Bad mom

I had a bad mom moment today. No. I am not going to tell you what it was. It is none of your business and completely irrelevant to the story as a whole. The point is it was bad. It was bad for me. My son was fine. Which kind of leaves you to wonder just a bit about bad mom moments. Here my child is clean, well fed, loved... and here I am crying in the arms of my own mother because I am having a "bad mom" moment. Go figure.

And for your viewing pleasure the cutest little tea-drinker ever:

Internet Gypsy

I was given my guitar. I wasn't given just any guitar either. It's a Taylor. If you don't know what that is then you are obviously not a guitar player and I am not looking down my nose at you but I am thinking about what you are missing out on. This is a beautiful instrument. It also came to me used which I also enjoy because you don't have to worry about being the one to make the first scratch... kind of takes the anal-ness out of it. And what, you may ask, does this have to do with being an internet gypsy? Don't get your undies in a bundle, I am getting to that part. The name of the guitar was Princess I say was because when I got her I just didn't fit us. I mean I know it could have been cute the whole Princess Jasmine thing and all that but for whatever her and I were going to become Princess just didn't fit us. So I changed her name. Gypsy. It fits. It fits us. I am an internet gypsy. Maybe it is all the years spent traveling. Maybe it's just the fact that I feel a fresh wind blowing (every watched the movie Chocolate? You should. You'd get the wind reference then.) and I just have to change.

I am changing my blog space again because I wanted to be close to everyone else. Every other blog seems to be on blogspot and I can't follow anybody! Plus I have to admit I would like to make it easier for peeps to follow we as well, who likes to have an empty "follower" space.

Feel free to welcome me back and I will try not to stray far again.

I am here to cauterize

It seems that when the cool blade of life and criticism slices in to the nape of your neck there are two amazing things that happen. #1. You do not experience the huge amounts of pain that you expected. It’s much worse. #2. It severs whatever was left of the “I care what other people think” cord that was dangling by a thread anyway. Now here is an interesting thing the “I care what other people think” cord always grows back. Sometimes in pieces, sometimes stronger because it has been chopped once and has grown back with scar tissue. I have decided on a course of action to keep it from growing back. I am going to cauterize it. Painful? Yes. I have a plan of action. We have camp here at the community base for the next couple of days. I am going to make sure that by the end of camp I have seared those puppies dead.

You may think that it is important to care what other people think. I mean it would be terrible to have a bunch of people running around with no feelings about others I have no desire to become a psychopath. I have lived with the early stages of psychopathy in my home before and there is nothing that would make me wish that on someone else. BUT this cord I am talking about is not the same thing. This cord is the one that lets other peoples choices, thoughts and criticisms dictate what you say and how you feel. It is the cord that lets other people damage me. It is the cord that dictates what I am worth. This week(end) I cauterize.

The interesting thing about cauterizing is that is only a step in several and it isn’t the first. The first is the pain and understanding that things just are not going to change unless you do something differently. The second is that you must face your own personal guillotine. Failure. That’s right, failure. And then there is the choice. Leave it be? Let is grow back? Hope that it doesn’t? Rave about it? Let everyone know how you have been set free only to be back again a month, two, a year later?

Pass the red hot poker.

The Guillotine

I can feel writing boredom hanging over my head like a guillotine waiting to drop and cut short my blogging experience. Why? Because I have run up against what normally happens when I take on a writing project like this. I want to dive in too deep. I want to talk about things that are so gritty and sometimes emotional and… well frankly it isn’t that I am afraid of criticism. I actually don’t really have many “real” friends to lose. It is just the fact that sometimes what I want to talk about involves such personal detail that I don’t know if I want just Joe or Jill Whatserface reading about it and then there are the times when I am concerned that someone might read something I have written who is actually close to me and be hurt. It is so hard to convey the actual passion or original thought behind the black and white. I guess that is what a good writer is supposed to be able to do.

The rope is slowly coming apart that is holding the guillotine blade at bay my head is suspended beneath it and yet just like a dear in the headlights I can’t seem to move.

A better version of me?

There seems to be a trend in moms especially “crunchy” or hippy-ish moms, of which I count myself a proud card carrying member. It is not only in these mothers but seems to be in the lives of any woman who has a “cause” and that includes children and all our extras. The trend is that all of us cause mamas tend to be just thought, totally focused on who we are and what we are doing and forgetting all about what we look like while we are doing it. I have learned something from “What Not to Wear” and that is the fact that many women who have causes think that the only way to seem fully absorbed in their cause is to look like they don’t care about anything else. They are too focused on feeding their family right or on their art, music, writing, children… and many many other things.

Not long ago I would have counted myself among that number. Thinking that my personality was the only thing that I needed and if people didn’t appreciate that then they were probably just shallow. Thinking that clothes, makeup and all the rest wasn’t really worth anything because I was too busy doing something worthwhile.

I have had a slow transformation over the past couple years of my life. A lot of the credit I have to say has to go to my Superman. I have come to a place where looks, my clothes and fixing myself up a bit has become a small but important part of my life. People do see you differently when you make an effort. Like it or not it is the exterior that people see first even though some of us would argue the point you can’t actually wear your personality. I am finding that exerting that little extra effort helps me to reap greatly. My Superman appreciates the effort, actually all of the important people in my life, superman, mini man and my community are able to see through my effort every day,besides those occasional pj days that we all have. But that is the problem, many times occasional is used in the reverse and we end up putting forth no effort for those who we care about the most.

I was completely amazed about how I saw myself in a different light when I started putting myself together on a regular basis. I feel more confident. I feel like I am going to accomplish things not just today but from here on out.

The Million Dollar Middle Ground

I am not really big on happy mediums. I am very much an either/or black or white yes or no type of person or at least I was. Something about getting older, getting married and having a child has changed me when it comes to hard lines. I guess you could say that I have “softened”, actually quite literally.

I have found parenting to be frustrating not because of parenting my child I actually am more what I would call an “instinctual” parent I go with my gut a lot and it really does work for us. I attribute a lot of that to being raised in a healthy well-balanced family. What I find frustrating about parenting is other parents. Not other parents exactly but all the different parenting styles that have labels and the fact that there seems to be a very black and white style face-off going on. I belong to several groups and they are very close to black and white opposites one is on the “attachment parenting” side of things and then there is the “babywise” style. Now if I need to label myself I would land on the attachment parenting side because I have seen first hand the damage done in the lives of children who were not firmly attached to anyone. I would also call myself an attachment parent because I firmly believe in co-sleeping, breastfeeding and responding to your infant. I do not think it is ok to leave your infant to scream, ever. I am bolding the word infant because I think it is very important to make a distinction between the way we parent infants and the way we parent as our children grow. One of my favorite analogies for raising a child is an inverted triangle, when a child is small the have very little room, they are kept close and tight to you and they are not allowed as much leeway if you will but as a child ages there is more and more freedom and they are able to make more and more choices on their own. I would not say that I have any “babywise” tendencies at all I just can’t put together the babywise philosophy with the way I feel like my child and the way I feel as a parent.

On the other hand… I am finding that there has to be some other thing that doesn’t have a name yet. I don’t know what it is. Whatever it is that is what I am. Why do I think that? Because researchers have discovered that there are two ways that a child can have attachment problems the first way is through their needs not being met and the second through everything being over-met, basically a child is smothered and spoiled until they develop problems.
I know this may seem shocking but I really do not believe that discussing things with a toddler works. I do think that is important to talk to your child even if it is over their heads and to explain things, even explaining the discipline makes sense to me but to watch a parent get down and have a serious talk with a toddler and actually think that it is going to keep them from hitting that other child again is actually quite laughable. Developing respect for other people does not come naturally. We are naturally very selfish creatures. You can see that in toddlers especially, we are not naturally kind and giving, we learn to do mean things without ever being taught how to do them, it is shocking but true. How do I know that it is true? I have watched it with my own child I have been surprised by some of the selfish behavior he exhibits without it ever having been modeled for him. Going back to the triangle analogy I find that confident secure children that grow to be emotionally, mentally and relationally healthy are those that basically “ran up against” their parents when they were toddlers and found them to be immovable. I do not mean unkind in any way but that they find that there is a safe perimeter set up in their lives that they can bend or break but it also can not be bent or broken by anyone or anything else.

So in practicality what I mean is exhibited in the story of my non-sleeping child finally becoming a sleeping child. My son was a terrible sleeper and was up 6+ times a night up until he was 11 months old. There was finally a point where we were both so exhausted that I put up the pack n’ play right by my bed, I was less than a foot away from him. I laid down in bed and placed him in the pack n’ play during one of his out and out fits about going back to sleep for who knows what time that night. He was nursed. He was warm. His mommy and daddy were right there. He proceeded to throw a fit the size of Texas. Then my child slept. And I slept. This did not stop all the waking. There were still waking but they were to come to the big bed with mommy and daddy which we willingly allowed (and still allow) him to do. He still needs us, he needs our comfort and we do not deprive him of that but we also came to a point where his waking was no longer needs based and his crying had turned from needs crying in to fit throwing and that is where he chose to start testing the parental walls.

I don’t think that this is a middle ground because I don’t think it is midway between “attachment parenting” and “babywise” I don’t think there is some mystical perfect middle ground so to speak I think there is just some other way of doing things, maybe if I come up with a good name I’ll write a book and make millions. But until then I’ll just remain broke and keep blogging.

The Mini Van

I was cleaning out my mini van yesterday and thinking about all the harassment I have endured for first purchasing a mini van and secondly, horror of all horrors, actually enjoying it! But as I was lifting the pads of my son’s car seat to make sure I vacuumed all the cracks (dirty car seats just happen to be one of my pet peeves) I was rehashing why so many people hate mini vans. I know there are probably a hundred million different reasons but I really think that it really comes down to the mini vans contents than anything else. I mean sure they don’t have the most stunning bodies and they don’t have the best gas mileage but still a heck of a lot better than many SUVs. I really think it comes down to the fear of what is inside a mini van. Mini vans contain children. Children have food in the car. Food gets spilled in car. Frazzled mom can’t find time to clean the up the food/beverage spilled in the car by the children it contains therefore it sits there. For eons. Mini vans smell. The smell like… I don’t even know. But you know what I mean. It is “the” smell. It’s the “I carry children” smell and not just children but dogs and gear and whatever else but they all seem to smell the same. There is stuff everywhere, paper shoved in cracks, coffee cups, plates, last summer’s sunscreen and most of all, snacks, crushed, mooshed snacks. Not only do mini vans contain all these things but they also contain the main operator, the mom. Now the mini van mom is something to be truly feared. She is the one who proudly slapped the “My child is on the honor roll at….” on the back of her van in honor of her 2-year-old that is on the “honor role” at the local day care along with everyone else so that no one got hurt feelings. There are stickers with soccer/football/baseball, and everything else played with a ball, located somewhere on the back windshield. You know what she does at those games. We don’t even have to ask do we? We hardly even have to waste an imagination. We’ve all seen ‘em. Mini van moms. Everyone knows ‘em, no one wants to be them and yet there are out there, hundreds, thousands of them.

I was thinking of all this while cleaning my van and it made me put a little extra effort in to vacuuming every tiny crevice that I could possibly reach in the whole van. I spent time smelling around to see if there was even a trace of “that” smell. I checked for loose toys, pieces of paper were discarded anything and everything that could possibly turn this vehicle in to that… thing… I really do like my mini van. A lot. I can even take the harassment that goes along with owning one because I know that all you SUV owning parents have the same problem you just aren’t owning up to it yet but one day, don’t worry, that will carry a stigma as well, oh wait… ok, not going there, not tonight.