Seven Habits of Highly Effective Moms

For Jen's Quick Takes Friday this week, my "quick takes" are from my vault of vast maternal experience and wisdom. I must clarify, of course, that I don't actually do any of these things myself. I'm just in awe of the moms I know who can actually pull off these amazing seven habits.

1. Wake. Up. Early.
Again and again, I discover that moms I admire rise quite early--long before the other members of their family. I don't know why the hours between 5 and 7 a.m. are more productive than those between 10 and midnight, but for some reason they must be. Maybe someday I'll wake up to see for myself.

2. Become Brutally Proficient at Throwing Things Away.
Stuff Management is a serious skill that is absolutely critical to managing a home well. Heck, they should offer a college degree in it, I think. Mail and paperwork, kids' artwork, hand-me-down clothing, school supplies, pantry and 'frig management--for me, anyway, this is going to take a lifetime of work and suffering to figure out. The master's degree in this field could be available for homeschoolers, for whom Stuff Management rises to a whole 'nother level.

3. Power Up.
Motherhood is exhausting and demanding, and it is vital that we do whatever it takes to keep our own energy up. I'm talking about sleep, exercise, and nutrition here. This is different for each of us, of course, but I can tell you that fat, lazy, and tired is no way to go through life.

4. Put On Your Own Oxygen Mask First.
When you stumble in the door with a carload of kids and groceries, with everybody starving, whining, and exhausted, it's okay to take a little bathroom break for yourself before trying to make lunch for the masses. Or make coffee in the morning before starting your little sweeties' breakfast. You may have heard that parenting is a marathon, not a sprint. This is true. Take a water break, for goodness' sake!

5. Know Thyself.
Over the decade-and-change that I've been a mom, I've spent a lot of energy trying on different hats and running around doing crazy stuff that doesn't work for me. (Come to think of it, I've done that my whole life, but I digress...) Try your best not to do this. You are the heart of your family, just the way you are. Just be you.

6. Stay Loose.
Over and over again, when I get everything figured out around here (yeah, right), somebody changes schools, or has a birthday, or stops taking naps, or decides she doesn't like wearing dresses every day, or develops an extreme aversion to Cream of Wheat, which was his favorite breakfast last month. It's a moving target, apparently. Successful moms seem to be prepared for this, and even recognize that it's a good thing--which, of course, it is.

7. No Do-Overs Allowed.
It's a scary thought, but we only get one shot at this. Also, we get no guarantee of tomorrow. Have you ever heard anyone say they were surprised at how slowly their kids grew up? Time is precious. Do absolutely everything you can to squeeze every last drop of life out of...life.

Now go on over to Conversion Diary for everyone else's great Quick Takes posts!

It's Not You, It's Me

If you are my Facebook friend, and you've noticed my recent absence, I must tell you that it's nothing personal. I would never un-friend you, I promise. Someone did that to me once and it caused me a ridiculous amount of angst. (I'm over it.) I would, however, un-friend Facebook. And a couple of weeks ago, in order to step back and ponder the drug that is Facebook, I deactivated my account.

It's the "in" thing to do, apparently, since there's even an official "Quit Facebook Day" quickly approaching. Recently I've come across articles about detoxing from Facebook all over the place. Privacy concerns seem to be paramount, but to me it's more personal than just data (which, of course, can be quite personal).

I've been in the habit of posting links on FB to articles that I find interesting. Often--not always--when I do so, I have a particular FB friend or group of friends in mind, who I think would enjoy the link, hate the link, laugh at the link with me, or react in some predictable way or another. I've recently figured out the hard way, though, that all my other FB friends see those links too. (Duh!) And I don't know about you, but my FB friends are a wonderfully diverse group. Someone I haven't seem since childhood, for example, could easily take one of those links the wrong way, if I intended it for my fellow forty-something Catholic mom friends, or vice-versa.

I'd been thinking of FB as a big party, where I got to see everybody I ever knew in my whole life all together in one place. "Share the love!" I thought. And share I did--whatever was on my mind. Now I wish I'd been a bit more circumspect, because at least one of the links I posted seems to have hurt someone's feelings.

See, the thing about FB is that there's no context for discussion. You can't sit down and hash things out over a cup of coffee. You can't roll your eyes when you say something tongue-in-cheek. You can't see when the other person is starting to frown, and quickly reorganize your point. You can't even know who's "listening" to your conversation! And all that sets up a perfect storm of potential for hurt feelings, which isn't what I intended when I signed up for FB, at all.

This is, I suppose, what everyone's talking about when they decry social media and how it has impacted contemporary communication and our relationships. Of course it's much easier to type something bold, brash, and hurtful than it is to say it to someone's face. Even though a FB profile isn't anonymous, it can only provide a one-dimensional perspective of someone, which can hardly represent the whole person.

All that's not to say that FB isn't worth doing. Sure, it's fun. The best part is finding old friends, some of whom I never thought I'd find again, ever! So cool! And regardless of whatever overanalyzing anyone does about how social media are changing "kids today," there's no turning back the clock. It's the new reality. As I've just learned, the key thing with FB is to treat FB friends with just as much care as real-life friends, because, after all, they're just as real.

The Holy Father gives us bloggers and Facebookers his blessing, calling on Christians to

"utilize the new technologies of communication in a positive way and to realize the great potential of these means to build up bonds of friendship and solidarity that can contribute to a better world"

and appealing for cyberspace to be a place that promotes a

"culture of respect, dialogue and authentic friendship where the values of truth, harmony and understanding can flourish."

Yeah, that's it. What he said. :) As always, he's got it just right. If only I'd followed his words in the first place! But I don't suppose he has time to help solve the data privacy issues?!

Friday Quick Takes

Joining Jen at Conversion Diary for Quick Takes Friday.

This week's Quick Takes involve me sharing my Mommy wisdom. Here are seven things I wish I could tell my 31-year-old self, when I embarked on my parenting journey.

~ 1 ~
Don't worry too much about any one phase the kids are going through. Nothing lasts more than three or four months anyway.

~ 2 ~
Less stuff. Really. Especially toys.

~ 3 ~
No TV. (We hardly watch TV at all.) No candy (except on special holidays). TV and candy are pretty much the same thing.

~ 4 ~
Set the breakfast table, unload the dishwasher, and lay out everyone's clothes the night before.

~ 5 ~
Resist the urge to sign them up for so many activities.

~ 6 ~
Homeschool from the beginning.

~ 7 ~
Relax. Don't over-analyze parenting. Don't fanatically read every parenting book you can find. Don't stress. Just love, enjoy, and cherish every minute with your sweet babies. Life is short.

And so are my Quick Takes this week! Hooray! :)

Inspiration: Leftovers!

You guys have all probably been doing this forever, but tonight we had the best dinner! I had a bunch of leftover white rice (planned-over, actually, from last night) and a bunch of random assorted leftover vegetables in our refrigerator from meals past. Tonight I threw it all in the wok with a chopped onion simmered in sesame oil (any oil would work, of course) and a chopped up chicken breast. I also added garlic salt, a little stir-fry sauce that we had in the frig (soy sauce or broth or anything would work fine too), and when it was all cooked, I cracked an egg on top and flipped it around until the egg was cooked and mixed in.

Voila! Seven-Ingredient Fried Rice! It used up every single random leftover I had! Everyone loved it--and they never would have wanted all those leftover vegetables if they were just nekkid. :)

All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned While Homeschooling, Part 375

Yesterday I learned that my gorgeous, talented cousin-in-law hates doing laundry. She just hates it, apparently. And I found that startling--not because the "chore" of providing clean clothes for my family is so inherently enjoyable to me, but because I realized that up until a couple of years ago, I was quite a laundry-hater myself. Nowadays, though, I don't mind it a bit. What happened?

It turns out that "laundry maintenance" is just one of the astonishing things that God taught me during my past two years of homeschooling my sweeties. Three years ago, I pretty much figured that it was impossible to homeschool the kids while simultaneously managing the clean-to-dirty-to-folded-and-clean-again cycle that clothing must undergo. "Impossible," I thought. Way too much for me. Surely we'd have to find some domestic help of some kind--a college student, perhaps--upon whom to unload this overwhelming task. Right?

Problem was, no one else in my vast and wonderful homeschooling group seemed to need such domestic help. What did they know that I didn't? Was there a super-secret big-family laundry trick that I had yet to learn? Had they really taught some or all of their children to do this job? Could it be, perhaps, that laundry wasn't such a big deal after all?

Well, yes and no, to all of the above. Laundry for a family of seven, especially in the Wisconsin wintertime, could certainly be considered a pretty big deal. Once I acknowledged it as such, it helped me to approach this part of my domestic vocation with an appropriately structured mindset. Was it reasonable--valuable, even--to expect the kids to take time away from academics to participate? Oh, yes.

Laundry, in fact, was a great way to teach my kids organizational skills, teamwork, and responsibility. Once I looked at it that way, laundry became neither good nor bad--just an opportunity to figure out a workable system that maximized everyone's ability to contribute.

Homeschooling helped me look at many aspects of family life that way. I'm finding that plenty of daily domestic tasks--unloading the dishwasher, keeping the house reasonably tidy, planning meals--are now transforming from fearsome fire-breathing dragon chores into simple everyday parts of life.

No doubt this has all been part of the divine homeschool curriculum at our house--for the teacher.

And Now For A Very Practical Post

Last weekend, my personal grocery shopper (to whom I am married) did a wee bit of comparison shopping between Sam's Club and Costco. We belong to both, because we are serious bulk shoppers and each club has certain things that we can't live without. Also, we are lucky to have both within reasonable distance from home here in our perfect little medium-sized town.

Anyway, I thought you might be interested in some of the results. The overall winner? Pretty close, but it's Costco, in almost every category. Go figure--I would have guessed the other way. Anyway, here are some details:

Classico spaghetti sauce: 3x32 oz. for $6.88 at both clubs.
Classico alfredo sauce: 3x16 oz. 4.97 Costco; 6.12 Sam's.
Basmati rice: 20 lb. bag $13.26 Costco; 15 lb. bag $13.26 Sam's.
Swanson chicken broth: 12x14 oz. $7.88 at both clubs.
Purdue chicken breasts, 10 lbs.: $23.29 Costco; $22.98 Sam's.
Velveeta cheese 2x1lb $8.79 Costco; $8.88 Sam's.
String cheese, 3 lbs.: $7.99 Costco; $8.26 Sam's.
Yoplait yogurt 18x6 oz. cups; $8.29 Costco; $8/10 Sam's.
Butter 4 lbs.: $6.79 Costco; $6.98 Sam's.
Kraft american cheese: 4 lbs. $8.96 Costco; 3 lbs. $7.46 Sam's.

And a couple of others, but I can't read Bill's writing. Also I'm so bored out of my mind just typing this up, I can't imagine actually doing the comparison shopping myself. No doubt I would lose the piece of paper somewhere in my car while driving between the two stores, and the math to figure out something like which one of those american cheeses is the best deal would probably make me want to cry.

I am so thankful for my practical, frugal husband who will do all this stuff--especially all our grocery shopping! (See what I mean about how it would be inconceivable for me to lose $350.00?!?!)

Wisdom from FLYLady

FLY (Finally Loving Yourself) Lady has really hit a home run with her note today, so I wanted to share:

Dear Friends,
Do you want to know why your home gets messy? It is not because your children tear things up faster than you can put them away and it is not because your husband doesn't help?
Your home gets messy because you don't think you have time clean it up!
When we quit blaming others for the messiness then we will start to see windows of opportunity to pick up and put away.
The hardest person in your home to clean up after is YOU! This is because you feel like that you will get a chance to go back to that project. That is one of the reason you never put thing back where they belong.
The keys to keeping your home clean is to pick up after yourself, get rid of clutter and to quit complaining that you don't have time.
Those words, "I don't have time" are a red flag for you! They tell you that your perfectionism is taking over. When you hear yourself say those words or think them; I want you to pick up 5 things and put them away.
As we say in the south! Hit a lick at a snake. That is our way of telling you to just do something. Anything is better than nothing!
Now I want to talk about your children and their clutter. Clutter gets in the way of their enjoyment of their rooms. This is because you have turned their rooms into storage building for the other children. You are hanging on to their clothes and toys. When they have too many toys and clothes they can't think or play! All any of us want to do is play. Help your children by boxing up their toys and letting them go visit the House Fairy for a while. http://www.housefairy.org/
Are you ready to help your children FLY?
FlyLady

Uh, now I gotta go clean up around here...

Chore Update

After more or less giving the kids a pass on chores this fall, with them being back in school and all, a couple of days ago I finally snapped. Mealtime alone around here is enough to require a household staff (hmmm....there's an idea...), and I was worn out.

Rather than taking a couple of weeks to scrape together enough spare time (in between loading and unloading the dishwasher, you know) to make up a complex chore chart for us on Excel, which has often been my standard operating procedure in the past, this past weekend at dinner I just announced,

"Now you're all going to have mealtime jobs. Except for MPD. Here are the four jobs:
1. Clear all the dishes,
2. Put away leftover food,
3. Sweep under the table,
4. Wipe down the top of the table.
You will each have one of these jobs for a week. I will still be here, helping you and doing all the hard stuff, like deciding which container to put which leftovers in and loading the dishwasher. Each week, you'll switch jobs. These will be your chores following every mealtime. Starting now. Go."

It reminds them of the lunchroom jobs that the 4th and 5th graders have at their school, so they like it. Well, at least JPD does, because he feels like a big kid. And you know what? This little thing is making a HUGE difference around here. We're getting in a new year's groove!

(They don't know it, but my evil plan is to add back in pre-mealtime chores too, then Saturday morning chores. I'm heading for easy street around here!)

Seven (Very) Quick Takes Friday

~ 1 ~
Recently heard at our place: "Some people think their parents are really Santa Claus. But Mom and Dad would NEVER buy all that stuff!"

~ 2 ~
This week our Little Flowers Girls' Club meeting was on Tuesday, the Feast of Mary's Immaculate Conception. I opened our meeting with the Hail Mary prayer, and then asked the girls (who had all been to a special Mass that morning for the feast day) if they could guess why I'd chosen that prayer. KLD's hand shot up. "The feast of the Immaculate Heart!" She proudly answered. What a cutie! (Everyone agreed it had something to do with Mary. Well, they got that part right, anyway!)

~ 3 ~
I am so proud of my sweeties and their Christmas preparations! They are all very busy getting ready, and SO concerned with what they're getting/making for each other--far more than what they're asking Santa for. So sweet--just warms their mom's heart to see their sweet generosity! Really creative ideas too, like a spaceship for JPD out of packing boxes. (Sssshh!)

~ 4 ~
We are pretty excited around here about the Longhorns in the National Championship game. I'm just saying.

~ 5 ~
Speaking of sports, we are in a FRENZY of basketball tournaments for WWD. Our weekends are totally booked. Last Friday night, I took all the kids down to W's tournament; Bill was driving in from a meeting in Chicago and meeting us there. I wish you could have seen how excited MPD was to see his BIG brother on the court with all those other HUGE 5th grade players!! It was floor seats at the NBA to him! He was so proud of WWD; it was just precious. I often think about my uncle's description of my dad, who was his 9-year-older brother--same age gap as WWD and MPD--as "larger than life." It is such an amazing blessing to see how sweet these two almost-ten-years-apart brothers are together! As soon as the first game was over, MPD couldn't wait to climb into W's lap, to show that he was HIS brother:


~ 6 ~
After the snow, came the cold. We're now having single digit high temperatures and wind-chill temps in the sub-zero teens. That 17+ inches of snow is now frozen into a hard pack, everywhere. The garage door did not want to open yesterday morning, and my van doors were frozen shut. I love #7 of Jen's Quick Takes this week--it totally sums up the difference between daily winter life as a Texas Mom vs. a Wisconsin Mom. Sandals, shorts, and t-shirts 9 months of the year!! We are buried in winter gear, and I am so thankful for our new, bigger laundry room which is full of 10 winter boots (as well as regular shoes), 5 pairs of snow pants, more than 20 mittens (each child has at least two pair for when they get wet), random coats and hats and neck gaiters and headbands and...well, you get the picture. And they can't wait to get outside!!

By the way, my big-family frugal mommy wisdom on this issue is that I get black Target snow bibs in all their sizes, so each year they just move up to the next size, all unisex. If they bust the knees, which happens rarely, I just buy more because they're pretty cheap. I also like to buy their coats red or cobalt blue so that they can be unisex and more share-able; this is getting harder to do because Lands' End and other favorite coat suppliers are making things more and more gender-specific! The kids can "express themselves" (whatever) with their hats, gloves, and scarves, which are whatever flavor (Dora, Disney Princesses, Superheroes, Longhorns, Packers, personalized)they're into. So far, this has worked great (this week they were actually laughing about someone at school having pink snow pants--how crazy! ha ha), and keeps our off-season storage of all this gear more manageable too.

~ 7 ~
This morning on Catholic radio I heard the most beautiful description of the story of St. Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose feast days are yesterday and Sunday. Two things are especially striking me about this story this year: It's amazing that this powerful apparition happened at such a critical period of history--the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs--and also, as with so many saints, that God always best uses the most humble souls for His greatest work.

The Blessed Mother's loving words to St. Juan Diego about his uncle's illness are especially precious and so comforting and applicable to all of us:

“Hear me and understand well, my son the least, that nothing should frighten or grieve you. Let not your heart be disturbed. Do not fear that sickness, nor any other sickness or anguish. Am I not here, who is your Mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not your health? Are you not happily within my fold? What else do you wish? Do not grieve nor be disturbed by anything."

~~~~~
Lots more Quick Takes at Conversion Diary, as always!

Less Is More, Part 2

Like I said, as the years go by and my mommy wisdom continues to grow, I'm finding that life is better around here with fewer kids' extracurricular activities.  If my experienced-mommy self could go back in time about a decade and give some advice to my rookie-mommy self, I would apply this same less-is-more advice to the acquisition of kids' STUFF. 

"Stop the madness!"  I would say to my old self, who was pretty mesmerized by all the cool educational toys, adorable kids' clothes and shoes, and endless parenting gear I encountered upon becoming a parent.  There were--and are--so many irresistible gadgets and gizmos!

There's a good reason why first-time mommies carry huge diaper bags with a couple of changes of baby clothing, several toys and board books, a clean mommy shirt, a dozen or so diapers, a pack or two of wipes, sample size diaper rash lotion, scented diaper disposal bags, and a pack of disposable bibs, whereas experienced moms (notice I did not say "old") carry a small handbag containing lip gloss, a cell phone, and a credit card. 

The new mommies--except for those of you much wiser than I was--haven't figured out that in a pinch, they can surely find a wrinkled-up diaper under a seat in the van, and McDonald's paper towels make adequate wipes (again, only in a pinch).  And with all that stuff, you spend more time organizing and reorganizing it than actually using or enjoying it.  (Or, if you're like me, the diaper bag just fills up and gets all junky, and the baby outgrows those outfits and diapers, so you...I shudder to admit this...just go buy a new diaper bag.)

I keep giving away more and more of our baby stuff.  At one point we had three or four strollers--well, actually we still have three, so maybe that's not such a good example.  :)  If we have another child, s/he might just live happily without a Boppy pillow, infant swing, or exersaucer (if I don't get pregnant pretty soon, they're outta here!).  In the new house, the poor babe might not even have a nursery of his/her own--I'll just stick her bed next to mine for, like, two years.

As for toys--just say NO, mom!  I wish there were toy libraries, so I could check them out and return them, like books.  When we moved here from the house with the bigger basement, we had so many toys that we literally could not unpack.  I can hardly give them away faster than new ones come in for birthdays and Christmases!  If I had it all to do over again, I'd go for three or four classic toys--right now I'm working on getting our stash down to Legos, a couple of other building sets, American Girl dolls, and a Thomas train set.  (Still lots of games and puzzles, though.)  I'm not there yet, but I am really trying to simplify our life as much as I can--fewer toys means fewer things to tidy up.  Also, it is absolutely true that the fewer toys we have, the more my sweeties enjoy playing with the toys that remain.

I like Flylady's definition of "STUFF"--Something That Undermines Family Fun.  So true...less is more!

Why I Give My Kids Chores

                            

My neighbors think I'm nuts.  Again and again it seems that my children are the ones taking out the garbage, watching their little brothers, helping in the yard, helping clean out the garage, or shoveling snow out of the driveway (they've yet to complete the driveway alone, though).  The neighbor kids, at least, think our kids have it pretty bad over here!

I promise you that there's more going on with this than just Bill & I taking advantage of slave labor--well, most of the time, anyway! 

My parenting philosophy is all about chores.  I think chores--better than anything else I know--help develop responsibility and self-esteem for children.  Also, as someone who made it to age 30 without so much as the ability to make pancakes, I don't want my kids to grow up as spoiled, self-centered, and inept-at-household-tasks as I did!

The esteemed John Rosemond is one of my parenting heroes.  A proponent of super-traditional parenting, his books are full of wise anti-advice.  (Anti-advice="Trust your own instincts.  Parenting is easy.")  From his book A Family of Value*, here are some reasons why chores are critical for kids:

1. Participation in the work of the family confirms the child as a valued member of the family.  The more responsibility a child accepts, the more status he has in his parents' and siblings' eyes.  With more responsibility comes more opportunity to participate in family decision-making and other grown-up stuff. 

2. Chores help children internalize the principle of give-and-take, which is the centerpiece of every workable social contract and provides children with an understanding of social accountability.  Each person in the family relies on each other person to pull his weight.  This builds self-esteem, of course.

3. Chores enhance the value of the family to the child.  They are a means of bonding the child to the values of the family.  Just as contribution of time or effort to a local charity is evidence the contributor shares in and wants to support the values the charity represents, a child's contributions to his family cause the child to bond with the family's core values.

"We have to work as a team," I'm always saying.  "Many hands make light work, and then we can do something fun together."  No doubt they're rolling their eyes behind my back, but...tough.  It's good for 'em!

This is all related to having a big family, you know, although of course the principles work no matter how many kids you have.  In a home with lots of siblings and a busy mom (me), it's impossible for me to over-coddle my kids or make things all about any one of them.  And I really do need their help. 

I'm always working to strike a balance with this, of course, because I love each of them beyond belief with every fiber of my being and I would love to spoil them to death just for fun, but just like giving them nutritious food instead of candy all day, I have to parent according to my principles and not what just feels good, right?!? So...my guys are bringing in the empty garbage cans and clearing the breakfast dishes and supervising their siblings. It's all part of being a family, I say.

Plus then I get to blog while they're unloading the dishwasher, right? :)  JUST KIDDING...

 

*If you want to check out just one book by John Rosemond, I recommend New Parent Power, which combines a couple of his other books and presents his core ideas quite thoroughly.

Feminism Part 2: What Do We Tell Our Daughters?

This is Part 2 of my contribution to the sage and insightful discourse related to feminism over at Jamie's blog. Part 1 is here. For me, being half a generation or so older than Jamie, the discussion isn't so much about myself anymore per se, but about my girls.

What messages are my choices sending them? What advice would/should/could I give them, based on my own circuitous path to grownup womanhood? What do I hope/wish/pray/dream for them? Homeschooling mom of double-digit numbers of kids? CEO of a major corporation? Consecration to religious life? All of the above? Okay, well, maybe the nun thing is kinda mutually exclusive with the others, but I digress...

Recently, I have been delighted to get to know "Melissa," a friend and fellow homeschool mom who is expecting her fourth child at age 25. Talented, energetic, gregarious, mature, and faithfully living her vocation as a Catholic wife and mother, Melissa met her husband because he became smitten with her beautiful voice when she was the cantor at church one Christmas Eve. They got married when she was 19 (he is a few years older than her and had already established his career). She had started college at the time, she told me, but quit when she got married, figuring that, as they hoped for a large family and planned for her to stay home, there wasn't much point in finishing her teaching degree. She got pregnant on her honeymoon, and now has three adorable children with the fourth on the way.

I must admit, when I first heard this sweet story, my first instinct was to sign up my daughters for voice lessons right away. And wouldn't that just be a next-generation pendulum swing from my mom's advice to me to "work, work, work; achieve, achieve, achieve," in order to have an accomplished professional career? Is Melissa's path preferable--or not--to my own path of career in 20's, marriage and babies in 30's, raising big kids and spending all the money from my 20's while in my 40's? :)

What, then, do we tell our daughters? Is it better somehow to get going early with wife- and motherhood? Is career achievement important too? How does service--peace corps, mission work, volunteering--fit in? And, all kidding aside, how can I help them discern whether a religious vocation might be God's plan for them?

After all, our ultimate goal is eternal life with God in heaven. Our ultimate happiness doesn't lie with our achievements or relationships or self-fulfillment or checking adventures off a "bucket list" while we're on this earth, at all.

Taking that as a starting point, I know exactly how to advise my daughters: The key to a happy life--on this earth and forever after--is knowing and loving God. Everything else--work, family, vocation--just follows from that.

Again, I'm back to "vive la difference," because each of us must prayerfully find her own path. As far as advising my children, I will try to at least be aware of how my own experiences color my perspective, so that I can avoid imposing any of my own regrets or deferred dreams upon them. My goal is simply to help them love our Lord, and learn to discern and follow His plan for them, which will lead to perfect happiness forever.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
~ Jeremiah 29:11

Feminism Part 1: Can't We All Just Get Along?

So I'm finding the discussion on feminism over at my dear friend Jamie's blog so interesting, I'm just gonna write about it. How any woman could not define herself as a "feminist" kind of escapes me, although I suppose it all depends upon one's definition of "feminism." And there's the rub, right? "Feminism" is constantly redefining itself, and it hardly means the same thing to any two people. Without consulting Webster, I'd like to take the good things that I associate with feminism--equal rights, equal pay, equal opportunities--and define myself as a feminist based on those.

As a girl growing up mostly in the 70's and 80's, mostly in Texas, mostly surrounded by traditional families of the day, I certainly got a lot of mixed messages about what I could and should do with my life.

"Don't be the nurse, be the doctor," was the message I always got. "You can be anything at all, Kim," my mom, a secretary with a business degree who quit work when she was pregnant with me, would say wistfully. "Don't ever think that boys are smarter than you or can do anything you can't." (What did I want to be? Different things: a mommy, a flight attendant, a journalist, an editor, President of the United States. At least one of them came true!) But in my twenties, when I embarked on a pretty fast-paced consulting career and parted from my long-time college boyfriend, my family got nervous. When I finally got married and "settled down" at age 30 (whew!), they all breathed a BIG sigh of relief. At my wedding, I promise you that no one in my family cared one whit about my decade-long successful career for which they'd encouraged me to strive. It's all about grandbabies, right? :)

In my family (as Jamie knows VERY well!), we're definitely, deliberately traditional--almost comically so, given that Bill and I started out as peer business colleagues. To me, traditional roles are liberating, not oppressive. Each of us, in our own way, is working his* bum off for the other. And you know what? It seems clear to me (and not just because I'm typing this by the pool while the kids swim--JUST KIDDING, I'M NOT!!!!) that women are definitely getting the best end of the deal in our society. Within their individual socioeconomic constraints, women really can do anything--big work, small work, big parenting, small parenting, all of the above in any combination--whereas men haven't yet really achieved the same degree of societal acceptance for the same constellation of combinations that women have.

My best friend Ashley is a seriously accomplished doctor, with an amazing career, and her husband is an attorney. She took off about two months when each of her two darling girls was born, and each of them started "school" (i.e., "daycare") quite early in their lives. Her girls are gorgeous, accomplished, happy, amazing--and proud of their mom.

It's incredible--and funny--how different my life at home with my five munchkins is from Ashley's. Is my way better? Sure--for me. As hers is for her. Can Ashley's or my parenting be measured solely based upon our career choices? Hardly!

My advice to anyone considering career/motherhood/childcare issues is simple: Know Thyself. (Simple to say, not so much to implement.) As Ashley says, "Would it be better for my girls to have me at home, frustrated and unfulfilled?" Um, no. And on the other side, could I stand to be sitting in some conference room while someone else spent the day with my babies? Well, it depends on what I'm wearing--do I get new business clothes? KIDDING AGAIN...

Day care is not evil. Not using one's graduate degree to its fullest maximum potential is not a crime. Letting your husband get away without changing diapers in the middle of the night (or not!) is fine, if that's the way you want to divvy things up. Just wait--he'll take his turn, just when you need it most. Trying things one way, discovering that you want something different, and changing things around is okay too. Honestly, I've never understood why stay-at-home moms and "business mommies" (my term, soon to be copyrighted) have such conflicts. Everybody's different, for crying out loud.

Douse the flames; I'm keeping my (nursing) bra on.


*My pronoun usage, like my marriage, is quite traditional.