Mom is Just a Nickname

Today’s been an odd sort of day. I’m in a fairly snarky mood; maybe it’s boredom (been stuck at home most of the week with sick kids), maybe it’s sleep deprivation (was up most of last night with one of the sick kids). Either way, I don’t feel like spending more than this first paragraph being snarky, bored, cranky or otherwise irritating to myself (let alone to others). So, I’m going to count some blessings.

From the movie White Christmas, where Bing Crosby sings about counting blessings, to the book Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy, where Sarah Ban Breathnach recommends keeping a daily gratitude journal, the idea of looking at the good things in life is not new. Focusing on the positive instead of the negative has a way of altering a bad attitude –and I’ve got bad attitude in abundance today.

So, today I am thankful for:

1. Although both J and X have been sick this week, neither has been so sick that I’ve had to sit at their bedside worried, nor have I had to rush anyone to the doctor or the hospital. (You couldn’t see it, but I knocked on wood as I typed that.)
2. Today’s boredom has resulted in a multitude of snuggles with X, two clean bathrooms, a dishwasher of clean dishes and at least one load of clean clothes.
3. We finally managed to get our old washer and dryer out of our garage and into a good home where it can once more lead a useful life.
4. Despite the fact that I haven’t grocery shopped this week, we have plenty of food in the house. Stocking up grocery shopping is working nicely that way.
5. I have a book waiting to be read, which is promising to be a good read: The Fiction Class by Susan Breen. It came to me via Blog Stop Book Tours which is run by my friend, Lynn, the Virtual Wordsmith. (Look for the review on my blog in April! More details later!)

I have other things to be thankful for, but this will do for now. Oh, I have one more:

Today is Friday!!!!!

71 words

Speed test

It is rare to see X sitting completely still at almost ten o’clock in the morning. He is a mover, a shaker, a child who doesn’t sit still. Oh, he can be intent on a task and stick with it, but his body and mind are always moving. He is energy, personified.

This morning, I had the first hints that he wasn’t feeling like himself. He complained of being cold. I figured he was just waking up and had crawled from his warm bed, finding the air in the house chilly after his nest. I helped him get dressed, suggesting sweatshirts to help him stay warm. He declined all offers, deciding to wear just his Spiderman t-shirt and a pair of jeans.

I went to take my shower after helping him get dressed. When I came out, he was curled in a ball behind my cheval mirror. He knows he’s not supposed to play near it. So, I coaxed him out of his corner, and asked him why he was there. He said he was just sitting there, listening to the fan in the bathroom. X, just sit there listening to white noise? That is not like him.

He was eager to go to the library for story time, but we still had an hour before we could leave. Over his t-shirt he layered on a turtleneck, a sweatshirt, and a windbreaker. I thought he was getting ready to go outside, but instead he told me he was just very cold. Our heat is set to sixty nine. Is it that cold in the house? I’m usually the one who feels the cold the most and it feels fine to me.

As I made a check on email, he lay down on the couch. He is still there now; just laying there. He doesn’t want to watch television, he doesn’t want to look at books. He doesn’t even want me to read him a book. He just wants to lay there, in a half doze. He says that nothing hurts -not his throat, not his head, nothing. Just his nose is runny, he tells me. And he’s cold.

He has turned his energy inward. All of that vital movement stilled as his body works to feel better. I wish there was more I could do for him than just offer medicine and drinks.

Sometimes I just want to run away.  I think, “If I could just get away for two days and not have to worry about anyone but myself, I’d feel so much better!”  And then….

 I feel guilty.  I feel like it’s wrong for me to want to get away from my children.  I feel like I should be available to them when they need me, on their schedules not my own.  Or I feel like a bad mom for not always liking the way they are acting. 

 Sometimes, I feel bad that I will spend an entire day writing or blogging or reading and not spending time playing with the kids.  The four year old has recently become aggressive, both in action and words, and doing some reading online, it seems that he may feel that any attention (even negative) is better than none.  Maybe he is acting out to get attention.  He usually seems perfectly content to play alone, but then he will get aggressive towards his sister and us in the evenings. 

More mommy guilt.  This one, at least, I can do something about.  Athough I find the blogging and the writing therapeutic and the reading is a habit I just can’t break, I still need to take the time to praise the little man for good behavior. 

I’m not convinced I should feel guilty for wanting to be away for a chunk of time, though.  We all need breaks.  People who work full time outside the home can leave their jobs.  Mine is always there.  As a full time stay at home mom, I’m always on duty.  Even when my husband is home and takes on his share of parenting, there are still some things that Mommy must do.   I do not clock out when Daddy walks through the door for his shift.

Have you ever had Mommy Guilt?  What made you feel guilty?  How did you handle the situation? Was it something you felt deserved Mommy Guilt?

Very few books, movies or anything make me cry. There is one topic -death and family responding to death - that will always make me cry.

When I was a teenager, I had yet to find a movie that would make me cry. Then, one day, I watched My Girl. The movie where the little boy dies from bee stings? (sorry if I just ruined it for you…it’s such an old movie, I figure most have seen it by now!) That one made me sob hysterically. Looking back, it almost seems prophetic that the one movie I’d seen that triggered a powerful emotional response was one in which a family and their friends must handle the death of a child.

Yesterday, I read a book called Necessary Arrangementsby Tanya Michna. Basically it juxtaposes the stories of two close and loving sisters. One is getting married, and one has cancer. I literally cried through the entire book. I found it poignant, realistic, and heartbreaking while still being uplifting at the end.

“Don’t let them give up family traditions. If they stop doing the stuff we all did together, if–”

If the customs the four of them had shared disappeared, it would be as if Asia had disappeared. Not just from their active lives, but from their shared memories, their collective love for her. No, they’d always love her, but it was disconcerting to think that one day they might possibly get used to being without her.

Paragraphs like that run throughout the book. They bring to mind the things that have plagued my mind since Sullivan’s death. Sadness that he’d be forgotten, hurt that lives would, could and should move on away from his life, and the ways that relationships change in the wake of a death.

Although I have not lost an immediate family member to cancer, I can relate with the long, drawn out fight, with the constant medical attention, with the array of emotions present, and with the decision that must be made between treating a fatal illness in order to buy more time or treating the symptoms to make the time available worth living. I can relate to the feelings of the family facing the loss of a loved one. So many of the things in the book were from different perspectives than I’ve experienced, but I could so easily step into their shoes and feel what they were going through.

Between the excellent flow of the writing, and my own experiences with prolonged illness and death, this book struck a very deep chord with me.