of control and as a consequence they lost all television privileges today.  Unfortunately for my children, their radio and CD player are in the same room as the television.  They love to blast their music and dance and today they wanted to dance while their grandpa wanted to watch television.  Because they were not allowed to watch television they had to leave the room and could not dance.  Boy were they ticked off about that.  They did not understand why grandpa didn't have to turn off the television so they could dance.  They yelled and screamed about it for about 20 minutes.  It was really pretty ridiculous.  I told them that grandpa was our guest and he could watch television whenever he wanted to and all they could respond with was, "but we want to dance."  They just could not fathom why they weren't getting their way.

I know children are all self-involved, but I promise you when I was a kid, changing the channel or turning the television off when my grandfather was watching was punishable by a severe butt-whooping.  That fear was more than enough to keep us from complaining.  The events today have got me thinking that our gentler way of disciplining our children has made them less aware of other people; especially now that I stay home.  My daughter is just home for the summer, but my son is with me all day, every day.  He doesn't have to share with 10 other kids anymore and he often has my undivided attention.

This is an overstatement, but some how our choice to limit our television viewing has not taught our children to care for other people, but has caused them to believe they are the center of the universe.  I'm not sure how we're going to work on this problem, but it definitely deserves some attention.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

That's What Moms Do

That's what moms do.  I have said those very words no less than a dozen times in the last two weeks.  It is truly amazing what Moms do.  We are a truly giving, overworked group of people.  My concern now that I stay at home is how I'll deal with the pressure.  I have three main concerns: 1) Can I live up to the ideal? 2) Do I want to live up to the ideal? and 3) How do I keep from becoming a martyr?

I think everyone has an idea of what the perfect mom is.  She is calm, patient, loving and makes a killer chocolate chip cookie.  While I think I have the loving and chocolate chip cookie parts down, I am far from calm and patient.  I am no June Cleaver and to be honest, I don't want to be.  I'm goofy.  I like to rough house with my kids and chase them around the house.  As a result my kids are high energy, rowdy and loud.  For the most part I love it.  It would be nice to have a bit of quiet every now and then, but I love their wild side; even if it means they stay up two and half hours past their bed time alternating between playing tent and swords and fighting over who touched who.

Regardless of what type of mom I become I am still a mom; which means I will still be eating cold dinners, running off to another room during a party to spend 30 minutes nursing an infant, living on less than 6 hours of sleep a day, wiping butts, noses and anything else that may be vomited, pooped, peed or snotted on.  I'll kiss boo boos, clean cuts and dole out medicine.  I'll drop everything I am doing to make sure my children are fed, played with, clean, well rested and happy.  But when you give up everything you want to do to make sure some one else is happy, how do you keep from becoming a martyr? 

I know lots of women who gave everything to their family and now seem a little bitter about it.  At the end of the day I want to be happy with the choices I made during the day.  I don't want to be angry or upset that I had to rearrange my life to accommodate my family.  I want, to want to be there for them.  I know I won't be happy everyday, but I don't want to become one of those moms that makes her family feel guilty about all the things she does or missed out on because she was too busy "doing" for them.  Only time will tell how this mom thing will work out, but I'm hopeful and confident I will be able to do the right thing.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

What I've learned in one month

The baby is nearly a month old and I have learned a ton!  For instance, nothing wakes a baby faster than the need to pee.  Seriously, as soon as the urge to relieve yourself comes on, they start to scream.  Alternatively, the hair dryer makes the baby go to sleep, but calls the other two to the bathroom like cows to a feeding trough.  I would love to be able to get ready in the morning without interruption.  I have my routine down to about 25 minutes, shower and all (35 if I shave) and apparently I am just asking for too much time. 

I have learned that anything I want to do now takes at least twice as long if not longer.  I have been trying to work out for 30 minutes on the elliptical every other day and it has only taken 30 minutes once.  The last time I had to jump off every 30 seconds to a minute to return the pacifier to the baby for the last 10 minutes of the workout.  Making the entire workout about 45 minutes.  The constant starting and stopping makes the workout twice as hard, so I guess that might be a good thing. 

I am starting to learn the art of giving up.  The other day I was trying to balance the check book.  It took over 20 minutes to even log into the bank website because my son, who was supposed to be napping refused to and I had to keep putting him back in his room and then as soon as I got back to the computer the baby, who almost never fusses, would start crying.  I think I went back and forth (a total of 14 stairs one way) 5 times before I gave up and sat with the baby on the couch and let my son have a nap free day; the results of which are for another day.


My two oldest children will play nicely with one another until it's time to nurse the baby, then all hell breaks loose.  There's nothing like breaking up a fight between a 6 year old and a 2 year old while a newborn is trying to eat.
When they say it takes a village to raise a child, they aren't kidding.  Right now it feels like it would take a village to vacuum the living room!

Friday, June 1, 2012

3 Kids, 2 Parents and 1 Grocery store

My husband and I are pretty brave, but even we were nervous about taking all three kids to the grocery store.  Most of the time our kids are well behaved, but you never really know what a toddler is going to do and our 6 year old is always capable of having a volcano-style eruption.  But we decided after three weeks, it was time to try it.  So we loaded up the kids and off to Kroger we went.

At first, the logistics were difficult to work out.  I didn't bring the baby sling, so we ended up keeping her in the car seat.  And, of course, the car seat that we bought doesn't lay in the top of carts well, so we had to put her into the large section and use a separate cart for the groceries.  That was OK because there was two of us.  Our son wanted to ride in the car cart which makes things more difficult.  I hate pushing those things around.  It's like driving a school bus through an inner-city alley.  But sometimes you do what is necessary to keep a two year old happy.

Luckily we were organized and had the list ready to go.  We got through the store with no fits or tantrums and didn't forget anything.  I think the majority of the stress was worry-induced.  We were too concerned about what could happen.  Turns out there was no need to worry and we should have had more faith in ourselves and our children.

In the end, we did it!  My husband and I successfully took three kids to the grocery store.  I don't think I'm willing to do it on my own yet, but I think we're going to make it.

Since the grocery trip, I have successfully taken the kids to the park and to the bouncy house place all by myself.  I'm starting to get more confident in my ability to handle three kids at once.