It’s Not About Our Hair

What I Think I Know - A tongue in cheek commentary of things I’ve learned (or so I think)….

I haven’t talked about this yet, because I wasn’t sure what to say and I still can’t watch the video without crying for the entire day, but I know her life wasn’t lived in vain and that she was brought into my life for a reason.

Louise was the only one of my friends who got just as excited as I did over creating family journals and making family vacation jars , and she was even the inspiration and creator of some of the activities like the giant S in our family room.  She would call me all the time with ideas for the website and about products she thought we should add to our store.  She was a “family geek” just like me and I loved her for it.  She was a true friend who believed in what I did and inspired me to be a better person, mother, and friend.  And watching her battle cancer over several years and finally having to surrender at the young age of 37 was one of the hardest things I have had to go through in my life.  She lived her life with integrity and died with integrity and never once complained about the bad hand she was dealt.

After she died in February and we had the chance to say goodbye at her funeral, I started to take the time to look through our family photos to see if there were any of me.  If you have been a reader of our newsletter for a while now you know that I spend a fair amount of time worrying about how my kids will remember me , and after Louise’s death I realized I spend no time making sure my kids have pictures of me.  I couldn’t find any pictures of me and my kids together.  They were all of just the kids or the kids and my husband.

My reasons for not being in the photo’s are just like many other moms, my hair is a mess, I don’t have makeup on, or I just want to make the good times about the kids not me; all selfish excuses that come from my own insecurities and desires and none of which are in the best interest of my kids.   Because in the end, my kids won’t care if I have make up on or if my hair was a mess, my kids are going to care that I took the time to be present in their lives and left behind physical proof of our life together.  Pictures of me give my kids more than just memories, they give them proof that I lived and loved them.

So PLEASE do your kids a favor and take some time to make sure you are in the photos, in their lives, and in their memories.  Someday they will thank you.

Living with a Twelve Year Old Environmentalist

What I Think I Know - A tongue in cheek commentary of things I’ve learned (or so I think)….

Stop running the water!  She’s destroying the rain forest!  Can’t this be recycled? 

If you lived in my home you would hear these cries all too often not from me mind you, but rather from Katie, my 12 year old daughter, who over the last couple of years has developed a deep affinity for saving the environment. 

The first born of four girls, Katie is a soulful deep thinker and a classic type-A overachiever.  I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she grew up to be a teacher, activist, or even a Presbyterian minister someday.  I can always count on her to do the right thing and remind me when I am not. 

And over the past couple years as she has worked hard to educate herself about the environment and yell at us (ok, primarily me) about what we (ok this is me too) are doing wrong, I can’t help but wonder if I would have made the changes in my life if it weren’t for her.  I’m not so sure I would have the patience to shred and recycle paper, wipe out reusable sandwich bags, slow the flow of water as I rinse dishes to a painfully slow drizzle, or hunt down water bottles hidden under a couch if it weren’t for her reminding to be a better person.  She makes me conscious of my choices and what these choices are teaching my children.

I am a little embarrassed and at times aggravated that I have to be reminded by my 12 year old daughter to be more environmentally friendly, but I am much more proud than embarrassed.  Proud that she has taken the time to learn her stuff, proud that she has the courage to speak her mind, and proud that she makes me a better person.

Thank you, Katie.

Whose Dream Is This Anyway?

What I Think I Know - A monthly tongue in cheek commentary of things I’ve learned (or so I think)….

I’m a little worried I’m cheating my children.  Cheating them because unlike many other parents in our school district, I don’t make my kids take extra math classes, join competitive sports teams, and participate in performance orchestras.  My style tends to be a little more laid back in that I make sure my children work hard in school, get good grades, have plenty of opportunities to participate in extra-curricular activities of their choice, form many friendships and social networks, and always give 110%

And as I stand back watching these other kids grow and their parents dedicate endless hours and dollars to their children’s lives, I often wonder whose dream are they chasing?  Do these kids actually dream of becoming the doctors, scientists, and lawyers they are being groomed to be or do they dream of something different?  Or worse yet, do they dream at all?

Call me crazy, but I actually think it is a good idea to let my kids dream their own dreams and help them along the way by providing them the opportunities and resources to achieve their dreams.  Mimi Doe said it best in her book, 10 Principles for Spiritual Parenting: Nurturing Your Child’s Soul, “When we nourish our children’s dreams we help them strengthen their courage to stay true to who they really are - we allow them to weave their spirits into everything they do.”  I couldn’t agree more.

Don’t get me wrong, I know the parents who choose a more structured managed life for their kids, are doing so out of love and a desire to give their children a better life.  But in the end, the straight A’s and perfect ACT scores will mean little if their children’s spirits are sad and unfulfilled and they end up being something other than what they were meant to be.

The Good Times ALWAYS Outweigh the Bad

What I Think I Know - A monthly tongue in cheek commentary of things I’ve learned (or so I think)….

I think I was probably about 8 or 9 years old when my parents, older brother, and I took a two week vacation out west in a non-air conditioned station wagon.  We were on our way to see the major sites that most families see when making a trip to the west, Yellowstone Park, the Grand Canyon, and Mount Rushmore.  Back then my brother and I thought it was fun to bring along tape recorders and tape various parts of our trips.  We would interview each other and our parents and just do silly little things with the recorder to pass the time. 

We were all having a great time until we had trouble finding hotels with vacancies.  It seems that my mom the planner thought we should make hotel reservations in advance so that we had places to stay whereas my father didn’t think hotel reservations were necessary.  Needless to say, my mother deferred to my father’s judgment and hotel reservations didn’t get made.  And this is where our pleasant fun filled trip turned for the worse at least for my parents.  Tired from driving and spending a little bit too much time together, my parents began one of the worse arguments I had ever heard them have throughout their 40 years of marriage.  Being young and somewhat oblivious to the fragility of the situation, my brother and I saw my parents’ moment of weakness as an opportunity and recorded their entire fight on our tape recorders.  My brother and I were having a great time hunched over in the back recording and laughing at every last word.  Eventually we found a place to stay and my parents made up, leaving us to record our own thoughts and silly games.

To this day my brother and I still talk about that trip and get a good laugh out of that fight and gutsiness it took on our part to record it.  And I think we appreciate the memory even more because we are now both parents and can fully appreciate what our parents were feeling on that long 100 degree day in a non-air conditioned station wagon with no place to sleep. 

I have to admit that there have been times on family vacations where I haven’t kept my cool.  Whether it was because of the too close quarters, the lack of sleep from driving all night, squabbles from the back seat, or my husband walking away from the plan, there have been times when my tiredness overtook the excitement and I completely lost it.  But yet we continue to go every year, saving money in our family vacation jar, setting family travel goals, and keeping track of everything in our family journal because the good times always outweigh the bad, and if for nothing else than to give my kids memories and laughs to last a lifetime.

The Not So Perfect Family Journal

What I Think I Know - A monthly tongue in cheek commentary of things I’ve learned (or so I think)….

At one point in my life, I had dreams of capturing all of our family’s life memories in a beautifully decorated, perfectly designed, and magnificently color coordinated scrapbook.  I was going to do one for every year of our life and they would be handed down from generation to generation.  Each scrapbook would capture all the most important parts of our lives as well as our hopes and dreams.  They would be the epitome of the perfect family journal and my daughters would fight over who got to keep them after I died.  That was my dream…

Well needless to say our first epic family journal is sitting somewhere in my basement completely unfinished.  I think the year was 2002 and I maybe got a total of four pages done.  It wasn’t for a lack of desire but rather a combination of my innate lack of eye for design and an overwhelming feeling they needed to be perfect. 

So out of confusion and frustration, I gave up the idea of scrapbooking our lives.  I continued to take photos that are proudly stored somewhere on my computer’s hard drive and I continued to save some of the more important mementos of our lives of which are safely stored in boxes in my closet. 

And I was more or less happy with this solution until my daughters started finding it fun to reminisce during family dinners about all our good times.  Remembering things I had completely forgotten and making me realize how some of the most seemingly trivial things like a cow spitting on Jennifer or a hen biting Katie can be so meaningful to four young girls. 

And I suddenly realized we didn’t need a perfectly designed, beautifully decorated, and magnificently color coordinated scrapbook.  All we needed was a not so perfect family journal to capture the thoughts and memories of four little girls who had a much deeper appreciation for our history than I ever realized.  And so our family journal was born.  We don’t do any cropping, or use special cardstock and stickers.  We just glue, write, and draw from the heart. 

Remember, it always the little things.

I Have Work To Do

What I Think I Know - A monthly tongue in cheek commentary of things I’ve learned (or so I think)….

Growing up, my mother set the tone for the entire family.  When Mom wasn’t happy, no one was happy.  Even if her unhappiness didn’t have anything to do with us kids, it still made us feel bad.  We weren’t old enough, mature enough, or self-aware enough to understand that our mother was a real person who had feelings, interests, hopes, and dreams outside of her children, so when she was upset we internalized her unhappiness and often ended up feeling bad and responsible. 

Now don’t get me wrong, my mother was a wonderful person and mother.  She worked her fingers to the bone to provide all of us kids with college educations, love, support, and strong values.  But with all of the pressure she felt to provide for and raise her children she sometimes got unhappy and yes even grumpy.  And today, as I am raising my children and I am facing many of the same worries and challenges, I finally understand how one bad day or unhappy moment can affect my kids even when I don’t mean for it to happen. 

While writing the article How Will Your Kids Remember You, I decided to find out what my girls thought of me, so I asked them this question:  “How would you describe me to a friend or teacher that didn’t know me?”  Some of their answers I expected, some of them surprised me, and some of them hurt a little.  But what I found really interesting was the one I didn’t hear but expected to hear.  Not one of them would describe me as happy….

I guess I have work to do because I really want them to know and remember me as happy.

The Goodnight Thing

What I Think I Know - A monthly tongue in cheek commentary of things I’ve learned (or so I think)….

It started when my daughter Grace was three. Partly out of just goofiness and partly out of my worry Grace was feeling neglected with a new baby sister in the house, the two of us created what we affectionately now refer to as the Goodnight Thing. The Goodnight Thing is a silly little bedtime ritual we do every night just before she nods off to sleep.

The Goodnight Thing goes something like this: with the door partially closed and me standing outside, I make 5 quick jumps back into the room and each time say one of these things, “I love you very much”, “No one loves you more than mom”, “You’re my favorite 6 year old (or whatever age she happens to be at the time)”, “I love you da more (da is how Grace used to say the)”, and the last using only hand signals as I point to my eye, cross my heart, and point back at her is “I love you”.

Now to anyone who has never seen this ritual, it really does sound pretty goofy, but to Grace it is one of the most important parts of her day. Not a night goes by that Grace with a soft pleading look in her eye doesn’t ask me to do the Goodnight Thing. It is our way of connecting after a busy day and most importantly makes Grace feel special. Special in a world where she has to compete with three sisters for attention, special in a world where she has to compete with 17 other kids in her class to be heard, and special in a world where quiet little girls struggling to find their voice sometimes have a hard time making themselves known.

And if I was perfectly honest, I would admit that sometimes after very long days it is all I’ve got in me to drag myself to her room for the Goodnight Thing; you know the nightly bedtime ritual that takes all of ONE minute of my time, but fills my daughter with something so powerful.

Somehow I always manage to find that one minute.

There is a lot of Peace in Having a Plan

What I Think I Know - A monthly tongue in cheek commentary of things I’ve learned (or so I think)….

A few years ago, I was working a corporate job with excellent pay and incredible benefits. The company pretty much gave me everything I requested in terms of flexible work arrangements. I was working a reduced work week, job sharing a full time job, and at times working from home. I had the working mother’s dream of job flexibility. The only thing missing was passion. No matter how hard I tried or how hard the company tried, I just couldn’t get excited about the product they sold. I ended up burned out and emotionally exhausted week after week. I knew I needed more and I knew what could give me that, I just didn’t know how. I was overwhelmed by all the details that needed sorted out, the risks I would have to take, and the sure panic of giving up the financial security of my job.

So I made a plan. I set realistic goals and plans to make my dream happen. I discussed my dreams and goals with my husband and kids and listened to their concerns and advice. We worked out solutions together and worked together to make the dream a reality. The road hasn’t always been easy, there have been mistakes and problems along the way, and we still have some way to go before we can declare success. But what I know for sure is that I couldn’t have made any of it happen without a plan; a plan based on solid family focused goals. And from that plan came tremendous peace. Peace in knowing that I was on the right track, peace in knowing that I wasn’t taking huge risk, and peace in knowing that I was doing something I absolutely loved.

And now three years later, I have a job with work life flexibility and passion. I come to work everyday with enthusiasm, love, and happiness. I absolutely love what I do and have never felt so at peace in my entire life. And it all started with one little family goal….