I'm GI Jane, not Mary Freakin' Poppins

Day One of summer was tough but my strategy paid off.  Totally different children for Day Two.

 Day One

Day Two

       I credit working on my other rocks: my time with God in the morning, getting to bed at a decent time, and cutting out sugar for my ability to stay calm and carry on.Gotta take care of myself first before I can help my kids.

 My Facebook status for the first day of summer vacation was  this:

Day one of summer vacation and my son is screaming and flopping on the floor, "I don't like the rule that we have to pick up our stuff before we can go somewhere!!!!" You should have seen him flipping out because his sister is singing. Oh boy, hopefully we can bootcamp him into the summer routine or else it's going to be a looooong one

I could tell by a couple of the responses I got that some people are far removed from my reality.  I’ve mentioned before that my son has issues.  I don’t say that lightly. He isn’t like your average kid so I can’t discipline him like the average kid.

I realize that posting about my kids’ meltdowns may give people the wrong impression.  They are good kids 90% of the time (Well, one is 99% and the other is 80%) and I think the meltdowns make for funny stories. I tried crying about them but that didn’t work so now I try to laugh at them.

          Today I want to show the flipside of the meltdowns.  There’s always more to the meltdown stories but it doesn’t make for a funny ending, more like an “Oh, she’s just bragging about what a perfect parent she is” ending.  And we all know, a perfect parent is not how I see myself.

You see, I don’t just let my kids have their fits and walk away.  It may look like I’m letting them get away with it in the short run by not getting them to stop right away. This is where all that money spent on parenting classes, psychologists, and books for dealing with my son's Encopresis pays off. Love and Logic tells you that the only thing you can control is your behavior.  I can smack a crying kid or tell them, “Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about!” I’ve found that it doesn’t work on my kids which makes sense, if I’m upset and crying would I calm down if someone hit me or yelled at me? Nope.  Plus they are so drunk on emotion at that point that they can’t be reasoned with.  Kevin Leman’s book Have a New Kid by Friday teaches that the lesson sinks in better when you wait and deal out the consequences when it really hits home.  My dad taught the biggest part of the solution which is, follow through. I don’t let them win in the long run. I know their currency and I use it as a carrot. The people who watched and listened as my daughter had a never-been-done-before HUMONGOUS fit at Target and rolled their eyes at my “lack of parenting” (because if I were a good parent, she wouldn’t be having this fit? She's a kid) they missed the ending where after she finally calmed down, she walked back in the store to the aisle on which she left the toys out and calmly put them back in place. She then walked to the cashier and apologized for her behavior.

They missed that this turned into a Never-To-Be-Done-Again fit when the next day on another trip to Target, Boo said to me, “Mama, I’ll never have a fit like that again. It didn’t work.”  We ended up at the cash register just one aisle over from the day before and she said, “Oh, that’s aisle 10 where we were yesterday.” She remembered the aisle number? I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that.  I told the cashier that Boo was remembering the five alarm meltdown she had had the day before.  The cashier asked, “What time was that?” Around 4:30. “Oh, I was here for that.” Who would forget that?  She took out a sticker and gave it to Boo saying, “Good job for behaving so well today.”

Hello people!! Do you think Boo learned her lesson?  Just because the other people saw a snapshot of my life, they don’t know the whole story. 

So, this brings me to our first day of summer vacation.  Yesterday was miserable. Fighting new rules, bickering with each other, acting like married people who have been home together for too long.  My son had to put his Legos back in the box three different times because I was making him clean-up before we could move on to something else. He fought it every time. While he’s flopping on the floor, do I grab him and yell, “You better pick those up right now or they’re gone!!!”  No, because he’s too drunk on emotion.  I tell him that if he wants to go to Target to get his friend’s birthday present for the next day’s party, he has to get the Legos put away.  And I walk out of the room (that’s called not engaging. Pay attention, I just saved you $50 of psychologist fees.) Each time he didn’t want to do something, I pointed out that he was stuck until he did what I said. 

So, this morning he came into my room and asked, “What chores do I have to do before I can play video games?”  When I told him we were doing laundry before playing, his response was not a flop on the floor with screaming.  He answered, “Yes ma’am.”  Throughout the whole process of separating, folding, learning how to fold the towels properly (his wife can thank me later), and putting everything away, I only heard positive things coming from this boy. He was so proud when he was done that I took a picture of him standing proudly next to his folded clothes.

Yesterday, my son learned that GI Jane is here to stay and she is calm and in control.

That's what DVR is for.

Even though I was watching My Best Friend's Wedding for the first time in over a decade and it was my favorite part where they break out in song at the restaurant with the workers in the background wearing crab claw oven mitts swaying back and forth, I did turn off the TV and go to bed at 10pm.  I thought, "Heck, that's what DVR is for." But that's been true for years yet I have had the hardest time turning the boob tube off at a reasonable hour.

It was still hard for me to go to sleep despite the fact that I was so tired at 7:30pm, but I managed.  Getting up wasn't a joy either but I'm not expecting miracles after just one day.

Today is the last day of school for the kids and I've been working on our "daily schedule" to try to keep a routine this summer.  We'll see how that goes.  I'm so not good at enforcing routines.  I love them, I need them, but I need someone to keep me accountable.  You'd be surprised how much having a blog audience does that for me.  I know someone will be reading this and somehow that makes me motivated to get done what I said I'd do. So if you're having a hard time keeping your promises to yourself, start a blog! Imagine all of these people blogging about going to bed on time. Our grandparent's generation would be laughing pretty darn hard at us."Why in my day, you went to bed at a decent hour because that's what you're suppose to do!"

Priority Challenge Week 1-It's a Win-Win

According to an article published by Harvard Medical School 6 Reasons Not to Skimp on Sleep, the result of sleep deprivation could explain A LOT of the problems I complain about and blame on age or having children. Can you relate to any of the following?

Problems with memory

Poor metabolism, weight gain

Sleepiness during the day

Making mistakes because of lack of focus

Irritability, impatience, inability to concentrate, and moodiness

Increased stress hormone levels (cortisol aka the belly fat hormone)

I can raise to my hand to all of the above.  So, my challenge for this week is to get more sleep. More is too general so let me be specific, I will go to bed at 10pm and wake-up at 6am. I normally stay up to 12 or 1am and my alarm goes off at 6.  I used to be able to function on 6 hours of sleep but that was when I was eating so well and exercising.  Now I do it just because I enjoy being awake when the kids are asleep. There are days like Saturday when either my son or daughter isn't falling asleep and plays the "I'm going to come up with a thousand excuses to go in my mom's room game" and not fall asleep until 10:30pm.  The kids share a room so they feed off of each other and the idea of fighting with one of them while the other is sleeping keeps me from playing bad cop with the one that is awake. Then there is my co-dependent husband.  We both know that we need more sleep but like to hang out with each other and watch T.V. 

So by doing this challenge I could:

Remember more things

Help myself to lose or keep off weight

Have more energy

Not make as many mistakes

Be less moody

Lessen belly fat

Shoot, it's a win-win. Get MORE sleep and feel better? Why didn't I try this sooner?

If you are enjoying "My Jar of Rocks" please forward the blog by using the options below. Post on Facebook, email, tweet, whatever it takes to share the information.  Also you can subscribe to the blog and receive it in your email in-box. Go below the comment box and click on "Subscribe by email" Thanks!!!

Politics and the Playground

I'm going to chalk this up to falling under the Health rock in the mental health section.  My major mission in life is to change the way motherhood is seen from the eyes of moms.  I curse Martha Stewart for her cute little ways of making the norm into things beyond necessary.  I'm all for decorating and baking when it gives you joy BUT when it takes over society as a competition to rival the Olympics, something has got to give.

I had to talk myself down last year from a bad morning and learned a great lesson that I have to relearn on a bi-weekly basis. So here's the scene:

It's morning and I'm running around in my usual morning rush trying to get everything done including dragging kids out of bed "AWWWW MOM!", getting them breakfast "If you don't eat it  in 10 minutes, it's going in the trash", getting them dressed, "You can wear this or this, which do you prefer? No, that one is not an option it's fleece and long sleeves and it's supposed to be 95 degrees today."  We are heading out the door right on time (I know because I have 4 different alarms for the different stages of the morning: mom up, kids up, done with breakfast time to get dressed, and the one that is sounding now that is the sound of a nuclear sub alarm WAH-WAH-WAH letting us know it's Go Time) and as we're out of the gate almost to the car I remember that today is walk-a-thon day!  There was a flyer or five sent home reminding moms to put sunblock on the kids, send a hat (normally against the rules), and a water bottle for this special fundraising day. Crap! I got none of the above but I'm not about to be late for school so my kid is just gonna have to get skin cancer (as if the sunblock will still be on and working after 5 hours of normal kid wear and tear including 3 recesses) and he's NOT going to die of dehydration. Remember when we only had the drinking fountain to drink from at school not thermo cooled filtered water carried in our licensed character back pack? Remember when we didn't have backpacks until our backs and shoulders were strong enough to carry them and we maybe carried home a workbook, a math textbook and loose paper in our Pee Chee folders? Plus I know darn well they have moms with spray bottles spraying down the kids and water bottles that they hand out.

Did you catch the poor planning of this event? I didn't until this year when I got my second chance at getting this walk-a-thon thing right. It's planned in mid-May in the central valley of California and takes place at the END of the school day.  I'm not kidding; it gets to be 95 degrees. But this does not cross my mind last year when it was my first year of being a mom of a school-goer. I wasn't strong enough yet to say, "Forget that! Why don't they do this extortion, I mean fundraiser, in the MORNING?"

As I pull into the school parking lot feeling like the most neglectful mom in the world, I see all of these parents carrying armfuls of flowers, balloons, and Starbucks coffee cups. Venti people, not grande (which is medium) or tall (which is their word for small) but fricken Venti because you know what today is besides the super-hot money extortion walk-a-thon? Well it's Teacher Appreciation Day of course! It's a new holiday they've come up with since we were in school where parents compete to bring the biggest and bestest show of appreciation for the poor people who have to teach our kids. 

I lost it. I give my son air kisses as he's climbing out of the car to the curb where the teacher watches to make sure he gets the 5 feet safely to the playground (times are different people!) and I slowly drive out of the parking lot with tears streaming down my face. I suck! My poor son, God gave him a mom with ADD who is in her 40s so she can't remember what she walked into a room for let alone the random changes in school schedules that seem to happen just often enough to no longer be special but just enough to mess up the regular routine of the things I already have a hard time remembering like PE on Tuesday for one kid but on Wednesday and Friday for the other kid with a Free PE thrown in on Thursdays, Library on Monday for one kid and Thursday for the other. Reading logs are due on Friday and Behavior Logs are due on Monday. Math homework is two things done and turned in everyday, Spelling is three things but due only on Friday, and the writing homework that is supposed to be weekly but only is assigned maybe 2-3 weeks out of the month is given on Monday but due on Friday.  The only reason I know all of this by heart is because we have 4 days left of school.  I will have to erase it all to make room for learning next year's routine because it will all be different.

What will these people think of my poor son? He will be out there dragging himself around the perimeter of the school with skin cancer dying from dehydration while the volunteer moms shake their heads and tisk-tisk-tisk saying, "That mom is soooooo bad.  She's letting her child die knowing darn well that no teacher in her right mind will save him because who wants to save a child whose mom doesn't even bother to bring a Venti Caramel Macchiato and a bouquet of homemade cake pops on Teacher Appreciation Day????"

And then it hit me! What was I worried about? My son's well-being? No! I know he is going to be just fine.  My son's teacher? No, I know darn well from my own experience that the best appreciation a parent can show a teacher is making sure that she is respected, that the student is learning what he's supposed to learn, getting his homework done, and for me to stay the heck out of her way of getting her job done. I got her a gift card for a massage at Christmas.  I sent her an email letting her know how impressed I was with what my son was showing me when he came home from school and that although we got the call that his name was finally picked for the local charter school, we turned it down because of how well our son was doing in HER class.  Do the other parents know any of this? No, and that's how it should be.

I was worried about what these other moms thought of ME. And that my dear readers is NOT mentally healthy.

So today as the moms were bringing their homemade cake pops and cupcakes that look like actual hamburgers for their kids to sell at Market Day, I felt a twinge of Martha Stewart envy. But my 42 year old brain remembered last year's lesson. It's not about the moms, it's not about me, it's about my children learning to become the best they can be and not worrying about what other people on the playground think of them.

I've got to keep my priorities straight and not get sidetracked by the politics of the playground or the parking lot as the case may be. I do not want to teach my children to judge themselves based on peer pressure therefore I need to not judge myself based on peer pressure.

Remind me of that tomorrow because last night I found out that the spirit day theme is "College Day."  I have no idea what my kid is supposed to wear for that. Who has child size college shirts around? I have my old college sweatshirt that is 10x too big and the forecast is 87 degrees. My husband said we can send the kids to school with Red Solo cups with their names on them written in Sharpie......

Health gets a jar of its own

So my second rock is Health.  As I explained yesterday, we have to take care of ourselves or we can't be 100% there for those we love.  I know because during the last 7 years I've been plagued with many health issues and I've spent a lot of time MIA being in bed with migraines, sleep deprivation catch-up, recovering from a broken foot, etc. And those are just the physical problems.  I also have the joy of inheriting the depression gene on top of some childhood trauma.  So I'm well rounded in the health challenges.

Before having kids, I was really healthy.  I cut out tons of junk from my diet and I was exercising regularly.  I was on no medications what-so-ever and I had lots of energy.  My headaches were gone and my mood was level.  No allergies, no tummy trouble, life was good.  Once I got pregnant, I was so sick.  In the first trimester I was a mess.  Nothing sounded good to eat.  Even though I forced myself to eat, I lost 10 pounds in my first trimester with my daughter.  I've never fully gone back to the healthy eating I was doing before.  So I get it when people say they don't have enough time to eat right.  Being healthy takes effort, time, and resources.  It's much easier to eat the convenient food our fast paced society provides. But it's killing me and it's hurting my family.

So what would the jar of health look like? What rocks would go in first and what is the sand that would keep me from doing well?

Rocks: fruits and vegetables, exercise, sleep, supplements, time outside, soul filling hobbies, "me" time, and even the quiet time that I've been doing for my God rock.  (Rocks supporting rocks!) Not all of those rocks would be put in the jar on a daily basis but most should be.

Pebbles: socializing with others especially other healthy moms, journaling, reading good books

Sand: energy zappers like sugar, caffeine, fried food, dairy is an issue for me, negative unproductive time like too much time on Facebook or surfing the web mindlessly, too much TV, complaining, eating at restaurants with few exceptions, running up the stairs in the dark and breaking my right foot leaving me unable to do much especially drive for 6+ weeks (trust me, it can happen)

Does this overwhelm you? Are there things you KNOW work better for you and your health but you have stopped doing them?

I'm not going to jump right in and get all of these rocks going at once.  I'm working bit by bit until I get good at something then I'll add more.  Right now I've given up refined sugar for the last week and I've added supplements I've learned about in my research of depression.  Doing my daily quiet time has been positive.

We'll spend some time with the health jar so don't be in a huge hurry to take everything on at once.

What will you do today to help yourself?

Below after the comment box, there is a link to subscribe to these blog posts.  Click on it to subscribe!

When is putting yourself first the right thing to do?

There seems to be two extremes on this subject. There’s the "Looking Out for Number One" club and the "I'm Supposed to Do Everything for Everyone Else" club.  Neither is healthy.  So as I go into the next rock in my jar, I want to be clear that this is not a license to be completely selfish and use it as an excuse to live life without my spouse or children in mind.  This is actually about doing what is BEST for my spouse and children.

My second rock is my health.

What??? God, then Health BEFORE spouse, children, and family?? Yep. I'll use the flight attendant speech as an illustration.  When you are seated on the plane before take-off and you are hearing the instructions to use your bottom, I mean your seat cushion, as a flotation device, the instructions regarding the oxygen mask has a unique twist to it.  You MUST put on your oxygen mask before helping your children.  I've had flight attendants stand over me and sternly look me in the eye and tell me again, "You MUST put your oxygen mask on BEFORE helping your children." Yes, ma'am.

Why do you think they have to point this out to us?  Aren't we selfish creatures whose basic instinct is to go into self-preservation mode? Not when it comes to our kids.  It has to do with survival of the fittest but once we have children they are the ones we've created to pass on our genetics to future generations so then they are the subject of our protection.  We will go to extremes to preserve our children's lives.  God wired us that way.  You know what I mean, the mother bear instinct that causes us to take on a 250 pound man with a gun who threatens our children.  We don't stop to be logical about it, we just do what it takes to take care of our children not thinking about what may happen to us.

We do the same with the little things in life too only instead of our life being in danger in a flash, we can let ourselves go and slowly harm ourselves over time. We must put on our oxygen mask every day in order to be 100% at our best in order to take care of others.

What do we need to do to be at our best? Eat right, exercise, take "me time" breaks, get enough sleep, and all of those other things we put off because we think we don't have enough time.  We see it as a selfish luxury and something that needs to wait until after we've taken care of everyone else.

What happens when we don't put the oxygen mask on ourselves first before helping others? We pass out.  How useful are we to them at that point? We're not.

The health rock could have a jar of its own.  So many aspects are involved and there is so much sand that can get in the way.  I'll be tackling this topic over the next few days.  In the meantime, I have found myself with 15-30 minutes that I can use to take a walk so I'm going to do that.  It doesn't feel right with dishes to be done and other things on my To-Do list, but I know it's the best thing I can do right now for myself and for my children.

We'll do more rock talk tomorrow.

Rock #1 Setting the Stage

To be successful with our rocks, we need to set the stage because things don't just happen. There would be no need for the rocks in a jar metaphor if everything magically fell into place without us thinking about it.

For my quiet time, I have to have a place I know I will go and a time that I will go there.  Just like brushing my teeth, there is a time and a place for it. Teeth: when I wake up and at the sink. My quiet time has to be the same way.  The trick is to give myself enough time to add it to my morning routine or the madness of getting the kids ready for school will take over before I know it.

I'm not a morning person so I've tried the end of the day quiet time which I'm sure would work well for many people.  I've learned it doesn't work for me because I NEED to be filled before I get going or I'll easily turn to my own self-focus and, "Me, me, me!!" does not make for a good day. If I skip breakfast, I'm not a fun person to be around come 10am. Same with being spiritually fed.

Where do I go? I've always had the vision of a nice red leather wing back chair with a small round table next to it.  On the table I'd have a nice lamp and a small stack of inspirational books with maybe a journal. Instead I have the rocking chair from the nursing babies days scooted up next to the particle board scrapbook desk turned TV stand that has a 6"x12" space to put my books under the TV. Waiting until I have the perfect spot would put me off at least 2 years so, make do with whatcha got right?

What tools do you need for your big rock? Do you have a time and place set aside?

I'll be applying this idea to all of my rocks in the days to come.  Let me know how your journey is going!

Big Rock Number One

So, what are my big rocks?  What are the things that mean the most to me or are my core values? Maybe what I should be asking is, "What do I WANT my big rocks to be?" Because I can tell you that God is the most important thing in my life, but often gets put off more and more until I realize I haven't been filled spiritually in days which leads to weeks.

One Bible study teacher said to me, "You miss one day with God, He can tell. You miss two days with God, you can tell. You miss three days with God, EVERYONE can tell."

So if you see me being cantankerous (I had to look up a synonym for "bitchy" because I'm trying to not swear, Oye!), so...... if you see me being cantankerous wink wink, you can ask me if I've been spending time with my number one Rock.

What are my other rocks? My spouse, my children, my health, my family.

What does putting them in my jar first look like?  Let's just take this one rock at a time shall we? If I try to take on too much, rocks'll be flyin!  Knowing that this was going to be my post today and that today is the first day of the month, I made sure I had quiet time focusing on God. Well... that's debatable because the book I used for a devotion is "God's Words of Wisdom for Moms" or something like that so really the focus was ME with God because I'm that self-centered, but it's a step.

It truly did help though because it got me thinking about celebrating my children and their growth in their faith.  It's hard to be Mean Morning Mommy when you have thoughts of your children's faith on your mind. And hey, that's a two for one rock moment there: God AND Kids.

Having the devotion book helped too because I wasn't overwhelmed with the idea of BIBLE STUDY. I have more plans for addressing my God Rock, but hey we've got all month right?

What's big rock do you want to focus on right now? What's one thing you can do to put that rock in your jar today and not let the other things get in the way?