Family : Circling the Wagons

I have four kids. That gives me a lot of free passes for stuff:

“You can’t make a cake for the PTA bake sale? Honey, totally don’t worry about it. I don’t know how you manage getting anything done with four kids…”

“You’re late? That’s alright. I’m sure just getting out the door with four kids is a feat in and of itself…”

“You’re going to go run some race half way across the country? I don’t blame you. Sometimes a mama just needs to get away from her four kids.”

So yeah, a lot of times the four kids thing works in my favor. 

But it also means, with six people living in my house – 3 girls, 3 boys – that statistically, somebody’s eventually gonna go crazy. Especially as my four kids are inching up on teenagerism.

The statistics were right: one of my middle school aged kids, done lost her mind this past November and December. It was pretty vicious – the choices she was making, the way she was thinking about herself & others – and I was left wondering how I didn’t see it coming. At all.

But let me make one thing clear: it is an absolutely brutal time to be a teenage girl in our society. 

Issues of health, self-esteem, beauty, attraction, belonging and self-worth have always plagued young girls. But now it plagues them with a running commentary from everyone they know (and some they don’t) when these girls put their feelings out into cyberspace for all to see. 

I’m not saying anything new here, that hasn’t been already been said much better by other people. And believe it or not, it’s not even my point.

My point is what happened after my daughter had the mind-losing experience.

This happened:

Okay not just that. 
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When my parents found out about the struggles my daughter was going through, they dropped everything at their home in Georgia, and came and stayed with us for six-weeks.  
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They didn’t come up here to tell my husband and I what we were doing wrong as parents (although I’m sure the list was long) or to be voices of criticism to our daughter.   
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Instead, they came up and cooked meals and did chores so I could spend much needed one-on-one time with my daughter and not have to worry about what the rest of the family would eat or if the laundry would ever get done.  
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They played games and watched movies with my other three kids so they wouldn’t feel left out, as mom and dad had to spend more time with their sibling. 
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They went and ate lunch with my kids at their school sometimes 2-3 times a week. Bringing – much to the kids’ delight – fast food or sub sandwiches for them to eat, rather than the cafeteria food.  
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They sat with my troubled daughter some evenings and told funny stories of the mischief my brother and I got into as kids.  And helped us pry my daughter’s smart phone out of her hands so she could learn to reset and live without it.
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But most of all, they came in and spoke life and encouragement to me and my husband and our kids and our house. They hugged and prayed and smiled and loved. Day in and day out, over and over, for six weeks. 

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My parents left today – having done, I think, what they set out to do: help me and my family get back on course. And I already see a positive change in my daughter that I want to continue to foster. 
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Most importantly, my parents proved to my daughter, without ever having to say the words, that nothing was more important to them than her.  That when family needs your help, you stop what you’re doing and give the help that’s needed.  
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Circling the wagons. To protect what’s precious within.

Makes Me Laugh - Parenting Edition

For the past 48 hours, 21 minutes and 19 seconds (but who's counting)  I have had SEVEN (but who's counting) kids under the age of 12 residing at my house. Four dear angels of my own and three borrowed from people evidently smarter than me, because they left town without their kids.

Now they're all gone -- someone else's problem for a few hours. So, I decided to pry my fingers from around this bottle of tequila and post a few parenting funnies that have gotten me through the last couple of days. And twelve years.

If there had been warnings like these around when my kids were babies, they would've ended up in the oven much less often. Instead, I just had to muddle through...

Of course, this never happened.*

I never claimed to be a great mom

To all the parents out there (except my friends who are vacationing at the beach without their little terrors -- you guys can kiss my very tired butt), remember: Sometimes you will never know the true value of a moment until it becomes a memory. 

But don't worry, if that "moment" involved you saying a four-letter word in front of your kids -- they're remind you of that "memory" every chance they get. 

 * It was Target

Whose Comfort Zone is This Anyway?

It's one of my favorite quotes.  I found it on a coffee mug in NYC a few years ago.  I’ve put it on my Facebook page, it’s part of my Twitter tag, it’s been on my blog.  I get comments about it all the time.

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone." 

Mostly I use that quote when justifying something stupid I want to do like run a half-marathon in Antarctica, or go cave diving in Mexico, or zip-lining  in some rainforest.

Practicing our panicked looks last spring.

But today I watched my 10-year-old son get ready to go to his first sleep-away camp. He’ll be gone from home for five days.  As I took him into the meeting space to check in with his counselor and the rest of his teammates, he had a distinctly panicked look in his eyes.

He was definitely well out of his comfort zone.  And some bumper-sticker/coffee-mug wisdom about life being better because of that was not going to help him.

I had to fight every urge not ask him if he wanted to forget the whole thing and just go home.  I wanted to wipe that panicked look from his eyes.  I wanted to hug him and love him and protect him…

But then I took a deep breath and thought: what exactly was I trying to protect him from? Growth? Meeting new people? Having fun?

Leaving his comfort zone?

So I watched him board the bus, waved to him one last time and left him to go have his adventure. I’ll look forward to hearing all about it when he gets back on Friday.

 I guess today life begins for both of us at the end of his comfort zone.

Junk Miles

As I’ve mentioned before, I love to run, but it wasn’t always that way. I never ran a day in my life before February 2010.  Since then I’ve run all sorts of distances: 5k’s, 10k’s, a few half-marathons, and even a marathon in January 2011.

When I first started running I hated training plans. Because here’s how basically every training plan starts:

“Warm up with 1-2 miles.”



Maybe a 1-2 mile warm-up isn't so bad



I’m sure there were other sentences that followed that one, but I never read them because “warm up for 1-2 miles???” Seriously? 1-2 miles was half or sometimes even three-quarters of my ENTIRE run.  “1-2 mile warm up.” Yeah right.

To be honest, I’m not sure I ever ran a 1-2 mile “warm-up” even when I increased my mileage for half-marathon or marathon training. I’m not a big training-plan person, especially the really complicated plans.

But as I’ve become a more established runner I’ve had to acknowledge what training plans are attempting to eliminate from a running schedule: JUNK MILES. Junk miles are miles you run that don’t actually improve your fitness or challenge you in any particular way.

When I first started running, there were no junk miles. Every mile improved my fitness or challenged me. But now, many miles later, I have to be careful not to get lazy in my running. I have a limited number of running hours each week: how will I use them? Will I push myself with speedwork or hills or distance? Or will I just run along at a pace and route that doesn’t really challenge me?  It’s something I face every run: Am I going to put in my full effort or am I just going drift along?

What I’ve come to realize is there are junk miles everywhere, not just in running.

There are junk miles in my job: Am I just going to just assign a grade or take the time to help this student understand the issue?

In yoga: Am I really going to engage all my muscles or just stand there holding a pose?

In my writing: Am I actually going to work on my book or just blog and Twitter all day?

Even in how I interact with my children: I’m sitting with them, but am I actually listening to them?

Junk miles can be everywhere and if we’re not careful they can become the norm instead of the exception. 

So in this season when people are giving up things, I am going to attempt to give up something permanently: junk miles. Even in running.

I have a limited number of hours this week. How will I use them?

Making Room for Failure

Last week my 11-year-old daughter auditioned for a play at a local children’s theater. She did well enough at the first audition to receive a call back the following night for dance. We found out at the call back the play was set on a Caribbean island and most of the dancing was African-based moves. So I watched (since they left the doors to the rehearsal hall open) as my blond, mostly rhythm-less, whiter-than-white daughter tried to do these African moves. 

It became apparent to me after just a few moments that this was going to go poorly.  Like really bad. And it did. After an hour of watching my daughter try and fail, and try and fail, to do these moves, I was a basket case.  It was obvious that she wasn’t right for the show.  I just wanted to sweep her up and take her where no one could make her feel less than perfect. But that wasn’t my job at the moment. My job was to allow her to fail.

Allowing our children to fail is perhaps one of the hardest jobs we have as parents. But if you carry them through everything, they never learn to walk sure-footedly on their own.

Fast forward to last night at dinner. As part of my “try a new recipe every week” resolution, I decided to make Indian Chicken Curry – a favorite of my husband’s and something I had never made or even tried before.  It was much more involved than most of the meals I usually fix.

How the heck do you cook with this?

It became apparent to me after just a few moments that this was going to go poorly.  Like really bad. And it did. There I was running around the kitchen like an episode of Worst Cooks in America: chopping onions, dicing potatoes, trying to stir the curry paste mixture (who knew you had to mash the “paste” so you wouldn’t have chunks of it in the sauce?  They should say so on the box. IN ENGLISH). I put the oil on too early and my onions weren’t all chopped, so I was darting back and forth, trying to chop and stir at the same time. Stuff was burning at the bottom of the pan. My youngest three children were hopping in and out of the kitchen, taking perverse delight in telling me how gross everything looked.  And all the while I’m trying to figure out HOW THE HECK you get fresh minced ginger out of ginger root. Seriously – have you seen ginger root? That’s not even right.

I turned to find my daughter looking at me with what I suspect was the same look I had for her last week at the audition.  That "I-want-to-step-in-here-before-you-crash-and-burn-but-know-that-I-need-to-let-you-just-figure-out-this-mistake-on-your-own" look. Sometimes you just have to let your parents fail. If you carry them through everything, they never learn to walk sure-footedly on their own.

In the end, there’s good news: my daughter wasn’t cast in the Caribbean island show, but WAS cast in Willie Wonka – a much better fit for her and her talents. The other good news: Pizza Hut delivers.

Homeschooled? So Are You a Genius or an Idiot??

Homeschooling physics lesson?

For the past three years, despite them being neither geniuses nor idiots, I have homeschooled my four kids. Nobody was more surprised than me about our foray into homeschooling. I am definitely not one of those moms who are “called” to homeschool, as many of my friends are. I am not particularly patient (“really, the word is CAT – how can you spell that wrong??”) nor creative (“Sure kids, there’s nothing wrong with a two-lined poem. Let’s move on to the next chapter”).  But we found a curriculum that worked for us, hammered out the logistical kinks as best we could, upped my supply of Xanax, and jumped in.

Why do I choose to homeschool my kids? Well, mostly because it gives us freedom to study subjects more applicable to our family (Chinese rather than Spanish), it works well for our schedule (read: Janie does not have to get up at 6am), and allows us to travel – a favorite family pastime.  Plus, Chuck Norris homeschools his kids. Nuff said.

There are always skeptics about homeschooling. Rightfully so, because for every 100,000 or so properly- educating home situations producing well-adjusted, happy, intelligent children, there’s one case where a mom locked her kids in a basement and they learned to read from Bazooka gum wrappers.  (No matter what you heard, those weren’t my kids. My kids had Bazooka gum wrappers AND the backs of cereal boxes. Plus, it was the attic).

Here’s a funny clip about the “The Top Seven Lies About Homeschooling – Debunked.”  Dude is a little wound-up, but it’s still pretty entertaining…

In case you’re too lazy to watch the video, I’ll summarize THE LIES:

Lie #7: Homeschoolers are really sheltered.  “Living in a world where you don’t know who Lady Gaga is…” – wait, maybe we all should be homeschooled.

Lie #6: Homeschoolers go to church 7 days a week.   – yes, but here at our house we are starting to discourage the practice of kidnapping neighbors and dragging them to church with us

Lie #5: Homeschoolers don’t actually do school.  – ahem, my kids ARE NOT taking nature walks while I watch Dr. Oz! It’s while I watch Sherlock.

Lie #4: Homeschoolers have no friends. – That’s right, homeschoolers do have friends. Not every homeschool family lives on a farm or in a log cabin. Just 90%.

Lie #3: Homeschoolers are really shy. – Obviously said by someone who has not met my youngest son.

Lie #2: Homeschoolers have no lives.  –  What dude said in the clip - just find it in the video: 3:05

Lie #1: Homeschoolers do school in their pajamas. – Yeah, well that’s just true. “And it is the very, very, very best thing about being homeschooled.”  Yep.

Despite all the homeschool perks, the kids have decided (with my blessing) to attend school next year. So we are enjoying these last few months of homeschooling as much as we can. In our pajamas, of course.