Wordless Wednesday - Japan's children

Nothing has left me quite as wordless as the images that have been in the news about the devastation in Japan.  The thing that struck me the most was the images of young children.   I thought of my own children and held them tight and prayed for those who lost children, and the children who lost parents, and the children going through this trauma..  These are not my images but what has been posted on news sites.

This last one made me cry.  She was found alive after being separated during the Tsunami from her parents. 

Click here for the story of this miracle baby.

Wordless Wednesday - Diva on a Random Sunday

Career Girl Interrupted

Ever since I was a child my mind has been wrapped up in making it as a successful business/career woman.   I was about 8 or 9 years old when I saw this commercial:

She seemed so with it, together.  I wanted to be that woman with a business suit to say "I brought home the bacon".  While all of my friends were playing with dolls, pretending to be mommy's, I pretended to be the daycare center owner or the school principal where all the dolls would be.  While my friends were playing tea party, I played the owner of the restaurant where they were having tea.  My parents had taken me to a warehouse store (Think Costco)  and asked if I wanted anything.  I wanted a huge box of Cracker Jacks.  Instead of a delicious snack, I though of selling the boxes to my friends and making a profit out of it.  This was successful and I had a neighborhood candy store out of my garage.  I started with candy and progressed to soda's to the neighborhood adults.  I got my first job at 13 working for the parks and recreation program in the city through a special program.  I also was able to house sit for the neighbors that went on vacation and babysit to make some extra cash. 

I never saw my life without some kind of goal being met towards a career.  I went to school became a preschool teacher and then life happened.  I met Prince Charming.  I wanted babies with him and my career goal took a slight back seat to Life.  When babies were not in our future and a divorce was more than likely I put my head back into being a career woman.  I was 30 by this time.  I changed careers, and had to start from the bottom again.  The struggles where all worth it, I went back to school and worked in various businesses.  Graduating with my Bachelors degree in Business was the best thing ever, I was looking forward to working towards my MBA.  There I was 35 and full of hopes to move forward with my career and with my new job. I still rememeber my interview they asked me "Where to you see yourself in 5 years?"  my answer "In a management position, such as yours" .  I was THAT ambitious.

Flash forward to just a year after graduation.  I find myself pregnant, this was not in my career plan or my life plan.  I struggled with concentrating on work let alone on the whole I am going to be a mom.  I had wanted to be a mother for so long and then the moment I gave up and was going to dedicate myself to my career.  After all this was the dream I had since I was a child.  I felt really emotional about the choices I was going to have to make.  During that time I was the only one that would have a child in the office.  I felt hard to relate to my co-workers and all I wanted to do was sit and cry.  Once Thing One was born, I just yearned to be home.  Financially Big Cheese and I knew I had to go back to work.  It pulled at every inch of my heart to leave Thing One everyday.  Every morning I cried in my car before getting into work.  I often felt alienated because no one really was going through the same things I was going through.  Not to much later I was pregnant again with Thing Two.  I struggled again with going to work.  This time I was the not the only one in the office with children, so I started to feel more of a camaraderie between my co-workers. 

So here I sit almost 5 years from the point of when I got hired and I told the interviewer I wanted a management spot.  Somehow life has side tracked me again.  Sure, this could probably be a really sad realization to some, but something happened just the other day. My yearly review was a real success and I was asked if I would like to make the next step in my career.  My answer surprised me.  Without hesitation I said "Let me think about that, I have to consider my life/work balance".  I thought of the extra stress , what I would be bring home with me and into my children's lives. Imagine that?!?!  This whole time while I thought was wishing for a career, I really just wanted to be a successful mom. I am ok with that.

Wordless Wednesday - Rock Solid Confidence

 

Love Songs...

Love is all around us in February.  The hearts, the flowers, the expressions of romance.  PHOOEY!  Yes, I am single, as I have been for the last couple of years.  I should be a bahumbug person when it comes to Valentine's Day.  Instead I have taken the high road and have really taken inventory of where my heart has been the last couple of years.  I have been a mom who is dedicated to her two babies.  My love affair with them started the moment I knew that I carried them in my womb.  The following love songs bring a smile to my face as I think of my two loves, Thing One and Thing Two.

Mana - Bendita tu Luz

This song is for my beautiful baby boy.  Just one short month after I had him I went to see this group in concert.  I had heard this song before, but it took on new meaning for me that day.  The tears rolled down my face as I thought of my baby at home and how much he filled my life already.  As the song says in the very beautiful spanish language:  Bless your light, Blessed is the light of your gaze, Bless your gaze, Blessed is the gaze from your soul.

John Mayer - Daughters

I heard this song when I was pregnant with Thing One and thought it was beautiful.  When I was pregnant with Thing Two it took on more meaning.  I related how as a woman we take how we were treated by our parents into many aspects of other relationships.  I was blessed to have a great father, who left much too soon.  I wanted to make sure that Big Cheese would be able to understand his role with our daughter.  Even though he and I have mixed feelings about each other I want to make sure he never fails her. 

Colbie Calliat - Bubbly

Bubbly is just how fun my children's love is.  How I am like a child and their laughter and hugs make me feel new. They place a smile on my face and laughter in my voice.  I hope the three of us can always feel this way about each other in the years to come.  Ok, so maybe the teenage years we may be in denial, but I hope we will get through it and find the fun we have always had together.

 Lee Ann Womack - I Hope You Dance

Even before I had children I really loved this song.  At first it was the hopes I'm sure my parents had for me.  Once my children came to be I absolutely felt every word of hopes and dreams that this song  refers to.  You always hope for more for your children.

Defining a Family

Mami got Thing Two a doll house for her birthday. I finally got around to putting it together and putting it out for Thing One and Thing Two to play with. While I was putting the pieces together Thing One kept saying "I want brother!" I was wondering what he was referring to. Once I put the doll house out Thing One raced over with Thing Two to play with it. This is the moment he picked the male figure and said "See, the brother"
What is funny is that I'm sure that the maker of the toy meant the male, the female, and the baby to represent a nuclear family (Mom, Dad, Child). That is the way I was viewing them. Maybe I was reflecting on the dynamic of my own family: Sarge, Mami and I. It was bitter sweet to me that Thing One did not see what I saw in those figures. I truly wanted to give my two children a mom and a dad under the same roof. Instead Thing One's definition of his family was a Mom, a brother, and a sister.

I have started to accept the reality of what I can give to my children as I look around and see that there are several definitions of family. Some are grandparents raising a grandchild. Some are partners of the same sex raising children. Some are single parents raising one or many children. Whatever the dynamic, I'm glad that Thing One was able to identify his own family better than I could. Whatever your definition of family, a child will most definitely know where they belong and how much they are loved.

Here is a story for you to retell... I have a heart that bleeds

I have spilled my feelings of rage, anger, sadness, happiness and loneliness all over pages and pages of blogs, journals, and posts on my facebook page, just to have them come back to me as a dagger. My own words twisted and retorted as vicious gossip that is told to Big Cheese.  Big Cheese is not the type to figure out that some people don't have your best interest at heart.  They use these words to spin drama, to make a mountain out of a mole hill.  They do this to stir feelings of chaos for their own enjoyment. 

Now, I'm sure that maybe some of the things that get reported back to Big Cheese of the things are innocently mentioned.  I am not a complete idiot about things like this happening.  I am after all a fairly reasonably person.  Big Cheese is known for making me feel like everything is my fault, that I decided to have a split family.  Despite my many attempts at reconnecting my whole fantasy of a traditional family, despite the numerous times I have set aside my pride, the very fiber of who I am to do this.  So don't think I know that this may be the case.  Do me a favor, when you retell the story show the whole scenario.

Have I felt lonely and sad, yes, yes I have.  I want a big shoulder to cry on to tell me that I am doing ok as a mom, as a woman as a freakin' human being. I want to have a friend in the person I am with.  Big Cheese, I know tries, but there is a huge disconnect in our relationship.  He has been holding on to things that happened when we were dating.  Things that I am not proud of doing. I have apologized, I have tried to move to the present.  I have even disregarded his mistakes during my pregnancy.  He can't let go, he is still angry.  It may not be outwardly apparent, but he lets it all out when we argue.  I can't keep living in the past, my children deserve two happy parents to raise them. 

Like I said I take responsibility for my part in the failure of this relationship, I'm no angel.  I have however vowed to be true to my children.  I have not introduced to anyone I may start dating, because simply put there is no one.  I respect myself to know that this is not a good time for me to even consider that.  Do I desire that attention? Sure, who wouldn't.   I am first and foremost a mother of two young children who deserve my attention right now.  Maybe down the road I can revisit that place as the woman I want to be.  I want to be "that" person for someone and they can be that for me, for now I am ok with just me and the kids. Big Cheese can't meet me half way and talk to me like an adult.  He resorts to insults and raising of his voice.  I will not let him bring me down and make me feel like this is all of my fault. Just because I told him to leave, does not give him the right to blame me for all of it and not take responsibility for his part.

I leave my future in this and any other relationship in God's hands.  I can't do anything else.  I often feel defeated in that department.  Still I pick myself up and dust off and move forward.  Why?  Well here is the simple answer:

So if you want to retell false truths remember this, your words and gossip affects more than just me.  It's like throwing a pebble into a pond, the ripples get bigger and you hurt more than one person with greater intensity.  If that makes you sleep better at night, so be it.  Just do me a favor, sign up to my RSS feed so you can get all the information correct and show him what you read instead of interpretting it on your own. 

Thanks a lot! May you find peace of heart.
 

AMA

BIG BOLD BRIGHT RED LETTERS - AMA

That was the big acronym strewn across my medical file when I glanced over.  It was a prenatal appointment I had when I was pregnant with Thing One.  I thought to myself "What the heck was that?!"  Did I have something that was bad?  Was the Doctor not telling me everything? What in the world could AMA be?  Being hormonal and being beside myself with worry I had to ask the doctor.  "I'm sorry, but I notice the initials AMA on my chart, can you tell me what that is?"  The ugly truth, the cold hard facts were about to hit me at that point "Oh sure, it means Advanced Maternal Age".  I sat there and looked again and I thought...Oh my GOSH!  I'm OLD!  In fancy medical, politically correct terms, but yes it meant OLD!

It took me months and months to be ok with that big bright red acronym to be on my file.  It was like a scarlett letter, I was old, different, not young enough to be having kids.  Utterly frustrating to me at one point thinking, why are you putting me in the OLD catergory.  I'm not peeing myself, YET!  I had never thought of myself in those terms.  I always considered myself young, hip, with it.  Hmm...why???!!!  I guess the medical community agrees that I was not of "child bearing" age.  I was 36, and I was far from the age of the girl sitting next to me in the medical office waiting room, who was like 10 years my junior.  Mind you, we were both expecting our first child. 

It was really not a choice of mine, by far to be AMA.  I had tried for a good 2 years to get pregnant with Prince Charming, when I was 28.  It had failed miserably and accounted for a lot of turmoil that led up to our divorce.  By the time that happened I was 30.  I had 5 good "child bearing" years I figured.  Within those years I met The Frog.  I did get pregnant at 33 only to lose the baby I was to have with The Frog. Depression hit me hard after that and any type of hope to bear a child was out the door.  I date Big Cheese with no intention on having children, I had hit the big 3 - 5! SURPRISE! PREGNANT!

I always thought I wanted to be a hip young mom, not too young, but young.  Life had other plans for me.  I have worried a lot about being the oldest mom in playgroups, not being able to relate with the other mothers.  Quite to my surprise, once you become a mother, you share the same fears, the same hapiness, the same guilt.  It's a huge sisterhood, for sure. 

My other fear I had was my own health and mortality.  Will I be here long enough to teach my children all the need to know?  Will I be capable of the demands that young children have, physically?  Both of my parents were older when I was conceived and I lost my father at the age of 12.  I feel that this is why I worried so much.  After having Thing One I realized one thing, sure I was older, but I wasn't dying and I had some control of my health.  I was still able and capable of taking on this new chapter in my life.

I will have to say that being AMA has it's advantages in some aspects.  I have more patience with them because I don't have to worry about going to school, or that I have not yet found my identity.  I have done my share of going out with my friends, with experiencing the world around me.  Of course there is room for growth and exploring, but this time I'm willing to do it through the eyes of Thing One and Thing Two. 

Who needs a fountain of youth???!!!! I have Thing One and Thing Two! :)