Consistency is key...

Nope, not talking about consistent blogging...  Because if that was the case I would be a big failure!  The consistency I am talking about is the kind needed in parenting.

Monday I had a bad parenting day.  Kaiden had thrown up the night before and I woke up feeling strange and dizzy.  I went downstairs to cancel Stroller Strides which means posting in about four different locations on line.  It is a little time consuming.  So time consuming that in that time frame Ethan managed to put on his Toy Story slippers and let the cat out the back door.  He also let himself out the back door.  And he closed it.

So I am downstairs typing up a storm when Kaiden comes looking for me.

"Mommy, can I play XBox?  And why is Ethan crying for you?"

Mommy intuition kicks in and I go running upstairs.  I throw open the back door and there is Ethan, in his Thomas pajamas, crying and cold.  I cuddled him close, ran upstairs and jumped under the covers to warm him up.  Half my thoughts were on how cold his ears and hands were, the other half was wondering if the neighbors had heard him crying.

Am I really one of those parents?  The one on the news closing the door to their messy house saying no comment as the reporter asks them if they knew their child was walking around in the cold morning with only their pajamas?  How could that be me?

Terrible, yes, I know.  It couldn't have been more than 3 minutes, but still. 

My life as a mom is peppered with bad mom moments.  The days when I let them watch more than 2 hours of TV a day (gasp), feed them candy to keep them happy, let their fingernails go uncut because I would rather not sit on them to cut them short and the list goes on.  I like to think it is equally peppered with moments when I am a fantastic mother, truly the stuff only seen in movies (and not Mommy Dearest).  Like when I crouched halfway in the MRI tube holding Kaiden's hand for his whole test.  When I make almost every meal Kaiden eats to make sure it is gluten free (even though I never know if he will think it is gross).  Even today when I shared Gummy Bears with Ethan (his first time) because sometimes kids just need to eat candy. 

All those parenting books call for consistency.  Consistency is key.  But how can any parent be consistently fantastic.  Is it possible.  Should we even try for it.  And if we fail?!?  Oh the guilt!!!  And does it ever end?  Good mom, bad mom, angry mom, cuddly mom, crazy mom, lazy mom, up and down and up and down. 

Ugh, is it just me?  I guess I will just consistently try to do my best, something that shifts at every moment, and we'll have to leave it at that.  Oh and put a top lock on the back door.  Because I don't want to be on the news anytime soon.

LUNA MOMS CLUB: Personal care product companies are not required to test their products for safety prior to selling them... They would rather test it on YOU!

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Fact: Personal care product companies are not required to test their products for safety prior to selling them and can put in virtually anything they want. Not surprisingly, there are many ingredients that have been found to be harmful.

 

Action: To reduce exposure to carcinogens, neurotoxicants, and reproductive toxicants, purchase products that do not contain:

• Parabens
• Formaldehyde
• Triethanolamine and cocamide DEA
• PEGs
• Isopropanol
• 2-phenoxyethanol
• Benzethonium chloride
• Talc
• Phthalates
• Fragrance

Skin Deep safety guide to cosmetics and personal care products (brought to you by researchers at the Environmental Working Group) is a great resource for what type of chemicals are in over 25,000 products – you can search by product type, by brand etc.  Find out more at www.cosmeticsdatabase.com.

On this Mothers Day, I would like to thank... my sons!

On Mother's Day families gather together to celebrate mothers and all they do for their families.  As a mom, I know first hand the countless hours it takes to manage a family.  I could use this whole post to catalog all the things I do- in fact sometimes I am up to my eyeballs in the stuff that I do, doo-doo, and to do's.  But everything I do is tiny compared to what my children have done for me- or rather to me... 

Just with their entrance into the world they have changed the very fiber of my being, they have moved the axis around which my world revolves, they have shifted the way I look at things profoundly that I cannot look at another suffering child or family without putting myself or my child in their place (and feeling utter heartbreak because of it).  They have made me understand what it means to be proud, lost, overjoyed and in awe.  They have made me felt a love that is beyond bounds and a worry that, even when unfounded, can consume your whole mind.  What I do on a daily basis to care for my children is important, but what they have done for me is immeasurable.  They have made me a Mother...

So this Mother's Day I celebrate all the mothers in the world.  I celebrate their hard work, blood, sweat and tears.  But I want to send a special thank you to Kaiden and Ethan.  Since without them, I would never have become a Mother, and would never have been able to experience this amazing journey.   

(And of course special big ups to my Mom too!  Since without her I never would have been in the first place...)  

Is Motherhood hard? Well, I wouldn't use that word...

So I am sure I will have a lot of moms up in arms about the title of this post.  I know that everyone loves to say being a mother is hard and I agree with the sentiment, but as I said above, I wouldn't use that word.  Why?  Because I am a person that believes in the power of words.


A yoga student went up to his teacher and asked him "Why do we have to chant "om" at the end of class?".  The teacher replied, "The sound we make when saying OM helps us reach a deeper peace within us.".  The student said, "Come on, just by saying the word I am supposed to become a more peaceful person? ".  The teacher said, "You are being an asshole".  The student got so angry he started yelling at his teacher.  The teacher calmly said, "Do you still mistrust that saying just one word can change you?"
(totally paraphrased from my meditation teacher from many years ago)


When you are teaching your child something difficult and they are on the verge of giving up, what do they say?  "I can't, it's TOO HARD!".  If you have to choose between two equally awful decisions you are trapped between a rock and a HARD place.  "Hard" is unyielding, unforgiving, unmalleable, and all it does is steal your power to be better in some way, even if it means changing how you think.  After all, if it is hard, you have excuses to fail, to be late, to be unprepared, to be less than you could be.

Of course I know that being a mother is challenging.  There are times that I want to crawl under a rock (when K, the oldest kid at a play date, is the worst sharer), retreat into a warm bath (when the house is a wreck and somehow does not have the ability to clean itself) or run away with my imaginary lover to tour some foreign land (when I am reading Eat, Pray, Love).  But I can't say it is hard.  I have to say difficult or problematic.  I use a word that I know I can work with, something I can shape or form, something I can solve, plan around, prepare for...  I cannot win against "hard" unless I smack up against it over and over, smashing it like a hammer against rock.  And is that how we want to be mothers, or people for that matter?

So I am challenged daily...  I am challenged to get out of the house on time with 2 (clean) children. I am working through the difficulty of providing healthy meals to a family of varied needs and tastes.  I am having issues with communicating with my husband so that we can work together as a well oiled machine.  I struggle through that extra mile on the treadmill, that one extra rep at Stroller Strides, no matter how exhausted.

I work with my challenges- I use my skills, my brain, my strength, my love, my heart and my patience to give it my best.  And at the end, I use my forgiveness.  Because I know that being a mother is hard a journey.  And who doesn't love that word...