Honesty

What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive...

Why is it that the hardest person to be honest with is ourselves? It seems to me that I have spent an awful lot of time convincing myself that everything was alright, when really it wasn't. And in order to do that I told myself some real whoppers!

Like: It will get better when...and then when came and when went and it wasn't better
Or: This is how things are supposed to be...I don't really think we are supposed to be unhappy.
And my personal favorite: You aren't trying hard enough...Is happiness supposed to be hard?

The TRUTH (as I understand it as this exact moment in my life):

Only you can make yourself happy and if you are looking for your happiness in someone else and what they may or may not be doing you aren't going to find it.

What makes you happy changes over time...what made you giddy at 19 is probably not the same thing that makes you giddy at 27.

You are a strong and courageous woman and you do not want to wake up one day and realize that you were to scared to make the changes that led to happiness. (Thank you my NBO friend!)

And finally you deserve to be the best you you can be!

Introspection and Irony

There is something about coming home that unleashes the nostalgic feelings inside. I am having an endless amount of "remember when" moments. I am recalling who I was at fourteen, sixteen, eighteen...remembering pieces of me I had forgotten, pieces that have gotten lost over the years. Buried in marriage and motherhood. Remembering that I didn't really know who I was at that age...I was defined by my peers. Realizing that I still don't know who I am. Now I am defining myself as a wife and mother.

I never took the time to find myself, to know who I was. It sounds cliche to say that, but as I wrestle with decisions that seem easier left unmade I have to face that fact. As I sit and stare at the void in myself that was pushed aside in order to keep up with my expectations I realize that there is nowhere left to go but inside.

I have the music on right now as I type this. Adding to the drama of introspection and taking me further back into my nostalgia...remembering how as a teen I penned endlessly of unrequited love and rotten parents all the while listening to music that fit the mood. Full circle?

The difference now is that I am not a single person who only impacts herself with her decisions. I am a mother and have the lives of real people to consider as well. Don't think that the irony of this post being only one away from my lamentations on the decline of families because of divorce has escaped me. I am not ready to call myself a hypocrite yet...

The ultimate question though is: Why am I unhappy? What can I change to make me happy? Assuming of course that I will know happy when I find it...

to be continued...

"Your Baby Can Read" NOT

There are nights when I can't sleep. When this happens I like to surf the infomercials. I really like the Shark steam cleaning ones, or the NuWave oven, or P90X (no I am not checking out the muscles!!). I cannot stand the infomercial for a new educational tool: Your Baby Can Read.

This program promises to connect neurons and dendrites together in your babies head through a series of videos and word cards that will result in your child fluently reading by three. Now, I am not suggesting that the product CANNOT achieve these results. It very well may. But I am asking what the purpose is of a child that young reading?

I didn't learn to read until about four (yes, I am tooting my own horn over the fact that I taught myself to read BEFORE kindergarten...the smarts have been downhill ever since!) Most kids do not learn to read until they start school. The goal of public education is to have fluent readers by third grade. Third grade not third year! Are these children who waited until school before they learned to read at a disadvantage educationally?

What they don't say in the infomercial, as they have a darling little girl about 2 1/2 years old reading Charlotte's Web, is whether or not the young child has any comprehension of what they are reading. And without actually understanding the words you are reading I argue that you are not really reading...

I also think that as a culture we are pushing our children to grow up faster and faster. We are also striving to prove to others that our kids are better and smarter than their kids. We use the intelligence of our kids as a way to prove we are doing our job as parents. My kid started reading at 2, I always do the best for my child!

Our job as parents to the young child is to provide EXPERIENCES! Let your child play and be a kid! Read to your child, talk to your child, let them get messy, give them opportunities to develop creativity and problem solving skills.

I promise that your child will be fine if they wait until school to learn to read!

2012 and Divorce

So, we just got done watching 2012. An apocalyptic movie with lots of special effects and mediocre script. What stood out to me was not the end of days but a seemingly mundane detail: a split up family.

At the beginning of the movie Dad came to pick up his two kids, was criticized by his ex wife for not seeing them more often, while the new husband said a jolly hello and left for work. This probably did not stand out as a detail to many because, well, it is commonplace. Average. Acceptable. And a present detail in many other elements of popular culture.

I am going to come clean here. I am a child of divorce. In fact I don't even remember my "real" father and have no relationship with him (sort of hard to do that when you don't know where he is!) My mother remarried when I was young and for all intents and purposes my stepfather is my real father...although I don't have a relationship with him either, but that is for another post. Overall, I do not think that being a child of divorce has ruined me or warped me or caused me to not be able to have adult relationships. But it did have an impact. It started the shaping and belief in me that divorce was okay.

Also, I have a blended family. I am my husband's second wife and we are raising his two children from his first marriage. And for all intents and purposes I am their real mother.

Last year, right about this time I was seriously considering a divorce. I had moved out, things were disintegrating in accelerated time and I was out of options. This was not going to work. This was not what I wanted, my only option was to walk away. Walk away and start over. I didn't want to analyze why it wasn't working. I didn't want to try to figure out what my role was in it not working. I certainly didn't want to try.

Trying is hard work. Trying meant putting aside my self and looking at the bigger picture. It meant admitting the things I was doing wrong. And frankly popular culture said I didn't have to try. No one was judging me for leaving, in fact I do believe I had several supporters. We hear all the time that half of marriages end in divorce, celebrity couples are on and off in the change of a channel and before your ten year reunion you hear about so and so and their failed marriage. Divorce is cheap and fast. And romanticized and scripted and played out over and over. Until it is normal. What has become abnormal is putting stock in your vows and honoring them.

What are vows anyways? We grew up having our Barbies repeat them over and over and dreaming of our wedding, we never paused to consider the marriage. Our vows just became part of the script we memorized and carried very little meaning in the end.

Now, I am by no means judging those who divorce. I believe that my mom and even my husband made the right decisions for them at the time. And seeing as how those decisions have greatly impacted my life I don't know how they could have made them any differently.

I am saying that I wish our popular culture wasn't so focused and full of broken homes and families. I wish it wasn't normal, because I don't believe it was what was intended for us. Instead I wish we could watch family played out in a functional manner. Where mom and dad respect each other and model a committed relationship for their children. It might be a little Leave it to Beaver, but I don't think that it is such a bad place to be!

At this point in time I am committed to my marriage. It hasn't gotten all that much easier in the last year, although we work on it one day at a time. It has gotten better, and richer and fuller and happier. Because we are committed, and we work hard for it and we both believe in our vows. Because I took time to reflect upon my vows and exactly what it was I promised!

I am excited when I think to the future about the legacy I am leaving to my children. We are not perfect, but we are doing the best we can. And perhaps one generation and one family at a time we can rebuild a sense of what commitment means.

Joining the Ranks

Well, I am jumping into the blogosphere! I have spent the last year following many blogs and have thought for awhile that it would be fun to add my thoughts to the rest of the content on the web.

I think some pretty good ones every once in awhile!


Recently a friend of mine started a blog and said that one of her reasons for doing so was "to empty her mind, and save her husband from having to listen to her." Pretty good reason, and I have to say that is largely my reasoning too. Is that plagiarism?

My husband is still going to have to listen to me though!


I realize that initially those who read my blog will already know me, but maybe someday I will catch the attention of others and I bet they would like to know about me.

I am pushing thirty. It is kind of fun to say that, adds some maturity. I have four kids...and you will hear about them a lot through this blog. I am married, see above reference. I teach preschool. I like to cook. I am a Christian. Probably be a lot about that on this blog too.

Overall I am an average wife, mother, teacher woman striving to grow and make the most of life!