Mothering: Teacher, Protector. (On Steroids)

This post is predominantly about my big kid. My sweet Oliver.

With the school year starting for all the kids around our area, I've really been thinking deeply about my calling to be a mother. In being called to mother my sons, I've also been pondering the great calling I have on my life to teach as well. Mothering and teaching go hand-in-hand, but I feel very enriched by teaching fundamental lessons and instilling sound behavioral roots. At one point in my life, I felt very drawn to the idea of teaching as a profession. High school English, to be exact. During my soul-searching of my high school days, trying to decide which path was right for me, I toyed with different paths: journalism, teaching, design, and illustration. I guess the path that I was supposed to take simply pieced together some fragments from each of my 'could-be' paths to form this perfectly imperfect role that I play as a mother to my two boys. It's kindof neat how God takes our strong points and uses them so profoundly in our lives, but also brings to light our weak points on which we are to work.

Which brings me to the original point I was gearing toward: I (along with Andrew) feel profoundly called to homeschool our boys. To be the fully-aware, fully-immersed, fully-annoying parents.

Back to the weak points: organization, a fear of insufficiency, and perhaps a small amount of knowing how tightly to hold onto my children the older they get. As I begin to sit down and try to get a clear direction of how I would like to address homeschooling and try to formulate a 'lesson plan' of sorts for at least a few months worth of schooling, I'm met with a few crippling details: I seriously suck at planning, organizing, and feeling confident in the thought that I can and will be able to do this. 'This' being raise my boys up to be well-rounded, intelligent, free-thinking, creative, passionate, kind, polite, and loving souls. Parenting is scary, folks!

Along with planning out Oliver's preschool agenda, I'm met with other obstacles that prove to be even larger hurdles than teaching him his 'ABCs' and '123s' (so to speak): other children, outside influence, and this world in general.

I will be the first to admit that I have cursed in front of my children (and if you say that you haven't, I'm virtually-calling you out), listened to music in the car that is less than ideal for little ears once or twice, paused a movie or TV show a little too slowly and allowed my son to hear a word or two he really shouldn't have, opted to take a day to literally let my four-year-old watch TV for hours on end, and have just generally lacked in the good-mom department and have probably thrown my chances of being nominated as 'Mom of the year'. So, let me first stress that...I do not, nor will I ever, claim to be perfect. I am so far from it. It is only through the grace of Jesus that I am able to get through some days without drinking half a bottle of wine and pawning my children off on the nearest decent-looking adult passing by.

However, as my big little grows and spends more time with other kids, whether it be outside on the playground at our apartment complex, at soccer practice, or what have you, I notice changes in his behavior that make me cringe and feel like a failure as his valiant protector and guardian. In these moments, I feel such a huge weight come over me: I need to be on my A-game at all times; he needs to hear and see the best from us as parents because he sees the worst out there in the world when my mama-bear arms aren't wrapped around him. Nothing is worse than seeing your soft-hearted children being bullied, treated poorly, or left out by other kids. Or...beginning to do those same things to other children as retaliation. I've let the world's idea that "kids should be around other kids or they will be socially awkward" rot my internal momma-compass at times.

Living in an apartment, especially on ground-level, makes monitoring which kids your child interacts with less like a menial task and more like a great, looming, strenuous ordeal. I mean, who wants to tell your kids 'Yes, I know Billy, Joey, and Martha are outside playing, but you need to stay in here and do a puzzle with your old school, protective mom instead because their behaviors are behaviors I don't wish for you to mimic...'? I'll tell you: no one. So, I give in. A lot. But when I do, my sweet boy comes inside transformed into this mouthy, tattling, black-mailing turd-of-a-kid that I don't recognize. So, I reach this impasse.

One day, I know that the hard stuff of being a stay-at-home/homeschooling/hawk-eyed/protective mama-bear will pay off and my sons will be all that God wants them to be, but until then, I will be the mom that gets on her boys' nerves by not always letting them do and get away with whatever they want. I will be the mom that listens and watches what the kids around them say or do, the mom that would rather keep her boys home to teach them, guide them, and 'train them up', and the mom that imperfectly perfects her own route on this path of motherhood.

It's hard work, but the pay off will be golden.

Wish us luck with our first real year of homeschooling, guys. Pray that I don't lose my mind. (Hardy har har...). Pray that we can find a good balance of letting our boy figure out who he is and continue to be the goofy, creative free-bird that he is, and training him up in the way he should go.

On hand-me-downs.

In an effort to keep the blogging ball rolling, I'm going to try to post frequently and not put too much pressure on myself to have eight million points and ponderings accompanied by fourteen billion distinctly unique photos in each post. Because, really, guys...I have a wild four-year-old that likes to be read the same books twelve times in a row, chased around the house by 'the angry giant', and pushed on the swing for, quite literally, an hour. Additionally, the infant. I don't even need to really expand on how time-consuming those things can be, do I?

So, here I am, distracting the bigger little with Curious George on Netflix while the smaller little naps in the swing. I have a shred of time; a fleeting moment.

I took some photos of Dexter this morning. While I was rooting through the clothes hanging in the boys' closet, trying to find something in which to dress the babe, I found it. 'It' being the navy blue and orange romper that Oliver lived in for the better part of 9-12 months. 'It' being the one solitary outfit that I associate with Oliver's baby years. I mean, we had a lot of outfits, so it's not like we dressed the kid in nothing but this one outfit, so settle down. But this outfit...was our favorite. We started him in it early, when you could easily fit two Olivers within its vastness, but we kept it hanging in his closet to be worn up until the zipper no longer closed over his plump, roll-y baby body and the elastic for the ankles inched all the way up to his upper calves. I can't tell you what it is about this outfit that we loved, I mean...I couldn't tell you the brand of it or where we got it from, and really...it's orange. No hard feelings, orange, but you're just not my favorite color.

Now, here it is. Zipped up to the throat on our second son as he slumbers. When I laid it down next to him to see that he could probably fit into it, I started to feel very nostalgic and excited. When it zipped up and I saw that the wrist and ankle elastic were just right on him, a large lump forged itself into my throat and my eyes filled up with tears in the cheesy mom-way that they do so often these days.

I could go on and on about what the passing down of this outfit means to me, or what it signifies, but it could take a century. Guys...I have two sons. Two very different, very real sons. I get to relive things about Oliver's babyhood and also experience very different and equally momentous things exclusively surrounding Dexter in his uniqueness.

I'm both excited to watch these two amazing littles grow up to be two different and two very loved young boys and men, and finding myself frantically flailing around in my heart and mind, trying to capture and cling to each of their childhoods. I don't want to let them grow up, I want them to always stay small and in love with their mother and amazed by the simplest of things, but as long as I have to let go and let them grow...I might as well enjoy it to its absolute full potential. That means getting overly sentimental about the passing of one silly little outfit from one brother to the next.

This sibling business is just a whole lot sweeter than I could have ever imagined.

On Being An 'Experience-er'.

I have this love/hate relationship with my phone (mainly Instagram). I take loads and loads of beautiful photos of my boys and my life daily, but my 'real' camera sits in its bag collecting dust. I haven't quite figured this whole two-kid business out quite yet. When Oliver was a baby, I didn't have a smart phone or a DSLR, so my little point and shoot camera was always in-hand, but I never, ever lacked photos of him (if you ask anyone who was around me while he was a baby, they can tell you that I constantly had a camera shoved in his sweet, little, blue-eyed baby face). When I bought my DSLR, I started taking hundreds of photos daily. Literally. I have an overabundance of photos of Oliver as he grew from infant to toddler, then toddler to child. So, why am I having such a hard time picking up my camera and actually shooting now? I want to make certain that Dexter never feels the 'second child syndrome' that is so often talked about, so in fairness, I need to be taking more photos of our every day.

But...life takes over, the current keeps pushing us, and time slips away. We stay afloat. We still have those delicious moments of sweet baby smiles, fort-building, whispers and tickles under our stark white sheets, piggy-back rides, whisker rubs, and mushy 'I love you's after nighttime prayers, but I've become less dependent on capturing each and every moment, and become more of a do-er, feel-er, experience-er as a mum. I want to be there. I want to witness things without having to look through the small window of my camera. So, I guess that's that. I guess that's why I've been slacking; I've just been taking a moment to step back, breathe deeply, and experience life in a very real, un-rehearsed, un-staged way.

It's pretty lovely kissing toes instead of photographing them. It's pretty lovely hearing my boy's wonderful and imaginative story-telling and tickling him before scurrying off into his room to tuck him into bed...and not always telling him to 'Look over here, babe! Let me take a picture!'.

But, in fairness...the boys still need these photos. I still need them. I need them so that the next time I look at my tall, lanky almost-five-year-old and think 'Where has the time gone?', I can flip through the pages of our life with tears stinging my cheeks, saying 'Ah, yes. Here are the moments. Here is this sliver of his life that we shared.'...

As for what we've been up to lately: lots of sweat-soaked afternoons and evenings spent in the summer heat, cool nights in the air conditioning snuggling little brother under a blanket, popsicles melting down the little's dirty hands, zoo trips, books before bedtime, a camping trip in the hills, a five day stretch without Daddy while he was in West Virginia for a Roaster's Guild Retreat, iced espresso drinks, getting pressed up to Andrew in our disheveled bed at night because Dexter can be quite the bed-hog, nights with the four of us all sweetly slumbering in the same room because Oliver had a nightmare, and...loving the heck out of each other until the chaos of the school year begins again. My cup runneth over and I am just ever so thankful. God is good to us.

Very good.

Cheers.