LA Moms Blog

Christmas Is Coming And I Am Getting Fat

I don't know about the goose that is suppose to be getting fat with Christmas, but I'm sure I'm out pacing it. Who was the genius who put Thanksgiving and Christmas so close together. Arghh.. and Halloween. Really, what chance do I have. (note: I'm writing this while eating caramel popcorn)

It's starts at the end of October with all those tiny Snickers. Then in November, Thanksgiving and it's unrelenting pies. Finally we come to Christmas which has both pies and tiny snickers, not to mention fudge. I feel like all I do from the end of October till the New Year is put things in my mouth that have next to no nutritional value. I try to rationalize my choices, but really, pecan pie for breakfast, there's just no excuse.

Schedule a C-Section

Five years ago when I was pregnant with my daughter I never dreamed I would one day be advising other women to schedule a C-section rather than go through with a natural labor. But I am.

When I was pregnant I studied the Bradley Method of delivery(a natural birth technique). I was adamant that I would have no drugs, and my child would have no drugs, and I would nurse, and it would all go smoothly. NOT!

I did not go into to labor until close to my 42 week of pregnancy, going 2 weeks past my due date. But I believed strongly that when the baby was ready I would go into labor. Not picking a green apple my Bradley teacher called it. Of course, my doctors were encouraging me to induce. But I refused thinking that it would start me down a road to a c-section. Unfortunately, by the time I did go into labor my daughter had grown so big it was impossible to deliver her, that and the fact that she had lashed herself to the figurative mast with her umbilical cord.

Kindergarten Confidential

I've been proven wrong so many times in my parenting career that it doesn't even surprise me anymore. This was most recently exemplified on our first day of kindergarten last week. I'd been saying for weeks how I didn't think it would be a rough transition for my daughter and I and I was half right. My daughter has always been pretty mellow with change. She basically weened herself at about one, basically potty trained herself around two and a half, and gave up the pacifier with little to no fuss. I'll stop there before you start pelting me with rocks and garbage for having it too easy. My point is that she was fine the first day of kindergarten and pretty much every day since.

The problem has been me. Sadly I am not as good with change as my daughter. I had thought that since my daughter had been in day care three days a week since just before she was two, it wouldn't be a problem for me to just be dropping her off five day a week at kindergarten. Wrong! I had to really fight back the tears the first day and finally just left before I lost control.

What I didn't realize going in was the sadness, at least for me, about kindergarten isn't about the dropping off for more days or longer days. The sadness is about your baby becoming a separate person who has their own day, full of experiences, thoughts, and interaction that you can not control or even fully know about. From this point on I will be less and less involved in my daughter's life, and it scares the (pardon me) CRAP out of me.

Lessons Not Learned

So many of the things I try to teach my daughter, I realize I have yet to master myself. I think many of us expect more of our children then we do of the adults in our lives, including ourselves. While I feel pretty confident about my ability to refrain from biting and hitting, at least most days, there are other areas where I am less than proficient. Sharing, temper, and exclusion come to mind.

I am forever insisting that my daughter share things with others. Everything from her toys, food, and even clothing. If I’m going to be truthful I will have to admit, that I am not a great sharer. I don’t like other people to wear my clothes, I’ll let them borrow jackets but that‘s the limit to my comfort zone. If you are one of my sisters or a very close friend I’ll do it. But I won’t like it. I don’t mind sharing food so much but I don’t like people to drink out of my glass, including my own mother. I think I’m turning into a germaphobe in my old age. I don’t have that many toys, but I wouldn’t test the theory out by trying to borrow my laptop or iPhone, like my daughter some things are just “too special”.

Controlling my temper is another thing, as my own mother, I‘d be riding me about. Too often I see parents tell their children it isn’t ok to get angry. Now come on, most of us can’t manage a minor road trip without losing our temper. Let alone dealing with the all day malay of preschool.  I would completely lose it, if I wasn’t allowed to get angry. Which probably explains a lot of the flip outs I see in my home. You know the one where your kid is inconsolable, incoherent, and irrational all at the same time?

SAHM, WAHM, Working Mom????

Some moms work outside the house, some moms work at home (WAHM), and some moms are stay at home moms (SAHM). Which kind are you? I could never choose. I started off staying home during the week and working on the weekends and at night. I’m a massage therapist, so I could make that work. Does that mean I was a working outside the home mom or a stay at home mom, even if I wasn’t 9-5 Monday through Friday?? Yeah, I don’t know either.

After a few years I started blogging. Blogging, I do all from home, whenever I can fit it in. I still do massage, but two days during the week now, and then I’m still home with my daughter the other three week days. What does this make me? I feel like I’m all three. I wonder if I should start a mommy war with myself?

Lice

Has this happened to you? You send your sweet little angel off to school one morning, hair flying in the breeze. Only to have them return that afternoon with a note that someone else’s sweet little angel has lice and now the whole school is on full tactical alert. Our school just survived another round of lice, and I have got to tell you I didn’t enjoy it. We didn’t even get it but all the same it is positively draining.

As soon as you get the note you start itching all over. Just writing about it now is making me itch. You start by checking your kid’s hair. And even though I came up with nothing I stripped her bed and washed all the towels in really hot water and ammonia. Just to be on the safe side I got the Tea tree shampoo, that wards off the little vermin.  After that I just keep checking the kid’s hair, over and over and over again. You know the kid loves that.

Circus Fun VS. Animal Rights

A few weeks ago I was invited to a press day for the Ringling Brothers Circus. When I wrote a little blog about it, I got several responses that were adamantly anti circus. They all felt the animals were mistreated and that by attending I was condoning that. I will say it made me remember my own feelings about caged animals in my youth.

When I was a kid you couldn’t drag me to the circus or the zoo. I hated to see the animals in cages. I literally would cry and cry until no one could stand it any longer and they’d take me home. Finally my parents got the message and stopped taking me all together. Don’t I sound like a pleasure...Anyway, knowing this you might be surprised to find out that I take my daughter to the zoo all the time, and am preparing to take her to the circus for the first time in the next few weeks.

Drama Girls

I remember as a child my best friend getting really mad at me for cheering for her in a hand ball game. Her reasoning was that I thought she couldn’t win unless I cheered for her.  Even then I thought it was crazy. But I talked her down and convinced her that I was just being supportive, I think it took a few days to completely convince her. The reason I bring this up is that I now have a daughter and realize, some little girls are crazy!! I mean little boys can be crazy too, but they’re more of a, destroy your property variety, while the girls go straight for the emotional drama.

My daughter is five now and we’ve spent many years dealing with the “she can’t play with us” loveliness that is part of the playground experience. My daughter has more often been the one left out but I’ve seen her pull this stunt too. All I can say is what is the deal??? Why is this dramatic behavior so ingrained in girl DNA. In my experience every class, park, playdate, birthday party, has a “Queen Bee” stirring up trouble. 

Sometimes it is just creating drama over nothing like my little hand ball friend, and other times it’s the exclusion of a playmate. Strangely, if by some minor miracle you find yourself without a Queen bee, the girls seem to try their best to fake the same scenarios. They aren’t anywhere near as good at it as the naturals, but they still give it a shot. I try to break it up but it’s pretty futile. Also I know I have 13 more years of it. So really what’s a mom to do?

Television and Violence

All my life I’ve heard about how the violence on television is desensitizing us to it. That after watching endless Tom and Jerry cartoons, as children; we’re all going to think that hitting someone over the head with a frying pan is an acceptable form of conflict resolution. I know I’ve seen more than my share of violence. Even now, every week I watch multiple shows that depict the most graphic of violence. For example, Medium, this is a great show about a psychic who helps solve murders but along the way we get to see every grisly detail. Last week, they showed the image of a murdered girl laying in a room full of blood, disemboweled with her eyes removed, about three times in one episode. Nice, right.

Not to isolate Medium, I also watch, The Closer, about a crime scene investigator, VERY blood. I don’t even sit down for the CSIs or any of the Law and Orders,  if I did I’m sure I could spend every evening viewing all manner of violent acts against all walks of life, which brings me to my point.  I don’t think filmed violence is desensitizing us at all, I think it’s making us hypersensitive.

What Constitutes Child Endangerment?

I'm really at a loss. What constitutes child endangerment these days? It seems like with every generation children have less and less freedom. You'd think they'd have some sort of uprising. When my mother was a child (6-10 years old), she and her sister walked at least two miles to the movie theatre on weekends and spent the better part of the day there alone and then they walked home. All for a quarter she would tell you. Now apparently that would get you brought up on child endangerment charges. If the Women in Scarsdale who kicked her bickering children out of the car, to walk home, is anything to go by.

When I was a child, not only was I sent to the store to pick up groceries, but I was also often left home alone with my sister after school, in elementary school. If someone told me they were doing this today, I would seriously question they're judgment. But really we were perfectly fine. Why are we all so panicked about children on their own now. Is the world really that much more dangerous? If anything parents are more accessible with cell phones. I'm just wondering who makes the rules?