Confession

I named this blog “Confessions of a Working Mother”, so I suppose there should be some confessions here once in a while. So here goes . . .

I don’t think I’m very good at being a working mom.

Now I know that women tend to be too hard on themselves, and I’m no exception, but I just think that other working moms seem to handle it better than I do. I just haven’t been able to figure out how to work full-time, keep the house clean, spend enough time with the kids so they won’t be scarred for life by my absence, keep them fed with good, nutritious food (which must be organic and free of high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils, MSG, steroids, hormones and any other evil I can’t think of at the moment or haven’t heard about yet), nurture my relationship with my husband, work on my personal development and expand my skill-set so that I can advance at work, watch enough t.v. so that I have a clue what people are talking about around the watercooler, work on the novel that’s been percolating in my head for the past 6 years, keep up with the latest fashion and hair styles, stay slim and in shape, and make sure I have enough “me time” so that I don’t go crazy. Oh, and don’t forget the necessary 8 hours of sleep every night. There’s more, but I think that gives you a basic idea.

I just don’t have enough hours in the day to do all that. I’ve gotten pretty good at multitasking, but still something is going get put off or pushed to the side.

I’m ashamed to admit that my children eat too many meals that consist of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, mac & cheese with chicken nuggets, or cheeseburgers and french fries. I know they should be eating organic eggs from free-range chickens with nitrate-free bacon for breakfast and grass-fed beef with pesticide-free veggies purchased from the local farmers market, but I have two hours from the time I get home till they need to be getting ready for bed and I’d like to spend some of that time interacting with them in a way that doesn’t include the sentence “You’ll eat it because it’s good for you and I said so.”

Another area in which I am failing miserably (much to my own embarrassment) is housekeeping. I don’t like to invite people over because my house is never clean. Ten minutes after I finish cleaning something, it is dirty again. When I had only one child and didn’t have a job, I mostly kept up with it, but now it’s out of control. In some ways I’ve given up trying to have a clean home because the amount of time it would take to keep everything clean would leave me nothing left to do any of the other things I listed above. So, somewhere along the way, I decided that it was more important for me to spend time actually playing with my children rather than following them around the house with a vacuum in one hand and a wet wash cloth in the other.

Does that make me a bad mom? Maybe by some standards. Sometimes by my own. Most days I’m ok with it. Now and then, though, I encounter another mother at the mall who works full time and looks like she just stepped out of Vogue magazine with her kids who could be featured in a Baby Gap ad. She talks about the dinner party she had at her home last weekend and the gourmet meal she made, from scratch. I start wondering why I can’t keep it all together they way she does. What character flaw do I have that she is obviously lacking?

Then her four year old daughter throws herself on the floor in a kicking, screaming tantrum because she just saw my daughter wearing a Tinkerbell costume and it reminded her that she wanted to wear her Cinderella dress, not this outfit that matches her baby sister!
That’s when I realize that looking perfect doesn’t mean being perfect. (And I make myself feel better by telling myself that she probably has a rich husband and a housekeeper to do all the things that she’s not doing while making herself and her children look so good.)

I can only hope that when it comes time to pass through the Pearly Gates, “Thou shalt have a clean house” won’t be the 11th Commandment that all who enter must have kept. Maybe God will forgive me for not trying to be perfect. ^_^


But the Lord said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

Running Scared

I have a confession to make. It might make me a bad mom, but it’s time to be honest. So here it goes. . .

I like it when my son gets scared.

I don’t, of course, like that he is afraid, but I like what happens when my little man is scared. A loud noise from construction outside or the siren of an emergency vehicle sends him running, as fast as his chubby two-year-old legs will take him, for the protection of my arms. He scrambles up into my lap and hides his face in my shoulder. He holds onto me with all his might. That is the part I like. Some days it is the only cuddle time I get from him.

Since the day the little guy started walking, he hasn’t stopped moving unless he was eating or sleeping. Occasionally he does come and give me a spontaneous hug or drooly kiss, but those moments are gone as quickly as they begin. A good scare can give me perhaps a full minute of soft, wonderful baby hugs. If he has a bad dream or other night-time fear, I might get 15 minutes before he either falls asleep or wakes up enough to decide it’s time to play. 15 minutes! It’s like heaven.

So. . .there it is. I enjoys those times when my son gets genuinely scared. Do you think it makes me a bad mom? Oh well. It could be worse. I could scare him on purpose.

Hmm. Now there’s an idea.

Pancakes!

I went to lunch the other day at a local diner. Shortly after I ordered my food, a boy, about nine or ten years old was seated near me with his mother and grandmother. He picked up the menu and announced, “I want pancakes!”

“We came here for shakes, not pancakes,” his mother said from behind her menu.

“I want pancakes! I want pancakes!” This kid had whining down to an art. His voice pierced through the air and made me cringe and grit my teeth.

“No. If you are going to have food, I don’t want you to have all that sugar.” What? They came for shakes, but she didn’t want him to have sugar?

“I’m going to have pancakes! I want pancakes! I want pancakes! I WANT PANCAKES!” He really seemed to believe that if he asked frequent enough and loud enough his mother would relent and let him have the PANCAKES! he so desired.

“Stop it! Stop! You aren’t having pancakes,” the harried mother hissed. The boy leaned across the table and yelled in her face . . . You guessed it, “I WANT PANCAKES!” I couldn’t help but think about what would have happened if I had ever dared to try that with my mom. There would have been no pancakes. There would have been no shake and probably no dinner. I may even have had to wait in the car while everyone else ate their lunch.

The waiter returned at the end of this tirade. After some conversation, the mother convinced the boy to get a root beer float, since they didn’t have an Oreo cookie shake. About this time, I finished my lunch, paid for my food and headed back to work, grateful to leave.

I really felt bad for that mother. Her son caused such a scene in the restaurant and it was very obvious that she was embarrassed. I can’t imagine, though, that this was an unusual occurrence. I wonder how many times he had done this very thing in other places. I also wonder how often it gets him what he wants.

Can you imagine how this same kid will be in, oh, say, six or seven years?
“I want this car. Mom, buy me that Mustang! I want that car! GIVE ME THAT CAR!”

How about in 15 years . . .
“I want a raise! I deserve a raise! I want more money! Give me a raise!”

He’s in for a rude awakening, and if it doesn’t come from his mom in the very near future, it will be very painful when he gets out into the world and discovers that whining doesn‘t get you whatever you want. For his sake, I hope it happens sooner rather than later.


He who ignores discipline comes to poverty and shame, but whoever heeds correction is honored.

Lessons I've Learned From My Children Pt 3

Boys and girls are just made to be different.

Obvious, I know, but I didn’t realize how different they are until I had one of each. It’s amazing to me that even at the tender ages of 2 and 4, the difference between the sexes is apparent. We have a wide variety of toys in our home for the children to play with, but with a few exceptions, they gravitate to typically gender specific toys. My daughter loves Abby Cadabby, Disney Princesses, Barbie and playing dress-up. My son’s idea of a great time is building Legos towers, crashing cars, climbing, and knocking things over. If it’s pretty, my daughter likes it. If it makes noise or can be thrown, my son likes it.

Before I had children, I believed that children are socialized to behave in typically feminine or masculine ways. I thought that, all things being equal, boys might play with dolls and girls might like to race RC cars. I really did think that boys learn to like tractors and superheroes because those are the toys that are given to them by their fathers. By the same token, I thought that girls play dress-up with their Barbies because they see their mothers paying so much attention to their appearance.

While I do like to look nice, I am not particularly fashion conscious. So, Imagine my surprise, when my daughter started insisting that she wear a dress every day. I rarely wear dresses, so I have no idea where she got the idea that if a person wears pants, they must be a boy. For about 4 months last spring and summer, all my daughter would wear was dresses or skirts. The only way I could get her to wear pants was to let her wear a skirt over them. She notices if I do something different with my hair and is overjoyed any time I actually do wear a dress. She loves her princess costumes and frequently runs around the house with her fairy wings on and a pink magic wand in her hand. She is definitely a girly-girl, and she didn’t learn it from me.

My son, on the other hand, likes to build towers just so he can knock them down. His favorite words are animal and car noises. He’d rather grunt and point at what he wants than to actually speak the words necessary to ask for it. He only wants to get hold of that pink magic wand so that he can hit someone or something with it. It’s a recurring problem we have that didn’t occur with my daughter. He just likes to hit people for some reason. He didn’t learn that from me or his father.

Some of the differences I see are partially due to the fact that my daughter was the firstborn and my son had a big sister to keep up with. I can’t help but notice, however, that boys who are firstborn or only children are generally still more active and aggressive even than girls who have older brothers. It’s comforting to me that boys will be boys whether or not they have “manly” toys to play with and girls will be girls even if mom doesn’t play Barbie with them. It’s good to know that there is an order to the universe and there’s not much I can do to mess it up.


God created the man in His image; in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. And God blessed them.

Lessons I've Learned From My Children Pt. 2

When you have a bad dream, all you have to do is turn your pillow over and the bad dreams will go away.

My daughter watched The Little Mermaid for the first time tonight. I should have known when she became very upset when Ariel had to escape the jaws of a shark that maybe it was going to be a little scary for her.

When I tucked her into bed, after she brushed her teeth, read a story and said her prayers, I took the opportunity to ask her how she liked the movie.

“The Sea Witch is mean,” she said.

“Yes, she was. What happened to her?” I asked.

“She fell down”

“What made the witch fall down?”

“Ariel was in love,” responded my four year old daughter. At the time I thought that this was just one of her random answers that she gives now and then, but I suddenly see the depth of understanding in that answer. The Sea Witch did fall because of the love between Ariel and Prince Eric.

“Was anything else scary?” I asked.

“King Triton was mean.”

“Yes, he was mean when he got mad at Ariel.” I got to thinking that the movie might prompt a nightmare, or at least an over-active imagination. She sometimes has a hard time telling us when something is wrong, so I’ve been trying to talk to her about what she should do in various situations. With that in mind, I asked “If you have a bad dream and get scared during the night, what are you going to do?”

“I’ll turn my pillow over,” she said.

I smiled at her matter of fact tone. “So, if you turn your pillow over, you’ll have good dreams?”
She flipped her pillow, nodded, and laid her head down, snuggling under the blanket. With the matter settled, I kissed her forehead, turned off the light and said “Good night”. I walked to the living room marveling at her innocent faith. How wonderful to believe that all you have to do is turn your pillow over and bad dreams will disappear. How extraordinary to be unconcerned by fears that may come. How remarkable to be so free of worry. How I’d love to recapture some of that innocence.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Lessons I’ve Learned From My Children Pt. 1

If I can’t do something by myself, I should ask for help.

It might sound silly, but I actually had to relearn this lesson recently. One evening, after a particularly frustrating day at work, I was going through the bedtime routine with my four year old daughter. I set out her pajamas and told her to go potty, take off her clothes and put on her pj’s. I left her to it and went to the living room to check on the progress my husband was making with our 2 year old son. Several minutes later I heard fussing coming from her room. When I opened the door, she was sitting on the floor crying. Her pajamas were on, but unzipped.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” I asked. No response. “Sweetie, did you hurt yourself? What’s wrong?” Again, no response. Getting a little frustrated, I helped her to her feet and started looking her over, checking for a new boo-boo. She just stood there crying. I sighed. “I can’t help you unless you tell me what’s wrong.” My beautiful, intelligent little girl (who, by the way, already can read full sentences), flopped down to the floor, grabbed the zipper of her pj’s, which was down near her foot, and yanked it repeatedly, obviously in frustration.

OK. Now I get it. She’s having problems with the zipper. “Do you need help zipping it up?” Still wailing, she nodded her head. “Well, why didn’t you just say so?” I asked, helping her once again to her feet. The zipper was a bit stuck, but it only took a moment for me to fix it and get my daughter properly zipped and ready for bed. “If you need help, all you have to do is ask,” I said in my Mommy Voice. “I don’t know what you need if you don‘t tell me. It’s better to ask for help than to get mad and cry about it.”

Later that night, after the kids were tucked into bed and all was quiet and calm in the house, my husband asked me how my day was. His question opened the floodgate. I began telling him, once again, about how the volume of work flowing onto my desk has become much greater then the volume flowing away from it. I’ve been struggling for months to keep up with it, but it’s a losing battle. The client has become particularly hard to deal with, my boss keeps giving me more and more responsibility (without more pay, I might add) and no one seems to care how buried I’m getting.

Then my husband asked me something that he’s never asked before. “Do they know that you are overwhelmed?”

“Of course they know. How could they not? I mean they keep giving me more and more and more and I’m just supposed to get it all done. How could they not know?”

Suddenly I remembered my conversation only an hour earlier with my daughter. “I don’t know what you need if you don‘t tell me. It’s better to ask for help than to get mad and cry about it.” Realization struck. I’ve been doing exactly what my daughter did, only on a bigger scale.
Somehow, somewhere on my way to being an adult, I decided that I should never have to ask for help. I decided that I should be able to do everything that needs to be done on my own. If, for some reason, I can’t change the transmission on the car, get the grocery shopping done for the week, and respond to all 382 emails impatiently waiting in my inbox at work, all on Saturday morning, then I must be a failure. If I really had it all together, as every other working mother in the world surely does, than I would be able to do all those things and look glamorous at the same time. To admit my inability to multitask every task in my life to perfect completion is to admit a fatal flaw in my character.

I would never look down on another person who needed help, so why do I think that others will do that to me? For that matter, why do I condemn myself for things I would never condemn others for? I guess it’s time to start cutting myself some slack . . . and to start asking for help when I need it.

God will be gracious if you ask for help. He will surely respond to the sound of your cries.