Life Lessons

I did not accept that I was meant to be a Mother until very late in life.  Maybe because it took me a VERY long time to meet the right person to be the father and husband who could put up with me on a long term basis.  I'm one of those people that does not have issues with being alone, maybe because most of my life has been spent around big hoards of people.  When you are a member of my family there is no such thing as a small event and this is a fact that my husband has had , at times, some getting used to.    He comes a small family nucleus with few extended family and many close friends.  I come from the Geisers who started out with 8 brothers and sister and the Galvans who started out with only 4 sisters and a brother.  Add in the cousins, extended aunts and uncles and you end up with a Thanksgiving meal at our house with 65 in attendance.    Anyway, I digress, being a mother has taught be many lessons so far and many more to come.  Now, I recognize why my Dad was so protective and so strict.  It made me crazy when I was a teenager but I am thankful now.   Some of these lessons seem like a no-brainer in retrospect but clearly, I don't always think these things through.    So, continuing with my infatuation with bullet points here you go:

• Do not let a bottle feeding baby have too much egg nog even though he REALLY loves it.  On the way home from a trip to La Veta to visit Grandma Rita and Grandma Geiser we stopped at Farm Crest for some egg nog.  I gave some to Blake in his bottle and he really liked it so I gave him more.  Darrell and I can't remember how much I gave him but it was too much.  Later that night when Darrell was about to leave for his first poker tournament at a friends house, I was feeding Blake right before his bed time and Blake started projectile vomiting.  Lesson #1:  Even though they REALLY like it, don't let them have too much.  This leads to lesson #2....
• When a baby starts projectile vomiting, don't hold the baby straight out, screaming while turning in circles around the room.  Clean up is much harder this way.  Since we are discussing vomiting there is another valuable lesson I must point out.  When Blake was 5 years old, he came down with the flu in the middle of the night.  First bout of puking was in his bed I got up, changed his pajamas, rolled the sheet up in a ball and brought him to my bed.  Second bout of puking was in my bed, we got up, changed pajamas rolled up the sheets and went downstairs to the couch.  This time I figured it out and had him lay on the couch with a bucket directly underneath his head and told him to to puke on the couch because we were running out of places to go.    Luckily, Blake doesn't get sick very often because I listened to Grandma Geiser when she gave me this VERY sage piece of advise--don't be too sterile and let them eat dirt.
• Kids are the BEST negotiators in the world and I'm a sucker for puppy dog eyes.  Sometimes, I think that Blake's the best at this but I'm beginning to think it's all kids and I have a serious soft spot in my heart for kids so I'm especially gullible.   I'll tell Blake something like, you can't play until you finish your homework and he'll say how about....and we're right back to wear we started.  When we use the Love and Logic lesson of giving him choices, we will give choice A and choice B and Blake will always add the choice C. 
• This lesson is partially a valuable lesson from a very wise client of mine and a valuable lesson in over-confidence.  Blake said to me one day, "Mom did you know that the United States is not very good at math.  Thank goodness they have me, right Mom?"   Blake is VERY good at math and at the beginning of the school year scored high in testing.  He could figure out addition and subtraction in his head with out using his fingers and toes, I can't even do that.  He was moved to advanced math course work however through out the school year his test scores started to go down.  I had challenged him to get all 4's on his report card with the reward of getting ANY Lego he wanted.  When we got his final report card I'm going through each section and he was doing well with 4's and 5's then I got to math where he had all 4s except addition and subtraction where Blake was graded with 2's.  Honestly, shock and disbelief over came all three of us.  My mind flashed back to a client who told me this story:  She had recommended to a male client to recognize his son for his great work within the company.  He thought for a moment then said, " The male ego is a funny thing.  If you pump it up too much they quit trying.  You're right, I probably do need to recognize him."

I did a great job at picking a good Father.  Darrell is the right mix of compassion and strictness.  I know he gets frustrated with me because I am such a softy but he balances me out.  As parents, we want to raise a successful, happy and healthy man and we won't know if we've done a good job until he forges out into the world.  I'm sure there will be some disappointments along the way and I pray that we are doing the right things.  I watched the movie "One Day" yesterday.  It's kind of sappy and predictable but I wasn't feeling well and it was easy to watch.  The handsome young man in the movie was visiting his ill mother and at that point in his life was into stardom, alcohol and drugs and his state of disarray was very apparent.  His mother looked at him and said something like, "I'm sure that some day you will be the man I dreamed you would be.  Loving, caring and successful with a sense of purpose in your life.  You aren't that man now and I hope I live to see the man I know you will be."  As parents, it's all we can hope for, I suppose, but it was heartbreaking as it took a long time for him to get there and she didn't get to see it in reality although she knew it in her heart.