Unexpected Phrases

Before I became a mommy, I had an idea of some quirky things that kids say and do. Not only have I attended college where I studied elementary education, but I worked as a nanny for many years and babysat; not to mention, I come from a large family! I was aware of the stages that both Piaget and Freud outline that everyone goes through. I've also witnessed and have been a part of the "why" stage when children incessantly ask, "Why? Why? Why?" in response to everything that a person says. What I wasn't prepared for was the little phrases that I would be saying either to reprimand J or to converse with him. I've definitely had some WTF moments. Here are some unexpected phrases that nobody prepared me for:

• Peaches don't belong in your ear.
• Don't lick the window. That's yucky.
• We don't walk up the walls with our shoes on.
• There's nothing inside of your belly button. It's just a little hole in your belly.
• No, your penis doesn't have a boo boo. The hole is what the pee comes out of.
• Mommy is too big to sit on your lap.
• Please don't put rice down your shirt. It only gets into your belly when you eat it with your mouth.
• Cat litter is not food.

I'm sure there were many other crazy phrases but those stick out most in my mind. What kind of WTF moments have you had with your kids? 

Painful Memories

When it comes to my own childhood, I have some painful memories. You see, my mother was mentally ill like I am but it was with a different disorder. My mom had bipolar disorder a.k.a. manic depression. Everyone has mood swings but my mom's were extreme. Sometimes my mom was happy and energetic and created amazing happy memories. She would wake up early in the morning, open up my curtains singing, "Good morning sunshine! Rise and shine with the sun!" I would groggily sit up and rub the sleep from my eyes; or as a teenager I would pull the covers over my head and groan at her to go away and let me sleep. My mom would cook a full breakfast with my favorite foods: pancakes, turkey bacon, turkey sausage, toast, and fruit. Then she would say to me, "Let's have a hooky day today, girlfriend!" She would call school and tell a little fib that I was running a fever, then my mom would take me shopping for a brand new wardrobe. My mom had so much money, or so I thought when I was a child. Her wallet was full of magical plastic cards and she used as many as she needed to buy me the things that she said would look good on me. Later, we would go out for lunch, again with plastic cards. Sometimes we would take a random road trips to Cape May or to Clementine Water Park or even to Pennsylvania.

Late at night, my mom would stay up crafting. She would crochet blankets or doilies. She would teach herself to pain on glass. She would paint beautiful pictures on glass vases to give as gifts. She would make crafts for every season: elaborate wreathes, decorations to put outside and around the house, trinket boxes that she painted then dry brushed then decorated with dried flowers. Sometimes she would antique her art. During the day, my mom taught me how to do the crafts that she did. Other nights, my mom stayed up baking a lot of goods: brownies, cookies, cakes, fudge, and so on. I would wake up to find a kitchen full of delicious treats that she was gifting to the people whom she cared about.

One day, I would wake up all by myself and things would be different, which would lead to painful memories. My mom wouldn't be the one to wake me up and she wouldn't cook me breakfast. She would still be asleep and if I tried to wake her up, she would yell at me to let her sleep or she would promise she would be up in five more minutes. I would have to make my mom's coffee and I would pour myself cereal and milk for breakfast. Sometimes Mom would get up and other times, she would stay in bed crying. If I tried to hug her, I was told that I was being manipulative and selfish. I was confused about what was happening. Why was I selfish? If I was a good girl, maybe my mom would be happy.

Sometimes after work, my mom would come home and pour a drink with her friends. They'd smile while having tonic and gin, and laugh loud. When I got out of bed to ask her to tickle my back, my mom would tell me to go back to sleep. Or sometimes, she would invite me to stay up and play cards while she and her friends gossiped. Sometimes they talked about things that I didn't understand: sex, marital problems and the "sluts" they didn't like My sister learned that she could stay up too provided she rubbed my mom's back.

Sometimes my mom had a new boyfriend. They all had one syllable names: John, Jim, Dan or something of the like. Of course, their names were pretty common and there was more than one Jim, more than on John, and so on it would go. My mom would accuse me of running the men out of her life when I asked when they were going to marry my mommy. You see, my dad remarried when I was eight years old, and it only made sense to me if my mom would too. I thought if I had a stepmom that I should have a stepdad too. It was only logical in my mind. When a boyfriend cheated on her, it was her fault or it was my fault or it was the "slut's fault." I never understood why men would spend the night then leave in the morning, and why we would see them for awhile then they'd never come around again.

I never knew which days my mom would be happy or which days she would be sad. Life with my mom was like riding a roller coaster and my sister and I learned how to go along for the ride so that we didn't fall off and get left behind.

When I was in high school, I took a psychology class and recognized all of the symptoms that my mom had when we learned about bipolar disorder: extreme mood swings, putting oneself into debt with many credit cards and random shopping sprees, lying in bed all day crying, the alcohol use, the over-the-top-happiness and evading of responsibilities. I tried to talk to my mom and tell her that I believed she needed help. My mom laughed me off at first until I persisted at nagging her into calling a doctor. I wish someone would have listened to me then before it got to be too late.

I am pained when I think about how my mom's mental health declined. Her shopping sprees during manic episodes became more extreme; for example, she would buy twelve loaves of bread on sale then put them in her car and leave them there just in case she may need them at any given time until the bread went moldy and the car smelled bad. My mom would peruse the neighborhood on "collection day" and college random items such as bowling balls or rocking chairs, or would take a trip to the local turnpike rest stop and fill her purse with little packets of ketchup, mustard, salt and pepper. She filled her van with random odds and ends that she may need at some point in time (like the bowling balls). It pains me to say that when I was in my twenties I had to cut off contact with my mom because I started having anxiety attacks when she called me in the middle of the night to tell me she was going to slit her wrists or told me about events that I knew were hallucinations.

My most painful memory is the one surrounding her death. When my mom was 42 years old (I was 22), I walked into my father and stepmother's house and my dad told me to sit down because he had something to tell me. My mother had been missing for a week and eventually her neighbor noticed and called the police. When they burst into my mother's apartment, they found it in complete disarray because she became a hoarder and left her insulin needles everywhere. In her bedroom, my mother was dead on her bedroom floor, her body already in decomposition. My dad had been contacted and he had to tell me this news. The autopsy revealed that my mom had been dead for some time before her body was discovered but the autopsy report listed her date of death as September 14, 2005.

My dad accompanied me and my sister to the funeral home where we had to plan the funeral. We had no money because my mom had cashed out her retirement plans and life insurance policy, leaving behind nothing but debt. My stepmom had to send copies of the death certificate to all the debtors, leaving out our names so that we would not bear the responsibility of paying it all back.\

When we viewed our mom's body, she did not look like herself anymore. She was cold and was missing hair and her face was slightly purple, even with the makeup that was applied. We had to ask for monetary donations in lieu of flowers because we had no money to pay for a funeral, and the funeral director helped us to cut costs by driving the casket to the cemetery in his personal car. I spoke the eulogy and asked the people in attendance to find it in their hearts to forgive my mom for the ways in which she had hurt everyone when her mental condition literally drove her crazy. The person who really needed to forgive her most of all was me, and I am still working on that.

My biggest fear is that I will turn into my mom. Unlike my mom, I sought help when I became depressed but whenever I feel a little too happy, I am afraid that I am manic and call my therapist. So far, he has always said that I am anxious but we are monitoring my condition because you never know what can happen.

I promise that my son will never know the pain that I did, because I will always be on top of things. Someday, I hope to come to terms with the way things had happened; I will forgive my mom, I will forgive the doctors for ignoring me, I will forgive myself for giving up on her. Most of all, I will learn to let go of the memories that haunt me almost every day.

A Dark and Looming Cloud

The expression, "This is so depressing,"is commonly used but for someone like me who has depression, that is a careless use of the word. True depression goes much deeper than feeling sad one day. I am about to get raw and give a big glimpse into my mind because I am hoping that somebody somewhere may feel the same way and then be pushed into getting proper help.

For me, I don't just wake up depressed one day. It builds up like a storm on the horizon, and there is always a dark cloud just waiting to rain on my parade. I may start out feeling a little bit tired and decide not to get out of bed. I may blow up at something small that a mentally healthy person would take in stride. I start out feeling blah and every single day it gets just a little worse until one day, I stop getting out of bed, I stop showering, I overeat to try and stuff the emotions down, I snap at the people I care the most and isolate myself from everyone, I blame myself for everything that goes wrong in my life, I cry myself to sleep, I sleep all day and all night, I become that permissive parent with J because I just don't want to deal with him anymore. I start to look in the mirror and see a shell of a person with empty eyes. Behind those eyes, is the hurt that I try to hide as hard as I can. It gets worse and worse until one day I start to feel like a burden to everyone in my life. J starts to throw massive tantrums because my mood is affecting him, and he's crying out for a little positive attention. I ask my husband to get up with J every single morning because I just can't. I sit around crying all the time, even in front of my child. When things get stressful (e.g. money becomes tight or I get bad news), I spiral downward even more. J doesn't understand why his mommy won't play with him anymore and feels neglected.

Eventually, it all gets to be too much and I start to think that everyone in my life would be better off if I could just disappear. I pray to God that he will take me in my sleep and start to fantasize about the ways that I can disappear so that I can burdening everyone in my life. I tell myself that J would be so much better off without me because I am a horrible mother. I can no longer concentrate and don't focus well when I drive. I write suicide notes in my head and I get dangerous to myself. I purposely park on dangerous roads and cross the street, hoping that a car will hit me; if it looks like an accident, my husband can move on and nobody will be angry with me. J can move on and someday be the best person that he can be since I am holding him back.

When it comes down to it, I loved everyone in my life except for myself; and you know what they say...you can't truly love anyone until you love yourself. I actually loathed myself to the core; I was weak, over-emotional, a bitch, a terrible person, a bad mother, a horrible daughter, a horrible daughter-in-law, a horrible wife, a failure of a person, and so on. Anything bad that you can think of, I felt that I was. I may have pasted a smile on my face but inside, I was slowly shriveling away.

I would be in a room full of people and the dark cloud was always looming. I would wonder why I was there, and how the people put up with me. When meaningless comments were made about small things, in my mind those miniscule comments became bullets aimed at me. For example, someone could say something like, "My son has always been on the skinny side" while watching my J play. The story I heard was, "Oh my God. That kid is fat. That kid's mom is fat. Jaime is a horrible mother and she is ruining her child." Was that what the person may have meant? Absolutely not. But for a person with depression, your mind tells you a different story.

One day, I realized that I was hurting J and I could not continue to do that. I recognized that these feelings were not normal after a text message to my sister that was a cry for help, she implored me to call my doctor I informed her that I was too tired of living and that nobody needs me anymore. I told my husband the same exact thing and he called our church's Senior Pastor. The pastor asked me to meet with her so I did, and I sat in her office and cried. I confessed that I was a mistake and that I should not be alive.

 That same day after meeting with the Pastor, I called the mental health number listed on my insurance card and asked for numbers for therapists. I also made an appointment with my MD and she started me on an anti-depressant called Pristiq. The therapist recommended therapy once a week and has been working on coping methods with me so that when life gets too stressful, my mind doesn't tell me the wrong story that sets me back again. My MD manages my medication and she and my therapist have a signed release from me that they may communicate regarding my treatment. Within a couple of weeks, the cloud slowly started to lift and I could see some light, and in about six weeks, I was able to get out of bed again. I get up with J in the morning now and I pick him up from school. I no longer daydream about dying, and I actually play with J. I kiss my husband and tell him I love him, and I reach out to the people who I isolated myself when the depression set in.

My therapist says that my depression is currently in remission but will never truly be gone. I have told my story so that it may help somebody somewhere. Please, if you ever feel the way that I have felt, tell somebody and if you know somebody who acts the way that I did, call for help. It can be a matter of life and death.

I'm back!!!

Good morning! I am well aware that I dropped off the face of the earth, but there is a reason for that and I am about to get very personal. 

All of my life, I have been a people-pleaser. I could not handle disappointing any person at any given time and help myself to the highest standard. My standard was being perfect so that everyone would love me. Now, as you can imagine, it is not easy to be perfect and it comes with a high price. Throughout my high school career, I maintained straight A's, was active in many extra-curricular activities: marching band, concert band, concert choir, chorus, the school newspaper and committees for every single dance that we had at the school. You see, it was ingrained in me that I would never be anybody if I didn't go to college. Not quite in those exact words; more like, "Life is so tough and only people with a college degree can make a real living. Don't be like me. I dropped out/I never went to college/your aunt was the only one who went to college/I am counting on you/You are so smart/You should get your doctorate by the time you're 30/etc. So, I joined every club that I possibly could and volunteered too, because everyone around me knew what was best for me (or so I believed for a very long time). 

I graduated with honors from high school as a member of the National Honor Society. However, I was isolated from many of my classmates and every single day, I felt like I was walking on a tight rope. I had to maintain the perfect image for the people whom I was closest to and I could not screw up. Screwing up was not an option, even if I was trying to find myself. I could find myself when I was 62 and retired; I did not matter at all. Only the act that I could put on did. In the meantime, I have always been lonely when in a room full of people as my head and heart were pulling me in different directions and nobody could possibly understand. But I do believe there are readers who do understand and if you do, please share your own experiences.

I was told that I could pay back someone close to me for everything he's done for me by graduating from college. By the way, this was five years ago after changing schools three times and majors four times. I was chasing a dream of being a teacher so that I could make a difference in the lives of children and work Monday thru Friday and have summers off. Why? Because everyone told me that is the best career and at one time in my life, I believed it was too. After student teaching, I can tell you that teaching is not just from 9-3 with summers off because the best teachers, like my cooperating teacher, work their butts off to get to know their students, plans amazing lessons in a timely fashion and either stay late at school or take their work home with them. I could get into a lot more detail but that is not at all what this blog is about. It was reinforced in me that working in childcare was not "a real job." I needed "a real like" which in many people's minds means being a teacher.

I was pregnant when I returned to university and remained a full-time student until J was born. I had the summer off and in September, he was 4 months old and I returned to school once more. I quickly found that it was extremely difficult to be the mom I wanted to be, take care of all of J's special needs, keep up with my school work, keep in touch with my family and most, to be happy. I was burning the candle at both ends with the motto in my head that "winners never quit." I had to be  a winner, even if it mean losing my identity. At night, I would lay down in bed and cry. I really just wanted to be a SAHM or a WAHM but that what would everyone think of me? I would be happy, but everyone else would think I was a loser. I couldn't let that happen.

Determined to make everyone proud, as I started to have anxiety attacks, stopped sleeping, cried at the drop of a hat and started to lose my patience with J from being pulled in all directions, I took the Praxis 2 so that I could so my professional field work and graduate. I also took a class called American Drama with a certain professor who will remain unnamed; one of the best plays we read in that class is Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. What I took away from that play was that you can either work yourself into the ground until your life no longer matters like Willy Loman did, or you can follow your heart as his once-upon-a-time-football-hero son did. I really wanted to follow my heart, but I had to get my B.A. because financially, my husband and I were strained and it all fell on me to bring home the bacon someday. I passed three sections of Praxis 2: Language Arts/Reading, Science and Social Studies. I failed math the first time and retook it four more times. 

After tutoring, reconnecting with God and major soul searching, as well as therapy and medication management for depression and anxiety that caused me an inability to function in my life, I said a little prayer before my fifth time. My husband recently attained an amazing job that pays him well and we are no longer living paycheck to paycheck; we are saving up to buy a house of our own (we live with his parents right now and have since 2008). That means that the dream that I kept a secret from everyone but a select few is now possible and I am going after it. I plan to become certified in first aid and CPR for infants and children once again, get a job as a nanny, save every single penny I make plus part of my husband's salary as well. We will buy a house once we have enough saved up, because my father-in-law works in real-estate with a family friend and they will help us look at all avenues for a good home. Once we buy a house, my husband and I will be trying for baby #2! 

Now here comes the rest of my dream, because that was just part of it. After the baby is born and I am cleared to work at 6 weeks pp, I will be offering childcare during regular hours in my home on the books. I will be doing whatever it takes and caring for up to five children in my home because the law allows it, and I can handle that many children after working in a daycare and as a nanny for 6 years. Someday, I will save up and rent a building to move the daycare to and my current families will have first dibs. 

Love it or hate it, this is my dream and I'm going for it! I'm finally allowing myself to be happy and no longer worrying about anyone else's opinion; I'm 31 and it's time to live for me. 

What's your dream?

Stranger Danger

For a very long time, I had major social anxiety which I believe resulted in what my mom told me in order to instill stranger danger in me as a child. When I was 4 or 5, my mom told me that if I talked to strangers, that I would be taken away, dressed as a boy, have bad things be done to me and never see her again. As a child given this information, I needed to know what qualified as a stranger and my mom  told me that a stranger is "anyone you don't know." That's pretty darn terrifying for a child! From then on, I never spoke to anyone I didn't know and that included kids since I over-generalized and had no idea who the bad people who would take me away would be. Then when I was about 6, my grandmother got a divorce from my "Pop-Pop Ray" (who I later learned was abusive) and was only told that "Pop-Pop Ray is now a stranger. If you ever see him anywhere, don't talk to him and never go anywhere with him." Well if someone who was once family could become a stranger, who on earth could I trust??? At the bank, where the tellers gave lollipops to the kids, I would burst into tears and refuse that candy because those tellers were strangers, and I once turned my best friend's mom down for a ride home from school and opted to walk home since I figured I had no idea what kind of person she really was. It took me a very long time to get comfortable in situations where there are many people around and I actually had panic attacks in any groups of people, including school. Even now, I don't fully trust anyone and always carry pepper spray on me just in case.

Given the barriers that social phobias caused for me, I am now questioning how to best teach my dear J about strangers. Yes, there are crazy people and sadly, child abductions do happen. BUT what my mother told me when I was a young child clearly scared the living daylights out of me and I do not want to give him the fears that I had. Right now, he is almost 2 years old and still either holds my hand everywhere we go if he is walking OR rides in a shopping cart or stroller always under my watchful eye. So him being taken by anyone isn't something that's possible right now; however, I am aware that J will not always be willing to hold my hand and someday he may not even want to walk anywhere near me in public places. When that happens, how do I stress that people can be dangerous without making him fear everyone as I've always done? Some amount of fear is good but not to the extreme that mine was...I think. Further, at what age do I even broach the subject of strangers?

Any suggestions from my readers?

91 Pounds Down, 44 To Go...

At this point in time, I just have to blog about something major. I may not be exactly where I want to be weight-wise, but I'm proud of my 91 pound weight loss!!! Here's some before and after pictures...

This was me in the summer of 2011, only months after J was born.

                                 And here I am now...91 lbs lighter and feeling great!!!

Over this journey, I have learned so much more about myself. In the past, I was an all-or-nothing person when it came to food. I only ate "good" or "bad" and there was no in-between. Either I was "on track" and wanted to eat and exercise perfectly or I was "off track" and ate pretty much anything I saw (of course mostly fatty, greasy foods). Now that I'm 30 years old, I realize that I don't need to be perfect and as a mom of a tot, I don't have time for that. Do I aim to eat as well as I can? Of course I do. I aim for 5 servings of fruits and veggies per day, lots of water, and whole grains over unrefined grains; but I have my moments where I splurge on the less than favorable foods. I still eat Hamburger Helper or processed foods in the occasion that my father-in-law makes that and I don't feel like cooking a separate meal, then I just add in a serving or two of vegetables with it to fill myself up. I have some weeks when I walk all over the place and also work out 5 days at the local Y, but there are other ones when I am not as active. AND I'm okay with this. I've learned that if I am going to be a healthier person, I have to let this fit into my lifestyle and accept that I'm human; I'm going to crave "bad food" and as long as I eat what I want in moderation and track it, and am active when I can be, I'll be moving toward a healthier weight. In the meantime, I feel happy and confident, and I know that I'm doing the best that I can for myself.

"Cow's Milk is for Baby Cows"

Lately, there is a battle between those who are anti-cowmilk and those who are pro-cowmilk. From what I've seen, people seem to see things in black and white as they do most things. The anti-milk group is known for saying, "Cow's milk is for baby cows" and points out the fact that our species is the only one that drinks milk from another species. In nature, animals nurse their young then when weaned those animals drink water and eat whatever it is that their species eat. Even baby cows can only drink straight from the tap and if they drink homogenized milk, they would die (this fact came from a farmer whom I spoke to). From research, I've read on a few websites that most humans can only digest lactose for the first few years of life in order to digest their mother's milk then gradually develop lactose intolerance. That fact is something that I can relate to as both my husband and I have problems digesting dairy, and in my case it is a recent issue. Many people who are against cow's milk also say that milk is not even a necessary beverage as the nutrients found in milk can be digested via a healthy, varied diet.

On the other fence, a lot of people grew up drinking cow's milk and see it as something worth continuing to drink and to give their children. Heck, cow's milk is creamy and tasty and we all know it is chock full of calcium and vitamin D. Basic argument is that a doctor or pediatrician wouldn't recommend dairy milk if it weren't good. More commonly, people who drink cow's milk purchase homogenized milk in the store, but there are more "natural" individuals who prefer raw milk (unpasteurized) milk, saying that it is easier to digest and more healthy.

When it comes to the two sides of things, I go both ways. Considering the fact that there are so many milks on the market (almond milk, coconut milk, rice milk, soy milk, etc) and the digestive issues that hubby and I have with milk, the two of us drink vanilla almond milk. It can be pricey, however, I'm a serious couponer, so I have yet to pay full price for almond milk. Our son J does get whole milk but he gets lactose free because he's always had dairy issues and lactose free doesn't present a problem for him. I will say that I prefer organic milk over non-organic because of rBGH as well as hormones found in non-organic; I also found that organic milk just tastes better. Further, my personal belief is that kids are developing earlier and there are more health problems due to hormones and chemicals in foods we buy in the supermarket nowadays. Others have tried telling me that children don't need cow's milk but I feel that the fat in whole milk is better for my tot who sometimes goes days barely eating anything; it is the days when J eats next to nothing that I am comforted knowing he's getting protein, fat, and other vitamins and minerals from his milk. Someday, J probably will be drinking almond milk along with his mama and daddy but in the meantime I'm happier giving him organic lactose free milk that meets his nutritional requirements.

What are your thoughts on dairy milk vs non-dairy diets?