To work or not to work

Lets face it, daycare's and preschools can put a hole in a parents pocket pretty quickly. You almost trick yourself and when you are presented with the weekly numbers you think, "well that's not too much." But then you receive your tax documents and when you look at the amount listed under paid to date it will blow you away with how much you are paying in childcare for that year. 

As a personal choice I decided to stay home with Elijah for about a year and a half after he was born but after a year I was beginning to feel a little stir crazy. All of my friends were working and the Mommy friends I had met had returned to work. I was left feeling a little lonely. Elijah was showing more of his social side and so I felt that maybe part time daycare would be good for him and good for me. I found a job working with special needs children as a behavior therapist, and then later found a job at a preschool with the local school district. I loved it! I was so intrigued by the job and always wanted to learn more, and still do. I wanted to be able to pursue this field as my career and continue to advance up the ladder to higher positions. Unfortunately, it turns out with only a Bachelors degree in this field the ladder ends abruptly, in fact, there isn't actually one to climb and you're making mediocre salary.  

Then I became pregnant with Liliana, and as I began my maternity leave I was faced with the dilemma of either returning to work or to not return after she was born. The facts were simple. My wages were only enough to pay for Elijah's preschool tuition, and I couldn't advance in the field unless I go back to school for a Masters or Teaching Credential, which lets face it again, is outrageously expensive. I personally feel preschool is important once a child turns 3 and with Elijah being 3 1/2 I wanted to keep him enrolled. However, returning to work meant Liliana would have to go to daycare which would mean we would have to pull the money to pay for that out of somewhere else. 

In the end I chose to stay home and not return to work. I chose to keep Elijah enrolled in preschool because I feel like he's thriving there in more ways then one. It just means living expenses are a little tighter so that he is able to go. It means I am able to stay at home and bond with Liliana the same way I bonded with Elijah. It also means I give up a job I have a passion for. When I weighed them out, raising my kids outweighed that job and I'm ok with that, I had to be. Being a mom means sacrificing yourself at times and this was something I was willing to sacrifice. 

I sent my letter of resignation off today as my maternity leave has come to an end. It was bitter sweet. I'm going to miss the friendships I made and I'm most definitely going to miss the kids and the job. Hopefully some day in the future I will be able to work with them in this field again. Until then, I look forward to spending my days with these little loves, and remember that I'm blessed to be able to.

  

Strength. Courage. Wisdom. Forever our Guardian Angel.

My Grandma...

"What a Beautiful Life we Could Have..." What a beautiful life we did have and it was all thanks to the most special woman in not only my life but that of my entire family's and every other person my Grandmother's path crossed. 

For over 10 years, she was at all of my games, sitting front row cheering us on, yelling at the refs, and bringing her speciality foods to our team potlucks, holding it down as my support system, and my biggest fan. One game in particular we always laughed about, but in the moment it was scary and I felt guilty for a long time. It was raining, and we were extremely late for one of my games. When we arrived I ran in to meet up with my team when I realized that through all of the rushing I had forgotten my shoes. It was literally minutes before game time, and she insisted to run back home and pick them up. On her way back, partly because of the rain and partly because I'm sure she was rushing, but either way she got into a car accident. She spun out on the freeway and damaged her car but she wasn't hurt. The reality sunk in for me, and it took a long time for me to get over the fact that she could have gotten hurt, and it would have been all my fault. It just showed a small part of her selflessness and her willingness to always be helping someone. She was known to all of my teammates on every team I was ever on as "Grandma" and she literally stole our hearts, bringing laughter and warmth to us all. 

When I think back to some of my memories, there's so many. To list them all, the list would go on and on for forever. I remember spending time at the family restaurant "Mom's" that she owned and was known to most of us as our second home. I remember having to go there at the beginning of my Mom's work shift and having Grandma take my brother and I home which usually resulted in a pit stop to a local frozen yogurt spot before we reached home. 

I remember Holidays and all of us piling into her house on the mesa, and the value of family I pulled from watching her with the members of my family and friends. I remember laughing so hard it making us all cry due to her wittiness and her ability to make any situation something to laugh about. I remember being able to go to her for any problem, concern, or just to talk. I remember her hugs, kisses, and the immense amount of love she shared and gave to anyone who walked into her home. I remember the way she would tease the boys about their facial hair and how she would explain to them what my Nona would do/say if she could see them. How her hearing aides would ring and everyone could hear them ringing but her. I remember the looks we would get from waitresses when we would repeat to her what they were asking by yelling the words to her so she could hear us. I remember the letters her and I would exchange when I moved away for college and the way she was able to make me laugh and feel her love just through the words on the paper. I remember her immense amount of strength and how she was able to pull through any injury or undesirable situation. I remember all of her stories, her love for my Grandpa, and her love for life in general. I mostly remember her ability to pull people close to her, I was close to her. She was my rock, our families rock. She was the reason for most of our travels, for most of our meet ups, and for most of the mutual stories between us. She loved each and every one of us full heartedly and created a special unique bond with each of us without effort, but by just being herself. 

My life has been blessed. My Grandma showed me what it means to be a selfless, strong, caring, and supportive person. She was wise, kind, loving, had a heart bigger than anyone I know and was absolutely hilarious. She was our families matriarch, the person I look up to, the person I will forever strive to be, the person who will forever be my guardian angel. 

I find myself now thinking about her and missing her...a lot. I find myself feeling guilty that I should have set more time aside finding ways to talk to her when I could no longer talk with her on the phone, and when letters became too difficult for her to keep up with. I wish I would have made a better effort to tell her in person how much she means to me, how much I love and look up to her and how much of an influence she's been to me in my life. I wish I could thank her for the love and support she gave me in sports, academics and in life in general. I can only pray that she already knew. I try to convince myself that she's in a better place and that it's ok because she is now without pain, but the bottom line is that I miss her. It saddens me that Elijah doesn't get any more time with her, and that she had to leave so early in his life. My goal is to keep her alive in our hearts and to always talk about her so that he always knows who his Nona is and the beautiful person she was. 

Her strength, her courage and her wisdom are all traits I saw in her long ago and they hold true to me still today. She is an inspiration and I will always keep her close to me, in my heart and in my soul. 

Power Struggle

As I sit here on the couch, Elijah is sitting on the floor playing with his cars and ramps finally content playing by himself. We have just finished cleaning the entire room, because he decided to dump out every bucket of loose toys he could find. I’m talking cars, blocks, crayons...if there’s loose multiples of something; he dumped it onto the middle of the floor. I had told him to choose what he wanted to play with (which he chose cars) and that everything else had to be put away. He chose to ignore me, and proceeded to not put anything away but rather try and make a larger mess. After a few times-outs for not listening and talking back, him becoming frustrated and me being pushed to my limit, the room finally got cleaned. Now he’s playing with his cars independently and without slamming them against the laptop as I type, or trying to climb over me saying “whaa oo ooing Momma” (translation “what are you doing, Momma?”). With that said, I would consider the ending to our last 20 minutes of what seemed like hell, a success.

We have been struggling with this lately. It’s becoming a power struggle between us, and whoever holds out longest wins. This all started with the infamous room of toys. I was beginning to become aggravated with cleaning that room full of toys every night after watching him purposely dump them out onto the floor. I felt like if he’s old enough to deliberately dump the toys out, then he’s old enough to put them away. That, and I was beginning to notice that I would ask him to do simple things I know he can do, and he intentionally wouldn’t do them and actually started walking away from me. I began to crack down on discipline and started attempting to follow through more; which has resulted into escalated super tantrums, crying and lots whining.  

Is he too young at 2? Am I setting my expectations too high? I really don’t believe so, but I also am not sure. I do know that if I hold out the longest between us, and am adamant that he follow my rules, he usually ends up complying in the end. This just proves to me that a command like “clean up your cars” or “come here” is an expectation I can certainly have of him. Is it more work for me? Absolutely! It’s exhausting! I have to ask him several times to do one thing. I have to watch him like a hawk to make sure he doesn’t wonder away. I sometimes have to show by example what I’m asking of him. I have to take time to follow through with time outs, and most importantly I have to keep a level head. It’s a whole lot of work and not to mention a big chunk of extra time that he’s just soaking up.

Then there’s the question of disciplinary actions and what to use and what not to use and are they actually working? Time-outs at one point seemed to work well for us. Elijah sat there, genuinely looked upset that he was in trouble and would come out of time-out behaving much better. We even could threaten him with a time-out if he was beginning to behave badly. He would look at us with a sad face, droopy eyes looking down at the ground after we asked him if he wanted a time out and he’d mumble “no.” Now all of a sudden, we’re questioning the effectiveness of the time-out. He still sits there without trying to escape, but instead of looking upset he has a smile on his face. When you go back to him and explain why he was in time-out he interrupts and starts talking about something irrelevant, which obviously is him trying to distract us. If you threaten him with a time out, he now answers “yes” that he wants one. We’ve since changed the question from “do you want a time out?” to “You will get a time out if you do that again.” Either way, it just doesn’t seem like time-outs are much of a punishment to him anymore. He’s seems too young to understand the concept of taking away toys, but I have done that too, and he just moves on to something else.

The reality comes to our day to day. His attitude and tantrums haven’t gotten any better, if anything he’s testing us more and as far as he possibly can; which some days feels like he has more stamina then me. I feel like Joel and I are the blind leading the blind. We have no idea if we’re doing the right thing, we have no idea how he’ll turn out when he’s older, and we have no idea if the techniques we’re using are actually teaching him something. Often times Elijah’s 2 minute time-outs are pow-wow times for Joel and I, as we look at each other blankly and as we justify to each other that we’re doing the right thing; our Pow-wows ultimately end up in a big huge question mark.

The combination of frustration and lack of confidence is really what’s weighing us down. I suppose what we have to do is chose our disciplinary methods, stick to them like glue, be as close to 100% consistent as we can and pray that in the end Elijah turns out to be a well behaved kid. *Sigh*

"Terrible Twos"

Around the time Elijah was 16-18 months old we used to joke that we were already entering the "terrible twos." He had been showing some glimpses of independence, and was definitely attempting to voice his opinions. We found his tantrums a little humorous, and felt we were doing an ok job handling them. The word "entering" is definitely the key word. We had no idea that we were just scraping the surface. With June (Eli's second birthday) rapidly approaching, we are now full-fledged faced with the "terrible twos", and at the rate its going we've still got a long way to go. His tantrums are more often, less humorous and now sometimes we’re often wondering if we are in fact handling it "ok." We're using time outs as a disciplinary method which seem to be effective but there are so many times where a time out seems needed that we're not sure when in fact to actually use them, so they end up happening often. There are times when Eli just seems grumpy and for what seems like no reason at all. He's opinionated, stubborn, and selfish. He has a hard time sharing, doesn't follow directions the first time he's asked and gets upset when he doesn't get his way. He's also incredibly sweet, kind, a huge cuddle bug, and extremely funny. Although he has a hard time sharing and following directions, he will come around if told again or he’s told that he’s not being nice. When he gets upset for not getting his way, tantrums usually don’t last long and eventually he does move on. He seems genuinely sorry when he realizes he’s not being a good boy, but it doesn’t stop future tantrums from happening, nor does it put an end to the same tantrums happening over again. So, what’s the secret? How do we get them to learn a lesson for the next time, so it won’t happen again or quite as often?

We have figured out a few tricks to help get through dinner at a restaurant, or through a play date. Alternate activities and keeping him busy have been a huge success. Time outs seem to calm him down a bit so that we can at least talk to him and tell him what he's doing is not ok. But what happens when he realizes he can actually get up from a time out? Are they truly a threat to him? Does he already pick up on the idea that by getting himself put there, we’ll be nice to him when he’s done his time? Bottom line is we’re aware that most of the tantrums are simply a huge test, and we just have to find our inner patience, stick to our guns and get through it. All the while using this time to make sure to teach what acceptable behavior is and what is not. I'm not going to lie, it's exhausting! We try to be consistent, we try to follow through, and we try to make sure rules we set are always followed, even the rules we’ve set for ourselves. The hardest part is not knowing if we’re making a difference or getting through to him and fearing the unknown of how it will affect his behavior when he’s older.

I've heard age 3 is even more difficult, so I guess we're in for a long ride. I feel up for the challenge, when he turns 4 I'll let you all know how things panned out!

Never Ending Cleaning...

...Maybe there is an "end" or at the least, structure!


"The house is always a mess." "I hate spending more time cleaning, than time with my family." "I don't have time to do that." "There's always so much left to do." "I'm failing at this role as Mom..."


...These are some of the things I often say to myself. I feel like our house is always messy, and although it may be just me, regardless, it's an unsettling feeling. Who has time to clean the appliances in the kitchen, or wipe down all of the blinds, or sweep and mop the entire wood and tile floors? (which if you know our house the entire square footage is tile or hard wood) I don't feel like I have that time, but they definitely all get dirty. I certainly feel like cleaning shouldn't consume your life, but it's an important necessity, so how are other Mom's/House Wives keeping their homes so clean? Sometimes I walk into other people's homes and I think, "How do they do this? It's so clean in here!" It's a little discouraging, and makes me feel like somewhat of a failure. If other people are able to do it, why am i struggling with it? Is everyone else struggling too? Am I being too hard on myself? It's really hard for me because I in fact feel like I'm cleaning all of the time, but there's little to no reward because there's so much more that needs to be done...always.


To start, for us, we didn't merge our belongings together very efficiently when we merged our lives. If there wasn't a place for something we'd just stick it in the corner, which has been creating an outcome of clutter. So, we've put some effort in figuring out how to keep it straightened up. The secret is organization and making sure everything has a place to be put away. We are still working on some areas of the house but the places we've organized are much easier to keep straightened. We are definitely getting closer, but still have a ways to go. 


This is a great start, but how am I supposed to actually keep this place clean? Where do I find the time to clean, spend time with my son, work, and cook dinner? Is there really enough hours in the day? It seems impossible and I started to realize that I'm spending the majority of my day doing everyday chores like dishes, cleaning the kitchen counters, laundry, sweeping, straightening etc. and since those chores are done throughout the day, as well as numerous times a day, the bigger chores tend to be put off. Not only that, but I have a certain little "helper" which is GREAT, except that his idea of "helping" is actually making my job much more difficult. The chores I've put off just get worse and worse until I simply don't want to do them at all anymore. It's a losing battle and I often go to bed at night feeling unaccomplished, because that is when I start thinking about all of the areas where I "slacked off." 


It came to me one day, and now I think I've found a solution to all of this, at least for me. I'm really successful with to-do lists so I figured it would be a good start in feeling more accomplished. Also, (just a little bit of trivia) the body releases more endorphins from crossing off a completed task from a list then it does when we smile. So with these things in mind, I made a list of all the household chores that I feel need to be done. This list included tasks often forgotten about like cleaning the kitchen appliances, wiping down blinds, dusting, even washing the dogs. But also included more important tasks like mopping, cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming area rugs etc. I broke them all down and created a note for each one on how often each chore should be completed based on how quickly I've noticed each gets dirty (i.e. every other day, once a week, or once a month). I then created a key for the entire month by the week, which will be my outline for continuing months if this strategy ends up being successful for me. I separated all of the chores and spread them out over the course of the week where in the end, in addition to the tasks done every day, I only need to complete one or two of these bigger tasks. I figured I could handle only completing a few tasks a day and If I'm successful I anticipated I would feel more accomplished. If I'm not successful some days (as I can guarantee will happen), I will feel less like a failure because only a couple of things were left undone, not an ongoing list of ten or more, therefore a feeling more towards a win-win. 


This is the end of the first week of using my new system, and I love it so far!! Instead of having multiple things to do, feeling overwhelmed about it and not knowing even where to start, I already have it written out. I even created a section to check off the completed chores to release those endorphin's, and boy does it feel good to check them off! I also included larger random tasks of things I would like to get done within the month, like organize the junk drawer that's over flowing or take down the Christmas lights from the outside of the house, (things that often get forgotten about over and over again). I took the time to create this list and cut into my sleeping time to do so and it's now saving me a ton of grief and feelings of unaccomplishments in my every day life. The lack of sleep the night I took time to create it, definitely is paying off. I know this whole system sounds completely dorky, but it works for me, and that's the only thing that matters!


Here's an example of my spreadsheet:

Dreaded Hours of 4pm-6pm

Whether you're a working Mom or a Stay at Home Mom, I can almost guarantee we all can relate to the dreaded time frame of 4:00PM-6:00PM. This is the time during the day where our child (or children) seem to  absolutely lose it. Whether you've just gotten home to relieve the nanny, just picked your child up from daycare or you're just trying to make dinner, we are all faced with similar scenarios of over the top, dramatically cranky little people. They are hungry, sleepy and exhausted from their day, and whether it's your first time seeing them since early that morning or you've been with them all day, they really don't seem to care. Eventually we start to feel like we're losing our minds along with them. Poor hubby's probably feel like the whole household has gone nuts, he might even start to feel a little nuts himself. Reality is, this is just how it is, our little angels have been so busy all day that during this time it feels to them how we might feel at 10pm. So, how do we overcome it? Unfortunately, I don't have the answer to that, I certainly wish I did. In my opinion I feel it's all about how we manage our time. The biggest lesson I've learned this past year as a new Momma is to try and avoid unwanted situations. And what I mean by that is to try to recognize what triggers certain outcomes and if we want to create a different outcome avoid those triggers. For instance, when I'm attempting to cook dinner between 4-6 it creates the worst outcome for us. Elijah will hang onto my legs, cry to me "up, up", gets into drawers, terrorize the dogs etc. And when I tell him he is not to be in the kitchen (a rule I've been trying to enforce, for what seems like forever) he cries or falls into complete tantrum mode. Now, thankfully this doesn't happen every evening, partly because sometimes he's perfectly content in playing with his toys just long enough for me to get the food onto the stove, partly because Dad is home to help distract, and partly because sometimes I'm actually successful in avoiding the situation all together. For me I have found Crock Pots and preparing dinners earlier to have worked wonders. This way I'm not busy when he starts to melt down and I can attend to him rather than shooing him out of the kitchen. I also have come to realize that it doesn't always happen this way. Whether it's because the day was busy and preparing dinner early simply just didn't happen, or I was at work for most of the day and so dinner became last on the agenda, or I was feeling lazy, we are always thrown for a loop if the schedule is altered. And lets face it, it's usually always altered in one way or another. Either way, it's inner strength we have to find and it's a day by day process. If there's a tantrum, it comes and then it goes and  they eventually go to sleep; even if it's hours later, at some point they sleep. We constantly are shown that what worked yesterday may not necessarily work today. It can feel like a losing battle at times, but if you're a Momma out there feeling like what I've described; know that you're not alone and that there's at least me out here feeling the same way.

Veggies - To Decieve or Not Decieve

April 22, 2011

As an infant beginning to eat real food, Elijah ate EVERYTHING. And when I say everything I'm not exaggerating. I'm talking even the veggies; spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, beets, etc. We honestly would hesitate sometimes on giving him more food because he would eat so much it worried us that we might over feed him. However, with hearing about some of my fellow Momma's having trouble getting their babies to eat certain things or eat anything at all, I began to feel a little better. I thought, at least this is a battle we won't have to have with him at dinner time later. Boy did I speak too soon, this was just a battle we were going to encounter at a later time. The deeper into toddlerhood he gets the more picky he gets. Currently he won't eat anything green (literally). 

As you can see, the zucchini was picked out of the spaghetti.

And he doesn't like oatmeal, doesn't like rice, is picky about meat, will eat fruit but can be picky about it. Basically anything healthy he's not as enthusiastic about. As for cheerios, cheese, bread, crackers, or also known as CARBS, these are the foods he's most keen on. But I've found a system, and for any of you Mom's out there who are struggling with something similar, this works for us!

First, it's important to understand serving sizes, which may lower some stress levels for you if your child isn't eating the foods that you feel are healthy for him. This definitely helped me calm down a bit about it. The easiest scale is 1 tablespoon per year of age as a serving size. Toddlers need roughly 4 servings of fruits and veggies, 2 servings of protein, 16-24 ounces of dairy and 4 servings of grains. At 1 tablespoon per serving, we're not talking much! For us, the part we struggle with most are the veggies, so sometimes I sneak these veggies into his food. I puree' the veggies he's not too fond of and put them in highly preferred foods. Cauliflower in eggs,  squash in mac-n-cheese or grilled cheese, (although sometimes he'll eat squash by itself) broccoli in stew, and pretty much anything (like mushrooms or zucchini) in spaghetti or burgers. Guess what? He eats it all up!! In addition I put whatever veggies we're having for dinner on his plate in attempt to get him to eat them by themselves too.

This method I have found from talking to other Moms is pretty controversial. As some are opposed to it due to feeling like the method deceives our children. My answer to that is when they are between the ages of 1-3 their communication is pretty limited. With that, in my opinion, there's really no benefit to battling at the dinner table trying to explain to your toddler why it's important they eat their veggies. Following with feeling like your failing your child by not giving him the essential nutrients he needs because in the end he wouldn't eat them anyway, or he even spit them out. Not only that, but I don't feel it's beneficial to turn eating into a negative activity, it will just cause additional problems down the line later. So until we can have that dialog between us, why not give him the veggies he needs into his food, offer some on the side but not making vegetables the center of attention. We can worry about having that conversation as to why eating veggies are important later when he can understand? Works for us! I feel a lot better, Elijah is eating good nutritious food, and dinner is stress free!