I Don't Want to Alarm Anyone, But . . .

...I'm sure that I've just experienced one of the signs of an upcoming apocalypse. Before anyone gets too worried though, I'll set your mind at ease. Several events have not come to pass . . . My kids haven't been able to spend an entire day without arguing over the computer. I haven't yet had an entire week where I could cook a nutritional and delicious dinner for everyone where we could sit and eat as an entire family every single day. The Cubs haven't won the World Series recently. And aren't pigs supposed to fly too? So there are several events that must take place. You still have time to prepare yourself. 

But for me, right here, right now, I have experienced a modern day miracle.  You see, I used to think of myself as fairly organized. Not this kind of organized:

Ugh! Who lives like this in real life?

But this kind of organized:

Now this I can do!

I was the queen of organizing our paperwork. Our accountant used to say how much he enjoyed doing our taxes each year because I would come to him and hand him a few files that had been organized according to tax categories with excel sheets and quicken reports to explain everything. If anyone came to me and asked me for a document or receipt I knew exactly where to go for it.  I had well organized files with categories and subcategories. It was a thing of beauty.

And then life happened. I'm not exactly sure when things fell apart for me, but it was a gradual thing, I think. One day I was skipping through my fairly clean office to grab a birth certificate so that the kids could sign up for soccer, knowing exactly where to find it, and now if I had to do the same task it would require me to tiptoe through the same office, hoping that there would be a few inches of clearance for my toes, only to find myself in front of a huge pile of documents, tossing them here and there in hopes that the certificate would magically appear. I'm not kidding, this is what my office looks like:

No . . . that's not really my office! I would never actually put a picture of my real life office on the internet for all the world to see. My office looks WAY, WAY worse than this. And the worst part of it all is that it isn't full of junk. No. All of the stuff that is littering the room is supposedly important. Someday, somewhere, someone is going to want to look at these items. There are receipts, bank statements, tax documents, real estate contracts, kids artwork, pictures. You name it. If it matters to me it is there . . . somewhere. So why in the world is it sitting in unorganized piles getting more and more scattered with each passing day?

Well, I blame Minsy. It's all her fault. Not really, of course. She didn't make the mess there. After all, she's only four . . . or three . . . something like that. While we were preparing for Minsy's adoption I was very concerned about keeping all my adoption paperwork organized. My biggest nightmare was arriving in China, only to find out that I was missing one crucial document, thus preventing us from completing the adoption and bringing Minsy home. So I was hyper-vigilant with keeping things organized, at least as far as adoption docs went. But in the meanwhile the rest of life continued. And the paperwork piled up. It didn't help things that we left for a family trip to China that took almost a month. I arrived home to find a stack of paperwork at least a foot and a half high that I needed to go through. Unfortunately the jet lag I experienced when I got home was a killer. I just couldn't beat it, no matter what I tried, so I got further and further behind. And at a certain point the task of catching up seemed so daunting that it really paralyzed me. All I wanted to do was sit in bed and read all day long. I got to read some super amazing books, so all was not lost, but reading books all day doesn't help the chaos to go away. The mountain of paperwork in my office just continued to grow. It became it's own little monster, scaring the holy heck out of me any time I approached it. So I avoided . . . and avoided . . . and avoided.  Yet again, that doesn't help things either. Something was going to have to change.

Well, this week I declared war on my paperwork. This was me:

Oh yeah! I was done. This paperwork was going to get organized, or I was going to die trying. (And what a horrible way to die that would be . . . lost in paperwork. Ugh!)

So I started on Monday systematically going through pile by pile. The chaos had gotten so bad that it was no longer confined to the office. Now there were piles of documents that were in the dining room and kitchen, constantly being moved from spot to spot, but never getting any smaller. Our financial records were a complete mess. That wouldn't be so horrible if we just had a normal, average financial situation. But because we own our own businesses and in addition have several rental properties nothing is simple. There are so many receipts and accounts to take care of. It wouldn't be that big of a deal if I was just taking a little time each week to update things. Unfortunately, I was not a good little accountant, so I hadn't updated things in months. MONTHS. The situation was absolutely horrible . . . but not impossible. 

One thing I discovered . . . I HATE accounting. I hate financial record keeping. I could never, ever do this in real life all day long. My mind just doesn't roll that way. Kudos to those who do this for a living. After a good eight hours a day immersed in our financial docs I was ready to pull my hair out, bang my head on the table, and even happily subject myself to a few hours of watching Power Rangers with Hy-guy and JoJo. I was a mess. 

But I also discovered that if I just put one foot in front of the other I could make a little dent in the mess. And that's what I did. It wasn't pretty, and it wasn't fun, but I was making progress. Pardon me for a moment while I do my own little happy dance:

Like I say, the end is not totally near. I did get all of our financial records updated and current. I paid all of the bills that had been hidden in a mountain of correspondence. But my office did not end up like this:

Yet again . . . Who lives like this?

I still have a lot to do. We still haven't gotten things organized enough so that we can do our 2011 taxes yet. I still have at least three years of children's school memorabilia to go through. But now I have a twinkle of  hope that I just might be able to do it. . . . Tomorrow.  Tonight I'm going to lay down for an hour or two and lose myself in a really great book.  The mountain can wait a few more hours.  But I'll get it done. Really. I swear. It'll happen. Yea for small miracles!

Six Months of Minsy's Merriment

Laney and Minsy -- Best Friends

It seems hard to believe, but six months ago today we finalized our adoption of Minsy in Wuhan, China.  It almost seems like a dream to me that we were really sitting in an office half a world away signing the papers that would make this sweet girl officially a Blau.  I sometimes wonder if Minsy thinks of her time in China as a dream.  We have some ladies who are from China who live in our area, and the other day they sat down with us and spoke to Minsy in Mandarin, and she looked at them like they were crazy.  On the off chance that her family in China had spoken to her in Cantonese, they switched to that, and still Minsy looked at them like they were speaking gibberish.  Oh what I would have given to have some sort of idea what was going through her head at that time!  I wonder if she has already forgotten much of her Chinese.  I hope not, but we don't know enough Mandarin to do any sort of real conversation that would keep her immersed in the language at all.

Minsy pointing to her new siblings after meeting Mama in China
November 7, 2011

Six months have come and gone, and so much has changed.  When we met Minsy we were overwhelmed with how wonderfully pleasant she was.  She smiled and giggled at all of us and seemed to jump right into our family without any problems.  It was like she was always meant to be here.    For those who missed it, here's our account of Gotcha Day! HERE.  And you can see another sweet video of her getting to know us HERE.  It was a perfect day.  So did that perfect day translate into six months of perfection and pure joy?  Well, not exactly.  We have had concerns and things that we have had to work on, and there has been a transition that has had to happen before it felt as if Minsy had fully integrated into Team Blau.  And it is ongoing.  We aren't there yet.  But we keep moving forward, seeing new milestones reached every day -- and isn't that how it is with all our children?  It's just that Minsy got out of the starting gate a little later than the rest of them.

Our first introduction to Minsy's amazing smile
November 7, 2011

So what has changed?  First of all we still don't know how old Minsy is.  That is way weird for us.  I assumed that at this point we would have either a new birthday set up for her or we would have her on some major growth hormones to help her gain back and growth losses she may have suffered due to malnutrition.  But it isn't quite so simple.  She is definitely tiny.  Her official record would make her over four and a half years old.  She has the bone structure and size of a two and a half year old.  Her language skills are about there too, but that's a bit hard to judge because she is still in the process of transitioning from Chinese to English.  Her fine motor skills are closer to a three year-old.  Her gross motor skills are closer to a two year-old, but, again, that is hard to judge because she has had to compensate for many things due to her club feet.  So how old is she?  We have taken to telling people that she is three.  That still makes many eyes bulge because of her small size, but it hasn't sent anyone into apoplexy like might occur if we tell them that she is almost five.  Our pediatric endocrinologist is just going to watch her growth trends and developmental milestones for the next year before making any decisions about age or possible growth hormone therapy.  But we have already noticed that she seems to be growing a bit.  Her hair is definitely getting thicker and less coarse, so hopefully our diet is helping her catch up whatever she is lagging in.

Classic Minsy photo pose!
April 2012

When we met Minsy in November we fell in love with her smile and her giggles.  They were the sort of things that could immediately melt a heart.  I sort of imagined the months ahead being filled with tons of Minsy smiles and giggles.  But it didn't quite work out that way.  She did smile and she did giggle, but we would have to work for those.  They weren't spontaneous.  More often than not Minsy would just sit quietly and watch, letting everything sink in.  She was still a very happy girl and easy to please.  She still would giggle if she found someone hilarious, but these reactions weren't easy to pull out of a hat.  It was especially frustrating whenever we would take a picture.  We noticed when we were in China that the Chinese people do not always smile in their pictures.  Smiles were the exception, not the norm.  Minsy proved to be very Chinese in this respect.  She would never smile for a picture, but she was quick to do her little picture pose which was for her to lean her head to one side while holding her fingers in a peace sign.  No matter what sort of contortions we would put ourselves in or how many times we would say "Smile!" we just couldn't coax it out of her.

This was a typical Minsy expression for our photos in the beginning.
Minsy and Daddy

That was then . . . This is now:

Tony Sexton pushing Minsy on the swings.  She LOVED it!
April 2012

Yesterday as a family we went out for dinner to celebrate the six month anniversary of Minsy's Gotcha Day, and (of course) we headed to Chopstix for some not-so-authentic Chinese food.  We gathered outside the restaurant for a picture, and when Herman prepared to take the shot he yelled out "Smile!", and Minsy immediately broke out into an exaggerated smile, scrunching up her eyes as much as she could while flashing all her teeth at the camera.  I almost broke out into tears at that moment (if I were the type of person who breaks out into tears at a moment's notice).  It was just such a change from the smiles we got at the beginning when we would have to be entertaining Minsy to see one.  Now she breaks out in smiles constantly and without anyone having to prompt her to do it.  I love her smiles!

That's not all.  Minsy has always been fairly quick to trust us.  She always let us kiss her and hug her, and she would even kiss and hug us back a little bit.  But you could tell that her heart wasn't quite in it.  It was more as if she was performing a duty than because she was outwardly expressing any inward emotion.  I knew she knew who I was and cared about me.  I knew that she trusted me.  But all of this was just on the surface.  It hadn't gotten to the very essence of her soul yet.  I don't know when things changed, but now she'll come racing to find Herman or me sometimes, and while she is running I'll hear her making kissing noises.  She feels the need to give her Mommy or Daddy a kiss, and she can't wait to start.  I love those kisses!  And her hugs?  Amazing!  She grabs on and holds us for dear life.  Sometimes she'll even pat our backs to make sure the hug gets all the way through our skins.  I love her hugs!

Minsy getting ready for some garden work.
March 2012

We were super impressed with Minsy because she could say the word 'bubbles' on the first day that we met her.  Very impressive!  Since then her language acquisition has been steady but very slow.  Part of this may be because we aren't pushing her too much.  I just figure that it'll come when it comes, and I'm not going to worry about it too much for this first year.  But still, after several months Minsy was still communicating in more non-verbal ways than she was verbally.  I wrote about that in this post HERE.  Although I tried not to, I still worried a bit that her communication skills were lagging.  But it seems as if Minsy is progressively picking things up faster and faster.  It's like a snowball rolling down a hill, picking up momentum more and more as it barrels down the hill.  Each day Minsy seems to say a handful of new things.  A few times she has managed to even put together full sentences.  Her most frequent words?  Chicken, Cheese, Look, Laney, Daddy, Mama, Blue (as in Blue's Clues), Puppy, Stop, and JoJo.  She still struggles with making some of the English sounds -- particularly the "L" sound.  We'll probably have to start her in speech therapy next year, but that'll be just fine.  And that will just cement her role in Team Blau since every one of our kids has had to start out school in speech therapy.  And I probably need it too, but it is a bit too hard to teach an old dog like me new tricks. I'm doomed to have a lisp until the eternities it seems. 

I love this picture!
. . . even though it isn't Minsy at her happiest.

And Minsy's personality?  It is perfect.  She can be a bit shy in new situations.  In those cases she is quick to offer a handshake to any new face, but she is slow to say a word or to offer a smile.  She can be extremely outgoing in other situations.  She has no problem letting her siblings know exactly what she wants.  She can express her needs quite firmly, and although she has been known to throw a tantrum or two (especially toward Laney for some reason) she is generally easy to please.  She has developed a love of the iPhones and can already manipulate them to bring up her favorite apps and videos.  Scary!  Her favorite thing to do is to play whatever her older brothers and sisters are playing.  She still loves bubbles, and those are the best motivations for her when she goes to physical therapy each week.  She also loves shoes.  It is sort of a shame that she loves shoes so much because she has to wear therapeutic shoes almost all the time in order to correct the curvature of her toes.  These shoes look like old fashioned baby boots.  They are big and clunky and not necessarily the cutest shoes on the planet.  But she lets us put them on her each day.  I just know that she would prefer to wear her pink Converses or black Mary Janes.  Oh well!  She'll thank us for this later -- I hope.

Minsy loves to share most things -- generally not toys, but she does love to share her food.  This is a trait that she had in China.  It was one of the things listed in the biography they sent her from the orphanage, and it continues to this day.  I think it is sweet.  She is also super concerned if anyone is upset for any reason, and she is quick to go up and pat that person on the back to help them feel better.  She isn't a big fan of long car trips or large animals.  She makes an adorable monster growl whenever she sees any animal that looks like a monster to her -- giraffe, lions, elephants, and such.  Too cute!

So six months completed.  I wouldn't change any of it for any reason.  It has been better than we could have hoped for.  We still have a ways to go on this journey, and probably the hardest part is yet to come.  But we have headed off on the right foot.  Minsy is a Blau, no doubt about it.  It is hard to remember a time when she wasn't a Blau.  This adoption journey for us has been amazing and well worth every sacrifice we have made in the process.

Team Blau Complete
April 2012

TV Free (Mostly) -- One Month and Counting

For the last several months I have thought over and over about shutting off the satellite service to our television.  This would be a bit of a lifestyle change for us because we live far enough from major broadcast areas that we would not have the ability to receive any live television programming at all.  Now I know that there are several people out there who have managed to get by just fine without television.  It wouldn't be the end of the world if our access went away.  But for me I have always found the television to be a source of comfort for me, whether I was watching anything or not.  Just having that background noise made me feel more secure and safe.  Weird?  Probably.  But it just is what it is.  I can't explain it.  It just made me wary to take any steps to turn off our satellite access. In addition, I felt as if I would feel cut off from the world if I didn't get to watch the news every day.  I didn't want to miss anything important that might be going on in the world.

But a few months ago I started to get fairly irritated with the things I was seeing on television.  I actually have gotten to a point where I don't really watch too much television at all any more.  It was mostly the news, but presidential election politics highlights the very worst of broadcast journalism.  It was irritating me to see how the media (and by the media I mean all sides of it -- left, center, and right) was sensationalizing everything.  I could hardly stand to see any of it.  Every single story seemed to be chosen based on how tantalizing it sounded rather than whether it was true or relevant to anyone's life at all.  I was much more content to surf the web to get my information and make my own informed decisions based on that.  Suddenly the television news didn't seem all that important to me any more.

Then there were my children.  When we were first married we lived in Springfield, and we relied on our television antenna to get the local channels, and that was it.  Laney and Savannah got to watch a bit of PBS each day and maybe a video tape of a Disney movie.  That left lots of free time to do other things.  When we moved to Waynesville we couldn't receive those channels any more, so we signed up for cable.  We still only got the local channels, so nothing much changed except that the pictures were clearer.  Yea!  However, a few years after we moved here the cable company decided to double the cost of their local tv package so that it was now about the same price as satellite service.  I couldn't find it in my heart to pay so much for only local channels, so we made the switch to satellite television.  And wow!  So many channels!  So many programs I had never seen before.  It was pretty exciting. 

And our kids discovered Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel.  They were in heaven!  There were programs for little ones and programs for pre-teens.  There were programs that appealed to everyone, and they were available 24 hours a day.  They were in heaven.  If I were a perfect parent I would have severely limited the time that my kids watched television.  But as I have established in previous points, I'm not a perfect parent.  In some ways we did try to limit things a bunch, but frankly, I so often found myself in so many places that the limits weren't always enforced.  I wish that we could self-regulate, but it just wasn't happening.  More often than not, this was how I would find my children:

Not the best situation, to be sure.

So something was going to have to change.  I was starting to notice that the younger bunch of my children were not the avid readers that my older children were.  I assumed that that might have something to do with their almost unlimited access to mindless television shows.  I don't really have any particular issue with the shows they were watching.  Although I say that the television watching took too much time during the day, we were still very strict about the types of shows being watched.  But even good shows can be detrimental when there are too many of them viewed during the day.  And television watching is so passive most of the time.  I wanted my kids to discover the joys of reading a great book, and their television habits were getting in the way.

So what should we do to fix this problem?  The obvious solution was to turn off the satellite access, but I balked a bit at that.  The one thing that I absolutely love about having satellite access at home is that we get BYU television, and so we can watch General Conference from home twice a year.  I can't even begin to explain just what a big deal that is for me.  I remember being a young mother and attending Conference when you could only see it at the church building.  I remember trying desperately to keep young children quiet for eight hours of Conference during the weekend so that the other people in attendance could enjoy the words being spoken.  It was well worth the trouble that we went to, but it wasn't the most fun either.  It was a HUGE blessing when we could now sit at home and watch the same thing without having to worry about disturbing others.  Luckily, however, the internet speeds have sped up to the point where we could stream the session live to our computer without much trouble, so I was willing to take a chance and give up my BYU television access.

   



I was tempted to do this!
But I couldn't go that far.

We contacted DirecTV and suspended our service for six months.  It wasn't an outright cut off.  It was more like a trial period to see how things went.  They shut off the service right before Conference, and that was our first major test of going without the satellite service.  How did it turn out?  Not too bad.  We gathered around the computer in comfortable chairs and got to see and hear everything.  Granted, it wasn't on the giant big screen, but we didn't need the big picture to hear the messages that we wanted to hear.  I only missed the tv a tiny little bit.  We survived.

We haven't completely cut ourselves off from technology.  We still have netflix streaming so that we can watch some previous seasons of shows we enjoy.  There are some good children's options on there for those times when Mommy needs the kids to take a tv break to preserve my sanity.  (Come on!  I know other people out there do that, don't they?)  But adding the extra steps it takes to get the netflix streaming going is just enough to keep the kids from being glued to the tv all the time.  Suddenly our house was quieter.  I even felt calmer because I didn't have to listen to political blowhards contantly feeding the latest talking points to people pretending to be journalists on the screen.  It was refreshing.

And an amazing thing has started to take place. . . .

The kids are playing outside a lot more!

They are getting along . . . mostly!



All of them are reading
and reading and reading!

It's a miracle!  Hurray!

Now it has been more than a month.  How are we faring?  Wonderfully.  I barely miss it at all.  I wonder how we will feel during the Olympics this summer?  Or other big sporting events like the All-Star game or World Series?  I'm not sure.  But I think that whatever inconvenience we might face, it will be far outweighed by the blessings we have received by having the access turned off.  I'm finding that I like the way that our family is whenever we aren't glued to the set.  I like the way I feel when I'm not irritated by political coverage.  It's a win/win for all of us.  We'll see how things turn out, but for now I'd say that our grand experiment has been a great success.

The Mother I Thought I Would Be

A few years ago during Stake Conference there was a visiting general authority presiding that weekend (for the life of me I cannot remember his name).  Preceding the Saturday evening adult meeting he asked that all of the bishops in the stake along with their wives join him for dinner.  Herman was serving as a fairly new bishop at the time, so he and I joined in the fun.  At some point during the dinner this man (oh I wish I could remember his name!) went around the tables and had each of the wives introduce our husband and tell something about our families.  I did.  No big deal.  But then he gave a little mini talk about how awesome the mothers of the Church are.  He went on and on and on about our awesomeness. . . . And I began to cry.  And cry and cry and cry.  Why wouldn't my tears stop, for goodness sake?  I hate crying in public.  I know that all of the people sitting at my table were thinking, "Awwwwww, Sister Blau is totally feeling the Holy Spirit, and she is crying because she is soooooo happy."  I know they were thinking that because they kept giving me that look -- you know the one -- with a small half smile, letting me know that they totally understood why I would be moved to tears by such a beautiful endorsement of my awesomeness as a wife and mother.  Right?  Well, I leaned over to Herman and whispered, "I hate these kinds of talks."  Herman did a double take has he looked at me, and he raised his eyebrows, questioning how in the world I could hate such a talk.  After all, the man was praising my efforts.  Who doesn't like that sort of talk?  More than that, who HATES that kind of talk?  It made no sense to him.  Yet I continued to cry -- not because I was overcome with emotion, so happy to hear someone validate my role.  As he spoke this leader said, "It is because of you women that our families are succeeding.  You are the reason that we regularly say our prayers each day.  You are the reason that our families are having regular Family Home Evenings.  You are the reason that our children are attending seminary, going on missions, etc., etc., etc."  And on and on and on.  If there are good things going on in a family, he explained that it was because of the valiant efforts of the mothers.  But all I could think about as he spoke was the inverse of that -- if these things were not going on or were not successful, THEN IT WAS MY FAULT.  Now, the logical part of my brain says that I was very much over-analyzing his statements.  He didn't mean to call me out.  He meant to thank me for all that I do.  I didn't need to beat myself up over his comments.  But I couldn't stop crying.

Before I had children I lived in the world of theoreticals.  "When I'm a mom I will do this . . ." or "When I'm a mom I'll never do this . . ."  Insert anything.  The truth was that I wanted to do a good job -- not just a good job, a GREAT job.  And I knew just how to accomplish that.  Piece of cake.  I envisioned myself as strictly observing schedules, taking lots of time out of my day for appropriate learning activities and book reading with my children.  When they came home from school they would be met with a giant hug before I led them to the kitchen so that they could enjoy the fresh batch of homemade cookies or cinnamon rolls.  I envisioned a perfectly homemade meal on the table every evening as our family gathered together to recount the events of our day.  I thought I would be that parent that every other kid on the block would want to come and visit because of my extreme coolness.  I thought that I would be queen of the bedtime ritual, making sure to spend quality time with each of my children, giving them all of the love they would need to get them through a night of sleep.  I thought that I would be the parent who would have a perfectly open relationship with my children so that they would immediately think of coming to me with any problems that they might face.  Prayers, Family Home Evening, scripture study?  We would be unstoppable in our regularity of doing those things.  You name it.  I wanted to be great.  

Laney and me -- December 1994
I had no idea what I was in for!

And then life happened.  Reality hit.  I came home from the hospital with my very first baby, not knowing ANYTHING about what I was doing.  I had my well-worn copy of What to Expect the First Year, dog-eared and underlined.  And yet, why would this bundle of joy not stop crying?  What was I doing wrong?  I got slammed with a bout of postpartum depression that I wasn't prepared for.  It wasn't until I finally had my last child before I even realized that I was suffering from it.  All I wanted to do was stay in bed and sleep all day long.  My motivation left me.  I was exhausted.  I felt like I was failing this parenting test big time.  And this story continued for six births and one adoption.  Every time a new situation came to pass, and I had to relearn my role again and again.  This was not all tears and frustration.  If so we would only have one child.  Between my insecurities and fears about my abilities as a mom were moments of joy so sweet that it could erase almost anything else.  Family is amazing.  I wouldn't trade my experience for the world.  Give me my family, mistakes and all.  Nothing this world could offer would top their importance to me.

Today I came home after dropping everyone off at school and ended up thinking a lot about who I am today.  I thought about the mother I expected to be when I was a twenty-three year old know-it-all.  And I thought about who I am now as a forty year old wish-I-knew-it-all.  My mom always had a hot breakfast ready for us each morning.  Cold cereal was a luxury for us.  We got to have that only on Saturday mornings.  My family?  Cold cereal is the norm.  Feed yourselves for breakfast is generally the rule.  When we do have a fancy hot breakfast it is usually on Christmas or on a breakfast-for-dinner night.  I was a highly organized student.  Always.  As a parent?  I am constantly forgetting to go through my kids' folders.  I sometimes forget snack day for the elementary kids and have to do a mad dash to Wal-Mart to grab a box of oreos.  I have often had to make extra runs to the school to hand in permission papers that I forgot to sign, despite constant reminders from my children.  Afternoon snacks prepared by me are a rarity, even though I enjoy baking and am pretty good at it.  We have fend-for-yourself dinners or cold cereal for dinner more often than I care to admit.  After coming home from China I was so incredibly overwhelmed that I didn't do a well thought-out prepared dinner for weeks.  In fact, one day when I started making a real dinner the kids asked me who was coming to visit.  Sigh.  Bedtimes can be hectic.  Family prayers can be forgotten.  Family Home Evenings can sometimes get lost in the shuffle.  I often feel like I don't know the right thing to say to my older children.  I worry that I can make situations worse by saying anything at all.  I can be ridiculously overbearing when it comes to my children and dating.  See HERE and HERE.  Am I proving my point?  I feel unorganized and exhausted more often than I should.  I did not end up being the excellent parent that I hoped to be.  And I could go on for awhile.  But I won't. 

You know, as moms sometimes we can be hard on ourselves.  And many times we can be hard on each other.  I can't even begin to count how many times I have heard the words "I would never do that" come out of a woman's mouth as she was talking about how another woman was raising her children.  It's hard.  Sometimes there are people out there who are truly unfit to be parents.  But the reality is that most of us love our children dearly and are doing our very best to do what is right for them.  I am wary of women who are so quick to volunteer their opinions as to how much better they do as a parent than someone else.  Those people who are always the very first to criticize and then who dominate conversations, letting everyone know their great skills in parenting.  I know that we all have a lot to learn from each other, but I think that I have learned the most from the women who recognize their shortcomings, and work to overcome those shortcomings, never afraid to admit weakness, but instead to volunteer their education in the mommy trenches.  I appreciate those moms so much.  They give me strength and comfort, knowing that I am not alone out there.  

Today my heart is heavy as I think of that mom I expected to be.  Every single time that my child has gotten ready to go to that first day of kindergarten, from Laney all the way to JoJo, I have spent the evening before almost devastated as I thought about all of the things I wish I had done during those five years that I had them all to myself.  Why hadn't I taken more trips to the park or the zoo?  Why hadn't I taken more times to color or read books?  Now everything would be different.  Kindergarten is only the beginning of their eventual weaning from me as a total influence on their life.  Now the rest of the world gets involved.  Now as Laney will soon head off to college (not until next year, thank goodness) I think that feeling that I had when she entered kindergarten is totally intensified.  She's going to be leaving us, and it will never be the same here at the Blau house.  I think about these years that I have had, and I see so many things that could have been better.  And just like my experience at the beginning of this post, I worry that these things don't happen because I, Melissa Blau, didn't make enough effort to get it done.  You read essays and books and see people interviewed who talk about how amazing their mothers were, and I cannot fathom those things being said about me.  Now I'm not a horrible mother at all.  I get the job done, and sometimes admirably, I must say.  But I didnt' end up being the milk-and-cookies sort of amazing mom that I always wished I would be.  When I see my kids talking about their awesome experiences growing up (and I think they have had some great ones) I always think of them mentioning their dad (who is awesome!) -- not me.  I have just too many shortcomings in the mom department.

Isn't this turning into a downer of a post?  I don't feel like a failure as a mom at all.  I look at my family and I see well-adjusted, intelligent, happy, talented, and well-behaved children.  I have an amazingly wonderful relationship with Herman.  We are a bit goofy, but we aren't terribly dysfunctional.  I have no complaints in who Team Blau has turned out to be.  Maybe my neurosis in this is a result of some real fears I have about my life in general.  I think this quote sums up my fear best:

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'it might have been.' — John Greenleaf Whittier

I spend too much time worrying that I may have prevented my family from something amazing because of my shortcomings.  A lot of people use that above quote to motivate others to take risks and grab their futures by the horn, taking control and making the best of everything that they have.  For me, though, I think that those words can be saddest because I spend too much time worrying about the failings of the past instead of recognizing the successes of the present.  I think that my biggest fear that I may have is that when I get older and look back over my life I see the situation below:

Juice Williams is stopped short of a game winning touchdown.

 You've seen those situations in football games.  It's the final seconds of the game.  One team has the ball and a chance to win, only to be stopped inches short of the goal line.  Is that a significant moment of the game?  Yes.  But in reality this team had every opportunity of scoring throughout the game.  The entire game mattered, not just those final seconds.  Football, however, truly is a game of inches.  Well, I worry that I'll have that same feeling at the end.  Looking back over my life and seeing the inches that I missed, the opportunities with my family that I let pass me by while I was overwhelmed with the happenings of life.  I sure don't want that to be the case.  It is just my fear.  I was on a date once, and my date asked me what my greatest hope was in life.  I told him I wanted to have no regrets at the end of it.  He looked at me and said that was a stupid answer.  He was a jerk.  Needless to say, I didn't end up with that bozo.  But still, I do hope that I won't end life concerned too much that I let it pass me by.

So today I recognize that the mom I thought I would be does not exist.  She never did, other than in my head.  But the mom I am today -- scatterbrained, disorganized, exhausted, tongue-tied, overbearing, etc. -- is a mom that loves her family deeply.  She sees the hand of God in her life, gently guiding her when she lets Him, helping her to get the job done.  She has a joy that cannot be described as she sees her large brood jumping on the couches, spilling milk on the carpet, singing very off-key to the Beatles (and not their good song, the weird stuff they wrote at the end), dropping their trash wherever they feel like, and drawing all over the walls.  Because despite all of my shortcomings, I have a happy, secure, and amazing family.  Motherhood can be hard, but it is so worth it.

Team Blau