Tag Archives: family

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Maybe I Can Convince You Now Is A Good Time

I sympathize with people who don’t feel like the process of pregnancy is a blessing. The child is a blessing and worth it, however the process to get there is always less than ideal for most women. I repeat this a lot, and today will be no exception, but people who think pregnancy is a cake walk either is incredibly lucky or lying to themselves. Even the easiest pregnancy has issues, I saw this with my first pregnancy. It wasn’t too miserable, I felt mostly good, and aside from usual aches and pains I had no real complaints how it progressed. It wasn’t flawless, but it was easy enough where when my husband finally convinced me it was time to expand our family I hoped things would be just as fine.

Then it happened, and it wasn’t like the first time at all. The first trimester I’m pretty sure I just slept through, because I remember being that tired. The second trimester hit me, and it was a tease. I felt full of energy and things were good. I slept fine through the night, I kept up with my son’s baseball games and practices fine and things seemed pretty well. I think the second trimester only exists to give you a false sense of relief, only to smack you in the face the minute you enter into the home stretch. Then the third trimester hits and you’re big and only getting bigger. You can’t sleep, because who can really sleep well with a 20 lb. stomach that encases a child that thinks midnight to 4 a.m is the perfect time to kick you all night long. If you sit or lay down too long, every joint in your body feels like you’re 80 years old with arthritis. If you spend too much time walking around, your feet swell up so much you can’t even take off your shoes, and your knees and ankles feel like you’re 80 years old with arthritis. In fact, I’m pretty sure I constantly feel like an 80-year-old with arthritis lately. Also don’t discount how miserable those contractions are, and remember them because when you’re actually in labor they are a million times worse.

I understand the people who don’t quite feel the joys of pregnancy, because sometimes the pregnancy is more tiring than raising a child. Don’t feel bad for feeling miserable or feeling anger towards all your pregnancy books/websites for lying to you about how amazing pregnancy is. Don’t feel like you’re somehow ungrateful for the miracle growing inside your or that you don’t deserve it. Going through it is worth it, and sometimes it helps to remind yourself of that every time you wish that your child would just come now. That doesn’t mean you can’t try to convince your child now is a good time, I know I’m not giving up hope he’ll decide he’s ready or that the doctor was off by a month so I can get back to feeling like me.

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If I Close My Eyes, It Didn’t Exist

It seems appropriate for my first week of “whatever snazzy title fits a teen mom Friday”, that I start from the beginning. It’s always harder to understand the ending if you never learned the start, and I don’t think that the way this story starts is much different from the way any of these sorts of stories start. I’m sure the closure of that “my story isn’t unique” is something that would relieve both the reader trying to understand or currently in those shoes and myself as the writer of the story.

High school isn’t a fun place to be. We’d like to tell ourselves how fantastic it was to tell our children the lies of glory days that never really existed. Even the most perfect of the popular ones had a hard time, and I’m pretty sure they’d be lying if they denied it. Whether you put pressures on yourself or let people around you influence you, sometimes even the strongest seems to cower under the pressure. Even the most chaste of your classmates were giving in, and if you even made it to Senior year without giving in, it was a miracle. In looking back, this reinforces a belief that people are fools to think abstinence is the way to teach teenagers about sex, because the more informed they are the better off they are going to be. Teaching abstinence isn’t going to prevent teenagers having sex anymore than anti-drug “Just Say No” programs or anti-bullying programs prevent drug use and bullying. I think as adults, people forget these truths.

The worst part happens when you find yourself in a bathroom with a pee-stick in your hand and realizing that in 5 minutes, your life had completely changed. It’s not enough to walk the school halls with your secret nestled away in your brain while trying to forget it happened. It was a mistake, the test was wrong. I’d never had regular periods, that was what was affecting the test. 5 months wasn’t too excessive to be without, it will go away if I don’t think about it. It doesn’t go away though; eventually you need a plan.

My plan was simple, to just run away from the fact. I saved up my extra money from work, and worked more hours than I probably should as a high schooler. My graduation money had finally brought me to the amount I needed, and shortly after I had moved out. My parents couldn’t kick me out if I was already out when they found out, right? All the TV shows of that time with that situation had the parents kicking their stupid slut of a daughter out, while I didn’t really know anyone else in my shoes. If I had known then what I know now, things would’ve ended up completely different I imagine. It turns out, I didn’t give my parents enough credit and even today have a close bond with their little surprise child. I’m lucky though, not everyone is that lucky.

In this first part of the story, I hope people understand that sometimes things need to be talked about to your kids. I also hope teenagers realize that instead of running, they should try to talk it out with their parents. You never know how it’s going to turn out, and parents are never short of their surprises. Parents love their kids, good parents love them no matter what.

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When Old Men Attack

Saturday was a hot day. By 9:30am, the sun was already setting us on fire while we were getting ready for the last little league game of the season. I mentioned how a nice iced drink would be perfect, and we decided to hit McDonald’s drinks to cool off with. No big deal, and our son in the back seat was excited for his day of baseball then a picnic with his teammates. The day was supposed to be a good and stress free day, and so far so good. That was wishful thinking too soon, I should’ve known better.

As we pulled away from the “drive thru”, barely out of the corner of my eye I notice a car too late. The guy saw that we didn’t notice him and decided to continue his drive anyways. He stopped so we went ahead, and we thought that it was all done with. We were wrong. In my view I could see that he pulled up next to us, and was yelling at us through his window. When my husband opened his window, and a slew of profanities came out of this old man’s mouth. He apparently expected my husband to climb out of the car and bow down to this obviously superior white man to beg for his forgiveness. My husband calmly said “I’m sorry I didn’t see you, I already said I’m sorry. What more would you like?” This man continued to yell, and I swore I heard him hurl a few racial slurs towards my husband. Luckily the light turned and we went on our way trying to forget this incident.

A few things bothered us about what happened. The obvious thing was that this man (who was easily in his 50’s-60’s) felt that he had a need to belittle my husband over a mistake. A grown and supposedly mature man was acting like a 16-year-old. The fact that he hurled obscenities and slurs at my husband was bad enough, but we had a 9-year-old in the back seat listening to this person act this way. He listened as a person referred to my husband with words he’s never heard before and words he knew were negative towards him. If my son wasn’t the kid he was, that man could’ve shown him that it was acceptable to use that language in that situation. Luckily, my husband is a good person and obviously a much better man than this guy twice his age.

I have an awful temper, I know this and I know well enough to swallow my words most of the time before something is said that would make me ashamed. That man should’ve been ashamed of himself, and I could see from the look on his wife’s face that she was ashamed enough for all of us. Road rage is awful enough, but what gives that man the right to say what he said? He would’ve been just as much as fault if we did actually get in an accident, as he didn’t look like he was going to stop when he realized we didn’t see him. So what, my husband is Asian and the joke is that Asians can’t drive. There’s also a joke that old people shouldn’t drive, should we have said “get your eyes checked old man” or “you people shouldn’t be on the road after 50”? No, if we had it would’ve been appalling and they would talk about how the younger people don’t respect their elders. Yet this man is able to shout racial slurs and people probably wouldn’t care except people that are negatively called “liberals making a big deal out of something minor”. This incident scares me more than I was before about my child being mixed race in this society. I hope that either things change or my children will help make this change.

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Spending Nights on the Bathroom Floor as Parents

I’m sure we’ve all had those nights after staying out late where you made your bed on the bathroom floor so your evening’s mistakes would end up in the toilet and not your bedroom floor. Eventually we grow into parenting, and these days we spend our time sitting on the floor while our child vomits away a fever. It’s heartbreaking watching them moan and shake while getting sick, but it’s good to know that they can curl up in our arms afterwards to comfort them. It doesn’t make you feel any better though, and I think all parents hate it when they watch their child feeling miserable.

Once my son, then around 1 1/2 or 2, had a fever during a weekend he was away from me. I received a call at work telling me he had a high fever and wasn’t feeling well. I heard myself repeating “take him to the doctor’s” and restating the doctor’s information. He was never taken to the doctors and when I had gotten him back, his eyes were sunken in and he was lethargic.  He wasn’t my son, he was a zombie form of my child. I was scared, and luckily my doctor’s office had a nurse that was able to calm me down and told me to head to the emergency room.

I’ll remember that trip forever I think. The nurses were urgent with him, and hurried him into a hospital gown. I remember the look of terror in his eyes when they put in the I.V. and taped it to his arm and splint, and pumped him full of fluids. They took vials of blood and I sat and watched helplessly while this happened. He was sick and needed me to comfort him, but I couldn’t. They wanted us to walk around with him to make him thirsty enough to drink and my now husband got him a snack to coax him into drinking enough to get discharged. Several hours later he was released, diagnosed with a rhinovirus and severe dehydration. Ever since then, I’ve been neurotically overprotective every fever he’s had since then.

Mothers have this natural ability to tell when they’re kids are seriously sick or not. From the phone call, I knew instantly he needed to be seen by the doctor. Other times, I knew he had an ear infection and while the doctor’s argued with me, they checked and discovered I was right. We have this child inside of us for 9 months, and that gives us the ability to sense something wrong with them. This isn’t just true for the child being sick; I find that it applies to knowing when he’s had a bad day at school or similar situations like that. It’s hard to explain until you’ve experienced it.

Sometimes we are irrational and overprotective, but sometimes you need to trust our maternal instincts. It might not make sense, but there’s usually a reason for it and it pays off when you listen. It still bothers me today when I sit there with the doctor and they don’t listen to me until they see that I’m right. “No, there’s nothing wrong he’s just small because that’s the way he’s supposed to be. That and he didn’t exactly hit the genetic lottery in the height pot.” The worst thing we can do is let our kids see us buckle under the pressure, whether it’s crying with them when they get a shot or getting nervous in the hospital. Kids get sick, everybody does. It might be heartbreaking, but as the parent it’s your job to make them feel as awesome as possible.

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Where Did The Time Go?

It seems like yesterday I was my normal skinny self starting my long list of Christmas baking that needed to be done, and on a whim based on my female dog Zoey acting funny around me, I took a pregnancy test without any expectations. Now, it’s 7 months and my husband and I have already established a sappy bond to this fetus we haven’t met yet. Then after all that excitement passes and you start seeing your collection of baby supplies grow, you get that moment of “oh crap” realizing you have 2 months to prepare if you’re lucky enough to go on your due date.

I sat staring at my assorted supplies and realizing that I’m not ready. Emotionally, I’m definitely prepared. I mean I’m not ready for it to actually be here, with 2 months it doesn’t seem like I’ll have enough time to get everything I need done. With my shower next month, I need to step it up. By that I mean, I have to go into crazy pregger nag mode on my husband to get stuff done. I’m not going to lie, I’m getting anxious with preparations of setting up the household to accommodate the new addition. That preparations are more unnerving for me than the real process of birth. Last time it was easier, I was smaller and more capable of doing grunt work. This time I can’t even tie my shoes or put on shoes that aren’t slip-ons. This time, I have no control over anything getting done and can only sit back and pray it gets done.

At least I have my birth plan all set. It’s pretty simple and straight forward: unless I can stick a needle in your spine with you hoping you don’t get paralyzed, you’re not doing it to me. It’s simple and to the point I think, and I’m praying since I went sans epidural the first time around that I can repeat this. Also, the fact I was only in active labor for less than an hour last time and they say the 2nd one is easier, that I’m going to just have him slide out. I know, it’s unrealistic, but sometimes you need to let us pregnant women hope. And let’s find a way to safely knock a pregnant women out for a c-section. I don’t like the idea of being awake while watching the shadows of the doctors pulling out my insides to retrieve a stubborn fetus., and I don’t think I’m the only one.

When you get to this point in the pregnancy, the lovely 3rd trimester unless it’s just me, that you’re less excited about the idea of the newborn baby in your eyes and alternate between “get this thing out of me” and “I’m not ready for this”. You can still revel in the fact that you can eat what you want, and if you’re lucky like me, take advantage of the massages your partner is willing to give. Just focus on what you need to get done, and then allow yourself time to sit back and imagine the newborn about to take over your life. It’s worth it, and after all you go through to get them here, it better be.

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The Real First Sign of Summer

And that sign says “Tag Sale”.

I love this time of year. Not because of the beaches or water parks, I hate being out in the sun because the sun hates me. Sunscreen wasn’t really made for the pale complexion of the Irish. I hate the heat, and admittedly am a baby when the temperature hits higher than 75 degrees. Okay, maybe the baby in me complains if it’s over 70. My allergies make this time of year miserable for me, and I’d rather stay locked in the air-conditioned house. I do enjoy my son’s little league baseball games, and more with the portable fan my husband bought me because I’m more of a baby about the heat now that I’m 7 months pregnant. BBQ and bonfires may make this time for me, except I dislike most BBQ food.

So with the long list of things I hate about Summer, you’re probably wondering why I started off by saying “I love this time of year”. Really, I only like that this seems to be tag sale season. I’m notoriously cheap, and that’s being nice about it. I love shopping at thrift stores and tag sales, and this love has increased with my pregnancy. I remember how expensive all those diapers and bottles are, and how expensive necessities like onesies are for how easily they get ruined and the baby grows out of them. This is exactly why I like tag sales.

My neighbor from across the street gave me notice that over the weekend, there was going to be a tag sale, and her friend was bringing by a ton of baby boy stuff. Score, this was asking for me to wake up early and go crazy stalker and eye her house from my front window for me to pounce out and get dibs on the good stuff. I ran across the street, with a $40 budget in mind, and was disheartened that the person with the boy’s stuff hadn’t arrived yet. I did get a gorgeous and warm knit blue blanket and a couple of white onesies for $3. I looked for a blanket just like the one I had bought and found one very similar for $25. I was told to spot a specific car for the baby boy stuff, so I proceeded to go back into ninja stalking mode. Right after my start, the car appeared with boxes upon boxes of stuff. Soon, I noticed a brand new vibrating and music bouncing chair and a nice infant car seat. I struggled with being too “creepy stalker” and rushing over to stake claim on these items. Unfortunately, I’m notoriously cheap and that won the battle. Fortunately, the brand new bouncy chair was only $20 and the car seat was $10. The bouncy chair at the mall was about $150 and the infant seat at about $120, and neither item looked like they had been used. Add in a giant bagful of assorted sizes onesies and footy pajamas, and I had used my $40 budget. The approximate mall price for the items? My guess was $300 worth of new items, as most of the clothes still had tags on it and the bouncy chair I had gotten had no sign of use at all unlike the other one she had put out.

My point? Embrace tag sales. Sure, I wouldn’t buy things like teethers or cribs at one. If you’re smart and know what is safe to buy at a tag sale, they are a fantastic place to go to get great things. Rules like most cribs should be bought new, as safety rules for cribs are constantly changing and infant car seats shouldn’t be more than 3 years old and never have been in an accident. Also, keep note of certain areas of the town with tag sales. My neighborhood has a lot of hit or miss sales, but my mother-in-law lives in a fancy neighborhood where you can always find nice things. I also find the richer areas have more brand new stuff they tag sale, so new the tags are on and aren’t damaged. Plus, look at another benefit other than saving money: the exercise you get walking around the sales and carrying the stuff home. I’m not saying go hoarder and buy everything, but if it’s tag sale season and there’s something you need, I say go for it.

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What Kids Really Learn

Before having kids, I thought the “Nature vs. Nurture” was a joke. My son isn’t biologically my  husband’s, but that doesn’t make him any less the father. This scenario is the only proof I need that while kids are born with a certain disposition, the environment they grow up with influences them more than we can understand. My son is every bit of my husband, the same mannerisms and likes and interests. It’s something completely interesting to witness, and last night this all came together for my inspiration for today’s blog.

This idea of what a child learns is all speculation. No one really knows how a child really learns, but one thing most people agree on is that a child learns from observing the people around them. This learning comes mostly from our parents. We see how they act and behave and a child learns from this. This can go from 2 extremes, the really silly and the really serious.

To start with, the serious. A daughter who witnesses her mother being mistreated by her father might grow up thinking that this behavior is something acceptable, and allows herself to be treated the same way by her future partners. A son who sees his mom beaten might grow up thinking that is the way to treat women and become abusive towards his partners as well. Nothing is guaranteed, but statistically it happens more often than not. Children are sponges for information, and without being shown what’s appropriate or not, can lead down a path making us wonder what we did wrong not realizing it may be too late to fix it. With this idea, in raising my first son I led by an example I hoped that he would grow up and be proud of. My husband’s parenting style is the same, and it worked out well the first time around and I hope it continues the next time.

Now, the silly way this can be proven true with a funny story of my household. My husband is a very overprotective person, one feature I find both lovable and annoying. Next to our bed, he has a wooden stick that he jokingly refers to his “just in case beating stick that can be used from anything from robbers or a zombie apocalypse”. One day, my son was sitting on the bed watching streaming videos and dropped his favorite stuffed animal. When he picked it up, he noticed the wooden stick and asked about it and of course I told him and he smiled that smile he gets when I tell him something about his father that makes him want to be more like him. And last night I found out he was.

I went downstairs before I went to bed like I usually do to check in on my son and nephew while they were sleeping. I went into my son’s room to retuck him in and I noticed next to his bed was one of those plastic bats ready to be grabbed for “just in case”. I couldn’t help but to let out a loud laugh which made him turn in his sleep. I called upstairs for my husband to see what I can only blame him for, and we sat laughing together.

This just makes me wonder if I’m right about children learning from what we do and how we behave. While no one really knows the answer, I’d like to think that you should set an example for your kids. Then you can look on with pride when they explain to you in the morning why they had a plastic bat next to their bed or why they picked up someone’s money and returned it to them instead of keeping it. We do a lot by raising our kids to high standards of behavior and giving them knowledge to be good people in society.

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Fairy Tales

One night as we were winding down and talking, I went on a random rant of the day to my husband. His response was “I’m glad we’re not having a daughter.” We both laughed, I’m sure the world isn’t ready for another me and he agreed. My point was a simple comment in response to an episode of Game Of Thrones where Arya told Tywin, “Well most girls are stupid”. I, being the feminist I am, fully agreed with her little statement. Most girls are idiots and I, the pessimist over-thinker I am, figured it out. I figured out why they like boys who mistreat them and waste their time. The answer was simple really: fairy tales. I never cared much for them, but most girls are raised with them as lovely nighttime stories. Let’s be honest here, that’s where parents years and years before us have screwed up my gender. This is why my husband is thankful we’re not having a girl. Next time though, I think the world needs another me.

He thinks I over-think it, I think he’s just a silly boy sometimes. Let’s look at the facts here, and you decide. First, we have the poor but beautiful Cinderella who gets help from a fairy godmother to meet Prince Charming and get married. However, he doesn’t recognize her without seeing if a shoe fits? Really, he couldn’t be bothered to actually remembered what she looked like and if he had come across the Evil Queen herself and the shoe fit, we’d be looking at a completely different story. From that, little girls learn that all that matters is he found her based on a probable foot fetish and it didn’t matter who she was. Also a guy would never just look for a girl based on a shoe, he’d just find another girl because it’s easier.

Then we have Little Red Riding Hood. It starts off innocent enough, a girl wants to give her sick grandmother some food. But why would she get there and not be able to tell her grandmother was actually a wolf, not a human. Is a girl supposed to learn you don’t need to be intelligent, just cute? If you can’t tell that a human is actually an animal than I think you deserve the title of an idiot because, well, if I need to finish that idea than I’m worse off than I thought. The distressed damsel thing bothers me, too. Sure she was a girl against a wolf and needed help but maybe she wouldn’t have gotten there in the first place if she ran when she saw a wolf wanting to bite her head off in the first place. Screw that “My what big eyes you have” comments.

I’m sure if I wanted to I could come up with several more examples of this. I don’t want to read my daughter any feminist manifesto telling her she doesn’t need to wear a bra or shave her legs to get respect in the world. I want a good literature role model for her. We have Bella from Twilight that really just wants to marry a vampire and become one, which passes a message that girls just want to get married and suck the blood of their husbands or wallets depending on your interpretation. Luckily, we have Katniss from the Hunger Games who doesn’t consider love or marriage and kicks a ton of butt. We need more role models like that for our girls not ones that teach them that marriage and playing a brainless wife is what love is about. That’s how girls grow up to be idiots.

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Who Needs Flowers?

My husband is a good man, as I often state. In the years he’s known me, he learned one thing: never send me flowers. It’s not that I don’t appreciate flowers for their beauty, only their beauty actually planted. I don’t see the point in flowers, they are just dying plants that only last a week at best and you pay a lot for. Maybe I’m just too cheap to truly appreciate a bouquet of stargazing lilies, but it causes problems on days like Mother’s Day where it’s customary to give your wife flowers to show your adoration. He always makes do with surprisingly thoughtful gifts that make me laugh that other men get off easy just buying some roses and having their ladies swoon at their feet. Not my husband, he doesn’t like to take the easy way in anything.

Usually he can’t keep his gift a secret from me. 2 years ago at Christmas time, he comes over to me with a box. “I can’t keep it a secret, I’m too excited. You might as well just open in now.” It was barely 2 weeks until Christmas, and his joy in giving me a present he thought I’d love turned him into a kid waiting to open his presents at Christmas time. That is the type of person he is. He doesn’t really care what he gets, but the joy in our eyes when we love our presents turns him into a giddy schoolgirl.

This Mother’s Day was different. He kept his mouth shut though I kept guessing what it was that he got me. He smiled maniacally, playing a game with me of “you’ll never figure it out”. I knew I figured it out though, but I knew I’d be shocked and thrilled when the day came. Sure enough, with a knock at the door and the shrill bark of our overly anxious dogs and in comes my husband and son with my surprise: An Edible Arrangement. Now, I knew this was coming but my fat pregnant self couldn’t help but be giddy and touched all the same. My number one food craving has been fruit, and here was a giant bouquet of my favorite food in gigantic size. The card was signed with a “love” from my husband, my son, and my unborn son. It was adorable, and I don’t normally call things adorable. No other word seems to fit.

I devoured that thing in a day. I regret that now, not just because all that delicious fruit was gone but because my stomach still hurts from my lack of willpower. Apparently, your appetite reaches “bottomless pit” mode at 6 months pregnant. The pain is worth it, so so worth it. Mother’s Day is a day to celebrate the things we do as mothers every day and to celebrate all our mothers for everything they do for us. So all Moms, including all the Moms in my life, you are awesome and don’t forget it. It’s all worth the pain.

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And Now It’s 3 months

I was sitting in my living room, indulging in a nice salad and rice because that’s what my crazy fetus enjoys. It then hit me that in almost 3 months time, I’ll be sitting in that same spot with a swaddled newborn. It wasn’t the idea of the newborn that sent sudden waves of terror and anxiety in my body, it was the idea that there was only about 3 months left until he appeared. I had only 3 months and a lot less time to get things accomplished than I had hoped.

I looked at my bedroom, which I had destroyed in a fit early on in my pregnancy when I realized nothing fit. Where was I going to put this bassinet? What happens next? Do I baptize him? Who do I choose to be his godparents without offending everyone else? Will I be a terrible mother this time around, knowing that I wasn’t that great my first time? I couldn’t help to think “well with all those kids in foster care or the state’s care, I’m sure it could be worse.”

Then, I cheer up. “I’m sure it could be worse for him.” No that’s not what cheers me up, I’m not that awful. What comforts me is that in 3 months time I won’t have to pee every hour and all these aches and pains will vanish. I’ll have this little life staring at me wide-eyed and excited for what the next day will bring. That’s the best part of being a parent: realizing that you can open this new life’s eyes to something better than what’s actually there. Children are innocent and unaware if you don’t feel like changing out of your pajamas. They don’t care about anything other than whether you love them and are there to take care of them.

Maybe 3 months is perfect time. Time enough to focus on getting everything done and time enough to enjoy it while it lasts. Time enough to prepare for everything, and realize that all the preparation in the world won’t help for all the unknowns parenthood brings. Maybe 3 months isn’t perfect time, mostly because there’s no such thing as perfect time for anything.