Monday, August 13, 2012

Kids will be kids, is that enough?

A couple of weeks ago, my husband was gone so I brought the kids by myself to church.  I was looking forward to the peacefulness I would have sitting in the pews by myself.  Turns out, once a month the kids' Sunday school is closed.  Unfortunately for me, that was this Sunday.  I had nothing with me to keep the kids entertained and nobody to help.  So much for peaceful.  I started off the service trying to keep the boys sitting in the seats the right way, followed by getting them off the ground, followed by getting them to stop laying down, this wasn't nap time!  To make matters worse, the couple in front of me with a tween kept looking back at us.  I was already sitting in the balcony, where did they want us to go?

I had kept my voice reasonably low while threatening the kids with death (aka no DSs for a week), but they were all over.  During a prayer, B managed to crawl under the pew and was a few rows back. I was beyond frustrated.  They tailored the sermon to be entertaining for younger kids.  It was about Sampson, well, from what I could hear, I thought it was about Sampson.  So why won't my kids sit still??!?!

Boys will be boys is a common phrase people tell me, but is that ok?  Should I just laugh at their wild ways and shrug?  Or should I try to tame them?  I've spent my whole, child-rearing life trying to tame and I'm not sure it's helped.  It has just caused a rift between them and me.  I guarantee they think I'm a terrible mother because instead of playing, I'm telling them to be safe, be responsible, don't hit, don't kick, to quit putting underwear on their heads, to JUST LISTEN and DO IT THE FIRST TIME!  Apparently, they are well behaved in school, daycare, Sunday school, so is it too much to expect them to behave for me too?

So I'm in turmoil.  Should I change my ways?  It would be very difficult for me to do that, but if it would help me regain a better relationship with my kids (especially my oldest, he's 8), then I would try very hard.  Or do I continue beating down on them to sit still and maybe it'll sink in?

Here I sit, at the Chelsea Tree House (indoor play area), catching up on my work and watching the kids play.  My main motive is to get them tired out so they will sleep tonight (my youngest was up until 9:50 last night!!), but a secondary motive is the enjoyment I get out of them playing well together (because this is rare at our house too!).


Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Here we go again!

When I first moved to Jackson, I only knew my boyfriend (now my husband), his best friend, and his best friends girlfriend.  I'm an introverted person, so it's hard for me to make friends (I usually have to be around them a lot to feel comfortable enough to talk about anything personal but most people just think I'm shy or rude for not speaking).
I spent my free time with my boyfriend.  I had made a few friends at work and spent some time with them, but mostly it was with Mike.   His best friend's girlfriend, Meredith, had met a friend (Lidija) that she said was a lot of fun.  They were getting together with a few other women at Lidija's house and Meredith invited me along.  I knew two girls from work there and thought it was a great group of girls. Fast forward 8ish years, past marriage and babies and more baby, and past 6 years of slowly coming out of my shell and now these girls can't get rid of me.  I've got stories that I've told a hundred times that they still listen to, tears that nobody cares that I shed, and constant chocolate whenever we meet.

Three of these girls (Angie, Becky, and Michelle) get stuck with me quite often.  Actually, now that I think about it, I think they can't get enough of me.  They begged and begged and begged for me to run a marathon with them (OK, maybe begging isn't the right word, it went more like this:  Me: "Hey, did I hear you guys talking about a marathon?"  Them: "yea"  Me:  "Ok, I'll run another one with you."  Them: <awkward pause> <whisper> 'Did we invite her?'.  Ha!  I'm kidding!
They did the full training for the May marathon, and I ran half of what they ran (see training schedule ) and we all started the marathon.  One of us became severely dehydrated and had to stop around 21.5 miles.   A few hours after we finished, I volunteered to run another one with her when she was ready.   Last week she decided she was ready, so we are upping our mileage to prepare for an October marathon.  I really don't care about completing another marathon, I don't care about another medal, but I wouldn't miss the training.  I have learned so much from these girls.  I learned how great organic food is, I learned about eMeals (about any night of the week you could pop over to any of our houses and we'll probably be preparing the same meal!), I learned that I'm not the only one who screams at my children until I'm blue in the face.  We read the same articles, listen to the same podcasts, run a ton and still don't lose weight.  We can talk for five hours without much silence.

So here we go again.  Another 2.5 months of training, another hundred or two miles on my shoe, and I'm sure an injury or two, but I wouldn't miss it for anything!  I wonder how many marathons we can fit in next year....