A Culture of Gratitude. Days 12 through 18. Oops.

Today is November 18th

There are 6 days until Thanksgiving.

I obviously suck at this.

I'm grateful for so many things...I just wish time to blog was one of them. (Them's the jokes people, take 'em or leave 'em.)

Here's a quick round up of the days I've skipped/missed/forgotten to type up this week.

Bon Appetite!

Day 11 
Today is Friday, November 11th
There are 13 days until Thanksgiving
Today I am grateful for Clorox Bleach products.
I am grateful for plastic trash bags.
I am grateful for stain-resistant carpets.
I am grateful for small, sleeping, feverish Munchkins curled in my lap.
I am grateful for the stuffy nose I've just developed...mostly so I can't smell the puke.

Day 12

Today is Saturday, November 12th.

There are 12 days until ThanksgivingToday I am grateful for do-overs.
I am grateful for old friends who have reappeared on the horizon.
I'm grateful for porches and delivery pizza and the fact that it's finally eggnog season.






Day 13

Today is Sunday, November 13th.

There are 11 days until Thanksgiving
Today I am grateful for my mother...who knowingly entered the 'Sick Zone' to bring us milk...and other assorted essentials when we were all too housebound to go get them.
Because, let's face it. The absolute LAST thing you want to do with pukey kids is pile them all into the car so they can whine and moan and complain of not feeling well at the grocery store (where other people will overhear them and glare at you as if you're a bad parent for infecting the Greater Indianapolis Area)

Day 14

Today is Monday, November 14th.

There are 10 days until Thanksgiving
Today I am grateful for ice cream.
And everything that went with it.




Day 15
Today is Tuesday, November 15th.

There are 9 days until Thanksgiving
Today I am grateful that my place of employment has dedicated a corner of space to a workout facility, because my pants are feeling a bit...snug these days. Which means a return to the daily Lunch Hour Workout. Huzzah.

Day 16

Today is Wednesday, November 16th. 

There are 8 days until Thanksgiving.

Today I am grateful for The Girls.
Stephanie, your strength and your smile and your sense of acceptance inspires me.
Karrie, your loyalty and dedication to others humbles me.
Jill, your ability to love openly and without reserve encourages me.
I do not know what I would do without you guys.
I would not be the person I am today without your presence in my lives these past 28 years (Yes, for those of you playing along that would be preschool). I love you guys.



Day 17

Today is Thursday, November 17th.

There are 7 days until Thanksgiving.
Today I am grateful for the amazing support network of educators and caregivers in the lives of The Munchkins. I am able to go about my day, confident and secure that the people my children spend the bulk of their day with are loving, caring, intelligent people. They are, in effect, a second (or third? or fourth? I've lost count) family. I trust these people not just with my life, but with the lives of my children. I trust them with their fragile egos, their giant sponge-like brains, their open hearts, their compassionate souls. And each year I am more and more grateful that they not only maintain them, but feed them. They not only teach numbers and letters, but compassion and dignity.

Day 18Today is Friday, November 18th
There are 6 days until Thanksgiving

T.G.I.F kids. Seriously.

It's been a long week.
Today I am grateful for the frozen pizza we're going to have for dinner and the movies we're going to plop on the floor and watch tonight. Fridays have always been pizza and a movie nights...for as long as I can remember. I let The Munchins eat in the living room and we put on our jammies and bring down blankets and pillows and just veg all evening. This is considerably more fun (in my opinion, anyway) when it's sub-freezing temperatures outside. The thought that I get to put on my ugly sweats as soon as I hit the door tonight is preeeettttty much the only thing getting me through my day today.

A Culture of Gratitude. Day 10.

Today is November 10th.
Today marks 15 days until Thanksgiving.

Today I am Thankful for the growing independence of The Munchkins.

There is a special sort of joy that occurs when you realize that your youngest child is finally old enough to sit and color quietly by herself for long stretches at a time.

It's euphoric, really.

Considering that I can still remember the days when The Monkey wouldn't let a soul but Yours Truly even touch her, makes this moment an even greater success. There were days when I was sure I held that child 22 of the 24 hours of the day. And now, the edges of my memory have blurred just enough that I think on those days fondly...

Because as much as I celebrate the fact that I had an entire 30 minutes to myself this morning to enjoy my coffee and the current trashy novel I was curled up with under the couch-afghan, I'm also realizing that this is the beginning of the end. Soon they'll be rushing out the door...on the way to friends' houses and sports practices and to meet *gasp* boys. I shudder to even think...


So maybe, just maybe, I'm not in such a hurry for them to climb down off my lap and into the world.

...maybe...

A Culture of Gratitude. Day 9.

Today is November 9th.
Today marks 16 days until Thanksgiving.

Today I am thankful for this guy right here:

...because he's kind and generous...and funny...and wicked, wicked smart...and a bit of a fish geek...

...because he'll claim to be the least romantic person in the world, but is light years from it when you pay attention to the little things...

...because he indulges me when I tell him he has to dress up in costume...
(Which is actually fairly often. Can you hear me smirking? I'm smirking. Maniacally)

...because he makes a mean breakfast sandwich...

...because he's so often my rock, my point of sanity and my sounding board these days...
...and because two people couldn't possibly be more opposite, and yet rub along so well...



...and because, frankly, it's getting harder and harder to imagine what my life is going to be like when he leaves...

A Culture of Gratitude. Day 8.

Today is November 8th.
Today marks 17 days until Thanksgiving.

 

Today I am Thankful I've got an hour (Actually 45 minutes. eep!) to race over to the polls and exercise my right to vote.

 

Go! Now! Hurry!

It's more important than Jersey Shore. Promise.

A Culture of Gratitude. Day 7.

Today is November 7th.
Today marks 18 days until Thanksgiving.

I know. I skipped a few days in there...

They're actually at home, scribbled on napkins and the backs of watercolor pages (don't tell The Monkey) They'll get worked back in here in a day or so. I just don't have interwebs at home. My bad.

But today? Today I am Thankful for growing up in Faith.

Notice I said Faith. Not necessarily the Catholic Church.

Which, let's be honest here, I AM Thankful I was able to grow up in the Catholic Church. It's so much a part of who I am. But Faith is both a part of that...and something greater than the sum of it all at the same time.

Every Sunday morning, for as far back as I can remember, we woke up and poured our sleepy selves into dress clothes (no jeans!) and went to early mass. It was just a part of the schedule. It was what we did. I attended both a Catholic grade school and a Catholic high school and I owe much of my sense of self to those two institutions. I feel most at home, honest, when I am perched on a wooden pew, surrounded by the buzz of pre-mass greetings and catching up; the trail of incense wending its way through the crowd. I feel alive in my own skin when I reach across the empty space between people to clasp someone else's hand in mine for the Our Father. I feel a sense of warmth and comfort when I stop mid-hymn to listen to the scattered voices echoing across vaulted ceilings and hard tiled floors to become, if only for just a short time, one voice each Sunday.

But Faith is more than all those things as well.

Faith involves practicing what is preached.

Growing up, It involved celebrating our beliefs at home and at school, not just on Sundays between the hours of 8:30 and 10:00.  It seeped into every aspect of our lives. And it's this continual reinforcement of the understanding that there is something greater than ourselves stringing us all together that I am Thankful for. It's the lesson that was reinforced by my parents and my teachers and everyone my young, awkward self came into contact with that helped me to understand that my religion is not something I visit on Sundays and major holidays, it's something I live. It's not church. It's Faith.

And I've let that slip a bit with The Munchkins.  And I was ashamed of that and a bit adrift over how to fix it for a long time now. And, so, as hard as it was last week to suck it up and contact Holy Cross (which, granted, we've been attending for a few months now, anonymously.) I did it.  I joined the Parish. I signed The Biz up for First Holy Communion Classes. I paid my dues and signed The Monkey up for her baptismal classes.  Faith is about family. It's about that bigger connection. It's about celebrating your beliefs in every aspect of your life. And, while we'd been doing that at home, we had yet to find a new parish family for ourselves after being a bit adrift the past few years.  And I think we've finally come home.

And I've found it's self-renewing...that faith. It builds and builds when you feed it.

After church each Sunday The Munchkins have questions. And I find myself racking my Catechism to answer some of them. I lament the fact that they are not  attending a Catholic grade school almost daily. But, as it's not an option right now, I try and compensate in as many ways as I know how.

I'm excited to work on an Advent calendar with them...

I'm excited to find a new Advent wreath and light it nightly and weekly...

I'm excited about my Faith again.

And that's the funny thing about Faith...and one of the reasons I'm so grateful for it.

It was always there for me, even when I lost sight of it for great swaths of time. And it's that sense of Faith that I so desperately want to pass on to The Munchkins, no, that I will pass on to them.

A Culture of Gratitude. Day 6.

Today is November 6th.
Today marks 19 days until Thanksgiving.

Today, I am thankful for these ladies right here:

It's awfully easy to get wrapped up in your own day-to-day and forget that there are other people out there doing the exact same thing.

I do not exaggerate when I say that more of my friends than I can shake a stick at have had new babies in the past year. And I'm not even really sure what that means other than there are a LOT of babies going around.

And sometimes, the best cure for feeling overwhelmed in your own skin, is to get out and connect with the other ladies going through exactly what you're living. Every day.

Life can, simply put, be more than we can handle sometimes.

And it's easier when we can commiserate with each other. When we can confirm that, yes, our kid was up four times last night too. When we can lie, smilingly to each other and say that no one's sleep-deprived, under-eye bags are noticeable. When we can one-up each other with poopsplosion stories until we're all laughing maniacally.

Thank you ladies.

Thank you for letting me hold all your babies.

Thank you for reminding me that no one gets a good night's rest any more.

Thank you for letting your kids help my kids get so worn out they passed right out on the car ride home.

Thank you for being there.

A Culture of Gratitude. Day 4

Today is November 4th.
Today marks 21 days until Thanksgiving.

Today I am grateful for the strength to make the big decisions...
The little decisions, those are the killers.



I get menu anxiety. 

I'm pretty sure my sister coined the phrase, back when we were little kids and she would freeze up every time we went to a restaurant. I still have issues choosing what to eat given too many options. See also Fabric, and Thread, and Yarn, and Clothing. 

And you'd think that my complete inability to make the little decisions in every day life (Cottonelle vs. Angel Soft? Pasta vs. Breakfast Dinner? Leftover Pizza for lunch or a Sandwhich?) would render me completely at a loss for the big decisions (what school should the kids attend? At which parish should we make our new home?)

But for some reason, I've been graced with a support network that needles me to make the big decisions in an...er...timely fashion and to stick to my guns. 

Which helps me sleep at night...even when I'm second guessing the clothes I laid out for everyone for the next day...and whether I should have bought the dryer sheets that smelled like lemon instead of spring fresh...and whether I should have defrosted those pork chops instead of that hamburger for Tuesday's dinner...

A Culture of Gratitude. Day 3.

Today is November 3nd.
Today marks 22 days until Thanksgiving.

Today I am grateful for the 5 minutes of quiet I managed to carve out for myself this evening.

It doesn't happen too terribly often.

The Munchkins were cranky when I scooped them up from school today.

They generally are on Thursdays. It's like a second Monday around my house...they're just a little out of synch. And so I try to low-key it on days when they return to my house. I'd planned mac & cheese with smoked sausages cut up in them (and on the side for The Biz...never mixed in...not for her) and a movie night complete with floorbeds in the living room.

...

But, of course, nothing went according to plan.

Which is the norm here. So we rolled with it.

Somewhere along the way from School to daycare to the grocery for a gallon of milk and a couple rolls of toilet paper and home, The Munchkins went from grouchy and out-of-sorts to Full.On.Meltdown.

It was not pretty.

I was hanging on by a thread.

So when we hit the front door and there were literally kidlets littering the front floor...lying on their backs and crying from exhaustion, I nearly lost it.

I cow-pusher shoveled everyone up the stairs en masse. I gave everyone three pieces of Halloween Candy and a book from the upper bookcase, lined them up in the upstairs hallway and we had "The Talk".


Look, gang, Mommy's TIRED.
You're TIRED.

We're all CRANKY.

I get it.
Would bubble baths help? (three nods. Bubble Baths are a big favorite in our house)

Okay. So, if you can all be quiet for 5 minutes while I put the noodles on and go to the bathroom? We'll start the whole evening over, okay? (three more solemn nods.)

And so we did.
And it was the quietest, most peaceful 5 minutes of my entire evening.

Owing, probably to the candy, but I'm hoping everyone just happily overlooks that parenting gaffe.  We had bubble baths times three, and noodles for dinner, and then I fell asleep on the couch at 8:30 while The Munchkins very very quietly watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

So I'm thankful for the five minutes...

When you take into consideration that your kids' emotions ride the train to crazy every five minutes or so...and that  they can start out having a meltdown, fight amongst themselves, and still end up laughing and playing together all within the space of half an hour or so...you either hop on board with crazy or let it drive you nuts.

Sometimes that five minutes is all you need.
Just five minutes

To hit reset.

A Culture of Gratitude. Day 2.

Today is November 2nd.
Today marks 23 days until Thanksgiving.

Today I am grateful for the impulsive nature of friends. 

I have found, over the years, that people are more the sum of their friendships than anything else. I have a tendency, believe it or not, to hunker down with a good book or movie when I find five minutes to myself. My first thought is not, in fact, to pick up the phone and see who will help me escape myself, even when perhaps it should be.

There are nights that, once The Munchkins are tucked safely away under covers, nightlights on, soft snores wafting down the hallways; I so crave adult contact that I very nearly ache with it.  And you'd think I'd get some of that at the 8-5 I pull five days a week, but that, honestly, is more computer interaction than anything and significantly less...fulfilling than one might think.

So six nights a week I curl up on the couch, tuck my toes under a blanket and pull up a good book, or my sewing machine; wishing I could be out of the house. But on that seventh night? The one when I could be out? I get anxious. I get nervous. I rent Redbox movies and buy TV dinners. FreedomFAIL, no?

And so it is, with great delight, that I find myself surrounded with enough people who pull me out against my better judgement on these days. I blink and find myself in smoky bars or art galleries or Tapas restaurants or local breweries without knowing quite how it happened. I find myself laughing until my cheekbones sting with it. I find myself surrounded.

I am grateful for the last minute phone calls. I am grateful for the mid-week emails. I am grateful for the plotters and planners and movers and shakers that let me tagalong for sanity's sake.

I am grateful for the impulsive nature of my friends.

I'm not sure where I'd be without them.

A Culture of Gratitude. Day 1.

Today is November 1st.
Today marks 24 days until Thanksgiving.
Today I'll share one thing I'm grateful for...
You should too, it's rather empowering. Watch.



Today I am grateful for MomGuilt.
No, really, I am.

On nights like tonight, where The Monkey whined for three hours straight through, stopping only twice to breathe...

On nights like tonight where Mr. Man quite literally laid down on the kitchen floor and mulishly refused to do his homework...

On nights like tonight when The Biz was trying desperately to fill the 'good child' void and overcompensating to a frustrating degree...


On nights when I lose my temper so badly I have to lock mySELF in the bathroom for a timeout left I end up on the 11 o'clock news in my bathrobe and monkey slippers... On nights when I have tucked everyone in, snapped my goodnights too quickly, stormed down the steps too harshly, plopped myself on the couch too happily, and felt the ooze of MomGuilt seept in around the cracks and settle around my bones...

I am still grateful.

I am grateful for each whiny, needy, annoyingly wonderful amazing Munchkin in my life. Even when I am wracked with guilt over the duties, trials and tribulation that the moniker bestows, being a Mom is still the best thing I have ever done. They are the best thing I've ever done.

I am grateful for MomGuilt.
It reminds me, simply, that I am a Mom.