It’s the end of the world as we know it… Sing it with me now

Last week, Ethan started homeschooling. He’s doing great so far. This week, I start my college class. On top of that, this year I’m also in charge of our Moms’ Group at our church, I’m the historian for my multiples club, and I am still a mommy and wife. So I feel the need to point out a few things:

1. My house has never been perfect, but I expect that in the next few months, it will become even less perfect than usual. If you have a problem with that, you are welcome to come over and clean or hire a maid for me. (Hint hint.)
2. I will be twice as insane as normal, which is to say that Tom should be adding padding to the walls of our house any day now.
3. Please don’t feel upset if I fail to respond to a phone call or e-mail. Just call again or send me another message. I promise I won’t neglect anyone on purpose!
4. I will still shave my legs every day, even in the winter.

Thank you for reading, you can all return to your regularly scheduled programs now.

Go ahead, laugh. I won’t be offended. Much.

We moved into our home eight years ago. The former owners, who shall remain nameless because I don’t remember their names, received a storage shed from one of  the neighbors for free. Someone used a huge forklift and plopped that sucker down directly on the ground – not up on blocks or a foundation to keep it from soaking up the moisture from the ground. They repainted it, though, so that was nice. However, new paint was not enough to stop the wood on the bottom of the shed from rotting. So our summer project was to save what we could from the old structure and replace whatever we needed to (which ended up being almost all of it). Anyway, part of the reason we did that was because my mom and dad very generously gave us an old riding mower – they bought one of those zero turning radius mowers – and we needed a shed with floors that wouldn’t collapse when we drove the mower in.

The mower my parents gave us is a Simplicity brand. Simplicity. It’s a funny name. Especially for this mower. It should be called “Complexity” because after 11+ years, you have to convince it to do what you want it to do. I had used it to mow at my parents’ house when I still lived there, but that was ten years ago. It was fairly “simple” back then. Today, I managed to force the thing into neutral and actually got it started on my own. (Don’t everyone clap all at once.) I then took my foot off the break. That’s when the guffawing likely began.

This is actually one of only two riding mowers I’ve ever used, so I’m not sure if other mowers are this way, but the cherry red machine we are now the proud owners of lurches forward when you take your foot off the brake – regardless of how slowly you let it off. (It also takes quite a bit of time for the tractor to stop when you press on the brake, but I’ll get to that in a moment.) The first few minutes of my time on the mower today were spent lurching forward and then stopping, lurching forward and then stopping again. I started out fairly slowly – I think I was in first gear, but you have to put it in reverse to get it into neutral and it never seems to settle into one gear anyway. Once I realized that I couldn’t mow the whole lawn with my foot on the brake, I decided to just drive. In circles. Then in figure eights. I finally got to the edge of the property and decided that I was going much too slow. I put that puppy into fifth gear and nearly lurched myself out of the seat. Soon, though, I was flying along – literally, according to Tom. You might have heard my maniacal laugh as I sped along. Unfortunately, when I got to the edge of our yard, I was going so fast that I couldn’t decide where to turn. I made several wild, looping circles around the property and then decided to tackle the 10 foot by 8 foot section behind the shed. BAD IDEA. Really really bad idea.

There are three things wrong with trying to mow that spot behind the shed with this particular lawn tractor:

1. It’s on a slope.
2. It’s only slightly longer and wider than the mower itself.
3. There’s a shed on one side, bare dirt (from my garden) on one side, and ground-out stumps on a third side. That means there was only one way in and one way out.

If I had a zero-degree turning radius mower, that all would have been no problem. But I do not have a zero-degree turning radius mower. I have a beast of a mower that has slightly unresponsive brakes and cantankerous gears. Still, I pulled behind the shed and turned the steering wheel hard to the left when I realized I was running out of real estate. Naturally, I had to stop because I was about to plow over the stumps and into a neighbor’s yard. Dust was flying everywhere. I shoved the mower into reverse and let off the gas. Nothing. So I yanked it back into one of the forward gears and tried to inch my way forward. When that proved completely unsuccessful (more dust), I tried reverse again. Not only did it not work, neither did the brakes. I ended up going backwards, into the shed. So I frantically put it back into gear and lurched my way out of the death trap.

Now you would think that I would have realized that going behind the shed was a big mistake. But you would, of course, be wrong. After making two more wild swoops around our property, I somehow ended up behind the shed once again. This time, I had enough room to turn, but the tractor did not have enough traction on the slope. Reverse didn’t work again and none of the gears had enough oomph to make me go forward. At this point, I thought turning the steering wheel harder might be a good idea. (Don’t ask why, I have twins; a lot of illogical things make sense to me these days.) Imagine the terror I felt when there was a slight POP! and the steering wheel was suddenly free to turn around and around with no response from the wheels.

I had broken the lawn mower on the first day I’d used it. Ah, but wait! I turned the wheel back in the other direction and voila!! it popped back in and the wheels responded again. There was still the issue of not being able to go anywhere. I switched it into first, and then back into neutral and back to reverse again. After several harrowing moments, a miracle occurred: I went backwards and in the direction I intended to go. I got my little behind out of there and zipped around the rest of the yard in haphazard circles and zig zags.

I finished mowing in record time. As I dismounted the Complexity, I chuckled to myself at how I must have looked to my neighbors. Then I chuckled because, of course, the neighbors wouldn’t be watching me. Yet, as I turned around to walk to the house, I believe I saw several heads duck below windows and a few curtains close. No matter – if I provide entertainment for the neighbors, it’s all good. I can’t say that I’ve never laughed at them before. Well, yes I can, but that’s not the point. The point is, I’m ok with making a fool of myself. Sometimes. As long as nobody’s watching me.

Random Fact #3 – Just call me Gumby

So you are likely aware that I am double-jointed (see elbow licking post). It’s not just my shoulders and elbows that are loose – it’s all of me. Ever since I was I was kid, I could do all sorts of strange things – laying on my stomach and touching my elbows with my toes, bending my thumb down flat to my wrist, putting my feet behind my head, etc. In fact, being naturally flexible was the one edge I had on any of my peers in gym class. (I once struck out three times in the same at-bat. Ask my friends, it’s true.) If only doing crazy bendy things with your body was a sport – I’d have kicked butt. The only time it ever served me well was during those presidential test thingys they did at the end of the school year. You had to run a mile, do a long jump, do chin-ups, sit-ups, and – my favorite – see how far you could reach past your toes.

I went to a private school in Hartville. There were only 230-ish kids in the whole school, from kindergarten to 8th grade. But that day, in fourth grade, I beat all of them but one when I reached over 11 inches past my toes without bending my knees. The only person to beat me was a gymnast. It was the highlight of my gym class career. My glory days.

Age has only put a slight damper on things for me. This morning (as Tom can attest) I reached over 9 inches past my feet – and I don’t even do pilates or yoga. Boo-ya, kids who used to pound on me in dodge ball – beat that.

Mommy Confidence Boosters

It seems that since all of us suffer from Mommy Guilt, it might be beneficial to us all to have some Mommy Confidence Boosters. Yesterday, I came to the conclusion that no matter what we decide to do, once we become mothers, we are likely to feel guilty about it for one reason or another. Here are some things that are true, no matter what you decide:

God chose you to be the parent of your children. I know you don’t always feel capable of handling them every day; I feel inadequate as a mom pretty much every day at some point. But think about it, the same God who created the universe – the UNIVERSE, people – CHOSE YOU to be the mommy of your children. If Elohim – our Creator God – had confidence enough to trust you with His precious creations, you can have confidence in yourself.

All families, like the individuals in them, are unique; what works for one family may not work for yours. I don’t know about you, but sometimes if I don’t make the same decisions as my friends or family, it makes me feel like I’m doing it wrong. (Like not sending my kids to preschool.) But isn’t that silly? If we are all unique people, it doesn’t make sense to expect us to all do the same things. As adults, we chose different paths – doctors, lawyers, carpenters, stay at home moms – so why should we expect our kids to all travel the same paths? If you make a decision for your own family, that doesn’t mean others should make the same choice for theirs – or vice versa. So be confident in your choices – and stop comparing!

Pretty much nothing you can do (short of actual abuse) will “damage you kids for life”. Let’s face it – we all make mistakes. No one is perfect. We all fall short. Yada yada yada. There are actually two truths here. First, you can’t control how your mistakes will affect your kids, either now or in the long run. Second, even if you made a mistake that is terrible enough to damage them, there’s no hurt so deep that God cannot heal. As the Bebo Norman song says, He is “Deeper Still”. Trust God to care for your children’s futures, He loves your kids more than you ever could.

I keep typing something about marriage. There’s too much to say in just a few sentences. So I’ll just say this one thing: Never ever feel guilty for “getting away” from the kids with your hubby. Someday, your kids will grow up and move out of your home and it will be just the two of you again. It’s probably a good idea to make sure you still know each other when that time comes. Both of you need the time to be husband and wife – not just Daddy and Mommy. And guess what? When you get back, your kids will benefit because you are both rejuvenated and refreshed. Also, kids need – now more than ever – to see that you love each other and that you are important to each other. Not only will a weekend away from the kids (even if you just stay home and watch movies together) strengthen your marriage, it will also strengthen your family.

I hope I don’t sound like I know it all – I don’t. I tell myself these things all the time and I still struggle with guilt. I don’t know how to get through even one day without feeling like I shoulda, woulda, coulda. I guess the point is the same as yesterday – guilt doesn’t mean you actually did something wrong. Hang on to that, fellow mommy, I will too.

Mommy Guilt

Every mom suffers from the same malady at some point in her her “career” as a mother. I like to call it “Mommy Guilt”. It’s a disease that crops up with every decision we make for our children or for ourselves. From the moment we push out those pink, squirming, screaming babies – or from the moment they are placed into our care – we become guilty of something. No matter what we do, it seems, it’s the wrong thing to do, or it’s not good enough.

You shouldn’t hold your baby so much, you’ll spoil her.
You need to hold your baby more, so she feels loved and attached to you.

You shouldn’t want to leave your kids because that means you don’t cherish them.
If you don’t take time for yourself, you’ll go insane.

You should be a stay at home mom; it’s your responsibility and job to be the sole caretaker of your children.
You are more than “just a mom”; working outside the home gives you the opportunity to be who you were made to be.

As a stay at home mom, you aren’t contributing enough to your family, they would be better off if you could provide extra income for your family by getting a job.
Families these days are too materialistic, if you just made a few sacrifices here and there, you would be able to stay at home with your kids where you belong.

You should breastfeed your baby – it’s what’s best for you and your baby.
Your baby won’t take a bottle if you breastfeed, you’ll never be able to get away from him.

You shouldn’t let your baby cry, even for a few minutes. Crying is her way of saying something is wrong.
You need to let your baby cry, it teaches them to self-soothe. If you don’t, she will learn that you’ll answer her every beck and call.

Your baby should eat only organic baby food – preferably made by you using fresh produce from your local farmer’s market.
You’re wasting your money buying organic foods – “regular” food has the same nutrients.

Send your kids to preschool or they won’t be ready for regular school.
Your kids should be at home with you as long as possible.

Homeschooling will turn your kids into anti-social weirdos.
Public school will destroy your children’s innocence, and they won’t get a good education. (“Me flunk English? That’s unpossible!” – Ralphie, from the Simpsons)

Your house isn’t clean enough, spend your free time making your messy house a clean home.
You don’t spend enough time with your family, leave the dust and the dirty dishes and go play with your kids.

You don’t show your husband enough love, you should do more to show him how important he is.
Your husband should be able to understand that you are tired and touched-out by the end of the day and leave you alone.

I could go on and on and on – but I’m sure you get what I’m saying. Basically there’s nothing we can do to avoid feeling guilty about the choices we make. That sums up the essence of “Mommy Guilt”. There is good news, though: Just because you feel guilty about something doesn’t mean you actually did something wrong. We can’t all be the world’s worst mothers, can we? No. On the contrary, the fact that we feel guilty at all proves that what we really want is what’s best for our families. Guilt just makes us second-guess ourselves.

I bet you know what I’m gonna say next.

Don’t let guilt ruin the joy of being a mom. Don’t let guilt give you a lack of confidence in your abilities as a mom or wife. Don’t let guilt ruin your girls’ night out or a weekend away with your husband or a nap with the kids. If you want someone to give you permission to do something without feeling bad about it, just give me a buzz – I’d love to give you a “Mommy Confidence” boost!

Best Laid Plans

My kids, like millions of other kids, love The Wiggles. I have to admit, I like them, too – as far as kids shows go, they are entertaining and not, um… as annoying, shall we say, as some of the other choices out there. I saw that The Wiggles were coming to Cleveland and thought it would be fun to bring the kids. There was a slight problem: It was on our tenth wedding anniversary. Long story short, I found out they were also coming to Pittsburgh on the Sunday before our anniversary – a city I love, a city that’s only two hours away, a city that has an IKEA.

But I digress. Back to the Wiggles show. I bought five tickets at $10 each. The total cost? About $90 because I had to buy them through Ticketmaster and the extra fees are excruciatingly high. (I could have paid for closer seats, but the “cheap” seats cost us nearly $100… Maybe next year?)

So yesterday, our plan was to drive up to Pittsburgh, stop in at IKEA to grab a few things (I only ended up with three things more than we planned!), and then head over to see The Wiggles. That part worked well. We saw the show and the kids had a good time. The show ended at approximately 5:30. Dinner time. The next part of our plan was to drive out of the city to find a place to eat. We decided on Cici’s Pizza. It would be fairly inexpensive because both girls are still free. No wait to get our food. The kids all have something there they like to eat. Perfect.

Tom was navigating with his iPhone. I was driving. I thought we were getting off at the same exit where IKEA is, so I drove past the two exits where Tom said I should get off. That’s something I acquired from my dad’s side of the family; the inability to hear anyone else when you think you know where you’re going. So we got off at the wrong exit – which was no big deal because Cici’s was still in the same general area. It just meant we had to weave around on several winding streets until we got there. We were struggling to find the restaurant and getting rather frustrated when Ethan began to whine that he didn’t feel good. Ethan is a puker. When he gets carsick, it’s serious. Fortunately, I know that cranking the air conditioning usually makes him feel a lot better. We told him to keep his paper lunch bag in front of his face and kept driving. We looked everywhere for that dang restaurant and finally realized, after seeing the sign turned backwards, that it was gone, as in it didn’t exist anymore.

On to Plan B. Olive Garden. Easy to find. Two minutes away. Breadsticks and salad to keep the kids happy while we waited for dinner. Perfect.

We didn’t even get out of the van. The line of people waiting to be seated was out the door. Every other restaurant in that immediate area was also packed. At least by this point, Ethan had recovered from his car sickness.

Plan C. Chick Fil-A. We have never actually eaten there. I know – crazy because everyone says it’s a great place to bring kids. But we’ve never gone there. We both remembered seeing it when we got off the exit, so we drove back there. Just as we were about to pull into the parking lot, I noticed that it was empty. That’s when it occurred to me that it was Sunday. Chick Fil-A is closed on Sundays.

Plan D. Pound on the steering wheel.

Plan E. Panera Bread. It was just around the corner and we were completely fed up. Thank the Lord they have mac’n’cheese, even if it does cost a fortune.

The moral of the story? Don’t ever expect things to go the way you’re planning – especially if you have little kids. And perhaps it’s best to settle for fast food if you want to eat at Robinson Town Centre on a Sunday evening.

It is NOT impossible to lick your elbows

I’m sure you’ve gotten one of those e-mails that has a bunch of random facts. A duck’s quacks don’t echo and all that. It also says that it is impossible to lick your own elbows. Go ahead, try. Everyone does. When I read that, I thought, “Well, that sounds pretty easy.” And it is.

Here’s some pics I took of me licking my elbows just now:

See? It’s not impossible to lick your own elbows. And that is random fact #2!

Random Fact #1

Here’s a fact about me that you really need to know: I shave my legs every day, no matter what. In fact, I can only think of a handful of times when I deliberately chose not to shave my legs.

1. I couldn’t shave both legs after my knee surgery, so one leg got shaved (every day!) while the other was wrapped and braced – it was absolutely wonderful when my leg was freed and I could shave it again.
2. I got a spinal headache after my c-section (didn’t know what it was though, because the doctors said it would have started right away, but it didn’t start until the day after the c-section) and I literally couldn’t stand long enough to shave.
3. There wasn’t a shower in my room after my hysterectomy – and dilaudid is a really strong drug, it’s possible that with dilaudid in my system, I might have accidentally shaved my head. (I made a few phone calls right after my surgery without even the slightest memory of them.)
4. I got the swine flu. I was pretty sick – maybe not the sickest I’ve ever been, but I was certainly miserable. Found out later that I had a sinus infection at the same time.

That’s it – that’s all I can remember. So there ya go. You learn something new every day.

Gay penguins and condoms for kindergarteners, part 2

I was sheltered as a kid. A lot. Private Christian school, no secular music, not a lot of TV or movies, my extra-curricular activities were Missionettes and Bible Quizzing. I don’t think I even knew anyone who didn’t go to church.

My naivety has been the source of many giggles among my friends who grew up with more exposure to the outside world. They are laughing with me, or so they say. I was a senior in high school when I found out that the rainbows on all the cars at Kent State University didn’t mean that those people were just nice people who liked rainbows. There are still words used to describe body parts and types of people that I admit I’ve never heard – and I’m 30! I didn’t know Guns N’ Roses (I just had to Google that to see how they spelled it) was a rock band or that Axel Rose was a singer or that mushrooms could make you high. I didn’t know that Coke isn’t just a drink and that “weed” and “pot” were the same thing.

Despite all that, I don’t feel like I missed out on much – it’s probably good that I didn’t hear some of the songs that I like now when I was younger; the lyrics aren’t always wholesome or uplifting. I also don’t think that people thought I was weird, except for the fact that I thought wearing a t-shirt that basically said “You’re going to hell if you don’t love God” meant I was witnessing. (Since then I’ve realized that showing God’s love is all about relationship, not pounding people on the head with a Bible.)

Now that I have kids of my own, I’m really struggling with how much “world” I should let them see and when. It’s not that I expect to protect them from everything forever, but I like that my kids are innocent. It’s a great feeling to know that they think “dang” is a bad word because they’ve never heard anything worse (except for that annoying woman at Walmart who used the f-bomb about 50 times while we were checking out). I know they will eventually learn about homosexuality and hear really foul language and all that other stuff I don’t want them to ever know about, but I don’t want them to hear it when they are too young to process right from wrong on their own. I want them to have a firm foundation of belief in God before I “release” them into the wild. That’s the way it should be, right? Teach them how to be responsible with small choices now so that when they are older, they will know how to make good choices on their own.

I’m glad that God guides us and gives us wisdom. I’m also glad that I remember that Jesus said that each day has enough trouble of its own. I know that, for this year anyway, I’ll be homeschooling Ethan. I worry a lot about what to do when he’s officially kindergarten age, but God already has a path planned out for my kids and I am just giving myself heartburn if I worry about it now. Right now, when they are so little, it’s my job to protect their tender hearts and minds – to follow Deuteronomy 6:4-9.

I’d love to hear more thoughts from you guys – How much do you think we ought to shelter our kids? How do you handle it when your kids are inadvertently exposed to something you don’t approve of? If your school was handing out condoms to little ones, how would you react? Do you teach your kids about homosexuality when they are young so they know how to react if they meet someone who’s gay? (I was in second grade when I told my best friend that he was gay, but I thought it just meant happy. I could have avoided the situation if I’d have known…) Or do you wait? Kids repeat everything you say – how do you teach them to love someone and be kind to them while explaining to them that someone is sinning? (living together, having babies together, being lesbians, etc)

Gay penguins and giving condoms to kindergarteners

I checked a book out of the library last week. It was called “And Tango Makes Three”. It’s about gay penguins. (Apparently, it is one of the most banned children’s books ever, but I’d never heard of it before.)

I want to hide my kids from the world forever. I don’t want some kind of sneaky sweet-looking story to introduce my kids to what it means to be gay. I don’t want my kids to know that “gay” means anything more than “happy” until they are old enough to truly understand. I want to be in control of when they hear curse words (because obviously they will some days), and when they will hear about sex – and how they hear about it. (Did you know that a school in Massachusetts is giving out condoms to kindergarteners?)

I believe (based on Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and Ephesians 6:4) that as parents it is our job to “keep our children’s hearts” until they are old enough to make their own decisions. How that factors into our daily lives is what is really an enigma to me. How long do you shelter your kids? How much do you shelter them? When do you start exposing them to things and how much do you let them see at one time?

I’d truly love to hear your thoughts on this and I’ll share more of mine in my next post.