Parties, Purging and Soccer

Yesterday morning was filled with cupcakes, frosting, a bit of yelling and finally a party to celebrate my cousin's marriage. She got married back on 9/10/11 but put off the party until yesterday.

Months ago, my aunt (the mother of the bride) asked me if I'd make cupcakes for the party. They wanted the cupcakes to look like sunflowers.

No problem, I said.

Except...it's really hard to decorate five thousand (okay, there was only about a hundred) cupcakes while my two children raced around like maniacs all morning.

At one point, I made Olivia cry. See, I'd asked her, told her and threatened her with bodily harm if she didn't stop kissing my butt, Olivia did it one time too many. Now, before calling CPS, I didn't resort to bodily harm over this infraction but I did raise my voice quite high and her feelings did get quite hurt.

But damn it! That is so annoying. You wouldn't think that the kissing of one's butt would be so irritating but after it happens over and over and over again, yes, I just want it to stop.

I know she's showing affection but please, stop with the butt kissing. Before I had children, I never considered the possibility that the kissing of my butt would be something I had to tell someone not to do.

Finally, at 2:00, the cupcakes were done and we were out the door at 2:10.

This morning, I woke up with a need to first, clean up the cupcake mess I left in the kitchen from the day before. I realize that the very thought of dishes in the sink may leave others in a fit of tremors, but...ehh, whatever.

After the frosting-coated bowls/knives/cups were clean, I headed up to the girls' room to go through their closet and purge the out-grown clothes.

This is SUCH a job. But it has to be done. And now, it is. Well, half done. Alyssa's closet is done. Olivia's? Not so much. And now, it has to wait while we go to Alyssa's soccer game.

She loves soccer so much. She loves the running, the kicking, the comraderie. It's so much fun to see how far she's come out of her shyness. She's growing up, becoming her own person.

It's thrilling and terrifying all at once.

When we get back from soccer (after buying groceries) I'll be back at Olivia's closet, sorting the clothes into wearable right now, wearable next spring, donate/throw away. So much fun to be had.

Accentuate the Positive

I’m trying. Heaven knows, I’m trying to think about the good stuff and let the negative stuff wash away. A long time ago, my mom advised me to never point out my faults. She said that most people probably don’t even notice them until I point them out. She’s so smart, my mom.

Alas, I haven’t ever learned to take her advice, instead I’m famous for putting a negative spin on something as it applies to me but putting a positive spin on it when applying it to someone else. Okay, famous in my own mind. But whatever.

Take last weekend. My step dad was driving to Toledo to pick up a part for his boat. My mom had plans for the day to continue working at her sister’s house and so was unavailable to go with him. Well, after her left, her plans changed and so she called him and said if he wasn’t too far along in his trip, he could come back and get her.

He was already an hour away but he turned around and went back. They then turned back around and began the trip again, which took them to the far side of Toledo, a good two hours from their home. Over four hours later, my mom was seriously annoyed by the time this trip took.

My positive spin on that? He likes her so much he really, really wants to spend as much time as he can with her.

The negative way to take this is that he wanted to drain her time as much as he could so that when they got back, she wouldn’t have nearly as much time to give her sister.

Because I can make every single thing in this world about me if I put my mind to it, I immediately thought that there is no flipping way Tom would have turned around and come back for me.

Heck, we rarely go anywhere together.

Now, because this is about me, my first instinct is to be negative. I think, “Yeah, he just doesn’t want to spend time with me at all, which is why he wouldn’t come back for me. Heck, he wouldn’t have bothered to ask me to go along in the first place.”

It doesn’t even matter that I wouldn’t have wanted to ride along. That’s not the point. The point, my brain says, is that he wouldn’t have wanted me along. And that makes me sad. The brain thinking that way and the fact that he might not have wanted me to go.

But I’m accentuating the positive these days so instead of thinking the way my brain wants to think, I’m making it think something like, “Tom knows how valuable my time is. He knows I wouldn’t want to spend four hours in the car no matter how much we enjoy each other’s company and so he wouldn’t ask me because he wouldn’t want to put me on the spot.”

And he doesn’t care how I spend my time when we’re not together. Wait, I mean that as a positive thing. It means he’s not jealous of my time. He doesn’t monitor where I go, when I come back, how much fun I have when we’re not together.

I know husbands who do this. I won’t name names in an effort to protect the jealous but they worry every single minute that their wife is having fun without them, not even in an adulterous sort of way, just in the fun way, such as with their siblings or their kids, or even by themselves.

Tom wants me to get away sometimes, he wants me to have fun because he knows it makes me more pleasant to be around when I do come home.

We’re independent people. We go our own way and then come home to the joys and wonders of our sweet little family.

See? I can accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Now, to figure out how to hold on to the affirmative and not mess with Mr. In Between.

On the Bright Side

Olivia is home sick again today. She’s with Tom today, lounging around, eating popsicles and watching “Tangled.” She has a Rapunzel doll she holds as she watches the movie. It’s cute. It’s also reassuring to see her play with a toy, a favored toy. Olivia has never really been all that into toys. She’d much prefer to snuggle into a corner holding a cup than play with your traditional toys.

Or, even better as far as she’s concerned, she’d rather be with people. Given her choice, she’d sit on me all day long, or be carried from place to place by me as I got about my business.

But if I’m not available, my mom or Tom will do. She likes the security of being around people.

This illness, this cold, whatever is, is already passing. Sure, we had a couple of rough nights, where she whimpered in her sleep if I moved to far from her.

But we’re getting through it.

It takes me back to her early days. Those first few months where she hurt so much. Where she cried all the time. Those few months were all about survival. We were just getting through them.

Each time we went out among people, I’d get such looks of pity as my baby cried and cried. I’d assure family members that it would get better. It had to get better.

And it did.

But when I think back on those days, just as when I look back on last night and the night before, I realize I’m good at this. I’m good during these times of high stress, these times when she needs the most patience, I’m there. I’m an awesome mom to a child with a cold. I willing, cheerfully get up countless times a night to get fresh water, to change the sheets when she throws up, to take her temperature, to change pajamas/pull ups/blankets. I hold, I snuggle, and I rub backs and hold hands.

Now, if I could channel that awesomeness to the everyday stressors.

But I’m not going to go all negative on this. I’m looking on the bright side. Yes, I want her to feel better. I want her to have color in her cheeks and a bounce in her step. But I also want to be there to provide comfort until that happens.

I do realize how lucky I am that this is just a cold. I don’t know how great I’d be at this whole mothering thing if she had a chronic condition. I pray I’ll never have to find out.

But I have those first few months of Olivia’s life to look back on and know I’d probably be okay. I was then. Maybe I was in denial. Maybe my reassurances that things would get better weren’t so much for everyone around me as they were for me. Maybe I was telling myself to just power through because it HAD to get better.

Whatever the case, it worked. I got through it and she did get better. She started sleeping and so did I. She stopped crying and so did I. She started looking at me when I talked to her and the instinctive love I felt for her developed into a real, deep, abiding love that comes with time and with getting to know each other.

I’m glad to be able to say that I am a patient, loving mom to my girls, especially when they’re sick. Yes, there’s work to be done in the day to day world as far as patience goes but love? There’s never a shortage of that in our house. Of that I am absolutely sure. And that’s definitely a bright side.

Sick Kid

I hate having to wake a sick child. I really do. Especially when that sick child is only four years old and had a tough night, only to fall into a decent sleep around 5am. To have to wake that child at 7:15 just feels mean.

But I couldn’t leave her in the house this morning while I walked Alyssa to the bus stop and I couldn’t send Alyssa to the bus stop on her own.

Where was their other parent, you ask? Well, he’s had a trip to his brother’s for weeks and one can never depend on a child to get sick when it’s convenient for her parents.

So I woke O up this morning, much to my own hesitance and bundled her up in the car so we could drive Alyssa across the yard to the bus stop.

Then O and I went back in the house where I changed her into clean pajamas, called the school to let them know she’s out sick today and we settled in the rocking chair for the morning.

When I picked the girls up at my mom’s yesterday afternoon, my mom said that Olivia hasn’t eaten well that day. She’d also complained that her arm hurt. My mom gave her some children’s ibuprofen and O went about her day.

On our way home, both girls ate a piece of pizza (it was anniversary pizza, back to the ‘healthy eating’ plan today) and played outside for about a half hour once we got home.

When I called them in to eat more anniversary pizza, Olivia made her way to the couch, where she covered up with a blanket and ignored my attempts to get her to eat.

By 7:00, I was putting pajamas on her and realized she felt warm. I took her temp (only 98.8) and bundled her up to rock. By 7:30, her temperature was up to 99.9, so I gave her some Children’s Advil and we headed to bed.
She woke up at 9:00 to throw up and then tossed and turned for the rest of the night.

Which leads me to the guilt I felt this morning when I had to wake my FINALLY peacefully sleeping baby (hey, if you’re the last child born into a family, you’ll always be the baby, whether you’re three months old or thirty years old so…yeah!)

Tom is the parent in this household who runs to the doctor for everything.

I’m more “let’s wait and see.” It’s a fever. Kids get fevers all the time. Let’s see if her body will fight it off. If she’s still feverish through the night tonight and isn’t feeling any better tomorrow morning, I’ll call the doctor.

We’re lucky, though. Olivia is a fairly cheerful patient. As long as she has a warm body to lounge upon and an endless supply of water to drink as “Tangled” runs on a continuous loop, she’s all pales smiles and weak laughs.

Though at one point last night, she rolled over and said pathetically to me, “I’m so, so sick.”

Milk it, Sweetie. Milk it for all it’s worth.

Our Day

This morning Tom greeted me with, “Good morning, happy anniversary.”

I’d known it was coming up. Last weekend, I knew that Tuesday was our anniversary, but…this morning, as I was getting the girls dressed and showering and just going about the morning routine, it didn’t occur to me what day it was.

Had he not said something, I’d have gone on to work and realized at some later point what was important about this day.

I would have emailed him, wishing him a happy day.

We’re not big on gifts for days like this. You could say we’re more about living each day like it’s special rather than just one day out of the year. But…well, really we’re just both lazy and cheap and we don’t want to spend money on something that would probably sit around and collect dust.

Our wedding day was another of those events where family was the most important thing. My entire family pitched in. My cousin Spencer played the piano (he was 13 years old), my brother manned the cd player. My mom and aunts did all the kitchen work. Tom’s sons were up there by his side and his daughter stood with me. My dear friend Julie and her sweet Riley were up there too. Everyone there managed to make this day one of the best of my life. I was so relaxed and had so much fun. Every bride’s wedding day should be like that.

Tom likes to sing a silly little diddy that goes something like this, “Mommy and daddy got married. Because mommy has too many aunts.” Sometimes, he’s sweet and switches it up with Mommy and daddy got married because mommy and daddy are in love. But it’s usually the one about too many aunts.

I always laugh because, well, I do have an awful lot of aunts. And they’re almost all pushy.

But that’s what’s great about family. You deal with the pushy ones because you love them. Pushiness and all. It think it was their very pushiness, their bossiness that made our day so special. They pushed and they bossed and they made it perfect. For us. And that’s what every wedding should be, perfect for the couple standing up there before God and friends and family, vowing to stand by each other even when things are tough.

Tom’s hard work this past weekend cemented his place with my extended family. Not only did he work alongside my cousin who suffered a closed head wound fifteen years ago (which had made him very hard to work with) Tom did this with a smile on his face and a laugh in his voice. He let my aunts know that he’s as hard-working as they are, he’s as willing to get down and dirty to get the job done.

And in the end, over the years, he’s made me glad that eight years ago, I made that long walk down the aisle to him.

Pitching In

One of my aunts has been having some pretty serious health issues. She’s been in and out of the hospital several times over the last few months.

Most of her issues come down to breathing. She’s got OCPD, emphysema, asthma, allergies and she was a smoker for about twenty years. She quit smoking twenty years ago but the damage was done.

On top of all that, she’s overweight and carries the bulk of her weight in her upper body, so her heart is working overtime.

The last time she was in the hospital, her doctor advised her to replace the carpet from her bedroom with laminate flooring or linoleum.

Well, obviously, the poor woman can’t do all that herself, she can barely breathe.

So my mom put out the call. All able-bodied people should show up at my aunt’s house on Saturday to help clean, tear up carpet, etc.

I talked to Tom about it and he agreed to be home with the girls while I went over and did what I could to make my aunt’s home friendlier to her health.

As I was arriving, my aunt and her husband were leaving to go buy new flooring. My mom already had most of the carpeting and the under padding pulled from the floor and we got to work cleaning. We dusted, we degreased, we vacuumed.

My cousin and her daughter showed up and my mom put them to work cleaning my aunt’s van.

We’d been at work for about three hours when my aunt and her husband arrived with the flooring. They’d been told at the store where they purchased the flooring that laminate would have to be glued down and due to the fumes of the glue, my aunt wouldn’t be able to sleep in that room for two weeks.

So they went with laminate flooring. Except…no one knew how to lay the stuff. No one had put down flooring like that.

No one except one of my other aunt’s husband. And he’s 71 years old. Well, no one but the uncle and…Tom. Yes, he’d laid that kind of flooring in three rooms in the house we sold last January.

So at 5pm on Saturday evening, I called him. He and the girls were only four miles away. I told him I’d come home and take over with the girls if he’d come see what he could do.

He told me to give him a few minutes to gather his stuff (tools, a saw, etc) and he’d call me.

Fifteen minutes later, he pulled into my aunt’s driveway. The girls were thrilled to be there. They love gatherings. Alyssa immediately found work for herself and Olivia was quick to avoid the two dogs that rule my aunt’s house.

We were there until after 10:00 that night. Tom and my cousin Aaron worked hard and got the floor done. Olivia fell asleep in my arms as I stood watching Tom and Aaron work.

One thing I’ll say about this family of mine, we sure can come together and get things done. When one of our own is in need, we step up and pitch in. I hope most (dare I hope all?) families are like this, rallying around and making things happen when someone needs them.

Bonus? Alyssa earned $1.85 from my step-dad for all her hard work. She was desperate to go back the next day and see if she could earn more. I'm not sure what lesson she learned in the end, though. Give you shall receive? Or Papa is always good for a buck and change?

Harvest

When I think of October and think orange, Halloween, fallen leaves, a chill in the air and yes, the harvest.

I think of black cats and witches, of trick or treating and laughter.

I want to give my kids those same warm (chilled?) feelings in the years to come as we build memories and create traditions. I want our house to have a candy dish full of candy corn as the center piece on the kitchen table and to remember smelling crispy leaves on the ground as they walk to the bus.

I want them to cherish memories of us carving pumpkins, the cold goo that's inside the pumpkins sliming their hands.

I want to harvest all these things and hold them close as we enter this coming month.

I want to throw away all the negativity that I sometimes let bog me down. I want to build my confidence using the last two months' work and continue building upon it in the coming months. I want to harvest all those good feelings I've created within myself and weed out the bad that I've been tending for so many years.

I want to stop being so hard on myself and reap the benefits of being good to myself.

I want to dress in orange and black the entire week before Halloween and roast pumpkin shaped marshmallows over a fire. I want to admire the carved out jack-o-lanterns each night before bed, glowing from within from the light of candles.

Today, we hung a bat from our tree and a ghostly ghoul from our porch. We strung a spider on the rail that leads up the front steps. We bought some mini pumpkins and put them around our rock garden and some glow in the dark skulls that are scattered around our tree stumps.

And I stopped myself from saying something negative to Tom, something that made me look and sound bad. Yes, I thought it, but I didn't say it out loud and that's a start.

It will take a good long time before the negatives thoughts go away completely. In fact, they may never go away completely but the more I push them away, the farther they'll go and even if they're always there, in the periphery, I can continue to ignore them, to not give them power.

I can continue to harvest the good. That's the important thing. That's what this October is going to be about for me. Reaping the rewards of the hard work I've put in during August and September.

I can be good to myself for another month. I can think about how great it feels to be 28 pounds down from where I started on August 1st without thinking about how awful it is that I let myself get to that starting point. The starting point isn't the important part, it's just the start. The important part is now, the journey from the start.

And I want to concenrate on that, the journey, rather than where I started. I'm not even thinking about the end point yet. No. This is going to take some time, for the physical changes as well as the emotional. But if I'm kind to myself even as I take one month at a time, I can make those changes.

Remember, I can do anything, absolutely anything, for a month.