lightening the load
I had some friends over on Monday night. We ate dark chocolate covered popcorn and drank wine and talked about parenting and laughed and laughed and laughed some more. One of my friends texted the next morning and said she didn't know the last time she laughed as hard.
There is something about getting together with other women that I think is just good for us moms to do. (Men and dads too, I am sure. But this post is specifically about moms. I think we worry in different ways and sometimes share things in different ways.) Privately I think we can all get bogged down with the expectations of being a mom and we can start to feel overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the responsibility of trying to successfully raise other human beings.
Sharing stories with other women, relating to other situations, offering advice, and being able to laugh about things that once seemed so difficult is good for the soul.
We've had just enough kooky things happening around here this summer to keep me on my toes. Live bats in the house on two separate occasions that needed to be sent off for rabies testing. Projectile vomiting (that was probably food poisoning) and the consequent HOUR of mopping and scrubbing and laundry and taking apart the sink (yep. so gross.) that followed. A confirmed case of lice in the family and all of the cleaning and laundry that followed that. (again, so gross.) A set of weird looking, blistery bites on Drew that I feared were brown recluse bites since we have them in our house. Connected- to- one- another smoke detectors that keep randomly going off, loudly, at crappy times to wake us all up in a panic. Three power outages in a six week period that resulted in food thrown away and us trying to sleep in a hot house with no AC or fans. Car problems. A laundry room full of water. Ants that want to take over my kitchen. A brand new teenage driver and all of the anxiety-ridden moments that it brings (to me, not to her. She LOVES it.)
But getting together with friends and laughing about it all.... it just helps. My food poisoning story was met with stories of one friend catching her child's vomit in her hand, another who pukes every time her child gets sick, and another leaving a car sickness- covered car seat and kid outfit on the side of the road. All you can do is laugh.
And evidently our single lice story is so very tame. One friend had it go through her entire family three times in one school year. Everyone shared so many lice stories that I wonder how we've been so lucky in the past that this was Kate's first time getting it.
Bats inside old Webster Groves houses... pretty common evidently.
And so on.
It was good to hear that we all deal with bickering and complaining and ten year olds who know everything. It was good to hear that we all struggle to keep kids entertained over the summer and that we all hate to have to monitor and worry about screen time. It was good to hear other moms say they were going to lose their sweet minds if they were asked one more time for a snack.
It was good to have the time with friends to lighten the load a bit.
There is something about getting together with other women that I think is just good for us moms to do. (Men and dads too, I am sure. But this post is specifically about moms. I think we worry in different ways and sometimes share things in different ways.) Privately I think we can all get bogged down with the expectations of being a mom and we can start to feel overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the responsibility of trying to successfully raise other human beings.
Sharing stories with other women, relating to other situations, offering advice, and being able to laugh about things that once seemed so difficult is good for the soul.
We've had just enough kooky things happening around here this summer to keep me on my toes. Live bats in the house on two separate occasions that needed to be sent off for rabies testing. Projectile vomiting (that was probably food poisoning) and the consequent HOUR of mopping and scrubbing and laundry and taking apart the sink (yep. so gross.) that followed. A confirmed case of lice in the family and all of the cleaning and laundry that followed that. (again, so gross.) A set of weird looking, blistery bites on Drew that I feared were brown recluse bites since we have them in our house. Connected- to- one- another smoke detectors that keep randomly going off, loudly, at crappy times to wake us all up in a panic. Three power outages in a six week period that resulted in food thrown away and us trying to sleep in a hot house with no AC or fans. Car problems. A laundry room full of water. Ants that want to take over my kitchen. A brand new teenage driver and all of the anxiety-ridden moments that it brings (to me, not to her. She LOVES it.)
But getting together with friends and laughing about it all.... it just helps. My food poisoning story was met with stories of one friend catching her child's vomit in her hand, another who pukes every time her child gets sick, and another leaving a car sickness- covered car seat and kid outfit on the side of the road. All you can do is laugh.
And evidently our single lice story is so very tame. One friend had it go through her entire family three times in one school year. Everyone shared so many lice stories that I wonder how we've been so lucky in the past that this was Kate's first time getting it.
Bats inside old Webster Groves houses... pretty common evidently.
And so on.
It was good to hear that we all deal with bickering and complaining and ten year olds who know everything. It was good to hear that we all struggle to keep kids entertained over the summer and that we all hate to have to monitor and worry about screen time. It was good to hear other moms say they were going to lose their sweet minds if they were asked one more time for a snack.
It was good to have the time with friends to lighten the load a bit.
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