kids – Page 4 – Life and Lims

If breast is best, why do we never see anyone actually feeding their babies?

nursing — Courtesy of Twitter/News 6, via Yahoo

So a few hours after reading this news item on Yahoo, I find myself not being able to keep quiet about it: once again, breast-feeding moms are finding themselves being asked to stop feeding their babies in a public place. This time, it was at a Chick-fil-A in Tennessee. Honestly, though, the location is pretty much not important. What is important is the fact that it keeps happening.

Disclaimer: I am not a breast-feeding activist. I only gave birth to three daughters and breast-fed them all up until they were about a year old. I adopted one daughter after them and just bottle-fed. I enjoyed nursing my girls, but it was a heck of a lot of work and was literally draining. It was really, really tough to be THE on-call food for the babies. And my girls didn’t nurse for 20 or 30 minutes every four hours, giving me a solid break in between. They would nurse for a shorter time every two to three hours, making it feel as if they constantly needed me, just for sustenance (let alone all the other needs an infant has). It was exhausting and a HUGE invasion of my personal space. It made me kind of crazy. Even so, I breast-fed them. It was healthiest for them, which was important to me, and it was nearly free, whereas formula is super-expensive.

I never went to a La Leche League meeting or consulted a lactation specialist or read a book about breast-feeding or anything. I didn’t make a big deal out of it. I just fed my babies. And here’s why I feel the need to weigh in on this news item: it is a pain in the rear to breast-feed a baby in public. My oldest child is 17 and the youngest that I nursed is 11, so it’s been a decade since I’ve been in the situation of needing to feed a fussy child while out and about. No matter how well you plan and feed a baby before leaving the house, etc., there are darn sure going to be times that baby has to eat while you are outside of your house. And here’s the plain truth in our society even now: you almost never see a woman publicly nursing her baby, whether it’s at a store of some type, a restaurant, or a park. But that doesn’t mean they’re settling in to a nice, quiet, private room designated for nursing at any of these places, because VERY FEW public places have rooms for mothers to feed their children. There are more and more family bathrooms available different places, at least, which is definitely helpful, but still not a lot of spots for nursing.

What does this mean, then? There’s nowhere to go to “privately” breast-feed a baby. Restaurants, especially not fast-food restaurants, do not have somewhere to go if a baby gets hungry fast. So you either pack up and leave, with the baby wailing all the way home, before you’ve gotten to eat yourself, or you stay and feed the baby. But since we still so rarely do see anyone else breast-feeding in public places (whereas you can see plenty of women and men handing babies their bottles out and about), none of us feel comfortable with the notion, even breast-feeding moms themselves, in many cases.

Now that’s plain ridiculous. But here’s why: people who’ve either not been around breast-feeding mothers very much or who have absorbed our upside-down society’s notions that baring a little portion of breast while getting a baby latched on or off is somehow public indecency either outright make comments or ask women to leave or “cover up” or they stare or make weird faces at them because they are uncomfortable.

The problem is not that women are being inconsiderate and not “covering up”. The problem is that in our backwards, inside-out, upside-down society, it’s somehow acceptable for women to wear teeny tank tops and blouses that are so low-cut they show a solid third of a breast, and no one bats an eyelash. No one asks a woman showing a ton of cleavage to leave a public place. But if a woman doing her best to “discreetly” breast-feed her baby happens to show for a split second a good portion of her breast (maybe even her nipple, for heaven’s sake!), then it’s lewd.

And that’s what has my hackles up. Because when I see other people posting about this topic, and still so many people, EVEN WOMEN, EVEN MOTHERS, comment that they think these women should be more careful about “covering up,” I know we have a big problem in our culture. Women stage “milk-ins” to raise awareness whenever these news items pop up. A lot of commenters say these are unnecessary. I’m thinking, however, they’re still very necessary. We need men, women, and children, of all ages, to see mothers breast-feeding their children, enough that they become comfortable with it. Because most people clearly aren’t comfortable with it. And it’s not because it’s dirty or lewd or filthy. It’s because they just don’t see it happen often enough.

If nursing moms still need to stage “milk-ins” or “nurse-ins” to finally get our generally very-non-prudish society comfortable with a really healthy and natural activity, then I support them all the way.

It takes a village to keep me (mostly) sane

Life can sometimes be stressful. Life can sometimes be sublime. It can also, on rarer occasions, be unrelenting in its attacks, throwing punches from the left, right, above and below and behind — any which way — to try to knock one out, making the simple adjective “stressful” woefully inadequate.

It’s been like that for me the past month or two: life has nearly knocked me out. I suppose that any of the somewhat small things that has happened to me could just be easily shaken off; it would be laughable to think that any would really make me want to walk a ledge. But the constant barrage has cumulatively made me angry, frustrated, exhausted, utterly drained and significantly less able to function.

As time has worn on and I’ve become worn out, but I’ve still had to just keep on moving forward because circumstances have simply not allowed me to stop moving, I have come to appreciate just how much I appreciate those who are willing and ready to step in and help lend a hand or just offer moral support as I try to put one foot in front of the other.

This past week I’ve been traveling, visiting family and friends and attending the college graduation of a nephew and his wife. I was already at my wits’ end before the traveling began, so being in the car for hours on end (with three of my four children all cooped up in the small space with me and my husband) and sleeping in different places and all the other things that go along with road trips have made me even more tired and nearly feeling rather out-of-body.

Even so, seeing these special people has been a little boost. We visited for a short time with my husband’s oldest niece, a sweet young woman who was just a kindergartener when we married 20 years ago. Seeing her reminded me just how much I am grateful for her influence in my husband’s life: when she was an infant, he had just returned from a two-year LDS mission and was starting to get back to school and work. But he had plenty of time to help baby-sit her while his sister worked. He loved the experience. By the time we had our first child, I was still adjusting to the whole concept of parenting and all that went with it. But he was just ready to go. He changed diapers and clipped tiny fingernails before I even did. He held her and rocked her in the middle of the night to try to get her to sleep. Even for me, spending time with her as a five- and six-year-old was so enjoyable that I began to look forward to having a small child of my own to do things with.

Spending time with my grown nephew was rewarding because he fits in so well with my little family: my children adore him and his wife, and we enjoy their company so much. It also gives me great hope for his generation of our family and makes me want to be the best influence I can be. I don’t want to disappoint him.

Sitting with my wonderful, dear friend who lives a day’s drive away is always a blessing. We get to have so little time together, but when we do, it’s renewing and enriching. I can be utterly myself with her; I never fear how I may come across. I can unburden myself and she will listen and support without judgment and with love and compassion. She can encourage me to have hope and to do better without making me feel chastised or preached to or lacking or bad about myself. She has a real gift. She’s like my friend soul mate, and I am absolutely blessed to have her.

Last, I’ve had a great deal of practical help from friends in our hometown while we’ve been gone. My oldest had to stay behind because of a school commitment, and our absence, combined with all the things that had already gone wrong before our trip, required us to ask for a lot of help for her with rides, a place to stay so she won’t be alone, and lots of other little things. A number of friends have gladly and willingly stepped in to take care of her and figure out how to solve little problems while we’re gone. Their help has eased my mind greatly on her account. My mind has been racing so much and has been so burned out by all I’ve had to keep track of and fix, etc., that I don’t know if I could have done what needed to be done for her had people not just volunteered and helped her without my even being involved.

Sure, it does take a village to raise a child (a child just thrives and learns the best with a mom and dad and extended family and friends and teachers and all kinds of other people in a community). But it also takes a village to keep an adult functioning. We’re really all interdependent. The better connected we are, the better we can keep on keepin’ on. I’m just incredibly blessed to have some good people in my life and incredibly grateful to them for helping me to survive the toughest periods of my life.

Yes, ‘family’ channels have a responsibility to families

I wrote an article two summers ago for the Deseret News about “family friendly” TV shows. At the time, I was feeling particularly annoyed by the Disney Channel, especially the show “Good Luck Charlie.” Two years later, I still feel just as annoyed, and I’m pretty much banning the channel from our house.

I’m reminded again of this because of the latest information about the channel and this particular show, stating that the show will be adding a set of lesbian moms and their child to the show next year. Now, I’m not going to get into my stance on homosexual unions or parenting or anything like that. I will simply say that this is a hot-button issue and that the country is fairly close to evenly split on opinions about it. What’s at issue here is that probably half of the parents in this country (I’m just very roughly going to guess on this since the opinions still tend to be 50-50 on the topic of same-sex marriage) might have some reservations about this issue and may not be excited that a channel geared at young children is introducing this kind of controversial topic.

Now I got a comment on my original article two years ago, with the commenter saying that I’m essentially expecting all shows to reflect what I think reality should be, rather than what it is. And, of course, that’s not at all what I’m saying. Any channel out there can run whatever kind of programming it wants to. It doesn’t “have” to be responsible to any set of people or values or expectations of any kind. And I’m OK with all kinds of wacky non-realities in TV shows. I love fantasy and lots of situations that are far different from my own or what is “ideal.” Watching those can either just be fun or entertaining or acceptably escapist, or they can be informative and worldview-expanding. That’s great.

However, when a network is essentially setting itself up to be known for being “family friendly” or, in the case of Disney, building on a long tradition of expectations for that quality, I do believe it has some responsibilities. If you don’t agree with me about this, just stop reading now. You won’t agree with anything I say further. In the case of being responsible about portraying families to young children, I think it’s irresponsible to introduce some of these more mature concepts that parents would prefer to address themselves. I also think it’s irresponsible to portray parents who are mean, parents who are immature and just goofy, and parents who don’t seem to care about their kids’ welfare — NOT because these scenarios don’t reflect reality, but because on the DC, they’re played just for the purpose of getting cheap laughs.

I cringe every time I see the mom on that show put down one of her kids or plot against them or do anything else that belittles them. It angers me when they act like little kids themselves rather than responsible adults. (Again, this is not to say that parents can’t have fun and act childlike; it’s AWESOME when parents get down in the mud and play with the kids or color alongside them or swing with them at the park. I am saying that when they act like brats to get laughs, it diminishes the meaning and value of parenting and the importance of love and trust in family relationships.)

I’m putting our satellite service on pause for the summer, and when I take it off pause in the fall, I plan to block the Disney network. I don’t want my girls seeing that stuff anymore. And I doubt that Disney will care. The folks there clearly plan to continue on the path toward putting parents in a position of goofiness and un-respectability. I just won’t support them.

How to make a bubble table. You’re welcome.

So it is the first day of the first full week of my daughters’ summer vacation. If you’re a parent, you may very well be like me in that just thinking about having the house full of children all day, every day, with no school or other activities to engage their attention makes you feel … well, nutty. I decided that this summer I would provide a few more fun things for them to do to keep them out of my hair and me outside the loony bin. First off, I went to Hobby Lobby and bought nine bottles of tempera paint in the good basic colors as well as two 100-foot rolls of paper, as well as a bag of assorted brushes. We’ve rolled out that paper on the tile in the entryway and the girls have had a good ol’ time. Now, granted, I’ve kept the paint and pretty much all non-Color Wonder crayons, paints, markers, etc. out of the room of the 6-year-old because even up until very recently she has not proved herself to be at all responsible with their use. So these paints are still not in her room, but stepping up to letting her use them was a bit of a leap of faith for me (control and clean freak that I sometimes can be). So far, so good.

Next idea: making a bubble table. Now, my girls were entertained for a good long time at San Francisco’s Exploratorium last fall just at the big bubble table.

They could probably have stayed there for the whole of our visit, but there were other children who wanted to use it. So I’ve been trying to find somewhere online that describes how to make one for home use. I searched on Pinterest and had no luck. So I came up with my own version. Here’s what we did:

First, for the “table” part: I wanted to have some kind of large but shallow metal containers that could hold the bubble solution. I finally hit upon using restaurant-grade serving containers, the kind that are used in big buffet tables. I was lucky enough to find three of a good size at our local Smart and Final. Buying three at a time also reduced the price for me on this visit, so each one was $12. Now, if you’d like to keep this DIY cheaper, you could use the $2 foil containers of similar size, but I figured I’d end up replacing those a lot, so the $12 per container was a good investment. I also had to have three because I have four kids, one of whom is old enough to not really need/want to use the bubble table. The younger three, though, definitely each need their own.

Next, I wondered what in the world I’d use for large rings. The Exploratorium had big rings with handles on them, which I figured I wouldn’t find anywhere. My husband then became the genius when he came up with the idea of using tomato cages, like this one at the right:

Using his wire cutters, he clipped off the circle parts of the cages from the long straight “stick” parts of the cage and left just a few inches of those straight pieces on the circles. Then he bent each down into a little curlicue that the girls could hold.

Last is the bubble solution. I’ve found a few recipes online, including one that’s been circulating on Pinterest and Facebook that uses corn syrup. So far, I think I like the recipe that uses glycerin. But since I just set it up an hour ago, it may well be that any of the bubble solutions will work better tomorrow after having time to sit and mix nicely and evaporate just so. Here is a link to some recipes. As I said, I think I like the one that uses 1 gallon of water, 2/3 cup of dish detergent liquid, and 2 or 3 tablespoons of glycerin.

I set up my three metal serving containers on an old desk that’s on our back patio that my oldest uses for her art projects. It’s not pretty back there, but it’s fun and useful. At any rate, now that desk is the bubble table.

And I’ve been hearing a whole lot of happy squealing from three girls for an hour now. Yes! Score one for summertime mama.

Motherhood: Growing your own friend from scratch

Being out of the country and away from my four daughters for 8 days recently, I was struck anew by how much I not just love them — because of course I love my offspring — but how much I like them. I’ve never been gone from them this long, and in the past when my husband and I went on trips together, they were younger. I missed them, but when they were little and the days were endless cycles of feeding, diapering, clothing, and just keeping them alive and well, I was largely relieved to have a break from that caretaking cycle.

Now they keep me just as busy, but in completely different ways. They can be their own caretakers in most ways: they can go potty by themselves now (diapers are a distant memory), they can feed themselves (even cook), get dressed, and even get themselves places on their own (oldest has a driver’s license). Now my job is to make sure they’re learning and becoming who they should and could be. It’s to make sure they are nurtured in so many more complex ways as they make their way through tricky adolescent and pre-adolescent years. It’s to support them in their activities, volunteering as a band booster and so on. The job title is the same — Mother — but the duties and job description are very different and much more complicated and nuanced. I don’t have to just show up and go through the motions; I have to bring my A game.

What’s happened, though, in the course of their becoming these independent selves, morphing from little eating and pooping machines who cry to communicate or just repeat “no” or “why?” ad nauseam is that they have become people. They are completely their own selves, with amazing personalities and unique mixtures of traits, talents, and quirks. What’s more, we have become friends in many ways. Sure, I’m not one of those parents who is more of a pal to their children than a parent, but it’s absolutely true that my daughters are my friends. My oldest in particular, who’s turning 17 this week and will fly out of the nest next year (cue the leaky eyes), is such a fun person. She’s nearly an adult, and she is mature in so many ways and simply fun to be around. We have all kinds of inside jokes and we can look at each other and grin at something we just know we’re both thinking. She is so delightful and pleasant to be around that I miss her presence when she’s not.

And I felt that keenly while in another country. I didn’t talk to my girls for more than a week. I emailed and Facebook-ed a little, with one short chat session. (Even then, though, they were all using my mom’s account, but I could tell when a different child started typing. I knew exactly who I was “talking” to because of just how they phrased things.) But as much as I enjoyed my time alone with my husband and loved all the great scenery we soaked in and famous sites we visited, I missed my friends back at home. There were so many times I thought, “Oh, Brianna would like this. Oh, Cami would love that.” I was sure one would respond a certain way with a certain phrase to something we saw.

And as much as I loved (but often just plain endured) the different phases of mothering, I am loving this one, in which I can see how the little seeds I sowed have grown into full-size plants. They’re still here in my own garden, but in not too long they will be transplanted to other gardens. Right now, though, I marvel at how much I like them, how simply miraculous it is that I was growing my own friends all this time and didn’t quite realize it. I love them, but, even better, I really, really like them. Today, I will celebrate Mother’s Day with some really amazing friends. I can’t imagine life without them.

Farewell to E.L. Konigsburg

So I just read that E.L. Konigsburg, author of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, died. I can’t let this opportunity pass to write a short thank-you to her for that charming book, which I enjoyed so much as a young reader and which I have enjoyed just as much reading with my own young ones.

In a day when it’s easy for anyone to publish, and books for young readers are particularly hot items, we’re surrounded by thousands and thousands of choices for reading. I love to read the great new books that are coming out and contributing to the best of all genres, but there are some classics that still hold a special place in my heart, and Mixed-Up Files is definitely one of those. It’s a clever premise, one that any child who’s had those moments of wanting to run away can relate to, but which makes the destination very cool: two kids pack up and escape to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they manage to live secretly for a short time. Even now, it gives me little butterflies of excitement to think about the notion of being able to live in that awesome museum!

Then there’s the element of mystery added in to the story: is a statue the museum’s acquired for a bargain price actually the work of Michelangelo? And then there’s the interesting character Mrs. Frankweiler, who knows more than she lets on. All in all, the book is so fun to read, particularly because it’s so good at letting the reader step into the shoes of the characters and step off on a flight of fancy. It’s just the right setting for letting the imagination run wild. And personally, I’ve always loved museums, especially art museums, and my daughters love them too, so reading this story together doubled the pleasure.

Thank you, Ms. Konigsburg, for creating this story. I expect I’ll enjoy reading it to my grandkids one day too. And that is what makes a classic.

Safety: is it just an illusion?

Again, in reference to recent hotly debated issues, I’m not going to address gun control. I do think, though, it’s interesting to think about what constitutes true “safety,” or implied or felt safety. I’ve been thinking that most of the safety measures that are being implemented in schools right now, for instance, are really more there to create the illusion of safety than really, truly making our kids completely free from danger during school.

Kids are smart enough to figure this out really quickly, too. I have children at a high school, a middle school, and an elementary school. Soon after Sandy Hook, all three schools immediately started sending home letters and providing recorded information via phone calls about their stepped-up efforts to ensure students’ safety. Honestly, my first reaction on hearing the first phone call message was, “Right. Like changing which gates are going to be open at which times and which will be locked all day is really going to change things that much.” Yep. I was skeptical, and I’m still skeptical a month later.

The high school started locking more of its gates two days ago. When I picked up my child and a friend at the end of the school day, I heard a good amount of reasoning from the backseat about how they viewed the new policies. Mostly it was this: it’s not going to do any real good. For one thing, the fences surrounding the school are just about six-foot-tall chain-link numbers. My little teen girl has jumped them any number of times (for good reason, let me just say; she’s not a rule-breaker) when she’s been at school outside of regular hours. So locking more gates isn’t exactly going to keep anyone out who really wants to get in.

The kids also observed that the recent threat that actually occurred at the school was by a student, and he had told a classmate about his intention to harm someone the next day at school (I think on a Facebook page). Allowing only students in to a few particular gates in the morning would not have kept this kid out because he belonged there!

The door to my kindergartener’s class is now locked every day the second the kids have all lined up and marched inside. If we arrive even 30 seconds late, then she has to stand outside, knock, and wait for someone inside to open the door. This is the only change I could see as making some kind of difference. The classroom’s only access is that door, and because of the design of the schools here (we’re in California, so the weather’s temperate, so the buildings all have rooms that open directly to the outside, not using any hallways), the room is then secure if the heavy door is locked. There are some smallish windows, but it would be difficult to get in through them. So I think this is the only measure that makes sense, though it stinks if we’re running late. That’s OK, though.

Aside from that, all the gate-locking in the world is like having a basic home alarm system: it helps the most as merely a deterrent to the casual intruder. But someone who is absolutely determined to get in will easily find a way around it.

These are just a few simple examples of how the schools are trying to demonstrate their increased commitment to our children’s safety. But really, it doesn’t mean much to me. Life is impossible to secure. Wacky, random, and tragic things happen everywhere. It’s impossible to fortify ourselves or everywhere we go to a point that we will be completely safe from any threat. Stuff happens. People are crazy. They do stupid, crazy, horrible things sometimes. Yes, it’s good to do what we can to reduce the harm, but so much of what the schools are doing really just seems pointless. I want to be safe, and I sure as heck want my kids to be safe. But neither I nor anyone else can guarantee their safety anytime, anywhere.

That’s the thing: we can talk about gun safety, about gun control and rights, we can talk about making security better in all kinds of contexts. But (yes, TSA) there are always holes in the systems and loose ends and cracks of some kind or another, whether it’s human error or breakable machines, etc. Stuff slips through all the time.

Thinking we can actually keep everyone safe in any situation is just fruitless and ridiculous. We can try. I’m not saying we shouldn’t. But in the end, all the measures in the world are merely an illusion of security. Because life and other people are unpredictable and not safe. We can just do the best we can to go about our business and take care of each other in the meantime.

My resolution? Not to make any resolutions

I triumphantly announced a couple of days ago that I’d managed to check a couple of major items off my to-do list. Rather than being excited for me, my husband countered, “Well, are you going to add any more things onto the list?” Sadly, he knows me all too well.

2013 I am a type-A personality, capital A. I have always been goal-oriented, planning and working for the future. That personality served me well in school, leading me to be valedictorian of my high school class and earn a full-tuition scholarship to my desired university. Since then, it’s not been quite as useful, at least in day-to-day life. In fact, it’s probably downright detrimental when raising children. ‘Cause honestly, it’s pretty difficult to get things done efficiently when the house is full of children. They do not care that I have a list of things to do. Their raison d’etre is to prevent me from doing anything for myself, having any quiet time, or reaching goals.

Even so, I don’t know any different way of doing things, so I forge through every day with kids, taking care of them and squeezing in my goals and to-do’s and trying to think straight in the moments they’re not asking me for something. It’s like swimming upstream in molasses. But since I am so programmed to check things off a list, I just keep swimming, regardless of how thick the water is.

So making resolutions at the beginning of a calendar year is completely pointless. One, I make goals (aka resolutions) every single day. I simply CAN’T HELP MYSELF! Two, I’m already so busy with the goals I’ve already set for myself that coming up with new ones simply because it’s January means I don’t have time to work on the new ones; I barely have time for the old ones.

Therefore, I am resolving to not make any more goals, at least until I’m caught up on the lists that are scribbled on scratch paper on my desk, on the yellow sticky-note program on my computer desktop, and the ones that just crowd my head. Perhaps I can demote myself from a capital-A type-A personality to a lowercase-a. We’ll see. That’s the most grandiose resolution I’ve ever considered.

The best of (mothering) times

Motherhood did not come naturally to me. Babysitting, on the rare occasions I consented to do it, was a rough job, one that wasn’t worth nearly the small pay I got to do it. So once I gave birth for the first time and was presented with a tiny little stranger, I was absolutely flummoxed about what to do with her. Even looking at pictures of me with that first child, I can see the confusion and nervousness in my eyes: “What now?” I was thinking.

And that first child gave me fits. She was a very demanding baby. She didn’t eat for half an hour and then settle down quietly for the next four hours. She snacked for ten minutes and then needed to eat again two hours later. She did NOT like to be put down. I had to hold her constantly. For someone who was pretty independent and used to going about my business, having the little seven-pound interloper in my arms nonstop made it pretty difficult to get anything done.

So that darling child did not ease me gently into motherhood. It was a bumpy ride, and I did not enjoy it. I was exhausted and overwhelmed and overloaded. I remember many times that first year thinking, “I can’t wait til I’m done having children and they grow up a bit.”

Time slowly went by, and I gave birth two more times and adopted once. I knew what I was doing the second and third times, and the second baby was just the most easygoing child ever. She would eat and then sit in her bouncy seat or car seat and smile beatifically up at me, doing whatever I needed to do. Third child was somewhere in between. But by then I had help: two older sisters to distract her (and one time push her off the couch…). Fourth baby was a breeze in many ways because I didn’t breast-feed her, so everyone else could take turns feeding her a bottle. And changing diapers. And holding and playing with her. It was so much more fun that time around to have a little baby. I enjoyed her.

They all went through the terrible twos and their early stages of independence and potty training. Those days are now behind me. My oldest is now 16, and the youngest 5. They’re now all in school. They can feed and dress themselves and read to themselves, except for the kindergartener. Yes, I am finally getting to that magic place I imagined when I had that first demanding baby. And it’s struck me that this time is finite. The oldest is now not a squalling infant; she’s a high school junior. And she is amazing. She’s delightful and smart and talented and beautiful and makes me laugh. She can talk my ear off about her day. We can share jokes together. She’s one of my dearest friends, and I am loving life with her in it. Now the day of her leaving the nest is actually in sight (less than two years!), and it’s paining my heart to even think about. I DON’T WANT HER TO LEAVE!

Ah, what a difference 15 or 16 years can make.

So I have realized that, despite the absolutely crazy, hectic pace of my daily life with four children in school and all the needs they have, these are the best of times. In a few years, one daughter will be gone, and the others will be making their way towards that direction as well. The clock is ticking. And at this stage of my life, it’s not a biological clock. It’s the clock reminding me with every tock and tick that while motherhood is permanent, having children at home is not. I bemoan the lack of peace and quiet and sufficient time to myself now, but even in the midst of this busy-ness, I can’t imagine my house being quiet all the time. I love knowing that I can cuddle and squeeze all of my girls any time, that I can talk to them, listen to them, just study their faces. That we can laugh together.

I’m going to keep reminding myself during the tough days or moments that these really are the best of times. It might take a loud reminder during those moments, but I hope I can somehow still remember and appreciate what I have now.

Pinferiority: dodging a complex

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about how Pinterest can be really useful, and also how it can be just another brick in the backpack full of guilt that moms carry around. I read a great column yesterday by another blogger and thought it was just along the same lines of what I’d been pondering. As Tiffany writes, “I have this real and palpable fear that on my deathbed, surrounded by my children, they will say something like this: ‘Yeah, you were a pretty good mom, but you never, you know, made us apple snacks in the shape of ladybugs.’” Isn’t THAT the truth!

Because as any Pinterest user knows, here’s the breakdown on boards: 25% of pins are recipes, 25% home decor, 15% crafts, 15% exercise and diet tips, 10% jokes and inspirational quotes, and 10% everything else. And the recipes and home decor ideas have their own breakdowns: recipes are maybe a quarter cutesy kid-oriented, as are the home decor and crafts. Recipes show these darling cupcakes and unbreakable kid plates festooned with hot dogs and spaghetti noodles or vegetables or fruits cut and meticulously fashioned into animal shapes.

And kids’ rooms? They’re filled with professionally painted wall scenes, organized and clever bunk-bed arrangements, or fairy-tale canopies and related frou-frou. Pinterest is now the haven for moms gone wild decorating and cooking fantastical items for their adored little ones, who have endless ideas for educational and fun projects they do with their preschoolers. I’m guessing they sleep three hours a night, don’t work outside of the home, and focus all their time and energies on their kids.

Sixteen years into this parenting gig, I have mostly made peace with the fact that I can only do so much for my kids and everyone else. I have to sleep; I have to write; I have to take some quiet time for myself. I definitely need to take time to be with my husband. Alone. I decided I wouldn’t put my girls into lots of lessons and keep them busy all the time; I wanted them to have plenty of free-play time to just imagine and create on their own. Since I love to read, I did take the time (and still do) to read to them. Since I like to cook and bake, and since I want all of us to be healthy and use our food budget wisely, I make almost all the meals we eat. We don’t do much take-out or restaurant eating (maybe a couple of times a month). I don’t tend to make the kids a fancy breakfast most school days, but I do make something nice on weekends and maybe throw some muffins in the oven on an evening for breakfast the next day (because I’m not baking at 6 a.m.).

What I don’t do are these time-consuming jobs: home decorating. To me, function comes before form, and almost everything (except the pictures of the family on the walls) is useful in some way. Shelves hold toys and books. I don’t decorate for every holiday; I don’t, for instance, go all-out for Easter or Halloween, including a candy-corn-shaped nightlight (for instance, which I have seen) as part of the hundreds of orange/black or faux-scary decorations in October. I don’t do a lot of crafts. I do sew maybe a couple of times a year when I get the urge or when one of the girls needs something in particular for school or something else. I typically make skirts or dresses. The sewing machine otherwise sits quietly in its closet, awaiting my next yearly burst of sewing energy. Particularly, I don’t combine the two by crafting cutesy decorations, particularly not for transient seasons. I am not going to take the time to swap out dozens of decorations every month. Nope.

And yes, I like to cook, but I am not going to spend any extra time making the food look kid-friendly. I never even called broccoli trees. The girls love it, but I didn’t have to give it a cute name so they would eat it. It keeps me busy enough making weekly dinners and then breakfasts and lunches during weekends or school breaks. I can’t imagine doing any more prep or finishing work. It exhausts me thinking about it.

I’ve been able to largely be satisfied with my strengths and be OK with not doing all the other stuff over the years. I’d visit friends occasionally and be impressed with their decorations or cute kid bedrooms, but it was easy to brush aside feeling inferior because those were brief forays outside of my own good-enough child-rearing sphere. But then Pinterest came along, and it reminds every single mom out there that pins just how much we’re not doing. Well, now I have to steel myself against feeling inferior every time I get on Pinterest to look for recipes or great ways to get out stains (or the occasional really good laugh). I think I should just put a permanent pin up on the corner of Pinterest that tells me, “Being a good mom doesn’t make crafts mandatory” or any other reminders of reality.

Yes, Pinterest has its usefulness and a place in my life. But I refuse to let it make me feel bad. It’s just another time for me to go to my happy place and chant “I am a good mom, I am a good mom” until I stop looking at boards for the day.