All in Parenting
As the quarantine wears on, I’ve been looking for new ways to entertain the boys. As I was cleaning my bookshelf I came across the box set of my favorite books from 4th grade, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series. I managed to convince my boys to let me read a couple chapters to them every evening before bed rather than watching another lame YouTube video.
I love my son. I love music. I love that my son is learning music. I loathe the recorder.
For my first three years of college I majored in Education. What possessed me to think I could EVER be a school teacher is a mystery. I can’t remember if I’m 13 or 300 days into NTI, but it is beyond obvious that I am not equipped to be a teacher.
Today started off so rough that I overslept 3 hours and missed a phone conference. Yep, that was how I started off the day that was supposed to be Reds Opening Day.
I just spent an hour calming the nerves of my 11-year-old. He’s been brave for the first 10 days of this social distancing situation, but today was his breaking point. I thought today may be mine, but I had to hold it together to help my little guy out. I can pencil in my own ugly cry tomorrow between 10:30 and 11:00pm.
Earlier I spent an hour tucking my boys into bed. Both of them are struggling with the current situation. They’re struggling in different ways, but struggling nonetheless. Up to this point, they’ve both been pretty strong, but until today things have been pretty normal. But today was the first homeschool day.
My little guy turned 10 today. I’m not going to say the time flew by because in all actuality parenting is hard. Occasionally I wake up and suddenly realize, “oh shit, I have two sons,” while wondering why anybody left me responsible for innocent children. But in all reality, I’ve earned my parenting stripes over the last decade in part because Harry keeps me on my toes.
Today is my Ollie’s birthday. This got me to thinking about how much my life has changed since he burst onto the scene 11 years ago. Well, more accurately he strolled onto the scene after hours and hours of agony, but who remembers or cares about labor room details. Anyway, please enjoy this list of 11 reasons why Ollie makes me better.
It occured to me that in all 12 years of my public school education I was only required to read two books that had female protagonist—To Kill a Mockingbird and The Scarlet Letter. Thank goodness for Scout and Hester or I would have assumed women did nothing noteworthy. On second thought, TKAM is really about Atticus Finch and Hester Prynne served as a cautionary tale of what would happen to young ladies who dared to step out of line or make a mistake.
Somebody in my family, who shall remain nameless, got a bad haircut. More accurately, someone got a perfectly fine haircut he just isn’t fond of. I won’t go into details of his reaction, which honestly got a little ugly, but I’d like to consider my reaction and explore the gravity of navigating these types of situations.
In due time I realized comparing my parenting to anybody else was ridiculous. All families are different and kids’ needs and circumstances vary wildly. Also, if I’m not modeling authenticity with my children, how will they learn to be true to themselves?
A year or so ago, I found an Instagram account called Nature is Metal. It’s a graphic, brutally honest and violent representation of the animal kingdom. The curators are clearly fans of the unforgiving nature of Mother Nature. Recent posts include hyenas eating a lion’s head, an anaconda swallow a fawn and zebras murdering their young. This is not for the faint of heart.
