Mother’s Day

Posted on May 12, 2013 by jshamsmith | 1 Comment

I take Mother’s Day very, very seriously. Now, I am usually not a big Hallmark holiday type of gal. I could care less about Sweetest Day or Valentine’s Day, not even an acknowledgement required (how lucky is my husband?). St. Patty’s Day makes me hide in my house. New Year’s is the same. Christmas and Easter are fun, but tons of work and planning. Thanksgiving is like my Superbowl, as it pertains solely to food, but I digress.

Mother’s Day is my high holiday. A day where I get the day off. A day of rest. A day about ME. The past few years, I have gotten totally gypped. Mark has been out of town, a kid has been sick, and other uncontrollable circumstances have prevented me from doing the one thing I have wanted to do. NOTHING. As I told my husband, this is not about me not wanting to be around my kids, this is more about not having anyone NEED anything from me. A day where I am absolved of feeling guilty for doing what I want, not what my kids want. A day to walk out of the house to go shopping, alone and without moving heaven and earth to get said few hours alone to myself.

So, I thought I’d give you a brief synposis of what I DID NOT do and what I DID do:

I DID NOT wipe anyone’s butt but my own.

I DID NOT prepare or plan anyone’s meals but my own.

I DID NOT break up any fights or put anyone in time out.

I DID NOT cut up any food for anyone.

I DID NOT put a kid in a shower or bath.

I DID NOT get out of bed to start some electronic this morning.

I DID NOT go outside to ride bikes or go fishing on this frigid spring day.

I DID NOT make any decisions about anything for anyone.

I DID NOT load anyone into a car and wait patiently while they buckled up and fought over the movie, nor did I yell when they put up their umbrella instead of properly restraining themselves.

I DID NOT comb anyone’s hair or brushed any teeth that did not belong to me.

I DID NOT clean up after lunch and breakfast, and then proceed to sweep up most of what was prepared off the floor and table.

I DID NOT wipe any noses.

I DID NOT stand outside in the bitter cold yelling “CARRRR!”

I DID NOT get told I was chubby today.

I DID NOT have to tell my preschoolers teacher that I am not pregnant, no matter what my 4 year old told them.

I DID NOT have to explain how corn becomes popcorn, or why the lines are solid or striped in the street, or why birds poop or who that lady is in the car next to us.

I DID NOT have to watch Backyardigans, Dora, How It’s Made, Benji or Cinderella at all today. I did however watch Phineas and Ferb, because that show is hilarious.

However, I DID go shopping at my own pace. I tried on clothes, compared prices, and DID NOT have to stop and explain why the mannequins do not have hands and/or feet nor did I have to tell them “no not this time honey” to every single $1 item in the checkout line.

I DID go to a Mexican restaurant and had a big-ass margarita and some awesome fajitas nachos without once having to cut up any pancakes or ask for more ranch for chicken nuggets. I had an adult conversation without having to say once, “Wait for Mommy to finish….yes, that’s nice, no, I don’t know why that man has long hair or why that lady is wearing blue.”

I DID go to the bathroom BY MYSELF. No company. No comments on said results. No asking, “What’s the yucky smell?”

I DID read my book. In the middle of the day. For no reason.

I DID straighten up my house UNINTERRUPTED. I DID throw away some Easter candy and maybe a few artistic drawings without being accused of destroying their only food source and hating on their creativity.

I DID NOT yell one time today.

I love being a mom, even despite all the bitching you see on this blog. My kids crack me up. They light up my life and not for one second would I wish they weren’t here. I got to snuggle with my son today for a while, mainly because I didn’t have anything else planned or on my mind, and I could just sit and enjoy the moment. And I did. I high fived my daughter for her awesome picture that she drew and I excitedly listened to their stories about their day with dad. I did not ignore my children. I did not make a big deal about wanting to be away from them. Tomorrow I will start the day fresh and renewed and present. But, today, today was all about giving myself a break – emotionally and physically. It was awesome, and I can’t wait until next year to do it all over again.

Thanks to my husband and my family for understanding that I needed this day. Not because I am a bad mom, but because I do the best I can with what I’ve got and, frankly, I’m exhausted. I’d just like one day a year to not have to worry about anyone but myself. I hope you all had a day as wonderful as mine. God bless all the mothers out there. God bless our partners for putting up with us. And God bless the kids who let us try this parenting gig out on them, I’ll pay your therapy bills one day I promise.

Thanks Mom

Posted on May 10, 2013 by jshamsmith | 1 Comment

I wrote this a while ago, but thought in honor of Mother’s Day, I’d reshare.

An Open Letter to My Mom

Mom,

I owe you quite a bit. This mothering gig seemed easy through the eyes of a kid. How hard could it be really? I am only now truly beginning to understand the magnitude of what you did. The following is a list of things that I am truly thankful for, and it’s a working list, because there are things you did for which I am not yet aware because I am still new to this mothering thing, being only six years in…

Thank you for letting me poke at you every single Saturday morning to wake you up. Even though you worked full time and Saturday was your one day to sleep in, you let me tell you it was time to get up. And then, not only did you get up, but you promptly made us breakfast.
Thank you for letting my sexy swimmer boyfriend in the front door. I am not sure I will do the same for Gracie’s boyfriend, because I know what is on their minds and what they are going to try to pull with me in the same house. Also, thanks for letting me leave with him in his big white jalopy car too. Again, I am not sure I will let Gracie out of the house after the age of 15.
Thank you for the complete and balanced dinners. Every. Single. Night. After working a full day, without sitting down, you started cooking and had dinner on the table by 6 p.m. Never did we have a PB&J dinner, or mac n cheese five days in a row, you cooked actual food and served vegetables at EVERY dinner.
Thanks for working a full time job and then coming home to raise us. You never relaxed, you cooked dinner, packed lunches and kept a clean house for all of my childhood. It was amazing. I honestly don’t know how you did it. My house is a disaster at all times, lunches are packed in a rush in the morning, and dinners, well, see above.
Thanks for not killing me for how I treated my sister. I know now she wasn’t that bad, just kinda annoying in a little sister kind of way, and that I should have been way nicer to her. Thanks for telling me that one day she’ll be my best friend while I looked at you like you were crazy. You were right.
Thanks threatening to rip out a belly button ring if I ever came home with one. That was one mistake I was too scared to make.
Thanks for never letting me play with fireworks. While I thought you were totally uncool at the time, I feel the same way now. My poor kids.
Thanks for the weekends at the cottage, where food was always a given, and I was allowed to hang with cousins and my grandparents every single weekend of the summer.
Thanks for all the wonderful cards and cute thoughtful gifts for every Christmas, birthday, Valentine’s Day, Easter and so on. Every single holiday sneaks up on me, and I am still having trouble giving all the credit to a fat guy in a red suit.

This list is a work in progress. There are so many things I am thankful for that I do not know yet, and those that I am aware of, but have yet to remember in my sleep-deprived overloaded brain.

I love you mom and thank you every day for turning us into respectable adults (I use the term respectable and adults very loosely).

Love,

Jen (and Lisa too, since she lets me sign her hand-crafted cards on occasion).

Bee Movie

Posted on May 9, 2013 by jshamsmith | 1 Comment

Who killed a bee tonight LIKE A BOSS? This girl! Because, my “Edward” isn’t home until Saturday and this bee was all, “Oh I live here now. Honeybee don’t give a fuck!” And I was like “Will get my shoe and my cone sweeper! Grace, get the door!”

Killing is dramatic, I may have showed him the way out via a cone sweeper. All left happy. I swear this bee was stoned. He really didn’t seem to give a fuck where he was.

Let’s just say there was A LOT of screaming and yelling for a while, and the neighbor walking her dog got quite an eyeful as a 33 year old in a “He’s my Edward” T-shirt and yoga pants falls out the front door, screeching while holding a running cone sweeper. (Because if you turn off the suck, the bee will come out…duh.), with 2 kids screaming behind her like the bee’s family is after them and about to put a horse’s head on their beds.

What an evening.

How sexy am I?

A View Through a Peephole

Posted on May 2, 2013 by jshamsmith | 1 Comment

I have a pretty intense desire to be liked. This has waned as I’ve gotten older, and I am not quite so devastated if someone does not take a keen interest in me. That’s fine. What really bothers me is when people form opinions of me that aren’t true. You can honestly dislike me because I’m a crazy liberal, have bad taste in music and books, and am fairly lazy. I also try to be funny at all times, which can grate on people’s nerves. I also complain a lot, am a bit of a gossip, swear like a sailor, quote bad old movies and don’t find Big Bang Theory funny at all (I’ve tried, I just don’t get it). These are all things that I will legitimately own as my personality traits. Take or leave em, that’s me, and after 33 years on this planet, I like me, so if you don’t like it you can suck it.

What bothers me is when people form judgments or opinions of who I am based on a very small sampling of my personality and life, and being an introvert, a snippet is usually only what most people see.

See me snap at my daughter in a store because to you she’s being “just being a kid?” Well this kid just told me she HATED me because I didn’t let her watch a movie on the way to the store, only because she asked when we pulled into the parking lot of the store. Said daughter then proceeded to throw a screaming fit in the car, which put her in a coughing fit on the verge of throwing up and made us 10 minutes later than we needed to be, all just to run in to pick up one freakin jug of milk.

See me sitting on a park bench maybe sneaking a peek at my phone every once in a while my kids run gleefully in the playground? Chances are, I am checking the time, not Pinterest (or maybe I am, what of it?), and have just spent the entire week living and breathing my kids and could use a breather. Practices, lunches, doctor’s appointments, dinners, homework, building forts, blowing up various toys, replacing batteries in night lights at midnight, hearing their highs and lows of the day, disciplining, celebrating and so on. Every. Single. Moment. I am not married to my phone, it’s just I am too tired to run and play when my kids are perfectly content to play without me.

The problem with my parenting is that because I am introverted, I tend not to show the emotion, joy, happiness, and love I feel for my kids in public. I am content to let them have the spotlight, sit back and cheer quietly, and quietly survey the area for child molesters. My best parenting moments come when no one is watching. I am calmer because there isn’t an adult judging my every action, wondering if I am coddling my boy or giving into my princess too much, or making everything a teaching moment. When we are alone, we just have fun and we talk about life, about the good, the bad and the days where I wish I could lock them (or me) in a cage (just kidding, it would be a comfortable cage). No one sees the crazy dance parties or my dead-on performance of Ursula from Little Mermaid (For some reason, I relish only the villain parts). No one sees me struggling through a how to defend yourself from other stupid, mean kids discussion with my 6 year old, who’s just finding out there are actually people out there who don’t completely adore him. No one sees me sit and do a puzzle with my G or playing Barbies, or my personal favorite, My Little Ponies, like a boss.

I know people judge because my daughter is always sick. Yes, she’s in daycare, and yes, that’s a big part of why she’s sick, but am I solely to blame because I work? No, the daycare is not dirty or neglected. It’s as clean as it can get with 18 snotty, sneezy and wipey 4 year olds together every day for 8-9 hours a day. Her caregivers love and care for her oftentimes better than I could. And they are all freakin saints when it comes to potty training. So, when my kids get sick, please don’t blame being in daycare OR the fact that I didn’t breastfeed them long enough. Does everything have to be my fault?

I just get mad when people only see 5 seconds of my life and think they would do it differently. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t, but hey, what can I say? At least I am here, in the trenches of raising kids, digging as I go. I am present all day every day, even in the moments I get to be away from them AT WORK. I mess up, I lose my temper, I let things go that I shouldn’t, I feed them crap food, let them watch too much TV, but I am HERE. Cut a girl some slack will ya?

Wow, that got angry. Just a vent piece. Mark’s been gone for two weeks and comes home tomorrow. Let’s just say I need a break. I’ll feel better by Sunday.

Blerg…I mean Blog.

Posted on April 23, 2013 by jshamsmith | 4 Comments

I am unmotivated lately. Must be PMSing or pouting that my husband is gone for 2 weeks and G gets sick the second he leaves town.

How about I give a shout out to all the people who fill up my Facebook page and make me mostly unproductive during work hours. These bloggers help me daily and I love them dearly.

Angie Lynch @ http://awholelotofnothing.net/ who writes about awesome smut and gives me a cheat sheet on what to read next on … http://smutbookclub.com/. I hope to one day visit this Floridian and kiss her feet for making books awesome again.

http://jasongood.net/ - My hero of funny. I hope to one day be 1/4 this funny. I will die happy. This is the best. 46 Reasons My 3 Year Old Might be Freaking Out.

Moms Who Drink and Swear - Nicole Knepper makes me feel NORMAL and comfortable with the fact that I think my kid using sarcasm correctly at age 6 is a personal achievement in parenting.

Jen @ http://www.peopleiwanttopunchinthethroat.com/, because really, her blog name says it all. She cracks me up. She wrote a book with other awesome bloggers and maybe one day I can hornswaggle my way into one of her next bestselling anthologies. Cause right now, my publishing attempts are 0-2. This girl brings the funny.

And lastly but not leastly… my local girls

Jayme @ http://www.randomblogette.com/, who is awesome and one of only 3 ladies who will remember our senior trip to Cancun together, and who will most likely agree that our parents were the dumbest ever and our kids will NEVER get that opportunity of drunken debauchery in HIGH SCHOOL. Good Lord, some of the stories from that week we will take to our graves. Let’s just say only ONE of us did NOT get a tattoo in a walk up Mexican tattoo parlor, where they did not turn the autoclave on, only pretended to take things out of there. This was only because said person was STARVING and just wanted to eat food that would ultimately give her diarrhea. Food always trumps peer pressure, in SOME people’s eyes.

And Brittany @ http://brittanyherself.com/, who in the 4 years I’ve been following her (religiously and maybe a bit single white femalishly) has gone from laugh out loud pee your pants funny anecdotes to totally hot, inspirational blogger with ever-increasing fame and success – and she still has time to write ridiculously entertaining, hilarious stuff. See The Brazilian.

OK – that should give you something to do while I take a brief hiatus from writing. Check these girls (and guy) out. They are hilarious and will probably make you unproductive at work too. Try explaining why you are laughing at the Brazilian video to your cubicle mate. Not easy.

This is what life has come to…

Posted on April 14, 2013 by jshamsmith | 2 Comments

Life has been reduced to Ketel One in a kids cup.

This is my Sunday night. I was going to hop on the treadmill. But my kids have driven me to drink instead. In a kid’s plastic cup. With the good vodka. By myself.

How do they do this to us? No one can make you mad like your kids. Not your husband, not your work, not your family, not your parents. It’s like these little people that came from you know exactly how to push your buttons. How to take that one last frayed nerve you have and pull. Hard. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you either don’t have kids, or your own kids have not reached, oh say, 3 (if I’m being generous). I remember looking at my 6 month old baby boy and wondering, how could I ever get mad at this face? HA! Easily when said face is telling you YOU need to adjust your attitude and he doesn’t care how many privileges he’s lost because what I say doesn’t matter and he didn’t do anything wrong.

My personal button of rage is flipped when they completely disregard the fact that I am speaking. They don’t seem to fear me in any way. Not even a little bit. It’s like I am some chump substitute teacher they are switching names with their best friends to drive insane. They aren’t like this for Mark. Ever. It’s like I emit some sort of unique pheromone that only my kids can smell that makes them completely insane and flippant about anything I say. I feel like I am talking to brick walls. Stubbier, smarter, cockier brick walls.

What am I doing wrong?

No, I’m not depressed. I am highly medicated and have been since G was 6 months old, and I ain’t never going back to non-medicated me. It was horrible. I was horrible. Parenting was horrible. My life was horrible. I will take my 40 mg of Prozac gladly and proudly. I will take that Xanax when needed and have it on my person at all times. In fact, the highest dose you can take (so they tell me) is 60 mg of Prozac. I have been thinking about pleading my case to my doctor for 60 mgs just because. I am technically doing great on 40 mgs, but hey, if 40 is this good, imagine what 60 would feel like amirite? I can’t quite convince myself to lie to my doctor about my mindset…yet. I don’t want him to lock me away in some insane asylum. Unless said asylum let me have my own room and computer with wifi, then sign me up. Peace and quiet with no one needing ANYTHING from me. Just some nice nurse to come in a few times a day and say, “Mrs. Jen, time for your medicine.” Heaven.

You know you are a mother when an insane asylum sounds relaxing.

I think I may have scared them tonight. I yelled. Thank God it’s northwest Ohio and still freakin freezing so the windows were closed because it was loud. LOUD. They team up, ignore me, laugh and run around, scream and holler in circles around me and I had had it. My son lost his book that was due tomorrow in school. My daughter refused to get into bed, instead dramatically dragging herself across the mattress and screaming in maniacal glee while doing it.

My kindergartener has a project due on Wednesday that I was going to foist upon his dad, but his dad got stuck on the east coast because of the effing weather, so no dad this weekend. That leaves me to put it together, which will be a fight. I don’t want to be that mother who does his project for him, and I won’t, but it’s tempting because I know the fight to get him to put any effort at all into it will be like pulling teeth. So there’s my Monday and Tuesday fight. After work. You know work, the place that I get to go back to after a 3 day “weekend.” 3 days because Willie comes down with strep this week, which I totally blew off because I assumed he was being dramatic and it was just a cold, and he never gets sick, so he’ll snap out of it right? WRONG. I sent my poor kid to school for 4 1/2 days with strep throat because I was desperate to make it to my job for 5 days in a row. Something of a miracle during the months of December through, apparently, April. Or even May, as G had pneumonia at that time last year, so by no means am I in the clear yet.

I don’t know. I am just ranting and raving. Venting. I’m not sure this post even makes any sense, and you know what? I don’t care. I had a margie at Chili’s where I attempted to have an enjoyable evening with my mother after not seeing her for 4 months, and now I’m halfway done with a 1/2 vodka 1/2 OJ fuzzy navel, so I am 3 sheets to not really caring about anything. No I am not an alcoholic. It just seems to be a Sunday trend. God bless Sundays. Get me back to work, where the normal people are. And if you knew the people I worked with, you’d know that’s comical. My workplace makes The Office seem rational. They’ve got nothing on us and I have a picture to prove it, but I don’t want to get fired. Yet.

Good night all. One day, I won’t be whining about parenting. Just not today.

Bully Pulpit

Posted on April 10, 2013 by jshamsmith | 1 Comment

English: A Bully Free Zone sign – School in Berea, Ohio (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today is April 10^th. A date that is etched into my brain for one annoying reason. Today is my childhood bully’s birthday, and for some reason, I can never forget it. A girl who made my life miserable from about grade 5 until freshman year of high school.

I don’t think of this girl often, as it’s been 20 years since I last saw her, but every April 10^th I remember it’s her birthday. I hope wherever she is, she’s happy, as I can assure you she was not as a kid.

I met D’Vile (Ha! Get my play on words?!) when I picked her mom to babysit my sister and me. It was between a lady who had a nice boring house that abutted my school or her mom, who had a super fantastic playground and a POOL in the backyard. Pretty easy decision when you’re 9. It started out fun enough. Her mom was nice. A little possessive of food (meaning I couldn’t grab Little Debbie’s whenever I wanted, which to me, was the End. Of. The. World.), but otherwise a good babysitter. Her dad worked 3^rd shift at the Jeep Plant and was chronically laid off. (Sidenote: This was my first real experience with a loser. He basically scared the crap out of me. Lord help his kids (never us thank God) if he had to get his paddle, which was hung on the wall as decoration, for punishment. It was sadistic. Not because of the paddling, but because of the psychological torture leading up to said paddling. Crazy. No wonder this girl was messed up. He was often laid off and was always smoking and drinking beer even before we left for school. His favorite pastime was recording on VHS Looney Toon cartoons on the TV in some sad desperate attempt to “get them all.” (Poor dude, all that time wasted, I can buy him a complete DVD set now for $50). And another fun fact, he had a “secret” room. One with a padlock on it in the basement. As kids, we never thought anything of it, except it had plants and a lot of neon lights in there when we did see the door open. In grownup hindsight, dude was growing his own medicinals if you know what I’m sayin.

Anyways, I’m just providing some background. Here’s the thing that freaks me out and makes me kind of a crazy parent – my parents never knew any of this. Why? Because I didn’t think they needed to know. First, I had no idea about the pot. Second, they never hit or yelled at me or my sister, so I thought this was just the way it was in their house. They basically were good to us; it was their own kids they fucked with.

Anyways, back to D’Vile. It started kind of slow and as a kid, I didn’t recognize it. First, there was another girl her mom watched that she was just plain ol’ mean to. They blamed her for everything that went wrong, made her feel crazy, fat and ugly, all for no apparent reason, except maybe D’Vile’s mom didn’t like her mom.

She eventually left. I met this girl again in my 20s. We ended up working in adjoining cubicles at my 8 months of torture call center job, when I recognized her name. She survived and turned into a nice normal adult, but has very different memories of her time there, but it still has the same crazy undertones I remember.

After she left, they turned on my sister. I don’t know why they never picked on me, I think it’s because of my wallflower tendencies. I remember one day they pulled her chair out from under her as she was sitting down just to be mean. As her older sister, I started to cry. Cry because no one had ever been mean like that to my sister (besides me) and I didn’t know how to stop it. This girl and her little brother terrified me. Never once did I think to tell my parents.

So, this girl and I were friends. Friends in that I was terrified to not be her friend. We were in the same class that year, and I noticed she was mean to others around me and I didn’t like it. I never had the balls to stand up to her and defend any of my classmates, I just stood by hoping she wouldn’t turn on me.

As time went on, we got older and eventually stopped being watched by her mom, and after a few years of this “friendship,” it got too much for me. Some straw broke the camel’s back. I can’t remember what now, but I remember my real best friend and I decided to take a stand. We completely stopped talking to her, which at 10 was totally the right way to go about ending a friendship with an unstable crazy bully.

Let’s just say that didn’t go over well. Over the course of the next few years, all culminating at a rough inner city middle school, she made me and mostly, my best friend’s, life a living hell. She called my friend butterball and other fat names when we got off the bus each day. She’d follow us home. Things never got physical thank God, but then, girls are much more sadistic about bullying. They go for the jugular, and by jugular I mean tear into an 11 and 12 year old girl’s physical appearance. It was pretty brutal.

By now my parents knew, but were pretty much helpless to stop it. I mean, she wasn’t physical, just threatening mentally. Plus, these were the 90s, waaay before anti-bullying campaigns became popular and schools became more involved. It was just us kids figuring it out on our own, in a very Animal Farm/Lord of the Flies type of way. (See? I did read in 8^th grade.)

Things got better when my best friend and I went to the private high school and she continued onto the public high school. We no longer saw her and thought it was over. Then, one summer we started getting prank calls. This was pre-technology anything. Heck, we still had rotary phones in our house and caller ID hadn’t yet been invented. Now, as the babysitter of my younger sister, initially these calls were terrifying. I was alone in a house all day long with my sister and some weirdo kept calling, breathing into the phone and then hanging up. We called the police and they put a tap on our line (or the phone company did, I can’t remember.) All we had to do was pick up the phone each time for it to record. I don’t know how we figured out it was her, but we did. One day she called and hung up over 200 times, which I knew because I had to keep track of and pick up the phone each time.

Nothing really happened when they tracked it back to her. I think we pressed charges, but not much was done. I think they found out she was stealing from someone else and got in trouble. Her parents divorced. I went to high school, tried to fade into the background and not draw any attention to myself in true introvert fashion, pretty much hated it, and survived. Life got dramatically better in college and I grew up to what I am now – a fairly confident 30-something.

I wish I could take my 33 year old brain back to that 8 year old girl I once was. I would tell her what I was confirming in my young brain – that this girl is batshit crazy, you should tell your parents, and get away from her and her family at all costs. That you and your best friend were beautiful, funny and smart and to never let some scrawny insecure little girl make you doubt that.

Funny thing is, this girl still has a bit of power over me. Right now, I am a wee bit afraid of putting this on the interweb for fear she will find me again and start all over again. But, with some preliminary research, I am pretty sure this girl is mostly off the internet grid. So maybe, if we’re real quiet, it won’t get back to her.

I guess to wrap up, bullies still scare the crap out of me. My son is just starting to experience mild forms of it, but so far, we have escaped mostly unscathed. I am sure this is temporary as my kid is quirky, intelligent and funny in a weird way, which will eventually make him a target. And my daughter is fairly timid in her interactions with kids her age and basically lets her friends run all over her. I am absolutely clueless on how to handle this. Do I helicopter over them, so I am not largely unaware as my parents were? Do I teach them when, where and how to defend themselves? How do I teach them biting sarcasm and dry humor that has become my defense as an adult against big meanies?

I have no idea. Guess I’ll Google it or ask around if and when the time arises that I have to deal with it. I am just terrified some punk is going to stub out the quirky, unique, adorable strengths of my children way before they realize it’s those traits that make them awesome. I never want my kids to feel they have to fit into some box of preconceived normal. I want them to think for themselves and be leaders. I want them to have best friends who look out for them and love them for who they are, not because they are good at a sport or drive a fancy car (not likely on both accounts – they do have us as parents.).

I just hope I’m doing something right and can guide them through as best I can. What are your thoughts? What are you doing for your kids? I’m all ears.

Confessions of an Introvert

Cause I'm Too Chicken to Say it in Person