Tag: love

It’s Quitting Time

On By JillIn Uncategorized3 Comments

Call the reporters and newspapers… breaking news…I have learned my first Mommy Lesson…

I don’t know how long I’m going to keep writing this blog but I have decided to start documenting my momma life lessons.  I was thinking I would do a lesson a month but don’t hold me to it- that puts me in a box, with four sides, – everything I’m trying to escape from…  wish I could escape from the house right about now – there has been so much crying in my ears today I would be happy to go sit in the car, alone, and drive around.

More about that later…well, maybe tomorrow. Oh forget it- let me just say it- today Arianna cried in the car, coming home from gymnastics class because she couldn’t reach her blanky, the entire trip home, not super long, but anyone who has heard my daughter’s extremely loud cry, would deem this ride an eternity.  She cried when the furniture delivery people were here, when the mattress people were here…I thinks she’s a racist. They were all Spanish men! The crying continued for one reason or another today! Even Gia was crying and told me she was sad.

Just wanted to get that out there, because at this time, writing this, I have moved on. I am finishing the rest of my mommy juice…it’s only Wednesday. This week is killing me!

Yesterday was my self-created Too Kind Tuesdays and thank our lucky stars, we had a reason for kindness – my dear brother was going in for surgery on his shoulder this morning so we had something to do for our self-appointed day of kindness. I’m kidding about being happy about this. Surgery is no fun.

“Come on girls-  Get out the cocoa powder and baking ingredients -we are making brownies, from scratch of course, and making a card,” was instructed for yesterday.”…it was fun, but in the midst of flour flying everywhere, egg shells in the batter, and Arianna trying to get in on the action, it was chaos, the usual mess that ensues with these sort of undertakings.

I love this little vixen so much but she does not make things easy for us.  But, she tugs at my heart and is just so polite when she talks, and that coupled with her huge eyes, I simply cannot tell her no…last night when I was putting her to bed, she put her face right next to mine and said, “Mommy, can I please have milk in a sippy?”

Bless her little heart, she is so darn cute- little monster in the making…

After the mixing and pouring, Arianna and Gia fought over who got to lick the bowl, never mind the fact that the sugar would have spoiled their appetite for dinner – wait, what? Dinner, oh, right, probably something I should have thought about… but I didn’t have time for dinner. We needed to finish the card, bake the brownies, and deliver them to Jeff.

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It was late and I was tired, but I did commit to doing this so I got the kids in their jammies, loaded them in the car, each clutching on to a lollipop for dear life- I figured it would keep them awake in case one decided to snooze off- isn’t that the worst thing ever, in mommy world, when your child falls asleep at the wrong time thus creating utter havoc in your well planned out day or routine…

I am primarily thinking of my other mom friends who run a tight ship and are sticklers for their routine…I can only dream of being there one day… which kind of brings me to my latest thought.

I am taking down Too Kind Tuesdays and all of the other ideas I have come up with.  This is something I tried this month, along with starting this blog, and other various plans and ideas, and like many challenges I take on, they exhaust me…

We love doing kind things for others and the girls are thrilled to bake cookies and write cards, well Gia really.  Giving is fun and feels amazingly heartwarming to both parties (at least I think so) but I have personally been feeling like I took on a pressing project or challenge, to keep this up every Tuesday, along with something cool for Wednesdays, or have something funny or enlightening to blog about every other day.  Therefore, after thinking, planning, and blogging, I have come to this conclusion. I am finished with rules or unrealistic expectations and I have figured out my first MOMMY TRUTH.

Being a mom is NOT A PROJECT. It’s not  a series of small goals and checklists.  I want to just lie my head down at night and know that we got through another day with love, a connection, and  a commitment to trying my best.  I hate the expression “mommy guilt .”  If you are feeling guilty, fix it.

This is something I chose because I wanted to be a Mom, I wanted to feel those babies in my arms, I wanted to see those first steps, to read picture books to them, to share drippy ice-cream cones with them, and to just be a Mom.

 Fast-forward four years and I still am in love with them, and I want to be happy and relaxed so they can feel the same. I haven’t been feeling this way lately. I can count on my fingers a few reasons why and I will tackle those issues as I go but for now, today- I quit this project, tell the boss I’m done (I’m the boss so that shouldn’t be too hard), I am finished with deadlines, going to clean out my desk (the scraps of paper all over the house with notes like ‘start an inspirational quote book’ or ‘create tickets to recreate a Chucky Cheese prize counter’), yes, I actually was going to do this as well as have a Pink a licious day where we ate everything pink and painted our face pink! I still love this idea but right now, I have two energy sapping life forces in my house that I need to focus on.   

So after I quit, and walk out feeling free, I am not looking for new work, I need to focus on the job I already have. Stay tuned for the fun, the funny, but not the regularly scheduled show.

 

Herbal tea

On By JillIn Uncategorized5 Comments

I think I need to take a bit of a break with the daily posts on this blog.  Apparently, I am not spending nearly enough time on the extremely important events in my children’s life like the fact that I had no idea that I would have needed to camp out and sleep in my car overnight to get the morning slot for next year at the preschool we now attend!  My daughter currently attends this school in town and the registration was this weekend.  I sort of heard that a lot of moms wanted this morning slot at this school but I guess I was so involved with blogging lately and attuned to important issues like eating donuts and drinking wine and being silly, that I failed or rather neglected to suck it up and fully commit to the sleepover of all sleepovers! Waiting in line from 4 p.m. Friday afternoon until 9 a.m. the next day to get into the exclusive morning class at the very best preschool in the country!

I mean, my daughter’s entire educational career depends upon this school.  I can just forget about scholarships, or an Ivy League education now! Damn you blog for taking me away…ok, the truth is we did make it into the afternoon class so I suppose Gia will still make it in this world, not to mention that I’m sure this isn’t the best school in the country, it’s just the most expensive in this town, thus creating the illusion of the crème of the crop.  My husband got on line at 4 a.m. to  at least ensure we got into this school.  I may not be able to keep my daughter in this school now for other reasons, but the point of this post is I kind of feel that I have been wasting my time a little…

I love writing and it’s a great outlet for me but I feel like the posting every day has been a little obsessive and taking away from my family… not exactly sure if they care…the girls seem much happier to cuddle with their daddy at night anyway…he’s the good guy —I’m the mean one! Oh Mom- looks like I am following in your footsteps! But at this point in my life who do I call almost every day? Sometimes three times a day- sorry Dad, who wouldn’t even be reading this sentence at this point – he sees lots of words and paragraphs as something way too “long.” and I seriously doubt he reads my posts.

Dad may have a point there – when I am looking at other people’s blogs, I tend to see many paragraphs and get kind of bored, we are all so busy and have so much on our plate, who really wants to read about how I love Dunkin Donuts and that my house is a mess! Well, maybe it is comical for the first five posts but after a while, I’m sure you all are rolling your eyes…that Jill, does she do anything except drink coffee and wine, not do her laundry, and talk about what she’s going to do?

I guess the only solution is to switch from wine to herbal tea, send my laundry out to a cleaner, and with all the free time on my hands and laid back disposition, I’ll just start playing with the girls- no need to blog about how I’m going to create all of these index cards full of activities, I’ll just do them! The only problem is I’ll need a money earning job to pay for the laundry…hmm

But seriously, I am a self-admitted obsessive compulsive personality type, but I love my girls and my husband and my family, so so so much and they are my everything so I need to chill out and maybe write every other day…or perhaps just when the mood strikes me.

A Piece of Me

On By JillIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

When my first daughter was born, I decided to make a scrapbook.  I went to Michaels, picked out sparkly paper, puffy stickers, and ridiculously expensive scrapbook decor with sayings like, “Precious,” “Darling,” and “Sent from Heaven.” 

I had my pictures ready to go, ideas in my head, and events I wanted to write but I didn’t know if I should type the captions or handwrite them.  I knew that my handwriting wasn’t the best and the pages would look more polished if I typed them. So I did, and it was good. My scrapbook came out cute.  All the “Sent from Heaven’s” were in the right place.  It was a scrapbook that I could put out on the coffee table, show friends and family and listen to all the oohs and aahs…

Because things like that seemed so important to me at the time. I was a new mom with a bouncing baby and I wanted to be perfect. Saying all the right things to friends who asked me how it was going, creating scrapbooks, and making my own baby food seemed…I don’t know the right word, not important, but elevating me I suppose.  Just like loosing all the baby weight so fast seemed so necessary for this Mommy experience that I was about to embark on.  I mean, all I had seen for the past nine months while thumbing through magazines in the OB/GYN waiting rooms were covers of magazines with celebrites who looked amazing and thin, jogging with their baby joggers, and touting the latest advice in organic foods.  It appeared that being a mommy was on par with what college were you accepted to? Like this new stage in life where you had to be more than you ever were. 

Well, fast forward to today and I seriously want to shake that girl. Raising my girls, running the house, keeping them busy, stimulated, and engaged while trying to keep TV to a minimum certainly has pushed out those mommy fantasies.  More importantly, just loving them and making sure they get everything they need to be happy and feel valued is ALL THAT MATTERS.

Back track to the scrapbooking days (post year one) when I was about to start my second fabulous brag book.  I again, remember being faced with the earth shattering dilemma of typing verses handwritng so I googled about this quandary.  

I came across this post entitled “Exercises in Handwriting,” by Gwyn Calvetti,

 http://www.scrapbook.com/tips.php/doc/11956.html

I once met a woman who told me that her most prized possession was a grocery list on a scrap of paper she’d found between the pages of one of her mother’s cookbooks. Why? Her mother had been a perfectionist who was unhappy with her penmanship, typing everything. After her death, the discovery of this scrap of handwritten paper, in her mother’s sloppy scrawl, gave this woman a tangible link to her that she could keep always. It was the only thing she had with her mother’s handwriting on it.

This story made me think so much about the relationship between mother and daughter.  This woman probably treasured this scrap of paper because it was something real from her mother. Not a perfectly kept baby book or perfectly organized photo albums- just something everyday.  I believe that this is what we as daughters crave from our mothers- just messy, imperfect love.  

So, I decided that I didn’t even want to make another scrapbook.  All I wanted to do was write in a journal about our lives together.  Document the silly stories, the awe inspiring moments, the outings we have with friends, the emergency hospital stories ( or low grade injuries), and just the basic day to day things that we do together.  

So that is what I do. And sometimes I forget to write in it for weeks…and then I see my journals and the guilt consumes me for a moment.  But then I fast forward to a day where I am reading the journal entries to my daughters and say- “Oops- that’s when we moved, or that’s when Mommy was baking 200 hundred cookies for your birthday party, or even just, you know what G, “Mommy was being a lazy bones that week.”