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By Mom Unplugged, August 24, 2009 10:55 pm

Today was the first day back to school for my oldest two (9 and 7), and they were VERY excited. OK, OK, so was I (choirs of angels and all that).

The two of them were up early and dressed before I even managed to open an eye. By the time I had dragged myself reluctantly out of the shower (I am NOT a morning person) they had already made their own breakfasts and packed their own lunches.

What?? My heart sank when I heard they had packed their lunches. This was new, and entirely their idea.

Of course I immediately inspected their lunch boxes expecting to see cookies, chips and goldfish crackers, plus perhaps even some candy that had been squirreled away somewhere. What would you have packed in your lunch at that age?

However I was shocked to find that they had actually done a good job! There was leftover pasta (kept warm in thermoses), sugar snap peas, apples, yogurt, and…one Oreo each. I could live with that.

I plan to continue this self-packing of the lunch, and hope it does not fall by the wayside as school becomes less easy to wake up early for.

One less job for me is good. I am a lazy mom.

Comments (16)

By Mom Unplugged, January 7, 2009 7:18 pm

My littlest baby is now three. A “big girl.”

On Monday, just three days after her third birthday, she was scheduled to have her first day of Montessori preschool. After 8 and a half years of continuous togetherness with one child or another, I was REALLY looking forward to that first miraculous day of school for the last one, and the promise of several hours of solitude.

My imagination soared: loud music in the house (and NOT “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”), a good book, maybe even a trip to the bathroom without an audience!

But when I awoke on that much anticipated morning, what should I see out my bedroom window:

Snow. Lots of snow.

Mom of the Year Moment: Was my first thought of the day - “Oh, look at the lovely snowy scene!”

No. My first thought was: “OH NO - A SNOW DAY!!”

I had waited three years for this first day of school and it was going to be a Snow Day! Serves me right doesn’t it? The cruel irony of it all. I just wanted to put my pillow over my head and go back to sleep.

In fact it turned out to merely be a two hour delay, what a relief!

Despite my excruciating Mom Guilt over the depth of my joy on my baby’s first day of school, I was able to pull myself together enough to rock-out in the kitchen to some extremely loud music, unsuitable for children.

I can now set all guilt aside since it turns out that she loves school, and I love my mornings alone. So far, we both seem to be benefiting from the arrangement!

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By Mom Unplugged, December 22, 2008 8:51 pm

As a child, I remember Christmas being so exciting that I could hardly sleep the night before. We’d have a tree, Christmas stockings and yummy turkey. My Dad would always design a “trail” for me - a treasure hunt with clues - to lead me to my biggest present. Dessert was always my mother’s homemade Christmas pudding with lots of thick cream, almond paste cloaked Christmas cake, and tiny, flaky mince pies (my parents were from England).

As an adult, I managed to spend most of my Christmases at home with my mother and sister (my parents were divorced by then) where it would always be the same as I remembered (minus the trail).

This will be the fourth Christmas since the death of my mother. Each year, my sister and I have struggled with how to make Christmas like we remembered. For a variety of reasons, the first two years were fairly miserable. Last year, I just ran away from it all and ignored Christmas as much as I could.

This year, I feel brave enough to try it again. It will be different. My sister and I have decided that we can’t recreate the same thing without my mother. Those days are gone. I need to do something new (but with a few old elements?).

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a long time (at least a year) may remember last year’s Christmas/Holidays Unplugged series, so perhaps you know of my internal struggles. I want to create lovely memories and traditions for my children, but hate the commercialism and lack of any meaning.

I think that writing that series of posts really helped me prioritize and come up with a plan. A “year off” from Christmas helped a lot too.

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The plan this year is as follows:

- Tree: Thin tree that needed to be cut from our property anyway - read more: An Ugly Christmas Tree.

- Child Presents: Christmas stockings plus one gift each for the kids from Santa, and a few from us.

NOTE: Without TV, my kids don’t really have specifics on what they want…which is wonderful and difficult at the same time. They sat on Santa’s lap at our town Christmas tree lighting and both asked for “a surprise.” I wonder how many kids do that?

- Adult Presents: Christmas stockings all around. I do the children, my sister and my husband. My sister does her significant other and me. I love the challenge of finding cool little things that they might like that would fit in the tiny space of a stocking. It seems fun and not commercially excessive.

Otherwise, we are not doing adult gifts this year. We are all in the very fortunate position (especially fortunate in light of this year’s economy) of being able to buy whatever we need, and I hate shopping out of a “need to buy something” mentality.

In lieu of gifts, each adult will do a donation to charity for each other adult (to that other adult’s favorite charity). I have even gotten a few other relatives on board with this (even for the kids) which certainly lightens the gift receiving (and giving) burden, is much more in the spirit of the season, and makes me feel that we are actually doing good for the world rather than doing good for Walmart.

- Food: I think I’ll get a small, fresh turkey from our local market (but I’d better get on that right away, especially since the weather is forecast to be lousy). I’ll try to keep it somewhat simple because I want to enjoy the day and not spend it mostly in the kitchen as I remember my mother doing.

Of course, if I can’t get to the store for food, we’ll be having leftovers for Christmas. But snowed-in with leftover pasta might actually make for a completely fun and memorable Christmas!

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This is my overall plan. It may need refining next year…or maybe I’ll just want to run away again. I don’t know. I’ll tell you all how it goes.

Good luck defining (or redefining) your celebration. Happy holidays to all!

Comments (7)

By Mom Unplugged, November 8, 2008 10:21 pm

Yes, I am still alive. The blog has been silent this week, which means that my life has not.

There has been Brownies, Cub Scouts, Music Together, a field trip to the Waste Water Treatment Plant, and various volunteering activities at school … plus don’t forget the never-ending laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, and tidying. I am pretty sure you all are familiar with this situation.

I even missed the semi-annual Blog Blast For Peace for the first time in a year and a half (sorry Mimi!).

Tidying has been particularly intense the past few days. The contractor completed the last stage of replacing the carpet with wood floor. This time it was the older kids’ rooms and the stairs.

This meant that the copious contents of the two oldest children’s rooms were regurgitated all over the bottom floor of the house. I am faced with a complete and utter disaster. If a tornado had hit, it could not possibly have been worse.

Clutter makes me mad, so my only option was to attack it all today (my first day free of other activities) or “go postal.”

So far I have gotten rid of four garbage bags of trash, plus a large box for the thrift store (the kids keep taking things out of it though, so that part is still under negotiation).

I am tired and grumpy, but after much quality time and “help” (or not) from my three children, I leave you with this deeply philosophical thought:

Why do children want to “help” all the time when they are 2 and you don’t really want them to; but when they are 6 and 8 and you need their help, they are no longer so enthusiastic?

Aaaargh…… #*^^%#()_+@

Comments (3)

By Mom Unplugged, October 14, 2008 8:59 pm

As a mother, much of my daily existence is very mindless and repetitive. I sometimes feel as though I am repeating the same messages over and over again: “clean your room,” “don’t pick your nose,” “settle down,” or “say please,” are a few favorites of mine. And of course there are also the two that I swore I would NEVER say to my children: “we’ll see” (we all know that really means “no”), and “because I said so.” I say these too.

A tape recorder could accomplish the same job, and a robot could do the laundry, cook the meals, pick up the clutter, etc. Apart from the loving, my daily routine doesn’t take much thought or emotional involvement.

What DOES take intelligence and feeling however, is the effort to instill in our children a sense of our values.

I dislike the term “values.” It is overused nowadays, and often has a politically conservative connotation. For some reason it just rubs me the wrong way, like “empower” and “proactive.”

However, the fact is, that every single one of us on this planet has “values.” We all place emotional or intellectual importance on certain life issues. In other words, we have principles that we hope to pass along to our children. While we might wildly disagree on what our “values” should be, we all hope our children will eventually adopt our particular “values” and thus become “good people” (as interpreted differently by each family).

One of the lessons that I would like my children to learn is that of peace. In my mind peace begins with tolerance and acceptance. But I don’t want my children to simply tolerate and accept, I want them to truly love the differences that exist on this planet. I want them to be excited about other cultures, traditions, races, religions, cuisines, languages…everything that is different from themselves and their lives.

I hope I am not rudely presuming too much by venturing to guess that most of the readers of Unplug Your Kids include some version of peace in their set of “values.” In fact, I believe that most families around the world value peace, even those who we are told are currently “the enemy.”

We as mothers (and fathers of course, but I don’t think many fathers read Unplug Your Kids), have the world’s most important and powerful job. We have a chance to create a peace-loving generation that celebrates differences. If every family on our planet had peace and tolerance (at the very least) as a value and actively worked to pass this along, could we eradicate war in one generation?

This is obviously a Utopian vision, but as mothers, we must remember that no president, prime minister, king, or queen has the power that we do. When I get too caught up in dirty laundry and saying “no,” I must remind myself of this.

Like mothers in every corner of this Earth, I feel that even if my children continue to pick their noses into adulthood, I nonetheless will have done my bit for humanity if I manage to produce three enlightened and thoughtful inhabitants of our plant.

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It is time again for blogger Mimi Lenox’s semi-annual BlogBlast for Peace. Thursday, November 6th is the day when hundreds of bloggers worldwide (40 countries have signed on so far!) will all blog about one topic: PEACE. Every post will be entitled Dona Nobis Pacem (“Grant Us Peace”). This will be my fourth time joining in.

If you hope to contribute to a new generation of peace creators and lovers, please consider joining in. I’d love to read your thoughts on how you help your children understand that they can and should make a difference in this life.

If you want to participate, head over to Mimi’s to design your own Peace Globe (mine is up above) for your blog and Mimi’s Gallery.

I hope to read your thoughts on November 6th!