The Apple of Their Eyes - May 2017

The Apple of Their Eyes

May 5th was Harper's Kindergarten Music program.  She had been excitedly talking about it, practicing songs, and telling us all the details for months.  One set of grandparents attended.  We pre-ordered the official school video to show the other set of grandparents and cousins.  This was THE event of the year so far for Ms. Harper.

And, it did not disappoint.  The amount of energy, enthusiasm, and overall cute-ness of 80ish kindergartners singing their hearts out was just too much.  We clapped and waved and laughed and gave "thumbs up" signs.  Harper is typically pretty reserved and leans on the shy side, but in this program, she came to life!  Her singing was strong.  Her actions were bold.  Her smiles was wide.  Afterward, she told me it was even better than she imagined. 

 My heart was bursting with happiness and pride.

Harper and Rory do things big and small each day (well, most days) to make me proud.  They don't have to perform or demonstrate a new skill for me to feel proud of them.  Sometimes it's just a thoughtful, kind comment or a though-provoking question.  They teach me lessons every day and allow me to feel every emotion under the sun; pride and wonder being two of them.  

And, they feel such pride in themselves.  "Mommy look at this!"  "Mommy, guess what I can do?"  I hear phrases like this all the time.  Young children are so eager to learn and so proud to share their accomplishments with others.  

Thinking of their pride makes me wonder:  when is the last time I felt proud of something I did?

It only took a flip through the photos on my phone to find something.  A couple of weeks ago, I completed a half-marathon.  I say "completed" because I did not run the entire thing.  The Horsetooth Half Marathon in Fort Collins is tough!  Lots of ups and downs over the hills to the west of our home.  It was a gorgeous spring day and I had trained with an inspiring group of friends.  Given the hours I'd spent training in February, March, and April, I felt so relieved to cross the finish line and get my medal and free beer!!  It is safe to say that 13.1 miles is a bit beyond my comfort-zone.

After the race, both Harper and Rory ( and Eric too) gave me big hugs and asked lots of questions.   'Did you win?"  (ummmm.  no).  "Who won the race?"  (ummmm, I don't know).  "Why did you run so far?"  (good question!).  "Did you get to eat snacks and drink water?"  (yes, water and gatorade).  "Did you have to go potty?"  (again, yes).  

They seemed curious and pleased to be there at the chaotic, noisy finish.

Once we got home, I looked at the photos both Eric and I took of the race.  He and some other dads and kids collaborated to amass quite the cheering squad, complete with signs and noise-makers.  The photos he took of us runners running toward the kids is great.  We are so excited to see them!  I took a couple of the kids holding signs and anxiously awaiting high-fives from the moms in the group.

But my favorite, is a pic Eric took of me in the last quarter-mile.  I had just stopped to give Harper and Rory quick mini-hugs and had started running again.  I look excited to finish the race.  

 

 And, the look on Harper and Rory's faces is priceless to me.  Here's the zoom in.  

The looks of excitement and that's-my-mommy-pride fill my heart to overflow status.

I signed up for this race to get outside, gain strength and endurance, and socialize with my friends.  I need those things to be a happy, healthy Haley.  And, I gained something else in the process.  I realized that my kids are capable of feeling proud of me for doing something that isn't even connected to their ego-centric little selves.

As parents, we give so much of our energy and so much of our selves to our children.  We tend to their needs, support their dreams, and celebrate their accomplishments.  

AND, there is huge value in us parents challenging ourselves, getting out of our comfort zones, and accomplishing a goal we set for ourselves.  I feel strongly that if we want our kids to be resilient, to think outside of themselves, and develop healthy relationships, we have to be willing to demonstrate that we are complex people.  Even though being a mother is the most important thing in the world to me.  It's not the only important thing in my world.  I hope they will come to understand that, respect that, and live that as well.

So, when is the last time  you made yourself proud?  your kids proud?  Or, for my non-parent friends, when is the last time you made someone important to you proud?  

You don't have to run a half-marathon.  Just try something new and share that experience with others.  Feel the pride.  Relish it.  Share it.

Ready - Set - Go! 

Happy New Year and Welcome 2017

Happy New Year and Welcome 2017!

 

Holiday e-cards are getting sent out late this year!   

Christmas crafts, Christmas carols, Christmas lights.  You name it, and we’re excited about it if it relates to Christmas this year.  Five-year-olds love to talk about Christmas, and that energy and enthusiasm is as contagious and catchy as the common cold.  The whole family is having fun with the holidays this year, whilst knowing that melt-downs are pending due to the over-excitement and sugar-overload of the season.

2016 was a fun and exciting year.  Here’s a brief recap:

Eric – His 9-5 is still working as a structural engineering with Larsen Structural Design in Old Town Fort Collins.  He moonlights building shelving with materials retrieved from dumpsters in the construction site near our neighborhood, building aesthetically pleasing compost bins and garden beds, and designing (and redesigning) ideas for patio and home enhancements.  When Eric’s not working, designing, or building spreadsheets with our monthly budget, he can be found riding his bike across the dams of Horsetooth Reservoir, reciting his daily “Dad Jokes”, and serving as a human jungle gym.

Haley – She’s entered her 11^th year serving students as an academic advisor extraordinaire at CSU and is still enjoying her part-time work.  A secondary job and passion has emerged in forming a networking and support group for working mothers at CSU.  Off-campus, Haley continues to coordinate social activities with friends and neighbors, memorize the lyrics to countless children’s songs, and give appendicitis the middle finger by completing a half-marathon 3 ½ months post-op.

Harper (age 5) – Harper finished up pre-school, participated in summer “camp”, which involved field trips to all sorts of fun activities around the community, and enrolled in KINDERGARTEN this year.  There is little separation of school and home, as we see Harper either playing “school” or teaching us the activities she learns in school almost every day.   She loves planning parties (especially if we can have cupcakes), making arts and crafts projects to share with others, and expanding her athletic abilities (bike riding, gymnastics moves, dancing, volleyball, tennis, basketball, running fast, etc.). 

Rory (age 3) -  Rory spends 4 days a week at an in-home day care with his best friends, and 3 days a week fulfilling his family responsibilities at home.  Rory’s jobs are playing, potty training, and being the family snuggle-provider.  Rory loves all things transportation-related (trucks, tractors, trains, etc.), running fast, and making us laugh.   His expressive nature and curiosity leads to many humor-filled conversations.

The Roles We Play

2016 is half over, and I was just thinking the other day I should send out a blog update.  What should I write about?  I thought through a few ideas.  In the end, what has stood out to me throughout the first half of the year, is how many roles we all play – whether we like them or not.

If you come by our house at any time when our kids are awake, you’ll likely find us involved in some type of imagination game.  We play mermaids/mermen, swim class, school, race car people, rescuers, cowgirls/cowboys, dancers, singers, princesses, and more.  Sometimes I get so confused on who I am supposed to be.  Take, for example, this recent conversation:

Harper: “Mommy, you be Miss Allison (her favorite pre-K teacher), and I’ll be the mom.” 

Me: “So, I’m the teacher and you’re the mom of the kids?”

H: “Well, maybe I want to be the teacher.   How about you be the mom?”

Me:  “Ok, I’ll be the mom of the kids and come bring them to school.  Here we come!”

H:  “Wait!  Mom, you can’t forget Snow White’s (her baby doll) favorite toy.  sigh), maybe I should be the mom-teacher”.

Or, on another night playing mermaids with Rory and Harper (while Rory was proudly wearing a little purple mermaid outfit)

Harper:  “I’m Ariel and we live in a world under the sea!”

Rory:  “I’m Ariel too!”

H: “No, Rory.  You can’t be Ariel too.  You be Eerial.”

R:  “Ok”

Me:   “Alright Ariel and Eerial, I’m Miranda the Mermaid.  Let’s go exploring.”

H:  “You can’t be Miranda, Mom.”

R:  “That’s a silly mermaid name”

Me:  “Who should I be then?”

H:  “How about……..Ree-All?”

R: “Yea!”

I give up sometimes.  It’s too much to remember who I am and what story I’m supposed to be acting out.  But, I do love imagination games.

 In addition to her imaginary roles, some of the other roles Harper plays are:

• ·         Helpful Big Sister – She really is such a good big sister for Rory 90% of the time.  She helps helps him do so many things and encourages him to try new things.
• ·         Antagonizing Big Sister – The other 10% of the time.
• ·         Teacher - she teaches us all what she learns in school daily
• ·         Social coordinator - She’s always asking who can come over for dinner and planning activities for them (Heather & Paul were recent guests at a dance party!)

Rory’s roles include: 

• ·         Easy-going, go-with-the-flow, happy-as-long-as-you-are-with-me little brother – Rory will do things Harper never would have done at age 2 because she is there leading him along.  He’s also very happy and content to try most things Harper suggests (He loves playing dress up!).
• ·         Provoking / Annoying Little Brother – That 10% of the time role all little brothers have to play
• ·         Independent player – Rory will play in the sandbox or with water in the back yard by himself for as long as you let him.  He’s blissfully happy and lost in his own little world.
• ·         Family clown – While Harper is also quite goofy, Rory really takes it up a notch with his dramatic expressions.  He’s learning to tell jokes and he does all sorts of things to get us to laugh with him.

Eric plays many roles in our household.  A few include:

• ·         Jungle Gym – The kids love to climb on him and have him toss them into the air.  I think he secretly enjoys the workout.
• ·         Landlord – We’ve been managing a rental property in addition to our own for the past 9 months.  I’m not sure we have this all down pat just yet, but we’re working on it.  Eric definitely loses more sleep about it than I do.
• ·         Super-Dad / Super-Husband – When an unexpected medical situation arose in February (see below), Eric managed to juggle his work, the kids, and our household.  Quite a feat!  And, thanks to the many friends who helped us out in the process.

To supplement the plethora of imaginary roles I play on a daily basis, I’ve also spent time in the following roles:

• ·         Patient – In mid-February, I had an emergency appendectomy, which required a few weeks of recovery.  During that time, I had to turn off “parent” mode a lot of the time and simply focus on resting and recovering.  It was so hard, but luckily we had a lot of support to get us through the tough parts.
• ·         Out-of-my-league academic advisor – This spring I had two of the most difficult student situations that I’ve encountered in my 10 years advising students.  I felt woefully ill-prepared to deal with the multitude of mental health challenges they were facing.  I learned a lot about my limits and where I can refer students for some of these new situations.
• ·         Determined half-marathoner – Literally days before my appendectomy, I registered for a half marathon with a few of my friends in Deadwood, SD.  Determined to still finish it, I took it slow and eventually worked my way up to running (slowly). I did not set any records in this race, but on the day of the event, the adrenaline and support of my friends pushed me through to the finish.

Whew!  Is it any wonder I sometimes feel frazzled and a bit out of sorts?  I feel like I wear about 5 different hats on any given day – mother, wife, friend, daughter, sister, advisor, colleague, neighbor, etc.

And, perhaps the role that I’ve been thinking the most about lately is the role and responsibility I have in raising my children to be agents of change in this world. Warning:  this may sound a little bit political here, but these things have been weighing on me heavily, and I must share these thoughts.  Read as you wish….  

In the last month, 50+ people were killed at a gay nightclub in Orlando.  In the last week, our country has seen 2 black men killed by police.  Days later, we saw 7 police officers shot during a peaceful protest in Dallas.   The discourse, sound-bites, and national conversation related to race, guns, and law-enforcement is polarizing. 

How, as a parent, do I make sense of this?  How do I talk to my children about events such as these in an age-appropriate way?  And, most importantly, how do I raise them to think outside the dichotomous, polarizing conversations they hear?

It’s not enough to simply raise our kids to be kind individuals.  We can all be “nice.”  We can say we aren’t racist, homophobic, sexist, etc.  And, the fact of the matter remains that our system is unjust.  Equality is far from reality.   The conversations my black peers (mothers of young children) have to have with their sons is heart-breaking.  I’ve been in tears reading Face Book posts from many of them this week.

I don’t want Harper and Rory to be terrified about the world.  I want them to be relentlessly optimistic and hopeful.  I want them to be curious and open to ideas and cultures. 

And, I want them to acknowledge the advantages they have in our societal structure that aren’t necessarily earned (reference Peggy MacIntosh’s Invisible Knapsack if you’re curious).  I want them to see the unfairness of those unearned privileges.  Instead of feeling guilty for their privilege, I want them to use it and speak out about injustice.

So, how do I teach them to use their privilege as white, relatively-affluent individuals in meaningful ways to affect change in our society? If only I knew how to do this……..

Home is where ….

The second half of 2015 had a lot going on, but the biggest, messiest, most awesome, and most disruptive event was our family’s move to a new house.   The move went something like this:

• Spring – Eric and I began having conversations about how our (then) current house probably isn’t a long-term place.   “Maybe we should call our realtor and just put feelers out”, we thought.
• June – We tentative entered the real estate market.  The market in Fort Collins was (and still is) hot, hot, hot, so many times we would go see places that were way over-priced and already sold before we even got a chance to see them. 
• Mid-July  - One Friday, our realtor called and said “I think you should go look at this place”.  I had worked a crazy double-orientation day and was not at all interested in speeding over to look at another disappointing place after work.  But, I took 3 seconds to view the property online, and something about it made me say “we should go”.  We went to look, and it was just what we were looking for.  The size, layout, and finishes we just what we wanted.  Nothing about it needed fixing or replacing, and we didn’t have to sacrifice anything on our “needs” list.  We made a competitive but reasonable offer and didn’t get our hopes up.  Houses were selling for way over asking price all summer.  And then…. they picked us!
• August – Trying to coordinate a move with a 4 and almost-2 year-old was interesting.   We got very little done and were pretty anxious about how it was all going to work.  My saintly parents made 3 trips in 6 weeks to assist with moving, kid care, and painting/maintenance on the old place.  They deserve a medal for their hard work and support.

So, as of August 30, we’ve been in our new house:  3202 Reedgrass Ct.  It’s nestled along the foothills on the very west edge of Fort Collins.  We are two blocks from a trail that runs right up the foothills.  It’s so awesome!  The only down side is that we now are about 1.5 miles farther away from Old Town and CSU (where Eric and I work).  But, every house has its trade-offs, and we felt we could handle the farther distance with the appeal of being so much closer to the mountains.  We now have a full basement with a guest suite – perfect for visitors!!! (hint, hint, hint).

So moving has been the theme of the fall.  The moving and unpacking of stuff has been hard work for sure (we still don’t have all boxes unpacked, curtains on windows, or many pictures on the walls), but it’s the emotional work of moving into our new house and in other areas of life that have taken us longer to adjust to.  

For example, Harper “moved” into pre-kindergarten this fall.  She has been at a small in-home daycare with 5 other kids since she was 3 months old.  To move to a class with 20 kids was overwhelming and exhausting for her.  It happened the week we moved, so pretty much her whole world turned upside down within one week.  It was so rough.  She cried how her house didn’t feel like ‘her home” and how her room didn’t feel like “her room”.  On top of that, she missed her old friends and Donna (daycare provider), and she had to adjust to a totally new routine and environment.  Eric and I both felt like we deserved a “worst parenting decision of the year” award after making her go through those 2 huge transitions in the same week.   It took her 2 full months of tears every single morning at drop off and exhausted temper-tantrums in the evenings to fully adjust.  Now, she is thriving.  She babbles happily about her friends, she plays “school” all the time teaching Rory, Eric and I new songs, activities, and “rules”.  We are very proud of how strong and brave she was to get through that time, as it was not easy.  Hopefully the transition to kindergarten next year will be easier.    

The Harper –to-school transition also impacted Rory to a degree.  He’s always been with Harper.  Her move was a “move” for him as well.  They’ve really never spent much time apart.  He would get sad some mornings when Harper would go to school.  “I go to school too?” he would ask hopefully.  Luckily, he was easily distracted and happy to arrive at daycare to see his familiar faces.  He also suffered through many Harper tantrums.  He felt confused and uncertain watching them, as Harper was never as mean to him or as defiant to us as she was during her transition to pre-school. 

For Eric, the move meant taking on a second job – that of being a landlord.  The new role requires another level of “moving on” in the sense that you still own the place and are responsible for it.  But, you have to let go at some level.  Finding the right balance of oversight versus freedom and flexibility will be a challenge we both have to adjust to as we see if this is the right choice for our family.

For me, the move has been emotional too.  Despite the excitement of moving to a new house, I was plagued by feelings of sadness and grief from time to time.  We were leaving our “first house”; the old house was where I brought both of my babies home from the hospital.  It’s where I spent hours and hours on maternity leave rocking, nursing, and dozing with my little ones.  It’s where all of us experienced oh-so-many firsts. 

And yet, we are so blessed!!! We have a lot of painting, updating, and finishing to do. But it has so much potential.  Our new house definitely feels like the “right” house to raise our family in.  And again, we have ample space for guests!

As we approach the end of 2015, I am reminded how much we all are “works in progress.”  Our lives have long lists of “to-dos”, like fresh coats of paint, new fixtures, or some updated decorations.  But really, if we let go of our expectations of what we should be like and what our lives should look like, we really do have so much to be grateful for.  Sometimes the edges are messy and we may have to fight back tears or have tantrums.  Isn’t that how growth occurs?   And in the end, we hopefully find our home; our center, and our place of comfort with those we love most. 

May you be “home” for the holidays finding peace and joy wherever you are and with whomever you’re surrounded.

Sending love and blessings……

Haley, Eric, Harper (4) and Rory (2)

3202 Reedgrass Ct.     

Fort Collins, CO  80521