Deep South Moms

Why it's never easy to be a mom with an injury

I injured my eye while cleaning out my closet this past weekend.  In an attempt to goof around and make a silly face I ended up poking myself in the eye with a leather tie used to hang a piece of art.  

Don't ask.  That's as much detail as I'm willing to give and that, alone, is embarrassing enough.  

I spent the first night in pain.  My eye became red, sore, watery, blurry, and very sensitive to light.  By the next morning I was in severe pain.  I was waiting for the eye doctor when he opened that morning and explained my predicament.  He was able to squeeze me in and, to minimal relief, bandage me and send me home with drops.  I've been for one recheck already and have another scheduled for tomorrow.  It turns out that the abrasion on my eye was rather big and pretty severe.  It will take a while to heal.  

Well, great.  As if having a hard time seeing, driving, and functioning wasn't enough, I have to do all these things while taking care of my children.  

A Newbie Goes To BlogHer09

The buzz is building to the point where you can barely hear anything else these days.

The countdown to the BlogHer conference, kicking off in Chicago on July 23rd, is in full effect.

Bloggers are nervous, excited, down-right petrified, ready to kick it high-gear-style and every emotion in between.

And the talking? OH the talking about it! 

Who's going...who are you rooming with...which panels are you attending...did you get a sponsor...what are you packing...which parties are you going to hang at...who are you anticipating meeting...business cards...swag...shoes....WHEEEE!

But on the flip side of that is the underbelly of the beast.

Why I'm Dreading Vacation

We have just a little while before heading out to our annual summer vacation. 1300 miles in the car with four boys. I'm excited to visit with family, to see the town in which I grew up, got married, had my first house and first two babies in. I always get sentimental and love being in a place that holds so many dear memories.  There is quite a large part of me, though, that is just dreading this trip.

First and foremost: twenty hour car ride. I suspect it will be riddled with "are we there yet?" and "I'm bored." "He touched me."  "I can't see the movie!" "Mooooommmmmmmmmmmy."  There's bound to be frequent potty stops and it wouldn't surprise me if we have to stop off for additional items for entertainment. A new movie perhaps, some new toys. Yes, I plan to bring plenty but let me reiterate, twenty hour car ride. We can't even drive to the corner grocery store without some sort of sibling altercation occurring

Sleeping in a hotel room with four kids is less than ideal. Yes, I am thrilled to be stopping for the night this time instead of driving straight through like we often do. Although I'm unsure how much sleeping will actually occur. I'm certain one or more boys will wake up. Probably multiple times. They'll be disoriented or scared and likely end up in bed with my husband and I. Which means I won't sleep. At least I can nap in the car in between kid squabbles.

Spanish, the Other Southern

I decided to take French the summer before ninth grade.  “Why are you taking French in Florida?” my dad demanded. “You need to learn Spanish.”

I ignored him, and out of dislike for my school’s Spanish teacher and an obsession with Les Miserables, I enrolled in French my freshman year of High School.  I studied for four years and graduated with enough knowledge to get me out of taking a foreign language in college. 

As soon I started college, I met my husband.  Despite being half Argentinean and half Colombian, he does not speak Spanish fluently.  (He speaks enough to get by and understands it fairly well.)  The first time I headed down to Miami with him, I learned the hard way that I probably should have studied Spanish in high school.

Skateboarders Need Helmets, Too

We awoke Saturday morning to the news that one of the truly great neighborhood kids is in PICU with a critical head injury after falling from his skateboard. He is 12 years old and really a fantastic child. Without our asking, he's helped Kim and I prepare for parties and he's helped us with PTA functions. He's a doting brother to his little sister and keeps an eye on the younger kids in the neighborhood. He could usually be heard singing at the top of his lungs while coming down the street on his skateboard. Seriously, this is a good kid.

4th of July in Georgia: A Hot Mess

I love the idea of the 4th of July.  A quintessential summer holiday, a time to BBQ, picnic, spend time outdoors, and celebrate our nations' independence with family, friends, and fireworks.  We always have the urge to celebrate!

But, living in Georgia, our attempts to celebrate the 4th of July usually end in a hot mess.  I mean really- JULY in GEORGIA?  Heat, humidity, mosquitoes and chiggers are not really my idea of a great time.  Our continuing quest to spend the Fourth outside in Georgia, so far, has only ended in a hot mess.

Starting in February, when the air is crisp but usually not too cold, we start thinking about running the annual Peachtree Road Race- a 10k Atlanta tradition.  It seems like the entire city is excited about it, and we claim that THIS is the year we will finally join in.  That plan lasts until May, when the air begins to gain the soggy summer humidity.  It is then that we realize there is no way we want to run in Georgia in July.  So that plan is off the shelf, at least until next February.

Testimony by Anita Shreve: A Silicon Valley Moms Group Book Club

This month, for Silicon Valley Moms Group bloggers' monthly book club, we read a novel that many of us, as mothers, found tough to read. But probably every mother should read it. And their teenagers too - especially their teenagers.

Join in as Silicon Valley Moms Group bloggers discuss the book Testimony by Anita Shreve.

• DC Metro Moms Blog's Amy G. leads us off with hoping she has done enough
• Wife and Mommy from Wife and Mommy thinks of all the moments she knew her life would never be the same
• Jennifer from Connect with your Teens discusses the ramifications and repercussions of teenage drinking
• Melanie from Tales from the Crib forecasts the future
• Bonggamom from Finding Bonggamom remembers temptation
• The Fabulous Miss S from Fabulous Miss S screamed in her head "No! Don't do it!"
• Silicon Valley Diva from Blog on the Wall shudders when she thinks back to her teenage years
• Kim from Passion & Art says no one asks to be raped
• Chefdruck from Chefdruck Musings gives her own testimony
• Jessica from It's My Life thinks about when the best isn't the best after all
• Robin from Who's the Boss gives her testimony
• Gayle from Everyday I Write the Book reviews Testimony
• Christina from The Carpool Reader goes through the evolution of a marriage
• Linsey from Me Too You is glad she got caught

More posts will be put up throughout the day on our writer's personal sites, so be sure to check back to follow along.

.... and if you have a post up on YOUR personal site on this topic, please leave a comment here and we will add your link!

About the book - from the publisher Hachette Book Group:

At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape. A Pandora's box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voices--those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal--that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment.

Writing with a pace and intensity surpassing even her own greatest work, Anita Shreve delivers in TESTIMONY a gripping emotional drama with the impact of a thriller. No one more compellingly explores the dark impulses that sway the lives of seeming innocents, the needs and fears that drive ordinary men and women into intolerable dilemmas, and the ways in which our best intentions can lead to our worst transgressions.

Past Silicon Valley Moms Group Book Clubs have included:

• Comfort Food by Kate Jacobs
• Much to Your Chagrin by Suzanne Guilette
  
• It Started with Pop-Tarts by Lori Hanson
• Who By Fire by Diana Spechler
• The White Trash Moms Handbook by Michelle Lamar
• Writing Motherhood by Lisa Garrigues
• The Vaccine Book by Dr. Robert W. Sears
• The Other Mother by Gwendolen Gross

Battling Eczema

I am fighting a war.  A war against itchy skin. Against red splotchy dry patches all over my 2 year old's legs and arms.  I have been fighting battle after battle for the last 2 years, mostly to no avail. Only now, can I tentatively say I may be starting to win.

It is hard for me to remember when the eczema problems started because it just seems like it's been forever. I remember occasional outbreaks when he was six months old. I recall the first time I was truly concerned with the eczema was a few days after his one year shots. I was leaving the next day for a mom's only trip to New York City and suddenly, my baby broke out into a full body rash. I was accustomed to the eczema on his lower legs, and sometimes his arms, but never on his torso. I was extremely worried he was having some sort of negative reaction to his immunization. It also crossed my mind that he could be having an of allergic response to the antibiotic he was on for an ear infection.

Beating the Heat on the Cheap?

The heat has hit, full bore.

And when we moved North, I didn't even put "central air" on my list of rental housing criteria. So we are starting to melt.

Here are my top 5 ways to beat the heat on the cheap. What are yours?

• Wading pool in the shade. At least outside in the shade, the air moves. And the water is a little bit cooler than the air, even if not by much. Adults can soak our feet, and little kids can splash around, making a wet mess and having a blast.

Farewell Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson...and My Youth

I think I might officially be "a woman of a certain age." Two icons of my youth have died. On the same day. I don't even know how to assess this. I now understand what denial means. I can't really believe it to be true. I suppose the daze I'm in is similar to how my parents felt when John Lennon and Elvis died.

I was heartbroken on a January day in 1993 when Audrey Hepburn died. Friends even called to check in on me and sent me condolence cards. Her death would have surely jammed up the Twitter stream had such a thing existed. Audrey was my hero, my idol. But she was from a time past that I had romanticized. She was, and still is, a part of me, a vision of what I aspire to be. Posters and memorabilia still clutter my office. But she was never a part of my contemporary times.

Farrah Fawcett, however unlike the marvelous Audrey Hepburn, was iconic to my youth. She was a vision in red. I speak of that iconic bathing suit poster that was ubiquitous on every teenage boy's bedroom wall. I think my older brother even had a puzzle of that photo. I begged to stay up late to watch Charlie's Angels, and it was never the same after Cheryl Ladd replaced Farrah. I was a shy, dorky girl with a big brain and little confidence. I dragged my feet and rarely looked up through my scruffy bangs. I never thought I'd be pretty or desirable. I never thought I'd be like Farrah. She was gloriously glamourous yet affable and sweet at the same time. And how I coveted that feathered hair. I might carry a comb in my back pocket tomorrow to honor her. Oh, and that cancer special about her that aired recently? Well, it made me see her in a whole new light. She wore the mantle of courage that surpassed her outer beauty.

Spoiled Brats or Tech Savvy Kids?

For most of us, there is no denying that technology rules our world. Sometimes I look back and wonder how I ever survived without a digital camera.  I don't know how to read a map, and I don't need to, because I have a GPS.  I don't go anywhere without my Blackberry.  Most of us have laptops, video game systems, and Ipods. 

Even though I'm only 25, I remember when it wasn't like this.  We didn't have a family computer until I was in high school.  I had a cell phone at 16 for safety purposes.  It was an old brick of a cell phone (we liked to call them the Zack Morris phones) that I rarely used except to call home if I would be late.

 So seeing a young child playing a Nintendo DS, using a cell phone, or listening to an Ipod, still floors me.  I used to see this and think that those kids were incredibly spoiled.  I imagined these little brats (this is old me talking, ok?) begging their parents for these new, expensive items, and their parents folding to their precious little darlings' every whim.

My daughter can read: the end of my life as I know it.

It's over. My kid can now read.  Okay, not Tolstoy or even Nancy Drew but "I just saw your profile and you seem really nice" or, "I need to up my meds", yeah, that, THAT she's all over.

Now you'd think I'd be thrilled my little baby can read and if it were to help me to somehow make my life as a mother easier, I would say, "Yay, great" but my emails? I'm starting to think I should have let her repeat another year of pre-school.  I wear my heart on my sleeve and the filter on my mouth got lost somewhere in the birth canal, so the way I've dealt with it since my child was born, was to write and spell everything.

Now, I knew this day was coming and I'm not fully unprepared as I'd decided many months ago to learn Spanish, only that alternative doesn't seem to be working too well as no one in my circle of friends understands anything that falls in between when I say "hola" and "Adios".

Continue reading on our sister site, Los Angeles Moms Blog.

Are our children undereducated?

This morning, as I was mopping the hardwoods (a task long overdue), my kids were watching a TV show.  I overheard a commercial for teaching your baby to read.  My daughter turned to me and asked “Mommy, when I was a baby, did you teach me to read?”  I replied that when she was a baby, we were too busy playing to learn how to read.  I then had the thought “who in the world would want a baby to read?”  We won’t even talk about the fact that the commercial claimed that babies can read before they can talk (and to this I ask how would you know?).  I can see a lot of negatives to having a baby who can read.

My kids are very close to being able to read, and I am nearing the end of my use of ‘signs as rules’ method of parenting.  “You can’t climb that fence.  See- that sign says no climbing the fence”, as I point to a sign for handicap parking.  For some reason, me telling them not to do something means an instant fight and negotiation, but when the sign says it, they accept it and move on.  Why would I want them to read early?   I have not pushed them to learn letters, or numbers, or colors.  I know these things will come in time, and childhood is fleeting, so I am not in any hurry to push academics.

Step One

My weight has been something I have struggled with ever since I had my first child five years ago. It started with a little bit of post partum weight and quickly turned into the weight of three babies in four years. My eating habits were the least of my worries and my exercise routine consisted of lifting babies and chasing toddlers as they run away with crayons or cell phones.  

I've mentioned before that it was a goal of mine to do a complete overhaul of my family's diet this Summer. We've begun making the small changes by adding more fresh fruits and vegetables and limiting the amount of processed foods in our house.  It's a slow process, but worth the time and effort.  While we are working to make changes in our home, I knew I needed to make some personal changes.  Just for me.  

Today I took step one.