I recently was asked how to find joy being a stay at home mom. Next month will be 5 years since I resigned from my full time job and took on the role of being a stay at home mom.
I wouldn’t change anything over the past 5 years, but it did take a while to accept my role and find joy within it.
My boys {aka the twins} baseball season just ended. Their coach nominated them to try out for the leagues All Stars baseball team. Out of 110 kids only 20 kids were invited to try out. Out of the 20 trying out, only 13 kids would be selected. Knowing those odds that 7 kids would not make it I wanted to prepare my boys and let them know that one, both or none of them could be picked. If they didn’t make the All Stars team it was OK and they should be proud just to have been nominated.
How to spend quality time with your child. You don’t have to do much or even spend a lot of money to spend quality time with your child. Just spending time with them is important. I’ve put together a list of 5 ways to spend quality time with your child.
Becoming a mom changes your life. You have to deal with this little infant 24/7 and somehow you forget all about yourself. You become overwhelmed with this child, your home, your spouse and work that it just becomes a way of life. We get so used to putting everyone before us, that many of us moms become depressed, lonely and lost.
Are you looking for what to do for Valentines Day? Does your budget hinder what you want to do. Why not stay home and have dinner at home instead. A few years ago, I was racking my brain on what to do for valentines day and it was really hard. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money because my husband and I don’t really make a big deal about celebrating Valentine’s Day. I figured I had to make dinner anyways, so why not have a fancy dinner.
16 years ago my life changed. As a young inexperienced first time mother, I almost killed my daughter and not a day goes by that I don’t feel blessed that God had a hand on our lives.
The week before my daughters 3rd birthday, I noticed that she wasn’t feeling well. She had no energy and just laid around all of the time. She always seemed to get sick around the holidays and I thought maybe she had the flu. With her 3rd birthday being the next day, I decided to take her into the urgent care pediatrician – in hopes that he could give her some medicine to make her feel better. I didn’t want her to miss her birthday party, but never in my mind could I imagine what was about to happen.
But before I go on with the story, let me give you a quick back story and tell you that doctors intimidate me. I’m not intimated by many people, but for some reason doctors intimidated me. Perhaps it was their years of schooling, their white coats or my lack of understanding of medical terms, whatever it was – I always took them at their word and had I not questioned this doctor, it’s possible that my daughter would be dead now.
I believe the doctor didn’t know what was wrong with my daughter. So he lied to me, told me she had an ear infection and gave me a prescription for amoxicillin. I believe he choose to tell me she had an ear infection because it was not something I could see visibly. I thought it was strange that she had an ear infection, since she hadn’t been tugging at her ear and I couldn’t grasp why that make her so tired? Something just didn’t seem right, I guess you can say my mother’s intuition kicked in. So I stepped out of my comfort zone and started questioning the doctor. I can’t recall all of the questions I had asked, except for one. “Was it normal for her to be this yellow?” Then he replied with, “That’s not her natural color?” I said no and I guess something triggered in him to make him want to do some more research and told us we needed to get a blood test.
It was a Saturday and all of the labs were closed, except for the adult urgent care, which was the office next to his. He told me to go over there and get her blood drawn, but they didn’t want to do it. I explained the situation, had them call the doctor and they finally agreed to draw her labs and I’m so thankful that they did. By the time we got home, we received a phone call telling us that we needed to go to emergency room right away and the on call pediatrician would be waiting for us.
We got to the emergency room and waited and waited and waited. There was no doctor to meet us and while we were waiting our daughter seemed like she was feeling better. We had been going about this for over 6 hours and were exhausted. Her birthday was in an hour and since I had scheduled an appointment for Tuesday with her pediatrician, we decided to leave the ER and go home. We told the front desk, but she didn’t seem to care, scratched our name off the list as we left. I had no idea her situation was life threatening when we left.
I don’t know who God had checking up on us, but someone did. We started getting calls at 12:30 am from the emergency room nurse asking us where we were at. This nurse tried to convince us over the phone to come back. I told her no and if this was so important, why didn’t they seen us right away. She gave a gazillion reasons, but I wasn’t listening. I’m freaked out now, in tears, not sure what to do, praying about the situation, asking God for clarification and that’s when I received a phone call from a doctor telling us we needed to come in. I thought to myself, if this doctor is taking time to call us, it must be serious, but I was still hesitant to return. I can remember him telling me that he understood if I didn’t want to go back to that ER, but I needed to take her to an ER tonight. He also promised that if I came back, they would see us right away, so we did.
As soon as we returned to the ER, they admitted her right away. While they were admitting her, I asked the doctor if she had an ear infection and he said no. What I didn’t know, was that blood test showed she had leukemic cells and she needed a blood transfusion right away because her hemoglobin level (which is basically the cells that carries oxygen from the lungs) was at a 2. The normal level for a child her age would be in the range of 11-13. That’s why it was so important for us to get bring her in. Had we not returned she probably wouldn’t have made it through the night. Later she was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia. At the time I thought what a way to celebrate her birthday. But needless did I know – that it was indeed a celebration.
There were so many things that went wrong that night. I didn’t see it at the time but God showed us grace through so many people. From the lab agreeing to the test, the person who was checking on our ER status, the nurse who called us, the doctor who called us and I’m sure even more people that I’m not aware of. I’m so thankful that I can share my story and I’m thankful that God didn’t let this dumb 24 year old mom be afraid to question a doctor and let her pride get in the way of returning. Most of all I’m thankful that God healed my child and we are able to celebrate her 19th birthday today.
Bringing up girls is hard. Girls are easily influenced by other girls, especially during the middle school years. Girls also have a tendency to let their friends control their actions. That’s why it’s important to give your daughter tools for empowerment and success.
I can remember when my daughter was in middle school and her sport of choice was gymnastics. As things got harder and the other girls on her team were making rude comments to her, she just wanted to quit. I encouraged her not too and after months of hard work, I can’t tell you how proud I was when my daughter completed her first roundoff back handspring.
If you have daughters in sports there are 4 key factors to their empowerment and success in reaching their goals.
1.) Practice. Repetitive practicing can get boring. It’s true that practice makes perfect. If you find yourself getting bored, spice it up. Download or watch some videos and learn some new techniques.
2.) Forget about the score board. All you need is to take it one step at a time. You’ve got to start and give it your best. The score isn’t what matters it really is how you play the game.
3.) Play Fair. No one likes a cheater or a poor sport. Hard work and discipline will pay off in the end. If you lose, you lose honorably.
4.) Never Give Up. No matter how hard it gets, never give up. The finish line is so worth reaching!
Having your daughter follow these key factors will not only help them succeed in sports but in everything she does in life.
With Verizon FiOS you’ll have some of the fastest internet speeds that will definitely keep your daughter focused in retaining the 4 key factors of empowerment and success, by downloading videos and learning new techniques, finding motivation online, connecting with team mates, keeping your calendar up to date and so on.
Veriozn FiOS has also created a series of videos featuring the “FiOS Football Girl” You definitely want to check out this video and show your girls. I just love it! It’s very motivational.
Verizon FiOS gives your family the connection and speed you need to play with the big boys. Share your proudest moment of your daughter’s athletic achievements at www.verizon.com/playlikeagirl. You could be chosen to win a grand prize valued at $5,000!
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Verizon. The opinions and text are all mine.
Temper Tantrums aren’t fun and I recently read a blog article about children and their temper tantrums and basically went to say that if your child throws temper tantrums you should stay home with your kids. The person who wrote it felt that these bad behavioral kids were ruining their good kids. The article offered no solution other than to stay home with your kids and not expose the world with this behavior.
That article really hit a nerve with me as if we can predict when the magical temper tantrum moment will happen. These oh so fortunate parents who have never had their kids throw a temper tantrum in public, how I wish this on thee…
You falsely believe that these are bad kids and bad parenting is going on for your child to throw a temper tantrum.
I’ve been there and it’s not pleasant. My daughter now 19, at the age of 3 threw a temper tantrum in the store. She was one of those “bad” kids. We were picking up a few items and happened to go by the toy section. She grabbed a toy and I told her she could not have it and she threw a temper tantrum. This threw me by surprise. Her first one, in the store and I was utterly embarrassed. I can still remember it to this day. She arched her back and started with the kicking, while I was holding her. As much as I wanted to let her go and drop on her head because I was so angry of this behavior I didn’t.
Disciplining her by saying no and not giving in, got me nothing but dirty looks from spectators. Had I bought her the toy, she would have stopped and everything would have been fine with the world and I would have raised a spoiled little brat. Parents and observers should have been cheering me on, saying way to go for not giving in to your child for their bad behavior.
We are so quick to judge the instance. I used to judge too! That was before I had kids, before I experienced the situation for myself and now I feel for the parent and give them a smile.
I put together 10 Do’s and Don’ts for kids with temper tantrums for parent’s and observers.
I hope this help you on how to deal with children who have temper tantrums.
What are your thoughts about the do’s and don’t of this list and how do you deal with temper tantrums?
I love having a teen driver. I get to be lazy and make her go everywhere.
This was a recent text message that I sent to my daughter and thought it would give you all a laugh.
Me: Bring home milk and soda
Her: Really I just brought home milk like two days ago.
Me: Yup and it’s gone
Her: Ughh. This time I’m buying two gallons because I don’t want to have to go to the store again in two days
Me: Get over it
Her: I might as well get cheese too because we don’t have any.
Me: Well then you should get bread too.
Her: Its annoying. You need to go grocery shopping more
Me: Probably so.
Do you have similar conversations with your teen?
How to parent a child when parents don’t play nice is something we had to deal with the other day. We were at our boys championship baseball game and one play had a parent outraged!
Last week, my boys had their championship baseball game. It was an intense game, bottom of the 5th inning and our team was up to bat. We had 2 outs and bases were loaded. Our batter ran to first, the first baseman caught the ball and would have gotten him out. However the first baseman took his foot off of the bag. The outfield umpire called him out. Our coach disputed it and the infield umpire agreed with our coach and called our player safe. This decision was huge because it brought 2 of our players home, putting us in the lead.
The parents on the other team were upset, but after the decision was made and the game went on most of the parents let it go, except the parent of the first baseman. He was outraged! He walked over to our side of the dugout and started yelling at our kids telling them how much they sucked! After doing that he was removed from the field for the remainder of the game.
Our team ended up winning the game. My boys being very excited that they won, couldn’t celebrate. They were frightened. They felt that the angry parent was going to come hunt them down and kill them for winning the game.
I can’t believe the action of this parent! It’s a little league game with a bunch of 9-10 years old! Instead of being able to celebrate they were fearful and I had to think of how to parent my child when parents don’t play nice.
Communication was key! I asked my boys, the following questions:
Why do you think the adult acted this way?
Do you think it was appropriate?
Then I explained that just because someone acts out in anger, doesn’t necessarily mean they intend to hurt us.
I also encouraged them to continue to do what they love.
Then we talked about how to treat others with kindness and respect
and we finally talked about forgiveness. Teaching the kids that we should forgive, just like God has forgiven us.
I got my kids calmed down and excited about their accomplishment. It’s terrible that we even had to get to this point because of one’s parents ignorance.
Have you ever come into contact with a situation like this? How did you deal with how to parent a child when parents don’t play nice.