More Lucy Than June

Well, um, kinda.

McKenna playing the “violin”? from Annette Parris on Vimeo.

Speaking of “musical like Daddy”, I got to spend a little bit of time at the “studio” where Stephen is recording tonight. For those of you who don’t know, Stephen is in the process of fulfilling a lifelong dream of completing a studio recording of his own music.

It has been an incredible blessing to have so many of our friends come to see and support the amazingly talented group of guys while they are hard at work.

I’ll be sharing more about this in the days to come, but here’s a little preview. I like to call this my own version of “Behind the Music”.

These pics don’t really do this process justice. Wow.

And to think that my very first major in college was Record Engineering.

Yeah. I can’t even EQ my car stereo.

These people are the real stinkin’ deal.

I’m intimidated.

Being a mom is…well, it’s stinkin’ hard work. (Everyone pause to go call your mamas now and thank them for all the thankless work they’ve done for you your ENTIRE LIFE…and that includes the 9 months before your entrance into the world…)

And I get tired. And I get frustrated. And there are days I’d like to run down the street screaming.

Like today.

And here’s a little secret that is soooo hard to learn and realize and accept and admit and change…

I’m selfish.

I can, without a doubt, say that the times that I have raised my voice (okay, yelled) or closed the refrigerator door just a little too hard, or smacked the keys down on the counter with a little more force than normal  are times that I can look back on and honestly say that I was mad or irritated or upset or any other number of ways to describe how I’m feeling are all due in part to plain ole selfishness.

I wasn’t getting the quiet time that I wanted when I wanted it.

I didn’t want to deal with one more over-tired child’s meltdown moment.

I was SICK and TIRED of someone always having to touch me, climb on me, eat whatever I’m eating (you’re cute Jack, but there is a limit to how many times “Want bite” can be adorable in a day), or ask me one million and one questions or tell me one million and one things. (Today I closed my eyes for LITERALLY one minute when I hear McKenna say, “Hey. Wake up. I’m trying to tell you something about this movie.”)

Notice how that all starts with “I”.

Now, I’m not saying that Mommies do not need a time out.

Because we do. Oh my word, YES. WE DO.

Even Jesus spent time alone sometimes.

And my thought there is: You cannot give water from an empty well.

But, what I feel like God is slowly teaching me (and I don’t think “Slowly Teaching” is really the right way to put it. Maybe it’s more like “Slowly Learning”) is that most of my frustrations could be resolved by putting my own needs out of my mind.

I have this unwritten agenda sometimes that there are certain things that HAVE to get done around the house or things that I just WANT to do, but the needs of someone else (namely my children) have gotten in the way and I’m being prevented from accomplishing that thing or things that I wanted to accomplish, and that makes me frustrated and that’s when I lose my cool.

As hard as that is for me to admit, what I’m about to say next is even harder.

If I’m being completely honest, I’ve known that I needed to change my “me” focus for a long time. But, oh my stars, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe my honesty will help someone else who feels like I do…I never REALLY wanted to pray for God to open my eyes to it, or to make me desperate for it.

Does that make sense?

Because rather than praying for God to make me desperate for a calmer and less-”me” focused home, I was really begging God for a break.

Lord, don’t You see how hard I work? Can You just make them stop screaming/start sleeping/stop jumping on top of me everytime I try to sit down?

And again, I’m not saying we don’t need a break or quiet place to land every now and then, but FOR ME, I think my fuse was way too short.

God has given me three beautiful and very unique and spunky children. And the minute I decided that I was ready to be a mommy was when I should’ve realized that all of a sudden, it’s not about ME and my comfort anymore.

Wanna know another secret?

Sometimes when I read something on Facebook or Twitter about a non-child owning person, single or married, talking about some cool fun thing they did…or better yet, how they slept in all day and then went out for some fabulous dinner at some great restaurant…the jealous would start to rise up like a nasty little monster inside of me.

Sleeping in these days is considered 7:30.

And a trip to Chick Fil A is a fabulous restaurant.

I had my time of doing that. And, as the kids grow older, I’ll have my time again.

And whether or not I ever pictured myself as having three children as close together as I do is really irrelevant.

It is what God has chosen to GIFT me with, and I should treat it as such.

Not as a burden. Or a hindrance to my “me” time.

I have three little lives that have been placed in my home and in my care. I am to raise them, train them, and show them that we put others before ourselves.

It hit me just today that I DESPERATELY want to change my ever-present need to be heard, to be alone, to be able to do WHAT I want WHEN I want to.

I want my passionate prayer to change from “Umm, God? Hello? Can I get a little breather here?” to “Father, help me to see THEIR needs first, to temper my response with Your Love and not agitate the situation because of my selfish desires.”

Jack’s hair needed a cut.

I kept reminding nagging Stephen to take care of it.

If you’ll remember, he was the one who gave Little Dude his first ever haircut, so I knew he could do a good job.

It must have been too much pressure though because we finally just decided to take him somewhere to get it done. And we took him to the mall.

Don’t make fun. I’ve had plenty of “mall haircuts” that were great.

This one = NOT so great.

My first clue could’ve been when she asked me what I wanted to get done.

Well, um, he’s 19 months old soooo….how about a perm? Or some lowlights?

How ’bout, here’s a shot in the dark, a HAIRCUT?

And about as far as she went to actually interacting WITH my child would be to put the cape on him. She never spoke to him once…I couldn’t even get a smile out of the woman. And I was TRYING to be witty. Clearly, I did not impress.

When she was “finished”, she asked if that was “good enough”.

Um, sure. At that point, I just wanted to pay her and get out of there.

What we left with was…laughable. I feel like I could’ve done better with a potato peeler and a blindfold.

I tried to get some pics to show you….but really, the ones I got do not to “justice” to the haphazard mop left on my darling son’s head.

ACK! See that gorgeous top layer up there? Oh my word.

Be as nice as you want about how “it doesn’t look that bad”…but trust me, if you saw it in person, you wouldn’t be able to deny how crummy that haircut really looks!

So, to try and remedy the situation, I put a little hair product in it. I’m not one to go spiffying up the toddler’s hair everyday but until this mess grows out and we can take him to a more reputable place, I’m going to be using the mousse on him.

No matter.

He’s still a cutie patootie even with that mangled mess of a hairdo.

And, as if the trauma of a haircut gone wrong isn’t enough to unsettle me, Little Dude has changed the name of his beloved lovey (that seems a little redundant, but whatever…)

Once known as Wooby, we are now referring to the frog-head-half-blanket-thingy as Ibby. He couldn’t enunciate Wooby (which seems odd to me because he can’t say his friend Will’s name so he calls him Woo…so I know he CAN say WOOby).

Maybe Ibby is his way of differentiating between Wooby and his friend Woo.

Or maybe it’s a coping mechanism to deal with the shock of Wooby not being able to save him from the horror of his first bad haircut.

Sort of an “I can no longer trust you, so now I must rename you” sort of situation.

Yeah. I’m sure that’s it.

McKenna entered Kindergarten last Wednesday.

Kindergarten.

That’s big stuff.

It was bitter sweet. I have waited five and a half years for that day. And yet, I wasn’t quite ready to let her go.

She NEEDS it. She thrives on structure and constant activity.

But…will she miss me? Did I prepare her enough? Does she know that she can trust me? That I love her unquestionably?

Have I been a GOOD ENOUGH MOTHER?

God has quieted my anxious heart about these things…thankfully. But, I do still feel that sting of “letting her go”. Setting her free.

She slept fine the night before school.

I, on the other hand, did not.

I awoke every hour on the hour, frantically looking at the clock and panicking to see if I had missed the alarm.

We’ve made it through a few school days now. And this new schedule thing is, well…exhausting and exciting all at the same time.

But, I’m no fool. I know what you really want to see is the pictures.

She survived. I survived.

And she told me, “Yeah. I like it. I think I’ll go back.”

Well, that’s good.

She has, however, decided that she’s “not a morning person. I’m much more of a ‘night’ person.”

Oh yes, dear. And you always have been.

And speaking of always have been…well, I just need to take this opportunity to say that I guess REALLY this isn’t her first time in Kindergarten after all.

There she is, in utero, in October 2004.

I have to go find a tissue now. (sniff, sniff)

I have a balcony/catwalk/I don’t really know what you call it in our house.

I also have a five year old named McKenna with an imagination the size of Alaska.

And pictured below are images that I am greeted with on a daily basis.

Enjoy.

A pulley system using a bucket and a Wii guitar strap

The Pet Shop

The only place in Charleston where you can see an elephant, lamb, giraffe, tiger, and two dinosaurs all together.

And apparently, for sale.

But not really.

Because “they’re mine and I love them too much. It’s just pretend.” McKenna, age 5

This may look like Jackson’s baby blanket hand-crocheted by his grandmother.

But really it’s a net. And there’s a baby jaguar stuffed animal in it.

And he’s trapped in the net.

And we must rescue him.

AND FINALLY….

This may look a little sinister, but….

This is a stuffed monkey that’s “swinging from a vine” (i.e. a gold piece of ribbon tied around his paw)

And this is where I’d like to tell you that that same piece of ribbon was untied from the monkey’s paw, and I walked in the living room to find McKenna on the back of the couch, yelling up to her sister on the catwalk,

Okay! Now I’ll jump on it and you pull ME up!

And to answer your question…Yes. I HAVE already mapped out the drive to the nearest emergency room.