Another Reason I Hate Working Outside the Home

Alyssa's school as having track and field day today. Her old school didn't do this.

My school always did this and I loved it. It was an excuse to get out of the classroom, to go outside and run and play.

Parents were invited to go and watch their kids participate in this event.

I told Alyssa I'd try to be there.

But today is the last day of the month, which means that work is busier than ever. Which means that I'd have needed to be finished with my work by noon.

It could have happened. If the stars had aligned, if our UPS driver had been on time. If there hadn't been twice as many boxes as usual delivered.

If our accounting department hadn't take over our data entry system for over an hour between 11 and noon.

But what it really comes down to is...if I didn't have to work in the first place, I could have been there.

But I wasn't. And that makes me sad. I wanted to be there. She wanted me to be there. Instead, I was away from both her and Olivia, working, making money to pay our mortgage, providing insurance, blah blah blah.

We all know the reasons we have to work. It's nothing new.

Once upon a time, Tom and I were watching some news show special about a couple whose son had been injured in the line of duty. He'd come home with a severe head injury and several other medical issues. They both quit their jobs to look after him.

Tom and I looked at each other, confused. Both? Seriously? Why?

And during the course of the show, it was told that this couple and their son were now in financial ruin. They were on the verge of losing their house, they didn't have insurance. They were looking for help to support themselves and their son.

My response was, "If they hadn't BOTH quit their jobs, they wouldn't be in this mess." Because honestly, why did both of them need to quit?

The new commentator said that their son needed round the clock care. But really? Come on, you know he had to sleep at some point. And if one of them had continued to work, they'd have insurance, they could hire a night nurse, whatever.

So while I'd LOVE to be at home with my girls, I can't. We have a house to pay for, food to buy, children (and selves) to insure.

And I'll be honest, it pisses me off that others don't feel this sense of responsibility. That others expect the government to take care of them when they CHOSE to quit jobs. I know, the reason was honorable. But in the end, are they really taking care of their son or even themselves?

So I missed track and field day. Big deal, right? She'll have more and I can plan better in the future and attend. But she'll never have a FIRST track and field day. And the coming years aren't really guaranteed to us, are they?

The life of the mother who works outside the home is one of sacrifice. I knew this when I chose to have children knowing I'd have to continue working.

So I'll stop bitching and go hug my daughters, whom I don't see nearly enough of day in and day out.

Blue Competitive Pottying

Alyssa has two days of school left. Two days of second grade. She's beside herself with excitement. Had we not had a boatload of snow/fog days this year, she'd have been done last Thursday.

I didn't tell her that, though. Why dampen her enthusiasm by telling her she'd already be on summer break were it not for crappy winter weather over which she had no control?

No reason, that's why.

Anyway, in celebration of school being almost done, we did something unusual. Something I honestly never thought I'd do for my eight year old.

We dyed her hair blue.

Wait, before you all have a stroke, we didn't dye it all blue. We just did streaks, and most of the streaks are on the underside of her hair. I pulled the top up and clipped it, keeping it out of the way as I put the blue dye on her hair in hightlight-like streaks.

Of course, Olivia had to get her ends tipped in blue, because, hello! If you're doing something fun with one child the other feels a sense of entitlement to just the same kind of fun. O's tips didn't end up quite as blue as A's streaks, though, so there's that.

The fact that they've been watching the movie Aquamarine in almost constant loop is what made Alyssa ask for the blue hair. In this movie, Sara Paxton plays a mermaid with very blond hair with blue streaks. So...



Blue hair. It's a semi-permanent color, so by August and third grade, it should have faded/washed out.

Anyway, blue hair. Yay, right? Sort of cool even if it is buried in the rest of her hair.

After their bath in which they got the bulk of the blue rinsed out of their hair, the girls were picking out what they were going to wear between bathtime and bedtime and Olivia announced, "Lyssie has more tank tops than I do."

Huh? This was her first comment that indicates that compares herself or her things or anything else to Alyssa.

I laughed and assured her that her sister does NOT have more tank tops than she does.

She shrugged and declared, "She has more shorts than I do, too."

Well, okay then. Whatever, kiddo. But still, I like this awareness. I like that she's observing things and making comparisons, even if they aren't always favorable. This is a good development, even if it will probably lead to annoyance for me. Though it is hard to be annoyed with this face for too long.


And bigger still...she told me she had to potty today. Last year at this time, Olivia was doing well with the potty thing. 5p- kids are notoriously late potty trainers. Four is actually pretty early but...we decided to try. And last summer was great. She could go to town in underwear and either tell me when she had to go or hold it until we got home.

The winter was tough. She regressed a lot. To the point that in the last few months, she's been back in pull-ups pretty much full time because, well, it wasn't worth the frustration.

But today, after bath, we were all outside. She was in a pair of shorts very similar to her sister's shorts. They were playing on the swingset. Olivia cam up to me after sliding down the slide. She looked a bit frantic. She cried, "I have to pee!"

So we raced in and she went. It was big! I made a big deal, doing the potty dance, clapping, telling her how proud we are.

She'll go when we ask if she has to go, but often doesn't bother to tell us even once her pants are wet.

So big day all the way around.

Blue hair, competition with her sister, potty training step. Yay.

Ohhh, and summer has officially started. We had our first watermelon today. Very, very nice.

Cookies

There is something theraputic about baking cookies. Especially cookies that you know your children will devour, cookies that they stand around the kitchen waiting for the first cookie sheet full to be pulled from the oven.

Those kinds of cookies.

I'm making today be simple. Simple pleasures, simple chores, simple sugar cookies fresh from the oven, sprinkles already baked right in.

It's the simple things that make me happiest. Simply sitting on the couch with my girls watching movies like Aquamarine, Barbie's A Mermaid's Tale.

Folding and hanging laundry can take on a simplicity that makes it easy, less like a chore and more like folding love into the very fabric of our lives.

I need to simplify.

I need to declutter, both literally and figuratively.

I need to yell less and bake more.

I need to exercise more and eat less

I need to scold less and hug more.

I need to step back and figure out which simple things make me happy and do those things more often and stop slogging through the tougher stuff.

Sure, some of the hard stuff has to be done, it just does. It's a part of life. But those things don't have to always take priority. Sometimes, they can be put off in favor of sitting on the deck while Olivia climbs and slides, climbs and slides and Alyssa jumps and swings over and over again.

Taking a few minutes to just be, to breathe and be grateful can do a lot for putting things in perspective. It can help the anger drain, help to make it less a raging fury and turn it into a warming campfire over which we could roast marshmallows.

Each day is a chance to change, a chance to make different choices. And today, good choices have been made. Even the choice NOT to share my lunch with either child today. I know, the shame. Except...they'd just eaten three peaches and a can of soup between them. Sometimes, Mommy needs to eat her lunch all by herself. But just sometimes.

And a shout out to Lauren: Excellent advice on the issue of volume control. We've set it at 30 on the computer. And Alyssa understands (for now) that it shouldn't go above that. The next time I have to remind her of that, I hope to be able to do so calmly, kindly, even as I'm putting a post-it on the computer with the number written with a Sharpie. Thanks for that, Lauren. You're the awesome kind of mom I hope to be when I grow up.

Harsh

Last night, after making dinner, cleaning up the kitchen, giving the girls a bath and then settling in, Alyssa was playing some game on the computer.

I told her to turn the volume down like I always do. I don't know why she has to have the sound up so high every single time she plays games but I am constantly telling her to turn it down. I fear what the teenage years are going to bring.

I must have been harsher than I realized because Tom called me on it.

He said something off-hand about her blowing off the times when I yell at her.

I didn't think I'd yelled at her. But I might have. I was tired. I am always telling her to turn the computer's sound down, yes, I might have snapped the order at her.

But see, his comment just told me what I'd already feared. That I'm harder on Alyssa than necessary, harder than she deserves. She sometimes gets the brunt of my frustration, my annoyance.

And most of the time? She's not even the one that has frustrated me. She is just the one who happens to the very next thing that grates on my last nerve.

That's so unfair.

I love this girl so much. She makes me life so good, so amazing. I would die for this child.

But actions speak louder than words and while the words 'I love you' flow freely in our house, I sometimes wonder if she feels my love as much and as often as she hears of it.

So I didn't defend myself when Tom said what he said. I got reflective, I thought about his words and my own actions.

And today, I have been softer, gentler with both girls. I've been slower to react, thinking a few minutes about what is is they're doing that might be annoying me. I've given myself time to think before speaking, time to actually respond with appropriate emotion rather than jumping all over them when they do something that is completely age-appropriate.

I'm trying to be the kind of mother I always thought I'd be rather than the shrieky, annoyed mother I'd become.

They deserve this. I deserve it.

I'm angry about a lot of things right now. I've got a lot of work to do on myself. But these girls? They are two of the most precious, most important things in my life. And they deserve to know that, by word and by action.

Whoa!

Yesterday was Olivia's second to last gymnastics class of the season.

The girls ran a timed obstacle course, they did a standing long jump, a high jump and were timed as they ran about 200 yards.

And...Olivia was comparable to the girls in the class. She was the slowest in the obstacle course but that's partly because she needed help with a couple of the obstacles. She doesn't have the confidence to walk across the beam yet. So I help. She also can't quite jump off a mat that is about two feet off the ground.

But the other things? She was right up there. She even ran the 200 yards faster than a couple of the other kids.

I know, I know, this isn't a contest. They weren't running to 'win.' But, when it was all over? I felt totally like Olivia was a winner.

Two years ago, this child was JUST starting to walk. Yesterday? She RAN. She jumped on a trampoline. Not just jumped, she jumped backwards down the thing, kept her balance the entire way and then turned around and did a somesault.

My child. My child who, if you read the all the research online, wasn't suppposed to walk, let alone run and jump. My child, who is supposed to be weak and not speak, did a chin up (with a little help) and skipped from one end of the gym to the other. She laughed and asked her coach if they were going to get medals.

And they did! She was so proud of this medal. See, Alyssa's got several medals because she's played soccer for a couple of years. And this was O's first.

She wore it all evening and then wore it again this morning to Gram's house, announce to one and all that it was HER medal for gymnastics.

Yesterday? She was just one of the girls, one of the beautiful little girls who got a medal for running and jumping and playing.

I love moments like that, moments when she's just one of the kids. They happen a lot these days. Her doctor was right. She's showing us what she can do. She's showing us there isn't much she can't do.

All-You-Can-Eat Buffet

I went to our local Great Wall Chinese buffet place and got myself WAY too much food to go. Ugh!! Now I feel gross.

I sort of hope that the mosquitoes that have been having a go at my daughters feel the same way.

I hope those buggers feel bloated and gassy and sort of like they might like to throw up just to feel better.

The last month of so of almost non-stop rain has really made for fertile breeding grounds for the mosquitoes here in the Midwest.

I kill several on me each time I'm outside but so far I've had no noticable bites.

Alyssa and Olivia? Those poor things are just bumpy and itchy and miserable.

Olivia, the queen of no self-control, has scratched herself bloody in a few places.

This afternoon, before I went and picked up too much food for my lunch, I made a quick trip to the local WalMart for mosquito-bite supplies.

First, I actually bought repellant because, duh, what better way to deal with bites than to avoid them in the first place, right? Right.

I even went so far as to get repellant with Deet. I know. It's bad. But it's also very, very effective. And after I'm done writing this little piece of brilliance (ha!) I'm going to go google deet and see what makes it so bad. So yes, even though I don't even know why it's bad or how it's bad, I bought it. Because it not only repels mosquitoes but it also repels ticks. Because ticks? Ugh!!!! Nasty little suckers.

Because there are already bites covering much of my girls' bodies, I also bought Benadryl cream to help with the itching. I hope it actually works. They seem to be affectived by the fact that the bite happened, so knowing there is cream on the bite might not take away the emotional itch they seem to suffer from.

And for Olivia's bloody arm? I got some gauze and self-adhesive bandaging. Bandaids irritate her skin, just making the wound bigger and bloodier and just plain worse. So we're going to wrap the worst of the bites in gauze and hope her itchy little fingers can't make their way under it in the dark of the night.

I'm hoping to shut down the mosquito all-you-can-eat buffet that are my daughters.

Note to mosquitoes: I'm doing this for you. I don't want you to eat so much that you feel like crap for the rest of the day. I can't seem to do this for myself, so I'll help you show a little restraint.

Not So Special

I get asked often by a few of the 'special needs' moms I know how I'm doing. They want to know how I'm really doing.

And I know what they're asking. They're asking how I'm doing as a special needs mom. Not as a regular old mom, not as a woman, but as a special needs mom.

And to be honest, I never quite no how to answer.

Because, really, as far as the special needs thing goes? I'm fine. I'm good. We've got this thing down.

Except then I remember that Olivia isn't really all that special needs. She isn't.

She walks like any other four year old. She talks like most four year olds. She eats like a thirty-six year old. She tattles on her sister, she pours water on the floor during bathtime, she's just Olivia. So she isn't quite potty trained. Big deal. It doesn't really add much stress to our life.

So while I might have issues with myself, with my own image, with my sense of self and importance, the special needs thing? Isn't such a big thing.

This is not to belittle special needs. Because I know it's a big deal. The thing is, I know that there are a lot of kids out there with much bigger needs than Olivia.

She's just my kid.

I've never introduced msyelf as a mother of a special needs child. I'm a mother to two girls. I'm the mother of an eight year old and a four year old.

That's it. My girls are my life. I love them like I never imagined I'd love anyone. I'd die for them even though they can drive me nuts.

But that doesn't make me any different from any other mother out there.

When we realized that Olivia wasn't hitting her milestones like she should have, I never thought of her as special needs. Sure, she was delayed, but she was my girl. She was special because she was mine, not because she didn't walk until she was almost two and a half years old. This didn't make her more special in my eyes than Alyssa is.

So really, when it comes to parenting my kids, both of them, I may have my doubts as to my inherent abilities, but I'm good. I'm fine. Neediness and all.

Because in the end, loving them is what matters. Loving the heck out of them.

And last night, after yelling at Olivia for the eleventy-hundreth time for dumping cups full of water on the floor, I put her pajamas on her, braided Alyssa's clean hair and snuggled them both as they fell asleep, singing softly and holding hands.

There's something special about that. something needy. But special needs? We all have them to some extent. It doesn't make us any more special than anyone else in this big, crazy world.