Gallery Walls, Caller ID, and Water Parks.....Oh My!

I have a sunburned back......or a good base as my dad would call it........sore legs, wet bathing suits at the bottom of my basement stairs, a tired kiddo watching a phenomenal lack-luster Barbie version of Rapunzel, coolers full of water that were ice yesterday, a 'new' bedroom, and......wait for it.......caller ID on my home-phone for the first time ever (my TV will even tell me who's calling so I can 'exercise' my standing as an American and not even have to get up)!

That must mean it was a good weekend.

First up.......I've been wanting to grow up my bedroom for a while and make a gallery wall somewhere in my house.  Those two wishes got married this weekend and resulted in pure happiness on my part.

Before...........

After......

Chris and I made this headboard out of an old door before we got married.  We had no money to buy a bedroom set at the time but wanted to have more than a mattress on the floor, a la frat house, in our apartment.  And now....twelve years later....I will never get rid of this headboard.  It's been painted multiple colors, and comes with us wherever we go.  I love it and it reminds me of spending nights in the basement of the house Chris was living in right before we got married---stripping wood, painting, and shellacking.

Gallery walls are great because you can just keep adding to them, nothing really has to match because the more random the better, and they're bottom line so fun to shop for here and there at random little stores--antique stores have the best finds for gallery walls.

And AT & T men who are installing new cable behind your bedroom dresser all the while your three year old bounces in and out of the room asking, "what's that man doing?," "why is that man in your room," and "does that man like those pictures you're hanging up?," and you climb up and down off the bed with nails in your mouth and a hammer in your skirt pocket are fans of gallery walls too.

And then.......

We headed out to Michigan Adventure yesterday with friends for some water and sun and good kiddie rides..........

Georgia and Fi--how cute is Fi?  And her hat?  French Riviera here she comes!

Somehow Chris and I ended up alone on the track cars......Georgia was off riding with a boy..........

Catch you later this week.  Have a great Monday!

And then it all goes to crap...............

That saying, "The Calm Before the Storm," must have been penned by a mother of a three year old and then sailors or meteorologists or some other weather aficionados adopted it as their own.  I should know by now the implications it has on my life........I really should.

Tuesday was one of those summer days where life was like a Smucker's Jelly commercial.....idyllic, lazy, filled with kiddie pools and ice-pops, lunch on a picnic blanket, trampolines, good quiet time, ballet class and just Georgia and me.  We normally have some kind of activity going on most days of the week, but not Tuesday.  We just played--the two of us.  We hunkered down at home, destroyed the back yard with a hundred activities and left remnants of our good time in our wake.

After ballet class that evening we got the usual--ice cream.  It was just the two of us, in keeping with the day, as opposed to the friends we normally go with, and it was perfect.  An appropriate ending to a beautiful day.  I could hear birds chirping and angels singing and..........

butterflies flying, and children laughing, and light beams were bouncing off our joyous faces and........

there were ants to meet.  Always ants.  They round out a perfect day........well.......perfectly......at least in Georgia's mind.

And I was basking in the glow of what I was chalking up to be a near perfect parenting day.  I had been patient, happy, creative, logical, silly, doting, appropriately firm, and all around 'mother of the year.'

And then before bed I asked Georgia to "quick run in the bathroom and go pee before we put your pull up on."

And the whole day went to crap........because the tantrum that ensued over that request was the reaction you'd see if someone was being tortured.......I'm sure of it.  Over pee.  We ended the night more like an Allstate Insurance commercial with 'Mayhem' taking over our house.  There were time outs and no books before bed-time and shrieking screams for about a half hour once we closed Georgia's bedroom door.

And I should have known, that calm before the storm.........it's intoxicating, it clouds your mom vision, and makes you a little loopy on love.

Here's to a better day today.  Right?

It's okay........

When Georgia was about a month old I got a Facebook message from a friend out of the blue who I hadn't talked to in person in a very long time.......and really, we'd never been super close friends........given more time I'm sure it would've happened though.  She's pretty awesome.  She used to live in my town, she went to college with my husband and they were pretty good friends, and I did happen to star in a home-made version of the Real World with her that a group of us made one late, late, late night when we were about twenty.  It. Was. Awesome.

I assure you.
But......not the point here.

Her message to me was one I'll never forget.  It was an amazing gift to a bleary eyed new mom who had struggled so long to have a child and had finally gotten one.  An amazing one.  A little girl that was created to be my daughter.  And one that brought with her the most incredible blessing in the form of an open adoption; an added bonus to how phenomenal she was all on her own.

And I 200% believed all of those things to my core.  I loved my little girl like crazy.  I was immediately obsessed with her.

But sometimes, in those first few months when I was exhausted, cranky, my usually clutter free house was a disaster, and I watched my husband get to go to work everyday I secretly wondered what we had done.

This friend's message told me, "It's okay.  It's okay to feel baffled at your new life.  Not baffled because you don't know how to mix up a bottle, soothe a crying baby, or treat diaper rash.  But baffled because you wanted this so badly, you worked so hard for it, it wasn't easy, and now.............it's hard to remember exactly why it was so appealing."

She went on to tell me how guilty she'd felt for feeling those things when she was finally blessed with a child.......after a heartbreaking road to bringing one home.......a horribly heartbreaking road.  People asked her constantly, "Don't you feel lucky?" "Aren't you happy everyday?"  "Do you feel like life is perfect now?"

And gut wrenchingly the answer isn't just a resounding yes.
It's a yes, but.....................

However, the freedom to say the 'but' doesn't really exist does it?

Especially for those of us who have publicly struggled to have children.  It's like the things that are taxing to new mothers who came by it easier than us don't apply.  And we in turn feel like we have no right and there is no space for us to feel the same way as every other mother USA. 

And I'm not a proponent of a lot of public griping and whining.  But I am a proponent of being honest.  With yourself, with a few close friends, with your spouse.  And honest in a way that helps you get healthier when you're feeling like your drowning.......healthy enough to know that it's okay to live in a land where eventually the YES is a resounding one.......but for a while it's okay to initially have a 'but,' even after all those years of waiting and infertility treatments and heart-ache, and sad baby showers (that weren't yours), and questions like, "you're still trying aren't you?," and thousands of dollars spent, and growing pains.  A 'but' is okay.  It's normal. And I kind of think that if there is no 'but' you should share whatever you're on with your other new mom friends.

So if you're adopting a child......,if you're working so hard to bring home the most amazing thing that will ever pass through the doors of your house.......know that it's okay.......it's okay to privately long for the old life in a passing moment of desperation.  And they do pass--when you smell your baby, you see your husband hold her, she smiles at you, she sleeps eight hours straight for the first time, she touches your face, she falls asleep on your chest, she makes little chirping noises while she sleeps, or someone says, "you're going to be a good mama........it's hard now......but I can tell," those moments pass.

The desperation and the longing for days gone by are okay....it doesn't mean you're an unfit mother, unaware of the sacrifice someone else made for you, or that it's how you really feel.......they're just crazy moments all tangled up with thousands more good ones because being a new mom is hard.  No matter how you became a new mom.

It's okay.
So thank-you friend for your Facebook message all those months ago.  It's still sitting in my in-box forever, because it's true and helpful and honest.

The "B" Word.

When I was teaching 7th and 8th grade history there was always this little behavior of my middle school students that I didn't understand.  I mean......one of many.  It would be a test day, and most of my tests would take a good portion of the hour.  Finishing early probably meant they had ten or fifteen minutes left in the hour.  I always had small tasks for them to work on that would introduce them to the next unit of study.  One or two kids per hour would whip through those too--I'm sure they were done well and of high quality.  And then they'd trek up to my desk with..........all of five minutes left before class was over, stare at me and say, "I'm all done with everything.  What should I do now?"

Really?
Really?
You can't figure out something to do for five minutes?  You can't write a note to a friend (you're an 8th grader right?), sketch, read a book, put your head down and rest for a bit, do some homework from another class, peruse the amazing wall displays I worked so tirelessly on (I'm being serious here--they were pretty awesome), or just........be?

I didn't actually say those things like that.  I'd wrap them up in a sugary sweet smile with a kiss on top. Not true either.......it was generally somewhere in the middle.

But what I was always left thinking was, "Why is there this need to be constantly entertained?  Why can't kids appropriately occupy themselves with a random five minutes?  Fifteen minutes or even a half hour?

It's because of the B word.  And we've taught it to them.

Bored.

I hear parents say things to their kids like, "Are you bored honey?  There's nothing to do is there?  "I'm sorry this is so boring."

And worse.......I hear parents say (in front of their kids), "I'm just so bored."

And like everything else, our kids adopt the mantras that we put out there.  Even the ones we don't want them to.

If I had any inside connections with the folks over at Webster's Dictionary I'd propose the word 'bored' be stricken from the dictionary.  No one should ever be bored.  Being bored is as much of a decision as not being bored.

Never being bored is one of the character qualities I want to instill in Georgia.  There is too much to do to be bored.

Like living room cooking shows.

Eating.  Always eating for Georgia.

Passing the time during a two hour wait at the car dealership.

Tap dancing in the kitchen.

Looking forward to watching the garbage men do their thing on Thursday mornings.

Making up names for the goldfish at the grocery store.

Or typing on my computer.

I don't believe parents should play the role of cruise director on the Lido deck leading water aerobics at noon followed up with macrame at two and sushi rolling at four, however, so our kids will never be bored.   We do not exist to provide our children one Disney World experience after another in the form of baking cookies, art projects, trips to the zoo, hours of one-on-one reading, and twenty four hours of face to face entertainment.  We exist to love our children and to train them how to be responsible, motivated, compassionate, and independent grown-ups......and please don't think I'm saying not to play with them......a lot.......either.  We have to do both--it's a balance like everything else.

And one of the ways we train them is we show them that there is no such thing as being bored.  There are days when I do laundry, some cleaning, I give Georgia a bath, I play with her, cook dinner, run a few errands, and pick up LaLaLoopsey dolls off the floor about twenty times.  There are also days when I get to lead a training at work, go shopping, have dinner with friends at my favorite restaurant, and post three or four pieces for Mom Colored Glasses or Pink Shoes.  I am equally happy on both days.

Are there activities I'd prefer to do over others?  Of course.  Are there some some tasks (like emptying the dishwasher, putting away groceries, or arguing with Georgia over trying to pee before we leave) I wish Mary Poppins would swoop in and take over?  Of course?  But it doesn't mean that because they're not my favorite I'm bored.  It just means they're not my favorite.

I want Georgia to be able to recognize the difference too.   That just because we're not running off to buy the entire toy department at Target it doesn't mean that........

playing with a random bucket of soap dressed up like Dorothy Gale isn't fun.

Or that backyard fairy gardens at Gaga and PopPops's can't fill a few hours.

And that mid-morning two hour baths aren't the best.

And just 'being'?  That's completely fine too.

I want her to be someone that can always find something to do, rearrange, create, read, make for someone else, write, snap a picture of, or just be still and calm and comfortable in herself.  But she has to watch me do those same things in order to learn how to do it.

Will you join me in striking bored from our vocabularies?  Will you join me in raising kids who know how to fill five minutes, ten minutes, thirty minutes with their own thoughts and ideas?

That pesky "B" word.......be gone!

Music & Fireworks....Now that makes sense to me.

Does two years a tradition make?  I'm going to say yes.  We returned to Greenfield Village this year for their 'Salute to America.' It's this perfect package of good feeling, family fun, Americana, patriotism, goose bumps (well maybe not in 95 degree weather), and every single thing that should accompany a 4th of July celebration.

Greenfield Village houses hundreds of historic buildings that have all been re-located to this amazing piece of property right outside of Detroit.  Kids (and adults) can spend hours walking through them all, experiencing historical Halloweens in October, colonial baking in December, working farms, glass blowing workshops, perfect general stores, covered bridges, and just about everything else that speaks right to the history buff in me.  So many times in the decade that I taught 7th and 8th grade history in Grand Rapids I felt sad for the kids of my new city who didn't get to experience Greenfield Village on a regular basis like us Detroit natives got to.

Thousands of people make the trek into the historic village during 4th of July week with picnic blankets, lawn chairs, coolers, and strollers in tow until they reach a perfect picnic ground surrounded by historic buildings and homes like Noah Webster's house (my personal favorite), the Wright Brother's cycle shop, Thomas Edison's workroom, Robert Frost's home, one room school houses, quaint chapels, and I really could go on, but I won't.  The race to find the perfect picnic spot kind of reminds me of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in "Far & Away."

We found a great spot!

And really--the best way for me to relay our phenomenal night is just to show you............

Where there are kids there will be $5 light sticks.......and where there are kids and light sticks there will be 'swords.'

Georgia waves 'Old Glory' in an attempt to call a truce.

My friend Jill.....who I think is pretty amazing and who I wished I lived a lot closer to.

Is it possible to get a good picture of a three year old?  With a real smile?

Nope.  I guess not.

My Georgia peach.

Happy 4th of July shoes.

As it gets dark the Detroit Symphony Orchestra begins to play and when the canons go off you know the fire-works are about to begin.........

and when your three year old shouts into the night during a lull in the fireworks, "Music and fireworks....now that makes sense to me!," you know you've pretty much just had the perfect night.  

Hope you have a great 4th of July.  Celebrate the freedom that you've been given.  We are lucky everyday that we live in America.  Keep the principles of our founding fathers close to your hearts and remember that we live in an amazing nation.  We truly do.  

I'll see you later on this week.............

And I'll keep trying to get a picture of Georgia where she's not............walking away in an attempt to escape the soul-stealing camera.