Heartbreaking and Exciting, All in the Same Breath

Listening to: Angel  - Aerosmith

Mood: Optimistic

Thanks to our moving half way around the globe, our daughters had almost a full year without any institutionalized schooling.  There were many successful and even more unsuccessful attempts to teach them things at home too. All in all, it has been a LOT of togetherness time for the girls and me. I both love it and get tired of it.

The time has come for them to once again hop on board the white and green school bus (we don’t have yellow ones here) and leave for the day. Well, at least my oldest will leave for the day, the youngest will only be gone a half day. This was recent and largely unwelcome news for me. Not only was my first in school all day by this age, I really feel like my younger one could do with some independent time from me and her sister so she can make her own friends and develop her own personality.

There has been much talk lately about whether or not I should get a job when the kids are in school full time and if that job should be me starting a business. I was generally very excited about this new phase of life. Having my youngest in school only half time pretty much curtails that all together. Between finding a job, transportation, care for them after school, there really isn’t much sense to be had out of this.

My eldest daughter spent last night fretting and repeating that she was scared. Her first 3 months in an Indian school were indeed rough for her, but she made friends and did fine in school. I reminded her gently, but she will still have to see for herself that she can do it and will be fine.

My youngest is also apprehensive, but I think it’s more to do with the stories her sister told her than anything else. It’s probably intimidating for her to have to go to her own classroom also. My girls usually are found together. They are sisters after all.

I have a 1 week reprieve before I have to put the youngest on the bus also as the younger ones start 1 week later. I’m not a crier. I won’t get emotional watching them both get on the bus. But I know the house will be very empty, and very, very quiet. I look forward to having a small chunk of time for myself for the first time in almost 8 years, yet I still worry that things will be hard for them. Will they enjoy their class? Will the teacher be nice? Will my youngest get lost in the school? I know these are all silly worries and that the girls will be fine, but it’s still hard not to worry.

Their time as babies is over. It’s both exhilarating to see them grow and thrive and heartbreaking that I will never hold their warm, squishy little bald heads up under my chin as I rock them to sleep.

My apologies for getting a bit maudlin here at the end. I keep waiting for it to get easier that they are growing up, but it never does.

Becky

Some Examples of Why Raising Little Girls is Awesome

Listening to: Tonight’s Gonna Be a Good Night – Black Eyed Peas

Mood: Optimistic

Hello folks. I know I’ve been rather absent from this blog for a while. I’ve mostly been over at Following the Masala and Just PassingThrough. I seem to have more to say in those forums. My life has been SO full of my daughters this past year, sometimes the last thing I want to do is sit down and write about them in my free time too.

I know the tone of this blog has been a wee bit dark as of late, and for that I apologize once again. I’ve turned into a bit of a whiner and a Negative Nancy about some things we’re dealing with and that isn’t good for anyone. I’ll get to what the strategy is that has been helping us deal with undesirable behavior in the next post. As to what’s been helping me be a better mom, it’s a big ole dose of put your big girl panties on, adjust your own attitude, and act like an adult. A hard pill to swallow, no doubt, but if the nurses start acting like the psych patients, we’re all on a sinking ship.

Anyhow. I wanted to share with you what I consider to be some of the fun moments you get when Mother nature graces you with a girl baby or two. I find it absolutely tragic that in some places in the world, girl babies are a liability and are not valued, and occasionally not even tolerated. I wouldn’t trade my daughters for boys for anything in the world. However, Mother Nature, if you should be so kind to bless this house with a boy, I would be thrilled about too. Hint hint, elbow elbow.  Ahem.

There is nothing on earth like a clean little girl, fresh out of the bathtub. I know boys are cute, but girls in footie pajamas with neatly combed hair are just adorable. Especially when this is almost the only time when you see yours clean and fully dressed.  There’s also that lovely smell that hangs around them after they dry, especially their hair. This goes away after they grow up a bit, tragically.

Little girls have adorable clothes. My husband has threatened me with a restraining order from certain stores just so I won’t sit in the baby/toddler isle and cry over all the squee worthy clothes my daughters no longer fit in. I’m not a mom who gets all crazy about only putting her daughters in pink, but I like pink too. It screams innocence, which they are because they’re little girls. Any nice bright color is good though. Don’t get me started with the dresses.

Little girls are much more fun to fix their hair. There’s only so much you can do with a little boy’s hair without people thinking there’s something really wrong with you. Pig tails and braids are pretty much out. Again, my daughters are never so cute as after they’ve gotten dressed for the day (in clean clothes!) and have had their hair fixed. I won’t see them that neat/clean again until evening baths. I’ve never understood the people who can go out with their kids clean and neat all the time. That just never worked out that well for our family. I love watching them be concerned about wearing cute clothes and fixing their hair, only to not care a half hour later, because they are children after all.

Girls are inherently softer and more in tuned with emotions around them. Yes, it was a generalization, but it is somewhat true. Leave alone if it’s fair and good to do, it’s how people behave towards girls. I love the need to snuggle, the need to talk about feelings, the not being embarrassed to get hugs even though the oldest is 8.

Enjoy your girls ladies and gentlemen.

Becky

Here We Go Again

Listening to: Fall to Pieces – Velvet Revolver

Mood: Tired and Discouraged

I distinctly remember not signing up to get on the carousel. In fact, I despise carousels. Round and round, covering the same ground, seeing the same thing again and again.

Please do excuse my melancholy. I caught my 8 year old taking money out of my wallet again. I am just utterly deflated at the moment. At least her father was home this time to help me deal with it, but it’s still absolutely discouraging.

This past evening, we had a “Come to Jesus” talk with the daughter. It was an excruciating conversation for me to listen to and was all around unpleasant for everyone involved.  Much crying and hurt feelings ensued – not all of them mine.

I am petrified that this will continue and snowball into something I can’t control – hell I already seem to be failing at controlling this whole nonsense. It doesn’t even seem to matter to her that she is taking something from someone else. We have instituted lockdown again with some additional consequences like doing chores to pay back the money.

I’m pretty much out of ideas at this point. I have been trying desperately to avoid physical punishment, but nothing else seems to be making a dent.

Why does it look so easy when everyone else does it? Why do I have to feel like I can’t just relax and enjoy my kids rather than being a hardass? The minute I give an inch, we end up back here. I’m tired of always being the responsible one.

Becky

Encouraging Your Daughters to Dance

Listening to: Pump up the Bhangra – Bali Brahmbatt

Mood: In a serious procrastination funk. I have family coming over tomorrow and I’m pulling an ostrich

This post will be much happier than my last post where I generally lamented that life raising kids is hard. Wah wah wah. Thank goodness. I really get tired of hearing myself whine sometimes.

The other day I was watching my daughters play in my living room. My youngest daughter, who is 4.5, was dancing to some pop tune that she enjoys. Her movements were free and she danced however her body felt like moving. I was so happy that she is able to express happiness in this way and completely jealous that she was so un-self conscious.

Growing up, dancing was not only not encouraged at our house, it was thought to lead to other unsavory things. I grew up in a Dutch Reformed church with strict parents, what can I say? Anyhow, anything and everything related to sexuality or our bodies in our house was quickly shut down. As I grew older, I actually wished I knew how to be comfortable enough with my own body to dance without caring. It has taken me a long time to get comfortable, and to be honest, it still takes a lot of alcohol for me to be able to let go.

My daughter caught me watching her with a big smile on my face. She immediately got embarrassed and commenced with the blushing, stammering, and not dancing.  I believe she thought I was laughing at her or thought she looked silly. I immediately told her to never be ashamed of dancing and that she was doing it just fine. After a big smile aimed my way, my little pumpkin butt went back to dancing her little heart out.

I hope she will always be so confident and able to feel comfortable with her body. It always puzzles and upsets me that we try to trap our daughters into feeling that they shouldn’t be proud of what they do, be comfortable with their bodies and what they can do, and expressing themselves however they feel like.  How can we raise girls who are confident enough to speak up for themselves if we can’t even recognize that a little girl’s body is just a body? The same as every other little girl’s body. If a girl gets joy out of dancing, or singing, or art for that matter, why should we not encourage that?

I know there are plenty of people who think that having a passion (heads out of the gutter please, a passion is anything you feel strongly about and enjoy) leads to rebellious and precocious behavior. In other words, if we let her follow her passion, she will end up using passion for something we don’t agree with – i.e. she’ll end up sleeping with some boy when she gets older.  Ladies and gentlemen, that may well happen, but not because she was encouraged to express herself the way she liked. Teaching our daughters to be comfortable with themselves is a huge lesson that is a hard one to teach these days.

We cannot avoid having out daughters pursue what they love because of something that we are afraid will happen in the future. Teaching your daughter to make good sexual choices when she is old enough is super important. By all means, teach your daughter that along with encouraging her. But this is not a sexual issue. In fact, giving her the confidence she needs in herself and her own body will probably aid her in making wiser choices when she does come to that point in her life and these lessons need to start when they are young.

These are not easy times to grow up as a girl. We may have made strides in getting equal treatment for girls, but in some regards, things have not changed all that much. We all want our daughters to grow up to be happy healthy adults, we need to help them develop the confidence to get there.

By all means daughter, dance.

How do you encourage your daughters to excel at what they enjoy?

Becky

Parenting Without Makeup

Folks, this post is going to come out angry and bitter. My apologies for this. I have been trying to get my frustration, anger and sense of helplessness under control for the past 2 months and for some reason, I just can’t seem to get my shit together.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, we have been having some rather serious behavior problems with my eldest daughter. It was pure and utter hell to have to straighten my back every single day and deal with the shit storm that descended on our house. My husband was in the US, so all of the problems landed squarely on my shoulders. Everyday brought some new problem or some new behavior that I had to deal with. These weren’t small problems that I should just get a grip about either.  We had a small lull in the storm about a week before my husband came home. I allowed myself to exhale and slowly try and heal my very frayed nerves and battered sense of self.

My husband came home and we found the other side of the shit storm. Kind of like a hurricane, this was just a small eye in the middle.  I understand that kids do not react well to change. I’ve had the past 8 years to learn that lesson, over and over again. I’m sure that her behavior has something to do with her Dad suddenly being home again. The problem for me, is that my husband works. A lot. He’s a fantastic provider and he loves his girls and I like crazy, but he is just not there to back me up for the everyday stuff that I have to deal with. 

My daughter has been fighting nonstop with her sister (who definitely does her part too), lying, disappearing, and sneaking off when she’s supposed to be at summer camp. They are already grounded for the disappearing act, so they are home all day, every day.   I feel like I cannot take my eyes off them for one minute or trust them with anything.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was this evening. I went to pay the camp director and discovered that my children were not in with the rest. After about 15 minutes of searching, my daughters and their friend walked by and realized that I had seen them. They snuck into our clubhouse building and out through the backdoor to the playground. They did not have permission to go and play around, nor were they supposed to leave an activity that they were supposed to participate in. I followed them and asked my daughter what she was doing. She lied her little butt off and told me that the camp director had sent her off to play. If that was the case, which is just about the most ridiculous thing I can think of, they wouldn’t have ran off when they saw me. My kids always greet me when they see me outside. This was pure sneaking and naughtiness.

My husband has been urging me to stop yelling so much. I hate the way I feel when I lose my shit yet again and yell at them for doing something I have told them not to at least 20 times before. The behavior has gotten so accumulative that I feel like I’m yelling ALL. THE. TIME. now. Nothing I say or do is getting through at all.

I am so incredibly frustrated and tired of feeling like I’m beating my head against a brick wall with no result except frustration on my part that I’m not getting the results I want. I have gotten to the point where I do not even want to talk to my children because I am far, far too angry to talk to them reasonably, and because I feel it will do no good.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is parenting without the makeup. It’s not the cute pink and blue onesies, or the hugs, or the feel good moments. They are definitely part of the package, but no one ever tells you about the other half. It’s the daily fight you put in to produce good people. You are the only one responsible for how your kids turn out. To top it off, if you have any decency as a human being, you just can’t quit. No matter what kind of shit your kid throws at you, you have to get back in there the next day and do it over again. When you have an independent child who prefers to make his or her own decisions, it can be like slowly peeling your nerves back every single day. You will be standing somewhere screaming “What the hell am I doing wrong that I can’t get through?” and no one will answer you.

I love having kids, but there are days like today where I feel so absolutely raw that I wonder if I am honestly up to the challenge in front of me. In my darkest moments, I wonder if I even should have had kids. Watching yourself fail on a regular basis will do that to you. I love those two girls with every breath in my body and it is very rarely returned. There is no courtesy, there is no dignity, there is no cooperation.  In their struggle to become independent people, I am disappearing.

To top it all off, my inlaws are coming over to stay for a week next week, so this drama will continue to play out in front of other people. Awesome. Nothing like having unpleasant family drama play out in front of people and get them to think you're doing it all wrong too.

By all means, if you’re going to be a parent, go in with your eyes open. It’s worth it. But sweet god damn is  it ever hard. I’m at the point where I don’t think I can go down any further.

If you have any advice, I’d love to hear it because I am tired of feeling like I have failed in regards to them yet again.

Becky

The Razor’s Edge Between Control and Anarchy

Listening to: Just Gimme the Light - Sean Paul

Mood: Calm, for now

It’s a dance that all parents do. Some better than others on both sides of the spectrum.  The razor’s edge that exists between controlling them completely and having complete and utter anarchy.  I can just see the parents nodding. Those who don’t have children would probably laugh at this sentiment; it can’t possibly be that polarized.  To those, I say this: If you give a child an inch, he or she will blow the refrigerator up with TNT. Just to see what happens. The inch you give in hopes that small-ish children will step up to the responsibility is often either stolen or squirreled away for future devious uses. I wish I was joking about this.

I grew up in a time where kids disappeared on their bikes for hours at a time to go and actually play. As long as you were back before the streetlights came on, you were fine. It absolutely blows my mind how my parents thought this would be ok, and honestly, thinking back, it wasn’t a great thing for us kids. I can remember all of the naughty (with a few felonies thrown in – true story) things we did before I was even 12. Sure, it fostered a sense of independence in me that has helped me manage my entire life, but it also resulted in nonstop chicanery, most of which my parents had no idea even happened.  

It was a rather strange dichotomy. Due to things out of their control, both my parents worked while I was young. This was back before the days that DCFS (child services) was all up on top of things – no one cared that a 8 year old and a 6 year old spent the day unsupervised. While they were gone, it was a free for all. Most of what we did was eat nonstop candy (which I still can’t figure out why my mom left in the house!) and watching TV. Not too serious, but we got into plenty of other serious troubles too.  When they were home, my dad was a General type parent. You will listen to me, respect me, and do what I say this instant.  My mom was a soft, figure until they got divorced. She figured out far too late that control was necessary from the beginning or it was hopeless. It was hard for us kids to manage, because when you get used to all that freedom, going back to having people direct every little move of your lives was hard. It was hard to have to go back to asking for permission for things you had long gotten used to making decisions for yourself.

Anyhow, those golden days are long gone in the US. Parents these days are more paranoid than career meth heads. We never lived in a single-house neighborhood after  I grew up (all apartments), so my children were largely raised with constant supervision, but even with these constraints it was still a battle. Cooking dinner? That will be the time that the kids paste bright red crepe paper to the walls in order to “decorate.” Taking a 5 minute shower? You really didn’t mind if we tried on ALL your makeup, did you mom? No, I definitely did not squirrel away a bright red lip gloss into my book bag.

After we moved to India, it has been even more of a struggle. India is not the same relatively safe sanitized place to raise children. It’s dirty, crowded, and dangerous in some respects. Yet folks here regularly allow their kids to wander around unsupervised. This is especially true in our community.  We live in a huge apartment complex. It has a compound wall surrounding it and guards that wander around and keep an eye on everything. At any given time, there will be no fewer than 30 kids roaming around unsupervised in a pack. The boys are particularly rowdy. 

It has really been a struggle for me to let them go downstairs to play with their friends and not go with them and make sure they aren’t misbehaving.  Don’t get me wrong here, this is not an apron string issue. My kids, and indeed myself, NEED time apart to recharge. Too much closeness for anyone isn’t a good thing. What I’m concerned about is that my kids will be bad. I’m under no misconceptions that they are angels. Good kids, yes. Angels, Bwa ha ha ha ha. Not a chance.

I always find myself having trouble doing the dance between raising my kids military style or constantly having to enforce, reinforce, and oh god damn it, just break out the sandbags and blast them back into order  style. With my kids, it’s almost impossible to maintain that balance for more than 5.6 seconds – I’ve counted.

I want my daughters to grow up and learn to be independent little beings who aren’t afraid to use their own heads and make good decisions. On the other hand, I have some serious doubts that certain ideas have sunk into their heads, in spite of a valiant effort from their father and I. They tend to take on a far too utopian world view, and India is anything but. I want to be able to get them to follow a few simple rules (such as letting me know who’s house they will be at before they’ve been gone for 6 hours with me searching desperately for them – again, true story) so that I can give them a bit of freedom without freaking either myself or them out.  I do try to explain why I have rules in real type situations so that they can understand that it’s important. However some things don’t lend themselves to easy explanations. How do you tell an 8 year old that there are people who kidnap, sell, and rape little kids? My children just do not have the mental capacity to fathom this. If I tell them they could be kidnapped and hurt, it just doesn’t convey the seriousness.

My daughter, much like I remember myself being when I was younger, is convinced she can handle situations that are far beyond her grasp. I’m bursting with pride that she’s confident and feels strong, but after all, she is still just an 8 year old. I will continue to balance on the knife because I think that’s what’s best for my girls. I just hope I survive parenthood with my feet still attached.


Becky

The Children and Ooty

Listening to: Chalte Chalte Yun Hi Koi – Lata Mangeshkar (It’s Hindi Music)

Mood: Mad as a Wet Hen.

Our Ooty trip was fun. It went, over all, very smoothly, which is a minor miracle when you travel with children. If you’d like to read about the details, you can do so: Here.

The kids were decently well behaved and didn’t complain too much about everything not being focused on them. We didn’t have too many problems finding stuff they would eat either since Ooty is so influenced by all things English. And Fried rice - my kids love it and it’s available almost everywhere here.

Overall, Ooty doesn’t have much geared specifically at children, but my kids enjoyed the hiking we did and riding the toy train.

If you are in the vicinity of India, Ooty is worth a trip. It has a totally different feel than the rest of the country and some family time type things for you to do with the kiddos.

Becky