More of you, less of me

There's a song that I hear on the radio almost daily. I can't remember the singer but the chorus is a devotion to God in which the singer proclaims

"More of you, less of me. Make me who I need to be"

As I get older, and continue to experience life. This becomes more and more meaningful. In so many different ways. 

You could take the religious perspective here and beg God to fill your heart with his purpose and meaning, instead of your selfish worldly views. Imagine a world where we all executed or purpose and beauty free of societal repercussions? It's such a euphoric thought that I hardly can.

Even without the religion that's involved in the verse of the song what if we took these words and applied them to our daily lives. Instead of complaining about your day, compliment someone on how great they are doing. Instead of worrying about how much "me" time you'll have, indulge yourself in your childrens play. Help an elderly cross the street. Mow your neighbors lawn.  Invite your friends for a meal.

This is a call to action. Not for me, not by me but for you. Imagine our world if we consumed our selves with more of others and less of ourselves? 

Let's build a place where it is really "more of you, and less of me". 

Let them be little

Let them be little.

They grow up too fast. 

Rock them to sleep.

Let them paint your nails (or your hands)..you know.

Let them "cook"

Let them get messy.

Let them come into your bed, with a "nightmare", for the fifth night in a row, simply because they want to cuddle.

Don't sweat the small stuff. They'll eat when they are hungry. They'll complain if the concrete is too hot. They'll come in from bike riding if they are too tired.

Tuck them in. Sing songs. Play dress up. 

Hug them, kiss them, love them.

And do it today. When you wake up tomorrow they will be learning to walk, heading to preschool, making new friends, preparing for thier first day of kindergarten, having sleepovers, making decisions, taking care if responsibilities.

Let them be kids. Let them get completely covered in dirt. Let them have extra whipped cream. Let them bury you in sand.

Give them extra snuggles. Let them run around the house with a curtain so they can pretend to be sheep.

Let them cry. Kiss thier boo boos. Carry their  hearts. 

Let them be little. 

The Ultimate Quest

I want to preface this blog by saying I am no hero. There is no merit of recognition I want to recieve for my words and there is no type of message I want to send here, except one of peace.

This is my white flag. I am throwing my hands in the air, giving up, throwing in  the towel, calling it quits. I surrender. 

I give up the quest to be something I am not, change my body to be what fits other peoples image of beauty, tirelessly starving in the name of dieting only to regress in the name of progress. I give up the skinny-hating, fat loathing attitude. I surrender with no regret, no angst, no frustration. I am at peace. 

The past ten years of my life have been spent in emotional turmoil, in terms of my physical confidence.  Before I was pregnant, I was a size six. I wore belly shirts, and tight pants. I wore bikinis and tight dresses. I ate cheeseburgers and milkshakes religiously. Rum and coke was my multivitamin. I loaded on the dressing, ordered dessert and never thought twice. Everyone told me how "cute" and "little" I was. 

I gained 80 lbs with Noah. I retained a ton of water, ate too many cheez its and marichino cherries and played the The Sims on my days off. I was 19. I was isolated from my "normal" friends, with not much else to do. I never thought about it, never considered how weight would effect me. I never realized putting on weight would impact more than which  size pants I bought at the store.

After I had Noah, people that hadn't seen me in a long time would greet me with " wow, you have post a ton of weight, you look great" and conversations would lead to " you'd be perfect if you just lost twenty more pounds". And weight started to matter. I started to become self concious.  I had grown a life inside me, built a human being. My body didn't bounce back like some women's do. I never went back to that size six, but I spent the past ten years trying. I compared myself to other women constantly, and I thought I would never measure up. I convinced myself my husband didn't really think I was beautiful, he just "had" to say that. I convinced myself that I was a subpar human, not worthy of praise or recognition.

And that sucked. A lot. 

I joined countless gyms. I have been on more diets than I can imagine, without success. I have starved myself, joined gyms, stopped going, started again. And hated myself for not being able to live up to someone's expectation of beautiful. 

It all hit home for me a few weeks ago, and I have been reflecting ever since. 

Rylee told me she should not be eating Oreos because she is always having to buy bigger pants. After explaining to her that she is beautiful, and growing so of course, she would keep increasing in size, I went in my room head down in shame.

I had helped her feel that way. Shame on me. So these past few weeks have been spent finding the beauty in me. And not just physical. I have great skin. It's always clear. Hairdressers tell me how beautiful my hair color is. I am friendly, I am a decent writer ( I like to think),  I value intelligence and love to learn, I am a damn good cook, and damn it I have three beautiful kids and a husband who loves me, unconditionally. 

And according to him, I am beautiful. 

So just like that. I am over trying to be our worlds perception of beauty and for the first time that I can remember, I am comfortable in my own skin, even with my roadmap of stretch marks!

And I feel free!

The stigma of raising a kid with ADD & Dyslexia

In my head I hear other people saying..

Your kid doesn't listen. You must be a horrible parent. Control that kid.  What a disrespectful little brat. You're a trained teacher and your kid can't read?. He is so lazy.That kid irritates everyone, make him stop. Your nine year old acts like he is three when he doesn't get what he wants.  He is a liar.  Why don't you punish him more aggressively?  You really let him play those games all day?  And the worst, he's medicated. Can't you think of any other way to help your kid, other than the easy road?

And although no one has said the words, I have read the blogs that talk about what to do to get your kid  under control, how to teach your baby to read, how to teach him social skills, how to tell your child's emotional age, effective punishment for kids of all ages and the plethora of unsolicited advice that is available and consumed by moms all around the world, daily. A lot of times I read the headlines, and grimace, other times I smile because I know that even though they think they have the worlds greatest child, they haven't walked with mine.

That does not mean that I have the world's greatest child.

I hear the unsaid scrutiny because those are the exact things that I have said to myself. Several times. Over and over and over and over again.  And if me, his mom, the one person in the world who loves him more than anyone else ever will thinks those things, everyone else must be too right?

It has taken a diagnoses of ADD and Dyslexia to allow me to come to terms with who my child is and why I shouldn't worry about what other people say or what it think they'll say.

Well here is my rebuttal to my subconscious enemy.

Your kid doesn't listen. He doesn't listen.  He functions on his own accord. His brain waves move so much faster than ours, and he usually can only focus on one thing at one time.  Talking to him, and getting his attention takes breaking him of his current concentration to focus on a new one.  That means he needs to stop, redirect and focus.  That isn't easy for him to do, like it is for "normal" functioning brains like mine and yours. So give him a break and slow down. He will pay attention to you, just make sure he can hear you over the "noise" of his intermittent concentration.

You must be a horrible parent. No. I am not. My kid is nine years old. He has never missed a meal. He goes to a great school. He always has clean, relatively new clothes and shoes that fit.  He gets hugs when he needs them.  He gets disciplined when he needs it too.  He can laugh with us. He can cry with us. He lives in a clean (sanitary clean…don't talk about my laundry) house.  He has some fun stuff to play with, good friends to hang out with, and we even take vacations once and awhile.  We read books, we do homework together and I love him fully and unconditionally. I have worked tirelessly on a degree, on a job that I didn't always like, on school projects that bore me to the core, all for my kids.  I can't be a horrible parent, despite commentary from the "professionals" out there.

Control that kid. Control him? Not one of us has "control" over our kids.  We teach them, we mold them to be something that we will be proud of, but we can't control him.  He has obstacles. He has challenges and sometimes he can't control himself. My job is to guide him back to where he should be so he can make better choices next time, not control him completely to where he never fails.  With Dyslexia he needs to fail, and then succeed to know he is worth it.  With ADD he needs to have social situations plummet so that he can see how to do it better next.  So controlling him only inhibits him.  I will teach him though, to be a man, to be strong, to be in control of himself.

What a disrespectful little brat. I have three kids. They were raised in MS so they were taught to say ma'am when I called their name and respond with yes sir, no sir.  They sit at the table and eat with a fork (most of the time).  When he needs something or wants something he has been taught to say please.  He knows it. ADD is a disorder that deals with the impulse control part of your brain. That part of your brain that says "Maybe I shouldn't do this" right before you do something stupid…to put it nicely that switch is broken for him. Making that filter more prevalent so that he can show respect and not blurt out whatever comes to mind is a constant battle and I will continue to fight for him.  Disrespectful to you, yeah. Me too, but as long as we are making progress don't judge me.

You're a trained teacher, and your kid can't read.  Dyslexia is debilitating. Read this.

 Mos toft he worbso napa ge loo klike this. Mow onber it isa headache toreab evemt hesi nqlest ofth inqs. (Most of the words on a page look like this. No wonder it is a headache to read even the simplest of things)

That's what it looks like inside my kids head. You read and analyze a paragraph and tell me how you do. Kids with dyslexia deserve an a for effort.

He is so lazy. Everything from reading road signs to getting dressed takes work for him. A lot. So he does it at a slower pace and often gets frustrated so he does nothing at all. Wouldn't you? 

He irritates everyone. Make him stop. Part of ADD is not knowing boundaries and part of dyslexia is not understanding sequence of events. Put those two together and you get a difficult perps in to be around. We are teaching him to stop, look and listen to what other people feel, but often he irritates people not because he is trying to, but because sometimes it's the only way he knows how to interact. It is a learning process and he is learning more very day. 

Your nine year old acts like he is three when he doesn't get what he wants. Most kids with ADD are overly emotional because thier brain functions at 100 million times faster than yours does. When something interrupts thier routine or structure it is very hard to control emotions related to that disruption.  Everything that is not planned or in a routine is often met with anxiety and frustration. He may respond like a baby, but he is trying. Hard.

He is a liar. This was a tough one for me. All kids go through a storytelling stage. But kids with dyslexia take this a bit further because one of the symptoms of dyslexia is the inability to arrange things in order of sequence.  So let's Sally & Joe were playing with a ball. Sally kicked the ball to Joe and joe kicked it back and so on. Joe gets the ball and decides he doesn't want to play anymore and takes off with the ball. Sally gets upset and tells an adult. Joe responds by saying he had the ball first and he was playing with his friends. He remembers the most recent events, not how they happened sequentially. He needs time to think through and process everything before he is accused of being a liar. Intense demanding attention increases anxiety and makes it harder. If you see me "babying" my nine year old for not telling the truth, first of all mind your own business, and secondly I am not, I am coaching him in doing something that comes naturally to most of us.

Why don't you punish him more aggressively? Why don't you ground a two year old for hitting you in the face? A one year old for dumping out your entire new bottle of bio silk to make herself "pretty", a six year old for spilling kool aid on your favorite blouse. Not only does the punishment need to fit the crime, but the child needs to actually understand what they did. If he can't conceptualize that he did something wrong, and can't conceptualize the reason for punishment then I am not sure I can legitimize it.

You really let him play those games all day? It's his only escape. School takes 5x more effort for Noah to get through than the "average" person. He wants to play a game to relax, so be it. Judge me for it. It's one thing that makes him feel great about himself, when everything else is so challenging.

And the last one He's medicated. Can't you think of a better way to manage your child? Yes, I can. But that takes a lot of heartbreaking struggle for my child. He is nine. He has social trouble. He has issues with discipline in school. And medicine makes it easier to deal with something that is so unbelievably overwhelming to him. So yes, I medicated him. He likes the way he feels. He feels more in control, and damn it my heart needs a break. I like to see him interacting and enjoying life instead of being excluded. Think about it this way. Would you avoid taking Tylenol when you have a headache just for the sheer martyrdom of it or would you pop a pill because it alleviates the symptoms. 

Got it? That's how I feel too.

Our road is by no means easy, but who's is?  We will keep on going, a keep on fighting, because if anyone can overcome these obstacles, this little man can.

What I hope my daughter understands someday!

There are a lot of posts out there about moms and daughters and what they want out of thier relationships or what they hope they understand. But I want to tell her more. Of course I want her to know that I love her, that she is precious and much much more. As a mom of two boys and one girl, I already know a girl is going to be much harder to let go. But here's what I hope she knows when she spreads her wings and flies away.

1. Your beautiful. Yes you have perfect hair, long legs  a gorgeous, perfect face and a lot more to be envious of. That is clear.  But that beauty only means something if you use it well. Being mean, unkind and bitter will make you ugly, on the inside and out.  Giving to others, loving people, laughing at your mistakes and perserverance through a challenge can make you even more beautiful.  When you find someone you love, make sure he sees your beauty beyond those transcending hazel eyes. Your worth it. 

2. You can be anything but remember you can't be everything. As a girl, I took this to mean that I didn't "just have to be a mom".  I thought up all of the amazing "masculine" careers I could think of. And then I went into teaching, and almost felt like I had let everyone down. When I say you can be anything I mean you can be anything. If you decide to be a career woman good for you. And I will be just as proud if you live your life as a stay at home mom. Raising you is one of the best parts of my life. I will be proud of you, as long as you follow your heart.

3. You can always come home. Your  Irish and German, so pride goes a long way in our hearts. Don't despair. I will love you unconditionally, even if you make mistakes, even if you tell me you can get by without me, I will still take you back. You will never be to big to sit on your mommy's lap and cry. 

4. The world can be cruel. Combat it with grace. As you grow my love, there will be people who will knock you down. Sometimes on purpose. There will people who call you ugly(even though we know that's impossible), boys that break your heart, and girls that are mean. Love them through it. Most people that are cruel to others are usually fighting thier own battle and just need someone to love them. 

5. It's best to be a lady. Our culture makes every part of being a woman one of two things: deragorty and sexual or undesirable.  If you are sexualized you are the apple of a mans eye. If you are submissive, passive, quiet, underachieving, kind, introverted and good at cleaning and cooking you are "too" sheltered. Our culture wants women that act like men at work, but ladies in the home. The fact of the matter is, you can have your job and be successful but be a lady. We are genetically programmed to be the peacekeepers, the managers of our home and the caretakers. Embrace your womanhood.  Respect people, respect yourself and your body and be the type of woman you'll be proud to tell your kids about. 

Most of all my sweet girl, know that you have taught me so much about myself. Being able to watch you grow is the greatest gift of all. And nobody loves you more than your mom, no matter what those teenage boys try to tell you!

And so there were three...

 I sit here every night rhythmically swaying back and forth, back and forth humming tunes from The Sound of Music. My tone deafness means nothing.  My two year old is nuzzled up against me, "puppy" in his arms and his precious feet poking out from his baby blanket, which his sweet body has outgrown.  Sweet unrelenting, heartbreaking bliss. The epitome of hypocrisy.  And every night I want to freeze time.

You see, it wasn't too long ago I was a "wild child". Like most teenagers I could not wait to break free from the reigns of parents. They held on too tight, asked too many questions and always ruined a good time. Typical woes of an American teenager. When I could get away with it I partied, did things I'll never tell my kids about and did the opposite of what my parents asked. I am not going to carry on here about the martyrdom of children from divorced families. We have all seen and heard enough of that in the media and everywhere we go. It's not an excuse, but in my teenage head, my parents got divorced. They didn't  deserve my respect. Well, I showed them. 

I was 17 I moved out. I turned down three college acceptance letters at four year schools. School was always easy to me and I got by without trying very hard( we will save that hard lesson for another time). None of my friends were going to four year schools and I wanted to stay with them. I enrolled at the community college and carried on.

That summer I met my husband. The summer of 2003! If only it sounded as catchy as the summer of '69, we could have a song too. Well now, nearly ten years later here we are, a nine year old, a seven year old, and this sweet angel of a two year old that I never want to stop rocking.  Now I am sure because you are able to read this, you are able to do simple math calculations and you realize our oldest came along before we had the chance to say "I do". And the second followed before we had the chance to say "I'm ready".

Now I would be lying if I told you that I entered motherhood with grace and readiness. In fact, I was 19 and anything but ready. When I was five months pregnant, Jordan and I got married.  As nature would have it, Noah came along shortly after.  We were young, we were stupid and we had no clue what do do with this life we were responsible for.  When the news of my Rylee-Grace came along, I spent six hours in the bathroom sobbing with a 15 month old baby standing over me. I would once again be lying if I told you my mother's intuition had improved with her birth.  Now don't get me wrong, I was always a good mom.  My kids were clean, fed, happy kids that got held, snuggled, rocked to sleep ect. I remember comments about what a great mom I was for being so young.  But my heart wasn't ready.  

Four years later, Noah is 6 and Rylee is four. Jordan and I had been married nearly seven years. We had journied through the challenging years of marriage, entering adulthood, raising children and completing my education all at once.  (Picture a game of Jenga; no picture playing Jenga with a two year old). Disaster. We bought a house and lost it. We bought a truck and lost it. We lost a lot trying to measure up.  The news of Declan reignited a fear that I thought was stagnant. I wondered if I could do this again. It wasn't until we knew what love was and had been in the pits of it, that we really realized what it meant to be a parent. To my suprise The second Declan was placed in my arms, Jordan and I knew he was exactly what our hearts needed. They were all were exactly what we needed!

I sit here now, two "big" kids in thier rooms, holding this baby as he snuggles in my arms and I ponder how long I can keep him little, while I know the truth...not long. His precious breathe on my neck and the up and down rhythm of his back as he breathes reminds me of what an incredible gift I have.  The gift of motherhood. An ex boyfriend of mine said some words that have stuck with me, shortly after her found out I was pregnant with my second. He said "you'll fit in good in the south, it seems like your good at being barefoot and pregnant". At the time, I was humiliated. Now I couldn't be more proud!

I wonder now, as my kids get older how I can tell them "don't make the mistakes I made " and "listen to your parents, we have been there" while convincing them that they have made me whole, and loving them and being thier mom has fulfilled my purpose here on earth. How can I convince Rylee-Grace to wait, when she is the most incredible gift I have ever recieved?  How can I make Noah understand how hard the road can be if you don't plan carefully, when despite all of our mishaps, we got him and he is my world? How do I convince Declan of the incredible difference being emotionally prepared can be?  Though the road has been rough, I am exactly where I need to be and I count my beautiful blessings everyday.  Stretch marks, empty bank accounts, a loud home but an amazingly full heart.

And a mom. And if mom is all I ever am, I will be the luckiest person alive.