confessions

The Honey Bee has Landed – and Other Thoughts About Motherhood

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You might have noticed that there was a bit of a lull in my writing. It turns out that while I thought it would be a great idea to start writing with a brand new school year, the beginning of school can be fairly arduous for teachers. One would think I would remember this given that it was my seventh year to start teaching, but apparently I’m a slow learner. You would also notice that I’m starting to write again about the same time – the beginning of a new school year. Well, I don’t have the slowest learning curve in the world – close, but not quite. Here’s why.

So like I said, about a year ago I started school again. It’s busy. Very tiring. It took me back a little bit with the writing. And then I got pregnant. Talk about taking a step back. With #1 I was only tired and agitated. With #2 I was tired, agitated, sick and had a toddler in tow. And then after twenty-four shots in the tuchus to prevent pre-term labor, ten weeks of non-stop contractions and semi-bed rest, and 4 hours of labor (that’s right, it was quick, ten weeks and four hours quick) there was another child. And then there were sleepless nights and toddler-filled days.

I’ve just started to figure out life again and am lucky enough to take some extended maternity leave so I’m not starting school in September but November. Therefore, I can now work on writing again. And with that, here are a few of the thoughts I’ve had during the past few months.

  1. No two pregnancies are the same, which sucks if you had an easy first pregnancy. Ultimately this means that you should never get comfortable with what you think you know about motherhood. You know nothing. You just survive.
  2. Shots are horrible. Shots in the rear are really horrible. Shots in the rear every week for twenty weeks is torture. This only proves that you will do anything to have a healthy, full-term baby; and it’s a great way to toughen yourself up for having a toddler and baby to look after all day long. I think it’s all part of a master plan.
  3. Semi-bed rest is awful. I can only assume that full bed rest is torture.
  4. Teenagers really can be caring human beings. They like to make sure you are following doctor’s orders. All. The. Time. While sweet in sentiment, there is nothing quite as horrifying as the idea of energetic 17 year old boys wheeling a seven month pregnant woman around the school in an office chair. Seriously. The had to be talked down. Sweet. But horrifying.
  5. You really do have more control over your bladder when pregnant than you think. If you ever think that you might have just had little loss of control, go to the hospital. Right away. It took me two pregnancies to learn from this. Please learn.
  6. Even you can survive without the epidural. Turns out there is a time table on drugs. Even if you run into the hospital screaming to everyone you pass that you want the epidural, there may not be time. This mostly is due to the fact that you still don’t understand what it’s like when your water breaks (remember #5), and you try to play it cool and let your husband finish a round of golf (he got to the eighth hole), and you decide to go to the doctor’s office instead of the hospital first (just so they don’t think you’re crazy and overreacting). If you want the drugs, overreact.
  7. God could have created babies to sleep through the night. Really. He could have. I think it’s another master plan. This one involves population control. It’s the only reason I can think He would purposefully inflict this sort of pain on parents.
  8. Speaking of creation, men have nipples, too. I mean, I know that they call it breastfeeding, but it would be great if someone else had some skin in the game. There would be a lot less mothers thinking about stabbing their husbands in the middle of the night.
  9. When a new baby comes home, the honey bee really has landed. There is nothing quite like the sting of getting used to a new person in the home – especially one as demanding as a baby. There’s also nothing quite as sweet. You know, once you get over the mind-numbing pain (ok – maybe a little dramatic). This will probably happen on that glorious night when you get three consecutive hours of sleep. The sting really makes you recalibrate what makes life sweet.

7 Reasons I am a Recovering Footballphobic

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Girls, your father has broken me.

In your life, you will know that on many, many Sundays of the year we have a thing. A thing like most other people in the United States. We watch football.

I will admit. I used to hate football. I hated the game. I hated watching it. It made very little sense to me.  I would complain about my dad and brother hogging the tv all Sunday long. A lot of times I got my way and switched it to a musical on TCM or AMC.  It took me years to fully realize just how long you could watch football on any given Sunday. That’s how little I knew about it. I didn’t even know the Sunday tv schedule. I was a master avoider.

And then I met your father. And then I married your father. And since I married your father, I had to live with your father. And do you know what your dad loves to do? Watch sports. (As it turns our your uncle and papa do too, but your nana and I were forces to be reckoned with on a Sunday afternoon with a remote.)

So in an effort to be a good wife, I “allowed” football on Sunday. And do you know what football on Sunday turned into? College football on Saturday. And do you know what college football on Saturday turned into? Monday night football. And then someone came up with the genius idea of football on Thursday nights, too. And do you know what all of this football eventually leads to? A broken mother.

Girls, I am your mother, and I am a recovering footballphobic. I will even willingly turn on football without your father in the room. Here are the top seven reasons why I now embrace the football.

  1. Football means fall. I love fall. I love the crisp cool weather. The turning of leaves. The sense of something new like the beginning of the new school year. I love buying new school supplies (who doesn’t love a brand new notebook and pen collection? and all those ways to organize – it’s awesome! I’m also a recovering teacher, can you tell?).
  2. Football means fall part 2. Do you know what else is great about fall? The food. I can finally start making soups and stews again. Hot totties and cinnamon sticks galore. And after months of thinking about swimming suits, I can now think of sweaters and jeans and scarves. Comfort food, here I come! So if football = fall, fall must = football. And if I love fall, therefore I love football. (It’s some sort of property – ask your dad.)
  3. Football means family. It’s what we do now. Football happens on Sunday and Sunday is the universally known day for family (although life has been encroaching on it for years now – we have to fight it). It’s the day that I have always reserved for rest and time for family, and I don’t see that changing for the foreseeable future.  Football happening on Sunday also will not change in the foreseeable future. Your father has compromised on a lot of things in his life. And while I’ve compromised a lot, too, I knew that there was no breaking this football habit of his. Might as well get in the spirit. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
  4. Football commentary is awesome. I don’t mean the actual commentators who do this for a living. I have little to no use for them. All they do is give out actual facts and figures. I mean my own personal commentary. “Seriously, down the middle never works. They get like .5 yards. What’s the point?” “Seriously, why are all of these manly men ok with the term ‘down the middle’?” “How was no one concerned about concussions in a sport that expects you to beat the crap out of each other until 2015?” “Clearly he didn’t want it enough. If you touch it, you should catch it. That’s just being lazy.” I could probably keep going, but everyone’s sake I’ll leave it at that in print. You’ll get to experience all of my witty commentary real time, which is even better! I’m guessing it’s going to be one of the things that will embarrass you the most when you bring friends over because the commentary doesn’t stop at football. Oh no. Lots more sports. Lots more commentary.
  5. Football means impressing people. Now I’m not the person who really knows anything about sports in general (I mean I played them as a kid and get the general concept, but it’s not my first choice of entertainment). But watch enough football and things just start to seep in when you’re not paying attention. It’s like osmosis. And when my students are least expecting it, or at a party with football loving adults (do we go to those?) I can bring out a football analogy or anecdote and they’re pretty impressed. At least I think they are. At least they should be. Shouldn’t they? Don’t they know I’m a recovering footballphobic?!
  6. Football means nostalgia. Now your dad is not big on the nostalgia, which means I’m totally re-appropriating this sport for my own good (we’ll have lots more discussions about re-appropriating in the future). Football means college. And tailgating. And thoughts of reliving our time together at school. And thoughts of how your dad really started to become a great griller which ultimately led to his hobby of cooking which ultimately led to my extra poundage. But back to college – it reminds me of our first years together, and I get all schmaltzy thinking of young love and the beginning of life together and our first big party together with my family and our first apartment together and I could keep going. Sigh. I love football.
  7. Football means non-stop tv on a Sunday. Which means that while everyone else is actually focused on the game, I get to read my book without any interruptions. And that is the real beauty of the game.

Honey Badger-Bees

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“I don’t get it,” said your dad when I told him about my new blog name.

“What do you mean you don’t get it?!”

I’ve been mulling this name in my mind for weeks now, and I thought I had finally come up with the perfect name for my re-invigorated blog to let you two (my daughters) know more about me. And so I can remember more about you. Revisionist history can really bite you in the butt if you let it. (Just ask your nana – my brother and I never had a problem sleeping, were never fussy, and it was completely easy raising two small children while she was a stay at home mom. Right, mom. Right).

“I get the honey badger part. I have no idea what you’re talking about with the bee.”

Ellen and Lucy, your parents laugh at inappropriate things. We won’t let you know this for many years to come (unless you become very interested in your mother’s rambling blog at an appallingly young age). But we laugh at things we shouldn’t. Like when your favorite song is “Uptown Funk” and you keep asking for “F*** up!”. We laugh. It’s funny.

Herein lies the honey badger portion of the blog. Ellen, when you were very little there was a video that came out “Honey Badger Don’t Care“. It’s hysterical. Inappropriate. Hysterical. And honestly, you were a very laid back kid, and we started to say “honey badger don’t care” whenever you shocked everyone with your laid-back-ness. It stuck. And then one day you did care. You still do care. Amazingly enough I think the name still fits. You’re a fighter. You know what you want. You let people know what you want. You also might be a genius toddler manipulater. TBD. So world, watch out because honey badger don’t care.

“How can you not know that we call Lucy Honey Bee?”

“Because we never have.”

“Sure we do. Every day. It’s cute. It fits. We have a honey badger – now we need a honey bee. They work together. Wild Kratts told me all about it. Plus, she’s super sweet. Like honey. Get it?!”

“Never once have I heard you call her that.”

“Well, I do. And now it’s the name of the blog that I thought about so long and hard. I mean, I can’t keep calling it “Thoughts for Ellen” because then Lucy will get jealous.”

“You mean the blog that you always talk about and never write in.”

“Exactly. I’ve got ideas. I want my daughters to know who I am and what I think about. Maybe it will be so big that I can just blog and stop working. I’ve got to practice writing if I’m ever going to make it big in the freelance world.”

“Big in the freelance world?” (insert appropriate amount of sarcasm here – your dad is VERY sarcastic).

“You betcha!” (I’m not really a “you betcha” kind of girl, but it seems to fit given that I’m loosely translating our conversation). “But now I’m completely rethinking the name given that you didn’t get it. But I already paid for it…Oh well! It’ll make a great first post to re-start my blogging enterprise.”

“You’re totally going to write about this, aren’t you?” I’m going to look like an idiot because I didn’t know our kid’s nickname.”

To be fair, dad’s been working A LOT, and I’m not sure that I ever really told him about the honey bee part in person. But I did have the conversation about the nickname a lot in my head. That happens when you stay at home all day with young kids.

And with that – I’m relaunching my writing with “Living with Honey Badger-Bees”!

Robin Hood and Benjamin Button

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Both are fantastic cultural/literary references and have amazingly applied to our lives this week.

So the other day you (Ellen) decided to go through all of the diaper bags in daycare and take out as many snacks as you could find. You then proceeded to get all of the other children in daycare to sit in a circle while you sat in the middle and passed out snacks to everyone like a modern day toddler Robin Hood – stealing from the parents to give to the kids. Great.

This week has also begun the realization that there is a Benjamin Button-like effect in my life, but instead of me getting younger everyday, I believe that I get less and less responsible every day. Take, for instance, the fact that I am 30 years old and until Monday, could not access my bank accounts online nor did I know how my money was in each of my paychecks. I used to manage all of my money and fairly well. Then your father came into my life and I just trusted him to take care of everything. We routinely make fun of the fact that he could be syphoning off funds to the Bahamas, and I would never know.

Finances is not the only place that I have regressed in responsibility. I used to make all of the family meals. Then we moved to Grand Rapids, and your father began to take over all of the cooking. I love to cook, but seriously, who is going to argue with less work that results in fantastic food?

While analyzing this I can’t figure out if this is:

  1. bad – should I be more responsible or is it a blessing to take and not question?
  2. because of marriage – are you able to share more responsibilities and therefore not have to be more responsible as a whole?
  3. because of your dad – he probably enables me. I also appreciate that.
  4. because I was so responsible as a student that I’ve had enough of it and decided to revolt. This might be one of the more likely possibilities. I was too adult-like as a kid. Now I’m more kid-like as an adult. I kinda like it. But as I’m writing this I realize that by the time you can read this it may not seem like I’m kid-like at all and you probably won’t appreciate that thought. Welp. Whatcha gonna do?

The end.

Type A

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This is not about blood. Well, maybe it is.

Recently I lost out on an opportunity because I was considered too “type A”. Number one, I was really disappointed about loosing out on the opportunity. Number two, I was frustrated to know that I was perfect for the opportunity except for my personality. A personality that typically means that I am timely, well prepared, focused, and effective. It also means that there is the possibility that I might be hard to get along with because I have strong opinions on how to get things done. It is also a term that I do not think gets applied to too many men – not because they don’t display these characteristics, but because instead we would call them leaders and go-getters.

At first I was sad. Really sad. Now I’m just mad. While I do not know for sure, it is highly doubtful that a man would ever be turned down for an opportunity because he is too “type A”. In fact, it is probably a lauded trait. (Side note – there are probably other opportunities out there that would also praise this quality in women, but there would probably be a heated discussion about her suitability.) Why is it that we are okay with men being focused and opinionated but we are not okay with those same qualities in women?

I really started to think about this because in the past few months, there has been a movement to get rid of “the other B-word”. In case you didn’t know, that is “bossy”. Women are called bossy and men are called leaders. The way we are treated and the opportunities out there are different for men and women because of the connotations between those two words (even though the definitions are the same). You would think in 2014 that would be different, but sadly it is not.

Ellen, the reason I say this is because already at not even two years old, you have been described as bossy. You do already have definite ideas of what you want and what you think people should do. You command a room that you are familiar with. People, albeit toddlers, listen to you. I love this trait about you. You may not always love this trait. You may want to eventually fade into the background when you find that people don’t always react well to a woman that has opinions. You will try to not have opinions. You will try to go with the flow, even when you know there is a better way of doing something. And it will feel wrong. You will be doing yourself a disservice.

Ellen, you need to not give in to peer pressure and try and fit into the mold of what people are okay with women being. This is going to be hard. You will probably break at some point in time. But the thing is, that you will not be working on honing the God-given skills that you have. Don’t do that to yourself. Flourish. Lead. Serve. Because really all of this drive is not about being bossy and leading people. It is much more about service and helping others achieve. You won’t get that right away, but eventually you will. Focus on why you want to accomplish something and then pave the way to serve the people you are helping. It will be hard. People will call you bossy. People might even call you worse. But you will be amazing. You have great things in store for you baby girl. I can tell already. I know because both your father and I have passed the best of us to you, and there is no escaping the Type A that flows through our veins.

An Addition: Here’s a really great article that articulates a lot of things I have experienced as well.