I'm freeeeee! Kind of!

The first day of school is upon us (tomorrow), my friends.  And do you know what that means?  FREEDOM!  Well not entirely, but in my case close enough.  Freedom from a little 6 ½ year old little stink in my face all the time telling me he’s bored even though I have the over $200 credit card bill that PROVES that I did more than my fair share to entertain his ungrateful little butt!  He wants to be going going going 24/7 and I get it!  He has boundless amounts of self-replenishing and self-sustaining BOY ENERGY that no mother who has never had boys could ever even begin to find fathomable!  I mean if you had brothers or nephews you helped a lot with, you might get it, but when it’s your own child, it’s a whole ‘nother level of WTFuck-ness! I am 1000% sure that the moms of girls only would have plenty of stories to tell me about girl issues, too!  Our little ones are a hoot one minute, a pain in the neck the next, but they will always be the joy and center of our worlds!

I write this as I sit here still fuming that I could not get B to go to bed for the life of me tonight.  He literally got up 6 times before I chased him with threats and a small amount of profanity back into his room and threatened to ground him the rest of the week if he came out again.  I’ve had peace for the past hour, though, so all is well!  As soon as I lie down and turn on my reiki music and drift off into sleepy sleepy land, I’ll be a-ok!  Till my alarm goes off at 6:30AM!  Ha ha!  This momma here is NOT a morning person!

Where does baby D fall in all of this, you might ask?  Well… He is a handful right now.  He gets into everything and is now, at 21 months, climbing onto the barstools in our kitchen and getting items off of the counter.  Yep, he’s keeping me on my toes.  So it’s not like I’m getting a break from everything.  The difference is that a 21 month old doesn’t get bored!  They find shit to do, whether it’s being good and playing with a toy or watching a short TV show or grabbing everything on the counter he can find and throwing it onto the floor.  Oh and how could I forget the best part!  He likes to get the hand soap and pump it all over the floor and himself, too.  Makes bath time a synch!  

In conclusion, I extend to all of you mommies and daddies with school aged stinkers out there a HAPPY BACK TO SCHOOL salute!  And I have a special message to the stay at home moms (like me) who have had a lot to deal with during the summer.  It’s ok to be happy to be rid of your kid(s) for several hours a day.  Sometimes, absence can make the heart grow fonder.  Send them off with a delicious and healthy lunch, a kiss, a hug and a “have a great day, sweetie” and then breathe.  Just breathe. 

From Super Mom to Psycho Mom

Have you ever had one of those days where you woke up in a great mood and felt like super mom?! Those days are few and far between for me in all honesty. Walking train wreck here!!!!!! Anyway... The difference between a great day and an atrocious day can be as simple as missing a dose of my bipolar meds. I'll talk more in depth about the medication situation in another entry because it's a lot, let me tell ya! So today I woke up and I felt like a million bucks! Ready to take on the world (aka my children)! Haha! So majority of today was fabulous! For starters, little D, my 20 month old, slept till 1pm after going to bed at 8pm last night and sleeping all night. Sounds crazy, right? He's been doing that the past few days in a row, but there's no change in his usual super happy-go-lucky behavior. He just eats more, which leads me to believe he's in a growth spurt! And that's always fantastic! All of us mommies want strong, healthy kids and my little dude is on his way! Soooo prior to D waking up, I was having a blast with my oldest, B. We talked and laughed and made kool-aid pops! My hubs (aka Dad) was here too working from home. So it was a pleasant morning!

Now B is 6 1/2 and going into 1st grade next month. He is a little behind on reading so dad has been working on that with him and I have taken on writing/spelling and somehow ended up doing math with him, too, which is odd. It's odd because I'm ridiculously mathematically challenged! No lie dude! But it would be sad sad sad if I couldn't do 1st grade math, so it's fine! I'll be good to help till right around jr. high, let's say! Well today's writing and reading started off fine. D had just woken up and all was well. I don't know what the hell happened, but I snapped when B wouldn't focus on his work. Now, I am fully aware that he is 6 and his attention span is short. We only work for 20-30 mins at a time. But he was being completely unruly and it completely flipped my 180 switch. I went from feeling like super mom to feeling like that psycho mom who had completely lost her sanity. But let's be honest, in my case, you can't lose something you never had! Haha! For real, though, people! Ok back to me turning into psycho mom. There was yelling and I became soooooo IRRITABLE! I had to find my zen! Breathe in with the positive and out with the negative. And REPEAT! Like 20 times!

So this situation has lead me to brainstorm about what triggered this meltdown. It's not an uncommon feeling for me. Was it mental illness (my bipolar)? Probably. Which, by the way is not EXCLUSIVELY limited to mania (extreme highs) or depression. Severe irritability is a part of the mix also. To quasi-briefly explain my particular bipolar situation, I suffer from type I bipolar disorder and rapid cycling bipolar disorder. Type I previously known as manic depressive disorder is most severe of the 2. With type I, there are periods of mania that for me can last weeks or months as well as depressive phases that can be equally as long, with times of "normalcy" sprinkled in here and there. Rapid cycling is cycling through 2-3 or more drastic mood changes throughout the course of one day. From extreme anger to extreme despair to euphoric happiness, etc. It makes you feel like an absolute nut job that belongs in the damn loony bin!!!!!!!! I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, if I had any. So all of that being said, I have just now come to the conclusion that I am rapid cycling today. Booooo! Pray for me people! I have no clue how this is going to pan out. It hasn't happened in longer than I can remember. Over a year at the very least. I will have some time away from my children tonight, which (theoretically) should work wonders.

I am aware that these types of feelings are not always associated with mental illness, but I am VERY self aware and intuitive. Especially with what's normal as far as my moods go. I feel for anyone who EVER feels this way. We ALL have those psycho mom moments. Some of us more often than others. But we need to support one another through these hard times and empower one another as mothers and more importantly, as women.

Depression with children and bouncing back from it with YOUR super powers

For those of you who haven’t read my blog bio, I am bipolar.  I do not indentify myself by being bipolar, nor have I EVER use it as an excuse for any certain type of behavior.  But it affects me in many many ways.  Being a mom can make things even more complicated.  My mood is somber today and I am doing my best to turn that around.  I have many blessings and things to be grateful for, but I’m only human and we all have our good days and rough days.  But what I’d like to do is share my emotional journey from the past 2 weeks.  I will not recount the reason for my depression, because that’s more personal than I feel I need to get on a blog post, but I will talk about how I dealt with those feeling of depression as a mother and a wife.

I once had a friend who wasn’t a mother and had no desire to be a mother.  She was only 3 years younger than me and she was becoming what I thought to be a good friend.  That fizzled out as quickly as it started.  She said something to me that put her into perspective for me. We were both having a rough day one day with anxiety and whatnot.  She was at work and I was at home with my 2 boys.  We had a small argument via text message and it made me realize that she and I couldn’t be friends.  She (angrily) told me over text that I had things easy being able to have my anxiety in the comfort of my home, while she had to be at work in front of her coworkers.  I was livid.  I told her that she has NO fucking idea what it’s like to raise 2 children who depend on me day in and day out.  I said, I don’t get breaks or vacations or sick days.  And when I have a mental breakdown, I still have to take care of them like nothing is wrong.  I have to be strong for them so that they feel secure and know that everything is ok.  That was the breaking point for me and her.  We tried to mend things after that, but a new friendship can’t take a major blow like that and make it.  So needless to say, I don’t talk to her anymore. 

My point in telling that story was that this chick made me realize how amazing I am.  I deal with a lot and I handle it.  It’s not always easy, but I always handle it.  I feel like most of us mommies don’t give ourselves enough credit for the things we do, because we are so focused on what we didn’t do or what we feel like we could have done better.  And you know what that type of attitude leads to?  Feelings of inadequacy and that’s right, depression.  We all need a reminder at times that we are awesome and that we are capable of whatever we put our minds to.  Do you even realize how powerful your mind is?  We have fucking super powers!!!  All of us!  If you can learn to channel your thoughts, energy and feelings to put all of your focus on exactly what you want, you can manifest miracles.  I wholeheartedly believe that and I have manifested many things in my life that I never thought would come to fruition.  But they did.  And you wanna know why?  It’s because I believed that I deserved it.  

My husband said something profound to me yesterday.  Honestly it wasn’t that profound, but it caused me to have an epiphany.  He said that as much as I talk about the concept of focusing on what one wants as opposed to focusing on what one doesn’t want, I sure do complain a lot about not feeling well.  And he was right.  In the depression funk I was in, I had completely forgotten about that.  In that very moment, I made a decision for myself and for my family that I would be more conscious of how I react to situations and how I choose to feel.  It’s a matter of always choosing happiness over misery.  It’s easier said than done when you’re first bringing ALL of your feelings and thoughts to your conscious mind, but it gets easier as you keep practicing.  As I said before, we’re all human and we will all have our tough days, but don’t dwell on it or wallow in the self pity for too long.  Remind yourself that you’re a bad ass with super powers and that you can handle this shit!!!!!!

A new found bond

Hindsight shows us a lot of things.  Some of those things are great and we are happy to have had that epiphany.  While others are extremely painful and leave you wondering how you could possibly have ever lived that way.  My hindsight epiphany came a few years ago.  My oldest son (let’s call him B) and I haven’t really gotten along in the past a few years, which says something quite sad because he’s only 6 ½ right now.  Things were dandy until he turned 3.  Fuck terrible 2’s!  Whoever started that one should be slapped and so should their mom!  Countless times, I’ve talked to numerous parents and every last one of them has said, oh 2 wasn’t bad at all, but 3 was awful!  Terrible 2’s is an absolute myth and I have the emotional scars to prove it!!!!  So B’s terrifying 3 stage was literally the worst year of my life!!!!  He was too young to be reasoned with.  Spankings (in the privacy of our home) worked and were one of the only ways to get his attention.  And I DO NOT want to hear anyone judge me about spanking my child.  I owe you no explanation.  To each their own.  If you don’t like it, shut your mouth and keep it moving.  Now, moving on.  There were so many a times I walked out of stores crying my eyes out with him in the front of the cart because of all the many things he did and tantrums he threw in the stores.  It wasn’t easy, by any means.  And it wasn’t about the stares, whispers and mean looks from people in the stores.  I gave them evil looks right back and on an occasion told an old bag to mind her business.  

The problem stemmed from what I realized in hindsight.  Which is the fact that I never bonded with my oldest son and I will NEVER in any of my days understand how things went the way they did.  From age 3 on, he had an incredible way of pushing my buttons and making me about lose my shit on a regular basis.  That terrifying 3 year, I decided that I didn’t want any more children.  How was I going to handle the one I had?  I couldn’t even fathom the idea of another.  As time went on, things increasingly got better with his behavior (at home), but he still made me angry SO often by just doing what he was good at with me.

Fast forward to today!  I actually just got done crying my eyes out like a little baby.  Happy tears, people!  Happy tears!  I honestly thought, and said to my husband before, that I felt like I’d never have a bond with our big B.  I had an inferiority complex because I felt like he liked and loved his dad more than he did me, from the time he was a crawler on.  But it’s not that.  He just has a different dynamic with his dad.  His dad works on things around the house and B would rather do that any day over going outside to play sports.  Funny kid!  But awesome!  We’ll talk about his talents in another post so I can brag about how damn smart my kid is and annoy you all!  Haha!!  I’m always going off of my topic!  Back to it.

So tonight, B and I had a really nice time together.  Dadda (as he and our youngest dude, D call him) worked late tonight so after I put D to bed, it was just B and I.  He has been defiant and talking back a lot, so I had a heart to heart and very calm talk with him about that.  After that we just laughed and he told me about his games with his favorite cousin and his imaginary friend (which I LOVE that he has an imaginary friend!!) and the tooth fairy because he lost a tooth yesterday and she brought him money and a toy and wrote him a really nice note!  He said it was the best day ever.  Anyway…  My point is that tonight I realized that my oldest son and I have a chance.  I had given up hope of ever being really close with him, as ridiculous as that sounds.  Tonight proved to me that he loves me to the moon and back, as I do him and always have.  I want him to know that he can talk to me about anything and right now is a key time to get that into his head.  I think he gets it already because a good chunk of my day is pretending to really care about his My Singing Monsters game, Minecraft and whatever funny things happen on his favorite episodes of Dinotrux or Talking Tom!  LOLOLOL!  He’s an incredible little person and I am proud to have had a huge hand in raising him thus far.  Of course my husband has too (although he tends to work a lot).  But because of my husband and his incredible work ethic and desire to care for his family, I’m here 24/7 molding B and D and shaping them.  B is turning out to be an amazing boy and I could not be more proud.