DC Metro Moms

Ten Reasons Why it Sucks to Be the Parent

Being a parent is cool. There's a whole lot of love that you get to give and receive. You get to boss a group of small people around. There's always someone whom you can tell to bring you your shoes. Or a beer. 

But there are downsides too. We all know it. I now present to you, in no particular order, ten reasons why it sucks to be the parent. 

1. When your kid accidentally clonks you in the bridge of your nose with the back of his head, you can't freak out and curse at him. You have to be understanding and say, "accidents happen," when really you want to cry and yell mean things and hold a grudge. 

To Love, Honor, Cherish, and Sort Socks

When my husband asked my father for my hand in marriage, my father asked him a few serious questions and then said, "You do understand that this means you are now responsible for moving all her heavy furniture and dealing with her sock drawer, right?"

JavaDad had already been well-vetted by the family, seeing as we had all known him since he and I were in elementary school, so I imagine my father was doing a happy dance on the other end of the phone conversation, knowing he would no longer have to rent U-Haul trucks to move me cross-country whenever the whim struck me (funny, we ended up moving cross-country again not long after our engagement...) 

As to the sock drawer... well, that stems from a few visits when Dad would sit with me as I did laundry and he'd help me sort socks. 

Who Do I Want to Be in 2010?

I've never been one to make New Year's resolutions. The ones I would make, I do make every day. "I'll start the diet tomorrow...I really have to stop yelling so much around the kids...I need to turn off the computer and spend more time building block towers..."

And none of them are easy.

But the eve of the new year always makes me a little introspective, as any ending-beginning does. So I find myself thinking about the kind of life I want to have and the kind of person I want to be.

When my daughter was born, it was the end of only worrying about little boys and their wants and needs. And it was the beginning of my tenure as a role model for what a woman should be.

Relax. Just Do It

"Relax.  Just relax."  The salon worker said it over and over again to me as he washed my hair, glazed it, conditioned it and massaged my scalp.  "Relax. Just relax. Let go..."  Each time I gave in, but then I had to be retold to take it easy all over again.

This seems to be my lot in life.  I can relax for only so long and then I'm alert, tensed and sometimes a bit unhinged with stress.  It is probably why I started having anxiety attacks at twelve.  I don't make New Year's resolutions anymore.  That's something I put aside long ago.  However, if I did make them, it wouldn't be to lose more weight, exercise more or eat less junk.  I try do that regardless if it is January first or not.  My "resolution" would be to relax more, take on less stress, especially self-imposed.  I would try to stop controlling the things that I cannot control, like traffic or long lines, and go with the flow more.  I would take my doctor's advice when he first prescribed me Paxil years ago (which did not work out) and act like, "when I get there, I'll get there."  That frame of mind?  It is as if you are asking me to climb Mt. Everest in six hours.  My brain wants to explode at the sheer thought of it. 

March of the Inflatables

  For some families, the start of Christmas is heralded by decorating the Christmas tree. For others it is the Christmas village. For our family, it is the inflating of the giant inflatables. Do you have these in your yard? Pleeaasse tell me that you do!!

What started as a Daddy shopping expedition with the baby ended with a giant inflatable moose coming out of a package in our yard. Apparently the baby "insisted" on buying the moose. My husband said that our son would not put the moose down. Ahem, I think I know who didn't want to put the moose down!

And we didn’t stop there, nooooo. Someone had to buy an igloo with a couple of penguins coming out of it. Of course once we had two inflatables, then why not get three? So, we now have a Santa train with more penguins.

Even I got in on the act. In my defense, I spotted it while on my annual after-Christmas Walmart shopping expedition. It was white...a snowman...on a Harley...with a penguin in a sidecar. I was powerless in the grip of its cuteness. Plus, I am unable to resist a super awesome bargain even if it is an inflatable biker.

Now, this year's addition leaves me scratching my head. What did my son and husband come back with this year? An elephant in a Santa hat, that's what. Now I can understand the penguin, the moose, Santa, and the snowman, but when did you ever see an elephant in any book about the North Pole. Even the poor guy's Santa hat and scarf seem inadequate against the Arctic cold. Brrrr.

The Family That Plays Together

We got a wii for Hanukkah.  And yes, we were maybe some of the last people on the planet to obtain said gaming system.  I was one of those, what the hell am I going to do with a wii kind of people?  I don't really like video games.  And we don't really NEED ONE.  But my four year old started Occupational Therapy for some fine motor and gross motor issues and his OT suggested it as something we could do at home to work on gross motor skills.  And then I received a wii fit at a Nintendo blogging party and my mom offered to buy us a wii for Hanukkah, and we ended up with a wii.

It is has totally changed the way my family interacts with each other.  My husband has never been TV person.  And I love TV.  So in the evenings, after my son went to bed, I would watch tv and he would go up in his office and do whatever.  Unless we specifically scheduled time to watch a movie together, or we were working on a project for the house together, we weren't really "together."  Now we wii

Long Distance Holidays

Another Christmas has come and gone, marking yet another year that we did not make the trip north to visit with grandparents.  The logical reasons all exist- at the top of the list is the sole breadwinner of the family has no leave remaining this year.  There's also the fact that the drive up the east coast to the farthest eastern portion of Connecticut where my dear parents reside takes over seven hours.  And that's without endless potty breaks, meal stops, and forty-thousand-jillion other vehicles on the road, so during the holidays, I believe we end up driving for two days to get there.  Alright, it may only take an hour or two more, but being cooped up in the van with three kids who simply don't like being cooped up in the van feels like torture as defined by any Geneva Convention-abiding state.

Yes, hubby and I made a decision to move hours away from our families when we first settled in the DC area twelve years ago.  What can I say?  He was still a University of Maryland student, and we were young and childless.  We hardly thought a month ahead of time back then, let alone considered the long-term effects of establishing our lives so far away from our childhood homes.  Fast forward all these years, and I feel more identified as a Washingtonian than I do a New Englander.  My three kids are growing up with the norm being Metrobuses rolling by our house every hour and six lane highways as regular old roads.  This area that I now lovingly call home is perfect for our family in so many ways, except at the holidays, that is.

The Life Cycle of a Blizzard

I don't know when I have ever been so excited for trash day.

It all started over a week ago - Friday the 18th, to be exact. I started hearing rumblings in the morning about a snowstorm. Now, as a DC resident, I tend to ignore these rumblings, because they are usually false. We hear a lot of hype about incoming snowstorms, about "four to six inches" and "potential school closings," and usually end up with a dusting, at best. I can't remember the last time (before last week), that we had an actual snowstorm here.

Well, this time, it was for real. We got a lot of snow. And here's a rough timeline of how I felt about the snow.

Daytime before the snowfall started: Wow, is it really going to happen this time? If so, is our kitchen stocked? We have milk (I think), we have bread, we have trash bags and toilet paper... are we going to be ok? I eat dinner at my mom's house that night and grab a pound of butter on the way out, just in case we decided to do some baking. We don't go to the store, which ends up being a mistake because we did run out of milk and, it turned out, we were very low on eggs. (Our efforts would probably have been in vain, though, as my friends posted many pictures on Facebook of empty shelves at Giant as people made pre-storm runs for the exact same things I would have been shopping for.)

Dad, the Goldfish Isn't Moving!

My well meaning father bought my 4 year old, Sophia, a lovely goldfish the week of Thanksgiving. The theory is that she'll be so preoccupied with her new pet that she wouldn't notice that her mom was super busy with her new baby brother. Thus Sophia Goose swam in a large vase on our coffee table. I thought my dad was also going to buy a little tank too. A vase was all we got.

Well, apparently a goldfish is not a very exciting pet. Ok, I already knew that. I had to remind Sophia Swan (since she's a swan, the goldfish is a goose, get it? Me neither.) to feed her fish every day. She wanted to feed it breakfast, lunch, dinner AND dessert. I'm still teaching her moderation.

Earlier this week my sister noticed that Sophia Goose was, well, just floating. Thankfully Sophia hadn't noticed it yet. Then one morning, on our way out the door, she said it. "Dad, my fish isn't moving."

Smartassery Begets Smartassery In My Family

You know what happens when you make fun of something and you do so repeatedly?  Do you know what will happen if you joke that if you owned such an atrocity you might be inclined to get rid of grounding as a discipline technique  and instead wear that certain something to your sons' soccer games and cheer loudly on the sidelines? What about if you pointed it out that your husband should get one and wear it to the Pentagon work since his office tends to be a little on the chilly side?

What if you were asked to change the channel on the TV and sighed, "I'd love to help you out, but alas, my blanket doesn't have sleeves." Let's say you also theatrically chattered your teeth and accompanied the chattering sound with a "brrr" every time you opened your laptop?  Maybe you make one too many references to how a person could be cast as  Huggy Bear's long lost sister on Starsky & Hutch. You know, the one who lived in the frozen tundra?  If that weren't enough, you continued to insist the thing was nothing more than a long sleeved hospital gown-only made out of fleece.   Do you have any idea what will happen if you do such things?

That's right. You'll receive a bright pink Snuggie as a Chanukkah gift from your children.   

Original post to DC Metro Moms. You can find Devra and her pink Snuggie over at Parentopia.

I Don't Like Me During the Holidays

I realized it when I reached for a Rescue Remedy and the tiny tin was empty.  What in the world? I just bought these. . .

My patience was short.  It has been short—all month long.  And rather than lose my temper, yell, scream--or cry--at 8:29 am when trying to get the troops bundled up, out of the house, and to my daughter's school in ten minutes, I needed help.  Enter: Rescue Remedy.  But apparently not today.  Deep breaths, deep breaths. .  .

I should be skipping around the house, humming holiday tunes and trying to trick one of my kiddos—or my husband—to stand under the mistletoe with me.  But instead, I’m rushing around, trying to do it all, when. .  . I just cannot.  I really, really wish I liked myself more during the holiday season.  But every year, I am embarrassed, angry, and upset at the mom-monster I become during the last month of the year.

Santa Secrets

I learned the truth about Santa Claus early on in my life.  It was Christmas 1980, when I was in first grade.  All the tags on the gifts Santa left me were written in my mom's handwriting, and the nice note Santa left in exchange for the cookies I left him was written in my dad's handwriting.  This confirmed the suspicions I had the year earlier, when my grandpa mysteriously left Christmas Eve dinner, and "Santa," wearing my grandpa's shirt under his red suit, dropped by for a visit.  I knew they were trying to be sneaky, but I wished they had tried harder. 

Somehow, I thought that if I let on that I knew the truth, my parents would be mad at me.  So I let it slide for a couple more years and successfully kept up my end of the bargain.  Finally, in third grade, I sidled up to my mom one day as Christmas approached.  With my best wide-eyed look of little girl innocence, hoping the lights from the Christmas tree would cast a warm glow on my little face and further add to my facade, I asked, "Mommy, some of the kids in school have been saying there's no such thing as Santa Claus.  Is that true?"

A Holiday Gift for Locks of Love

 As PunditGirl hits her 10th birthday in this holiday-heavy, gift-giving crazy month, we've been talking more about the idea giving rather than getting.  As parents, we struggle to find the balance between letting our children enjoy receiving gifts at the holidays and at the same time making sure that we can teach them about giving to others -- and not just giving things that money can buy.

Our fourth-grader has been obsessed with her hair and growing it as long as possible since she was in kindergarten.  When she got old enough to wash and care for her hair by herself, we told her she could make the decision about how long (or short) she wanted it to be.

Little did we know just how long it would get!

Snowmageddon? Don't really think so after all

If you haven't seen or heard already, the DC area had a TON of snow dumped on us over the past few days. We had about 20" here at our house. A friend (whose husband is out of the country) aptly named it "Snowmaggedon." This was the the sixth largest storm recorded in the DC area since they started keeping track way back in the 1800's. And even though it is such a big storm, they seemed to have gotten a bunch of people dug out pretty quickly, except in our neighborhood, that is. We are literally snowed in. My four kids, my husband, myself, and my Dad are all trapped here while the city goes on about its business (or at least that's what it feels like).  They have yet to plow our street, so we are here until they do. We have no four wheel drive vehicle, so the idea of driving out in the unplowed snow (and now ice where those brave souls have driven down our street) is a scary one. We have no chains, and no idea how to get up the one steeper end of the street or over the hump caused by the plows on the other end. We have heard rumors of the big roads just past the ends of our streets being plowed out, but that's beyond the borders of where we can get in our two vehicles. It's like a mystical land beyond the castle walls that we've heard stories of, but haven't ever seen for ourselves. I have even seen posts from a friend on Facebook that her family made it to a local restaurant last night, had a beer, and posted pics of that beer. Sigh. Another friend made it to the airport and back today to grab a husband that was delayed for a day in Florida of all places. And here we sit, feeling a bit stuck. But it isn't all bad here inside the "walls." We met our neighbors. We've played outside. We've looked at pictures. We've hung out together, and we've done a whole lot of nothing.