Married with Kids
ahhh, being married is awesome. being married with kids, strenuous on the marriage, but still awesome
No-Tell Motel to the Rescue
Midnight bottle and diaper changes killing your mood?
Non-sound proofed doors making it hard to”live in the moment”?
No where to unwind without teens arguing or toddlers pounding their baby sisters?
I know. Boy, do I know. With 4 kids it’s hard to find the time to not-be-mom and not-be-dad. To just be a woman and her man spending quality time together.
After Damian, my third child, my husband’s first, was born, we went weeks without “communing with nature”. Not that we physically couldn’t. We were just too tired. And when we weren’t tired, there was a bottle to make, a diaper to change, a colicky baby to soothe. Not to mention there were two tweens who also needed quality time with us in the face of new “competition” in the house.
But at some point, everyone gets tucked away, right? Time for that communing business, right? wrong. Time to take shifts. Hubby would stand guard the first half of the night, listening for Damian, while I tried to grab what sleep I could before my shift started at 2am. At which time, I would be the one to get up for Damian and hubby would sleep.
After 3 months of this, the crankiness started. Not Damian being cranky. Hubby and I being cranky, with each other. But fear for me not, it was only crankiness. Hubby and I have only had one major argument since we’ve been married and it ended in tears, each of us crying for the other. We’re not the loud fighting type. When he’s pissed he doesn’t talk to me until it’s built up and then he says in very few curt sentences what his issue is and tells me to stop. *snort* When I’m pissed, I tell him as it is and wait for him to apologize. Eh, it works for us. And it only happens occasionally. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that we’re the perfect couple, I just know when to pick my battles and when to let stuff slide. He knows when to let me have my way and when to put his foot down.
Secret Mommy-hood Confession Saturday
I miss sharing me here so I figured I join in on the fun:
*What sacrifices have you made since becoming a parent?
Ha! That list is so bloody long…
And it’s not even since becoming a parent, it’s since becoming a parent of toddlers AGAIN.
When the teens were toddlers, I was in my early 20s and really had no life outside of them and work. Probably cause I had no money. ha!
As the girls got older and I became the smancy fancy color guru, things changed.
I had a wicked salary.
I had GNOs.
Hubby and I would head out to Josie’s Pub on Waverly place to shoot pool and drink.
I got my nails done.
I got my eyebrows done.
I got my hair done twice a fugging week.
I shopped for me and my girls from hardcover books at B&N to at least one new outfit for me once a month.
I had a bloody iPhone.
Now I’m in my 30s.
I’ve got two more toddlers now.
I’ve got no bloody time to do anything alone.
I’m lucky I had two pedicures last summer.
Don’t you dare ask about the caterpillars above my eyes.I may have to start feeding them.
Hairdresser? What the hell is that? Don’t remember.
I don’t know when the hell I last had a GNO, had to be before the kids were born.
Nights out with hubby? Big bloody laugh. That’s never gonna happen for at least the next 4 years.
Also, I haven’t seen the inside of a barnes and noble in ages.
*How do you sneak away when you just want to take a shower by yourself?
There is Hope
This is not a sponsored post. I am sharing this experience because lately I’ve found many of my favorite bloggers are really down in the dumps and I want to share that I made it through a very bleak time in my life. There is hope. Warning, it’s bloody long.
Life is sometimes a struggle. Life is always a learning experience. Life is filled with changes.
I remember when I was younger I use to say, “Life sucks and then you die”. Though this line speaks volumes about my childhood, I was in my teens, what the hell did I know of life back then?
After having my first two children, my line changed. It became, “Life is what you make it”. Those girls were a blessing. They gave me hope, they gave me goals, they gave me a sense of responsibility and the strength to push forward through all the crud in life and make something of myself. I went from coasting along and blaming life for my circumstances to taking action and making my life (and theirs) my responsibility.
In October of 2001 my life went to crap. In short, my marriage ended, my children were without a father, I lost my job and I just didn’t know how to carry on. But this was necessary. It was the closing of a chapter in my life. The long of it can be found in my Winds of Change post. I recommend reading it if you’re feeling like you’re at the bottom of the sea and the surface seems too far to reach.
Loving Your Bully
Bullying in the Raw
Recently Christal at So Many Ways has posted a handful of heartbreaking posts about bullying. Bullying is a subject she’s living with right now through her teen and it’s an issue that she had to deal with as a child too. Her posts are heartbreaking and honest and have made me cry multiple times.
I know that pain of being bullied. I went through it myself. After Christal’s recent mention of an article she’d come across where someone who’d been bullied was interviewed, and after my rant on her blog in the comments section, I decided I wanted to help and write a post to share my experience. I wanted to add links to other posts too, to share the experience of others. I did find a lot of posts. There were so many that were as authentic and raw as Christal’s. But I learned something else when looking for these posts.
Bullying is a hot topic. Everyone wants to write a piece on it when it’s trending. I’ve come across a few fluff articles (which included input from the “experts” in child psychology) and a handful of posts that mention something along the lines of the bully needing to be loved by the victim, to show the bully what “love” and “friendship” is. I’m not going to list those links.
Why?
Cause this crap about loving your bully is such BS that there’s no way in hell I’m going to link my site to those stupid posts.
You hear me stupid people trying to write stupid fluff with a spin on it because it’s a trending topic and you want to be the disagreeable one so people will visit and comment even if they’re insulting your dumb ass?
You can kiss my bloody arse cause i’m not suggesting anyone read your dribble.
Instead, I’m going to educate you on what being bullied feels like. See the picture? See how those little crabs are surrounded by those big lobsters? There’s an example right there.
Need another example? Being bullied makes you feel unworthy. Especially when you’re being insulted and told how worthless you are.
Oh! Wait! How about we make a list?
- Being bullied makes you feel unworthy.
- Being bullied damages your self esteem.
- Being bullied makes you afraid to be around people, cause “hey, there’s got to be something broken about me for me to be bullied, so everyone’s going to want to fix it”. Especially using their cruel words, the palm of their hand or/many-times-And the tip of their boot.
- Being bullied causes you to be ashamed of things about yourself that you were once proud of, your intelligence, your smile, your silly laugh . . .
- Being bullied removes your uniqueness and instead makes you “different”.
- Being bullied, tortures you every minute of everyday, even in your sleep when you should be safe, tucked away in your home.
- Being bullied makes you feel like you’re “too smart for you’re own good” and causes you to dim your brightness so you’ll be overlooked.
- Being bullied makes you wish you were invisible.
- Being bully HURTS.
Get it? I hope so. If not, if it sounds stupid coming from an adult, check out these teens at Lizz Speaks.
Now, let’s move on to the topic that twisted what I originally planned to write.
Has your Tween/Teen been sexting?
The Skinny Scoop has this question posted: If you have NOT talked to your 11-18 yr. old about sexting yet, is it because: . . .
I was surprised to see that there are so many parents, who like me, are stupid. Really. We’re stupid. I too, believed that it wasn’t on my child’s radar and that she was just too young. She just turned 13, damnit. Like a month ago. She hasn’t even entered “red tent” phase. Not to mention, Sabrina is trustworthy, sensible, has respect for herself, yada, yada, yada.
Boy, am I bloody stupid. Talk about a #ParentFail.
Sabrina uses AIM, I know this. I’ve sat there and read over her shoulder the silly teasing her and her girlfriends do, all girls that i know, the homework helping, the “i’m bored” messages. I have no problem with this. Would I rather she not use AIM and just have her friends over? Yes. But, I’m not the only parent in this equation. So Sabrina uses AIM to socialize with her classmates. She knows to only use it TO SOCIALIZE WITH CLASSMATES. All kids her age. Don’t accept requests from people you don’t know, even if they’re friends of friends.
Sabrina just got a mobile phone for her 13th birthday. She had one before, but when I lost my job, I cancelled all phones. This became a dilemma because when Sabrina was running late, I’d stress out. So we got her a phone.
It’s a MetroPCS phone. You know, no contracts, unlimited calls and texting. But Sabrina’s friends use AIM and that’s not an option with her phone. So when hubby bought me my new iTouch I gave Sabrina my old iPhone. I didn’t want her socializing on her laptop when she should be doing homework. Seventh grade is hard. It’s also the most stressful in Junior High because it’s your child’s 7th grade gpa and state test scores that the High Schools look at when deciding whether to accept your application for 9th grade acceptance. Yes, it would make more sense if they looked at 8th grade results, but NYC is slow and those results haven’t been ready in time for years.
So I gave Sabrina the iPhone, to socialize when she was just hanging around, when homework was over. One day I ask her to let me borrow it. My iTouch battery was dead and I wanted to check the weather. Sabrina signs out of AIM. I stand there, iPhone in hand, and all of a sudden the thing starts to vibrate. Messages were coming in through AIM. Messages from a boy. So I look through their conversation.
Boy have I been stupid.
Sabrina and I had a very very long talk afterward.
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