5 Year Old Letter To Ryan

I yearly make Ryan a photo book of the past year, I always start it with a personalized note. I hope someday he likes these and realizes how much I loved and treasured him. Here is his 5 year old letter, enjoy!

Ryan,

Again I sit and write this in complete and utter shock that another year has passed us by; my boy is 5 years old, writing that chokes me up. This year has bought so much intelligence, you are amazing and smart. You read many sight words, probably 50 and can get through a level 1 book; I will tell you I am not sure how that happen but clearly school is doing a good job. You run the computer almost better than mommy and I just crack up when you tell me "Mommy I am going to go to www lego dot com front slash ninjago" or some other site you saw on TV. Talking about Lego's, right now there is nothing else for you, they are your utmost favorite #1 toy and trust me Santa bought you plenty of them. You have come a far way with them too, when you first started you had trouble building some of them so we helped you but now you are a pro and do most of them by yourself only needing help with the really hard ones for the 7+ year olds. You are the sweetest boy, well frankly you have always been but lately even sweeter. Now daily you try and help me with things like carrying the stuff in the house from the car, you help me sort the laundry, clean and cook. You are so sweet that when I was recently sick you declared "I am going to hug you tight mommy and make you feel better" and you did, and yep it worked. I will be honest, I fear you growing up and stopping all this and someday leaving our home or moving far away. I feel like I want to put the brakes on now and say "NO he is now 5, I am not letting you let him get any older!" but yet this year is the year of beginnings. We did the eating solids, getting teeth, sitting up, walking, running, etc and now it is school. You will start school in September and frankly I am so scared. I am scared to put my little boy in this school with bigger boys and new teachers and places and walk away but I also know that you will run with it and learn and thrive and meet new people and just love it. You will meet friends that you may know for life as mommy has with some of her friends from kindergarten. You will remember these years too, as I do, but not much before these years. Again this year we had such fun, more Myrtle Beach, more Disney, more Imagination Movers, more running around, more swimming and Grandma and Grandpa, all the things we love. With school some of those things will slow down this year but we will still have great times, I am absolutely sure of that.

I love you everyday more and more, I swear I wish I could shout it from the rooftops sometimes the way it makes me feel to be your mother. You are handsome and polite and sweet and everything I could ever wish for. I hope you realize that even in the days where I yell or I am sad you could never do anything to make me feel different. As you get older I hope you know that I am your #1 fan in life and will never turn from you no matter what happens. I love you when you are bad or not doing what I want, I love you if you becomes a garbage man or the President. I will always be available and present and you need to do nothing special to please me. Remember life is only about pleasing yourself and fulfilling what makes you happy. Your happiness is mine.

All my love: Mommy xoxo

Reinventing the Rules for Boys

Moms of boys I decided to redo the rules. It seems like I read over and over again about how it is to have a daughter and frankly for a long time I felt I was missing something. Especially since you hear this motto of girls staying close to their moms while sons leave you once they take a wife. I pray all the time that this shows untrue and I really do love having a boy and would take more.....meanwhile here are my 20 rules of having a boy

1. Always be there, when the going gets tough let him know that mom is still his #1 fan and has his back

2. At some point no matter how much you try he will try and get in your bed, let him no matter how tired you are. Once there yes he will kick you and tackle you but heck he is only a child once

3. Sometime probably before he is 5 he will tell you he wants to marry you. Commit this to memory as someday (probably 10 more years from now) he will be saying under his breath he hates you. Repeat the marry you phase in your head over and over, walk away and keep smiling

4. Play with dirt and act like you like it, yep I rather not but he wants you too and you wont die doing it

5. Save him. Yes we want our boys to be manly boys but when they are under a certain age they need mom to save them and make them feel better. Be there shoulder ready, whenever

6. Be interested in things that interest him, its easy to say "yep" over and over when hearing about Lego's for the 17879 time but open up and be interested in it, really try!

7. He will have punk friends resist hating them and forbidding their existence. Most of them are just in the punk phase and feeling their oats, its what boys do, go with it

8. Yep you look silly making dinosaurs attack each other but they are only young one time get down on the floor and growl if that is what works

9. Tell him he is handsome as some day the girl he likes may not think so, assure him that the "best one for him" will think he is the most handsome

10. Let him know that he is smart because he works hard and tries to the best of his ability not because you want him to be smart

11. Help him understand he needs to please no one in this life but himself. Doing the right thing is an internal success and that is why he should do things

12. Kiss him every day until he will not anymore as some day they become embarrassed that mom is kissing them before they leave the house or go to school

13. Let him play in a puddle and in the mud, that is why they make washing machines and soap, no one died from dirty.

14. Make a big deal of his birthdays as there will become a time he no longer lives with you or wants to celebrate them elsewhere

15. Let him know about the day he was born, how badly he was wished for and how all the years made you feel, don't hide it

16. Someday he will be a parent, he should be thinking on that day "I want to be like my parents, they were the best"

17. Learn to trust him, as hard as this is, your lessons will come through and he will hear your voice in his head when making a decision

18. Let him know you accept him for anything he is and to never be afraid to tell you anything

19. Let him know he can always come home and you will always care for him

20. Savor each day and say I love you, as one day they are babies and before you know they leave for college and beyond. Each day is so important

Are You The Mother You Wanted To Be?

I am very active in a Debate Board, sometimes a very heated debate board but I totally love it. Today the question was asked "Are you the mother you wanted to be?" Many people were answering it with yes I breastfed, yes I used cloth diapers, yes I made all my babies food but, when I personally pondered the question I thought who gives a hell if you breastfed/cloth diapered/made food? OK clearly I know the medical world says breastfeeding its the best choice but I chose not to, I just felt odd about it for lack of a better explanation, some days I regret it and think I should have tried but I certainly do not think that makes me a bad parent. I also do not think I am a bad parent because I used Pampers or I opened a jar of Gerber baby food but what does make me a good parent? I answered it saying this...

For me being a good mother is raising a child who is taught to be polite, decent, caring and treats people the way he wants to be treated. Who knows he is loved beyond words and how much he is wanted. Who knows he does not need to be perfect, do anything he does not want to be or do anything special to please me as he will always be the best to me and loved by me no matter what transpires in life. Who trusts I have his back even when I want to kill him or he lies to me. Who knows I will tell him when he is wrong or judgemental to try and make him open minded and open to new things.

I sort of then chuckled at the other answers that people gave like breastfeeding or cloth diapering and thought, really do they think that makes them a good mother? Do they realize how wrong they were? Do they realize that many years from now no one will give a shit that you did not put Pampers on your kids bottom? How does this make them a good person, a good adult a functioning member of society?

You know working in a school district I see so many different types of children, heck so many different families and frankly sometimes the parenting puzzles me. We have children that are such horrible bullies to other people and I think (heck I say) did they not teach their child not to do that? To be tolerant of differences? To not hit people or call people names? When this now bully teenager was 2 and hit someone did you tell them no? Did they redirect and tell them that we do not hit people? It seems so natural to me to do that, would I just let my child hit people? Who are these parents?

I remember the first time Ryan saw an older woman with a walker and he yelled out "LOOK mommy that lady cannot walk " as we walked in the elevator with her. I said "Ryan this lady had trouble walking and this helps her, she walks different than us, different is not bad just different" The woman said to me "Thank you, you cannot believe the nasty things kids say" I thought really? People why are you not teaching kids to be tolerant, again its not about breastfeeding or Pampers it's about real life, how to function like a good human.

These parent whose most important thing is mashing their own squash are very much in trouble, they are the parent of children who make fun of quiet kids, black kids or not so pretty kids. Teach your child who they need to be to live in a society, teach them that just because someone is different that does not make them bad. Teach them you love them for their differences and you are the one person that through anything will be there for them, teach them they no one is allowed to make them feel inferior unless they allow them too and that includes you. Teach them that you will never hurt them or dislike them for choices in their life whether sexual orientation, being with someone of another race or religion or being a garbage man when you want them to be a doctor. Teach them how not to be that asshole guy at the bar who punches someone that is "bothering him" or the jerk at the ballpark everyone wishes was not there.

Yes we all want to keep our children healthy, feed them the healthiest, keep them safe BUT that does not make a good mother teaching them to be all the things in my answer to the Debate Board does!

Quote Obsession

I am realizing lately that I have a quote obsession, like I literally think in quotes. I don't mean these quotes " ", I mean inspirational quotes like "Don't cry because its over, smile because it happen. I have a strange and weird addiction to them, like I think about them in my head all day everyday. Like I search them on the Internet and read them always looking for the perfect quote. I describe myself in an inspirational quote and I have a list of quotes in a Word document on my desktop so I don't forget them. I make Ryan a photo album yearly to go over the past year and it is always chock full of them especially the ones that are about how special he is or things to inspire his future.

I am starting to think it is not so much an obsession with the quote per say as it is to FIT the quote or to inspire me to be more or not depressed or something weird like that. Its like living in a novel.

I even have a quote in my office on the wall (as you see in the photo) to inspire others I guess or maybe I am showing my quote obsession to the world or something, I think I have a mental illness or something....LOL! I have a new love of the website Pinterest and of course that is feeding into it more and more since I search for the word quotes or the word inspiration and look for hours for another thing to "pin" to my board under the title of inspiration of course

Isn't it some sort of OCD when someone repeats a behavior again and again, I have that I am convinced, among other things. I am not sure what I am looking for with these inspirational quotes but I have to read them all the time. I think I am hoping to find maybe an answer....

An answer to what I have no clue but someday I guess I will find that quote that tells me

His Personality

Ryan is so much of me, he is a character and always looking to make you laugh, he has that humor that I have that is witty and a tad sarcastic and sort of blunt, the not-trying humor, it just comes out funny all the time even when you are not trying. He has the perfection gene, the gene that I many times define as one of my faults. The same gene that made me practice my letters at 5-6 years old over and over until they were perfect, or re-write my shopping list because I cannot fit the cereal in I need to be in the exact spot it belongs on the list, or put the milk the the same spot in the fridge every time. He has it bad too, to the point that he will cry that he went outside the lines coloring, or the picture he is drawing is not absolutely perfect or the Lego will just not fit together the exact way he wants and I try my darnedest to make him understand that nothing has to be perfect but it does not always work. This same kid would cry if he got milk on his clothes or food on the floor because that was not "right" or "what good boys do" until finally I convinced him that is what washing machines are for or what brooms are for.

Ryan is also very much Peter. As much as he is the humor and perfection of me he is the quiet, shy, loner of Peter and frankly it boggles me, for lack of a better word and sometimes bugs me because I don't get it. I have that parent thing that I always feel the need to try and make everything perfect for him, mixed with teaching him right and wrong and how to handle life currently and in the future. I do not in anyway want to change Ryan I just want to steer him in the right direction.

Not that long ago about 1 month after Ryan changes schools his teacher wrote a note to me, it said "I hope Ryan is comfortable here he plays alone A LOT" and yes she capitalized it. I read it and said to her "that is Ryan, he is fine" and that is Ryan, but honestly it has bothered me since that day. Yes Ryan loves to play alone and do his own thing but he also likes to play with friends sometimes too he is just good on his own.

Why does this bug me so much? Probably because its not what I would do, play alone when you can play with friends? Why bother...So of course I watch him in every situation now with other kids and you know he does play alone a lot, most of the time. Is this an only child thing and I have damaged him without a sibling? Is this a good independent thinker thing? Is this an anti-social thing? Or a shy child thing? Or this is what I want to do right now and you don't thing? I wish I knew and could get it

Just recently we were at a party and there was I would say 12 or so children and again Ryan was doing his own thing and I was sitting by Peter worrying about this and telling Peter how I felt, he said to me "OK he likes to play alone what can you do about it? Are you going to force him to play with other kids?" Of course not, I kind of like that he is his own leader and not a follower but what about other kids? I am afraid that he will be lonely but Peter is right what can I do? Should i even want to do anything? Peter was that kid and survived and thrived just fine

Ryan is a good boy, a really good boy. He listens and always wants to do what is right, he is that child that wants to do right by his parents. He is smart beyond his years and loves school, he loves science, Spanish and sign language that he tells me about learning daily. He is a gentle boy who would never purposely hurt anyone, he is wise and caring. He is a perfectionist who is quiet and likes his own self and does what he want to do when he wants to do it and does not need a friend to do it. For all of these traits will make him a wonderful adult and this is just his personality, just who he was born to be. As much as I wish he was not shy in groups and more outgoing with people at times I would not change him for the world, he will always be perfect to me. Shy or outgoing he is what he is

Although I will admit its tough for me as the parent of a child who is not totally like me I need to understand the differences between us and nurture them and let them thrive in the future. Ryan and I are very close and we understand each other, I know exactly how to talk to him when he is bothered by something, I know how to relax him when he is bouncing off the walls or how to comfort him when he needs it but yet he is so different, he is a lot of what I'm not and its odd to me....

Its amazing how alike and different we are, lets not even go into how much he does NOT look like me

Travelling The Same Road Twice

At this moment my family is going through a really tough time with the terminal illness of my grandfather and I feel like we just did this with my grandmother, it was May 2010 and I am not sure I am up for this again. Clearly I don't get the choice and I realize that unfortunately since I come from a line of people who live long this means that those people are all late 80's or 90's at the same time and that is seeming to be our limits. Again my connection with God is coming front and forward in my life and honestly with each turn at this it makes me more of a believer and follower of what I have been taught.

When my grandmother was failing she was cared for by the wonderful hospice people and one of the things they discussed with us in length is the stages of death and how a person moves from the living world into death. I found it amazing that there are real stages and people actively go through the stages like clockwork as did my grandmother, I read the handbook and it was like someone was sitting at her bedside writing it down.

Why? Is this how our organs work, this is how they fail? Or is a higher power responsible for us going through these stages? In my mind this cannot just be how organs work why would it be, do they have a life expectancy like a car engine? Why does some organs then fail at infancy like in SIDS or at 35 or 91? Its just to odd form me to comprehend that to be the case

The pattern of the stages of death seem too orchestrated to be "just how the organs work", why do people not need nutrition or fluids anymore when clearly we needed them from the moment of our birth. Or why do people who are actively dying sleep in a sort of comatose state, seemingly to block ourselves from pain? Why are we left to be able to hear our loved ones to the end as our hearing is the last to go? Why do we many times need our families to let us go and free us from our living world obligations?

There must be a God that controls this and gives people the time and peace to die without fear and without pain. So many times you hear that the dying speak to family members who passed before them, I know my grandmother did is this just a coincidence that they are hoping for that person in their death or that person has truly come for them?

I belong to a very active debate board which I frequent daily and there are many atheists on the board and religion seems to come up a lot, the more and more I deal with death I just don't get them. Do they not believe because they have not looked at what is placed directly in front of them? Why do I believe that there is a higher power because I have opened my mind to it? Or again is that how it is suppose to be? What are they missing that they have not seen the signs or proof of more? Will the be afforded the same "stages of death" at the hand of God even if they do not believe in life?

I always had a tremendous fear of dying and trust me I am still not thrilled about it ever happening or having to leave Ryan and never see him again but I am starting to truly believe that it is not over when you are dead and that makes me feel good. It makes me feel so much better right now as my grandfather faces his final days, it makes me happy in my heart that I am sure he will meet his son again that so sadly passed before him or his parents who I am sure loved him so much. And in all my sadness right now for not only myself but for my mother, my aunts, uncles, cousins, grandmother, etc it strangely makes me happy inside that I know for certain that once he has passed we will meet him again someday. I am not sure why I feel that certainty now or where that message is coming from, but for me right now I am simply confident.

Understanding Limits

It seems for me lately this common message has been coming up again and again and I am starting to get it. Many times we are not ideal, we do not conduct ourselves they way others would want us too. I don't mean we act silly or anything, I mean the way we parent or the way we are a spouse or friend. Recently a friend of mine was talking of her mom and she said "She is not the mom I wanted but she did the best she could physically do, she could not do any better and I know that." Hmm interesting, people have limits, people cannot always be what we want. It sparked a great conversation.

I spoke of my grandmother and my father, they always had a difficult relationship and in her older days my father tried to speak of how he felt of his childhood. He perceived his childhood to be terrible and she did not perceive that but this is from a person who father was an alcoholic and died when she was 12. In her mind THAT was a horrible childhood and her child (my father) had a wonderful childhood, its all in the perception. Now I understand that it does not make my fathers perception change but there becomes an understanding that she absolutely did what she thought was best. She ultimately never wanted to hurt him or make him unhappy she just did not see a problem, what more could he have wanted? He wanted a more active mother, a more loving mother and that was not her, she is not the huggy lovey mom, she was not the huggy lovey granmother either. I wanted more from her too but she was not capable of opening her heart that way, its not in her makeup. You either accept it or let it bother you but its not her fault she did not do it to be hurtful, our personality has limits.

I realize that this is true in any relationship, unless you are a horrible person no one intentionally tries to do something to a person they care about that they would dislike. How many times have we had the fight with our significant others and hear ourselves say "sorry for trying to be nice" OR "sorry for trying to make you happy"? I sure know I have said that but I now realize that while maybe I thought I was doing my best, it was not what the other person wanted at that moment. Maybe he needed more from me at that moment and instead of the snarky "sorry for trying to be nice" seeing what he needed internally was the better answer.

Although, I think it is hard to stand there and think "could I have given more?" OR on the other side say to yourself....My mother/father/husband/etc did what THEY think is best and they are incapable of anything more and that is OK

People have limitations in personality, people have limitations of what they think is right or wrong. People who love you will never intentionally make you sad or hurt, you they are giving the best to them and we as people who maybe want more or something different have to realize each persons limits and that is what makes them.