What I Would Tell Myself in 2002

You guys.

Right this very minute, my kitchen is cleaner and more organized than it has been in 15 years.

My secret?

I boxed up most of the contents and put them in a storage unit and slapped down a whole bunch of shelf liner.  Only 23 more items on the checklist and we can get this house listed.  Which means I have projects looming.

Which means I’m in high anxiety mode.

Which means I’m procrastinating!

So I was delighted to receive an email from a reader this morning because it has given me an excuse to park myself on my bed with the cats and blog which is so much better than painting.  This email (which I’ve edited to protect identity) said,

My son was recently kicked from preschool which sent us down the winding road of therapies and psychiatrists and lead us to ADHD … Would you mind sharing with me any tips or tricks? I have a baby on the way and I’m overwhelmed with how to manage him in the midst of all this. 

Oh goodness.  That word, “overwhelmed” brings back memories.

I’ve written about Hayden’s ADHD in the past.  Now I’m getting ready to celebrate his high school graduation and send him to college.  Here he is heading to prom last week.

From this spot, I have to say that all in all, raising a kid with ADHD isn’t all that different than raising one without it.  There are (many) days when I’ve enjoyed him and (a few) when I really didn’t.  He’s had successes and failures and some tasks he really struggles with while other things come easy to him.  I’ve laughed with him and cried for him and prayed over him.

I could say exactly the same thing about my kids who don’t have ADHD.

But for this sweet reader’s sake, I will share what I wish I had known when he was a preschooler:

1) Don’t let yourself get embarrassed.  It’s so hard when your kid is the one who is always causing a ruckus and misbehaving to not flush deep red and start apologizing.  Don’t.  Don’t let yourself feel shame over the way your kid is wonderfully and perfectly made.  If he makes a mess or hurts someone, clean it up and apologize just like you would for any other kid and move on.  Don’t let anyone make you feel ashamed or like you have a “bad” kid because your sweet baby will feel that shame and catch on that there’s something “wrong” with him.

There’s nothing “wrong”.  There’s just something different and that’s ok.  Breathe.  Embrace who he is and help him become the best version of himself with what he’s been given.

2)  Structure, structure, structure.  Hayden thrives when he knows what his parameters are.  He needs a schedule to follow, deadlines to adhere to and predictability.  When situations are open ended or expectations are not clearly defined, he flounders.  Set a tight schedule for wake time, meals, snacks and bedtime and adhere to it whenever possible.  Follow routines as much as possible - you’ll see a difference.

3)  Don’t set yourself up for failure.  For years, we did not eat out at restaurants.  Expecting Hayden to sit still and keep quiet for a meal in the midst of the sensory overload that restaurants provide was too frustrating for everyone involved.  We ordered in or got take out but rarely went to a sit down restaurant to eat because he just got into trouble and I got angry.

If there are situations your child doesn’t do well avoid them.  Generally, these are places and times that involve a lot of noise, a lot of people, a lot of excitement and not much structure where a rambunctious kid is going to get into trouble.  Go to zoos, not museums.  Plan a quick escape route from the family reunion.  Movies at home are going to be a better bet than the theater.

4) Work with your school.  ADHD kids are hard to have in a classroom.  They just are.  Hayden probably would have benefited from being homeschooled, but he got me for a mom so that didn’t happen.  The best I could do was to team with his teachers to make the best situation I could for him.  A good IEP or 504 plan are beneficial here to make sure everyone is on the same page.

5)  Make sure you have a plan to take care of yourself.  If you are tired and frustrated, you’re not going to be the best mom you can be for any of your kids, but especially for your kid who may be the source of the frustration and fatigue.  Figure out how you can recharge.  Put on a movie or a video game and take 30 minutes for yourself to read a book or take a shower or journal or get a quick nap in.  

Find a person or people who get it and hang out with them.  I was fortunate enough to have a friend or two with kids in the same boat.  If you don’t, maybe find an online group.  Find somewhere where you can vent and talk things through with people who won’t judge because they’ve been there.  Avoid the judgmental people who seem to have all the answers to your problems.  They may mean well, but at the end of the day they just add to “overwhelmed”.  

I hope this helps my reader and anyone else who is on this wonderful journey of raising the most energetic kid on the block.

Painting and Parenting

Getting a house ready to be sold is not my favorite thing.  I like to think that we’ve kept up on projects through the years.  Goodness know it seems like we’re always working on something.  But now that we’re thinking about strangers walking through and evaluating everything and hopefully coming up with offers to buy the place?

Well the To Do list is daunting.

Little nit-picky things like paint touch-ups.  Great big expensive things like replacing most of the carpet.  Random things like replacing a light fixture that we haven’t used in ten years but the next owner might want to.  And sad things like painting over the pink, polka-dotted walls in Reagan’s old room with a neutral color.

Actually I managed to paint over the polka dots without too much pain.  Reagan hasn’t lived her in almost two years and if she were to move back we would paint over the walls because she’s not so much a pink and polka dots kind of young lady anymore.

Also?

Those walls were grimy.  Adults rarely touch walls and so once you paint a wall in your bedroom, it stays more or less in good conditions for years. Kids and teens see walls as vertical floors.  They lie on their beds or rugs and put their feet on the walls, manage to get hand smudges in unlikely places and just are generally hard on a paint job.  Not to mention the tape and other adhesives for posters and such.

So while painting those walls was a little hard, it was also necessary.  What I was not prepared for, was painting the closet.  I had mostly forgotten about this:

I think Reagan was in kindergarten or first grade when we had some friends over for dinner.  Their daughter, Ressa, was in Reagan’s class and the girls disappeared upstairs to play.  When we went up to check on them, we found them doing this.

I was furious. Furious!

Reagan was thoroughly lectured and I’m sure it included a phrase along the lines of “this is why we can’t have nice things” and … well now it all seems really stupid.

Why was I so mad?

I mean, no - it’s not okay to draw all over the closet door.  But really? Big picture?

Not worth getting furious over.

But these are the things you learn on your first child.  They teach you what is worth making a fuss over and what isn’t.  Rich and I are both oldest children ourselves and we turned out (mostly) ok so I feel safe saying that being the “practice kid” isn’t life shattering.  And there are plenty of mistakes to be made on subsequent children so it all evens out in the end.

Apparently I got over being mad about drawing on the back of closet doors because the art work seems to have continued for a few years.  It included memorials to several pets that came and went.

 I sat on the floor in front of that closet door yesterday and really, truly cried.  Cried over the fact that my kids aren’t little anymore.  Cried for the mistakes I’ve made.  Cried over the fact that I have to paint over this lovely childhood memento when I really don’t want to.  Rich came in and I told him, “I just can’t do this.”

But I can.

And after taking a lot of pictures, I did.

Which led to the discovery of something worth getting upset about.  Turns out that washable marker - even 13 year old washable marker - cannot be easily painted over.  It bleeds right through.  Two coats of primer and six coats of paint later, you can still vaguely see a cat head.

Parents of Littles take note:  If your kid draws on the walls, don’t get bent out shape over it.  In fact, tell them to have at it.  And then hand them a Sharpie which is MUCH easier to paint over.

When Boys Are Easier Than Girls

When you are raising both genders, you occasionally get that question: “Which are easier to raise, boys or girls?”

The answer depends on the child and the day and your temperament.  You also need to factor in patience levels, tolerance for stink vs. overly perfumed, how much you’ve had to drink and … well the variables are endless.

But there is one occasion when I can unequivocally state that boys are easier than girls:

Prom.

To find a girl’s outfit for prom you shop.  And then you shop.  

And shop some more, until finally… you shop.

Then you buy the dress.

Next you have to shop for shoes.  Then you shop for accessories.  You also shop for makeup.

Then you drop her off so she can shop with her friends.

With the boy, you walk into a tux shop and discuss the six options - all of which come with shoes and accessories.  Thirty minutes later you walk out with a complete outfit.

The day of the prom, girls start early.  We went with paying someone to do the hair, but doing it yourself takes just as long.  There are also nails to be painted and re-painted and a painstaking session with make up.

My son spent exactly thirty minutes, to shower and shave.

It only took that long because he went all out and washed his hair twice.

Hayden did not take any particular date.  He went with a group of friends which was a smart move, because guess who planned the whole outing?

The girls of course.

They picked the restaurant and the locations for the photographs.  They decided where to be and when to be there.

They even tried to tell the boys who would be doing the driving.

Telling boys what to do with their cars is where the line is drawn apparently.

Look at those girls.  Aren’t they lovely?

The girls spent fifteen minutes grouping and posing and regrouping and taking photos from all angles.

While the boys?

The boys stood off to the side and played with the sword that belonged to the guy who decided to go to prom dressed as a pirate.

I couldn’t get a straight answer as to why he was dressed as a pirate.  I’ll say this though: he owned it.  He wore that pirate costume with bold swagger.

I never did decide whether to be impressed or alarmed.

So go ahead:  ask me which is easier to raise - boys or girls.

The answer this week is definitively BOYS.

Weirdest Paint Color Yet

Let’s hear it for three day weekends.  I love that I can take a day for normal weekend chores and another day for minor diy and STILL have a day to lounge around.  I say we all go to a 4 day/10 hour work week!

My diy for this weekend was strange:  I painted a bedroom.  Of course, it’s not the painting part that was strange.  Goodness knows I’ve done plenty of painting in this house.  And the house before it.  And the house before that.  No, the strange part was the color.

I don’t shy away from bold paint colors.  My living room walls are two different shades of blue.

Picture from Easter 2009.  How cute were those girls?  The answer is: very.

I have red accent walls in my kitchen and the wall behind my bed is purple.

Then, of coure, there are the kids rooms, the most colorful of which is Faith’s:

Clearly I’m a fan of color on the walls which is why the bedroom I painted over the weekend is so strange.

I painted it off -white.  Well, Hazelnut Cream to be precise, but definitely neutral.

Yawn.

But as I considered paint colors, I realized something:  I have no idea what this room is for.  When we moved in, it was Hayden’s bedroom.  He was two and a half and I had it wall papered with a green, sports-themed paper.  I found a strip of it under the chair rail when we removed it on Friday.  It’s funny to me now that I chose that paper, because Hayden has never been into sports. When he was two though, I did not know that about him yet.  I should have papered it with bugs or sci-fi I suppose.

Hayden was in that room for two years and then we put Faith in there.  When she moved in, I stripped the paper and painted the walls green and purple to match a pretty quilt I got her from Pottery Barn.  Last year when we moved Hayden down to the basement, Faith got his room and the guest bed went into the green and purple room which was quite a feat because it’s a pretty tiny room and the bed is king sized.

Which is why it won’t be the guest room forever.

Actually, if Reagan follows through on her plan to get an apartment when she’s done with the residence hall, I’ll move the guest bed into her room because it’s bigger.  (But I haven’t actually mentioned that to her yet so sshhhhhh!) When that happens, this little room will be … well I don’t know.

IT HAS NO PURPOSE.

So I painted it neutral so that whatever it’s purpose may end up being, I won’t have to repaint it.  

I’m a thinker!

It’s kind of a glimpse of the future though.  As the kids leave, more and more rooms will be useless.  Two people won’t need five bedrooms.  Or a family room AND a living room.  Or a basement TV room.  Or more than two bathrooms.

We moved into this house because of it’s space and the potential we saw for being a great family home.  We only had two kids at the time and the day when they would leave home seemed far into a hazy future.  But in what only seems like a couple of years we’re there.

Well, almost.  I guess Faith still has high school ahead of her.

And Hayden says he is never moving out of the basement because he hates to spend money.

And who knows? Reagan might come back.  It happens.

I guess I won’t start looking into down-sizing just yet.  

Traditions and Middle-School Humor

A couple of years ago, I blogged about how we paint Christmas cookies every year.  Make that almost every year.  In 2012, with Rich living elsewhere, it was way too weird to do the family tradition without him so the kids and I made a gingerbread house instead.  That was actually really fun and I appreciated not having to roll, cut and bake 100 cookies.

But, thanks to last year’s miracle, we are all together again and it felt so good to sit around the table with paint brushes and glaze and renew the tradition.

With a few changes.

Cookies with teens is very different that with toddlers.

On the plus side, teens are actually helpful.  As much as I love baking, I do NOT love making sugar cookies.  I find the process of rolling and cutting to be tedious and exasperating.  Because I am already exasperated, I have never let the kids help with this step because I know myself and yelling would ensue - not so much a happy holiday experience.

But this year, I took a deep breath and let Faith help.  Why did I wait so long?  She was really, truly helpful!  Her cookies turned out beautifully with little to no instruction and having her company made the whole process faster and much more enjoyable.

Next year I very well may have her take over the whole project!

Now for the down side of working with teens.  First of all, they don’t want you to take their picture - especially if (horrors!) they aren’t wearing make up. (The girls, not Hayden.)  I was only allowed this one side shot.

That’s Faith mixing up the icing in her PJs and new Batman socks.  She did a great job with the icing too.  The colors were perfect.

However.

She did commit one major cookie crime.  She created this guy:

That right there is middle school humor at it’s finest.  Which means that the boys in the house found it to be hilarious because boy humor pretty much is fully formed in middle school.

Rich got the honor of decorating it and the picture is a bit too much for a family blog.  Let’s just say that the snowman ended up in a red Speedo and that the cookie was NOT on any of the plates we gave out.

Neither were any of Hayden’s cookies.  All of the cookies he painted were involved in a very dramatic Christmas crime scene:

It involved the theft of valuable, bejeweled Christmas bells and some gory deaths of the criminal deaths by a Christmas tree spear and some kind of Ninja star thingy.  I don’t know how the police managed the take down with those gigantic badges but Christmas cookie police are very macho I guess.

Reagan, unfortunately, has a nasty cold so she was quarantined to her own area of the table and the cookies she decorated were put into an isolation unit.

All in all it was a fun night, made even better by my new appreciation for just how special these family moments are.  Not all of our traditions have survived.  For instance, we did not watch Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer even once this year which is sad because at one point it was Reagan’s favorite movie.  I have also not been asked to read a single Christmas book.  Honestly that just about makes me cry.  So many wonderful December nights have been spent snuggled into our bed with the kids while I read these over and over.  

No more.  

And with the typing of that sentence I officially am crying.  Good thing I haven’t put on my mascara yet today.

Christmas is a great time for traditions and memories.  May all of yours be merry and bright this year.