Orange County Moms Blog

The Trauma of Childhood Sports

We had a little crisis this week. My five-year-old son Jafta has been begging to attend a basketball camp for the past three months, and I signed him up for one through our city for preschool-aged kids. All summer, he's been asking about it and counting down to when it would start. It was supposed to start Monday. On Saturday, I got a call telling me it had been canceled.

I found myself with two options:
1) completely crush my son and have him mope about it endlessly until the next camp starts IN OCTOBER
2) lie omit information about his age and enroll him in a camp running this week for kids age 6-8

Which one do you think I did?

Growing up in a family that didn't really do sports, I am having a long and rocky learning curve as I navigate the role of "sports mom". I would like to pretend that it's just a new cultural experience for me, but the reality is that athletics have always brought up deep insecurities for me. And as any parent knows, having a child basically means watching your own fears and insecurities walk around outside your body.

My Babies are Growing Up!

Being a Mom of two boys is a never-ending source of entertainment.  Ten years ago no one had heard of iPods, iPads, iPhones or other silly things, but now those words are common.   

We were out and about running errands in the car when I heard my oldest began to tell my youngest a joke:

Hey Kyle?

What?

How do you spell iCup?

It only took him a minute to start spelling out i...C...u...p... (Are you laughing yet?)

The car was suddenly full of laughter.  I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes.  Of course the same joke was re-told about 50 more times.  Yes, including to the couple in line behind us while waiting for Space Mountain at Disneyland last week.

My life has really changed being a mother of not just one, but two active boys.  No butterflies, Barbie's or pink anything around our house.  Instead it's roller coasters, Lego's and video games.  My boys have brought out the adventurous side in me and I love it.  But, my little babies aren't babies anymore and it is becoming harder to ignore every day. 

Gun Control (the mom you want to be, and the mom you are)

I spend a lot of time pondering the disparity betweenthe mom I though I would be, and the mom I am. I was such a good mom before having kids. I had dreams of my children playing with quaint wooden toys, learning piano at a young age, and having picnics in meadows (eating only organic food, of course). Somehow my reality of motherhood involved a lot more plastic, McDonalds, and trips to Target than I ever imagined. That meadow picnic? Yeah, that's never happened.

Also in my dreams of motherhood, our home would be free of toys that represent weapons. My oldest was a boy - but I imagined that somehow, with careful guidance, I could free him from the gender expectations that give way to a desire for violent objects. Unfortunately, no one warned me that a predilection for destruction seems to be coded in the DNA. Despite providing my son Jafta with a playroom full of peaceful, docile toys, he seems to be drawn only to things that produce explosions, loud noises, or (best yet), wounds of the flesh. He was begging for a sword by the time he could talk. Once he got wind of this light-saber business, everything in the house (paper towel roll, umbrella, drumstick) was brandished as a light-saber. And now, despite the fact that he's never seen a movie much darker than Stuart Little, he is totally and utterly obsessed with guns. 

WARNING: Hormones at Play!

Why is it that pregnancy just doesn't seem to bring the best out of women? Between weight gain, a huge belly, skin issues, tears over Hallmark commercials and the ending of Disney movies, and excess perspiration we also get to deal with raging hormones worse than what we experienced in our teenage years. Ah, the joys of growing a child!

I have to admit that I'm at the point in my pregnancy where for the most part I feel as if I'm functioning rather normal (as long as I get some sleep at night). But there are certain things that really set me off. Certain things that have an automatic Panic Button deployment that I feel so out of control on.

How do I explain this to people?

I'm not normally too crazy. But let's face it, I do get a little nutty at times- which I attribute more to my lifestyle of wearing far too many hats, and my lack of ability to say "no" to taking on far too much. Recently there was an incident when a certain person in my life gave me information that just pushed me over the edge. I essentially took the information to be perceived as pressure on me, and then put undue pressure on other people. I panicked. A lot.

Vlog: Moms, kids and pets

A simple Pineapple Martini toast to all the moms who give their kids the gift of pets. Whatever the pet, whatever the size, whatever the mess. 

The house is clean but my conscience isn't

I’m sitting in a clean house. Not just tidy. Not wiped down. Full on scrubbed-floor-to-ceiling - CLEAN! Am I exhausted and worn out from 6 hours of nitty gritty work? NOPE! I was enjoying a picnic at the park with the kiddos. When I came home my house was sparkly with a lemon fresh scent. Lacking the magic to wiggle my nose and start washcloths and Comet scrubbing, I had pulled out my checkbook and called a housekeeper. 

I broached the “housekeeper” topic with my husband after a long day of cleaning. I had done a complete scrub-down of all the bathrooms and the kitchen, only to have the kiddos tear apart their room, the living room and dining room. Talk about counterproductive! Not to mention dinner was In-N-Out again (yummy!) and the kiddos were given raisins and M&Ms for lunch. I was about 30 weeks pregnant at the time, meaning, bending over and standing up were quickly becoming daunting tasks of their own! Wisely, he OK-ed a housekeeper once a month and subsequently never looked more attractive to me! Now, at 36 weeks along (and counting) I’m hoping we can continue the housekeeper for a few months after the baby.

So why do I feel guilty?? Having a housekeeper once a month is only 12 days out of 365 I have help, my belly hinders every movement (including breathing), I have a preschooler and toddler who require my attention, I run my own business, it’s not that pricey and having the house cleaned really saves me hours of time. Plus cleaning totally sucks!

Making sense of autism (when there's no sense to be made)

Order. You dream of it.   Limbs would be traded for it, and  life span would be bartered  if it could be known with any permanence. In the last few years, learning to stop striving for it has been a life lesson.  Because life is ever-changing, and unpredictable. Like dominoes falling haphazardly, circumstances cannot be controlled. 

Order is desired, but rarely found. Ducks do not walk in a row. Life is a mystery, and why becomes even more confusing.  Neuroses are a puzzle. Your need to make lists, carry out plans, and decide fates is strong. The need to organize the way things will be is overwhelming.  Self-constructed boxes line up neatly on the shelf, thank you. Yes, add more dominoes, if necessary. The need for knowledge, something to make sense of the pile of blocks you have been given..necessary.

Autism Spectrum Disorder is every day.  And that is what it is: DISORDER. It doesn’t live in boxes.  Boxes are created, and nothing fits in them.  And the things that do fit, never stay in the boxes for long.   The quirks of children; the faces of autism.  Those qualities that must be accepted, or die trying. A young daughter cannot play without singing. The noise level is constant. The only time she is quiet is when cuddling her or when she is asleep.  A son is constant in his need to discuss whatever his favorite subject is at the moment. Once you point it out to him, he can stop, but he will talk about it again, sooner rather than later. And then apologizes for forgetting the subject was done. If the phone rings, do not ask the oldest to answer it.  She can’t do the phone.  It’s a thing. If pushed, she will freeze and run from the room.  Tears may follow. Meltdowns are imminent.   Quirks.  They all have them.  Learning that no matter how much you want it changed it is what it is.

What is the value of a dollar anyway?

It was one of those moments as a mom that I found myself wondering if this is one of those battles I needed to pick.

I had trusted the boys to take $5 in cash to reload their lunch accounts that morning, something I had never let them do on their own before.  I was in a rush that morning and didn't have time to go by the school office myself and the boys reassured me it wasn't a problem.  I handed them each a $5 bill and watched as they tucked them deep in to their pockets.  As I dropped them off at the gate I reminded them to head straight to the office to put the money on their accounts.  "Yes, Mom, we know, we know" was repeated back to me over and over again. 

My mother's intuition was going off like no other.  I knew this wasn't going to go smoothly.

Me, and My Projects

I have days where (I feel) that I am failing miserably at being a mother. Like last weekend, for instance. A simple Sunday outing turned in to my youngest crying the entire time and my eldest asking me why our day was being ruined by him. There was nothing I could do really to make the day better. Well, except go home and put my little one down for a nap.

But it seems that whenever I have these epic failure days I turn to projects to redeem myself. Can't succeed at parenthood? Well, I can certainly succeed at completing a project!

I have a long track record of this. When I was having trouble coping with the fact that my eldest had a speech delay and was being evaluated for therapy benefits, I turned to scrap booking. When I was feeling frustrated with my tennis game last summer, I turned to painting my master bedroom a few different colors before settling on a new color! If I'm frustrated with my career, I'll make new pillows for the couch! 

The one where I get schooled..again

Homeschooling can be a lot of fun. What? Stop laughing, no really. I mean, the times I lie awake at night worried that my son can't do Algebra and my daughter can't read well enough are just a million laughs. The stress and responsibility I feel when it seems the kids cannot function academically, socially or behaviorally the way I believe they should, well, it makes me want to drink. And I am not talking about Tang or Milk here, either. Send Mama a martini!

Often, though, when I feel like I have reached my limit…when I think I am doing my children a great disservice by schooling them at home and that they would be better off in a public school setting, with all of its weaknesses and the lack of placement for higher-functioning autism/Asperger's? Well,the kids go and make cognitive leaps, seemingly overnight. Almost like they have to prove me wrong. They show me that it isn't that bad, and that it always gets better. Or, you drink. Something the kids didn't show me. And just an aside, I talk about drinking, but do very little of it. It doesn't make a very good coping mechanism, to be honest. Karate works better. And yoga. And screaming. In the car, with the windows up. By myself. I tried it once with the kids in the car, and they flipped out. Thought I grew two heads. Note to self: save the theatrics for alone time, mama!