Whose the Better Parent?

I had an interesting conversation with one of my besties today. Nowadays we often find that our conversations tend to drift to parenting techniques. Today's topic was more or less on when it's appropriate to introduce technology to kids, meaning ipods, cell phones, facebook, etc.

Both of us had our opinions, but the thing with us is we are in two entirely different phases of mommyhood. She has toddlers and I have pre-teens. Of course she doesn't see the need to give her four year old a cell phone, where I can justify letting my oldest have one. She doesn't see the need for kids to have a facebook pages, where I can see the importance of letting an older child have one. You say tomato, I say tomahto.

Letting my child have a facebook page has always been somewhat of an internal battle with me. On one hand I think it's intrusive and could potentially be dangerous, but on the other had it's also a good tool for communicating with peers. Plus it's a great way to spy on your kids. After all, it was because of social networking that I was able to stop the party of the year that Buddy was planning on throwing at his vacationing mother's house. Although I agree with allowing older kids to have a page, I strongly disagree with elementary age kids having one.

This got me to thinking.....am I a better parent because I won't let my nine year old have one? Does that make her friend's mom neglectful? I think not! I learned a long time ago, painfully I might add, that you should never judge another person's parenting skills if you haven't walked int their shoes. When I was twenty-one I thought I knew it all and I actually criticized the way Buddy's mom was raising him. Thank God she is a forgiving and non violent woman because if I were her I would have knocked me on my ass!

I think at times we are all quick to judge the choices of other parents. "I would never let my daughter wear that to school", "I would never let my child listen to that music", "I would never let my child stay home alone", "I would never let my son have a girlfriend", the list goes on and on. The truth is you can never say never because you aren't in that parent's shoes.

Here is a good case in point. I remember a friend once telling me an incident involving lunchables. Now there is a good "I would never" subject. Her daughter came home upset from school because of something her friend said. Apparently at lunch her daughter's friend said that her mom called my friend lazy for giving her daughter lunchables. I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of lunchables and I've thought the same thing about parents who send those in with their kids (at least I used to), but here is was that parent didn't know. My friends other child was diagnosed with cancer and was given a five percent chance to live. Fortunately, he was in the five percent and I'm happy to report is thriving and healthy today seven years later. This serves as a lesson though, don't judge a lunch by it contents.

Bottom line is, we are all doing the best we can. Parents don't go into this child rearing adventure thinking I'm going to be the worst parent there is! No, we all go in with the best intentions and cross our fingers that we are making the right decisions on behalf of our precious gems. I am clearly not a perfect parent. I'm sure my children will have plenty to discuss with their therapists when they are older. I'm trying though, we all are. Just remember that the next time you see a six year old with a cell phone, you never know when your "I never" will turn into an "I allow".

Mr. Me

For the past two and a half weeks I have been biting my lip so hard that I may need a blood transfusion by the time I'm finally healed from my surgery. My darling husband has graciously taken off work to care for me during this time, which has been a huge blessing. The only thing is I've had to catch myself from, let's just say, suggesting how he should go about doing things.

Let me give you an example. Laundry. Oh boy, does he do laundry. He is constantly washing up clothes. He is awesome on staying top of my most hated chore. For that I am grateful. However, there is just one little thing. He doesn't put it away. The kids and I are forced to dig through laundry baskets that are, no exaggeration, piled halfway up the wall. It drives me crazy, but I bite my lip.

Now let's talk meal time. Thanks to all my friends we have been blessed with dinners every night. This is a huge help to both myself because I am forbidden to do anything but lay on a couch and my husband because he already is taking on so much extra. So it shouldn't be such a big deal for him to clean up the dishes after dinner, right? Wrong. He eventually does clean up but it's usually right before we sit down to eat the next nights dinner. After dinner my lip begins to throb from the biting to keep my complaints silenced.

I know he is trying his best, and really do appreciate him. I know there are many husbands out there that wouldn't be willing to use all their vacation time to take care of their re cooperating wives. I am lucky. I know that. But here is the thing, he took vacation time so that he could easily do my job. I'm not keeping score or anything, but if I was here is a taste of what it would look like-

The amount of times my kids have been late to school because I over slept- me- 0 (out of the 9 years they have been in school) husband- 2 (out of the two weeks he's had to get them off to school)

The amount of times my kids have missed and entire day of school for a dentist appointment- me- 0, husband- 2.

(My lip is now bleeding because I am biting so hard. I want to scream SCHOOL IS NOT OPTIONAL!)

The amount of times lunch is packed for the kids each week to save money- me- 5, husband- 0.

The amount of times McDonald's is served over a holiday weekend- me-0, husband- 4 (even with meals being delivered every night my kids are still getting healthy doses of junk food)

The amount of school projects completed in time- me- too many to count, husband- 1/2 (I still needed to do most of it).

The amount of times the house needs to be vacuumed due to a large hairy dog- me- 1x every other day, husband- 0 (he hired a cleaning lady!)

I think you get the point. He's not all bad.. he is painting our middle son's room. A room he's been telling me he was going to paint since my step son moved out three years ago. It only took him three days to go buy the paint, one day to "prep", one day to take a break, four days to paint four walls and two days to reassemble.

I understand that my job is hard, heck I do it everyday plus work part time! But I will tell you this, the first time he even looks at me sideways for not having the laundry done, or having dinner ready, my lip will come unbit and he will go down! After all he's doing my job with help and he can't keep up.

I can say I do get a little satisfaction from knowing that I'm a better mom than he is....I guess that's why he is called dad.

Home Salon

Rewind about thirteen years ago. I was 22, newly married only for about two years. Money was tight and one of the things I did to cut corners was do my beauty maintenance at home. One day I had the bright idea to wax my legs...something I had never attempted before, bad idea. I bought one of those kits that boasted "no paper necessary, just peel was off". Sounded easy enough. Of course I thought why not make it easier and ignore the directions that say small section at a time and do both legs at once, bad idea #2. Needless to say after several attempts to peel, wash, cut, soak (with lighter fluid none the less), I worked about 3/4 of it off my legs. My legs were blue from my jeans for weeks.

Lesson learned, right? No. Over the years I've had several home salon mishaps and I keep going back for more.

Fast forward to present. With me being confined to the couch and unable to do anything, a couple of my besties went in on a cleaning lady for me. My husband thought it was such a good idea he hired her to help me through my recovery. Most women would jump for joy, but honestly I feel a little silly. Sure, I know I'm not supposed to do anything, but I can't help but feel guilty. So in an attempt to ease my guilt I decided to dye my hair myself, with the help of a friend, to contribute in my own way to the hiring a cleaning lady.

Truth be told I have dyed my hair for years on my own. In fact just before thanksgiving I became a brunette for the first time, but as any "blonde" will tell you, it's hard to stay brunette. No offense to any brunettes out there in cyberland. I have a lot of friends who are brunettes. I'm just a girl who likes blonde. I'm sure your thinking, so what's the point. I'm getting to it.

The reason I dyed my hair brown in the first place was because it was just getting too long for me to do myself. You see, about two years ago I went to see Mamma Mia, the movie, and fell in love with Meryl Streep's hair. I decided then I must have it on my head..thus the growing began. Dying it brown did help and I thought I had found the perfect solution to my problem, that was until Mamma Mia was broadcasted on television. Meyrl Steep's hair was blonde. A spark started inside and I needed my blonde hair back.

Two days ago one of my besties came over to help me not only save money but look like Meyrl Streep in Mamma Mia. I told her to get one of those frosting kits, the one with the cap where you pull the hair through. Sounded simple enough. I would just sit there while she helped my tranform into my Meyrl Streep image.

I had done the cap thing once, in seventh grade. A girl whose mother was a hair dresser swore to me that she knew what she was doing. The only thing I can remember from the experience is that it hurt. It hurt real bad, but in my infinite wisdom I thought that it would be better this time. I was clearly wrong.

At eight p.m. the torture began. At first it wasn't bad, a little tug here and little tug there. I could handle it after all I was saving money that could go towards the new cleaning lady. By nine p.m. it was a different story. As I felt and heard my hair being pulled from my head my friend said, "We are almost halfway done."

All I could muster out of my mouth was, "Almost halfway?"

At this point I was too far into it to turn around. I convinced myself to keep going. I kept going even after my husband said I looked like a doll that a little girl hadn't taken care of and my children kept walking by with strange looks on their faces. I kept going even when my friend's voice turned from confident to skeptical.

An hour later my hair was completely pulled through the cap. It was ready for the dye. My friend slathered it on and the waiting began. As my hair processed I wondered what would happen when it was finished. Would I have any hair when this was finished? I didn't know. All I could do is laugh. After all this was my bright idea.

Just before I washed out the solution Pumpkin Head helped ease my fears by telling me that my hair looked like yarn and that I should of left it along. He is now written out of my will.

After another hour of rinsing and working the cap off of my head, I was able to see the finished product. I ignored the small pile of hair that was left in the bottom of my shower and apprehensively looked in the mirror afraid that I would still resemble that unwanted doll. By God's grace I did not. In fact my hair looked great. However, the next morning as I was carefully washing my aching head I made a promise to myself that I would close my home salon once and for all. I know they say pain is beauty, but I think that saying should be saving money is pain, beauty is worth the cost.

It's Been Awhile.....

I'm ashamed. I haven't blogged in quite some time and I can report that I have a really good excuse. Not only have I been adjusting to working a "normal" job, and having a junior higher (which by the way just complicates life 100x more) I have also been having to buck up and force myself to deal with my "pain".

No, my "pain" is not one of my kids, all though I do think that they sometimes have contributed to it..but my pain is exactly that- pain. I've had it for years and over time it progressively became worse. So bad in fact I couldn't go on ignoring it, I had to do something about it. Living on pain meds was not an option I would accept, I was looking for something more permanent. Fortunately, there was a solution, unfortunately that solution required surgery, but it was the best option. Last week I bit the bullet, and went under the knife. I'm happy to report that as of today I am very happy with my decision and am looking forward to the future- pain free!

So here is to the first post of many to come.....get ready. A writer is about to emerge!