I just got back from a conference this past weekend. It was called Hearts at Home. A conference for Moms! A fellow homeschool mom asked a close knit group of us if we wanted to go and we all said YES! We signed up this summer so waiting for November felt like a lifetime. It was so worth the wait.
The conference was nothing short of perfection! We laughed. We cried. We laughed until we cried. I ruined my contacts on the first day! I didn’t bring my contact solution. Thank goodness for my contact wearing friend who brought an entire big bottle of contact solution and brought it to the conference with her. She had been to one of these before and knew all about the ruining of contacts from crying! Next time, if there is a next time, I will be wearing my glasses.
So I left Friday afternoon with a whoo-hooo lets go ladies! A giddiness in my step! We were free mommas! We could be Lynn, Jenn, Rebecca & Wendi! We could finish our thoughts and conversations without an interruption of so-and-so hit me!
We get to the conference, we get our goodie bags, and we find our seats. Open up our goodie bags and there is a package of kleenex in our bag. Huh? What? Why do we need kleenex? Oh and chocolate!! Good chocolate too!
They start the conference with a video showing little kids at a park playing on the swing. CRYING!!! Why in the world does this make me cry? I now feel like a horrible mom for being at this conference and not with my kids. I now feel like a horrible mom because I don’t take my kids to the park enough. It has only been three hours and I miss my kids terribly.
Then they sing a hilarious song about Moms and I am laughing one minute and crying the next.
Anyway, this crying and laughing goes on and on. I took some great classes. One of them was finding my mothering style. I am an introvert-innie-structured momma! Which means I am refueled by being alone, I have well organized color-coded calendars, and I can’t break away from color-coded calendars.
You know what? I was not like that until I had kids. I couldn’t stand to be alone. I wanted that group of people. I was still very organized and geeky about my calendar but I was spontaneous and I could totally break away from my calendar.
Something happened when I had all these kids. And I became crazy structured and to-do list centered.
Each class drilled into me – be more present. Stop the to-do. Sit and enjoy these kids. They will be grown up and gone before you know it and you don’t get this time back.
This is my first week back with a new outlook. I have been much more relaxed this week. I have changed my style a bit. I try to listen more and be present with the kids.
I have laughed so much this week and I want to remember all the craziness that went down. Max was a riot this week! And maybe he is always like this but I don’t pay attention – I will do better at paying attention.
I had to do a grocery run this week and I have my semi size cart. You know the one where I can haul all my children in one cart and still get a mega load of groceries. Where you can hardly turn it towards the end of your trip. Yeah, that cart. So Melanie sits facing me and the two big ones sit facing Melanie. Works great for the first 3 minutes. Then Max gets restless and he starts tugging on Melanie’s leg. She squeals. Mallory tries to make Melanie happy and gives her the toothpaste. Melanie chews a hole in the box and now the big kids think we are going to jail. Then Max says… Melanie has a grass stain on her head, she needs a bath! Ah, that is not a grass stain. That is a bruise. {{She fell down the stairs last week while I was on the phone with the insurance agent. A whole other scary heart stopping story. But she is fine only left with one heck of a bruise.}}
Eating lunch another day. Max is talking about the chores they have to do and how his chore is so much harder then Mallory’s. Max has to push out the chairs so that Mallory can vacuum the floors. Max says, “My job is so much harder. Seriously! You have to watch out for your feet so you don’t run them over {with the chair}!” Mallory and I laugh and he gets mad and says, “It really hurts!”
Last night we had a family game of wii golf going. We all tend to get a bit competitive when we play wii and Max and I are not the competitive type. I start making fun of Jesse because he is not feeling well and he gets really… I don’t know… we all know how guys are when they are not feeling well. So I am razzing him and Max just finished his round of golf and he is NOT happy. He got a really bad score and Jesse says to him, “Max don’t you feel sorry for Dad? Your momma is so mean to me.” To which he responds without skipping a beat, “I can’t. I am too busy feeling bad for myself.”
Tonight! Doorbell rings and there are two young girls selling chocolate bars to raise money for their concert choir to go to New York. Mallory heard the word chocolate and she is running for her money. I ask Max if he wants to go get a dollar for a chocolate bar and he tells me no. I think that it is odd and I ask him if he doesn’t want one or he doesn’t want to spend a dollar. He says he doesn’t want one.
Mallory and I are eating our chocolate and Max now wants to have a bite. I am sharing mine with chow hound, Melanie, so Mallory offers to share with him. Well now he wants half the candy bar!! Mallory tells him for .50$ he can have it. He fights her a little bit but she is firm and he finally agrees to the .50$. Now he wants her to come with him downstairs to get the money and she starts telling him how he has to put that money right in the center of her palm.
I could go on for days about Miss Melanie. But I will share only this week.
Melanie is a handful. She is constantly on a mission. She wakes up wanting her shoes and jacket on. Thursday mornings we take Mallory to choir. While Mallory is in her class the rest of us sit in another room waiting. Melanie paces around that room stealing all the baby dolls. I have had to tame a few fights from breaking out. Usually Max finds joy in chasing her and keeping her in the room we need to stay in. This week Max was tired and didn’t want to chase. So I did. One of my friends says, “Your super power is chasing! And with a smile!”
Melanie had a doctor appointment this week and we are sitting in the waiting room and all the kids are circled around the table with magazines and they are flipping pages. A little old lady is next to me and she starts making wrapper noises. It sounds like a candy wrapper. Melanie stops what she is doing. Walks over to that lady. Stands in front of her. Sticks out her little baby hand and grunts. Now in Melanie language that means – hand over the candy I want some. The lady keeps making her wrapper noise and looking at Melanie. I start laughing and trying to corral Melanie back to her table of magazines which she no longer wants any part of. I tell the lady that she thinks you have candy. The lady laughs and says it is my cloth to clean my glasses. She tucks it into her purse and says to Melanie “all gone”.
Melanie found a black marker today and colored on the wall. Mallory told me. I came down to find her little baby hands covered in black marker and a whole lot of swirls of black on the wall. When I would ask her if she did that she would say “aaaahhhh” like she wasn’t sure how to answer. She is real good at nodding yes or no… but when drilled about the incident she wasn’t sure what to say so she said “aaaahhhh”. Later on when asked she is quick to say “No.”
That was my week of slowing down and enjoying. What is crazy is I still got everything done! No idea how it happened, but it did.
