2me4art

of my daughter & I about 9 years ago.
I have been informed that I don’t do anything with my children. I love when I am able to come up with examples of me doing exactly that. Summer vacation is very difficult for mothers & children. The structure (school or daycare) that they relied upon to get them through their day, drop kicked them out the door. GO PLAY! Today is very different then when I grew up. The age of technology is here, the summers of my past are just that, past.

The guilt that comes with motherhood is like ketchup is with fries, you can’t have one without the other. My children can apply guilt as though they have a masters degree in it. I’ve been a mother for about 17 years, so I may not have the best answers, but what I do have, I am willing to share.

1. “You never play with us!”
A. This is a falsehood- they wanted nothing to do with you until you told them to turn off the: t.v., iPad, video game…etc.
Now they have come to seek you out & harass you with their interpretations of 1990 Garfield episodes. Until you relent & say, enough!…go watch t.v. (but not before telling the truth!)

2. You love so-and-so more then me.
A. This is also a falsehood, we humans tend to hang around the familiar, the child thats personality is closest to yours or a family member, you tend to allow babble incessantly BECAUSE…”I learned how to suppress your Uncle George when we were kids.” Then let the child know that that is all it is & they wouldn’t have said something like that had I not told them to turn off the iPad. Or remind them to eat…

B. I tell my children, part A, but I’ve also added…my favorite is the one, “I like the child who being the most helpful.” You think this guilt trip will damage them, but really it is the elbows of his/hers siblings, trying to push past to be helpful, that land in his/her stomach that is the only damage they will suffer.

C. The last guilt tri…answer that I have found that works is that, the reason I had your younger sibling is because YOU left me FIRST!

Then I tell them (very reluctantly)it is what they were supposed to do, as I am supposed to feel–otherwise the child will not grow up & move out. Mother’s would remember
1a. Pain of childbirth
2b. shlepping babies in my beautiful stomach
3c. STRETCHMARKS appearing on my everything…sob.
4d. Falling for your father
5e. Being perfect, living at home with my parents, driving their cars, using their gas, earning an allowance to buy records, tapes or CD’s, having someone else come up with dinner, being rescued by my parents for anything…that I wanted them to know about.  And believing getting out of the house & growing up would be better.  As we are supposed to believe, but learn at age 42 or so how unbelievable it was to have all that & being unhappy.  Thus proving that having everything doesn’t make you happy.

The mother wants more children because, i think, my children looked at me with their big, baby eyes. Starstruck. I was always starstruck with my children. Those babies I wanted to be with, talk to, raspberry on the tummy with…learned how to crawl, walk & talk–ultimately did learn those things…
My children left my arms because I had done it right. My crush was over & turned into…”why don’t you just fall the @$%&* asleep??!?!?!” I was tired, I missed being adored. I had become…my mother.
I love my mother.

I read in a magazine that the older we become, the happier we become. I thought that was true because most older people became slightly less…smart. That is not true. Older people know where I have been, where I am & where I am going BECAUSE they did the same damn thing.

Older people become teenagers again. They can fall back on their own children if they HAD to (they would have to live in the basement). They know that life totally sucks from 42+57 (because we still have to take care of our, now, spoiled children. AND we are tired). They know that when their skin is sagging (they now know that nothing will stop it) & have learned to move on (because time is a freight train).

I think that older people tend to be happier because they have, finally, realized the key to happiness is…sleep. Sleep whenever they feel like it. Sleep wherever they happen to be sitting, no matter the time. Like a house cat.

I remember sitting in front of my Grandparents television, enduring yet another football game, only to jump out of my skin because my (beloved) grandfather had snored in his sleep. I remember thinking, how can he sleep with all this noise?
I understand now, he had finally begun to earn all the sleep he had missed taking care of his family.

In this picture, I have evidence of playing with my daughter.
I also have evidence that my son left me first. The only real parenting advice I can honestly say is successful- is to take lots of photographs & save the evidence.
BTW, I will edit tomorrow, its way after my bedtime.