Cultivating my garden...allow me to wax philosophical for a bit

Like everyone I have personal flaws.

I am way too judgmental and concerned about what other people do. Wayyyyy too much so.
I am lazy. Super duper lazy.
I am overly concerned with how others view me.

In light of these various personality flaws Voltaire has been 'speaking to me'

He says 'cultivate your garden'

Meaning don't worry about all the things you can't control. Don't focus on how others are living. Don't obsess over things that don't concern you. Grow your life. Tend your life. Solve the problems that you can effect that affect you.

I have been very strongly attempting to do this. I will catch my mind wandering in a spiral or judgment about someone that has nothing to do with me and switch off that track and focus on my own life. I don't know how yet to stop myself from starting to think of these things but I am getting good at catching it and stopping it.

I am trying to be active/proactive in making my life what I want, parenting as I want, getting the outcomes that I want and can effect through my actions. Its hard. I don't want to clean the house, I want it to be clean. I don't want to listen to the boy drone on about his bionicles, I just want him to feel like I care. I don't want to teach my kids how to do math, I just want them to know. DOING is so much harder than WISHING.

I am who I am and I have to evaluate what I want with my life and stop worrying about people disagreeing with me or being angry that I disagree or trying to impress them BY disagreeing. I can only offer who I am and knowing who I am is a hard, hard thing. I am impressed and respectful of many of my friends life decisions. The way the live, what they believe, how they do things in their life. But I very much need to separate out that respect and admiration from wanting to 'do it like them'. In a way this is the easier 'issue' to deal with because I do have a strong ability to respect but vary. Its the identification of where I vary thats the problem!

Tired, sleepy, soooo sleepy

I can't sleep. I have this crazy sleep thing going on. Every night, every single night, I wake up around 2 or 3 and I'm just awake for 2 hours. It sucks. I'm waking up tired every morning. I don't know what to do about it. I do not like to take meds for sleep. I react very strongly to them so its really gotta be important to take them.

I think it might be getting there. I'm basically getting 2 less hours of sleep than I should be getting. This is NOT good. :(

I'm crazy. I just know it.

So we are going to the beach this weekend.
No biggie, just a 2 hour drive to a beach, an overnight hotel stay and home on the second day. Really no big issue.
But its highlighted a very sick and twisted part of my mind.

See...I like to take pictures. LOTS of pictures. And in my minds eye I am mentally reviewing all of the outfits the children have and what will be best at the beach, etc.

For instance, should the boy wear his plain shirts without graphics or his Hawaiian shirt and his gymboree thing with the pineapple?
Should the baby wear HIS Hawaiian shirts or maybe his one with the monkey on it.
And of course being the good mommy of a girl I am, the girls wardrobe is causing me the most uncertainty. I have a Jamaican dress for her and another sun dress thats darling. These would both be awesome to photograph against the pale beachy colors.
BUT I also have a cute white skirt and a tye dye shirt she looks frickin adorable in. Plus theres another skirt/shirt combo she could wear that would be awesome.

You see...this is not stuff to worry me. It shouldn't be, but it does. I am thinking about THIS and not important things.

I MUST be crazy. MUST be.

My little ones at VBS

The boy waiting to be a perch to a parrot in VBS


And here he is with his bandanna slipping while concentrating on another craft.


The girl posing in her bandanna, the only time she wore it :P


And playing in game time.


The toddler terror of the open seas Arrrggghh


And playing with his CARRRSSSS in the nursery at VBS

I don't wanna study

I am WANTING a natural birth.
I've been induced 3 times. No 'big deal' except I am POSITIVE the last time it was unnecessary. With my first he was out of fluid at 1 week past due the lying 'due date' they give you. With my second she was a week past due and I had Symphis Pubis Dysfunction and welcomed the induction.

With my third I WANTED to go 'natural' I didn't want interventions but status quo here is a week, I got 9 days and then was induced. Even though I was having sporadic (very sporadic) contractions on my own.

This time I'm going 2 weeks if I have to. I don't mind after 2 weeks, thats where medical journals start disagreeing about placental degradation. I KNOW when I am 'due' because I was very carefully charting my cycle, etc.

This all being said.

I want to go natural. I really, really do.

I don't want to read, I don't want to listen to cds, I don't want to do much of anything to prepare. I've got my game plan in mind and I'm feeling very manish about it and "i don't need to stop for directions, I can do this on my own" (insert tim the toolman taylors grunt)

I don't know if I will eventually succumb and pick up a book. I just don't know. But this is my fourth, I've read tons on the internets, and I just feel...I dunno. Like I know what I'm doing and I'm not scared, worried, or unsure of things.

I just want to have a baby. Thats all :)

I am the King of the Mountain.

I read once in a book that children will start games fighting to be the 'king' of the mountain. the one calling the shots and directing everyone. But they quickly realize that when they do so they don't get to have a part in the action, so they set up a straw man to be the king and then they all play and make up the directions.

I am so that straw man. My kids will set up games, today its mission space. They have all sorts of things thrown around put together as a rocket and they are flying around crashing into meteorites and Saturns gassy surface. But the directions come from me. Space Base Commander Mommy. Every 5 or so minutes I get a 'space base commander mommy can we have a status update.'

This is not the only time. most of them involve missions and such that they play at for 5-15 minutes and then return to me for a new 'mission' of sorts. Whether they are explorers, soldiers, astronaughts, police men/women.

They don't want me playing WITH them, even if I TRY to have another role I get stuck with 2 and the commander role comes first for them.

Sigh. Just call me straw man mommy.

The Liberal In Me

I don't really make it a secret, i'm a big ole bleeding heart.

So here's one that struck me as unnecessarily something to concern oneself today:

Transgender bathrooms. I dunno, don't ask me where the interpeople come up with this crap, but the backstory is that SUPPOSEDLY there is legislation in Pennsylvania to mandate Transgender people so that they have protection to go where they want.

Its been translated (if it exists...the only source I've heard of it from is a conservative who listens to Hannity...very well could have this way overblown...I could find neither hide nor hair of it on the web searchin) to mean that businesses will have to have transgender bathrooms.

UM.

Yeah.

My first thought was 'why don't we go unisex' how many problems would THAT solve for everyone. Stall up the urinals and have at it. We are adults or children who should be supervised by adults so why the heck not!!

But of course that is CRAZY talk and transgendered people are ucky and not deserving of care and SHOULD be treated like second class citizens and how oh how will we answer our childrens queries on why that woman has a *gasp* penis.
First: I doubt any child would see a womans penis (the argument is that it extends to locker rooms) and the parent should be with them in locker rooms to prevent rude staring at naked bodies anyway.
Second: Kids only know something is wrong once you tell them its wrong. If instead of making a disgusted face you just matter of factly explain that there are all sorts of different people in the world and thats what makes it so interesting, 10:1 the kid is going to drop it. Just drop it and move on to talk of other things.

Seriously...not that difficult of a concept people, really not.