Thursday, February 19, 2015

The Mom Quiz

As the cold winter days drag on pulling me into a seemingly endless abyss, I find myself going a bit stir crazy. It seems as if my toddler shares in my sentiments and thus the past few weeks have been difficult to say the least. Based on our current weather forecast, the chance for any relief is looking dismal. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t know if my back or my patience can handle everything that goes along with being confined to a small living space. I’m willing to bet a few of you are feeling the same so, I’ve come up with a “mom quiz” to test your winter sanity. Just in case you’re unsure of whether you are really losing it or just having a bad reaction to the dry air. Don’t forget to score yourself at the end!
Mom Quiz Winter Addition:
You’ve been stuck inside the house with your needy toddler for so long that when they demand a game of hide and seek you:
a)      Gleefully play along! Counting to ten a million times can only improve your pronunciation skills.
b)      Make sure to look EVERYWHERE in the house. Your child will be wickedly amused by their cleverness to outsmart you with their cunning ninja vanishing skills and you get to add steps to your ftibit workout! Bonus!
c)       Start counting loudly and trail off somewhere after two. Grab cell phone and blanket and hide in a lump on the couch. It was your turn to hide right?
d)      Start counting and suddenly remember you heard the mailman drop by a few minutes earlier and rush to the door to hear news from the outside world.
You have all this extra time at home so you can be productive around the house! Do you:
a)      Reorganize the file cabinet, er the stack of papers that have been piling up in that corner of the house no one dares go to.
b)      Finally research healthy, new and exciting dinners and meal plan for a whole month!
c)       Catch up on all the laundry! A dream come true!
d)      Look up after being held captive by your overly clingy toddler for hours doing arts and crafts and realize not only did nothing get done, but the house is a bigger mess than when you started.
You toddler is finally napping and you just sat down on the couch after picking up all of their toys. You see one lowly plastic something or other on the other side of the room obstructing your perfectly clean floor. Do you:
a)      Walk over and pick it up, it will only take a second.
b)      Hope your husband picks it up when he gets home in 4 hours.
c)       Hope your child takes initiative and picks it up after they wake up refreshed from their nap!
d)      Hope your invisible maid picks it up.
e)      Hope one of the dogs finds it and eats it so you have one less toy to worry about.
You have used up all of the arts and crafts supplies and have no other suitable amusements for your child (aka: your child only wants to do arts and crafts). In desperation, you turn to the tv to help. Do you:
a)      Limit screen time to 30 minutes and put on an educational nature show.
b)      Say tv be damned and break out some fabulous finger puppets!
c)       Tie the ipod to your child’s hand and call it a day.
d)      Give in to your child’s demands and watch the only working 45 minutes of the used, warped Monster’s Inc. dvd (that your father-in-law so lovingly salvaged at his neighbor’s yard sale) over and over again.
You are desperate to get out of the house but almost everything is closed and the roads are treacherous. Do you:
a)      Troll Pintrest for some indoor science experiments and hope you have the supplies on hand.
b)      Bundle up your potty training toddler in 5 layers of clothing to go play out in the snow and pray they don’t have an accident in their only pair of snow paints.
c)       Brave the roads and head over to the local Kmart, land of opportunity, wide isles for children to run, and evil shoppers who judge you when they see your child running full speed holding “fragile” glassware down aisle 9.
Did you write down your answers?!?!?! Great!!!! Now to score yourself: add 10 points for every letter you chose and multiply it by infinity cause guess what?!?! There are no right answers when it comes to managing your cabin-fever sanity as a mom (or person in general.) In case it wasn’t glaringly obvious, here are my real life answers: C, D, E, D, and C.
That’s it for this winter addition of the mom sanity quiz! Stay warm and sane everyone!

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Rebel Mom

Rebel Mom        
It recently came to my attention that I am not a rule follower (ok that’s not the truth I have known for years.) If you have known me at all my entire life you know, I have rebel tendencies. In other words, I haven’t been a hardcore rule follower. I’m not really a rule breaker, I’m more of the “loosey goosey, it’s up for interpretation” type. You need to microwave something for 10 minutes! (ha, I’m going to do it in 7.) You need to get your oil changed every 3 months (ha, I’m stretching it to 5 months!) And thus you get the idea of my rule breaking agenda. Granted, most of the time, the rules I brake end up coming back to bite me in the but, but I have always refused to be boxed into what society deems correct. Then, I had a kid. Suddenly, rules meant everything! I was in charge of a human being that I had to keep alive! So for months, I researched, scrutinized, and became obsessively paranoid with anything having to do with my baby (being indecisive does not help during this time – or any time- either.)

I have to say that after 9 or 10 months, once she started walking and a lot of the major baby/physical milestones were over, I kind of broke away from my excessive rule following. This was in part due to all of the reading I had done on various subjects. A lot of things said to just let Emma develop on her own and not get frustrated if she didn’t do things by a certain time (I’m glad I followed this advice now, seeing as how she completed all of her baby milestones early and is taking extra time completing the toddler milestones – um potty training and letter recognition much?) I swear Emma is bright, intelligent, and uses the word “actually” on a regular basis but ask her to point to the letter “A” and spoiler alert: it Ain’t happening.

No surprise, I seem to have strayed from my point. Maybe I’m making excuses for it, maybe I am plotting out some wickedly awesome explanation but the long and short of it is, I ignored one big rule. I guess what I am referring to is not so much rule breaking as it is rule bulldozing…. I did not wait for Emma to turn two before I let her watch tv. In fact, by the age of two, she already could recognize a fair amount of tv characters that included Mickey Mouse, Elmo, and the other usual suspects.  I know she started watching before she was one but didn’t really get super into tv shows until closer to 1 ½ or so. The terrible reason for my rule ignoring was not so she could enjoy the wholesome programing that Sesame street has to offer, it was because I needed a break. I needed to cook dinner. I needed to clean the house. We were snowed in for days. I needed a minute to myself to regain my sanity. Really there are a lot of reasons for Emma’s tv consumption that all revolve around me. I will own up to it. I sincerely hope my child does not suffer from depression, obesity, social anxieties, or becomes addicted to television because of my less than desirable tv standards. I watched a lot of tv growing up but I do not attribute it to the majority of my problems as an adult. 

Even though I was lax on the actual age she began to watch, I am a ragging tv dictator the rest of the time. TV is allowed on weekend mornings and every so often during the week (if I am very tired after work or I have a more complicated dinner to put together.) Occasionally, there will be a weekend movie night and when we have a long car trip, Emma will watch a movie. Or, if she is under the weather then I put no limits on sick day tv watching. This is easier to follow in the summer than in the winter. In fact, weekend mornings and the occasional movie is pretty much it for us in the summer.  There have also been times when we have gone completely without tv. Last winter, things spiraled out of control and it seemed like the tv was on all the time. When the majority of your child’s conversations revolve around a Mickey Mouse episode plot then you know you have a problem. Tantrums were had (by both my child and my husband) but we successfully went for weeks without the tv on during the day. It can be done but it is difficult. The other times the tv has gone silent was after a very epic, mean tantrum Emma threw that lasted over an hour one day. The disciplinary action taken was no tv for the entire day (we have not had a major incident like that since.) The other time we had to switch tv watching gears was when Emma picked up the bad attitude of one Donald Duck of the Mousekateer clan. We watched only Sesame street for a month or so afterwards and then slowly but surely, Emma’s precious Mickey Mouse came back. We haven’t had many problems since then and also since then; she has finally expanded her tv show viewing requests to include other things besides Mickey Mouse (that was all she wanted to watch for a VERY long time.)

And there you have it, my take on tv. I’m not writing to say my way is better than anyone else’s. It’s not. I’m writing to commiserate with other mom’s over the decision and let them know what works for our family and maybe to say that if you have figured out the magical harmony of running a household/ raising a child that does not involve some tv viewing then please let me know your secret!