Life in the Green House

I’m actually going back a few weeks for some of these posts and I’ve learned my lesson about sharing immediately. I know there were so many others I wanted to share, I’ll try to be more on top of it.

•  The Mommy Wars by Kristin at The Little Princess Diaries. I love this post from Kristin so much, if you aren’t reading her blog, you’re missing out. 

• Sometimes No Means Yes! from Sister Fitness (part of the Build ‘Em Up, Remembering You Series) I could relate to this post on so many levels. It’s true, sometimes we really have to say “no” in order to say “yes” to things that need us more. I’ve been working on this since it was one of my goals for the new year, but it’s hard to break the cycle sometimes.

• Outdoor Chalkboard Goodness by Darci at The Good Life Blog. Oh, Darci, this is just fantastic! So much so, that I’ve asked Allen to include one in the new playset design.

• What An Instagram Picture Won’t Tell You by Tara Lowery for CourtneyDefeo.com. Tara wrote an honest and real post about parenting moments you don’t see.

• The Word and My Boys by Erin Carroll for CourtneyDefeo.com. I love how Erin rights about faith and I love to see how she is parenting her boys. They have a beautiful relationship and her words never fail to inspire me.

I just finished up this gem:

I didn’t really intend on this post this morning, but I have a long weekend ahead and I didn’t finish the post I intended for today. I haven’t had a question and answer post on the blog in sometime so I thought this would be a great time to start.

The floor is open and there isn’t a specific topic, ask me anything. I’ll actually be turning the tables and asking you a few questions next week

Just leave a comment and ask away!

Last week (or maybe the week before) I saw a link-up on Becky’s blog and I immediately knew I wanted to take part. Anytime I’m asked to give a bio or I write one of those random things post, I always share some version of the same things. I thought this would be a good way to let you know a little more, from a completely different perspective. I sent Allen a text the other day and he agreed, then I had to send him another text to remind him and one more for good measure. He promptly responded after the third text. Third.

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at some of the things he wrote. Also, since it’s my blog I think it’s only fair to explain these, from my perspective. I basically just asked him for a random list, which meant I gave him complete control over something I would be posting for everyone to read. You know that was huge for me, right? Jokes aside, there are times when I’m certain he knows me better than I know myself  (I might have stole that line from a country song, I can’t remember if it was just in my head or if George Strait put it there). And I’m joking again, which is sure sign that I need to just go ahead and give up the goods.

1. She is GREAT at timing the gas light to come on in her Tahoe just before any time I drive it. He really capitalized that word, which normally means someone is raising their voice. I’m positive if he were the voice-raising-kind it would be completely appropriate to capitalize in this instance. I absolutely despise pumping gas. I can’t tell you the last time I had to do it for myself and I’d like to keep it that way. I’ve been known to suggest a DQ run (because we all know he can’t refuse ice cream) after dinner to avoid getting gas on my way to work the next morning. 
2. Almost every new person we meet says she looks like Marsha Brady or “one of the Olsen twins” or “some country singer.” Believe it or not, I tend to be pretty shy. I’m not striking up conversations in elevators with random people, I’m so awkward when it comes to small talk. Oh, but people aren’t afraid to strike up conversations with me to tell me that I look like one of the above mentioned. Maybe it’s my hair or maybe I have a familiar face but it happens all of the time. I don’t get the Olsen twin remark as much since their image has changed, maybe I aligned with their more wholesome image. People who grew up watching The Brady Bunch always peg me as Marsha Brady and I randomly get a country singers’ name thrown at me from time to time. Most recently it was the check-out lady at Publix who said, honey, you should be singing country music. Please do me a favor and say that with a southern drawl. I just smiled and thought, I think being able to sing is a big requirement. I’m pretty sure Allen added this because he loves to see me turn 6 shades of red in public, or make it a game and count how many times it happens during the span of a vacation.
3. A bug is no different than an axe murderer to her. Bugs, I can’t. I really just can’t. I automatically scream and run in the other direction. I try not to act like a 12 year old girl but I can’t help it, just typing this makes me shudder. He’ll tell you that he thought I was overreacting until he heard me scream once when I thought I was by myself. He came running because he thought it was a true emergency. Thank goodness he did, who else would have killed that bug?
4. It makes her happy if I turn the Keurig on in the mornings. Clearly, he just wants me to admit that I ask him to do this nearly every morning. In my defense, I only want him to do it when we need to add water. I’m obviously lazy in the mornings, and I need that coffee to be a nicer person.
5. If we are out of town, she doesn’t ask me where I would like to eat… She asks Twitter. Guilty. I won’t go into the specifics of his track record when it comes to randomly choosing the dining location on trips. It’s not good. I do turn to Twitter, and people who have eaten at wonderful places (usually local people who know what’s up) give me the best advice. I need to remind him of the amazing food we ate in Chattanooga thanks to a few Twitter friends.
6. She absolutely loves being a mother. Indeed, I don’t think an explanation is necessary.
7. If a shoe is missing, then someone “put it somewhere.” She will cry. This is actually true. I seem to be missing a shoe at least once per week. I always think “someone must have put it somewhere else, because I know I left it right here.” Maybe I say that out loud more than I realized. I do cry. You can cry over shoes, if you’re a girl.
8. Just before her c-section, she put on makeup and fixed her hair.  If you don’t know, I was nearly 41 weeks when I was induced with Braylen and I still managed to spend an entire day in labor. When my doctor said a c-section was the next step, but it would be about 30 minutes, I decided to freshen up my hair and makeup. I’m the only one who didn’t think it was a crazy idea.
9. She may pass out at any given moment… I actually passed out recently, while I was getting ready for work. I was talking to Allen and scrolling through Facebook when I saw a post-op picture of someone’s graphic wound. The next thing I know my head is killing me and I’m on the bathroom floor. The tile is not friendly. I wish I could tell you how many times I’ve passed out, anytime I’ve ever gotten my blood taken, sometimes when I get a shot or go to see someone in the hospital after surgery. I can’t handle the cutting and poking and blood. I will pass out every single time.
10. She really, really wants to like vegetables. I’m not close-minded when it comes to veggies, they just taste bad to me. I can eat them sometimes, like when I’m on a diet and starving. Other than that, I just sneak them into my smoothies and juices and take 2 Flinstone’s a day.
11. She always rounds down.  It’s shopping math, he just doesn’t like it as much as I do. If I spend $200 it’s always “around $150″ to Allen. Never round up, round down to stay out of trouble.
12. She would be lost without her planner. I do love my planner and making lists.
13. She never calls Braylen by her name, unless Braylen is in trouble. She’s BK or Bray or Ray or anything shortened. She was even Lucy for awhile and I’m not sure why. She doesn’t like it one bit, she always says, “uhhh mom, jus’ say Braylen Kate ’cause that’s my name. Okay?”
14. She erases 1,000 pictures from the computer every morning… she still has plenty. Not every morning. I set a goal to go through all of the pictures on my computer last month. Most of them are duplicates of the same shot or a million pictures from a trip and most of them aren’t good and can be deleted. I’m only doing this because I had nearly 40,000 pictures on my computer and it was running super slow.
15. She loves me. No explanation here, don’t know what I would do without him, even if some of the things on this list are slightly embarrassing.

I honestly laughed so hard as I read these and asked Allen about a few of them. I’m so glad I jumped on this bandwagon and had him come up with the list.

 And just for fun, how about a throw back from our younger, child-less years.

I’m a day behind on the PinStyle challenge post and several weeks behind on all other things, blog related. Including emails and blog posts. Yikes. Between planning a Disney trip (it’s just a little over a month away) and the mad rush that the end of the school year brings, I’m finding it hard to keep up.

Let’s jump right into last week’s outfit choices.

Monday- These red skinnies have been hanging in my closet for months. So long that when I bought them they were a little snug and when I wore them last Monday, I needed a smaller size. I love the red and white combination and recreated the look using items in my own closet. The red skinnies are from JCPenny, the top from Express.

Tuesday- My fear of the maxi skirt is officially over. I’m happy to have added this to my rotation and to pair it with new tops and accessories. This black maxi is so comfy and the possibilities are endless when it comes to styling. Black maxi skirt is from Gap and the top is a super soft tee from Express.

Wednesday- The printed top and bubble necklace combination. I paired this top with black capris and wedges and it was one of my favorite outfits. Top from Gap, black capris from Old Navy.

Thursday- On Thursday we wore orange from a sweet student who is fighting leukemia. There was a fantastic show of orange among the students and teachers at our school.

Friday- We went on a field trip to the zoo on Friday and my style was certainly lacking. I wore a school t-shirt and decided to spare you a picture. I had planned to have dinner with Allen on Friday night and give you a picture of that outfit. The zoo was a chaotic sea of people and I have never seen that many people there. By the end of the day, I was ready to get home and stay home.

Saturday- I had a few errands to run on Saturday while Braylen helped Allen work on her new play set. Really, I planned to take her with me, but anything with her daddy and outside in the equation trumps my plans. I mixed chambray and black and added a pop of pink to give me a little more color. Top from Old Navy, shorts from Gap.

Like Kristin, I have loved this challenge but I’m ready to just pick out whatever I want to wear from my closet without looking to Pinterest. I will definitely continue this fun challenge and pull from those pins I have on my Style board, just not every day.

You can link up with Kristin here. 

I’ve written about Jon Acuff  on the blog before, he spoke at Blissdom last year and sort of rocked my world. My short attention span means I pay attention to a speaker for a solid 15 minutes, then as the time progresses, I disengage. I’m thinking about life and things I need to do, I try to reign in my focus, but as I scan the crowd, Ohhh, I wonder where that shirt is from? Then it happens, my focus is gone and my mind becomes this pinball machine of thoughts, How in the world did she get her hair to curl like that? Did she use hot rollers or a curling iron? Wait, did I unplug my curling iron?  On and on I go until I have mentally left the building.

There is one thing that can change this, humor. Keep me laughing and I’ll keep listening. Make me cry? I’m not thinking of anything else. Challenge the way I see things, the way I live my life? You’ve gained an active listener and a fan. Jon Acuff is one of the few who has been able to do just that, I recommend him to others and read his blog and follow his tweets because I believe what he is saying and I believe his heart is full of purpose and inspiration.

He coined this great catch phrase,  Jesus juke, and we have all been privy to a juke of this nature. In Alabama, I live in the heart of SEC country, in the midst of one of the biggest rivalries in sports, the Iron Bowl. You can bet that the following Sunday in church, someone will be ecstatic about the outcome, oozing with passion, and then someone will say, Wouldn’t it be great it we were all this passionate about Jesus?  At that moment, everyone goes from feeling like a million bucks to feeling like they just stood up and declared that football is cooler than Jesus, at a Billy Graham crusade.

Now, I’ve been privy to a Jesus juke (0r 40) in my lifetime, but it wasn’t until I became a mother that I learned a whole other type of shame-inducing tactic. For the sake of creating clever names, let’s just call this the mama mock. If you’re on Twitter and you actively engage with other moms (because know this, women are meaner behind a computer screen), I’m wiling to bet that 95% of you have been privy to this ugly game women like to play.

Let me set the scene, it’s Valentine’s day and I have a two-year-old. My creative-holiday-loving-heart is more than excited to express a little creativity and make some cute Valentine’s for BK to hand out to her classmates. I scour Pinterest and buy up play-doh and cookie cutters, I create a graphic in Photoshop with an overly-cheesy saying. I am a rock-star Valentine favor creator and BK is going to be ecstatic. I tuck the goodies away in her back-pack, but not before snapping a picture to share.

Then it happens, Since when is Valentine’s day a competition of Pinterest creations? And my personal favorite? All of these personalized Valentine’s… I can’t, I just don’t have the time nor do I want to take the time away from my kids to impress others. 

Ouch. 

Game. Set. Match.

Sometimes, I sit back and watch as the drama unfolds, like a bad train wreck. Mama’s who are posting a picture of a breakfast table set with green goodies for St. Patrick’s day or children smiling ecstatically holding up golden coins from their scavenger hunt. Then they come, who has time for going overboard at every holiday? Or I’ll take the days of wearing green and hoping I didn’t get pinched over this competitive holiday we have now. I watch as mothers wage war on trends such as creatively styled first birthdays and  trendy patterns on toddler clothing. As they pass it off as opinion, and that’s okay, we all have preference. But if you’re the one making fun of someone’s over-the-top birthday party because that’s just not your thing, think about it you would be okay with the negativity coming your way if it were reversed.

As moms it’s about time we realize a few things:

We are all good at different things.  We are human, we will always like different things than other people, we have the freedom of preference and choice. Let’s just use it wisely. Be proud of your choices without dragging other people down. There is a balance and it falls somewhere in the middle, right next to being kind to everyone, not just to people who share your views on how many gifts Santa can bring.

There are no sides. We aren’t playing for the NFL, we aren’t campaigning for presidency, we are raising the next generation. Believe it or not, there is no underground Pinterest mom secret meeting and there is no Pinterest-haters club. There will be no Superbowl, no winners, no trophies. No one has ever showed up at my door and invited me to play for the moms who created their own baby food team or kicked me off of their team for using Similac. This mama-wars phenomenon? It’s a war we don’t have to be fighting.

Mockery fuels the War. We want our ideas to be appreciated? We want to express our beliefs without fear of judgement? Then we need to stop judging others, we need to stop pretending like there are two types of mothers and every parenting method is a battle. There is no Pinterest mom, there is no Similac mom, we have made that up. Have you ever had to check that box when you renewed your drivers license or applied for a job? No. Why? Because those are terms we’ve coined ourselves.

How can we change this? By being deliberate with our words, by owning our choices and allowing others to make their choices without criticism. There is a difference in sharing your thoughts, your beliefs, your choices because you are proud of them or because you think it might help someone else. Let’s use words we are proud of, be women that our children can be proud of and learn kindness from.

P.S- Jon Acuff has a new book out, you can check it out here.