June | 2014 | alice w. gold

We just had Father’s Day, which means once again, I’ve missed the window of opportunity for this post to go crazy viral. Ha.

Ours was really low-key. LG sent his dad an e-book and I sent mine a gift-card to KrispyKreme. LG gave me just a $10 budget for himself and so I did what we do best – I let the girls each pick something at the Dollar Tree. (Don’t feel too sorry for him, with the leftover cash I bought him a new t-shirt and a bath loofah. The man loves to scrub!) LG ended up with not just a loofah and a t-shirt, but a Spiderman piggy bank, an FBI kit, a bag of bubble gum, and a jumping bean racetrack toy that Caroline just couldn’t give up for he Ninja set she knew that dad would have liked better.

I was on my feet all day Saturday and so when Father’s Day Sunday morning rolled around, this 28 week forty-year-old pregnant wife could not move. All the girls came and tried to coax me out of bed. “Mom, it’s father’ day!” but it just wasn’t happening. My body was done. So, what did LG do? He told them to leave me alone and got them all ready for church and gave me the morning to sleep. He’s a gem. A total gem.

We did lunch of grilled cheese and fruit (that I somehow mustered the energy to make) and presents later and LG never complained. In fact, he acted totally stoked with his Dollar Tree loot. Why? Because that’s what good dads do. And LG is the best. This brings me to the point of the post.

You know I read a lot about parenting. I could list you a million requirements of a good dad. I could then put a star next to 80% of the list indicating that my husband and the beloved father of my children has mastered the large majority. Yet, if I did that, he would still focus on the 20% he wants to do better. Because like any good parent, he wants to be perfect for his kids. He wants to give them the moon.

So, this post is for all the dads out there, like my amazing LG, who feel like they just can’t be enough.

I am here to make a final parenting declaration. No more books necessary.

The #1 (and ONLY) thing a SuperDad needs to do is keep showing up.

That’s it.

Tell your kids you love them and that you want to be there for them and do your darnedest to follow through.

My girls adore their dad. In fact they constantly tell me to be nicer to him. (I have work to do.) They think he is the bees knees. What does he do special? A lot. What does he do not so special? Even more than what he does special.

He goes to work and hands over his whole paycheck for their needs and wants.
He comes home every day after work.
He helps them with their homework.
He keeps loving their mom, even when she is impossible. Especially when she is impossible.
He plays video games with them.
He involves them in his marathon Netflix sitcoms. (Why does the library have to take so long to get us that Season 3 of Veronica Mars?)
He takes them to the park to practice their batting.
He fixes their bikes.
He teaches them to cook the basics. They each have in turn mastered everything he can cook: frozen pizza, hamburger helper, mac-n-cheese, ramen, eggs, and pancakes.
He shows up at their stuff: plays, concerts, games, church activities….everything.
He takes them camping.
He teaches them how to respect the electronics and tells them about all the latest technology.
He has the hard conversations.
He says he is sorry.
He reads to them (and always falls asleep on the floor next to Caroline’s bed when it’s his turn because she always suckers him into staying with her.)
He cheers them up, makes them laugh, and teaches them corny jokes.
He gives them hugs and kisses.
He prays with them.
He reads scripture with them.
He tells them to be nice.
He compliments them.
He lectures them incessantly about modesty.
He lets them invade his personal space every time he sits down.
He takes them on daddy daughter dates.
He tells them that he loves them.

The best dads in the world lets his kids know that they matter to him in all the unspecial ways, but those ways become the special. The accumulation of his million little things scream 100% louder than anything special he could ever do just one time.

In a world of declining dads, I am so grateful for the father of my children who simply chooses to love. Every day. No matter how exhausting.

LG, I was just thinking it would be fun to plan for each of ours girl a really special first date with their dad when they turn 16. That way they can each have the perfect example of how to be treated. Then I realized, they already have that. They’ve had it their whole lives.

Happy father’s day to the best of the best.

pj,pizza For the last few months I’ve been feeling completely depleted, spread too thin, at my wit’s end, over it. I laugh at blog posts written by parents with one or two children giving pep talks to those other parents with one or two kids. They say don’t worry, you’ll get there. It’s all worth it. Not that having one kid or two kids isn’t respectable….it’s just that I want to scream through the Ethernet cable…..”Try having four!” And then I laugh at myself because there are probably plenty of moms out there who are right now screaming through their cables and reaching my ear, “Try having eight. Try having ten.”

Honestly I know a lot of parents who have four or five kids. I guess that makes them all extra horny in today’s society. just kidding. I guess I am just a Mormon. A majority of my friends have more than three children, but it’s kind of funny because a lot of those friends aren’t Mormon.

It’s easy for me to get into this “nobody has it worse than me” mode. And honestly, sometimes I think I really do have it hardest. I don’t know any of my friends who have ~~1….~~ (ok I started listing it all and then realized how lame and pathetic I sounded). But, let’s just leave it at the fact that everyone has their own struggles and mine always seem to have an unfair girth. It might be true or it might just be my incorrect victimized attitude. Either way it NEVER helps me to dwell on it.

However, I do have a responsibility to myself to figure out if I am making my own life harder or if all my troubles are caused by things out of my control. For instance: I am Bi-Polar Type II. Did I do something to cause that? No. Should I forever hold my DNA hostage because of the fact? No. Can I manage it? Yes. How about the intense busy schedule that I’ve been fighting since the first day of Spring…is it my fault? Partially. There are parts of it that I can change, there are also parts of it that I just know are going to be there every year and I have to learn to handle it better.

So, I’ve been pondering a lot about things I want to change to make my life happier. Less stressful. More enjoyable. The responsibility of raising my kids always seems to be at the top of the list…If I could just get rid of my taxiing job, if I could just get someone else to cook dinner, if, if, if. Some of those if’s are doable. Some are not. But, it’s not like I can just get rid of my kids so I can have a relaxing life.

Do you know what makes me the most mad? The fact that after being married for sixteen years I still have yet to have a honeymoon! Isn’t that ridiculous!? I stew about my lack of being able to escape away every day. I hold deep feelings of envy towards all the people that seem to be able to drop all their responsibilities and travel away often. Finding an evening for date-night is almost as complicated as my husband’s budget spreadsheet around here. Our schedules, our responsibility to our kids, and our budget always seem to make it impossible….is that fact or is it just not enough of a priority? I don’t know.

And this post is lame. And now you know why I don’t write when I am pregnant! See, how this works. I just go about my life and then all of the sudden I am stuck in another trap. I am so happy to have a baby, but what I found to be a good alternative to traveling away to somewhere tropical, I can no longer even engage in. I used to escape up to the trail every day…to run or bike and then my pregnant body wouldn’t cooperate. So, resentment builds further. I get more down. I don’t see an escape. EVER.

More than anything I just want freedom! LG and I were talking the other day about what kind of car we would want if we could have anything. I would want a Woody, a convertible, a jeep…all things that represent freedom. His desire was for comfort. (It was an interesting exercise…tell me what your dream car says about you.)

So, when feeling stuck, I do what I can to forget about how I feel, I throw myself into what I can do…..be a mom. And then I get sick of that. Really sick of it. Yesterday was bad. Really bad. From 6 something am to 9 something pm I didn’t get a second for myself. I ran every direction for my hubby and kids all day. Even taking a moment to pee wasn’t about me but about the alternative of peeing my pants not being an option for the busy day.

So, I am here to announce that today I succeeded. I said screw it. I have done absolutely nothing except for make pizza for lunch. I found my own little realm of freedom. While eating pizza with my lovely daughters I said to myself, “This for you all of you other moms with the money and freedom to travel. Today I have the freedom to check out of life and the ingredients for this homemade pizza and root-beer floats.” And it felt good. Not as good as Costa Rica or NYC but better than yesterday.

The kids are watching Arthur at the moment. This is what was just said, “The point is we all feel stress sometimes.” I tuned in realizing that this post is all about me ranting about my stress. Is the universe trying to teach me something through Arthur today?…My kids inform me that it’s the lunch lady that is teaching meditation to the kids on the playground “Now, whenever those heebie-jeebies start playing patty-whack with your nerves.” Of course it’s the lunch lady. It’s always the lunch lady. When am I ever going to succumb to the fact that I’m the lunch lady and that teaching kids to meditate is a very important and thankless job? Someday it will all have been worth it, just like those mothers of two claim. They can still be right, even though they had it easier.

And now I can’t stop laughing inside thinking about what our house looked like on Sunday night when I tried to do the same thing with our whole family. I made them sit in a circle, do the meditation pose, and try breathing exercises. Everyone just laughed uncontrollably for thirty minutes. I tried to show them how I could even meditate with all the commotion….except I couldn’t keep a straight face for longer than 20 seconds and every time I cracked a smile they laughed harder.

Now Arthur is coaching Brain during his exam freak-out “Relax your little toes. Feel all that stress leaving your body. Now that stress is leaving the classroom and leaving the school.”

And all I can think about is flying somewhere far away along with that stress. Dangit. Back to where I started. This is my life. How many of you feel sorry for me? Please tell me you are in the same boat. It helps me to not feel like the only lunch-lady in the universe.