Self Conscious

Here is something.  I am sometimes very self-conscious about my kids' behavior and my parenting skilz in general when we are in public.  Or if we are just in front of anybody really.  I hate that.  I want to be the kind of person who doesn't care what other people think, especially about my performance in my chosen profession (motherhood).  But here is the fact:  I often feel like I am not very good at my chosen profession. I try. Mostly.  Mostly I try really hard.  I try to be easy on myself, too.  But I feel like the moment I go easy on myself someone is looking over my shoulder and wondering, "Why does she have so many kids? She clearly can't handle them!"  I wish I was a rock star mom. But I think rock star moms are probably just a myth.  The perfect mom is an illusion you find on blogs. I know a lot of blogging moms who consciously or subconsciously make their lives look ideal, charming, quaint, uh... happy. But I know I'm just seeing the good stuff; the stuff they want to share. We usually only take out the camera when we are smiling.   I know that is true.  But somehow this doesn't stop me from being self-conscious.  I try to show the real stuff on my blog so there are no pretenses about what my life is really like.  But I am inclined to only post the most flattering pictures of myself and stuff like that.  So no blog is unsanitized.  Including mine.  Here I'll post a really awful picture of myself as a gesture of me attempting to "keep it real".

There. That wasn't so hard. I have some much worse ones somewhere. I'll try to dig them up...

Back to where I was, if that was anywhere to begin with...  No matter how much I tell myself that it doesn't matter what other people think, or that most people deal with the same kind of insecurities, I can't help it.  I feel self conscious.

Part of the reason why I love family so much is like that quote: "Sisters are friends that know everything about you and love you anyway." Or something like that.  Well, ain't that the truth?  But I haven't lived near any of my immediate family for over 8 years. So when I come into town with my brood, it is kind of like meeting me for the first time in some ways.  What are the rules of your house?  What is OK with you? Do you eat out of the kitchen? Are you OK with kids making messes? What is "out of bounds"?  Is "stupid" a bad word in your house?  What time is bedtime?  How do you handle a misbehaving child? How much misbehavior are you comfortable ignoring?  Do you insist that your baby or toddler share?  How do you reward your children? How do you punish your children?  Is it OK if your kids have sugar?  How about a sip or two of Dr. Pepper?  

Clearly there are as many ways to "parent" as there are parents. So even when it comes to people as close as my siblings, and friends that are as close as siblings, I feel self-conscious about my parenting because it sometimes differs from their's.  So imagine, if you will, what it was like for me to leave my litter with my sister Abby for 5 days and 4 nights.  The way the timing worked out, we weren't all together to let the kids acclimate to each other and new authority figures before Taylor and I headed out to Austin to look for a house.

The first text I received from Abby the first day was something like, "I had to physically carry Oscar to a time-out."  Oiy vay.   OK. This is not unusual for Oscar.  I was just wishing ("wishing upon a star!") that he would either 1) be like a deer in the headlights and just go along with whatever Abby asked of him as his temporary guardian, or 2) miraculously have excellent behavior for her the entire time.  

A second text from Abby said something like, "I would seriously consider counseling for Oscar."

It was actually kind of comforting to hear someone voice this.  When I'm in the thick of it, I can't see what is normal and what is not sometimes.  It is true, Oscar is unpredictable.  No, that's wrong. He predictably gets out of control regularly.  And over the exact same things every time: Alice bothers him, Henry won't play with him, I don't love him because I won't  let him have his way.

We have tried to help him learn to control his emotions.  Starting Tae kwon do was an effort to help him with this.  I try really hard to be firm and consistent. We recently took a Love and Logic parenting course, mostly because we didn't know what to do with him anymore. But the truth is that he is so loud when he gets out of control that I am not just imagining that other people are staring at us.  Truly, when I start considering whether or not I actually want to take a certain child out in public, it is probably time to consider counseling.  It is on my list of "Things to do" when we get to Austin.  All of this change this summer has got to be part of the problem.  But trust me, his problems did not begin with all of the change that has been going on in his life. And this goes way beyond "middle child syndrome".

OK, that was more of a tangent on Oscar than I intended... I was trying to make the point that my kids - all of my kids - were not angels for Abby.  She has three kids of her own.  The youngest is about Joe's age, and he probably didn't appreciate his mom's attention being divided with a new baby in the house.  And her older two don't line up in age/gender with my kids.  Unfortunately my Alice decided it would be really fun to have a younger girl cousin to tease and not play nicely with.  And my boys are older than her oldest and don't play with nearly the amount of imagination as her Cubby.  I would like to say that my kids were not on their best behavior at her house.  But the truth is that they were par for the course, and I didn't like how it looked.

When I came back to Vegas, my kids and I stayed another 5 days.  My kids may have had time with their cousins (bless their hearts!) but I wanted time with my sister!  I LOVE Abby.  She makes me laugh all day long.  She shares my love for Dr. Pepper, though she likes it "straight up" and I prefer diet.  (How she is not 300 pounds, I do not know.)  She taught me it is OK to have a can with breakfast.  Thanks for that, Abs.

Turns out she is a "real" mom just like me! (Already knew that.)





She struggles to keep her house clean, she worries about her kids' behavior, she is just sick of it all and sometimes wants it to go away. Just sometimes. ;)   I spent all of my time with her feeling grateful that she understood me, she was honest with me, she commiserated with me, she laughed at things that I thought were funny.  AND she taught me that having a lock on the outside of the kids' bedroom door was golden.  For the first time in... forever.... when I had to put a child in "time out" for five minutes they were in a place where they couldn't defy me, test me, etc, etc.  They had no choice but be removed from everyone and any fun that may have been going on for 5 minutes and calm down.  They were safe. There was nothing they could harm. It was like a true time out for me, too, which is exactly what I need sometimes.  You'd better believe I will be adjusting a bedroom door or two first thing in TX.  Thank you, Abby.

Once the kids were in bed at night we just wanted to hang out, eat yummy food and more Dr. Pepper, watch So You Think You Can Dance, look online to see what exactly different cosmetic procedures would entail, and chat.  We would stay up so late because it was so fun to not have the kids around with us, but then we would pay for it in the morning.  But it was worth it.

We tried to do a few fun things with the kids.  The story of my life (this summer) is that when I try to do something that is a real treat - something really fun! - with my kids, they act ungrateful and whine the entire time.  And then I hate that I have spent money on them that day.  And I resent that they put me in a bad mood.  And I hate that I have to tell myself, "No one can MAKE you mad.  You get to choose." Just like I tell my kids.  At the end of the day, it is just hard to say "I had a good day regardless!" when the whole point of the day was to do something fun with the kids.

The one thing I am most sad about is that I know her kids started acting like MY kids - copying their worst behavior.  That made Abby sad.  And that made me really sad.  It is one thing to misbehave. It is another to be modeling misbehavior for a younger cousin.  For this, Abby, I am truly sorry.  I hope you were able to de-program your kids and that they shook it off quickly.

And now for a few pictures.  OK, more than a few.

If we wanted to go anywhere together in one car, we had to break the law. Shhh.

 Once a life guard, always a life guard.  We swam one day at Abby's in-laws house.  Making sure our babies didn't drown was top priority.  Stressful. The look on Abby's face kind of sums it up. Classic.

 A recurring theme for the summer is Henry taunting Oscar about not swimming in deep water. It makes me so mad.  Here Oscar is summoning all his nerves (and all flotation devices available) to jump off the diving board for the first time.

 ...And then the next thing we know he was doing flips. Kids are baffling, I tell you.

Two-handed popsicle-eating-awesomeness.

 There's a genuine smile.

 In every other context imaginable ... this would be heaven.

 I feel like I am complaining a lot. We really did have a lot of fun, too.  It was just so very... sprinkled throughout.  Random.  Fleeting.

The day before we left we took the kids to see the fountains and the gardens at the Bellagio.  Surely they would think it was so amazingly awesome that they would forget that it was hot, and that they were "hungry" and that they were "tired".  

 Here is the thing about going on an "adventure" with kids:  One minute you are twirling your daughter and dancing to the music on the strip...

...and the next... LITERALLY the next minute you have three hot, cranky, moody, unhappy children hanging on you.   It is like living with several short, schizophrenic people.

 The moments when they were playing nicely together were so fleeting, it was rare to capture them with the camera.

 "Hey, can you help me get outta this joint?."

 They shared one thing very well:  snot and eye boogers.  :)

Abby, as you have read this, I hope you have understood my true meaning: that of appreciation and gratitude for taking on a really crappy job and doing it admirably.  Thank you so much.  And thank you for not insisting that I take my cranky kids and leave immediately after I got back from Austin.  I needed those few days with you to feel loved and understood.  When I left I couldn't stop crying, and I couldn't understand why.  We had planned for Abby and co. to come visit us in Irvine this weekend.  I would be seeing her soon!  I wasn't crying because I would miss her (although I would indeed miss her!).  I was crying because I was leaving a place of emotional comfort and rest.  We are leaving Irvine (where we have only lived for about a month) in 12 days to start the real deal.  I am so scared in the weirdest ways.  Newness freaks me out.  What if the other moms don't like me??  :)    And that, my friends, is why I need to stop being so self conscious.