Mothers Day 2012

I'm still trying to process Mothers Day. It doesn't feel natural to me, yet. I don't feel like a mom. I tried to figure out why not. I do all the things moms do. Even though I didn't carry, deliver or nurse Rose I invest just as much emotion and energy into her being.

I will need time to process this, but I think the reason I don't feel like a mom is because Rose can't share with me like I used to with my mom. Rose has good reasons of course. She was burned by adults and has no reason to trust anyone. At the same time, until she can confide in me, I don't feel like her mom. I feel like the kind woman who's giving her a place to stay. She's still my daughter, but not in the way I'd expected to have a daughter.

As a result, Mothers Day isn't really a sweet day, a more so bitter sweet day. I love honoring my my mom, grandma and aunt. I hate the full day reminder of the loss of mother/daughter role I'd wanted for years.Rose is a very important part of my life, my only daughter, but I hope some day we share a more strong bond.

Here's a picture of all the strong, beautiful women who made me, me.

First parenting win

Last week, Easter candy was suddenly going missing overnight. Wrappers and sticky globs of chewed bubble gum were winding up in trash cans unexpectedly. Chocolate bunnies were abducted without a trace of their whereabouts. Clearly, kiddo'd decided she needed to dig into the stash of candy.

Rose denied her involvement as convincingly as a mobster protecting their boss.  My eyebrow raised, and I said, "Well, Dad and I didn't do it. The dogs didn't do it. You didn't do it. So we must have a ghost who likes candy. Since I'm scared of ghosts, we're not going to have candy or treats in the house any more."

Two nights passed where Rosed asked for candy or treast after dinner. I repeated the silly ghost reasoning. The third morning, Rose emerged from her room holding some of the vacationing candy. I don't have the bunnies, though, I brought those to school, she said.

I was on cloud nine the whole day. The crazy scheme I'd concocted on the fly actually worked. She came clean about what she'd done. She later admitted to also taking a box of crackers to school as well. She got mad when we informed her there'd still be a consequence. That turned itself into a learning opportunity. Just because you tell the truth about misgivings doesn't mean you don't have consequences. It usually means the consequences aren't as severe.

So we have one blue ribbon on the parenting mantlepiece. Plus, this post is a nice segway into posting a few pics from Easter 2012.

Even better than the real thing

The past month has been surreal. Sure, we've had ups and downs. This time, though, none of the downs affected us for more than 24 hrs,

Friday morning, for example, mike had to carry Rose to the car to get to school. We wouldn't let her wear shorts so she refused to cooperate.

(She ended up wearing shorts anyway, which is perhaps a lesson learned for us first time patents. Choose your battles wisely.)

We issued consequences. She came home Friday afternoon happy and determined to please us. She wrote two letters of apology and cleaned her room. The rest of her weekend was spent researching and writing a report on The Civil War.

Sounds lame. Yet tonight, we slurped spaghetti noodles as chocolate chip cookies filled the house with a calming aroma. We watched the newest Muppet movie. I read "The Secret Garden" to Rose until bedtime.

It was everything I dreamed it could be. It wasn't flashy. It just was. And it was wonderful.

April Showers Bring April Birthdays

I was a very caring big sister. When my sister turned one, I decided I would "help" her open her birthday presents...out of my pure care of her well being. She was too little, I remember reasoning. Since I'm four, I'd better show her how it's done. I showed her how to open presents and how to play with her toys for two years before she decided she was ready to be an independent woman who opened her own presents. By then, I was nearly six and agreed.

As you can see, we were both happy with this arrangement.

Of course in hindsight, I'll admit I wasn't altruistic. I was an older sister who was spoiled and wasn't very thrilled that my baby sister had a whole day dedicated to her. Plus, I was convinced she did both the opening and playing WRONG! Better I do it myself.  When I realized she would let me open her presents because she was too little to care, I took advantage. This bossy, I know better, mentality is a family trait I believe I inherited from my Grandma. Yet I digress, wo why this trip down memory lane?

Well, because April is filled with birthdays, namely Mike's and mine. Rose really struggles with these days. She will fall into oddly argumentative behavior that tests my patience as I try to remind her it's DAD's birthday or MY birthday. From what I can tell, she suffers because the days focus on someone else. She is no different from me ages four to six as I came to terms emotionally with losing the only kid position.

Of course, all of this is conjecture because she won't share her thoughts or reason for emotions. Yet yesterday, on my birthday, the evening was filled with silly arguments and her generally becoming so disrespectful she wound up with quiet time in her room. At one point when I told her she needed to have time out, she said, "Mom on your birthday you're supposed to be nice to people." As my lower back continued to spasm I told her on someone's birthday you're supposed to be nice to them.

To top it off, for the last two days I've been bed ridden with a sore lower back. It was literally spasming. I can barely make it up and down stairs, and Mike has been taking care of everything. Rose is early in her attachment, but I believe some of her behaviors yesterday stemmed from her concern about my not being able to take care of her. She's mentioned having nightmares about Mike or I dying. So I tried, and will admit didn't do well keeping my patience while she spent 30 minutes getting to her room.

Sometimes, when we're in funks, alone time is the best thing. That continues to be true of Rose. After a little over an hour in her room, her attitude had turned around. Mike made her dinner, and I offered to read her another chapter from The Secret Garden to show her I am still here for her. The night ended well, relatively speaking. We got another interesting peek into Rose's psyche and I had an pretty fine birthday, all things considered.

Our second Easter awaits

More to follow...