Posts tagged as:

Motherhood

Motherhood Is Not A Handicap

March 18, 2010 · 18 comments

Many mom bloggers wrote great rebuttals to the New York Times story, “Honey, Don’t Bother Mommy. I’m Too Busy Building My Brand.”

There are links to many of them here.

I was going to just leave it alone. The other bloggers said it really well, and I figured there wasn’t much left to say.

But I kept thinking about the article. What was it that bothered me so much?

Was it the condescending line in the opening paragraph that referred to mom bloggers as the “Minivan Set”?

Was is the statement taken out of context about the blogger who received 28,549 page views of her tutu tutorial?

Was it the description of the attendees at Bloggy Bootcamp that made them sound like members of a high school pep squad?

Sure, all that is irritating. But there’s something else. And I couldn’t put my finger on it until yesterday.

There is an underlying tone in the article of disbelief that moms could and would actually take themselves and their interests seriously. That they would be audacious enough to want to learn, and *gasp* maybe even make some money. After all, we’re just a bunch of silly women who do laundry, and wipe noses all day.

Society seems to view motherhood as a handicap. The children who cling to our hands and hang on our legs are the growths that impede us.

Motherhood is or should be so all consuming that we can not learn, can not achieve, can not dream beyond what we’re making for dinner. Once a woman gives birth suddenly she stops growing, losing every aspect of herself, but the one that nurtures children.

On the contrary. The nitty-gritty, self-sacrificing work that motherhood is has stretched me, taught me about myself, my abilities and my desires more than any desk job ever could.

It’s only natural that women who experience motherhood seek out new endeavors, be it grad school, a business start-up or, yes, even blogging.

I am a mom. I am a blogger. I am so much more than that.

New York Times, don’t bother me. I busy living my life.

{ 18 comments }

Being Mom

March 15, 2010 · 23 comments

I don’t want to be here today.
I didn’t want to be here Sunday or Saturday either.

The last few days it’s been an effort to be Mom.

I don’t want to change another diaper. I don’t want to figure out what to feed the boys. I don’t want to wash bottles, or play hide and seek.

I don’t really even want to blog.

You know what I want to do?

I want to lay on the couch, and watch hours of reality TV repeats on Bravo. Uninterrupted.

When I worked in an office before I had kids, there were days I didn’t want to be at work. Even if you love your job, it happens.

I could “phone it in” at the office. My job was mostly self-directed. So if I was tired, or distracted I kept busy with some mindless task like scanning (That was way back in 2004 when photos still came printed on paper) and processing new product photos in Photoshop. I pointed and clicked, eyes glazed over, my mind somewhere else. Eventually the clock hit five, and I went home.

If I really, really didn’t want to be a work, I called in sick and played hookie.

Mom can’t call in sick. I’m already at work when I wake up in the morning.

Mom can’t “phone it in”. Children must be dressed, feed, supervised, entertained lest the the house be turned upside down, or worse, someone gets hurt. Their needs don’t stop just because I’m having a bad day.

Being Mom doesn’t end when the clock strikes five. Mom doesn’t even get a lunch break.

Most of the time I enjoy being Mom.

But the last three days I’ve just had enough.

Every time I hear, “Mooooom!” I want to pull my hair out. I long for nap time to come, and dread the sounds of waking children an hour or two later.

Right now it’s overcast, and I’m hoping that it’s raining when the boys wake up, so we don’t have to go outside to play.

I don’t know the cause of my melancholy.

The kids aren’t being uncooperative. I’m not overly tired. My husband is helpful and supportive as always. I’m not stressed.

When I have days like this I pray.

A lot.

Sometimes minute by minute just to get from one moment to the next.

“Lord, help me get through the day. Help me not lose it during Candy Land, because the kid won’t follow the rules. Help me find the will to make dinner. Help me find the pacifier so the baby will stop crying. Please let Spongebob be on so David will sit still and be quiet for 20 minutes.”

Maybe this is His way of drawing me closer. Teaching me to rely on Him.

I don’t know.

I do know I made it through Saturday and Sunday. I’m halfway through today. Tomorrow, I think, will be better.

I’m already feeling a little better.

Blogging is nothing, if not therapeutic.

And the praying helps too.

But I’m still wishing for that rain.

Photo used under Creative Commons License.

{ 23 comments }

Is Blogging Dying? Not if Mom has Anything to Say About It

February 8, 2010 · 10 comments

Google the question Is Blogging Dead? and you get hundreds upon hundreds of, ironically enough, blog posts discussing just that.

Maybe in some circles blogging is dying. Maybe in other circles blogging is simply changing and evolving. I know there is one circle where blogging is alive, it’s growing and, I think, is in no danger of dying out. That is the wide and varied circle  made up of moms who blog.

Why? Because mom blogs are not generally just about raking in ad revue or selling swamp land in Florida. They’re about connecting.

Some moms blog about family life, some about being a WHAM, some about photography, some about being frugal.  The subjects are as unique and diverse as the women who write about them. But ask moms who blog, and most will tell you it started out as a desire to share and reach out beyond themselves.

You can pour out your heart on your blog, and receive a dozen supportive comments from other moms in the same situation.

You can read a post from another mom, and know you’re not the only one.

There are so many women out there who’s writing moves us to tears, brings a smile to our face, makes us laugh out loud. Because they are putting into words feelings and experiences that we all share.

This circle of moms who blog is a community in a world where community is becoming increasingly rare. We’re so busy with so many activities, there isn’t time for weekly coffee klatches and bridge clubs. But at nap time or the end of the day when the kids are in bed, we can steal a few minutes with the computer.

Some worry that social media is driving us into our homes and away from each other. But for moms who are often isolated already by their family responsibilities blogging, Facebook, and Twitter are all ways to say in touch with the rest of the world. And blogging, more than any of those mediums, allows us to express ourselves fully.

As long as women are giving birth and raising children there will be the need to vent, to express joy, to share sorrows.

And they will blog about it.

{ 10 comments }

More Proof that Motherhood Fries Your Brain

November 24, 2009 · 5 comments

My little storehouse of knowledge, which wasn’t necessarily that large to begin with, is getting barer by the day it seems.

I forget little things. General knowledge kind of things that anyone who went past the 9th grade should know.

Now, I admit to not being the best speller. And I’m not a very good typist either. I’m also a terrible proof reader.

For me Spell Check is not just a tool. It is a way of life.

My trouble with getting the right letters in the right order often leads to some unfortunate errors in my writing.

However, vocabulary has never been a problem for me, and I did think I knew the difference between Peek and Peak and Hearty and Hardy, until I misused both words on this blog. A fact that I realized at 3:30 one morning while holding vigil with a sleepless baby.

Your have odd thoughts in the wee hours of the morning when delirious from lack of sleep.

Sometimes I forget how to spell every day words like tomorrow. Is it two Ms or two Rs? And have to think hard about whether to use through, threw or thru. I compound words that should be split, and split words that should compounded.

Just a few minutes ago I Googled, “When do you use a colon and and a semi-colon?” I had the rules switched around in my mind.

And the comma.

For, the, love, of, God, the, comma!

I can’t for the life of me remember all the rules about when and where to use commas, so I put one wherever I feel like one should go.

I am sure I often commit the cardinal sin of the comma splice, something I read about while researching colons.

I sat through more than a few English classes in my early years. I have a B.A. in Communication, and an A.A. in Journalism. I am quite sure I was taught this information. I must have even known it once according to the grades on my transcripts.

In fact, at one time, I earned a salary for knowing these things.

Where has it all gone?

Math, on the other hand, I never really learned, and it almost prevented me from getting those above mentioned degrees. In a Hail Mary attempt, I finally managed to pass prerequisite Algebra I in the last semester of college.

But I had basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division nailed down.

Or so I thought.

I was trying to divide 2,678 by 8 the other day long hand on a piece of paper, because I was too lazy to get up and find the calculator. But I couldn’t remember how. Once I got 8 divided in to 26 and subtracted the remainder, I couldn’t remember if I brought down  the 7 and the 8 or just the 7 for the next step.

Sad isn’t it?

I will be of no help to my boys when it comes to homework.

I’ll be learning it all over again.

Right along with them.

Something that, as evidenced, is probably a good thing.

{ 5 comments }

There Really is No Headline to Tie Together All this Randomness

October 14, 2009 · 5 comments

Well, it’s been a few days, so I have lots of random, miscellaneous bits and bobs to share.

On the top of the list, Wade turned five months old on Saturday. By my calculations it’s been 143 days, give or take a few, since I last slept through an entire night.

Now, Wade was eating more at one time, going longer in between meals, and sleeping longer at night and nap time as well. But then, all of a sudden, about two weeks ago he started eating smaller amounts every three hours again.

So I decided to whip up some of that fantastically bland rice cereal, and give Wade his first meal on Saturday, hoping it would fill him up and help him sleep.

I know these days doctors recommend holding off on solids until six months, ideally. And they say that cereal won’t help them sleep. I do, however, think it does help them stay full longer, and thus sleep longer. (Hey, doctors say teething doesn’t cause fever and irritability in babies either. What do they know?)  And, frankly, rice cereal hardly qualifies as solid or even as food for that matter. Besides, Wade seemed pretty eager to start eating. He’d watch us eat dinner, drooling and chewing on his little hands like he wanted some too.

You know, when David was a baby I did everything according to what the doctors and the books said. With Wade I’m a bit more relaxed. If we have another one, I just may end up letting he or she run naked and wild in the back yard all day.

All that to lead up to these adorable pictures.

firstbites1

firstbites2

firstbites3

Yes, I know Wade’s eyes are glowing. No, my baby has not been over taken by some evil force. I was just too lazy to edit out the red eye in Photoshop today.

Wade did seem to sleep better after I started the cereal, but he was still just kind of snacking on bottles far too frequently. Suddenly it dawned on me what the problem was. I switched out the stage 2 nipples (how many creepy search engine hits am I going to get from that word?) for stage 3, and he drank down six ounces in no time flat. He was just having to work too hard to eat. See, I’m a little slow, but I get it right eventually.

Speaking of getting things right, you may recall that I had a nasty allergic reaction a few weeks back. I thought it was oven cleaner that did it, but I was wrong. Saturday I discovered that it is the cheap, generic knock off of Pine-sol that I bought at Walmart. I started mopping my kitchen floor that morning, and about five minutes later I started itching.

And now you also know how infrequently my kitchen floor gets mopped these days.

This has nothing to do with anything, but do you know how difficult it is to try and explain Twitter to someone who has no idea what it is? Their eyes kind of glaze over, and I can see the, “Why?” in their expression. Oh, and have you heard about Google Wave? It’s really cool. It will revolutionize the way we use social media to communicate.

There, that’s me trying to sound smart. As if I know anything about social media. But Google Wave is neat. Check it out.

As for being full of crap, our septic tank is apparently also. Too full, so it’s getting pumped tomorrow. Yep. That’s the big excitement around here. I know you are jealous, and wish you had this life.

David, I am sure, will be fascinated by it all. Hopefully the smell will be enough to keep him in the house.

Well, I’m off to bed to get rested up for the big day tomorrow.

And because I’m nearing 800 words. The mark at which they claim readers decide a blog post is too long, and click away.

Honestly, I’m surprised you made it past the first 200.

{ 5 comments }

I’m Just Sayin’

October 8, 2009 · 2 comments

Moms should get sick days. Maybe they could put that in the health care reform bill.

That is all.

Thank you.

{ 2 comments }

Moonlighting

September 30, 2009 · 0 comments

Well, I thought of something really funny to write about earlier in the day, but now I can’t remember what it was. Maybe it wasn’t that funny after all. So if you want to read something funny, you can read my post The Naked Truth over at Mom Spark where I was moonlighting again yesterday.

{ 0 comments }

← Previous Entries