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Text of the page (random words):
where they sit where they don t sit what they can do what they can t then they come home get off your ipad read a book for once go outside play with your siblings your room is still a mess what do you mean you flunked that test do your homework no this is all wrong do it again you re not even trying get your elbows off the table don t talk with food in your mouth you left without clearing your place at the table what do you mean you forgot your math book at school i don t have time for this you need posterboard for tomorrow you couldn t tell me that an hour ago when we were out getting your math book slow down hurry up brush your teeth do it again go to bed stop coming downstairs it s late what do you mean you can t sleep readers that one bit of criticism i got threw me off for the entire morning it literally took me 3 hours and half a milligram of xanax to get over it no one yelled called names berated or accused it was all very adult and respectful and mature and yet i went through every negative emotion from angry to embarrassed to sad to hurt to angry again and even frightened that i had ruined an important friendship with my boneheaded behavior is it any wonder that by the time our kids hit the teen years they roll their eyes at adults maybe it s simply because they ve taken so much criticism from us their entire lives that they learn to think we re stupid as a defense mechanism they just shut down and wouldn t you next time i get irritated with my kids which should be in about 11 seconds i m going to try really hard to correct without criticizing correction is often necessary but criticism hurts and i don t want to hurt the people i love most posted by amy at 9 40 am 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday april 21 2016 hello from the other side my kids are now 10 9 and 5 jack is starting kindergarten in the fall which is completely insane i can t remember the last time i changed a diaper and for some reason i feel moved to dust off this old blog today and say a few things to you moms who are still in the trenches that i wish i could go back and say to myself 10 years ago you matter oh please take care of yourself your body matters before you know it you re going to be 40 and you re going to start falling apart my blood pressure was recently 180 110 for no particular reason it s better now yay meds i wish i could go back and take better care of myself if i had it to do over i would have joined a gym with free childcare when the kids were little i would have ignored their cries when they got dropped off at said free childcare i would have made myself forget that you get what you pay for and understood that an hour of unhappiness would not kill them and i would have walked on the treadmill for an hour every day what a huge difference that would have made and sometimes especially during shark week i would drop them off in childcare and go read blogs in the locker room for an hour because i deserved it and i would have remembered that children don t die of neglect in a single weepy hour i just remembered why we quit the gym there was a corner where the slightly less young children who were in charge couldn t see the kids and i caught someone hiding there eating drywall from a hole in the wall oh well i made the best decision i could at the time it would have been worth it to drive to the nice gym on the other side of town past amy when you get your do over do that your spirit matters too having kids gives you an excuse to make friends that you won t enjoy again as an adult so take advantage of it and make them bond with other adults over chicken nuggets and fast food play place playdates and keep those friends they ll keep you sane make time to take them a pot of soup when they re sick or a cup of coffee when you know from facebook of course that they re having a crappy day you won t believe the love that will come back your way it s ok to put jane smith tommy s mom in your phone i have handed people my phone at the park usually when i ve already forgotten their name and said put yourself in my phone so i can text you i ll watch the kids you wouldn t believe how long you can go without using someone s name anyway there s this lovely woman i ve known for years no idea what her name is she s delightful someday someone will say oh hello _____ to her in my presence and i ll figure out what her name is i ll probably promptly forget again but maybe i ll get it into my phone in time someday cultivate a hobby yes i know you re too busy stop arguing with me you have to do something for yourself or you ll become one of those women who can t talk about anything but her kid s latest bowel movement and how little sleep you re getting even if your hobby is just reading on your smartphone over your kid s head as you feed him pause every few paragraphs to make loving eye contact of course at least then you can say i am reading the most fascinating novel about world war ii when you have to go to some adult function instead of trying to cut your boss s steak into tiny bite sized chunks for him and asking about his bowel habits lots of things don t matter there were so many things that i absolutely agonized over that ended up not making a bit of difference i struggled and struggled to breastfeed mg i tandem nursed the girls for 9 months which was misery guess what by the time they got to preschool just a short year after i weaned mg no one gave a damn does she eat great well done gold star let it go i am happy that we breastfed mostly because we saved a ton of money and because i m lazy and cleaning bottles would have irritated me i m glad i stuck with it through the hard part so that i could get to the easy part this is not to say that there aren t great advantages to nursing there are but there are advantages to bottle feeding or doing both which is totally a thing too the main one being that someone else can do it other things that ended up not mattering include birth plans approximately zero things went according to my birth plan other than the fact that i left the hospital 100 less pregnant than i was when i went in save yourself some printer ink and go get a mani pedi instead trying to plan birth is futile it s like trying to plan a tornado there are things you can do to be slightly less unprepared but you can t control the situation no matter how many pages your birth manifesto encompasses besides no one asks at kindergarten registration whether or not you had an epidural and i m still waiting for my natural childbirth trophy i was begging for drugs there just wasn t time to get them maybe i disqualified myself the order in which you introduce solid foods with mg i had a spreadsheet with claire she kind of just ate whatever i felt like feeding her that day and i waited a few days to see if she broke out in a rash by the time i got to jack he was eating pretty much everything except honey because botulism by 6 months old none of the kids have any allergies all of them are equally good eaters they love shrimp and roasted cauliflower for heaven s sake and claire loves buffalo wings that stuff about if you give them fruit first they ll never learn to like veggies is bologna preschool choice they re all pretty good around here and i m glad we saved a fortune by not going with the most expensive one or the one with the waiting list kindergarten early enrollment vs redshirting mg missed the kindergarten cutoff by 10 days and i agonized about whether or not to send her to a charter school that first year we ended up putting her in a third year of preschool and i m so glad we did there s no reason to push them to go early it all evens out by middle school there s also no reason to redshirt them just do your school system a favor and send them when they re eligible according to whatever arbitrary criteria the school system has chosen sleeping arrangements crying it out we never cried it out and all my kids have eventually learned to fall asleep alone in their own beds someday they ll stay there all night too turns out that i m the one who is having trouble letting go of snuggling jack to sleep he can do it but i feel sad when i don t snuggle him i also kind of like it that he sneaks into our bed at night most of the time again with mg i agonized attachment parenting this is the philosophy that most closely aligned with our natural tendency as parents but we didn t follow it like it was a holy book in the end as long as what works for your family isn t illegal immoral or fattening just do it it s ok to be friends with people or not argue online with people who are doing something different what works for you works for you and may not work for another family realize that no one is wearing their 10 year old in a bjorn of any sort and that there are plenty of paths to parental enlightenment namaste baby staying at home vs working outside home parents i ll bet every single person reading this can think of at least one great kid whose parents both work and at least one little tyrant who has a parent that stays home it would be nice if parental success boiled down to one decision but it doesn t most childhood illnesses i wish i could have all the co pays back for all the little coughs and sniffles i took our kids to the doctor over try to think like a nurse and if the kid isn t actively dying keep them out of the doctor s office they re just going to get sicker or the healthy siblings that you have to drag along will get sick from going there basically if there s a mommy war over it it is probably a matter of personal preference things that actually matter vaccines car seats botulism um what you should focus on so if you aren t agonizing over all of the above what are you going to focus on in all your free time your relationship oh my gosh that person you made the kid s with is still going to be there when the kid s stop s hanging off of your body every second of every day and you might want to make sure you still like each other when that happens invest time and energy in your relationship go on dates talk about non kid related things i ll let you know what those are as soon as i think of some do nice things for him or her just because be the kind of spouse you would want to have if you switched places be interesting be kind dad don t read the rest of this paragraph the rest of you remember there s a reason why it s called making love ahem have you ever noticed that people are nicer to strangers like waitresses and cashiers than they are to their own family sometimes that makes no sense to me at all when you find yourself starting to be an asshole and we can all be assholes remember that the people who share your home are the people you love most in the entire world and treat them accordingly also unless your partner happens to be a waitress or a cashier do not make love with waitresses and cashiers focus on teaching your kids how to have a good relationship by modeling it for them they will thank you when they re adults and they re not married to someone who drives them insane what else the best advice i ever gave was only take advice from someone whose kids you would cheerfully live with mine are outstanding so it s safe to listen to me the best advice i ever received was if you teach your kids nothing else teach them to be helpers dr dave all of my kids will stop whatever they re doing and feed the dogs or empty the dishwasher when they re asked to help it s kind of my superpower actually and i honestly believe that it s because we told them from the time they were tiny oh you are such a good helper kids will believe what you tell them about themselves so if you tell them you re such a brat they re going to prove you right if you tell them you re lazy they will be so use that to your advantage and tell them several times a day oh you re a great helper thank you 2 year old big sibling brings you a diaper for the baby oh thank you my big helper start early say it often make it so read read read i ve been reading the boxcar children series to jack and when we get to some random old fashioned thing we look it up grandfather alden sent a telegram jack do you know what a telegram is of course not but suddenly we re off on a google mission listening to recordings of morse code and talking about what the world was like before telephones we ve looked up birds and animals and specific sorts of shells cat s paw if you care we looked up what uranium ore looks like on the ground because the boxcar children were given a ranch by their great aunt jane because of course they were and the fireplace is made out of rocks with yellow flecks of uranium in them because of course it was and it s starting to come up occasionally in real life too i m looking forward to him finding and recognizing a cat s paw hopefully not uranium bj is reading harry potter to the girls and they re all obsessed reading together is a memory they ll cherish forever plus kids who read or are read to are exposed to thousands more words over their childhoods than kids who aren t and it makes an enormous difference in their education read every day starting from birth bj s on a business trip and the other night we were sending love to daddy how do you do that mommy well you have to get a good clear picture of daddy in your head i always start with his hair and i pop it on like lego hair then i draw in his eyebrows then his eyes his nose and his smile can you see him good ok now you have to picture him doing something that either makes you feel loved or that makes you feel love for him or both what do you picture and every kid said separately reading to me and then you take the love from the picture in your head and send it all the way to daddy ready go then the kids wanted to send me love and i laughed and told them that it tickled so if they ever ask you if you can feel it when they send you love tell them that you can and it tickles rituals and traditions matter when bj is out of town we have breakfast for dinner always it gives them a little something out of the ordinary to look forward to and it makes them feel like life is predictable and safe it gives them continuity i still remember some of our traditions from when i was a kid and they still make me smile i do some of them with my own kids they don t have to be elaborate and they don t have to be tied to holidays you can start now family dinners matter bj always asks the kids how was school today when we sit down for dinner and it s hilarious because when he isn t home the kids will ask each other in their deep daddy voice how was school today mary grace how was school today jack how was school today claire it s a ritual and it matters to them everything is a phase nothing lasts forever and just when you get that little weirdo figured out they ll switch it up on you and go on to the next phase don t stress too hard over any of it make a few friends whose kids are older than yo...