All Things Mom

“What I Wanted for Mother’s Day”… I came across this title the other day over at the Tales from the Mommy Track web site. It was sweet—deliciously so—and I highly suggest you take a moment to read. Anyone who has ever been called Mom will appreciate it, the rest of you might learn something.

Walking later that afternoon, sans ipod (amazing how much you can think when you turn off the noise) I began to compile my own list of what I had wanted for Mother’s Day.

Wait! Don’t get me wrong. I did have a lovely Mother’s Day! The judge gave me the beautiful Citizen watch I’d been eyeing for the last month or so, and I received two beautiful, detailed bird houses to add to my collection. After presents and brunch (at the restaurant where our oldest was working!), we went to the Cowiche Creek Nursery, loaded up on plants, and came home, where I puttered around the yard for most of the remainder of the day. It was pretty perfect.

Birdhouses and jewelry and plants are often on my wish lists, because I like them and they are possible. But like Risa Green on Tales from the Mommy Track, there are a few other “gifts” I’d love to receive.

My Top 10 Gifts-for-Mom

1. I want everyone in our house to be in a good mood. For a whole day.

2. I want the dog poop in the yard to be picked up. Weekly. And not by me.

3. I want to be able to find the super glue/duct tape/flat head screwdriver when I need it.

4. I want my children (teens) to stop insulting each other with phrases like, “You’re a vagina!”

5. I want everyone to quit saying, “It’s not mine,” when asked to put something away.

6. I want to have all three of my babies (again, teens) lounge with me on the couch.

7. I want everyone to stop coughing and be well.

8. I want to get the kinds of gifts my babies used to make in school, wrapped in wrinkled brown paper bags that have been carefully sponge painted with rabbits.

9. I want all the dark laundry to be brought to me before I do the dark load.

10. When they go to bed at night, for the rest of their lives, I want my babies to always know how much I love them.

Really. Is that asking too much?

It doesn’t seem like very long ago that I celebrated my first Mother’s Day as a mom. My husband, baby and I went to church, where Father made something of a fuss over mothers. There were roses given to the oldest mother, the one with the most children, mothers of multiples, and every other category Father could imagine. I waited, hopeful, that I, with my six-week-old treasure, might be the newest mother, but lost out to a woman with her two-week-old. I was only a titch disappointed.

I had, after all, just joined this wonderful “club” of sorts. I was special. I was a mother, and on this particular day, I was going to be treated like the wonderful, amazing woman that I was.

Well, things didn’t go quite as I envisioned. Brunch at a nice restaurant was interrupted by my wonderful baby urping all over my dress. And he still pooped five or six times that day, and woke up five or six times that night.

I began to wonder what all the “Mother’s Day” hoopla was about.

I think many new moms probably have similar experiences, expecting and hoping to be treated as Queen-for-the-Day. After all, we do deserve it. I mean, there’s the whole birth thing (which is a tremendously amazing task), then we endure the postpartum period, that for many is marked by uncontrollable weeping (over nothing, mind you), sleep deprivation, engorged breasts (it may sound like fun, but it really hurts!), and feelings of love that are so strong they’re truly scary. And for a significant number of women, myself included, many of these “baby blues” symptoms continue and worsen, and we experience what experts now term “post-partum mood disorder”. For some, this condition can last several months, for me it’s been eleven years (except for the breast thing)!

So, after considering all of these wonderful, giving things I’d been doing, I found myself asking: Don’t I deserve to be Queen-for-the-Day? Shouldn’t all of us moms have a wonderful Mother’s Day?

The answer of course is Yes! We do deserve it. But the reality for most mommies is that the odds of getting the Queenie treatment are pretty slim, and letting go of that expectation is the first step to have a really great Mother’s Day.

I heard this news just before my second child was born, and I resigned myself to the idea. To be sure, my husband was extra helpful on those Sundays, and we went out for brunch or dinner, and if I was lucky, I got a good night’s sleep (the ultimate gift) because everyone else slept through the night.

They were nice Sundays, and I wasn’t exactly disappointed, but in all honesty, I think somewhere, mixed in with all those feelings of mother-child love and the fact that I wouldn’t give them up for the world, was just a tiny bit of resentment.

Until the year our third child came, and then I had the best Mother’s Day ever.

It started with having my heavily creamed coffee being brought to me (I’m so not a morning person), and after a few cups, I fixed breakfast. (There comes a stage, sometime after baby number two, when eating out becomes more of a chore than an enjoyment. With three little ones, it’s a long stage). Then, upon Daddy’s suggestion, we packed into the car to go to a nursery – a really nice one –where I was turned loose to look at everything. Being an avid gardener, this was a true gift. Dad watched the two older ones run up and down the rows of plants and baby trees, while I, with Jack tucked contentedly in his sling, browsed and imagined and shared ideas with strangers and asked for opinions. I picked out a couple of inexpensive bird houses and several lavender plants, and the kids chose (for me, of course) a lovely tin praying mantis on a stick. The entire trip was a joy; nothing got broken or spilled, no one fought with anyone else, and I was surrounded by plants and my happy family.

I was in heaven.

But the day wasn’t over. My husband – who will readily admit that little babyhood is not his favorite stage of parenting – then proceeded to watch Baby Jack while the older kids and I puttered around the yard all afternoon, digging and planting and pulling a few weeds here and there.

And when I went to bed that night, I thought, This was a perfect Mother’s Day! I held no resentments, and had no unmet expectations, because sometime in the last five years I truly lost my dream to be Queen-for-the-Day. Somewhere I realized that, at least to me, being Queen-for-the-Day was almost synonymous with being Not-a-Mom-for-a-Day. And that’s just a little too weird, since it Mother’s Day that were talking about.

Never for a minute do I wish I wasn’t a mom. Oh, to be sure, I wish I could use the bathroom for a few minutes alone, and that people might pick up their laundry and actually put it in the hamper before I get mad and yell. But I know, if it weren’t for my kids, I wouldn’t have the right to claim one May Sunday each year, and really, I wouldn’t be who I am today.

Of course, as the kids have grown, the holiday has changed a bit. They no longer seem to be able to go the whole day without bickering over something, but they will stop when I remind them, “Hey! It’s Mother’s Day, remember?” And then there’s the “When is it Kid’s Day?” question. (Isn’t every day?!) But they still shower me with gifts and school creations that I’ll treasure forever, and my husband still plans what has become our traditional trip to the nursery, where we putter around before coming home to plant my new treasures in the afternoon. My family gives me a little time to do something I really love, and, on that day, I feel free to take it without feeling guilty.

I’m already looking forward to next May, when once again the kids will hint at gifts they’re making at school, and I will find scraps from cards they’re creating at home. I anticipate the day, because I really know that to be loved as a mom is not about being put on a pedestal for the day, but being totally surrounded by those who love me. And that’s the Queen-for-the-Day treatment we moms all deserve.

While driving two of the kids to school today, I notices new yard signs lining the main street of Selah. I paused long enough to read one:

I don't normally use such terms, but WTF? There were 25 or more of them, placed alongside the Vote Yes for Kids signs.

It was startling, really. I've never seen a group go out and actively campaign against a school levy. Someone or some group spent money to have the signs printed, and then surreptitiously put them out in the middle of the night. They didn't even have the courage to do it when someone might see, stop, and ask them about it.

Our own children don't go to school in Selah. They attend a parochial school in Yakima. I realize that we are fortunate to be able to choose where our kids are educated, and that not everyone is in that position.

But never have the Judge or I voted NO on a public school levy or bond.

Today's youth is our country's future. I thought everyone understood that. Don't we want to prepare tomorrow's leaders as best we can?

My head ranted about this all day. At one point I decided I would go downtown tonight and quietly remove the signs. But that would make me as chickenshit as they group behind all this.

Who ARE these people?

OK. I think I'm done now.

This will hopefully become a new feature, encouraging me to blog a bit more.

Random will be those, um, yeah—random—topics, that don’t really fit into any of the areas I feel I am supposed to be writing. I say supposed because I’m still struggling with the point of my blog. I’m still reading how I need to find my niche, and have some expertise—or at least some good experience—in it. So far it’s been mommying. And getting old. And playing in the kitchen. No expertise in any of those, but experience.

But today is random. So I’d like to introduce you two my two little friends.

Yes, they are lady bugs. They may very well be man bugs, but I can’t tell—and I really don’t care—so they are my lady bugs.

I discovered these two little friends well after the nights had grown very cold last fall. Before the weather had turned, and the days were still spiking 70 balmy degrees, I had carried numerous neighbors of theirs (perhaps even family members) to the back door, dumping them gently on to potted plants outside.

Somehow, these two evaded my detection, until one day I spotted one moving across the ceiling. Hmmm. I watched it and thought about the fact that if the lady bug were a spider (male or female) I would be running for a broom-like weapon to eradicate all traces of life from the creepy thing. But she wasn’t, and since lady bugs are just so darn cute, I just couldn’t bear the thought of putting her outside, when she would FREEZE TO DEATH within 12 hours. Shortly thereafter, the second one revealed herself.

My daughter thinks I’m a little odd, keeping two bugs in the bathroom over the winter, but she has no desire to kill them either. We wonder how they are still alive, and what they’re eating (once I put a rice crispie near them, but I don’t know if they ate it or not).

Fortunately, one of my houseplants has come down with a few aphids this past week. This morning, while spraying it with insecticidal soap, my little light bulb went off. Lady bugs thrive on aphids. PING!

Now I’ve moved the rather large houseplant to the bathroom. No one uses the bathtub in there, so it’s not in the way.

Dinner is served!

While waiting for a boring webinar to begin, i found this recipe. can't wait to try!! I think the kids will love :-)
Will you share a favorite find?






Movie Theatre Cookies