Philly Moms

Plugged in Too Early

My daughter has been constantly asking for a pink iPod for her birthday. Its all she wants - and she'll take good care of it and not lose it and be very careful. And she doesn't want a shuffle - she wants a REAL iPod with a screen and a scrolly thing. And it has to be PINK.

Um... did I mention that she's turning seven?

SEVEN! Doesn't that seem a little young to be asking for a piece of technology that costs $150??

Battles I Will No Longer Fight

Instead of resolving to lose weight, eat healthier or whatever this year, I've resolved to stop fighting useless battles with my children. I've finally realized that life is just too short for me to stress out over things that are decidedly out of my control. I need to loosen up for the sake of my family and my sanity.

For example, my kids wake up by 6am, without fail. Regardless of when they go to bed, how tired they are, what time we went to bed, whether it is Saturday or vacation... It's annoying. We tell them to go back to bed, we try to keep them up later, nothing works. I need to embrace it and start going to bed earlier so I can drag myself out of bed before my three little alarms without snooze buttons go off. All while dreaming about when they are teenagers who want to sleep all day.

no one "does it all"

With three small kids, a husband with a demanding job, running three blogs and now having an expanded business, life is busy around here to say the least.  Recently, several people have asked me, "How do you do it all?" which just makes me want to laugh.

Haven't we women figured out by now that NO ONE does it all?

Some of us work full time, some of us stay home with our kids. Some of us travel for work or have husbands who travel, leaving us alone with the kids. Some of us volunteer at school or in the community and really do look like we have it all together and some of us don't.  We all have to take care of our kids, our homes, our families and ourselves.   And we all have 24 hours in a day.

animal planet in my surburban backyard

We live close to Valley Forge, so it is almost an everyday occurrence to see a deer in our backyard. Usually they are just passing through. Occasionally, they get brave and approach my deck to nibble on the herbs growing in pots or to chew on my supposedly 'deer-resistant' shrubs.

But this morning, when I was putting my daughter on the bus, I heard a huge ruckus in my backyard. Whatever it was, it sounded much bigger than my neighbors' cat.

Suddenly, a doe came tearing through my yard with two young bucks in hot pursuit. She took a sharp turn at the shed and shot into the trees up on the hill behind our house. The two bucks followed. One came along side the other and bumped him with his head. The other reciprocated. I heard the sharp "crack" as their horns met.

does my blog respresent the real me?

My husband commented the other day that I'm not nearly the emotional roller coaster my blog might suggest. One day I'm writing about loving my kids, the next I'm writing about bursting into tears, then how I love being a mom, then I lost it again, etc. It seems only the best and worst parts of my life end up on the blog, my highs and lows of parenting three small kids.

It got me thinking... how does this blog represent me? If someone found my blog who knew me in real life, would they make the connection? How is my blog different from my real life?

My blog shows the lows of parenting more than the highs. I post on the lows because I tend to blog more when I'm struggling, finding it therapeutic. And I like to keep it real: my life is not perfect, my kids are not perfect and I'm certainly not perfect. As embarrassing as the lows sometimes are, I think they're worth sharing.  One of the most amazing things about the mom-blogger community is how transparent it has made the journey of motherhood. Its not all tea parties, soccer practice and cuddles. The blogging forum has made moms more brave about sharing their struggles. 

bullying: to intervene or not?

My six-year-old daughter, Ellie, has been dealing with a bully on the bus. At first we decided to use this as a teaching tool: to teach her to stand up for herself. She did as we suggested and said sat with a friend near the driver.  But one day, after her friend got off the bus, the bully came and sat next to her. Ellie said no. She pulled Ellie's hair. Ellie said no and called out to the bus driver, but he didn't hear her because it was so noisy. Then she pulled her hair again, hard. Ellie said no and called for help again, but nothing happened.

She ran off the bus, sobbing, into my arms. And much, much more information came out. Like how this happened more than once last year. Like how this girl was talking about her to the other girls.  Like how this girl told Ellie to give her one of her backpack charms or she would pull her hair again. (Ellie said no, then the girl "got really angry" and pulled her hair again.)

So I spent an afternoon holding my sobbing six year old daughter, as she tells me of how it  hurt when this girl pulled her hair, but it really hurt when she said mean things about her.  Wiping away her tears as she asks "Why?", trying to explain something that is so beyond comprehension. Wiping away my own tears when she asks how she is supposed to treat someone like that.

our birthday lesson: it's not about you.

I have two little girls who are almost exactly eighteen months apart. My youngest girl had her fifth birthday last Thursday. And of course, she was ecstatic. She was skipping around the house singing "Happy Birthday to Me!" and inviting everyone she knew to her party.

Then, on Thursday morning, she came running up to me crying, saying "Ellie said she hates my birthday, that I'm still a baby and that she won't eat my cake!"

Woah.

My first thought was to comfort Ellie. Of course it's hard when its someone else's day. When the girls were younger, we would always have at least one small gift for the other sister who wasn't having a birthday. Just so she wouldn't feel left out. Maybe I should assure her that she is special too and that her half birthday was just days away and maybe we could celebrate that.

Wait. What kind of worthless lesson is that?

putting the "philly" back in "philly mom"

Hey, Philly Moms, when was the last time you and your family were in Philly?

Let's be honest - most of us live in varying degrees of what we call "The Greater Philadelphia Area" as opposed to actually living in Philadelphia itself. But if someone asks us where we're from, we say Philadelphia. But how often are we in Philly? For our family, we've been averaging once or twice a year. Its pretty sad I know.

Despite having possibly the busiest summer ever, we found ourselves with a free Saturday recently. We were discussing what to go over breakfast (the park? swimming at the Y? working on the yard? the zoo again?) when out of the blue, one of us suggested, "Lets go see the Liberty Bell."

wardrobe malfunctions: they're not just for celebrities anymore!

Poor Emma Watson.

This lovely young lady, who plays Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies, had an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction at the premiere, when a gust of wind collided with her wrap dress.

I can totally relate.

I’ve had more than my share of wardrobe malfunctions in my time. I actually had several before the term “wardrobe malfunction” was even coined. Back then they were just called “embarrassing moments.”

Sparing our kids from our stress

We're really trying not to be obsessed with selling our house.

You know, despite that most of our conversations, most of our energy and all of our anxiety is focused on selling our house.

We kept having the same conversations over and over and over. One of us gets down (usually me), convinced that we're not going to be able to move. The other assures the one that "We just need one person who likes it!" or "We're only half way to our sell-by deadline!" or something optimistic like that.

But being in limbo is so frustrating and we kept rehashing everything, everyday. Because we're only moving if we sell the house, so we don't want to talk about the new house very much just in case we don't end up moving because we didn't sell our house. So we're trying not to get too excited about the new house, but we ARE because we LOVE IT, but we're afraid we won't get it because we can't sell the house we have now.

But our poor kids. Our poor, poor kids who have to live with us through this.