No Turtles

This right here? This is good stuff: “Are we raising a generation of helpless kids?”

“We made our kid’s happiness a central goal – and now it’s difficult for them to generate happiness — the by-product of living a meaningful life.”

Timely, since here I am at home for the summer with my 8 year old, 6 year old and 2 year old who still needs a nap. They do not play well with each for more than 20 minutes. And sometimes by play well, I’m only talking about agreeing on the same TV show.

They’re bored, they’re hungry, they’re mean to each other and the next thing we know, mama is a screaming harpy and everyone’s been grounded til they’re twelve.

I guess I could take control of every minute of their day and schedule them into exhausted silence. It’s tempting. I know lots of moms who do.

But then I remember my “No Turtles” rule.

We started it when Gabe was about three and he’d pseudo try to do something, such as put his shirt on himself, and then he’d flop like Arjen Robben and wail “I can’t do it!!!”

I used to tell him “Don’t act like a turtle on your back, arms and legs kicking in the air! Figure it out.” This evolved into our “No Turtle” rule.

So if I hijack summer, my days might be more peaceful, but the long term result will be a household full of turtles. “Mom, I’m bored! Mom, we never do anything! Mom, I wish we could go to Disneyland! We never have any fun!”

No thank you.

Dearest children of mine,

This summer, the management will no longer be providing Perfect Days. There will be many, many opportunities for fun and games, but very few of them will be directed by Mom.

We went to the library, so there are books to read.

We went to the teacher supply store, so there are workbooks and science experiments.

We’ll keep up our tradition of the weekly trip to the mall, because Mama loves her some mall. We’ll hit the waterpark once or twice. I’ll set up play dates upon request. Maybe a trip or two to the beach. VBS, for sure.

And there are 12 kids in a five house radius. Everyone can learn a new game, like “tag” or “hide and go seek”. After a long day playing outside, I could probably be talked into making ice cream for the lot of you.

I know this is different, but we have no choice. If we continue to take responsibility for your happiness, where does it stop? I met a lady last week who is planning her son’s honeymoon—not just paying for it, planning it down to the daily excursions and nightly dinners.

Can you imagine getting a text from your mom on your honeymoon: “Have you guys gotten dressed for dinner yet? If you’re running behind, let me know and I’ll call the restaurant”.

Someday you’ll thank me.

In the meantime, remember the new house rule: If anyone says “I’m bored” or “There’s nothing to do”, I automatically get to pick a new activity. My current favorites are “Put the laundry away”, “Pack a box” and “Vacuum”.

Happy Summer!

Love, Mom

What’s In a Name?

One of my best friends is pregnant with her first child and just found out that she’s having a girl. When she sent me the text, I asked “Does she have a name?”

“Work in progress.”

A few days later, she texted again, no hello, how you doing. Just this:

“How many Olivias are there in Gabe and Kate’s classes?”

“None. Why?”

“We’re thinking about Olivia but are worried it’s too common.”

I had Teresa ask Siri where Olivia lands on the Top 100 of girls names.

“Looks like it’s #3 on the Top 100.”

“I know.”

“Can her middle name be Grace so we can call her the OG?”

“No. Olivia Claire, mom’s middle name.”

“I love it. Love it. And if you love it you should go with it and not worry about the other Olivias. That’s coming from a Jennifer. I know what I’m talking about.”

I was born in 1972, at the peak of Jennifer’s popularity. I spent the first 12 years of my life called Jenny F to distinguish me from the other five Jennys in the class. I survived. So will Olivia H.

“We are also thinking about Vivienne.”

“Vivi!”

She and I are Ya-Yas from way back. In fact, we ditched graduation duty to see the movie on the day it came out.

“Yes! Or Devynn. Or Blake.”

I’m down with the whole gender neutral naming trend. Devin was one of our boy names when I was pregnant with Annie. And we have two Quinns in our close circle. My kids call them “Boy Quinn” and “Girl Quinn” to keep them straight in conversation.

“When we were picking, I would imagine hearing the name on a loudspeaker or see it running along the bottom of the screen on ESPN.”

No, I am not kidding.

“That’s all I do, too.”

“Midfielder Olivia H— Or, midfielder Vivi H—“

“Mine more says “US Olympic Gold Medalist”

“Now playing on center court…”

“Now you’re with me!”

“Do all moms pick names this way or is it just us?”

Dana did it too. She was kicking around Cossette when she was pregnant with Violet. Then I made her think about the trash-talking across the net if the 6’3’ setter was named Cossette. I got your Castle on a Cloud, b***h!

Needless to say, picking a name is a big responsibility.

The year that Gabriel was two, I wrote my family names on the board for a project, and one of my students raised his hand and asked if my son was the only one in the family with a Mexican name. I laughed, because I have taught some wonderful Gabriels in my career—all of whom happened to be Mexican American—but we picked his name for the archangel, the right hand of God, defender of the light against the dark. Which is probably how the other Gabriels got their names as well.

I took full advantage of Shea’s English heritage to choose queen’s names for my girls.

Kathryn Grace was the first ever baby name that popped into my head when I found out I was pregnant with Gabe. It took two more years before we got our Kate. When I call her Kate, I see Katherine Hepburn, and hope that she takes the same big strides in the world, with the same sense of humor and maybe a little less booze.

Anne’s full name is Anne Elizabeth, which I justified because Ann is my mom’s middle name and Elizabeth was my grandmother’s middle name. But that’s a pretty regal name on a little girl. When I “Anne Elizabeth!” her in my mom voice, people always stop to look.

Olivia/Vivienne/Devynn/Blake’s mom actually asked me after Anne was born if I was naming my daughters in the order of Henry VIII’s wives on purpose and if the next one would be a Jane.

That made me laugh too. Because, kind of. And maybe. Let’s face it: you take the jerk husband out of the equation and those women were pretty bad ass.

So to answer the question: hope, dreams, love, Bible, family, culture, tradition. And maybe a wee bit of humor.

I Fainted at My Wedding. So?

There are two posts on this blog that get viewed almost on a daily basis even though they were published months and months ago: Dana’s Soup in A Jar and this one. And this one got so much play around Valentine’s Day that Shea and I were interviewed to be on an upcoming TV show about disastrous wedding days that turned into happy marriages! Although since we don’t see this story as a disaster, and we like to laugh about it, we didn’t make the cut.

It’s June, which means wedding season is here. And this week we’re going with a wedding theme. First the replay of my wedding day and then my mom is stopping by Friday with some words of wisdom about marriage for all of us.

The story starts like this: I opened my eyes to the sound of my mom calling my name. I saw my dad’s face and realized I was looking up at him. He’s not supposed to be on the altar, I thought.

“Did I just faint at my wedding?” I asked. Then “I’m going to puke.”

Moments earlier, I felt it coming. I leaned over to my cousin and whispered “I think I’m going to faint.”

“No, you aren’t,” she said with a sunny smile, and turned her face back towards the priest.

So I leaned over to my husband. “I’m think I’m going to faint”, I told him. “Ok” he said. That was it. Next thing, I’m looking up at my dad.

I was not drunk. I was not pregnant. And I was not scared.

I was hot. And kneeling. And trussed into my dress like a dang rump roast on Christmas Eve.

I enjoy telling this story to people. The reactions are fun. Some people laugh with me. Some shake their heads. But it’s the ones, usually single women, whose faces collapse in horror and pity that are my favorite.

It becomes a learning moment.

I fainted on the altar at my wedding. So?

“What do you mean so?!” one of my students asked me once. “All that money! All that planning! Ruined! I would be humiliated!”

I’ll admit that I had to do a magnificent job of shaking it off, a la Scarlett O’Hara: I’ll think about this tomorrow. I could have let it ruin my day.

But I didn’t. Look at the pictures. If you didn’t know I fainted, you wouldn’t know it from the pictures.

Beautiful, happy bride. Beautiful, happy day.

But most important of all: Almost nine years, three kids and two dogs later, beautiful, happy marriage.

That’s what a wedding does—it begins a marriage. Despite the wedding industry’s best efforts, we don’t say “We’re having a wedding!” We say “We’re getting married!”

Besides, a wedding is just one day. Not even the whole day. I waited eleven months for my wedding day and spent too much money on the details of making it lovely. For what? A blur. One moment I was fainting on the altar and the next I was lying on a beach in Mexico.

And I’m not saying that weddings shouldn’t be big and sparkly and fun. All of the weddings in our family have been big and sparkly and fun. We love weddings!

But that day, when you wear the crazy expensive dress and feed people food they will not remember, pales in comparison to the day you hold your baby in your arms.

The love you feel for your fiancé at your wedding is nothing to what you will feel when your spouse gets up with that baby at 3 am.

You think it’s the best day of the rest of your life? It’s not. It’s just the first best day.

We learned lesson #1 about marriage at our wedding: It wasn’t perfect. It was human and loving and beautiful. There was a moment it went a bit left, and then the moment passed, with the help and concern of our family and friends. Which is exactly what happens in a marriage.

When I look back, I regret nothing. Especially not the fainting. Because when we got home from our honeymoon and watched the video, we saw a church hushed with concern. My mom’s good friend Lu, a doctor, walked up the aisle to see if she could help. My bridesmaids held hands and prayed for me. Except for my sister in law, who crawled underneath my veil, hairdo be damned, and loosened my dress so I could breathe. When I finally was up and seated on a chair, wobbly, teary, embarrassed, everyone applauded.

I fainted on the altar at my wedding. So?

Brides and Bridezillas, don’t plan a wedding. Celebrate a marriage. It’s a very different thing.

The first lasts a day. The second lasts a lifetime.

Heart Warrior ~ Guest Post by Shalimar Niles

You know when you meet someone and they radiate calm kindness and patience? The kind that actually calms your own heart just from being in their presence?

Meet our new friend Shalimar. She is one of Kate’s Girl Scout troop leaders and I was amazed by her before I heard the story she’s about to tell. We invited her here because this woman’s life is full of grace–grace given by God and then distributed outward in total love. She knows that God is not here to test us, but to see us through.

She was born on a Friday morning. 10 fingers, 10 toes, and a head full of hair. Her daddy followed her to the nursery, and I went to recovery and waited for someone to bring my baby in to me. No one came. For more than an hour I waited, when finally, my husband came in, empty-handed, to tell me.

Our daughter was 1 in 100. That’s the likelihood of having a baby born with a congenital heart defect, or CHD. The ultrasounds showed us a healthy baby girl, but she was born with a severe CHD called Pulmonary Atresia. We had no indication that anything was wrong, and yet, our newborn daughter was now in a race against time to fix her heart before she started running out of oxygenated blood.

Emma at one day old — Shalimar with Emma at two days old

Hours after she was born, she was transferred to a hospital that could give her the care she needed. My husband went with her, and so it happened, hours after giving birth, I was alone in my hospital room, in shock and recovering from a c-section.

I held her for the first time when she was two days old. At four days old we walked her to the operating room doors for her first catheter procedure, which was unsuccessful. At one week old, her due date, which also happened to be our wedding anniversary, she had another procedure, also ultimately unsuccessful. From that point on, she was intubated and sedated, her right leg was purple and had almost no pulse because of damage to the artery during her procedures. We were broken-hearted for our girl, anxious to get her well and terrified of how bleak things looked for her at the moment.

Prayers and support came pouring in from friends and strangers alike. Her story was shared and thousands of people were praying for her around the world. I, however, was not one of my daughter’s prayer warriors. I told a friend that I felt like a hypocrite for allowing, and even encouraging others to pray for her when I could barely speak to God. “This is the time to let us lift you up,” she said.

We call June 7^th our daughter’s Happy Heart Day, because that’s the day that things started improving for her. She had open heart surgery, which was terrifying, but we had the hope that things would be better on the other side. The texts, phone calls, and Facebook messages were incredible, and did give us strength through those awful hours. All those people kept me close to God when I couldn’t do it myself, and they all have been able to witness the miracle that is our daughter.

She came home just a week after her surgery. On medications, and 24 hour oxygen, but she was home. And the medical miracles kept coming. Just a couple weeks after surgery, I started nursing her (which for being on a feeding tube for most of her life was amazing) and she began to thrive. She gained weight, she went on to oxygen just for sleeping and by the time she was three months old she was off all meds and supplemental oxygen. At 10 months old, she had a hole between the chambers of her heart closed, which improved her health even more. By looking at her, you would never know the challenges she has had to face in her young life.

I think the real miracles have been the intangibles. After being sedated and lacking oxygen her first month of life, she opened her eyes for the first time after her surgery and she was there. In the sense that I knew our worries about any brain damage were answered. She was delayed in rolling, crawling, and walking, and you could see the determination and grit in her face as she struggled in physical therapy to meet those goals. She is quite simply, a force of nature. Our daily reminder that miracles do happen, that God is with us even through the storm, and that hope we have in Him is real.

I live in a constant state of gratitude. I quite literally thank God daily that He saw fit to let us keep that sweet baby girl, who just turned two years old. A CHD is never truly cured, she does have more surgeries and challenges to face, and that is not what I dreamed of for my child. But as she healed, so did we, and I am certain that our strong family foundation, built of love and strength and faith will carry us through whatever may come.

Tomorrow, Emma’s family and friends will wear pink to celebrate the anniversary of her surgery.

Happy Heart Day to Emma from all of us at Full of Graces!

Conservative Feminists and Arrogance

Dana and I are Feminists from way back. Maybe you’ve noticed.

So we take issue when a group of powerful and important women trash Feminism, which is what happened last week at the Heritage Foundation’s celebration of Women’s History Month, “Evaluating Feminism, Its Failures and Its Future”.

These women have some serious hubris. Do they even know what the word Feminist means?

Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women (dictionary.com)

The Conservative Right would have us believe that Feminism only serves liberals. That’s not true. Sarah Palin is a product of Feminism. Condolezza Rice. Michelle Bachman. Bay Buchanon. Michelle Malkin. Even, and sadly, Ann Coulter. The only reason Karin Agness, Mona Charen and Mollie Hemingway even had a microphone to speak in front of the other day is because of Feminism.

And yet these women blithely turn their backs on the path forged by our grandmothers and great grandmothers, a path that says that every woman born to freedom in this great nation can be anything she chooses to be. Like a presidential candidate, Secretary of State, political pundit or even character assassin in a nodding relationship with the truth.

I am pretty sure that Mona Charen who “called the glass-ceiling a ‘supposed barrier’ and said Feminists and the Obama Administration often use “much debunked statistics” to argue their points” didn’t get where she is by sleeping her way to the top. But 70 years ago, who knows if she would have had the opportunity to run her mouth as a syndicated columnist? Maybe some cigar smoking editor with girlie pictures hanging all over his office would have sent her home to her husband and babies with a smack on her bum, or even invited her to “discuss” her career on his couch.

But that’s not allowed anymore, because of Feminism.

And Mollie Hemingway? It’s odd because I cannot find much specific information on this lady on the internet. Beyond that she’s a highly educated and decorated writer who lives in DC. I know she’s married because she wrote a defense of submissive wives after the whole Michele Bachman thing. But I don’t think she has kids. Which makes this statement all the more puzzling: “ ‘We’re telling women they should delay marriage, ‘lean in’ on career, focus on themselves,” Hemingway said. “And we know these things don’t lead to female happiness.’ “

I have no idea why this submissive wife doesn’t appear to have kids but does have a nationally important voice in the political debate. Or does have kids that are well hidden from an intrusive media, but still travels the country for her day job.

Oh wait, yes I do: Feminism.

And either way, I’m not judging her choices, even if her life seems to give a lie to her words. I don’t judge working moms and stay at home moms and single moms and two moms and dads who are moms and grandmas who are moms again. Because it takes a damn village, and there but for the grace of God go I, and no one should have to feel abandoned and alone before anyone else has walked a mile in their shoes.

You know where I learned all that?

Jesus. And Feminism.

So here’s the thing. If you think your daughter would make a great lawyer, you’re a Feminist. If you think your daughter would make a great wife and mom, you’re a Feminist. If you think your daughter is going to earn a scholarship to play soccer at Stanford or become a Rhodes scholar and get into every single Ivy League school she applies to, you’re a Feminist. If you proudly take her to vote the first time after she turns 18, you’re a Feminist. If you raise your sons to treat the women around them with respect and if you married a man who treats you with respect, you’re a Feminist.

Heck, let’s make this bottom line easy: if you teach your daughter to read and write, you’re a Feminist. And thank God, because in places where they don’t believe in Feminism, girls die on the way to school, shot by men who think they should never leave the house. Their. Entire. Lives.

So come on ladies. Where’s your humility? Maybe you don’t like the tone of womanhood today. I don’t, either. Too much sexuality, too much photoshop, too much divorce, too many babies born out of wedlock, too much abortion. But that’s not Feminism. That’s a crooked culture, and if we could just stop flailing at each other, we could band together like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and put the crooked straight.

(Well, maybe not just like them, because I do enjoy a good vodka tonic)

The point is that history shows us that women’s voices are strong and powerful and sensitive and maternal and compassionate and unyielding when we have something to protect.

You know how I know this?

Feminism.

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