Entries Tagged 'Parenting' ↓

“Secure your oxygen mask before assisting others.”

I heard that phrase three times this weekend. Once on the flight up to Boston, once on the flight back down to Tampa and once over dinner with my best friend. I was in Boston to see her and her family. She just had a beautiful baby girl three months prior and I was finally able to get myself north to meet her.

But over dinner, away from our children, wearily clinking our glasses together – we talked about putting ourselves first.

“I like to think of what they say on airlines before you take off. You know, secure your own mask before helping anyone else.”

She was explaining that if we don’t make sure we have ourselves taken care of, we can’t care for anyone else. And these were wise words coming from the mother of a brilliant and busy two year old and fabulous but fussy three month old. It seemed an enormous gift when she could pass me her littlest one just so that she could shower, just so that she could finish her plate of food, just so that she could be quiet in her space for a moment.

Granted, her words of advice are ones I suppose know on some level already. After seven years as a mother, I thoroughly understand that parents need to have time for themselves before they can care for their families. I get that. I do. But do I apply that advice very often? Does my husband? Does any parent?

When my boys were born, I got used to back burnering so much of my own indulgence. But so much more back burnering followed. Even the most basic functions can get ignored – and you know what I’m talking about here. Raise your hand if you’ve peed and fed your baby at the same time. (Don’t look at me like that. I’m just keeping it real here, folks.)

While considering this whole concept of putting yourself first now and then this weekend, I also happened to get sick. It was certainly ironic. Away from my family and responsibilities, I managed to pack it up, lose my voice (NOT COOL while with my BFF) and spend more time on her couch than out and about in Boston.

And that was fine because I was able to spend plenty of time with her girls, which is why I was there in the first place. (Disregard the germs I probably spread all over their home however… guilt guilt guilt.)

But once I arrived here in Tampa and jumped back into my role as mom, I faltered a bit. My chest cold had settled in for the long haul and (…I could insert a story here about how I dozed off on my 3 year old who decided not to be potty trained while I snoozed but I’ll spare you those details…) I was not functioning so well. So my husband, who is running on a work treadmill at full speed right now, had to find a way to get back home and care for the boys for one more day.

Sure, I put myself first. But only because I had to. And let me tell you – lying in bed while my boys were fed and homeworked and put to bed was strangely surreal. (Or maybe the Nyquil had yet to wear off.) Regardless, there is always a trade off. My husband had to desert his full speed treadmill at work for the time being, let alone find any time to focus on his own needs.

(I wonder when he ever secures his own mask? While I may be putting my kids first most of the time, he is putting work AND our kids first all of the time. Does his commute to and from work count as his alone time, his time to breath and refuel his brain again? I’m not so sure.)

This balance is something we all need to work out better. It is very easy to set your own needs aside because you aren’t going to get whined at or voicemailed incessantly until you DO pay attention to yourself.

(Imagine if you did though. Imagine if your child threatened a temper tantrum if you didn’t go outside and sit in that lounge chair with a book RIGHT NOOOOOWWWW!!!! I bet we’d do it without any arguments.)

I’m not sure I have any recommendations here. Because while I know we all need our time to regroup and recharge – I don’t always. And I don’t know how to insist that we do this every time. Or if we realistically can do it every time. But we can try to do it some of the time at least. And remind ourselves how much better off everyone might be if we did.

Now, if I could only figure out how get the airplane’s exit door open too, and that fun bouncy slide to eject, and then hurl myself and my husband wheeeeeee off the plane and onto a beach in Tahiti.

Baby steps. Oxygen first. THEN Tahiti.

Confidence is such a tricky thing. For anyone. I don’t care how many fancy degrees you do or don’t have under your belt, how hard you rock your job or how many awards you’ve earned as mother of the year. Confidence never comes automatically with any of it.

I am struggling to find a little of it myself these days. I privately brim and bubble with so much self doubt. It feels a little pathetic, and lonely, and then just feeds back into the cycle, so I feel worse and silly and not worth the trouble.

How did I get to this point? Why can’t I find my own private brand of “awesome” and feed off of that all day?

I have been out of an office place for almost seven years. And I am starting to re-fire my engines and consider going back (into something, anything) later this year. I don’t feel ready, I don’t know what I am doing, my professional skills feel entirely too atrophied, any competitive edge I thought I had seems long LONG gone.

Something happens when you stay home with your children. Something happens when you bring home your newborn and have to lower your expectations of productivity to a snails pace. Maybe you’ll get a shower in during the day or a bit of food. Maybe. You don’t prioritize your needs and then you don’t expect to owe yourself much. I think I kind of just got used to never quite being 100% so great at anything ever since. Or I assumed I wasn’t. It’s just not about me anymore.

(Ugh. Patheticness. Am already annoying myself with this post.)

Ok, its not as if I shouldn’t feel proud of some of the things I have accomplished. My children are amazing. And I am grateful for that. And to make a general statement that staying home with your kids makes you weak, well, come on. We KNOW that’s not true.

It’s just you have to dig way down deep to reclaim that piece of awesome I had reinforced on a regular basis beforehand.

Because you know that having children just adds a heap load more reasons to doubt myself. A heap load. When it comes to something so dear to your heart, when you have two children’s futures resting in your hands, when its on you to make sure they turn out ok… well, it’s hard to feel like any kind of rock star parent. There is a LOT to mess up, my friends. A lot.

Plus raising children 24/7 with no job review, or cute clothes, or pat on the back from any sort of boss, or flashy benefits assuring that you are SO worth that fancy “mom” title. Well. I usually have no idea if I am even in the ballpark of doing an ok-ish job as a mom.

So I have to dig deep.

Shovel, sling dirt, Yoo hoo, where’s my awesome? Shovel, sling dirt, it’s gotta be down here. Shovel, sling dirt, I think. Shovel, sling dirt, somewhere.

Somewhere, somehow, that old “who gives a crap what they think” will resurface, that swagger, that special something that I used to have.

Meh. Yeah. I don’t know.

And I know its not just me. I know lots of parents feel this way. Or every day folk stuck in jobs that they don’t love but are lucky to have. Or anyone stuck in any kind of rut or wishing for something more or wondering where the old “me” went and if they ever had it in the first place.

I am going to have to muster up a sizeable amount of “I’ve got nothing to lose” if I want to get back out there and work again. I have to find my value, my real worth and then – *eeps* – actually flaunt it. I have to convince someone, anyone that I am worth paying a chunk of money to and that I am so super-fabulous-awesome even though I’ve only worked part time here and there and really the only productive thing I’ve done over the past seven years is write. But how productive is that when it’s amounted to the equivalent of a few grocery trips and tanks of gas? No disrespect, glad to have that much, but how the hell do I, little ol’ me, translate as anything worthy?

Groan. WOW. I don’t like not being confident. I don’t like how I sound. I feel all kinds of icky when I’m feeling sorry for myself. And then I assume if I annoy myself this much, I must be annoying to everyone else so I back off. Don’t mind me. I’m the frumpy mommy mess, talking to myself in a corner. Move along. Nothing to see here.

I SO scream “hire me!” don’t I?

So yeah. Confidence is a tricky thing. Fleeting, here and there, evaporating, condensing, dropping back in, and gone again.

I think its rebuilt on the little achievements and the possibility of doing more the next time. I think its about taking chances and promising yourself that any risk is worth the reward. Its about reminding yourself about what you’ve done before and your ability to do that bigger and better the next time.

My parenting abilities, my writing skills, my job worthiness, my value as a friend, my position as a valuable, contributing member of society.

I’m working on it. I’m digging for it. Deep. Shovel, sling dirt, I remember leaving it down here, somewhere.

We are two months past Christmas and in the meantime, my six year old has been losing teeth and growing them back in faster than I can start weeping “I remember when you were just a drooling, teething, gumming mess!” And thanks to all the pasteled cardboard bunnies decking the halls of my local Target, I have been reminded that Easter is right around the corner. So what does this mean?

A whole lot of lying to my kid.

Why?

Because within a span of a few months, I will have told my kid that yes, one more mysterious magical being will creep into our home and leave him things.

Santa.

How does he get in?  The air vents? Why can’t we hear him? Do you promise he doesn’t come into my room?

The Tooth Fairy.

How big is she? Is she like Tinkerbell? Can she fly? How does she carry all this money and what does she do with all the teeth?

The Easter Bunny.

Does he lay these eggs? Does he like to eat plastic grass? Where does he come from? Why do I get jelly beans? What would the Tooth Fairy say?

And I come up with fascinating, complex responses to each of his questions. This year, I even managed to have the Tooth Fairy be in cahoots with Santa. If he does a good job brushing his teeth, she’ll let Santa know. His eyes were wide, considering all of this, hoping his rep remained in good standing for all of these magical home invaders.

And yet, those wondrous tales I weave? Lies. All of them.

Here I am trying to teach my six year old facts about the world. At school, he learns about gravity, liquids, solids, what floats, what sinks, where his nation’s capitol is and that Abraham Lincoln was our the 16th president. He helps me bake and bring his dishes back to the sink. He is learning responsibility and asks me questions about current events on the news. He is learning and processing and showing brief glimmers of (…I can hardly bare to consider it…) adulthood.

And then here I come along and throw in fat men squeezing into vents in our house (no “stranger danger” to worry about hon, I promise) and fairies flitting about dropping change and bunnies hopping through our home with an odd fetish for plastic grass.

It just feels a little… off.

But I try to back up and think of the six year old world I experienced some 30 odd years prior. I remember gleefully celebrating everything magical, fantastical and far from realistic. As fast as I learned about how serious and strange our world actually was, the hope of magic and fairies and gifts being left in the dead of night if I was a good girl absolutely appealed.

Because at six years old, magic still makes a lot of sense. Santa is about as real as some guy named Abraham Lincoln anyway. So let’s go with it.

But the guilt remains. I can’t help but feel like I’m lying. As much as he seems to enjoy these silly traditions…

Ok, wait. I’m lying again. He went through a faze at about 4 years old when the concept of some strange man coming into our home on Christmas Eve seemed more frightening than any spook left behind from Halloween. I promised he didn’t have to sit on his knee. I promised he wouldn’t go into his room. I promised that I was right down the hall. Yay for Christmas, isn’t this fun?

That has since passed. But during it all, I could not help but question why I had to shove this strange myth down his throat. Believe in Santa, damn it. After all, I believed – so YOU must too! Like some screwy rite of passage, you better be good for goodness sake.

And what will happen when my six year old learns about my litany of lies after all these years? Because what is all of this for? So that he can grasp onto some hope of magic only to have it dashed? I worry he will be so disappointed. Because he is wound deep into the tradition of it all now. He adores it all and takes it very seriously. I cringe a little while he solemnly places carrots for our reindeer in our driveway, making sure they are well fed for all their work. And then runs his pajama-ed feet back inside to find NORAD online and track Santa’s progress.

All of it is still so believable.

He believes because the barometer of all that is real and safe and ok  – that would be yours truly, Mommy -  said so.

Gawd, I am such a liar.

But there have been times where I have hinted that the magic isn’t there. I have forgotten to fill the advent calendar only to have him ask me to fill it, but could I do it when he’s not looking? He wants that candy to magically appear. And I have left the tooth fairy writing paper out, and the pen I used. He overlooks it. Maybe he didn’t connect the dots – or maybe he doesn’t want to.

I think I was close to ten years old before I was 100% sure there was no Santa. I held on for as long as I possibly could. I kept the faith, thinking the non-believers were totally losing out while I stubbornly bought into every last drop of Christmas magic. I knew that Santa and the Eater Bunny’s handwriting looked an awful lot like my parents. But I didn’t care. There were a lot of things we couldn’t explain, let’s just believe the magic is real.

And I think I still have to.

I need create magic for as long as he wants it. Because there is something special about believing. It fosters wonder and hope and possibility in their imaginations. If there is a tooth fairy hovering over my head, slipping change under my pillow, well anything seems possible, right?

Yeah.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed how I rationalize my lies. Yes, saying there is a Santa means my child will have a fantastic imagination. Awesome.

But I will continue with these traditions and routines. They are woven into our culture. Watching them believe brings us back to a time when we believed. And that feels ok and fun and, who cares, everyone enjoys it. So I’m ok with that.

But when my six year old puts it together that my handwriting is the same as Santa’s and the Tooth Fairy’s and the Easter Bunny’s, when he comes home telling me what they are all insisting on the playground, when he mourns the fact that all of this magic is just, you’ve got to be kidding me, his mom… well. I’ll be back on here. Oozing with guilt and parental self doubt.

Until then, I am wondering if the Easter Bunny should leave a new toothbrush too – a little something from his “cuz” the Tooth Fairy. With all of those anticipated jelly bellies, the Easter Bunny might need to encourage a little dental care too. Yep, let’s weave some guilt into my tale of lies. It just might work.

Here is my husband’s Valentine.

Because how else would a blogger give a Valentine but through words, online, for all the world to see?

But I think it is about as close as I’ll get to any sort of rooftop where I can somehow yell (to all who might care to listen) that I adore my husband.

Because I do.

Because I think about who we were 13 years ago, when we first met, with all the time in the world to discover and adore the other’s idiosyncrasies. I think about how we find each other now, in fleeting moments, while caught up in the minutiae of our own groundhog days running parallel. I devour those moments and then wait. They always happen again, once the dust settles and the kids are put to bed. And then I think about us in days ahead, dizzy from time gone by, readjusting our identities as parents and partners.

You and I, we’re not tied to the ground

Not falling but rising, like rolling around

Joy is boiled down to it purest form on those days when we both have two bumping, leaping boys besides us. Days we make some variation of adventure happen on an hour long hike or a picnic at a playground. Our days at the beach, digging trenches and crunching sand in our potato chips. These are those days that we’ll hold tight, and retell, and laugh out loud about how our boys were ever that small and wanting and new.

Oh, and when the kids are old enough

We’re gonna teach them to fly

Someday it will be just us again. And we will come back together, without two cracker hungry children whining in between, and miss this painfully same everydayness. And look at each other like, “oh yeah, us.”

We can always look back on what we did

All those memories of you and me baby

But right now it’s you and me forever girl

And you know we could do better than anything that we did

I want to remember us from before and find all that wonderful novelty. I want to hold on to these regular moments before they fall away entirely revealing two young men eating everything in our refrigerator before vanishing into their own lives. I want to look forward to adventures that don’t require kids menus or car seats or getting back to our room by 8pm.

You and me together, we could do anything, Baby

You and me together, yes, yes.

What an incredible gift to share history with another, to share children with another, to share a future with another. I adore you husband of mine. And I can’t wait to spend a couple hours out alone tonight - time together – you and me, baby.

The First Lady has taken on the fight against childhood obesity in her most recent initiative called the Let’s Move Campaign. I got an email yesterday from a journalist at Bay News 9 asking for my thoughts. And as I was reading the link he provided, I saw that the First Lady was speaking live about this initiative on MSNBC. So I stopped, read, listened and sent him my thoughts.

This is basically what I emailed him.

There can be no argument against that fact that we have a severe childhood obesity issue in our country. McDonald’s chains are often more common than supermarkets in some areas. One third of our nation’s children are overweight or obese. Junk food is stuffed into beautiful, fun packaging. Sugar tastes so damn good and its deliciously addictive. We eat big portions in this country – most of which is just a lot of nothing, filling the hole, cheap and easy. It’s here, it’s there, it’s everywhere, nom, nom, nom.

Bottom line? Our bad eating habits are so effusive that they have become a culture issue. My friends and I ate junk growing up, and now my kids and their friends want it too. And unless we want to continue seeing more children facing health issues and obesity before they even get to high school, we need to change our culture’s ideals about fast food fast.

I have to point out that the First Lady made a great point about obesity before she launched into the points of her program. She made it clear that this is not about how someone looks. Its about how children feel. Both in reference to their own body image and how they feel medically.

There is a huge issue of fat-ism (for lack of a better word) and body image in this country – and this initiative can’t and should not be about that. I am hoping that healthier habits change attitudes on many levels but never single out anyone for not fitting some expectation of “model thin” beauty. We are what we are, but let’s be the best we can be. Just saying.

So back to the Let’s Move Campaign. We have to change the culture of our country. So that means we need support. Parents need support from schools, schools need to actively educate children and funding will be needed to really push a campaign of healthy eating habits forward. Sugar has too strong a pull on us not to come back at the causes of obesity with guns blazing.

So will kids actually be able to learn how to eat better? I don’t think it is ever too early to start educating and empowering children about food. My six year old has a peanut allergy and has been reading food labels for as long as he has been able to read. And more recently, we’ve been taking steps to read the entire label. He knows to look for sugar, sodium, trans fat, protein and vitamins. And now that he generally understands what reasonable amounts of each should be in his food, he knows we need to pick Cheerios over Fruit Loops. He may not be happy about it, but at least he now knows why.

Also, it is my hope that some of the funding will make healthier foods more accessible to families in need. Feeding a family off a dollar menu is a hell of a lot cheaper than cashing out at a grocery store. Healthy eating should be something everyone can afford to do.

Finally, there has been some crabbing about this campaign banning certain foods in school. While I think banning food is never a good idea, teaching kids about better choices certainly is. And then, we would hope, kids will learn to pick better food choices and drive the market to provide healthier alternatives in vending machines which kids feel OK about buying.

“No way, dude. I don’t want that lame Ho-Ho. I want that bag of sliced apples! AWESOME!”

Er. Here’s hoping at least.

And if my son’s PTO votes to remove all sodas and cupcakes and sugary crap from the schools vending machines, so be it and good riddance. But that’s the schools collective choice. I’m just hoping that with focused education and better access to healthier foods, it will be my children’s choice someday too.

Oh and be sure to check out my friend Apryl’s post about this too: First Lady Michelle Obama takes a Bite Out of Childhood Obesity. Apryl, who writes at About.com, was in on a conference call to the White House as the President signed the executive order to fight childhood obesity.

It’s Groundhog day! It’s my holiday. Cheers, a toast to me.

Well, its my holiday in the Groundhog Day MOVIE sense of the holiday. Do you remember that movie? With Bill Murray? From about 15ish years ago? I remember going to that movie with an old boyfriend. I thought the movie was kind of lame at the time. So did he. I don’t think I ever thought about that movie again. At least not for a long while.

However. Years later, this holiday – in the sense that it is in the movie – has become my day. And I am sure you can guess why. Or why any mother home with her kids might relate. Stuck in my own personal Groundhog Day, I wash the same damn dishes every day, I yell the same demands of “stop beating your brother on the head with a baseball bat” about the same time everyday, I ask daily that they eat their carrots, and pee in the potty, and pick up their underwear off the ground, and not slosh every drop of bathwater onto the floor, and stop jumping on the bed, and WIPE for God’s sake, and yes you DO need a nap, and look both ways. Its always the same. THE SAME. Everyday.

In some ways there is a certain comfort in it all. I know there is for my children. By nature, kids require adults to create predictable rhythms and army issue schedules which we can set our watches to. They need that routine. And parents abide. To a child, in an ever-changing world, that schedule is wholly welcome and needed and comforting. And who am I kidding – the guarantee that I will see my 6 year old at 3:45 everyday is assuring and wonderful and something I look forward to daily.

But while I look forward to 3:45pm, to see him bopping up to my car with his backpack on, it always seems that this day could be the same as the last or the day before or the next day coming. The same buses pass me on the way to school, the same cars line up and sit next to me in the car line, the same fights happen in the backseat on the way home.

Its Groundhog day. Everyday.

Ugh, so… do I really need to make a disclaimer here? And say that while this painfully predictable same same saaaame-ness in my daily schedule can be extraordinarily tedious… and even though I admit to that plainly here… even so, I do truly love being here for my children. Do I need to say that? I hope not. I hope it is clear that I cherish my time with my boys. Just because my job is mind numbing and exhausting, doesn’t mean I don’t love it. I know. It makes perfect sense.

But oh once just to throw nap schedules to the wind, to bust out of the car line, to not have dinner ready at 6pm. My children would be better off for some spontaneity now and then. Which we try to do. And succeed at now and again. But I will tell you this. While the crazy fun is exciting initially, they don’t do so well with unpredictability long term. And they are much easier to parent if they know what’s happening next. So the routine is a must. It allows them to grow, to flourish and to trust that their world around them is still the same and that dinner will be ready by 6pm, I promise.

But still. Happy Groundhog Day to me.

And if you forget to wish me a happy one today, well that’s ok.

You can always do it tomorrow.

I dream a lot. And I dream some keeerazy, far too realistic dreams which happen to stick with me for half the day. And very often I wake up and have determined that my husband is in trouble for something he absolutely did not do. But I sure dreamt that he did and that’s good enough in my book. My mother used to do this to my father too. My father and husband commiserate over having spent days in the dog house for indiscretions we’ve dreamt up in the wee hours. It’s just one of those lovely hidden traits that spouses find out about long after we’ve walked down the aisle. Sorry, huz.

Anyway, I am usually not into replaying my dreams publicly because come on. What is more boring than hearing what someone dreamt about the night before? My husband gets to hear every detail – because listening to irrelevant dreams is in his husband job description (however fine the print was) I’m afraid. But I try to spare boring the rest. Because really I know, *YAWN* … so to speak.

But I had a dream that is worthy of sharing I think. It offers a unique insight into the mind of a mother. Maybe you’ve had a dream like this before? Well, whether you have or not, the real reason I am posting it is to rid myself of its demons. Because I am fairly sure I aged a couple of years just by having it. It was a doozy. And to start off telling its tale, I must ask you one important question:

Do you know what mom stress dreams are made of?

Well I’ll tell you.

I am riding in the very back of my friend’s red mini-van. And the car is filled with children that are not mine. Where were mine by the way? I have no idea where they are. And where are we going anyway? Oh look. No one is driving the car. That’s right, I am careening down a highway, in a minivan filled with children who aren’t mine, with no one at the wheel. So I scramble over the seats. And as I am doing this, I look down to see that the kids are actually not strapped into their car seats. And some of the car seats are far too small for them. And the kids are dirty. One little girl was covered in coffee beans. Could she choke on those? Holy hell, she has a handful in her fist right now. But wait. The van is still careening down the highway and starting to veer. Must. Crawl. To. Front. Of. Van. Oh no. My foot gets wrapped up in one of those dangling straps belonging to one of those children that isn’t strapped in. And now one is crying. A lot. He is squirming and its clear his diaper is full. Something leaks out the side. Oh this is bad. Finally, I’m in the front of the van, my foot yanked free, hoping to God those kids don’t crawl out of their seats. I grab the wheel. But, predictably, I could not reach the break pedal. The cliched slow motion, walking in syrup moment of it all was torturous. Reaching, reeeeaching for those pedals. Finally I do and I break. Kids fly around everywhere, I feel thudding on the back of my seat. What have I done? Screaming, crying, oh my God are they ok? I find myself stopped on a back road. I push open the door. Where the hell am I? Who are these kids? WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN? Where is my cell phone? I really need help. So I am searching and searching and searching in my bag when I look up. One child has escaped the car and is elbow deep in a conveniently placed trough of manure. Poop was all over her. And she is about to put it in her mouth because she’s just one of those “mouthy” kinds of kids. I grab her, tell her not to touch anything, and where are my wipes? Standing there on the grass, one hand on her, I am frantically searching searching searching my bag for wipes, pleading that she not move. But something does move – its the van. With the van door still open and every child still unstrapped crawling all over the inside, it begins to roll away from me, rapidly picking up speed. They start screaming again, and the van rolls further away, faster and faster and I am chasing it, slow motion AGAIN, with this manurey child on one hip, and I’ll never catch it (- oh shit I left my bag behind -) the van is gaining speed, its just too far away, a shoe just fell out the side of the van or was it a bottle? I’ll never catch it, OHMYGODHELP!!!….

And that, my friends, are what mom stress dreams are made of.

By the way, my children, my wipes, my car, my car seats, my cell phone and my bag are all blessedly accounted for.

Because I checked.

Yesterday, in a three year old “I don’t want to nap even though I am besides myself with exhaustion” apocalyptic melt-down, my darling one decided to smash the baby monitor. I’m not sure how he did it but as I sat waiting through a stream of howling, yelling and screaming – the sounds abruptly turned to just…. static. Assuming he had pulled the monitor out of the wall, I stormed in only to find him still gloriously enraged and a part of the monitor’s plug cracked, as if hacked off the wall. My request that he nap was clearly an outrageous one – and the monitor had to pay the price for his suffering.

My monitor, my trusty spying side-kick, was dead.

As you well know, my sons are hardly wee babes any longer. They are solid, school going, “big boys” now at the substantial ages of three and six. Do I really need a monitor any longer?

Probably not.

Certainly there are schools of thought that believe this whole monitor business is simply one more hugely unnecessary burden today’s parent places on themselves. Our parents and our parents parents didn’t have monitors. And they successfully heard their children cry out, carry on and tantrum at naptime. In fact, some say that NOT hearing every whimper your child makes is a good thing. You’ll hear them if you need to. They can figure it out.

And I will give the nay-sayers that. The monitor requires parents to sleep with one ear trained on the breathing patterns of our children. We stir when they stir. We wake when they wake. We worry over any snarf, coo or fart.

But you see, I don’t mind.

I kind of like it that way.

Because, my friends, the sounds of my children sleeping are like an addiction of sorts. And my monitor is my dealer. While I settle in for the night, my monitor brings me my fix: my boys slumbering sighs satisfy every sense, they green-light my mind to wander, they promise me total reassurance. All is well. Sleep can happen.

I know, I know. My house isn’t even that big. If their door is open and my door is open, I can hear them if they call out. And they are three and six, for the love of God. If they REALLY needed me, they could climb out of bed and, in three seconds flat, leap wildly – with their well trained pajamaed feet – right into our bed.

Truly, our trusty little baby monitor is now – if hasn’t been all along – entirely obsolete. It’s silly. It’s unnecessary.

But it’s my addiction.

Because as I laid down to sleep last night, I heard… nothing. Silence. I felt partially deaf. Muffled. It was as if my children were no longer there. After 6 years of ambient breaths and quiet background static, there was just… nothing.

“What if someone broke into that front window, someone could get them – we wouldn’t hear anything!”

My husband looked as if he agreed. He is as much an addict as I am.

But we both know that we would hear someone if they broke in, surely. Even if my husband slept as deeply as he usually does, I would wake up. I stir when the cat walks across the floor or the rain hits the window or the toilet starts (sonofa… who didn’t jiggle handle!?) running.

We don’t need a monitor.

We don’t.

But. Um. I reeeeeally still want to go get one.

I mean, I kind of thought that having a monitor around the house would just come in handy. My husband can use it as a one way speaker when he’s in there. And imagine its many uses if we quietly stuffed it under their beds when they’ve reached double digits and are no longer telling me a thing. IMAGINE what we would be privy to!

Ok, maybe that’s not a great idea.

But I had truly convinced myself that monitors are 100% practical parenting tools which every household must have, no matter the child’s age.

Fine. I am simply admitting out loud what I have felt ever since I brought my oldest son home from the hospital six years ago. The twelve steps between our bedroom door and their bedroom door seems an enormous distance in the haze of sleep, in the semi-conscious “are my babies ok?” state where every parent hovers most of the night. If I am unsure of their safety and comfort, well, I can’t help but let my mind wander and worry. And in the wee hours, its hard to agree to much sanity regarding your children unless you actually hear their sweet, shallow breaths coming from that red light on the dresser.

But FINE. Yes. I know. It’s time. I need to try. I must break myself of this addiction. It’s time for this household to say goodbye to our baby (*sniff, sniff *) monitor.

Besides. I know my ears will always do their radar thing. Monitor or not, my senses are trained on their sounds where ever they are in the house. I can still hear them. I just need to convince myself, while I roll over in the deep dark of night, that the peaceful quiet of the house means there is also peace twelve steps away. All will be well.

Unless I wander into the baby section at Target tomorrow and give in to my cravings for children’s breath and soft static. Unless…

During these cold, harsh Florida winter days, a mom has to find a way to get warm somehow.

So this is how I roll.

It started out innocently enough. All eight boxes of our Christmas paraphernalia had been pulled down from the attic and stacked up in our main room – we were ready to deck some halls.  But as I started pulling each stocking, star, Santa hat and trinket out, I looked around and saw clutter. So much clutter, clutter everywhere and clutter that we would only be adding more clutter to.

Particularly toy clutter. Toy clutter that had not been properly played with in months – maybe years.

That just would not do.

So I pulled out some plastic bags and a couple empty boxes, again innocently enough. It was time to collect all the unplayed with stuff and haul it away. It was taking up precious real estate in our cozy home in dire need of Christmas decor.

I never expected all of that toy clutter would actually retaliate.

I never expected that once I pulled a few things out and started sorting, it would pour out and surround me.

Soon there were little people lined up in formation on the floor, matchbox cars of every make surrounding me and plastic dinosaurs precariously placed on their sides – ready to mangle any bare foot. And electronic devices of all sorts, going off, squealing hideous obscenities, as their batteries died within.

The kids stayed back. Maybe the reason they hadn’t been playing with these toys was now more apparent. Maybe they were afraid. These things weren’t toys. They were parent seeking, clutter making, plastic, broken, noisy, insidious attack militia with my sanity as their target.

It seemed the more I pulled out to sort, the more cluttered the house got, the less I knew what to do with it all and then… I got stuck. Every toy box empty. All of it out. And sorted. But I had no idea what to do next. Trash? Give away? Keep? And where?

And where had it all come from in the first place??

I swear I never buy my kids toys. Their birthdays and Christmas – yes. But I’m not a “stuff” person. And they don’t beg for it either. So I thought we had it under control.

I was wrong.

Happy meal toys, headless Star Wars action figures, dried up markers, broken train track, puzzle pieces, fake food with real tooth marks. And then bits of colorful plastic that I didn’t recognize at all, broken off from something or another. Those drove me most insane. Do I keep this? Is this something they need for something they have but don’t play with because this piece is missing? Or is it a smashed up something or other that we tossed long ago and this one piece remains. What is it???

So, in retaliation, I started bagging. I wouldn’t look those stuffed animals in the eye, I couldn’t remember how much my eldest son adored that ragged old teether, I disregarded all sentiment and just got bagging. It was my only defense, I tell you. What else was a mother to do?

And I think the books were the hardest. Books we read a thousand times over, that my children found so much joy with, that taught them their first words or signs or colors. Words are my downfall. I’m a sucker for them. I loved those stories. But I couldn’t let them drag me down. If they weren’t reading them now, if they weren’t NEEDED any longer, they got thrown in a box. I knew what had to be done.

Panting, an entire weekend after the job was begun, I stood triumphant over two enormous trash bags of toys, two boxes of children’s books – all for give-away – and one huge bag of trash. What toys that remained had a home: the little people were caged in plastic boxes, match box cars parked away, and anything that threatened the tender under sole of an adult foot was snapped shut in tupperware.

Success. Victory! The toy boxes were under my control once again. And as I loaded the back of my car up with my prisoners of war, the kids gingerly stepped forward to peer into them again. There’s my favorite phone! You found my Cars car! My Star Wars book!

And so I revel in the room left behind. My Christmas clutter decorations have found spots in and amongst it all. There is peace in the land.

Until Christmas morning. Until everything is unwrapped and the toys begin to regroup, reorganize and rebuild their assault. It will happen again. But until then. I win.