No Average Mom

It doesn’t seem possible that 5 years has gone since you left us. In my heart it feels like just yesterday. I can feel the broken little pieces of my heart that remain from saying goodbye to the world that was supposed to include you. I once read that in every family there is a child who was “supposed” to be. It could be the daughter than turned out to be a son or the spouse that wanted 5 children but stopped with four. In my heart you are the second child of three given to me. Your place on my earth was too brief but my heart holds you forever.

We all have foods that just make the world seem right. Foods that no matter how bleak things feel somehow add a layer of security and comfort. For me there are many foods that fall into this category. This as you can probably guess has been a problem for me over the years. Turning to food for comfort is not healthy. I now try to make my favorite comfort foods even when the world around me is “good”. I hope that this will make me less likely to overeat and later wish for weight loss pills. One of my favorite things to make is cream puffs. I don’t know why so many people are in awe of my ability to make cream puffs because in reality they are fairly simple to make. Eggs, flour, butter, milk, and water is all it takes to make cream puff pastry and pudding is almost foolproof to make. I made a batch of cream puffs yesterday and you would have thought I made my husband a gourmet dinner.

Children are funny creatures. My youngest son has a fascination lately for taking all of his clothes off. This was cute the first dozen or so times but has quickly lost its “cuteness”. He is driving me crazy with undressing at every whim. I try to ignore it but when you are trying to get out the door this is frustrating. The other day I had him all dressed to run errands and ran upstairs to get my purse. I come downstairs to find him mostly undressed. I realize this is a normal developmental phase but I really hope he passes through it quickly.

We try to have a family game night about once a week. In theory this is a great way to bond as a family and enjoy each the company of one another. What I really need to do improve game night is to go through our game closet and either throw some of the games away or replace them. Nothing ruins game night more that not being able to find the rules or half way into the game finding out important tiles are missing. It is nice to be able to find rules online but not having all the pieces is often hard to fix. It never fails that the game my children are dying to play is the one that has fallen prey to the game piece black hole. Somewhere out there is a place where all the missing games pieces have gone. I wish someone would point me in that direction.

I don’t think of myself as a prude but maybe I am. As I sit here watching the Disney channel with my children I am astounded at how teenage girls are dressing. This particular show features three teenage girls who are completely focused on chasing boys. That doesn’t bother me so much as how they are dressed. One of the girls is wearing a micro mini in a school setting with high heels. These heels are so high is is crazy. I don’t think I have ever seen a girl wear stilettos in a school setting. In fact I didn’t even think this was allowed? I may have been living under a rock for a few years but are we really cool with young women thinking looking like a hooker is a good thing?

Our older son was always super easy to get professional photos of him taken. Our youngest son is and entirely different story. In fact I don’t have very many professional photos of him at all. He is just one of those kids who wants nothing to do with the entire process. I would love to get photo holiday cards this year but I am worried that he won’t comply. I have some great candid photos from home that might work but it just isn’t the same as having a professional photo to show off to family and friends. I feel bad because my family always drops hints about wanting photos of the kids but I haven’t taken them recently. It is hard to pay so much money for pictures of a tear stained little boy who is completely distraught with having to get dressed up and sit still.

A few weeks ago I had the bright idea of painting my kitchen cabinets. They were a very dark dated wood style cabinet. It wasn’t until about the fifth coat of paint that I began to realize what a bad idea painting these cabinets was. I didn’t take the time to sand them down and just jumped into painting them with primer. No matter how much primer I put on them this brown staining kept occurring. I then realized that what was seeping through the primer was cigarette smoke. Like everything else in this house the cabinets were very coated in smoke residue. We had washed the cabinets down when we moved in but it is now clear just how much residue there was on everything. If you are going to paint your cabinets be sure to know what you are doing before you start. This job is a pain under the best of circumstances and poor preparation will only make it worse.

It came to my attention this week that our little dog was getting rather round. I decided to discuss this at the dinner table this week and see if anyone had any insight. I was fairly sure that I was the only person feeding her. As it turns out this was not the case and the dog was getting fed by two or three of us a day. We now know that only one person needs to take responsibility for this job. My son suggested we look into the best diet pills for dogs but I think this can be solved pretty easily. Since the dog is in theory my older son’s dog it seems that he should be the one feeding her. I assumed he would forget to do this but he really has been doing a good job. I need to have more faith in his ability to be responsible and stop taking on this job for him.