Garrett's 4th birthday

The day before his birthday I decided to throw a party for Garrett...cause that's just the way we roll around here now...sometimes.

 I called a bouncy house place and got a good deal on a bouncer because I needed it for a Thursday.  I invited Garrett's three friends, Ben Boyden, Asher Anderson, and Owen Prettyman.  I also let Shelby invite Hanna and Eden and Dalton invite Jack.  My Mom and Dad came too.  I learned two things from this party: 1) It's not worthwhile to stress over these things and 2) Posing kids for pictures is idiotic.

 Here's Garrett leaving the "perfect picture" that I missed.  Here is my Mom trying to recreate the moment.

  

Nice try Mom, but no cigar.

 Okay, here is me trying to get the boys to smile...when will I learn how little control over life I really have?

 Tried to get Garrett to step to the side of the balloon string, but that gave him enough time to remember that he wanted to pick his nose.

 Here's Garrett with the Prettiest Grandma in the whole world.  He wanted to wear the crown that they made him for his birthday in his pre-school.  It's good to be king for a day.

 Here I am realizing that the sleek hair do I am sporting looks more like stringy ugh and that I need to start actually blow drying my hair again...sigh.

 The boys loved the bounce house, except for one, but they are four years old, so that's to be expected.  They all loved the motorized cars.  The Transformer's cake was a hit, especially since I ordered it from Dan's grocery store the day before so it was a piece of cake, literally. 

 Here are the girls (teens-in-training) who loved to boss, I mean help, the little boys during the party.

 And the presents were of course the best part.  I told my Mom that I thought we had too many presents.  She assured me with all of her maternal wisdom that there was no such thing as too much when it comes to children and birthday parties.  

 My cute friend Katrina stayed with her kids and I told her about the insane parties that I used to throw for Dalton when he was Garrett's age, where I would work for weeks on the details, send out homemade invites, spend all day making the homemade cake, and they never turned out a lick better than this party that I just put together in a day.  It is nice to know that in my aging I am gaining some wisdom.  Here's to lessons learned, and my baby who has now just completed his fourth year on the planet.  How I love him and am so glad he is the little book end of our family.

Get Real

I have been thinking about it, and I have decided a couple of things in regards to my blog.

Number one: I am writing for three reasons and those reasons are A) Dalton, B) Shelby and C) Garrett (aka: loves of my life), because I want them to know me.  They may not read these words for years...or at all.  It may be their kids that read them.  Regardless, I want the words to exist, because I existed.

Number two: Because I am recording my life for my children, I need to be honest with them.  I'm not perfect, so my words won't be either.  They don't need me to edit my life, to be syrupy sweet, or make everything look like it's coming up roses.  They deserve the truth, warts and all.

Number three:  MY life equals MY perspective.  Because I am telling my side of the story, that's just what it is.  Gavin may have a different perspective (and most likely will), other family members may have a different take on things, and guess what...that's okay.  My personal duty is only to share my thoughts and feelings and leave others to tell their own accounts of their experiences.

Those three revelations are pretty freeing for me because there is this societal norm that I've been bonking my head up against ever since I started blogging, and it says that you should record the pretty version of your life, the version that doesn't make anybody feel uncomfortable...cause heaven forbid if that were to happen.

And a couple times I have drawn outside the lines...where in I have been chastised.  It felt good at the time I was drawing outside the lines, freeing, because I was recording my truth.  But afterwards, when I was paying the consequences of my societal boo boo, it made me scared.  What if my writing caused me to look like a bad person, or made my friends and/or family not love me anymore, or made me look stupid?  Those were pretty heavy prices that I was not willing to pay.  A couple of times I had people chastise me in public on my comments forum, anonymously, which made me wonder who felt this way about me.

Here's the conclusion that I've come to about all of that:  I AM OVER IT.  I am over giving a damn.  Seriously.  I want to reach back in to my past and hug that needing-to-please human that I was.  I want to tell her that if someone didn't approve of her words then their issue was not with her but with themselves.  If someone really cared about me and wanted to give me some good advice, they would have the integrity to sign their name to it.  If they are judging me with the comforts of anonymity, then they are acting out of fear.  And fear is a very powerful weapon.

When I say that "I am over it" it doesn't mean that I don't care about other peoples feelings.  It simply means that my truth is numero uno because I want to teach my children that their truth should be their numero uno.  If we doubt our own feelings and experiences, or try to hide them away or polish them up, it invalidates who we are as human beings.  We must trust ourselves that our truth is precious.  And it's not always going to be pretty, but what will be pretty is the journey.

Looking back on some of my adventures, or misadventures, whether with my kids or my spouse or my family or my friends, I can see my personal growth.  I can see myself stepping out of the mold that I was given, the confine that I was placed in, and expanding to find myself and the roles that work the best for me as a human, a woman, a mother, a friend, a lover, a spouse, a partner, a friend, a child, a sibling, a confidant, a student, a teacher, and a disciple.

So, for you my darling Shelby, Dalton and Garrett, welcome to my journey.  You are enough.

Shelby's First Real Dance Recital

One of my favorite things this week was watching Gavin helping Dalton and Shelby rehearse for their upcoming Spanish play. They are each playing a character in the play, Cinderella, but the catch is that the whole thing is in Spanish. This is with their after school Spanish class at McKee Immersion Spanish School (that I love). The kids see their Dad in a whole new light when he is rocking his sweet Spanish accent.

This week we had the rehearsals and performance of Shelby's Virginia Tanner dance class. I didn't have big expectations because a couple of the girls in her class have the attention span of a gnat, and Shelby hadn't been super jazzed about her classes.  We did it because it was something fun to do and try out.  (Here we are below on the day of the show, all done up.)

Little did I know that Shelby would become sold on dance.  Maybe it's the femininity of it all.  She's been into soccer and tennis and art, but in this extra curricular activity she gets to flit and float and be very PINK.  I think that she viewed her Grandma Paula and Aunt Kristen as the masters in that department.  I was the Mom who donned the sweat pants till 3:00 PM with hat hair and unbrushed teeth.  But on the day of her performance I got us both glamorous, and it was like she was seeing a whole new side of me...her Mom could be a pageant mom...oh happy days!

These two girls nearly did me in...but who doesn't love a challenge?  I was asked to be a "Monitor" for the performance.  Good thing that I had no idea what that entailed...otherwise I would have run for the hills.  I got to go multiple times to Kingsbury Hall where we did dress rehearsals with the girls, helping them to get in to their costumes, and keep them quiet while we waited for the other dancers.  Sounds easy, right?

Wrong.  One little girl was terrified of heights and stairs...which meant that running up and down three flights inside the theatre was very difficult especially when you have six other girls pulling ahead of you and you all have to stay together.  I ended up doing a lot of pep talking as I held her hand and helped her to take one of the thousand steps at a time.  Her best buddy has the energy of a wind up toy and the personal boundaries of a jelly fish.  Her little hands and arms were like tentacles that she would wrap around any moving thing that was within her reach.  

So I had to summon all of my patience and contraband candy that I used for bribing, to survive the week.  It was a lot of reminding the girls to whisper so that people couldn't hear them on the stage, or try to keep them entertained with Gavin's IPad in their half hour of down time while they waited for the other dance groups to finish up.  I had never been a dance Mom.  I never envisioned myself as one.  Too many memories of pre pubescent girls bumping and grinding on a dance floor in half time shows, looking like they were training for their roles in smoke filled Vegas casinos.  I got the lure it had for others but it never did much for me (especially since I had zero talent in it).

But with Shelby, I see why she loves it.  It is because with Virginia Tanner, the dance moves are not sexual or seductive, but freeing and empowering.  They teach dance to inspire the girls.  With their vision, I was converted to how wonderful dance could be.  

This is the special hair do that I did for Shelby.  Oh yes, I have secret hidden talents.

Here she is waiting with the girls in the basement dressing room of Kingsbury Hall at the University of Utah.

The women who run Virginia Tanner dance are inspiring.  They are not done up.  They are not beauty queens.  They are not super thin, or really fit.  What they are is confident.  They are at home in their bodies.  I have never seen women so alive.  And whether they were in their twenties or their sixties (like Shelby's teacher) they were beautiful.  Here the director gives the girls from all ages a pep talk before the show.

Before the performance, Shelby was unsure about what was going to happen.  She wasn't really nervous.. it's more that she thought all the hype was a bit much.  Some of the girls were really nervous...to the point of some drama (which we both have limited patience for).

But once she was on stage, she was SOLD.  Here she is below with her hands in the air, freezing for her pose.  Her smile covered her entire face.  She said that she could hear her Grandma Paula cheering for her in the front row.  The stage was something that she felt safe on.  I remember that feeling.

These panels were their props, and though they were pretty cumbersome and heavy, the girls did well with them.  

 

They finished their dance and at the end they hugged each other and laughed till their sides hurt.  I viewed it all from behind the scenes, off to the side of the stage curtains, and loved to see them all shine.  Even the gals that had been a little challenging were amazing...giving it all they had and giving a beautiful performance.  Once they were downstairs, they were so thrilled with how well they did that they ran down the hall to their dressing room, jumping for joy.

Hooray for new talents, interests, adventures, friends, and self esteem.  Life is wonderful.

There is a lot I want to write about.  Here is my list:

• My elementary school's Art Night fundraiser
• Shelby's dance recital that is coming up
• Our home renovation project that finally looks like it is about to begin
• Shelby's conversation with me this afternoon about boobs, boob jobs, and more boobs
• The last book I read for my book group and loved
• The documentary "Bully" that I saw with a bunch of wonderful women
• Why we will only have two cats by the end of the summer
• Why I've gone from loving to hating Mad Men this season

I will have energy tomorrow.  Right now I have to sleep.  Yes, I took a 30 minute nap today...but it didn't cut it.  MUST SLEEP.

Quality versus quantity

Once upon a time I met a Mom recently who had more kids than she could handle.  And she yelled at them all day, yet she didn't know that she was yelling.  I think that she was shocked at my shock.  I tried to hide my wide eyes but her loud, booming, threatening, grating, mean-toned, voice shook me.

And it made me scared...because that is how I have sounded to my own children.  I have never heard a yeller like this mother, and it made me realize the power of the voice.  I don't use that voice as much as I used to...but I have used it.  The "mean mom" voice.  Like, when you are so burned out and overwhelmed that it's either a yell, a cry, or a banshee shriek that are the sounds left available to come out of your mouth.

I am worried that I used that voice far too often with my sweet Dalton.  

Garrett was with me and this mother's voice scared him.  I looked at her little ones running all around her, and felt sorry for them.  This is when I would usually say, "Who do I think I am?" cause it's not like I haven't screamed at my kids before.  But now I can see how easy it is to melt down with little kids.  How easy it is to just always have the mean voice as your voice, with the hope that somehow it will bring some sanity in to your house.  How easy it is to just switch over to the auto-pilot where the mean voice comes out way too often.

You think that people know that your voice isn't the real you...it's just your coping mechanism...to let your kids know you mean business...but sometimes they don't know.  How would they?  They can't read your mind.  The voice of this overwhelmed mom made me sad for the overwhelmed mom that I have been for many years that I have been a mother.  

I was mad at this mom, but maybe just because it held a mirror up to my own shortcomings.  Why do we think that having kids, and sometimes having lots of kids, makes us a good mother?  Mothering has almost nothing to do with the act of just producing a kid.  If that were the case rats and mice would be moms of the year.  It's parenting that makes you a good mother.  It's caring about your kids individually.  It's having the time and the patience and the concern for not just what they'll be like when they are chubby faced and darling at the age of 3 when the definition of being a good mother is sticking a nipple in their face, keeping their butt dry, and pasting a giant bow on their head, but also being equally concerned over who they have the potential to be when they are 18 or 35 or 70.  It's truly wanting to bring another human on to the Earth who is going to positively impact this world and be someone who you want in your life for eternity.

I had my kids about 4 years apart.  It kind of made it so that each of them was the only baby when they were the baby.  That being said, I still was nuts when my babies were babies and I had an older one who was a four year old.  I did kind of know that I was nuts, so I always tried to surround myself with kind people that could be there for my children when I emotionally could not.  

I remember the girl that I had helping me in Boston, when Shelby was a new baby.  Her name was Yumi, and she will always be an angel to me.  She really saved my life.  I thought that I was hiring her to help with Shelby, but instead she became the surrogate mother to Dalton.  She was kind and steady and young and loving.  She would walk him to his preschool and take him by the toy store on the way home.  All day long I was like a zombie...covered in breast milk that didn't seem to want to come at the rate that Shelby needed it, unshowered, depressed, overwhelmed.  

I didn't have near the love or the patience that my little preschooler needed.  And so I would snap.  I would be impatient.  I would be controlling.  To be honest, I was not a good mother.  I am not going to beat myself up over this, because I have done that for years, and it doesn't really do any good.  I have apologized to Dalton over and over for this, and again, it's pretty ineffective.  The only recourse that I have is to try to be a really loving, patient, calm, kind mother now.  I was young.  Too young to have kids...in my opinion.  My control of my children probably had a lot to do with me trying to regain control over the young adult period that I had lost out on.  Or I was just chemically imbalanced.  Both are a likely possibility.

Morgan was my angel here in Utah when Garrett was a newborn and Shelby was the preschooler who needed a solid, loving, kind, interested mother.  Thank god, literally, for Yumi and Morgan.  Without them, Dalton and Shelby would have been like little islands floating on their mom's sea of emotional instability.  Now with Garrett, I finally get it.  I finally get how to be kind to your kid, and love them and be the Mom that they need.

It's hard for me to see Moms now who have three kids under the age of four because I think that all their kids are all babies.  Yet, how can you parent three babies at the same time?  So by default the eldest becomes the "big brother" or the "big kid" and is expected to act much older than he is.  He is held to higher standards.  

I think that the screamer mom's kids were darling.  I hope that they make it.  I hope that my kids make it.  After a past soccer game where I overreacted big time at Shelby for not having a good attitude (ironic, I know), we made up a sign where she makes an L with her hand when I need to cool down.  The L doesn't stand for Looser, but for Loosing it.  I wish that we all had this system in place.  

Here's to seeing the timidness of the little ones that we speak to, and how fragile their little sense of self worth is.

romantic

I seriously hate Sunday nights.

I hate it for a plethora of reasons.  One being, I want to want to have sex.  But the kids went to bed late because one little doll face took a late nap that he didn't wake from till 6:00 PM and so I let him stay up and watch the rest of Masterpiece Theatre's Song Bird with me (depressing but beautiful).

And so we didn't watch a show together...maybe a movie that was kind of steamy.  We didn't rub feet.  I didn't brush my teeth...so oh my breath, it's even grossing me out.  I didn't get a drink to relax me.  I didn't wipe the Alice Cooper mascara off the 1.5 inches under my eyes.

So now he is back in bed reading his Kindle...probably some troll book.  And I am out here checking on facebook while my crotch gets a nice heating pad treatment from my laptop (it's a good thing I am done having kids because I think this thing has fried the remainder of my eggs) and we are like two ships passing in the night.

I want to want to have sex.  I do, I do, I do.  Does that sound sincere?  I know that if I brush my teeth, that will be enough of a sign that things will get going.  How sad that I brush my teeth so rarely at night that when I do it elicits the pavlovian response from my husband that tonight he is going to hit it.

Okay...pick butt up from the couch...commence to turn off all three lights in the front room.  Try to remember when the last time was that I shaved my arm pits...passable or gross?  Now I am realizing that someone who is related to me, and who is old and/or thinks of sex as being some Victorian religious/spiritual experience could read this and get offended...but oh well because this is (MY) life.

I am thinking about whether I can muster the energy to go big-bang-theory tonight, or if we are going to have ourselves a bit of a dry spell and wait another week...how long has it been now?  I am sure that Gavin has it written somewhere...how many days since our last sexual encounter.  Probably down to the minute.  Oh yes, it was after Art Night...so just on Friday...not so long...so what am I fretting about?  I could just lay down on the bed and drop dead tonight...

We'll see...maybe we'll give it a go to start the week off right.  Aren't I a romantic?  The important thing is that I can not skip the ProActive tonight.  A girl has to have her priorities.

faced with reality

My oldest son goes to a hip charter school here in downtown Salt Lake.

He loves it.

They do things differently.  Their gym is Liberty Park.  Their library is the Main Library.  Their bus is the Trax, which they all have passes to.

Today a class was visiting the Main Library and when they were up on the Garden Level which is the roof, they witnessed a suicide.

I don't know anything other than that.  I don't know how old the person was that died.  What gender they were.  I don't know what their mental state was.  If they had kids.

What I do know is that it rocked Dalton's world today.  When I picked him and his best friend up from school they were shaken.  Dalton said that it's the first time he didn't know how to feel.  They didn't see it, thankfully, but their friends did.

The kids who witnessed it were picked up from school early.  Tomorrow they will receive counseling from an expert.

As we were driving home, after we'd made our regular stop at Great Harvest to get the kids their free slice of cinnamon bread, and after I'd heard all about the details for the third time, I told them that sadly that was life.

They live in a bubble, these white middle class kids of ours.  Protected by trimmed hedges and clean roads and working street lamps, and neighborhood watch programs.  The people that hang out at the Library often have none of that.

Dalton asked why someone would want to kill themselves.  Isn't that amazing...that he can't even fathom why that would seem appealing to someone?  I asked him if he were homeless, and didn't have any money and didn't have any food and didn't have any friends or family, would death maybe seem better than this hard life?

Granted, you can be rich and educated and surrounded by friends, and still be positively miserable...but I thought I'd save that piece of reality for him for another time.  I told him that it's rare for kids that he knows to have something like this happen to them.  But in other countries, in other parts of this country, people know people who die.  Crime, disease, guns, suicide...death is not nearly as abstract as it is here in our little corner of Utopia.

Though it does happen here in Utopia, you just don't hear about it...or you don't hear the truth about it.  The reason for the death is hushed up.  It wasn't suicide, it was an accident.  He wasn't gay, he was depressed.  She didn't kill herself, she lost her battle with addiction.  We can't even grant people their truth in their death.

What a blow.  What a slap in the face for my naive son.  What a rotten situation.

In lighter news, here are some random pictures from the past few weeks:

Pictures from Easter.  Dan, Sis and my bro David.

 The IPad to keep Garrett busy, with Gavin and Mom.

 The boys on their screens.  

 My guys.

 The girls.

 The Easter gifts from my parents.

 A house in my neighborhood that I really wanted to buy...but it was $1.2 million.

 Kids at Hires with me the other week when Gavin was out of town.

 My house, probably on that same night...which explains why I didn't cook.

 Shelby and her cousin Lily over Spring Break at the Natural History Museum.

 Me and Gav on a date to the Jazz game the other night.

Shame

 (Goofing around)

 (Women whom I love and feel no shame around...period.)

 (New and old wonderful friends who also do not believe in shame.)

 (Cutie patootie and his new best buddy, Asher.)

 (Dalton at his funky school, being served Thai food for one of their ethnic lunch days.)

 (Art Night raffle baskets for Uintah... only three more days till all the work pays off.)

 (More ladies whom I adore and who could save the world.)

(Shelby and one of her BFF's, Kate...love these confident ladies.)

I think that shame may be one of the most powerful forces on earth....and it's weird because it is completely made up.  It has no form.  It has no voice.  It's not real.  Yet it can be the driving force in so many powerful acts.

The force that causes girls and boys to keep quiet when people have hurt them.  The force that causes people to stay married when they know they should not be.  The force that causes people to lie about their finances, or their feelings of attraction to someone of the same gender.  The force that causes people to throw up after they eat.  The force that causes people to stay silent when injustices, big and small, are occurring.  The force that causes people to use drugs, food or alcohol to hide their real feelings.  The force that causes people to end their lives because they would rather die than face it for one more day.

How sad that something imaginary has so much power over us.  Why do we care?  I know why.  I know exactly why.  I know because I acted in reaction to that powerful force for far too long.  The hardest part about shame is that those that are wielding it's power are often those that are closest to you.  They mistakenly think that the shame that they wield against you is like a pruner's tool- cleaning you up and keeping you from growing wild.  What they do not realize is that it is more like a vial of poison that  goes straight to your roots.

This week we found out that Dalton, our oldest, had lice.  In my mind, it was like having strep throat.  As soon as I found out, I wanted to let other families know, in case their kids had it too.  

Yet when I spread the word, I was often met with shame.  Like I should keep this one in the closet...say Dalton is sick with a sore throat.  People were acting like we must be eating out of the cat bowls and showering in the toilet to have this.  As if Dalton had done something dirty to get it.  

 But I don't equate lice with genital herpes for 11 year olds.  And I think that the idea of feeling shame because some little bug jumped on to his head is about the most asinine thing I have ever heard of.  So we were honest with everyone.  And it was funny to see how many people came out of the closet and shared that they'd been through the same thing recently.

We laughed about spending hours picking nits out of our kids heads, the mountains of laundry, the bagging up of every stuffed animal in the house, the neurotic checking of every family member's head for days after just to be safe.  It was an inconvenience, but in the grand scheme of things, it was pretty small.  Just like most things that we could feel shame about.

 (all the bugs bagged up after 4 hours of me picking them out of Dalton's hair with a pair of tweezers)

I did get to sit next to my eleven year old for four hours, which doesn't happen very often.  He told me in detail about the book he'd just finished.  He read aloud one of my favorite books, The Education Of Little Tree.  We laughed...especially when I'd find a live one and accidentally drop a swear word as my heart jumped out of my throat. 

 (lice free!)

I would hate for my kids to ever feel shame, period.  The only reason in my mind, to ever feel that feeling, is the self imposed shame that one naturally feels when one has been unkind or unfair to one's self or to another person.  Otherwise, it's rubbish.  So, we are now lice free, and thankfully- shame free as well.