This business of being a mom

One of my favorite things to do at the doctor's office is to read the baby and parenting magazines.  They are always good for a laugh.  I'm convinced they aren't written by real parents of real children.  Maybe the writers have one or two children and most likely a nanny; but I highly doubt they have any idea what it's like to juggle three young children day in and day out.

The most recent bit of humor was in the form of advise about pacifiers.  The article said that in order to make sure pacifiers were sanitary, parents should throw them away and get new ones every two weeks.  All I could think was, "What kind of crazy person would actually throw away a binky after only two weeks?"  Binkies are like gold in our house.  I spend most of my waking hours and sanity keeping track of where the various binkies are located and which twin prefers which one.  I don't even bother sanitising binkies after they fall on the floor of the grocery store.  There is no way on earth I could ever throw away a perfectly good binky after only two weeks of use.    

The sad thing is that there is probably more than one harried mama out there who has now added "rotate pacifiers" to her ever expanding to do list.

As you can tell I don't put a lot of stock in "parenting advise."  Especially when it comes from "official sources." I still haven't read a single parenting book since the girls were born.  Occasionally I'll read links to parenting blogs and websites that my friends post on facebook - but usually I just skim and read the bullet points that back up what I already do as a Mom.

Pretty much everything I've learned about how to raise my kids I'm received from one of three sources.  1. Observing other Moms - either in real life or on their blogs/facebook pages.   2. Inspiration - Awesome ideas that come into my mind.  3. Prior Experience - Taking things I learned before I was a mom and using them in my current situation.

Today I want to talk source number Three.  I want to tell you how some of the things from my work experience help me as a mom.   This post is dedicated to my dear friend Melissa.  Melissa and I worked for the same billing company for 2 1/2 years.  She recently left that company after working there for over 6 years to become a stay at home mom.  It's been a transition to say the least.  I can relate.  It's been over 2 1/2 years since I left that place, and there are times I still think I work there.

One thing that helped me with the change from full time worker to stay at home mom was to incorporate the company's core values into my way of thinking as a mom.  The values are: Accountability, No Surprises, Continuous Improvement, and Exceed Expectations.  Here are some ways I've put them to use in my daily life.

Accountability - Accountability used to mean (among other things) that I was billing with at least 99% accuracy and 99% timeliness.  If I had errors or late bills I had to explain why.  Now a days it's a lot harder to define.  For one, I'm accountable for EVERYTHING that goes on in this house.  Do we have enough food, are there enough clean clothes, how many diapers do we have left, is the house clean enough, are the kids all happy, the list goes on and on and on.  And at the end of the day the responsibility for it all rests on my shoulders.  I would go crazy if I tried to put a number or percent or even an emoticon on each of these things.

So instead I focus on the flip side of accountability.  Recognition! I'm accountable for all the GOOD things that happen in our family just as much as I'm accountable for the bazillion other things.

Early in my days as a stay at home mom I realized that I needed praise from Brandon.  I missed getting recognition from co-workers, points for doing good work, and most of all I missed a paycheck for heaven's sake.  I told Brandon that I needed him to tell me that I was doing a good job.  And he did, and still does.

Yesterday Derrick inexplicably woke up screaming at 3:00 in the morning.  Before I could quiet him down Charlotte woke up.  She in turn woke up Lydia, who eventually found her way into my bed and kept incessantly patting my face while I tried to sleep.  (It sounds cute until it happens to you at 4:30 in the morning.)  Brandon later sent me this text message:

Beautiful, thank you so much for loving me enough and loving the kids enough to deal with the stress of being Mom.  I know it drives you crazy a lot and it is frustrating but thank you so much for always being there.  For me and for them.  It means a lot.  

Yeah, it's not a pay check, but it's a lot more meaningful.

No Surprises - Communication was a big thing at my previous job.  It's also super important here at home.  I've found that if I explain things to the kids ahead of time then they are so much better behaved when it comes time to do it.

When it was time to move to Texas I was worried how the girls would handle the change.  I told the girls, "we are going to leave our house and drive drive drive to a new home so we can be with Daddy more."  They seemed to totally get the concept that everything was changing, but it was so we could be together as a family.  

A recent example is how we said "bye bye bottles."  I want to do a whole post on this later, but basically around the end of February I started telling the girls that on Derrick's birthday the bottles would go "bye bye."  They started saying, "Dewick's birthday - one candle - bye bye bottles"  all the time.  When his birthday came and it was time for bed I was worried they would cry for their bottles - especially when Derrick still got one.  They did ask for their bottles and I said, "no bottles went bye bye remember."  And they said, "Dewick's birthday - bye bye bottles."  And they were just fine.  (The M&M's I gave them might have helped a little bit too)

Continuous Improvement - I think a lot of us moms (me included) forget that we don't have to be perfect yet.  I love the concept of continuous improvement because it lets me admit things like, "okay today totally sucked!  What can I change so tomorrow doesn't suck as much?"  I'm constantly trying out new modifications to our daily "routine" to see if I can find something that works better.

Yesterday I decided that we would go to the park right after breakfast.  Usually I tell myself that we'll go later in the day, but then it gets hot, Derrick falls asleep, or we get sucked into a Toy Story marathon and we never make it to the park.  Going right after breakfast insured that we enjoyed some time outside and that we were all dressed for the day before noon.

Another tweek to the routine was to start doing all my major cleaning on Thursday.  I had been doing it earlier in the week, but by the weekend everything was a mess again.  Cleaning on Thursday means there is less for us to do when we straighten up the whole house on Saturday morning.

Pandora is another new addition to our lives.  Thanks to Pandora radio I can play Disney songs for the kids whenever the house seems a little too quiet (or angry).  They love hearing songs that they recognize from the movies they've seen.

Exceed Manage Expectations - this is the only one that I had to modify.  It's possible to exceed expectations in the work force.  A job is only 8 hours a day and you can leave everything at your desk, go home, and forget about it all.  Not so much as a mom.  You're mom ALL the time.  There is a never ending list of expectations about what you should be doing and how your kids should be acting.  (See earlier story about throwing away pacifiers)

In order to survive as a mom you have to manage expectations.  Sometimes this means giving clear directions about what you will and wont do.  Here are some examples (that for some reason all have to do with church callings):

When I was pregnant with Derrick I was serving in the RS Presidency.  I made it very clear to the other presidency members that I couldn't do much with the calling the last month before his birth.  And that I would not be doing anything at all for 6 weeks after.  I knew it would take all my energy to just take care of my family's needs during that time.  (I ended up getting released right after Derrick was born anyway.)

When Brandon went to basic training I was assigned to visit teach four women.  I told the RS President that I could only handle teaching two at the most.  At first she told me that everyone was assigned four people.  I was like, "well you can keep me assigned to four, but I'm only going to visit two."  She changed my assignment so I only had two.

I could probably come up with several more examples of me saying "No."  I'm pretty good at it.  But here is an example of me saying yes.  I was called to be the Adult Gospel Doctrine teacher right before Brandon went to basic training.  This was basically my dream calling so I said yes right away.  Some people wondered if I could handle such a demanding calling on top of the kids.  However, I knew that as long as someone took care of Derrick I could teach the class.  And I was able to teach it every single week.   Did I have handouts, treats, cool activities - no, but I did what I was called to do.    

These four values Accountability, No Surprises, Continuous Improvement, and Manage Expectations aren't the only things I use as a mom.  But thinking about them often helps me feel a little bit like I am still a professional person and not a person desperately trying to be the type of mom that the parenting magazines think I should be.