To All Those Sometimes-Hurting Moms Out There...

Occasionally, I have a rough time. Contrary to popular social thought (according to Ari's playmate's mothers), Ari is not the mellow, easy-going child you'd think when you see him playing calmly at the park. The minute we get home, sometimes, all hell breaks loose unless I have a solid Ari-accepted activity with which to woo him. Play by himself? No, not really.

Also, contrary to popular grandparent thought, I am not what you'd call a "natural mom". I did not take to this. No duck in water, am I. Nope. This chick flounders. But she also tries really hard.

Take Monday night, for instance. Dinner was a flop. Ari, although starving, refused to eat the intended-to-be delicious and nutritious meal that was lovingly placed in front of him. After trying it myself, I had to agree. It sucked. So, thoroughly heartbroken and amidst a chorus of whining and drama coming from the general direction of the booster seat, I toasted a Gardenburger and doused it with Ranch dressing. And then had to leave the table when His Highness refused to eat that as well. Judging from the conversation downstairs (as I hid out upstairs), Sascha got him to eat most of it. God bless him. He also cleaned up the kitchen...my husband can be a saint at times.

And so, Monday night sent me spinning to the safety of my laptop. My first action was to email a group of girlfriends, just to connect with some kindred souls. My second action sent me to the Hearts At Home website for a little inspiration and a little direction in this swirling madness known as stay-at-home motherhood.

Which brings me to the title of this blog...for the hurting moms...

When Ari was born, my best friend told me about Hearts At Home, an organization for the professionalizing and emotional support of stay-at-home motherhood. I was skeptical. And then...we moved away from my entire support system, Ari started his tantrum-phase and I was going through a substantial depression. I needed all the help I could get. At about this time, Hearts At Home came to San Diego for a motherhood conference and I jumped on board immediately. Let me tell you. I get a lump in my throat when I think of how understood I felt that day. Hundreds of ladies were present and we all laughed and cried together. I didn't make any bosom friends that day but thanks to the wonderful speakers and workshops, I did start to forgive myself for my failures as a mother; cut myself some slack and allowed my frustration to show at times; learned a trick or two in organizing our lives; and began the realization that I needed to put Sascha's and my marriage first, not our parenthood...something that had been lacking since we moved here. We're still working on that but at least we're aware of it.

And so, when I need inspiration or a little nudge to keep on keeping on, I frequently turn to Hearts At Home...either my notes from the conference, a book by one of their speakers or their website. Thanks Jolyn, for the recommendation. I owe you one.

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Upcoming conferences dates:

October 3-4, 2008 Grand Rapids, Michigan
November 7-8, 2008 Rochester, Minnesota
March 13-14, 2009 Bloomington, Illinois

If you don’t live close enough to drive to a conference, and hopping on a plane isn’t an option, you can also order a Home Conference Packet which gives you the conference via CD.

http://www.hearts-at-home.org/

Random Thoughts

Seems everyone is having babies. I just posted another "congratulations" in the announcements section and it gave me a moment's pause to count how many of those I've posted in the past year...

Hm.

When you get right down to it, I guess not that many (at first it seemed that all my friends were procreating like rabbits). One new baby boy, two sets of twins, one new baby girl, one new baby boy. I think that's it. That's seven new kids since November (God help me if I missed someone). Well, I guess, given the stage that we're at in life, this is pretty typical. In 15-20 years I'll probably be posting graduation announcements.

Deep thoughts...Jack Handy (remember him?)

Perspective

Today is better. I managed not to lose anything. Yet.

However. I would like to thank my mother for emailing me with the "positive spin" I needed. And thank you, dear Julie, for commenting with honesty on how this happens to all of us. And I'd like to thank MSN.com for the video clip on the North Carolina mother who survived 5 days pinned in a car. Nothing like sweet perspective. My day wasn't so bad.

It makes me wonder if I'd have the wherewithall to survive for 5 days like that...they said she did it for her kids...

Speaking of kids.

After a brief melt-down this afternoon, which soon became obvious that it was merely for the purpose of reminding Mom that it was "TIME FOR MY NAP", Ari and I settled down to read books. He picked out a book entitled, "Why A Son Needs A Mom." Now, this book is boring for toddlers. Filled with black and white photos of moms with sons and bits of sweet advice on why moms are important, it's really more for parents and grandparents who want to get all weepy and nostalgic. However, Ari ate it up. While I read the captions, he looked at the pictures and got all giggly when the mom was kissing the kids. Then he wanted a kiss from *his* mamma. We pointed out the mammas in the picture and the sons in the picture and then I asked where his mamma is and where my son is. Darned if he didn't nail the son part. Pointed right at himself.

So that was neat.

If you're going to fingerpaint, at least have the foresight
to do it in a hotel room.
(Our condo was fumigated last week and this is how we whiled
away some of our time at the Hampton Inn.)

Supreme Personally-Directed Frustration

Have you ever lost a credit card? Have you ever had to cancel said credit card?

Okay then. How 'bout this?

Have you ever completed the afore-mentioned process twice in six months?

I rest my case.

For some reason, over the past 10 days, my brain has chosen to vacate the premises surrounding my head. This has been a recurring (is that a word?) condition over the past year but it seems especially virulent this time around. Enough so I finally allowed myself to burst into tears at the sorry, disorganized state in which I've allowed my life to crumble. It didn't help that it took me 40 minutes to finally talk with a human being at my bank, merely to find out if I left my card there. I wasn't on hold. I just couldn't get past all of the "automated services"..."services" my ass.

This brain-vacation is especially noticeable (and aggravating) when you're married to the poster child for Supremely-Organized-I-Know-Where-EVERYTHING-Is. Apparently he has his shit together. Apparently, I do not.

I'm searching for a positive spin on this but, frankly, I'm coming up short.

Anniversary

One year here.

Zora Neale Hurston wrote, "There are years that ask questions and years that answer." I'm not entirely sure which kind of year this has been...maybe some of both.

Week in AV Review

We went to a Move-in-the-Park last Saturday on Coronado Island. Tres fun. You can see the movie screen and the Coronado Bridge in the background.

We walked around while we were there and saw this sky-writing in progress over the San Diego Convention Center. Sascha thought for sure they were writing his initials. They weren't.

Oreo cookies at the park.

A little more cookie action.

Swim gear.

I'm fairly certain this is in no way legal. Or safe.

Ari's World

Aaah, silence.

For the past seven hours, I have been at the epicenter of the whirling, chaotic exuberance known as "Ari". And the exuberance is finally napping. Albeit reluctantly.

It's difficult to effectively describe what it's like to spend that much time in the company of a lone, yet highly energetic, toddler. And I'll probably fail miserably and you'll wonder "so why the hell is it so exhausting?"...unless, of course, you've been there yourself. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, imagine, if you would, a three-month old Labrador Retriever after a nice, restful nap. This post-nap phase lasts for seven straight hours. You can't kennel him. You can't really scold him because he's not misbehaving. And he wants you to join in with every game, song and dance that meanders through his head.

Now, mind you, I'm not complaining (for once). The kid has been unusually happy and relatively tantrum free for the past week or so. He's been a pleasure to be around, in fact. We've had a blast. But mom's pooped. Ari's bedtime has been stretching later and later. He's now going down (wide awake) at 9:30 and Sascha and I are left scratching our heads as to how it happened. The kid is simply not tired. Granted he sleeps in till almost 9 am now so I suppose if I were to start getting him up earlier, he'd then go to bed earlier. But, oh, let me tell you how much I savor those quiet Wendy-time mornings. I cringe at the thought of waking him up before I finish my pot of coffee. However, here's the kicker, my day still starts around 6:30 am (usually). Ari's doesn't start till 9 am. Ergo, his nap doesn't happen till 4 pm. That makes Mom's day ultra-long...I'm practically comatose and drooling by 3:30. So, still drooling, I decided to update the blog with a little blast from Ari's world :).

He's talking now. In fact, we have achieved, "No, I do." I shit you not. He did not want me anywhere near his toothbrush last night. "No, I do." We have also achieved a vague "Luv vu." Then there's the usual, "truck, car, kitty, cat, dog, puppy, baby, momma, dad, wawa (water), choo choo, apple, ball, eat, Adi (Ari), poop, pee, pee pee, poo poo (he also calls Pooh Bear "poo poo"), penis (yep), hair, eye, ear, teeth, sock," colors, animals and animal sounds, etc. etc. It's very neat because he finally understands most of what I explain to him and I can finally understand about 50% of what he's saying to me. We were driving to the library today to turn in his summer reading hours (okay okay, our summer reading hours) and he starting pointing violently and saying "cannes, cannes, cannes". I thought, huh, we have a francophile on our hands here...and then was relieved to see that he was pointing at a crane from construction site. He likes anything truck, car, construction or train-related. The bigger the better.

Songs are huge right now. He, himself, has been singing the ABC song and "Bingo" (you know, about the dog B-I-N-G-O). Anytime I start randomly singing anything (which is often), he's right there asking me to do more. Today he had Bingo stuck in his head for about 4 hours.

Climbing is also topping the charts as one of the top things to do at any minute. He's conquered our bed, which is about 32" high, every chair in the house, the couch, the stroller, the car and his car seat, playgrounds and the stairs (facing front, like a big person). The only apparati he hasn't attempted are his crib and table-like surfaces, thank God.

Reading has been taking up a lot of his/our time lately. Especially any book about trains or trucks. We sat at the library for an hour the other day, just reading and looking for "more choo choo" books.

Praying. The boy likes to pray. Don't ask me why because I wouldn't describe either of us as "devout". I have a well-used devotion book sitting in the kitchen, which I call the "God book". Almost every day while we're eating one meal or another, he says "God" and goes to get the book. "Pay, pay", he urges and folds his hands. I've tried to tell him that we don't need the book to pray, we can make the prayers up, but he insists that the book must be there. And it must be open. On the back, this book has little pictures of all the contributing authors. After we pray, Ari turns the book over and points at pictures while I read off the names. Today, he kept looking up at me and saying "God?" while pointing at one picture or another. I had no idea what he meant. "Yes, Ar, this is the God book." Points at picture, "God?" Again, points at picture, "God?" Oooh. I'm a little slow sometimes. "No Ar, God isn't in these pictures. We can't see him. He's invisible. These are the people that wrote the God book." "Ooooh. Okay." Like he totally got it.

Water. Water. Water. Any water, anywhere. Mud puddles. Suspicious-looking puddles. Bath water, hose water, water standing in flower pots, sprinkler water, water in a Rubbermaid container on the patio, water in spray bottles, water sitting on the countertop, water trickled from his sippy cup onto his highchair tray. Any water except pool water and ocean water. Go figure. He stills says "no" when we walk into swimming class. And he ran away from the water at the beach last week, laughing, like he knew it totally flummoxed me. This dissapoints Sascha just a little, being the water bug that he is. I kind of want to remind him that he was scared to death of even bath water at Ari's age.

We've been spending more and more time with kids Ari's age and, by default, mom's my age. So much that we're out socializing almost every day of the week. This gets a little tiring for me by the end of the week and I think it does for Ari as well. Today we were supposed to head to the park to meet up with the Thursday gang and he simply refused to don his clothing and leave the house. He wanted to play at home in his jammies. Well slap my ass and call me Judy. You could've knocked me over with a cat hair. This is the kid that always wants to leave the house. The kid that isn't happy unless he's out, away from the house. I guess I had finally out-played him. So, by God-Almighty, hallelujiah, we played at home (which, ironically, is more tiring for me since I'm then the prime playmate).

Oh. And he's still drooling. Check out that shirt.

That's about all that comes to mind for now, when it comes to the World of Ari. Which is good because I have, in all probability, lost all of you except grandparents by now.