Joy in the Journey

Holy cow Mamas, I feel like I've been ranting, venting, and sharing about the preteen mom life for ages now... It has been four years, but still, it seems like I just go 'round and 'round on this. Today sucked! Like really sucked. Like by 10am I was texting my husband "I hate today" and had already, first thing after leaving my room (I do all my personal care stuff first), had a fight with my daughter... Again! Over being late to get her stuff done. So that happened and then I tried to calm myself down and pull myself up by the bootstraps and be a good example and yada, yada, you know what I mean. And I did, sort of. I started laundry, I meal prepped, I did school with my eldest, I was still "crushing it"... Then the second fight of the day, with the same kid ... I was less self controlled, less gracious this second time around and honestly, I was just plain TICKED! The disrespect, the sass attitude, and the snide response got under my skin. I yelled, wa...

My kids have issues... Which was blatantly clear the other day. MAJOR crap fest! It was awful. A trigger was hit and what followed was explosive! After things had calmed down my husband and I had a chat.  Photo Credit: elkrivertreament.com "What can we do? Is there something we're not doing that's needed?" He questioned, wanting to help our kid out in anyway we can. I went on to explain that our kid is just our kid. There is no magic solution to difficult times. There's no perfect parenting formula that will help make everything better, it is what it is. Our kid is who she is and she has to learn to best work with herself and we get to do our best to help love and support her through it. "I can't fix our kids". I said later that night. "If I could. I already would." I already would have "fixed" things because I love them more than anything and it pains me to see them struggle. I already would have because I would do anything to gi...

  It's been nearly three weeks since we moved houses... My conclusion: I never want to do this again. Moving sucks! There's a lot of grief that can be involved in moving. My family and I do not handle stress gracefully so I was fully expecting more stress fights and meltdowns than normal leading up to moving (and I was correct) but after moving I expected things to mellow out and "go back to normal" at least a little. And they have... Sort of. But, it's different. Everything is different. Even moving just fifteen minutes away we've changed towns, parks, neighbors, local stores, and even a little bit of a different feel to things. The kids after the first week of craziness and unpacking seemed to settle in as we started back with normal daily tasks like homeschool and dad going back to work. I, however, haven't handle things as well. I've had meltdowns. A few of them. They seem to hit at the most inopportune time, when I'm trying to get somewhere, ...

I had "a moment" today... A bad moment. The day had gone great. Nothing out of the ordinary. My middle child was sick with a cold that made her feel kind of crummy but we still had a normal day. School, chores, walk the dog, and met a friend at the park. All was going well... UNTIL... I noticed that my daughter's reading book, that had been BORROWED, had puppy chew marks all over it! "Oh no!" I said, "What happened?" My daughters response: Immediate denial followed by lame excuses like "I don't remember" and "I don't know what happened." Her sister ratted her out saying she saw the whole thing (and honestly, I vaguely remember it as well). The book had been on the coffee table, the dog had got a hold of it. My daughter said "No Zena!" grabbed the book and put it up. I thought nothing of it. "I don't remember the dog getting my book? WHY would the dog chew the book? When? What day did she ea...

How do you deal with anger in your children? Or in yourself? For years, I reacted pretty similar to my kids. If they got angry, so did I. If they yelled, I'd yell louder. If they slammed a door, chances are, I would too. This morning my lovely nine year old went down hill quickly. It was already a sleepy morning, the dense clouds making everything dim and gloomy. The lack of school schedule (Spring Break) making things more likely to get off to a difficult start. Sure enough, early in the morning the difficulties began. First my daughter did not complete her chore. When she was told that meant another chore she proceeded to stomp and slam and fling everything she was working on in anger. She was sent to take a break to calm down, which resulted in arguing, more stomping, and a dramatically slammed door. When she came back from her break I assumed we'd get back on track for the day but my daughter was still simmering with anger and everything was pushing her right back i...