Be A Good Mom

Today, Aunt Shel asked me to limit the gory details regarding pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood because I am scaring her. Well….you know I cannot do that. I am here to serve the good of humanity, and that means telling it like it is. Here are just a few, I want her to build up her tolerance slowly.

Pregnancy:

1. When you are pregnant, some things come out of your body that you do not want. When you sneeze, you will pee a little. You’ll fart; you’ll burp. Your breasts do a practice run and ooze a bit. All things that you would prefer to keep inside.

2. Personal Hygiene is a problem for 2 reasons. Its harder to keep up on, if you know what I mean, and even if you do keep current, you will find that new parts of your body sweat when you are pregnant.

Childbirth:

1. If you are a “close the door pee-er” now, be prepared for the fact that the husband who has never seen you pee will now see you expel a slimey human from a similar place. Let him see you pee now, it will cushion the blow to your self-esteem. Oddly enough, he will not even care, but you will.

2. Unfortunately, there is one trick of childbirth that really works, but is gross. Your OB will want you to watch the events in a mirror, giving you a first-class shot of the action. It helps you know when to push, because you can see the baby coming out. (and sometimes going back in, and then coming back out). But its quite a view.

Parenthood:

1. At some point, you will eat poop, maybe more than once. Poop is everywhere. You will not see it on the side of your thumb, you’ll stick your thumb in your mouth to use it to rub a smudge off your cute little baby’s face, you just ate poop.

2. You will smell more pee, vomit, spit-up, and poop than you ever imagined. Most of it on purpose. You will sniff sheets to see if they are “clean.” You will pick up your baby and sniff his heiney to see if its time for a change. You will inspect a pile of vomit to see if you can determine exactly what caused your baby to throw up, does it look like milk or peas?

But here is the kicker, Shel. This stuff might gross you out now, but when the time comes, you won’t even care.

Do you ever do things just to amuse yourself, as a parent?

• We talked Geetle into naming one of her babies “Little Baby Knothead”. She thinks its because he wears a hat with a knot on top. But really its because it makes us laugh.
• We secretly play “Will He Eat It?!” with Pookie at least once a week. He eats a wide variety of foods already. He prefers not to try new things, but usually we can convince him after only one or two soft requests. We have gotten him to eat cucumbers, shrimp, and olives recently. We convince him to try it and then try not to giggle when he actually does. Oddly enough, he seems to like most of what we get him to try.
• I have Geetle convinced that even though she sees me do laundry, its actually BAGD who washes the socks. So when she runs out of socks, I ask her “did you tell the sock-man?” Then she runs thru the house looking for BAGD to tell him he needs to wash some socks.
• Even though Pookie is a manly man, we taught him to say wee-wee and tinkle-tinkle. This one may actually be a joke on us, because he already knows that it makes us laugh. He only says it when he is hamming it up. Otherwise its pee. Just pee.

Parenting is hard work. We deserve to let off some steam every now and then. No real harm is done. And it makes for good stories later. BAGD’s family still talks about how Uncle Ray believed Great Grandpa Bluegrass when he told him that cows hatched out of those big round hay bales.

To the neighbors who we barely know, whose kindergartner and 2nd grader come to play on our front lawn just about every day:

Please come talk to us.  Please come make sure we are not lunatics.  Ask us if we have any guns in the house (NO) or if we have a dog that might bite (NO).   Ask us if we allow hitting (NO).   Ask us if we drink and swear while sitting out in the driveway watching the kids play (NO).  Ask us if we even *watch* the kids while they play! (YES, WE DO!)  Wouldn’t you like to know that I am keeping your kids safe?  Did you know that I refuse to let them inside the house (even though they beg to see the hamster) because I would not want some neighbor taking my kids inside without my knowledge.  Did you know that BAGD kept your son from standing on top of those big electrical transformer boxes the other day?  Did you know that your daughter wet her pants at my house the other day because she knows I will not let her inside the house and she was having too much fun in my front yard to run home to pee?

My kids are only 4 1/2, so we do not let them run the neighborhood.  We are happy to have your kids come over to play with us when we are in the front yard.  They are nice kids.  But, wouldn’t you like to know that they are OK while they are here?  On Monday they were here for over an hour.  No one came to check on them, we finally sent them home at dinnertime.

Luckily for you, we ARE nice people.  I do keep your kids safe when they are here.  But you have no way of knowing that.  You should come down and check on them.

Sincerely,

your nice neighbors

When did we start needing to make everything “exciting” so that kids will tolerate it? Why do we have to have hair salons with chairs shaped like ponies and motorcycles? Why does every child sized portion at a restaurant have to come with a toy or a scoop of ice cream? Why do vitamins have to be shaped like elephants or Bob the Builder? Why do some shopping carts now come with on-board DVD players?

News flash kids! I hate to be the one to break it to you, but life is not that interesting. At some point in your life, you have to get used to the boring, the pointless, the frustrating. And its my job to show it to you.

Now, I am not saying that kids need to be raised in a drab and grey adult world. I think that a child’s life should be fun. They should have moments of pure excitement and get to whoop it up. But, I also think they need to understand that these moments are balanced by moments of sheer boredom and that we all have to do things we don’t want to do.

Getting your haircut while riding the motorcycle or getting to ride in the DVD cart should be the exception, not the standard. When kids have too much, they do not appreciate anything. Boredom is a fact of life. Getting dragged to the store is a fact of life. I got dragged to Farm and Fleet as a child. BAGD got dragged to Sears Surplus. We drag our kids to WalMart. No child likes it, that is also a fact of life. Parents need to re-read that last sentence. To clarify: Your kids will be bored when you drag them to the store, but you still need to do it, even if they misbehave. If you don’t you are creating bigger problems for yourself.

See this boy? He did not listen to a word I just said. But I still dragged his heiney to the bank and the post office today.

I get a fair amount of search engine traffic asking the question “how to be a good mom.” Based on the title of my blog, you might think I have the answer. Well, I don’t think I really do. But, I can say that this blog helps me work towards it. Writing this blog makes me very aware of what I think, do and say, as it affects my kids. It calms me. It makes me feel more in control of my life. It helps me see the patterns in my kids’ life and my parenting. Being self-aware is a very empowering thing. Sometimes I do not like what see, so I try to change it. Other times, I am proud of what I see and give myself the earned pat-on-the back.

To those who find my blog asking “how to be a good mom,” I offer this list. Its not complete, but its a good start. Hopefully, you are searching the internet for this question because you want to be more self-aware too. Chances are, you are already a good Mom, you’re just need to realize it.

1. Trust your instincts. If you think you will feel better buying the baby monitor with the TV screen, then do it. But if you realize it will lead to obsessing about whether or not the baby is breathing, then don’t. If someone tells you your baby looks flushed and you disagree, you are probably right.

2. Trust your kids. If they indicate they are ready for grown-up forks and deciding for themselves how much toilet paper to use, then they probably are. If they make a mistake, help them learn from it and move on. You knew that someday they would grow up, you don’t want to be pouring the milk for a 12 year old anyway, do you?

3. Don’t be a single parent unless that is your official classification. My husband is a 100% parent and so am I. He takes care of poop accidents, he makes ponytails, he cooks, he laces shoes. Not every day, not every time. But neither do I. But between the two of us, it gets done. Having a good Dad makes you a good Mom, and vice versa.

4. Talk it out. Talk to your kids. Talk to your spouse. Life is a battlefield and you need a plan. If you wander through life, then you will get nowhere. But if you have some sort of plan or purposeful response to a parenting situation, you will do better. After a troublesome day, BAGD and I often talk about ideas for next time. How can we reduce Geetle’s sassy talk; maybe we should implement a reward system. How can we keep Pookie from accidentally dressing himself out of Geetle’s side of the closet; maybe we should hang a scarf on the closet rod to separate the sides.

5. Don’t be too hard on yourself. If making cupcakes for preschool is fun for you, do it. But if its not, then buy them at the grocery store. Parenting magazines are great for ideas, but NO ONE can possibly do all those crafts, made-up backyard games, finger puppet plays and funny face veggie pizzas. By my estimation, the average Mom (who is probably also a “good mom”) does less than 5% of the things in the magazine. Your kids would love a funny-face pizza, sure. But they would rather have you spray them with the garden hose or listen to their 10 minute story about the pile of dirt behind the fence at preschool.

6. Your kids are part of your life, your whole life. I take my kids to the grocery store, Jiffy Lube, the bank, and Great Grandma Jones’ antique-saturated home. If you learn to integrate your kids into your normal everyday life, you will get to spend more time with them, you will teach them how to behave in different situations and you will be able to get all the necessary tasks of life done.

7 . Try to be organized. This can be a hard one, but it really makes a difference. When your physical surroundings are chaotic, so is your mind. At the bare minimum, organize the parts of your life that directly affect your parenting. I have a giant box of household papers that I know I will never file; I stuff them in the sump pump closet in the basement. But, my the closet my b/g twins share is organized by gender and type of clothing. I have hundreds of recipe clippings that I stuff into a folder, making them useless. But, we keep our 25+ piece Mr. PotatoHead set all together in a lidded plastic box with his picture taped to the side.

8.  Keep your sense of humor.  Stepping in poop that fell out of someone’s droopy pull-up is funny.  Explaining why some peepees have hair on them is funny.  Realizing that someone let the hamster out is funny.  Cutting a patch of maple syrup-encrusted hair out of your daughter’s ponytail 5 minutes before the bus comes is funny.   Hearing your son belt out “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” at the top of his lungs at the bank to hear the echo is funny.    You might not realize it immediately, but its true.  If you don’t think so, try telling one of your stressful parenting stories to the Grandpa and see if he laughs.  If he laughs, its funny.

9.  You reap what you sow.  Screamers beget screamers.   Whiners beget whiners.  Do you know why Geetle listens to me when I tell her to pick up her toys?  Because I listen to her when she tells me her theory on why car tires have silver stars in the middle (hubcaps).   Why is Pookie willing to sit still in the doctor’s waiting room?  Because I sit quietly and cuddle with him on the couch at home. 

10.  Let your first thought and consideration when making any decision or action be “what about my kids?”  Really, if you do this one, you can skip all the other rules you read here or in any parenting book.   This is the silver bullet of good mothering.