And Now You Are Seven

Dear Marie, 

You are seven.  Seven year old.  As cliched as it is to say, I can’t believe it.  I remember the day you carefully made your way into this world like it was yesterday.

This year was a pretty big year for you.

You wrote your first book and entered it into the PBS Kids Go! Writing Contest.  First of all, so proud of you for writing a whole book just because you love to write.  But I am even more proud of you because you saw it through the whole process - from prewriting to the final touches of the illustrations.  I am so very proud of you!

And even though I have known you since before you were born, I did learn something new about you this year.

You don’t like surprises.  At all.

Daddy and I bought Taylor Swift concert tickets for you, and we were so excited to give them to you.  At first you were shocked, and then I thought delight and sheer joy would be the next obvious reaction.  But alas, you did not want the tickets and disappointment set in, which quickly turned to guilt about feeling disappointed.  Watching you struggle with the guilt because you expressed your true feelings was worse than knowing you were disappointed about the tickets.  It resonated with me because I often find myself managing my true feelings and the guilt associated with them.

I did my best to coach you through this; eventually you made your peace and spoke your truth.  And your truth was wanting either a World War II themed birthday party.  Although it was a great idea, we decided to go with your second choice of having your party at an indoor play area.

And because I have now learned your true disdain for surprises, we had an open talk about what you wanted for your birthday gift.  I thought about it and, I agreed that you could get gift cards for an iPod.  

But once you had the money, you felt guilty about the iPod.  After much investigating/observing/listening, I determined that you felt guilty because you thought you wore me down.  Which totally wasn’t the case.  I explained to you that I had to come to terms with what I thought you should have and what truly interests you.

Watching how much you torture yourself with guilt at the tender age of seven, my birthday wish for you is to have the confidence within yourself to be guilt-free. I want you to know that you need to be who you really are.  You have a lot of amazing gifts, and I don’t want them to get lost in a sea of guilt.

In your life, you will find guilt at every turn.  Guilt about wanting something. Guilt about getting something.  Guilt about your feelings.  Guilt about your guilty feelings.

Just stop.

You deserve to be happy, and you deserve to speak your truth.  No, not deserve, but the responsibility to live your truth.

Without guilt.

Never apologize for your feelings or for being you.

Happy birthday.

Love you always,

Mommy

Why Ever Mom Needs to Read Lost in Suburbia: A Momior by Tracy Beckerman

Happy (early) Mother’s Day!

On this very day seven years ago, I became a mom.  Little did I know that when I became a mom, I also became part of a club in which all the members know what it is like to have spit up run down your back and understands what it is like to function with as little as five hours of broken sleep.  It’s great to have a community of women to look to for advice on baby food, diapers, and preschool.

What gets lost in that conversation about baby gear and sleep schedules is who we are as women.  Not the women we were before children, but the women we become after we have give birth, separate from being a mom.  

Tracy Beckerman breaks down the walls about the identity crisis that many moms go through in her hilarious new book, Lost in Suburbia: A Momior of How I Got Pregnant, Lost Myself, and Got My Cool Back in the New Jersey Suburbs.  She details her journey from a full-time working woman in New York City with a cool job in TV where she gets to wear real clothes and shoes to a full-time stay-at-home mom for a boss that isn’t even potty-trained in a New Jersey suburban neighborhood. 

She explains her situation with such humor that I was able to laugh at some of those difficult memories of weird baby illnesses (like the time Marie had hand-foot-mouth disease as a baby, which at the time, was the grossest thing ever) to finer points about being neurotic about a pacifier (I actually called the pediatrician to see if it was OK to give her one).

However, the part that resonated deeply with me was the conversation about cleaning wipes. 

Yes, cleaning wipes.

I took great comfort in the fact that she, too, shared the feeling of insanity that cleaning wipes was an acceptable topic of conversation.  In fact, those kinds of conversations are the exact reason why I started a blog.  

And when I didn’t think that I could love this book anymore, Tracy writes about her rock bottom. I laughed through some tears as she describes the layers of guilt of not feeling totally and completely fulfilled with being a mom.  I love being mom, but sometimes it feels as something is missing.  That guilt about feeling guilty about being lucky enough to stay home with my kids mixed with the guilt of wanting something more is exhausting - on top of an already exhausting schedule.

I absolutely enjoyed reading about Tracy’s journey of finding her cool, that part of you that is just for you and not tied with being a mom or a wife or even something you do.  It is difficult to talk about this sometimes because it can be embarrassing (or scary or what is the word? Oh, yes, *guilty*) to admit that the most important job in the whole entire world doesn’t complete you is a bitter pill to swallow.  It is also frightening because if you let it, motherhood can make you a stranger to yourself. 

I am at a point right now with blogging/freelancing/teaching that I am enjoying what I do, but sometimes wonder what the hell I am doing taking time away from my kids to pursue my interests.  After reading Momior, I somehow feel less guilty to want a little corner of my mind that is just for me.  Her wicked sense of humor mixed with her powerful insights are exactly what I needed at this point in my life.

Be sure to check it out and let me know what you think!

Have a wonderful Mother’s Day!

*I was given a free e-copy of this book to read.  The opinions are all my own.

Technology for Kids - A Slippery Slope?

So my baby, my little girl, my first born told me she wants an iPod for her birthday.

Her 7th birthday.

My first reaction was visceral.  Of course not.  How could a 7 year old have her own iPod?!  Wouldn’t she want some stuff to go with her American Girl collection? 

And then I started to ponder her wish.

She is on the computer a lot and not just to play games.  She is on there researching former presidents and first ladies, you know, for fun.  She researches writing contests. 

I say this not to brag, but to show her maturity.  (Well, maybe brag just a touch - come on, I’m her Mom)!  I guess it isn’t any wonder she isn’t into dolls all that much.

Well, I take that back.  She is into American Girl dolls, but not so much to play with them.  She enjoys them for the purpose to learn about World War II.  (In fact, she tossed around the idea of having a World War II theme birthday party).  Please also note that her other favorite period of history is the Revolutionary War.

But I digress.

So when I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, she hemmed and hawed that she would like some books and notebooks  . . .  which I know she would love, but I asked her what she really, really wanted.

When she took a deep breath in and whispered desperately, “An iPod,” I knew I had to quiet that knee-jerk no and listen.  

Marie has never been the type of girl to play with dolls, and even though there is a finite time period in which she will even be interested in them, that just isn't her thing.

She loves to read and create.  And she loves technology.

I would rather her have something that she really wants as opposed to some things that she kinda sorta likes.

But is this a slippery slope sliding towards self-entitlement?  Towards the end of her childhood?  

Or is it a great opportunity to teach her limits and boundaries?  A chance to teach her how to navigate safely through technology-centered world?   

So after much thought and discussion, we have decided that she can ask for gift cards for the Apple store and she can buy an iPod.

I think.  

Or am I making a mistake of gigantic proportion?  

Or am I over-thinking this too much?

Do your kids have technology?  How old are they?  What kind do they have?  What kind of guidelines do you have for them to use their devices?

This House

We did it.  We closed on our house and after this weekend, we will no longer live here.  

At the closing, I was ready to be angry at the couple who bought our house because their agent was such a jack ass.  But when we got there, I saw a couple who looked too young to buy house and were probably clueless to the antics their agent was pulling on us.  

Truth be told, we were probably their age when we bought this house.

Our first house.

At the ripe age of 25.

Ten years ago.

I glanced at the couple as I signed my name a hundred times, and I was overcome with nostalgia.

We were babies when we bought this house.

We brought our babies home from the hospital in this house.  They learned to crawl, walk, and talk in this house.

We became grownups in this house.

I learned who I was in this house.

We don’t want to stay here - we have outgrown this house and want to move to a community with a downtown area with lots of parks.  I’ve been plotting and scheming a way into our new city for years.  And now it’s finally going to happen.

But I’m a little sad to be leaving this house where we became a family.

As I pack up up every single thing, I have had a lot of time to think about things.  (Like every damn day).

I wonder if Marie and Thomas’s rooms will still have their own sweet, distinctive scents: Marie’s  is a mix of lavender bath soap mixed with her own powdery scent.  Thomas’s has this clean, fresh yet sleepy scent.  If I could bottle it up and pack it with us, I would.  Because my heart may break a bit if the scents get lost in the move.

I wonder if we will be happy in our new house.  Yes, I’ve always wanted to live in this city, but sometimes things don’t live up to the image I have in my head.    I am hoping that the lessons I’ve learned in this house have prepared me to accept that nothing is perfect and to find the joy and happiness in any situation.

I wonder if the new couple will become a family here like us and the family before us.

My heart kind of breaks that we will be moving this house, the house where we have had celebrated birthdays and holidays and babyhood milestones.  I am sad to leave the neighbors who have taught me how wonderful it is to live by close friends who you not only trust, but enjoy.  This is an experience that was lost on me in my childhood since we didn’t have a lot of neighbors.  I will be sad not to see them every morning at the bus stop, but eternally grateful for their lesson in friendship.

I know that wherever we are together as a family is home; memories are not constrained by the walls of a home because they can always be found in the heart.  But right now my feelings are a mashup of everything bitter and sweet.

Have you ever moved from a place that you are emotionally connected to?  How did you deal with it?