Thankful Thoughts from the Turkey-day Hater

24 Nov 2011 7 Comments

by Natalie in From My Heart Tags: , ,

I am probably the only person on earth that hates Thanksgiving. It has always been my least favorite holiday. Not because I am unthankful by any means, but because of what the holiday has morphed into – A day of overstuffing your face ‘til your pant button pops and you can’t keep your eyes open anymore.

I’ve never been a big eater, and I have this feeling deep down that Thanksgiving shouldn’t be all about the food.

Think about it. When people ask you about Thanksgiving, they normally ask you where you are going for dinner. Right? I bet very rarely do they ask you what you are thankful for.

The poor holiday has turned into a food-focused frenzy.

With that said, I would like to change my focus this year. Before I get to eat anything, I want to share with you a short list of random things that I am thankful for. I say short list because I couldn’t possibly ever think of everything to include because I am thankful for more things than I realize. I think we all are. If you get a chance today, let me know something you are thankful for!

Here it goes:

1.    Life – everyday I have here on earth is a miracle
2.    My husband – who puts up with more crap from me than he should
3.    My babies – the two I have on earth and the one waiting for me in heaven
4.    My mom – I can’t make it through a normal day without talking to her at least once
5.    My religion and my Savior who made it possible for me to be with my family forever – all of them
6.    My grandparents  – they are the most selfless people I will ever meet
7.    My entire family – brother, sisters, mom, dad, aunts, uncles, etc.
8.    Food on my table – even if sometimes dinner is just corn dogs and french fries
9.    Heat in my home – and a new furnace
10.   Money in my bank – even if it’s only $5 some days
11.    My college education
12.   My awesome work-at-home job
13.   A home to call my own
14.   A van that I love
15.   Clothes on my and my family’s back
16.   Health and energy
17.   Love – including hugs, kisses and cuddling
18.   Music – the scream-your-heart-out-in-the-car kind
19.   Books that are so good I can’t put them down
20.  Movies that make me laugh, cry or both
21.   Flowers and weeds
22.  Ice cream
23.  French fries
24.  Blankets
25.  Sunshine
26.  Friends
27.  Notebooks
28.  Birthdays
29.  The internet
30.  Captain Hook

Losing Neverland

17 Nov 2011 8 Comments

by Natalie in Parenting Battles

It’s been two and a half weeks since Halloween yet my 3-year-old is still living in Neverland. I can’t for the life of me get the kid to shed his Captain Hook costume.

Don’t get me wrong. I love his costume and I think he looks really cute in it, but it’s getting a little old.

I made the costume in the middle of October and he immediately attached to it – wearing it all day, everyday. It was really fun to go shopping with him right before Halloween. People thought he was so cute and would dote over him. We got a lot of stares and smiles.

Nearly one month later, we are still getting a lot of stares and not so many smiles. I bet people think I am totally crazy letting my child walk around as a Disney character.

I have a couple of problems with him always wanting to wear his costume.

First of all, he constantly wants to be someone else. When he has his costume on, he marches around the house with a scowl as he sings the theme song to “Hook.” He won’t play anything with me or anyone else. He’s too far into character. Besides, it’s too hard to play with Play-doh, Legos, Tinker Toys, animals, etc. when you have a hook in one hand and a sword in the other.

Second, when he wants to be Hook, he wants to be Hook. I can’t convince him to put just part of his costume on, he has to put on the hat, wig, shirt, collar, jacket, pants, shoes, hook and sword. Oh, and I have to draw a curly eye-liner mustache above his upper lip.

I’m glad we have gotten our money’s worth out of the costume, but I want to put part, if not all, of it away.

Lastly, the costume has taken over his life. I don’t know where to draw the line between his make believe and reality. Who am I to crush his imagination and tell him he can’t play pretend anymore? When do I tell him he has to be my son and not Hook? I’m getting worried that he constantly wants to be someone else.

On Tuesday I told him he couldn’t be Hook because I wanted him to play with me and he doesn’t play with me when he’s Hook. His response? He told me he’d give me a $100 if I let him wear his costume.

Nice.

What should I do to ease our transition away from Halloween? What do you do for your children? I love my children and I want them to be innocent, creative and imaginative, but I don’t want my son to still be wearing his costume on Christmas.

Suck My Spit

10 Nov 2011 6 Comments

by Natalie in What's a mom to do?

Am I the only one who thinks it is just plain wrong for parents to purposely infect their children with chicken pox?

I stumbled across an article Monday about parents who are too fearful to vaccinate their kids against the disease so they are using Facebook to get in touch with other parents whose children are contagious, asking the parents for spit or other items from their infected children. Then they use the items to expose their children.

So these parents don’t want to give their children a shot that will produce minimal effects on their little ones, but they are willing to accept a spit-laden chicken pox-infested package in the mail in order to expose their child to the disease?

Have these parents had chicken pox? It’s a miserable disease. When I had it I laid around on the couch for days in a Hawaiian moo moo dousing my skin with soothing anti-itch lotion. I couldn’t help scratching, so my bumps turned into scab-topped sores. It was horrible.

I can’t imagine subjecting my children to that.

According to the article I read, one of the Facebook posts from Nashville was selling pox-infested suckers, spit and Q-tips for $50. Seriously? How low can you go? You are willing to sell your child’s germs?

I’ve heard of parents having “pox parties” where they expose their children face-to-face with other chicken pox-infected kids. The pox parties are bad enough. It’s extremely unsettling that they are willing to accept random specimens from strangers in order to make their kids experience the disease.

Not to mention the fact that it is a federal crime to send diseases or viruses across state lines.

I know some people are nervous about vaccinations. But recent reports dispute the arguments that childhood vaccinations have been linked to autism. I even heard a news story lately that the researcher who came out with early discoveries linking vaccinations to autism falsified his information.

I can’t imagine anything worse than knowing I made my child sick by buying someone else’s disease. Come on people.

Here’s a link to the article I read this week about sharing chicken pox germs:

* Vaccine-wary parents warned against sending ‘chicken pox lollipops’ through the mail

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/vaccine-wary-parents-warned-sending-chicken-pox-lollipops-mail-article-1.973738

Here’s a link to an article about research regarding vaccinations and autism:

* Medical journal: Study linking autism, vaccines is ‘elaborate fraud’

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/06/autism.vaccines/index.html

My Hate of Grocery Shopping

03 Nov 2011 2 Comments

by Natalie in Don't ever take your kids..., Failed Housewife, Parenting Battles, What's a mom to do?

If I didn’t have to eat to live, I would never go grocery shopping.

The grocery store and I do not mix. Add children to the equation and the combination is lethal. Normally I come home and want to cry, take a nap or start ordering all of my food from Schwans.

No matter how much I plan and how many coupons I clip, our trip always takes twice as long as I want it to and I spend twice as much as I planned.

I don’t know what it is about buying food for our family, but it brings out the worst in my boys and me.

Heaven help me if I have to go to a store with car carts. It never fails that the seatbelts have been broken off so my kids can climb out of the car’s doors freely. Usually they try to make a break for it while I’m rolling them quickly and I nearly run over one of their arms.

Then there’s shopping with the extended double-seated carts.  I have a serious love-hate relationship with those things.

One week I drove around the entire parking lot looking for an extended double-seated grocery cart.  I normally start our grocery trips hunting up and down the aisles looking for them. Because when we don’t have them, half of my food ends up smashed or broken as the boys fight while riding in the back of the cart. And I refuse to let them walk beside me.

Our favorite grocery store parks the giant haulers outside, which I think is totally stupid. Year round it causes a problem.

In the winter the door greeters have to help me push inches of snow off of the cart’s seats, then they get upset that the snow dripped inside the store. In the summer the seats are roasting hot and my boys don’t want to go anywhere near them.

Can’t they just park them inside?

This summer after hunting down a cart then draping it with my reusable shopping bags to keep it from burning my little boys’ bums, I pushed it on inside. Only to be totally floored when the door greeter cautioned me to not let my kids fall off of it.  Seriously?

I’m sorry that I improvised making a buffer between my boys’ bottoms and the blistering-hot plastic. Oh, and I didn’t want to strap scalding-hot seat belts across their poor little tummies in order to secure them in tightly. Rest assured door greeter man, their safety is my prime concern.

Maybe if you didn’t park the carts outside they wouldn’t be so hot and I wouldn’t worry about their under thighs blistering on contact.

All of this before we even buy a thing.

Sometimes while shopping my boys get what I call “grabby hands.” They stick their hands straight out from the cart grabbing and hitting everything they come in contact with on the shelves. That’s especially fun while rolling down the canned-food aisle.

Other times it’s a constant, “he hit me”/ “he pinched me” whine-a-thon. Yet another reason why I both love and hate the giant double-seated carts. I guess the urge to pinch, hit or bite your brother amplifies tremendously when you are in close proximity. Riding side-by-side, they just can’t help it.

I started buying a $2 cup of popcorn chicken for them to share while we shopped so they could keep their minds and fingers off of each other. That worked out well for a while. Until it got to the point where they started fighting over that too.

Every once and a while, my children surprise me by actually behaving when we stroll through the store. Then all heck breaks loose as we hit the checkout line. They must sense that freedom is near and all of their pent-up energy bursts through.

I have a particularly fond memory of my oldest kicking, hitting and biting me while we were checking out one day. I wouldn’t let him have a toy at the end of our trip and so he was taking his wrath out on me. I’ll never forget the older lady in line behind me. She helped me strap his tantrum-throwing body back in the cart so he couldn’t get to me to hurt me.

All she could say was, “I promise you it gets better.”

What am I supposed to do when they throw fits like that at the finish line? I’m not about to abandon a chuck-full cart by the side of the cash register and go home empty-handed.

I am sure it would be less stressful to shop alone. But I don’t always have the luxury or energy to go in the evenings or on the weekend.

Ironically, sometimes I think that it will be faster if I go shopping alone. Not true. I have been able to go alone a few times and it has taken me much longer. I guess something about pushing two little boys who are beating the crap out of each other makes you bust a move through the store and grab only the necessities. When I go by myself I pause to window shop. I get distracted. And I take twice as long.

But I can’t blame them for all of my grocery store blunders. I have problems when I am by myself too.

One night before their birthdays I went shopping by myself to get groceries and one of their presents – spin-brush toothbrushes.  Early on in my trip I dropped one of the stupid brushes on the ground and it started spinning. It spun and vibrated in my cart for more than an hour while I did my shopping. I’m sure the other customers walking around the store at 10 p.m. wondered what on earth the humming sound was coming from underneath my purse.

It seems as if I can’t win. And yet I can’t very well let me and my family starve because of a little chaotic grocery shopping.

Every once and a while shopping, I run into a mother just like me. She’s rushing through the store pushing a cart that is bursting at the seams and chastising her fighting, unruly children as her coupons and list fall to the floor. I have to fight the urge to give her a hug or a piece of candy. She has done something for me I can never repay. She has made me feel normal.

Luckily I only go shopping every two weeks. That way I have 14 days to forget about the pain. I am hoping that lady at the checkout stand is right. That it really does get better. But for now, I’m not holding my breath.