Endurance

We took the girls school clothes shopping this weekend. Of course this shopping had to take place at the mall.

I made Olivia wear her new tennis shoes because I knew it would be a day of walking. She was mad that I wouldn’t let her wear her flip flops but, well, I got over her anger at me.

We hit all of three stores, the food court, rode the carousel and soon headed home.

As of this morning, both A and O told me their feet were still sore from ‘all that walking.’

OMG.

Seriously, kids? What is up with their lack of stamina?

I feel like I need to start some sort of endurance boot camp for these kids.

My mom and I were both still going strong by the time we headed home but both of my girls were whiny and complainy about sore feet and tired legs.

Okay, so they are young and life is hard when people are buying you new shoes and clothes. Poor little princesses.

Appreciation

We all want to be appreciated. We all want someone to acknowledge that what we do is noticed and considered important.

I wonder if maybe some of the biggest issues in marriages (mine, included) come down to both partners not feeling appreciated.

Take, for example, the post office runs my husband wants me to make several times a week. I often do not feel at all appreciated for this.

Yet, I wonder if maybe he also doesn’t feel appreciated for all that he does, such as tending the garden, mowing the lawn, canning the beans and all that entails, from prep to putting the finished goods in the basement.

So…I need to make a little change. If I want to be appreciated, I need to appreciate. I need to acknowledge how hard he works and how important the work he does really is. I need to tell him these things, use the words that I would like to hear because, well, I think we all need to hear those things more often.

And when I’m feeling unappreciated? I need to speak up, mention that I’m feeling taken for granted. I need to learn to voice these things in a non-whiny, non-confrontational tone of voice.

I’m trying here and I plan to try even harder in the coming days/weeks/months. Perhaps even in the coming years. I love my life and I need to let those who are a part of it know that.

Finding My Non-Whiny Voice

I hate confrontation. My default tone of voice when in the middle of a confrontation is ‘whiny.’ I hate that about myself. I hate the sound of my voice when I’m whining.

But…I’m also tired of avoiding confrontation at all costs to the point that I often feel as if I’m being taken advantage of. So I am trying to find my voice.

I’m also trying to find a voice that is less whiny than my own actual voice.

Whininess is often not taken seriously. Or, it can cause the person hearing it to shut down completely without even hearing what I’m actually trying to say. They hear the whine in my voice and that’s it, that’s all they hear. I want to change that.

I wish I were one of those people who can calmly, sanely, non-whiningly state their point of view and then let things go.

Alas, I worry, I over-think, I stress all day long over a conversation that lasted maybe three sentences, even knowing that the other party in that conversation probably didn’t think a single thing about it, other than to perhaps think for a moment that I’m a whiny bitch but then forget about my whiny bitchiness for the rest of the day.

I want to be more forward about my needs, my wants, my rights. I want to be able to voice these things in a non-confrontational way, a way that is simply speaking my wishes and then, if the person to whom I am speaking doesn’t agree, I want to be able to let it go, resolute in my assurance that I am not being unreasonable, I am not being selfish, I am just asserting my own opinion and letting people know what I am and am not willing to do to make THEIR lives easier.

I want all of these things for my own sanity and comfort but I also want them because I’d rather my children not grow up seeing their mother being a pushover and a damned martyr. I’m so tired these days and things are piling up in my head and on my heart.

I need to let them go, get them out. But I wish I could do that without whining.

Oh, the whining that is both in my head and coming out of my mouth. Ugh!

2:00am to 4:30am

I am a terrible mother between the hours of midnight and 5am. I just am. I want to sleep without someone digging her toes into my calf. I want to sleep without someone wriggling and twisting next to me. I want to sleep without a child next to me at all, if possible.

Unfortunately, last night, Olivia didn’t want to give me any of my preferences. She wanted to lay next to me and toss and turn for over two and a half hours.

I threatened, I cajoled, I begged, I yelled at her to just go to sleep.

Each time, she’d whisper, “Okay.”

She’d be still for thirty seconds and go back to her energetic ways.

I don’t know what was wrong with her. She wasn’t sick, she didn’t to pee (she’d already done so at the start of her time in my bed at 2am.) She just couldn’t get back to sleep.

Since it is still summer, her not being able to sleep wouldn’t be such a big deal if she’d just lay in her bed and toss and turn on her own. But no, she wants company when she can’t sleep. She wants someone else to be even more miserable than she is.

It’s incredibly frustrating and then I feel terrible for how irritable I am when I tell her for the seven hundredth time to go to sleep.

It was horrible.

It’s the story of my life.

Sticker Shock

We had a wonderful time last week at the zoo. Well, we did after Tom got over the shock of how expensive it was just to get into the zoo.

Ha! Poor guy doesn’t get out much and so when he does, he’s surprised that things cost more than they did back in 1982.

When you add the price of entrance to the cost of the horse rides (2, both for Alyssa), face painting (1 for Olivia), carousel rides (two, one for each girl) and the river ride through the Australian Outback (three, one for me, one for A and one for O) well, you’re tacking on another $25 to the $46 it already cost just to get into the zoo.

I reminded Tom that we were being frugal by bringing our own food instead of buying a $3 slice of pizza and a $2 Coke for each of us. He wasn’t amused by my rationalization. But he still managed to have a good time. Big of him, huh?

Olivia got a little antsy during our African safari but that was because she was hot and hungry. Once we got out of Africa, we dug into the food we’d brought, gave her some icy cold water and the girl was ready to tackle Indonesia.

When we finally left the zoo, both girls were starving and so I told them we’d stop at McD’s on the way home. This didn’t make Tom happy either. He felt like they could both snack on what was left of lunch and be fine until we got home. But since I’d already said the word “McDonald’s” out loud, he couldn’t very well be an ogre and not go along with it. Well, he tried but he was overruled. I almost felt guilty.

Except, he ‘forgot’ to stop at the first McD’s we found. Then we were on the highway and the next one wasn’t for another fifteen miles.

I still made him stop in Auburn because, well, damn it, we were having and adventure and it needed to include chicken nuggets made from pieces and parts of chicken!

We got to Auburn and made our way to the McD’s only to find it...had been…torn down! What the hell?!

Tom turned us around and went back toward Walmart. He said, “We need bananas.”

Huh. Okay then. I said I’d got back to the deli and get the girls some popcorn chicken hold them until we got home. Yay! The day had been salvaged by deep fried chicken formed into a small ball.

Both A and O devoured their popcorn chicken, Tom added a watermelon to his produce selection and everyone was happy.

True story.

Squeezing the Last Bit of Fun Out of Summer

I’m taking the next two days off work and trying to salvage what is left of summer. It’s been a quick one. It’s also been on the cool side this summer so we haven’t made many trips to the pool or lake.

Sure, we did our big Cedar Point trip and that was great fun, but it was all of three days. The rest of the summer was zoomed by without much fanfare.

Here we are, exactly two weeks away from the first day of school. This weekend the girls and I will be purchasing school supplies. Next weekend, we’ll head to the mall to look for school clothes and shoes. Yikes. And let me say now how hard it is to find shoes for Olivia’s little Rapunzel feet. They’re long and narrow and she’s very, very picky. If a shoe doesn’t go on right the first time, she absolutely refuses to let me try the same pair on her again. She will insist, “They’re annoying. They bother my toes. They’re too tight.”

So yes, I’m so looking forward to that adventure.

But that’s another week away. This week, we’re going to go to the zoo and maybe the pool if it’s warm enough on Friday.

And the bonus part? Tom is going with us! I know, right? Wonders never cease.

I asked him off-handedly a few days ago, “Are you going to the zoo with us?”

And I almost fainted when he said, “Yeah, I probably will.”

He never wants to do things like this. I’m so thrilled to have him along but I honestly expected his answer to my question to be, “No, I have too much to do around here.”

I would have been fine with that, since, you know, I was expecting it. But for him to want to go? Yay!

Though I did pave the way a little by telling him, “I already promised Lyssie that she can ride the horses at least twice.” Because I know Tom and I know he’d probably try to limit her to riding once and for Alyssa, who loves horses more than, well, almost anything, once would not be enough.

So yes, we’re having a little family zoo trip tomorrow. It ought to be great fun. And very tiring, but yes, great fun too.

The Baby

I have a cousin who has three sons and the youngest of those three sons has been pissed off his entire life over being the baby of the family. At three years old, this child went around telling everyone he was five. He always, ALWAYS wanted to be older than he was. He hated that his next older brother was five whole years older than he is.

Last night, I made dinner and put it on the table in front of the girls. I then walked away to get something and Olivia called out to me, “But what about feed me?”

I laughed and told her, “You’re a big girl. You can take bits all by yourself.”

She sighed and picked up her spoon. I started to walk away but then turned back and asked her, “Do you just like it better when Daddy or I feed you?”

She nodded, a silly grin on her face.

My girl…she likes being the baby. She loves being babied and has never, ever wished to be older or more independent than she is.

I sometimes feel lucky that my youngest child enjoys that distinction. But then I worry that we’re stunting her development by indulging her desire to be babied. I know she needs to be independent and learn life skills. We work on these things and we encourage her to be independent.

But there are days when I am more than willing to snuggle my baby a little longer, to hold her tighter and let her continue to be the baby as long as she wants. It just works for us.