This Minecraft Moment Brought to You By...

Mom and the Number 8.

My Daughter LOVES Minecraft.  She is so happy when she gets her time on her mini iPad to play Minecraft Pocket addition.  She's almost as obsessed with it as my Mom and Sister are with CandyCrush. (Sorry for "outting" you gals) The one big difference though with this obsession is my Daughter doesn't feel bad or guilty using up her time playing one game, and she's never mad at herself for even getting started on it. ha!

Even after she has played it, she is drawing pictures, creating 3D homes out of paper, crafting diamond swords and fashioning Minecraft outfits for her smaller stuffies.  And she LOVES to talk about it, she will tell me anything and everything that is going on in her Minecraft worlds...and at risk of sounding like I'm really, really, old...I have no idea what she is talking about.  When I ask her questions she looks at me like "oh you poor dear, how do you not understand what I'm talking about? I feel sorry for you."  So I just kind of play along and mirror her excitement, and I can't help but get caught up in her happy energy over this game.

She asked me last week if she could teach me how to play it.  Of coarse I said "yes".  So we sat down and she showed me.  I'm just not a gamer. at. all.  I could tell she was disappointed in my lack of Minecraft Awesomeness.  So I suggested every week, her and I snuggle for half and hour while I watch her play Minecraft and she can show and explain everything to me, hence our Minecraft Moment.  (Disclaimer: We do snuggle all the time, not just for this one half hour a week)

It's such a small amount of time, but reaps big rewards on the connection front.  Minecraft is something that is really important to her at this time in her life and she wants to share it with me.  (Can you see where this is going?)  I feel this is one of those times that I needed to wake up and hear whats really happening.  She wants to share this important thing in her life with me.  I'm hoping this mindfulness transfer over for when she is older and still wants (needs) to share her important stuff with me.  I want her to always feel validated and be confident in knowing that I make the time for all her important things. 

What's your kids Minecraft Moment? 

Love
Marcia
XO

Update from "Anniversary of Motherhood"

Update from my previous post: “Anniversary of Motherhood”

After I posted and put ‘it’ out there, I was feeling a little raw and exposed, but relief as well.  I was overwhelmed with the comments I received on Facebook, on the blog itself and many through private message.  It just solidified what I thought might be true…we are not alone, we are all in this together. I am happy to have started a little dialogue about some the struggles and the magnificent triumphs parenting our school age children have, this is something we can do with tact, honesty and integrity.  I just want to say a heart felt thank you to those that read my post and to the people that wrote me and exposed a little bit of themselves.  I feel blessed.

I had a long conversation with my son about my blog and the contents of my Anniversary of Motherhood post. He was so sweet and brave and said he thought it was cool.  He knows I like to help people and he felt good knowing he could help too.  I asked him repeatedly if he felt comfortable with me writing about him (and sometimes his challenges) and assured him if he ever didn’t I would take it down.  I also told him, I had received so many emails from people, some we don’t even know, thanking us for being so honest and that they feel the same or are going through something similar, he smiled and said “really, I did feel alone, that's awesome Mom.” 

I am so much more than a Great Mom (winkie face), and my blog will be a vehicle to my many clever&lovely interests, hobbies and loves.  As much as my kids would like my whole blog to be about them thats just not going to happen.  And, I made a promise to my kids that I would run by any post or picture that involves them to be personally hand stamped by them.  Such stellar kids.  

On a sidenote: The kids think I look old and mean and my neck looks creepy in my blog pic.  I told them I thought I looked artsy, brooding and thoughtful.  They stared at me and said, “uhhh No.” I guess that means I need a new head shot.

Love 
Marcia
XO

Anniversary of Motherhood

Yesterday I celebrated my eleven year Momiversary.  In more recent years I have thought why do the kids get all the celebration on the day of their birth, after all it is the same day a Woman is born into Motherhood.  And what a feat that is. The Queen of the family takes her throne and throughout her rein gets the heavy jewelled crown donkey kicked off her head many times.  Sometimes she is defeated, but always gets up, holds her head high and her family close. 

           

Mothering, for me, has a whole different meaning and perspective before having children and after having children. 

I worked as an Early Childhood Educator for about 11 years before I had children. I was given the beautiful, trusting privilege  to learn, inspire, help, facilitate learning, and play with so many 3-6 year olds, as well as support and advise parents on occasion, with parenting issues, children's behaviour issues, toilet learning, etc. And I gave it with confidence, I gave it freely, I felt great that in some small way I was helping families navigate through their journey.  After all I had studied it in school, attended yearly workshops, read every early years book I could get my hands on.  I was the perfect parent, before I had children, it was so easy to say what I would and wouldn't do when I had children of my own, or even better, what my children would and wouldn't be and behave like. Talk about a huge wake up call.  My goodness my socks could not have been knocked off farther.

The first time I realized this was shortly after my son was born.  We were in the second month of his life, he was a nursing machine, and I was in the throws of major exhaustion, yet completely overwhelmed with LOVE.  I remember a late night feeding, leaning back into the nursing chair, half asleep myself, and tears coming down my cheeks, and thinking who the heck did I think I was to even work as an ECE and claim all this expertise on Early Years and Parenting when clearly I know NOTHING….cry, cry, cry.  I remember silently apologizing to certain parents I may have judged (in my head), especially to one particular single mother, with 2 very spirited little boys, that I would wonder sometimes why she never could get her boys ears cleaned…years later realization…because she was TIRED, because she had to do EVERYTHING at her house, because some children are EARWAX MAKING MACHINES!  Actually all the single parents I worked with over those years popped into my head with more frequency when I was a 5-6 day a week single parent for the first 2 years of my daughters life and for my sons toddler/preschool years, my husband worked and lived out of town for those 2 years, I was alone.  I remember always having empathy, for those families and would never want that for myself, but, sometimes its just not a planned thing and everyone is doing the best they can with what they've got.  Even if you think they should do better or at least want to do better, know this, they are simply doing their best.  

“ One of the best thing for anyone to do for another parent is to feel empathy, send love and support, and wish them well.  A simple, effective, silent wish skyrocketed to the Universe.”

I felt like I was living part of my dream when the kids were babies, toddlers and even preschoolers years. I rocked the early years (for the most part) The baby years were my years, I loved labour and delivery, Loved nursing (once I got the hang of it), loved the slower pace of the day, loved the milestones, loved the cute cuddles and smelling the tops of there heads and kissing their chubby feet.  I was constantly amazed that I got to be a mom and these two are mine…just like that mine, I made them…I feed them from…my body….mind was blown daily because of these facts.

Once my children got older, things changed a little for me.  

For one thing I realized they are not mine, as in mine to own.  We are all our own person, free to be, free to think our thoughts.  These beautiful children that are brought into out lives are here for us to guide, support, love and learn from and visversa. We are each others soul keepers, life encouragers and lesson learners.  Not possessions. 

The affects of two years as a single parent (not saying this was the cause, more like it was the magnifying glass) wore thin, separation anxiety from their dad being away, reared its ugly head.  My sons, behaviours were getting harder to handle, and since he’s been 4ish…my parenting spirit has slowly broken down. 

Parenting for me teeters on pure enjoyment and wonderment and overwhelming love to utter devastation, feeling like a parenting failure and desire to live on a private island by myself with conjugal visits from my husband, oh, and a personal assistant to make me food, clean up after me and give me pedicures.

As a little guy some behaviours were in public, but most were in the privacy and safety of our home.  He has very high expectations, for events, for himself, for us, for friends, but generally doesn’t voice them until after a complete melt down. He is extremely sensitive to how other people are feeling, he can read a person or the people in a room, in a heartbeat…and his mood will reflect it.  At school he appears, calm, cool, collected, never showing how he is feeling, keeps it together the whole day…plays the role of a student, of a friend.  But one little thing someone said or did, or didn't do at school can easily snowball into an evening of hell for us, and him.

It has been a good six years (he’s now 11) of learning how to parent this sensitive, beautiful, funny, active, intuitive, moody, creative, smart child, and I suspect this learning will constantly evolve.  My son has recently been diagnosed as ADHD with Inattention, Learning Disability and Anxiety.  So yeah…this makes sense.  A big discovery for me…choke…is that I am very similar to my son, but I developed some coping strategies at a young age (because no one talked about it and/or recognized anything was wrong) and am still learning about myself, ALL. THE. TIME. I am tired.  I am excited.  I am happy.  I am truly blessed. I am thankful.  Thankful that my son has someone like me (and my husband) to accept and love him no matter what, learn with him and guide him, relish in his strengths and hold him up through his weaknesses.  Thankful he has my heart and I have his.

I know its getting more socially acceptable to talk about Mental Health but it is very hard to do.  There are so many initiatives out there to get rid of the stigma of mental health…yet,still very hard to write about, talk about when you are the one dealing with it so personally, its a window into your cracked life.  When you don’t want to single out your child who is learning to live and thrive with it. When it is yourself, some days, just barely squeaking by.  But it has to be talked about.  If you and your family are dealing with this in silence I want you to know you are not alone.  I slick on the lipstick, do my hair, dress for the day, look like I’m put together and most days this is the case but sometimes, I am undone, and completely broken on the inside and you would never know.  And that is how I deal.  

Parenting is not for the faint of heart and most likely nothing like how you expected it to be. It is so many things.  Some days are sooooo long, tedious, heartbreaking, exhausting, frustrating, boring, not boring enough…to absolute and utterly joyous, heart-warming, heart- melting, heart-stopping happiness and Love, those days go by too fast.  And for it not the two extremes (in my case) , a divine paradox to blatantly  appreciate every, darn thing.

So yes, on this Eleventh Momiversay of mine, I am going to celebrate with a Pint down at our local Pub, with my King and a couple of friends. Perch myself upon the throne (bar stool), affix my crooked, tarnished crown, and toast to my rein as completely flawed Mom to my kids.

Love
Marcia

Updated "Anniversary of Motherhood"