victories

one night, i found myself berating ME as i swept and mopped the kitchen floor after getting the boys down for bed - for all the things i didn't get done that day. i was appalled at how easily and willingly i headed down that path so, instead of sliding down the spiral of my un-done list, i decided to mentally list my victories instead. several items into my list, i began to feel much better. here is the list:

- made french toast this morning with tug
- ate breakfast with my family
- cleaned the kitchen
- took my boys to the park and stayed longer than planned because they were being good
- cooked a hot lunch
- walked the dogs
- took the boys to the pool with dad
- cooked dinner for my family
- made time to cuddle with boy my boys for a few minutes at bed time
- and STILL got the kitchen floor swept and mopped

maybe i didn't get any laundry or cleaning done. maybe my bathroom is a biohazard area. maybe the poop needs scooping and the garden needs hoing, but my boys know that they are important. isn't that the real victory?

i don't always make the time to do this for myself, but when i do, i realize that a clean house is not all that important and target has socks if we run out of clean ones.

where can you give yourself a little grace today? make your victory list. maybe today just getting out of bed was a victory. celebrate them all - no matter how small.

a day in the life

i was reading back through some journaling i was doing last year and ran across this. it made me laugh and i thought i'd share. parents, you will understand! i refer to tug as '3' thru the entire entry, so i must have been planning to share it at the time and couldn't use his name because the adoption still was not final. he is now 4 and 1/2.

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Taking my 3 year old to preschool, we stopped for gas. I only stopped because I was sure that I’d sputter to a halt if I tried to go another foot. We are under the impression in our house that you absolutely cannot put gas in a vehicle until every last drop of the previous tank is burned. We carry gas cans in both vehicles now.

But I digress. I stopped for gas and before I got out of the truck, two things happened. First, my 3 year old spied a Krispy Kreme donut sign in the window of the gas station and said “I can’t have donuts, Mommy.” That’s how my kids ask for things. I’m sure it denotes some psychological screw up that I’ve caused, but I’m starting a therapy fund now for them. Some parents contribute to college funds, we contribute to a therapy fund. The second thing that happened was that a very nice man told me the rear passenger tire on the truck was almost flat. So I pumped gas, then finagled this huge ½ ton pickup into a sliver of space by the air pump, pissing off the lawn guys who had to maneuver around me with their 8 mile long trailer, with my 3-year-old incessantly chanting “I can’t have donuts, Mommy, right?” The air compressor of course cost a dollar and of course only took quarters. What kind of an asshole designs these things? They are at CONVENIENCE stores for crying out loud – what’s convenient about that?

Well, at that point there was no avoiding the donuts. We headed into the store to get change for the air compressor, picked out a box of donut holes for 3’s class and a box for the teachers. Seven dollars later, I had my 4 quarters for 90 seconds of air. I let 3 help me with the compressor until I realized that the hissing of air I heard was coming OUT of my tire rather than going IN. With only 45 seconds of air left. I grabbed the hose, jammed the thing onto the thing and pressed the thing while 3 climbed on the stone wall beside me, asking incessantly for a donut.

Gassed and aired, I got 3 buckled back in and figured that at this point, dad may be home from work (his schedule at the time was 3 nights a week 7PM to 7AM), so I called to see if he wanted to see 3 before I dropped him at school. Since we were only 5 min from home and we were already super late, and it was Friday – garage sale day - I told him I’d come get him and he could ride with us to school and then he and I could hit a few garage sales together (Do I know how to seduce my husband or what?).

So, I grabbed my full cup of coffee off the dash, immediately dropped it into the most expensive purse I’ve ever owned, and set a very bad language example for my child who was still asking incessantly for a donut. I jumped out of the truck and ran around to the passenger side to try to salvage my purse and the atlas while 3 had not yet taken a breath in his pursuit of a donut. At one point, I even wondered if he would pass out and reset – kind of like they do if they hyperventilate. If I hadn't been so worried about my purse, I would have tried to find a bag for him to breathe into.

Finally, out of desperation, I opened the chocolate donut holes and gave him one. After a moment's hesitation, I took one too - even though it was supposed to be day 1 of my new and improved healthy life style, affectionately dubbed "My Year of Living Dangerously (healthy)."

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wait - did i call this post a DAY in the life? it was still only morning!!

skipping stones and exhaling

[photos are from past experiences since i didn't have any photos from the stories below. they are growing so fast!]

are you one of those parents who has a camera at-the-ready - snapping away at all those special moments, capturing those crazy faces and shared smiles between siblings, immortalizing moments that become the stuff of family legend? well i'm not! i wish i had a nickle for every time i said "i wish i had my camera with me," or "did you bring the camera?" i've even mentally designed a pair of glasses that have a sensor so that if you wink, they take a photo. i guess until i get those glasses created, i'll have to practice imprinting those priceless moments deep into my memory.

we had two evenings this week that were those kinds of times where you just hit the pause button and remember what is important. tuesday night we made a last-minute decision to get the boat wet. our summer has been so busy. we've only taken the boat out a handful of times. i always resist evening rides - the kids end up getting to bed so late and we're left with a pile of towels, dirty food containers, trash and a soggy cooler to clean up. but in the spirit of 'the last week of summer,' i pasted on a smile and agreed to go. every single time we get to the edge of the no wake zone and the throttle starts to inch up and the wind starts to blow my hair i wonder - what's wrong with me? why don't we do this more often? speeding into the sunset with the wind in your hair is the best therapy i know.

we motored over to a little beach with our picnic dinner. the boys swam while kyle and i explored the shore a bit and cleaned up dinner. for a moment, everything was perfect. i sat on a rock and watched the dark silhouettes of my boys giggling in the sunset and i nearly wept at the perfection - click.

of course it didn't remain perfect, there was pushing and arguing and back talk, but in their own way, those moments are perfect too aren't they? it means that our kids are normal - they're doing normal kid things. they are starting to spread their little wings within the safety of our love and support. our job is to provide the best instruction we can and a net. once they're flapping their wings, it's up to them.

fast forward to wednesday. we picked the boys up from camp and headed to a small city park on the lake. a weathered, soggy stump sticking up out of the water provided the perfect target at which to launch rocks, and rock abounded. shoes got closer and closer to the water, sinking into the saturated mud, so the shoes and socks came off, then the pants, then the shirts. there were giggles and squeals and tentative dips until they were fully wet. the sun was setting, a heron sat - maybe fishing, maybe resting, maybe just sitting, dragonflies dipped and spun and buzzed, the lake shimmered.

i hunted for perfect skipping stones while kyle skipped rock after rock across the glass surface of the lake, teaching the boys the technique to get the maximum number of skips. both boys plopped rock after rock into the water until - skip plop! "i did it!" shrieked ray. and he was off - skipping rock after rock.

watching their backs, the boys mimicking their dad, seeing the determination in their skinny little bodies, hearing their excitement, feeling their confidence burst - click.

as we wrapped up and got ready to head home, ray said "i did it mom. whistling, snapping and skipping. i've got skipping now."

"was that your summer list of goals, ray?"

"yes" snap.

"did you get them all?"

"well, almost. i'm still working on whistling."

i hope you met your summer goals as well. and if you didn't, i hope that you just keep working on them til you get them!

on meditation

i wrote this post some time ago and just ran across it as i was looking for something to spark creativity. meditation has been strongly on my mind lately and i was interested to read this post from over a year ago. try this type of walking/dishwashing/swimming/vacuuming meditation sometime. just listen.

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summer 2013

as i sit in the back yard, getting eaten by mosquitoes, watching my boys play (and nearly kill each other) in our plastic backyard pool, i ponder meditation. being the mother of 2 pre-school boys, meditation is a survival tool. i have a feeling that i'm going to need more than meditation in the years to come.

i have been trying meditation lately in several forms. getting up at 6 to get 20-30 minutes of meditation is not always realistic, so i've tried walking meditation, driving meditation, a few minutes of meditation in bed - whatever works.

i am not a pious meditator. as a matter of fact, i'm pretty terrible at meditation. my mind races constantly. i've been practicing meditation on and off for 13 years. you'd think that i'd be really good at it by now, but what i'm finally getting good at is softening around the fact that i'm not really good at it. i'm more forgiving of the constant chatter and list-making and post-writing during meditation.

during a recent dog walk, i decided to try a little walking meditation. this consisted of just listening - just focusing on all the sounds i heard during my walk. here's how it went.

my breathing
dog's nails clicking on the street
dog panting
man i'm out of shape. this feels good, i'm going to start doing this again 4-5 times a week. i will also go to the gym 4-5 times a week. i can go monday evenings and then to the noon zumba class on tuesdays and thursdays. then i can try to get in a noon class on friday or maybe a saturday morning pilates class. i've got to do something to get my body and mind back into shape.
oh yeah - birds, breath, dog panting
the soft pat of my sneakers on the pavement
when i get home, i need to make a grocery list. what are we going to eat for dinner this week? i know that i need eggs, milk, granola bars, coffee and yogurt.
oops! dogs barking
weed eater
my breath
bread, strawberries, bananas, 1/2 &1/2
soft breeze
lawn mower
car driving by
clicking
padding
panting
broccoli, potatoes - when am i going to get to the store? we've got soccer, then we need to read sometime during dinner, bath and bed. i guess i can go after bedtime. but crap! i have a call at 9.

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you get the picture. it's an imperfect process, awareness is half the battle. after nearly 8 months of being a single mom through the week, a harrowing move (where in the HECK did all this stuff come from??), and trying to get settled into a new place, meditation has fallen way too low on my priority list. i'm easing myself back into it.

i won't say that i always walk away feeling blissed out, but i walk away knowing that at least i'm trying.

christmas in july

i missed sending out a christmas letter this past christmas. kyle was working out of town, so i was an unexpected single mom most of the time; we were deep into house renovations and packing and planning a move. life was hectic - nervous breakdown type hectic! i had a friend of ours take these photos for us at tug's birthday party in january (yes, my children are barefoot in January - you gotta love the south!), with the intention of sending a late christmas/new year's/valentine's letter. well the crickets in your mailboxes tell the rest of that story!

so here are our christmas card photos - in july! isn't this better? now you can see the whole story and i don't have to pick just one photo. i bought these bouncy balls for our family as a christmas present, but broke them out at thanksgiving. they are fun fun fun! they come in all shapes and sizes and should be a staple in every family!

welcome back

welcome back! i've let this ground lie fallow to too long. now's the time for clearing out the weeds and working again to grow this community. i've written post after post in my brain and on my computer, to relaunch this blog and reconnect, but nothing seemed 'right.' so i'm just jumping back in - right in the middle.

these are my boys. my bright, funny, wide-open, adorable, exhausting boys! for so long, thru the fostering and adoption process, i could not post pictures of them. i could not even use their full names in a public forum. so this posting feels a bit clandestine. shh - don't tell!

in november we adopted. it's all final and legal now. they are stuck with us. they had been with us for so long, they were already ours and we theirs. we knew in august, when parental rights were terminated, that adoption was coming, so we didn't expect such a transformation in november. but finalizing the adoption brought a profound shift deep in the center of the earth. it was as if everything had settled deeply into place for the first time in 20 months. we all felt it. we were a family - come hell or high water!

i was guilty of immediately flooding facebook with 20 months worth of pictures, to share my loves with friends and family. we discussed the future without fear. we talked about what it meant to be a family. we talked about family lost and family gained. kyle and i were no longer afraid to imagine our boys growing up, becuase we will see them, know them, shape them as they grow. we exhaled for the first time since those scared little boys with hollow eyes timidly stepped across our threshold march 20, 2012.

welcome to our family.

4 years old

tugboat - 4 years old - January 16, 2014**

happy, happy birthday to my tugboat, my big ol’ man!

i don’t dare call you my baby, or my little man. you will quickly correct me and tell me you’re not a baby, you’re a big man. you’ve always had a special, engaging, unique personality, but this last year, you’ve blossomed in a way that I don’t think we expected. you are a talk, talk, talker when you are finally comfortable with someone. you reserve judgment at first, but once you’ve checked someone out thoroughly, they are in for it.

i love your stories and your imagination. you have developed your own way of compensating for the memories that you don’t have of a time before here. when ray talks about things he did before he came here, you tell us some fantastical story about your ‘grandfadder’ and what you did with him. onetime you told me that you and your grandfadder caught a shark and the shark bit you, so your grandfadder put a band-aid on it for you. you are so earnest when you tell the stories too. you are developing your imagination and trying to relate, so we listen with interest to what will come up next.

this past year has been one of giant-sized strides for you as far as growth and development. you are a completely different kid from the scared, angry 2-year-old who first graced my door.

you took gymnastics in the summer and didn’t seem terribly interested in doing much but running circles around the room, so we didn’t keep you in when fall session came around. you played soccer on the sharks and your dad was your coach. You didn’t always want to play but you were a trooper on a team full of criers! you kept running back and forth on that field and stuck it out. we were so proud of you! early in the year, you also played blast ball, which was a cluster. we’ll have to see what shakes out as your main interests. we’d love for baseball to be on the list, but I think soccer will also make the short list.

i cannot even begin to tell you the relief we felt on november 15 of 2013 when the adoption was finally final and we knew that we could exhale. the earth shifted and settled into place with a deeply satisfying clunk that reverberated through our hearts.

you are forever, tug. we are forever family. my heart flows deeply with gratitude and a ferocious love for you. happy birthday my boy.

love mama.

*pay no attention to the dying plant and garbage bag full of fort-making tools behind him!

**can anyone give advice on how to avoid 'possessed' eyes when taking a flash photo with an iphone?