What Makes a Good Mother

What Makes a Good Mother?

I remember being a young teenager (14-15?) And this was the question on the flip board at church in my Sunday Class one week. We, all girls age 13-15, were in our Sunday best in the “over fill” room with dividers between our class and the boys our same age next to us.

The Teacher posed this question to us and our prim proper naive little hands shot up with all kinds of wonderful answers. A good mother is kind. A good mother is patient. A good mother sings songs. A good mother makes healthy meals. A good mother is well kept… and on and on it went. I have no idea what the point of this lesson even was other than to romanticize an ideal in our minds that was supposed to make us all gush and leave the building super excited to start using our bodies for their intended purpose, childbearing.

The question of why this should be a Sunday school topic can be saved for another day. Wherever I heard it, all women have heard something similar to this every day of their lives. Either through church, media, movies, even other moms who know better but have to hide behind the image they have developed of what motherhood has to look like to the rest of the world.

But our daughters deserve to be handed something better than an ideal, and our sons need to know that “mothering” isn’t going to be graceful and easy for their partners any more than it was for us. So, for just a minute lets be honest with ourselves and others, lets say what that Sunday school teacher should have said to a class full of young girls. Lets lift the motherhood utopia cloud that every cook book, magazine and pledge commercial is trying to shove down our throats and just be real.

Motherhood is hard. There I said what we we're all thinking. Sometimes I don’t actually like my kids. Sometimes hearing my name made into 15 syllables makes me cringe and hide in the bathroom. Sometimes I don’t care if they eat healthy as long as they just eat! Sometimes I fake a migraine because I need an excuse to lay in a quiet room.

Some days what separates a good mom from a bad mom is a 20 minute freak out and hot bath. Sometimes dishes get broken. Sometimes there is no differences between a good mom and a bad mom there is just a mom who’s tired, and crabby, and has way too much crap piled on her in a 24 hour period.

No one told me in that Sunday school room so many years ago that a flip chart can’t define a good mom any more than it can an omniscient being who all life comes from.  No one said that while you are picking out baby booties and onesies with funny sayings on them your kid is growing and going to turn in to a creature you don’t even recognize. No one said, “hey, when you are at your wits end and the self help books tells you to take a deep breath and count to five and then you throw that book across the room and break the blinds  because whoever wrote it is likely a man with his own mommy issues… that that’s okay.” Where is the Pillsburry commercial that shows a mom crying in the corner of the kitchen because she doesn’t want to bake the damn dinner rolls?

A seasoned mom told me recently that parenting is like walking a tight rope. She is right, it is, but not like a Cirque du Soleil tight rope walker who has beautifully shaped legs and a tight butt. It is not like that at all. It is like my 65 pound pit bull with a chunky frame and missing hip socket trying to walk a tight rope with four paws. It’s comical and wrong and all kinds of unflattering and awkward. That is what parenting is like. You won’t see that in your Sunday school room or on the Focus on the Family section of the news. So there it is. I’m telling all those new, or yet to be, moms out there that there is nothing “well kept” about motherhood. If you really want to know what it’s like picture an uncoordinated, slobbery dog trying to walk a tight rope and falling over and over again but still getting up each time and putting her toes on the rope. Bring that image to the table and then we’ll have a place to start from, because in the real world what makes a good mother is someone who has no idea what she is doing but still loves her children enough to keep slipping and fumbling with the stupid rope.

Nothing Like Insomnia To Get You Back In The Game

Life has been too crazy to blog lately, but It's 6:00 AM on a Saturday so here I am. Here is something just for fun. I love this show.

A New Sart To a New Life

This just makes my heart happy!

Because You Can Never Have Enough Pictures Of A Giant Cat!

100 Year Diet

So I have been having headaches for oh, well just say a decade or so. Most of the time they are not bad 3 or 4 a week, I take a Tylenol and they go away. Sometimes they are worse than others but not too bad, just annoying. My friend said "I bet it's something you eat". I said it's stress, doctor says maybe caffeine. Who knows!

But I was intrigued enough to find out so my friend (who is ever so smart with nutrition and a role model for healthy living) introduced me to the elimination diet. Let me just say that it is the worst diet in the whole world! You are supposed to eat NOTHING but fresh raw fruit, fresh raw vegetables, plain chicken and plain pork for 10 days. Then you can slowly add thing in and see if you get a headache.

Well I made it 5 days and it was the longest 5 days of my life! I did not figure out what caused my headaches but I did come to some realizations. 99% of what we put in our body is JUNK! Even diet drinks are nothing but unnatural products! Yogurt...full of corn syrup and artificial dyes.

So while I did not like not being able to eat hardly anything, it did open my eyes as to the junk we eat without thinking. I have decided I'm going to start what I'm calling The 100 Year Diet. I am trying very hard not to put anything into my body that was not around 100 years ago. No corn syrup, no processed, junk no dyes or fake sweeteners.

It takes some creativity and label reading but I'm having fun with it. Who knew that all natural rolled oats with a little cream and 1/2 teaspoon of brown sugar was really good? Did you know you can get 100% natural peanut butter that taste great? The only ingredient is peanuts! I even found Dannon makes a yogurt with nothing but natural ingredients.

The best part is that I feel really good, have not had a headache and lost 5 pounds. I now feel good when I send lunch to school with my kids and know it's really healthy. Dinner feels more like an experiment than a chore, and after not very many days my body stopped craving all that junky stuff.

Not to say that never again will processed products enter my body (yesterday I had a pumpkin spiced latte and I have yet to read a book where the pioneers stopped off at Starbucks for a pick-me up) but I am eating and living more consciously, and that feels good.

Scale Tipping Cat!

Sorry I've been away for a while. Busy with kids back to school, and I have started working at our local animal shelter. Which is where I found this big guy who needed a home and since our 10 year old kitty just died (sad story) there was a spot avaliable in ours.

We named him Murphy or Murph, and he weighs in at 17.5 lbs! He is one large cat! But so gentle and sweet to everyone!

The World Needs To Know This!!!!

So after 2 years of "country" living and dealing with the flies that come with that I was at my wits end! I have spent much time and money trying to find away to keep flies out of my house. I have been spending hours keeping my kitchen an unhealthy clinical clean just to starve out the little buggers, then today I get an e-mail from a friend. 12 cents later I am fly free!

The e-mail gave simple home remedies to everyday problems. One of them was to keep flies out of your house hang a plastic bag, half full of water, and 4 pennies up in your door frame.

What the heck I think, I have tried EVERYTHING else!!!

Normally there are 30 or 40 flies hanging to the side of my house just waiting for the door to open. I take my little water bag, get up on a chair, and hook the bag to the door frame. As soon as the sun hit the bag...BOOOM! Every dang fly in the area took off!

I googled it and apparently the science is that their eyes are so big they pick up the tiniest reflection and get spooked!

Forget drugs, global warming and cancer screening...this is what we should be spending our advertising dollars on! The world needs to know!