Outgrowing Motherhood?!?

I've come to a couple conclusions lately about motherhood in the later years. This is not the result of my own short five years of mothering either.

First of all, as much as we all may want to escape our mothers' nagging, hovering, or any other annoying little thing that mothers do while we're growing up, that doesn't completely disappear because we grew up and moved out of the house or in my case halfway across the country. They still worry, they still stress about what we're doing and how we're doing. My parents have never been hoverers or helicopter parents at all, but they express their worry and concern here and there about things. 

Second of all, after you get married you go from one mother to two mothers. Now you have your own mother and your spouse's mother doing all that worrying and mothering stuff :)

Third, even as much as we may try to push them away during those trying, adolescent years, you're never too old to need your mama. As an adult, it has always surprised me all the times the best medicine would just be talking to my mama. Even though it may seem like a child never needs their mama as much as they did in those early years, I think the runner up for the next stage in life when we need our mamas the most is when we begin our own parenthood journey.

So I guess my final conclusion is as mothers we never outgrow motherhood and as children we never outgrow the need for our own mothers.

Thankful Post Round 2

So I'm awful. I've been working on this post for about a week which is why it's the 21st day of the month and I am now a full 7 days behind on my thankfuls. So here we go with round 2 of my thankfuls.

Thankful #8: Our dog, Bettis. He is nine years old today. Nate got him for our first Christmas so he has pretty much been with Nate and I since the beginning. His health has not been the greatest for about the last six months so I'm hoping this isn't our last celebrated birthday with him :( .

Thankful #9: I realized tonight I only have three more classes with my college freshmen class. Even though I took on teaching the class for some Christmas money and resume building, I have really truly LOVED teaching the class. It was such an awesome reminder of what I enjoy about teaching. So even though it definitely helped with the Christmas funds the enjoyment it gave back to me for a profession I was worried I was losing my passion for was really probably the biggest reward of taking on the extra hours and commitment these past three months.

Thankful #10: Home. I can't even begin to express how excited I am about going home in just four weeks. I haven't been home in almost a year, and the homesickness I've experienced in the last year really surprised me. It's crazy how you're in such a hurry to grow up and move on, but then you hit points later down the road where you really just want to go home to the people that  truly know and understand you and love you for all your good and crazy. Sometimes even though we're independent, grown people there's just something about the comfort of home that no other place can replace. So four weeks and I'm coming home!!!

Thankful #11: Modern day medicine and medical technologies.  I recently wrote about my aunt facing breast cancer. She had surgery on Monday for it and today her pathology reports came back negative, meaning they did not find anymore cancer!!! They caught it early and now it's just the road to recovery. Again, thanks to everyone for their thoughts and prayers.

Thankful #12: Health and wellbeing:  This is something I truly thank God for everyday. There are lots of stresses in life, but I can't imagine anything being more stressful than the worry and stress of your own and someone you love's health. The few times I've dealt with health scares with family, I know how the anxiety can just make you sick to your stomach, you can't sleep, the worry is consuming. A healthy and safe family is definitely something to thank God for everyday.

Thankful #13: My job and the people I work with.  As we all know in this tough economy they're not as easy to come by as they use to be. Last year was the worse year I ever had. I reached a point where I was just absolutely sick of being treated like scum on the bottom of someone's shoe. I told a co worker I felt like what it was doing to me mentally was probably similar to the beating one's self esteem and confidence takes when in a toxic relationship (I don't have much experience with that so who knows). I've always enjoyed working, but last year's experience was a red flag to me. This year is going better so for that too I am incredibly grateful for that because I wouldn't have handled a second year like that well at all.

Thankful #14: Time to get started on the people. The first people are going to be our friends, Dave and Jess. We've made some great friends out here but these two truly are like family. We, especially Averi, adores their little boy, Benjamin, and we can't wait to meet their little girl later this spring. They are seriously some of the most caring, generous people we know.

My First 7 Days of Thanks


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I Didn't Think You Loved Me Anymore

As many of you know we had quite the traumatic experience (insert sarcasm) here when my oldest daughter decided to cut her little sister's hair. The two the most traumatized were me and my oldest daughter. The poor child that had to go around with a butchered mullet for over a month was too young to realize how awful of a haircut her sister really gave her so she escaped the experience with little trauma. I was traumatized because every time I saw Kenz's butchered hair I wanted to cry for those precious curls that were now gone. Averi however did cry for a good half an hour. She knew I was upset and horrified at what she had done. She still refers to it as the moment I didn't love her anymore.

I still remember the first time she told me this. It made me want to cry. Then tonight when I picked her up from school, I got the first bad report this school year form her teacher. The teacher reassured me that it wasn't enough for her to move off of green. (For those non elementary parents, the green, yellow, red color code system is a behavior reward chart to keep them all in line.) The teacher informed me though that she was surprised that Averi was not listening, had to be told to do things more than once, and had to be told  to settle down. When you're a teacher and you deal with everyone else's rowdy, sometimes quite rude and misbehaved children, you have little tolerance for your own child being anything but a polite, little obedient student. I told the teacher any problems tomorrow take her off green. She'll be sad, maybe even cry, but if she's not listening don't hesitate to show her that behavior is unacceptable.

However, I think it will be awhile before she forgets to listen and act out of line. As soon as I got her in the car, I didn't yell at her, but she knew from the tone of my voice and my disappointment that I was not happy with the report from school. She did not say a single word on the drive home and silently cried in the backseat. Then later she asked me if I was happy again and still loved her :( .

When I flipped out about the hair I maybe got a little exciteably loud. But I did not yell at all today, and as I told her teacher, she is such an easy child to discipline and correct because she wants so much to please. She has always been a child that's received lots of positive attention so when she sees you're not happy with her she tends to take it pretty seriously. However, I don't want her to think our disappointment means we don't love her. I told her each time she told me that we always love her, even when she doesn't act the way we expect her to. I never connected a  parent's disappointment to them not loving a child anymore but more they're disappointed because they love their child so much. Disappointment, rather than anger, has always been the thing to impact my behaviors the most. When met with someone's anger I just get defensive and want to retaliate, but when faced with someone's disappointment it's always lead to me actually think about my behavior and the result of it. I want her to understand when we're disappointed with her but I don't want her to think that means we don't love her. However, she's only four so how do I get her to understand?

 

 

 

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Prayers for the STRONG

As I head off to work in the morning, it will be with my heart in a different place. For the third time, we are here in our home in Maryland, while our hearts are back with our families in our first homes. The first time was when Nate's uncle suffered what could have been life threatening injuries from an accident at work, the second was when my dad underwent a procedure just in time to prevent a massive heart attack, and now in the morning my family will all be heading to the hospital to fight cancer once again.

Growing up, my cousin and I went to school together, graduated together, played ball together, were even nominated for the same Homecoming Court together as seniors. We even majored in the same thing with education. I don't think either of us was ever really following the other. We were definitely close but at times we were probably the other's biggest competitor. We both carried that Williams strong willed, competitive nature even when we maybe sometimes used it against each other but we were also the first ones in line to have the other's back.

Sometimes our fiercest competitor is also usually the one we have the greatest admiration for too though. We were just kids when cancer struck our family the first time. Her dad, my dad's brother, fought it longer than I ever saw anybody fight that awful disease. We were eleven when he died, and it will be twenty years this April. Now with what I see as a teacher and looking back on the last twenty years, her strength to mentally survive and overcome, hold onto her hope, and be the amazing woman and mother she is today deserves the admiration I had no hope of recognizing as a kid. She is without a doubt one of the strongest people I know.

But unfortunately after losing her father twenty years ago, she now has to go through fighting this nasty disease again with her mother. And this becomes one of those things I just don't understand. How does one child face cancer with both of their parents? It's one of those unfair things. My cousin comes by her inner strength honestly because not only from her father but her mother, my aunt, would also definitely make it into that one of the strongest people I know categories. They are without a doubt some of the strongest women I know.

But as my mother in law recently told me, even the strongest of us need back up. That waiting room during my aunt's surgery tomorrow will be filled with family.  That's what family does. We're there for the good, the bad, and the ugly and when the going gets tough, we all just get a little tougher. I won't be there with them in person, but I will definitely be there in heart. I know this is going to be a tough road at times, and we all know how strong (and stubborn) you are, but let the rest of us stand behind you, beside you, hold your hand, offer you our comfort, our help, our words and hope. Let us back you up and be there for you. Again I wish I could be there for you so for now I offer the only thing I've ever been able to offer in tough times. My support, my listening ear, and the words that show I care and that I'm here for you. It's time like this that there really never seems to be the right words to say so just know I love you all and will be praying and thinking of you.

For my praying people, I hope you'll keep my aunt in your prayers tomorrow as she undergoes surgery to remove breast cancer. Also, pray for her two children, my cousin I grew up with and her older brother.

Check out Holiday Gift Ideas and Deals

I am super psyched about the holidays this year. First, it's our first Christmas in our new house. I don't think we'll get to decorate the outside as much as we would like, but I did have room to set up a little table for my Christmas village. Because we are traveling for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, I told my daughter we would set up our indoor Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving. That leaves us one of the only two weekends between traveling for the two to get our tree and do our Christmas tree decorating. We are going to attempt for the second time to get a real Christmas tree from a local farm. We usually get ours at Lowes and we tried this once before. The search for the family Christmas tree ended up a Griswold Christmas family adventure. I'd share the story here but it's been accepted for publication in the Mused Literary Review for their Dec 21 Issue so just in time for the holidays.

The other reason I am so excited for Christmas is because we're going home for Christmas! Ever since we've been married we have rotated Christmas with our families; however, due to my sister's January wedding last year we spent two years in a row with my husbands' family (and I love our holidays with them too) but because of that we have only had one Christmas with my family since our first daughter was born almost five years ago. We will get to spend Christmas Eve with my extended family with my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. There's about 50 of us when we all make it. I LOVE the huge family gathering.

My family of five that I grew up with (my parents and us three girls) are now a family of 12 and this will be our first Christmas as a family of 12. We spend the whole Christmas day together.  My mom puts her big, beautiful tree in our basement because with 12 of us now the presents would overtake her whole living room. We will eat a big homemade family breakfast hopefully before opening presents but with four little kids who knows how that plan will go. My mom then makes her annual homemade lasagna dinner Christmas night.

I am as excited about spending Christmas with my family as a little kid is about Santa Claus delivering a bunch of presents.

Aside from starting to decorate for Christmas I've also begun my Christmas shopping. I am a photo gift giving queen. I love personalized gifts. I've come across a wide variety of things on Shutterfly and Tiny Prints. We've done personalized calendars in the past, but there are mugs, blankets, frames, shirts, and many more photo gift ideas on the website. I also create my Christmas cards through Shutterfly.

I am affiliated with Shutterfly and Tiny Prints so I do make a commission off of any purchases (doesn't have to be any of the particular deals advertised) you make so if you're thinking of using them, I hope you can click on the links here on my website to place your orders.  You can click on the links in my side bar to the right or click on them below.

Tiny Prints Photo Gifts

Shutterfly Gift Deals

Holiday Cards


Here's a sneak peak at our family holiday card this year. We wish you all a Merry Holiday Season!