I have such an awesome family that made my Mother's Day special. They made me a delicious breakfast (eggs, hash browns, toast, bacon, grape juice). I guess it was ready just as I got in the shower. Bad timing on my part. Then I was very surprised to have gotten a laptop (picture cropped so as not to include me with wet hair and no makeup):
Things I'm most looking forward to with the laptop:
I'm sure there are many others. It's not something that I seriously asked for, but I am super excited to have gotten it. THANK YOU, DAN! I promise to not to drip ice-cream on it.
All in all, it was a good day, except for that nagging pain and fatigue I'm always complaining about was really bad that weekend. Sometimes my body just goes kaput. But everyone helped with the cleaning up and stuff. THANK YOU,
SLAVES CHILDREN.
PART II-MOTHER'S DAY GUILTIt seems to be pretty common for moms to use Mother's Day to reflect on all of the ways they are NOT living up to their ideals of perfect motherhood. It's in our nature, isn't it? My failure list could go on and on. Even tonight we make tuna sandwiches for dinner because I was feeling like a failure because I have never fed three of my kids tuna sandwiches before, and I was sure this would have some negative repercussions on their future well-being as adults. I mean, are they really going to be okay if the only sandwich they will eat is PB&J?!
So really, things sometimes are much worse than tuna. Just ask Kaylynn about the cheese incident. Hopefully Child Protective Services has some sort of statute of limitations--it's been some time since I've used cheese as a weapon. More recently, Kaylynn can tell you how I asked her if there was something wrong with her brain, or if she was on drugs. There are just times (
every other day) when common sense parenting goes right out the window. I just hope that if I take her to In-n-Out enough times, it will all be alright somehow.
Not to single Kaylynn out--I mess up with my other kids all the time too. Hopefully through all of my crankiness something of those cutesy Mother's Day Primary songs shine through.
I started out trying to focus on the positive, but alas, I have strayed. I wanted to write about just one success--we all have at least one, right? Our morning routine charts have been successful for many years now. As an idea person, I come up with all kinds of cool ideas but I lack the self-discipline to follow through with much. But this is something that we have stuck to, probably because it makes my life easier. Here's a picture of Amy's morning chart at the end of a month of filling it in:
These used to be printed out and then laminated and used over and over, but it got to be a pain wiping them off, so now I just print a new paper each month on cardstock with four weekly charts on it. I put every single thing they do on it, and tailor it to each one. For instance, Jeremy cannot for the life of him remember to put his sorely needed deodorant on each morning, so that's on his chart. (I still sometimes wonder if the application process isn't going so well.) When we started this probably seven or eight years ago, the kids would get a reward at the end of the week, but they don't even think about this anymore.
If you look closely, you'll notice my kids aren't required to make their beds. (Gasp!) All I ask is that they put their blankets back on their beds that they carry out in the living room EVERY MORNING. Bed making is low on my priority list. Three out of four kids' beds are up in the air and I can't see them anyways. So another failure on my part that will somehow mess up their adult lives (or make their spouse/roommate go nuts.) I do make my own bed most mornings, but mostly so I can throw junk on top of it throughout the day.
If you've read this far, oh
five many readers of mine, please tell me one of your successes as a mother or what you're good at or a great parenting tip. Don't beat yourself up--that's what your kids are for.
