What can't you handle?
Sunday, March 21, 2010 at 05:00PM We get e-mails from moms often expressing their difficulties with parenting. You know, the everyday stuff we all have to deal with as a mom but often feel alone in the struggle of it all.
I home school- You know I love it. I've shared the crafts we've done and the fun I've had teaching my daughter how to read....but have I told you that I wonder at times, if we should put her in school? *Gasp I know! I often feel less then? *Wow, really? Yes! The moments are fleeting. I know homeschooling is best for our family and 90% of the time, I see the joy in it. But why is it that the 10% - the hard times, seem to out way the 90% of pure joy? Isn't that true of parenting? Marriage? We sometimes are so hard on ourselves that we only see the 10% and forget to focus on looking down the 90% road. I find reading blogs helps. Well, accept when I come across a home school blog where the mom seems perfect, then I get discouraged. Then again, I know no one is perfect.
But today I laughed. I was spending a nice moment reading the morning paper facebook and blog posts when I remembered Ree. We all know her, we all love her. If you don't know her, well jump on over. Your life will be changed forever....and you might even want to live on a Ranch....*sigh I DO!
So back at my ranch. I'm reading the morning paper posts while sipping from my life line cup of coffee; when all of a sudden, a bug landed on me. I jumped. My coffee spilled all over the floor. The entire cup!
Today....I can't handle my COFFEE.
Did you visit Ree's place, The Pioneer Women? She gives us a cathartic-exercise, go get yourself some parenting tools, pioneer style.
You see, she is a home school mom, she is a mom. She struggles. She laughs.
What can't you handle today? Laugh about it and then focus on the 90% of pure joy!
disclaimer...ha Our readers have a great sense of humor so I'm not thinking you will take Ree too seriously about her "hollering" .... But if you're new around these parts well, please be kind to yourself and laugh a little! ahh...smile *
home school, parenting
Reader Comments (3)
I have to laugh...right after I wrote this, My 7 yr old was so whinny which usually gets under my skin. She wanted to go outside but she was whining about it. So I looked at her and said ( OK no I didn't yell at her) I just looked at her and said, "you can't handle the backyard."She smiled and said, what? Then whined a bit more...and I said, "You can't handle your whining"....she started laughing out loud, we both did!
Nice down-to-earth post.
Teething....today I can't handle teething! What I can handle is how beautiful my baby girl looks in the fleeting moments when she is happy and gives me that gummy grin.
What I can't handle is the number of famlies who have lost thier loved ones in a combat zone. What I can handle is the knowledge that in 6 weeks my husband will return to me after 13 months at war. Although I admit I feel guilty sometimes that my soldier has survived 5 deployments, when some don't even make it through thier first.
I could amass a long list of things that I can't handle.....but that somehow balance - just not as quickly as we'd like sometimes.
Call it a Jewish guilt thing (we're famous for that) but I find that when I feel like I can't handle something, I think about how lucky I am to have the very thing that I can't handle. Like my baby, Emmersen, who the fertility doctors said would never be. She is the absolute most fussy, difficult baby I have ever encountered....but I have her. Watching friends long for babies that never come, I feel like a butt for feeling tired or frustrated.
When I get mad at the Army I think how lucky I am that my husband has a job that allows me to be a stay-at-home mom.
Here is my laugh....a story....when I was pregnant with Emmersen I had a series of events that reduced me to tears. Keep in mind I was 9 months pregnant and my husband was/is on his 5th deployment. I was tired from the last weeks of pregnancy and I laid down to take a quick nap. My daughter poked her head in and told me that she'd dropped a roll of toilet paper in the toilet. I told her I would deal with it later and went back to sleep. Then my son woke me up to tell me the toilet was clogged. I told him it was from the roll of toilet paper. He said, "Oh! I thought it was from my poop!"
The light went on and I realized that meant that he had just pooped ON TOP OF the roll of toilet paper! I went in to find the toilet overflowed and quickly grabbed the plunger. Anyone who has a 9-year-old boy (or a husband) knows the smell isn't good. So I went to plunging in a half-asleep state. Suddenly an air bubble broke loose and splattered poop up onto my chest and arm......and I commenced to throwing up like only a pregnant woman can!
There I was - puking, crying, pregnant and covered in poo. Then my daughter came in and exclaimed with some gusto, "Looks like brother ate corn!"
How can you not laugh at that?