That’s always an interesting treat…

You see, my kids play with my phone, and on any given day, you could receive a random phone call or text if you’re on my “favorites” list.

Or they could possibly figure out a way to call the pediatrician’s office and yell into the phone. Yes, that has happened.

But along with random communication “errors”, I will also find interesting pictures that were taken and images that they’ve somehow managed to download. Now before your mind starts wandering, let me give you a sampling of the things I have found today…

After spaghetti. And apparently during a meltdown.

I have no idea where this came from.

Doesn’t she just look so perplexed? Like something is horribly wrong in her world of fairies and rainbows and pixie dust?

Guess who had the camera for this one…

It’s a cross between creepy and cute. Sometimes, the line blurs…

This one needs no explanation…

And this is one that I actually took.

In my desperate search for chocolate after the kids FINALLY went to sleep, I found this.

And I may or may not have eaten three large spoonfuls.

Real moms need chocolate.

Or something like that….

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.”

She doesn’t know many of her songs, but the ones she does, she really digs.

So while waiting on Daddy to bring home the hot dogs to grill (see? he really does bring home the bacon—er, uhhh, pig), I decided to pull up some youtube videos of ole Taylor to watch.

I believe it was during the one about Romeo and Juliet (what is that one? Love Story?) that I caught her pulling stuffing out of a throw pillow. (And this is where I break out that great line: “See? This is why we don’t have nice things anymore!”)

At this point in my life, and with a pillow that had already seen it’s better days anyway, I just watched for a moment without interrupting because SURELY there was some good explanation for this.

When I finally decided to ask her what she was doing, her response was,

I’m throwing love. So just—-just—-deal with it.

Ohhh, ever the artist McKenna. Throwing love. Clever.

Wait. Did you just tell me to DEAL WITH IT?!

And then in my best Bill Cosby voice,

Let’s rethink what you just said before I give YOU something to deal with.

I jest.

Mostly.

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.

]]> http://morelucythanjune.com/?feed=rss2&p=2776 http://morelucythanjune.com/?p=2766&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-miracle-of-the-momentand-the-moment-of-the-miracle http://morelucythanjune.com/?p=2766#comments Wed, 25 Aug 2010 03:29:41 +0000 annette http://morelucythanjune.com/?p=2766 Sweet little spunky McKenna has always had, what we call, a “difficult” time processing her emotions.

When she is sad, hurt, embarrassed, frightened, or any combination thereof, her response has always been anger.

It’s sort of the default emotion for her when she doesn’t know what else to “feel”.

Sad songs on the radio cause her to throw her hands over her ears and yell, “Turn it off! I CAN’T LISTEN TO THAT SONG!”

Sad parts to a movie or a TV show will make her either leave the room or, if you try to talk her through it, she’ll abruptly tell you,

“No! Don’t say that!”

When Stephen’s parents dog passed away this winter, we never told her. Instead, we waited till we were coming back this summer to break the news.

All that I think we managed to get out was,

“We need to tell you something. You see, Cookie was really old and—-”

Her response was to glare at us and to give us a firm,

STOP! I don’t want you to talk about this. And tell GiGi and PawPaw I don’t want to hear about this either.

For whatever reason, her little heart simply could not process sadness.

Until today.

And it’s funny because I think, in God’s own way, He was preparing my heart for what was about to take place this afternoon. On my way to pick her up from school, it occurred to me that, at 5 1/2 years old, she has NEVER cried over anything in sadness.

She has cried out of frustration, anger, exhaustion, and a myriad of other things. But never has she cried out of just plain ole SADNESS.

As we unpiled from the van and made our way into the house after we’d picked her up, I really felt like I should just be sitting on the floor playing with the kids this afternoon. Not hurrying to do laundry or rushing to unload the dishwasher…but to just SIT and BE with them.

And not 30 minutes after I sat on the floor to play, I knew why.

I knew EXACTLY why.

A picture of a cat she had seen on my phone made her grow very quiet and still. Now, if you know McKenna you know she loves animals. Passionately.

Our cat Maggie had disappeared shortly after we moved into this house. She did fine in exploring and coming back home the first couple of weeks, but then we took a week long trip out to San Antonio…and she never came home.

The best I can figure is that she thought we had just dumped her at this new place and then left her.

We placed cat food on the porch for weeks hoping that she would return, and although we made a few other “cat buddies”, Maggie never made her way back.

McKenna had briefly mentioned here and there that she missed Maggie, but we never let the conversation linger…simply because I didn’t know what to tell her. Had Maggie run away? Had Maggie gotten hurt? Was Maggie coming home? They were all questions that I couldn’t answer, and I had no idea how her little heart would take it. I’ve always viewed her, for better or worse, as emotionally fragile.

But this afternoon, something in her little heart changed.

She looked at me after a long, still moment and said quietly,

I really miss Maggie.

And the lip trembled. And the face crumpled up. And then she just started sobbing.

And not the whiny, tired cry of a kid who’s ready for a snack and a nap.

It was the cry of a heartbroken child who had lost her very beloved pet.

I sat for a moment, almost frozen, as the weight of what was happening hit me.

This child, who has never been able to properly emote sadness, was crying. Crying tears of grief for her pet cat.

Then I scooped her up and sat with her for a long time. I held her and rocked her and stroked her hair.

And I let her cry.

I let her cry as much as she wanted. As hard as she wanted. As loud as she wanted.

I patted her back and said the only thing I could say,

I know. I know…

Then I prayed for her. I thanked God for the wonderful memories we had with Maggie. And I asked him to give McKenna comfort…and joy.

We found a picture of Maggie in her baby book, and she asked if she could have it. Well, a part of me thought, but this is her BABY book…I don’t want to disrupt the pages of her history.

But THIS moment, this releasing of her emotions, this instance of allowing herself to FEEL sad and to let the tears flow…well, THIS was a much more important moment in her history than a picture of a cat lying atop my pregnant belly.

So I gave her all the pictures of Maggie that I had.

And she lay on the floor, staring at those pictures and cuddling up her stuffed cat named Mittens, and I just sat with her.

She didn’t see the silent tears rolling down my own cheeks, or hear my heart shatter into a million pieces as I watched my baby girl GRIEVE for the first time in her life.

It was an altogether wonderful and heartwrenching turning moment in both of our lives.

She said to me, through the tears,

I never knew missing something could be so hard.

She was finally allowing herself to FEEL the emotions that God has given her and to process through them accordingly…

…and I was reminded in a very real and magnificent way to listen to the often still, small voice of a very present and very powerful God.

Especially when He tells us to just…stop. And be in the moment.

That moment in which memories and miracles happen.

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)

Maybe then I could find at least ONE that was frame-worthy.

Watch the progression in the photos. Or maybe I should say, DEgression…

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.

Well, not Williams and Sonoma the WHOLE store. I adore that place. I can’t do much more than window shop and drool and dream right now, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a sincere appreciation for all things cookery related. (Is that a word? Cookery?)

Shortly before Stephen and I were married, I had made a trip to an outlet mall in North Georgia. On their clearance table, they had cream-colored wide and shallow mugs and matching saucers. They were marked at something ridiculous like $1.00 for each piece or something…so I purchased a set of 8 mugs and 8 saucers. As a young bride-to-be, I had visions of having our friends over and serving them decadent desserts and/or ridiculously wonderful gourmet coffees in those cups and saucers.

And those cups and saucers were used frequently. At first, we reserved them for those “special” occasions, but before long we were breaking ‘em out for those nights when I hadn’t washed any other dishes (our first house had no dishwasher! ack!), and we “needed” a bowl of ice cream or Lucky Charms.

One by one those mugs and saucers met with a fate that, for whatever reason, many of my ceramic bowls meet with. A chip here, a crack there. But then, eventually, their ultimate demise: falling out a cabinet where they were placed precariously, dropped out of the dishwasher onto the hardwood floor, or…ahem…being left in the microwave too long at too high of a temperature. (And if you’ve never had a dish explode in the microwave while you’re unsuspectingly just waiting on the cheese to melt on your nachos, well…that’s just something you have to experience to really get the full effect of, I think.)

Well, today, the last remaining piece of what was once a set of 16 pieces, came to its final resting place on my kitchen floor.

Eggs. Scrambled eggs.

That was the last food to grace the final Williams and Sonoma saucer.

I had given it to Jack for his breakfast (please. don’t even ask me why I gave a toddler, a BOY toddler, a ceramic plate to eat his breakfast off of…), and then, I had to rush off to the potty room where one constipated three year old was having some…”issues”.

And that’s when I hear the crash. And from the mouth of the 19 month old little blond-headed, blue-eyed darling, “Uh oh.”

And then, from Kenni,

Moooommmm! Jack threw his plate on the floor!

Sigh.

Goodbye forever, little Williams and Sonoma saucers and mugs.

You were well-loved, well-used, but obviously not well taken care of.

EDITOR/AUTHOR/OWNER-OF-THE-ILL-FATED-CUP-AND-SAUCER-SET’S NOTE: I went to the kitchen to take a picture of what I THOUGHT was the remains of the final W&S set. Upon opening the dishwasher, I found THIS…

THAT is, in fact, the last piece of the set. One whole saucer remains, my friends.

I removed the plate, still warm from the heat of the dishwasher, took a picture, and placed it high up on the top shelf of my closet.

It’s kind of special to me. Sigh.

And I’m okay with being cheesy like that.

A disclaimer about how the following photos were taken in the middle of a summer afternoon, when all three kids were home all day long…and apparently bored and using the couch cushions as floatation devices. Or something.

But then I decided, nah. Let’s be real.

My living room, by MoreLucy…

Angle 1

Angle 2

Now, just for fun, I set the timer to see exactly how long it would take me to clean up this mess.

Nine minutes.

NINE MINUTES. That’s it.

Typically, I save the tidying-up the living room part of my housecleaning routine (ha! routine! Oh…that’s rich.) for the end of the day. There’s really no point in picking up the floor when someone is just gonna walk by and drop their crayons, sippy cup, lovies, woobies, goldfish crackers, rope/string/twine/jumprope/other assorted items used for making “machines”, and clothes on the floor.

I’ll just save my energy for wiping down the baseboards (whatever), and pick up the floor later.

But…so you all know I’m NOT too big of a slob (just kidding. don’t look in my van.)…here’s what it will look like should you ever drop by.

Well, that’s what it will look like if you ever drop by…and give me at least nine minutes notice.