My Mysterious New Backbone

Just wanted to take a moment to update the situation with my oldest son, The Sweet One. Thank you all for the kind comments to my last blog about him. It really meant a lot to me, to know that others understand where I am coming from :) The situation is different now, but no less scary for me as a mom. February of this year, The Sweet One "came out" as bisexual. It was a scary time for us, especially for Hubby. I think we were well prepared for it because we had already been dealing with the bullying. At least it wasn't completely out of the blue. That would have been harder to deal with. Originally, he told us he was gay. Well...he told me that anyway. I wanted to be cautious and urged him not to label himself at this age. Like I said before, our morals dictate our behaviors no matter what our preferences are! But, he felt like he needed a label. I understand that though. I understand the need to feel confident in your actions and even in your own mind. A label, even though it has the potential to be damaging, is solid and concrete. It sometimes can be used as something to hold on to when nothing else makes sense. This is totally not related, but I have used my title of nurse as a platform to stand on, and an identity to push myself to perform in situations I knew that I could not handle. It was the foundation I needed to help myself know that yes, I could do this difficult thing as a nurse, even when as a person it was too much to handle. I'm not sure that's what he meant, but that's how I understood it. For him to be able to stand up for himself, as a bullied person, he needed a place to start from. He's almost grown. I can't make these decisions for him. I don't even think I can influence him anymore than I already have. I've done my job, I've left my mark. One of the things I have learned about and for myself is that the world is not black and white. Motherhood is muddy. I can have all the opinions I want about other people's kids, but it's not so easy when it's your own child. I'm here to tell you that right now. I would like to say that I handled it well, but the truth is that I did struggle. I struggled with my personal opinions about homosexuality (which were that it is a sin, but so is my mouth so who am I to judge?), I struggled with worrying that he was acting out the trauma of the bullying (he quickly set those fears at ease with a few stories dating back to elementary school) and I also, to be honest, struggled with my faith. I'm still struggling with my faith somewhat. No, that's not correct. I am struggling with my faith "community". I have no problems with God. I have no problem with my son. I have a *HUGE* problem with other Christians' actions towards my son. Note to them: You are not being judged by him. You are not responsible for his actions, or preferences. YOU are not his mother. I tried to keep quiet for many months about his orientation. I figured, it was his business and he will handle it as it comes to him. Mostly, that is still true. But, I find myself becoming more and more defensive as time passes. This is what I recently told a friend, I need my son to know that I love him. Period. I don't care about what others think of me for it. If I have to march in the Gay Day parade wearing a rainbow striped shirt for him to know that I love him....where's my shirt?? I don't care if my brand of faith differs from yours at all. In fact, I could honestly care less. I'm not asking anyone what they think about it, or what they would do, because in reality, unless your child is gay, you have NO idea what my family has gone through. A very sweet older couple in our church recently came forward as having a gay adult son, whom they shunned and now are trying to re-connect with. They're advice was this: Love him. Never let him feel like you don't love him. Even if you have to keep your mouth shut about his life, his choice in partners, his choice in friends, whatever, make sure that he knows you love him and that is what is more important than being right. I think that is advice that I can live by. Since his announcement, he has taken the time and given himself the permission to "learn" more about himself, which is amazing considering I still can't decide if I like red peppers. He has dated a few girls and a few guys and has decided that he likes both, for different reasons. For now, he has chosen the label Bisexual. That may change with his life and experience. I may end up with a daughter in law, or a son in law. Both are wins for me, as long as he is loved. For now, as long as he choses the label son and lets me carry the label of mother...that's all that matters to me.

The Main Mouth

Let me re-introduce you to The Mouth. This was the Punk Rock Mouth at Halloween...I could not dissuade him from this costume, even with bribes.

He is a punk rock kid all the way.




He is also a Drama King...yeah, I said King.

This was Community Theatre, last month, in a children's play called "Wizard of Wonderland". He was the Cowardly Lion, to rave reviews.

Both our heads swelled :)

This kid cracks me up...like snorting in laughter, have to keep from peeing on myself laughter.

When we were homeschooling, I actually had to make a rule about foreign accents and impressions during school time because we couldn't get any work done!!

So, yes, he's a funny kid and a rock and roll kid...and he's mine.

Reasons Why I Love This Child...

Some of you may remember that this is my youngest child...Mr. Funny.

You can clearly see why I call him Mr. Funny...he didn't get his resemblance to Groucho Marx from me.

I decided to do a little post about each one of my children, because I haven't posted about them recently and I miss them due to the fact that I see them for about 30 min a day now.

So here is my Top 5 Reasons that: I LOVE MR. FUNNY

5. He "pants" his 12 yr brother on the playground today and when I asked him why he did it he said, "Because the girls told me to...You have to do what girls tell you to Mom".

4. He can recite almost every commercial he has ever seen and finds a way to insert them into almost every conversation he has...today's commercial was for mouthwash. As he breathed onto his father's face to prove that he had indeed brushed his teeth before bed, he says "Freshens your breath while it kills germs!"

3. Last week we broke in the new fire pit by having a weenie roast for dinner. Mr. Funny slaughtered everyone else with the number of weenie jokes he came up with(it was an obscene amount of weenie jokes overall)...and covered his mouth and giggled at every-single-one-of them.

2. Every Sunday morning when I emerge from my bedroom after getting ready for church he gasps loudly and says "You are beautiful, Mama!"

and the #1 reason why I love Mr. Funny:
...every time I look at him my heart swells and I get a lump in my chest that makes me want to stop time right now while he's still small enough to crawl up in my lap and keep him like this forever :)

Late Post from the World's Worst Mom

In my mind I am an old lady. Here I was, all satisfied with myself for posting about Father's Day and The Sweet One's birthday and about half way through my shift at work today, I realized that that I totally missed posting about The Mouth's birthday, which was on the 5th.

Now this may not seem like an unforgivable crime unless, like me, you are prone to montage-type hallucinations of the future in which your children have been driven to the Psychiatrist's couch my something you have said or done. Side note: a lot of my futuristic hallucinations involve my children in therapy...nevermind.

So, without further ado:

This is The Mouth.

I have named him The Mouth for blogging purposes because, well, he talks a lot. I plead the 5th on where he inherited that trait :)

So, his birthday was a couple weeks ago, but in my defense Hubby was in the middle of a very long medical ordeal and despite trying my best to keep that separate from my son's birthday celebration, my brain really wasn't focusing at the time. A couple of years ago The Sweet One decided that he was too old for cake and ice cream birthday parties anymore so we started a tradition of taking him and a couple friends to do something cool on his birthday. I think he was turning 13 at the time, and this was an outward way to express his "teenage-hood". So, it goes without saying that of course, his little brother was suddenly "too old" for parties as well. We've been doing the "special day out" birthday for the two older boys ever since.

This year, The Mouth decided that he wanted to go to the local go-kart track/amusement place for his birthday. Because of Hubby's medical issues, guess who was left to go go-karting with four 11 yr old boys? Correct. So, we show up at this place, which is slammed because it's the first Saturday of Summer Vacation. As soon as we check in and get our bracelets guess what happens?? The bottom falls out of the largest storm cell to pass through in several weeks. I literally checked the weather on my phone thinking that certainly this was like a rogue tropical storm that I wasn't aware of. That's how wicked this thing was. We didn't even get to ride the go-karts once. In fact, no rides for us at all. Everyone (which in this particular park happened to be about 200 people) had to hang out in the arcade to keep dry.

So, we're shoved into this tiny arcade, which is already loud and stuffy, waiting for the rain to stop. We wait...and wait...and wait. Thirty minutes into it we decide to go ahead and have our pizza now since there wasn't anything else to do and it sure beat standing at the windows with our faces pressed against the glass.


One Cheese pizza did not really help the situation at all since it's life span was exactly two minutes long. Now it had been raining for an hour and I was starting to severely sweat the fact that I was supposed to have these boys home at a decent hour, we hadn't done anything fun yet and all the cheese pizza was gone. I finally tracked down a manager and did my best "I know this isn't your fault, but I was just wondering where my money is going since we are standing here doing nothing and the sun is going down" face. As overwhelmed as she was, and believe me -with an arcade built for about 50 people that was now holding about 200- she was way overwhelmed, she really was great. After talking with her and asking Birthday Boy what he wanted to do, it was decided not to postpone for another weekend. I mean, it's summer in the South...it rains ever day here during Hurricane Season. Postponing it didn't guarantee anything and even the children knew it.


So, she made us an offer we couldn't refuse: $40 worth of arcade tokens and three games each of Laser Tag. This is a picture of four 11 yr old boys discovering a real "vintage" Ms. Pac Man/Galaga game. He totally asked me if he could have one for his room. I teared up a little. Two hours later all the tokens were gone, all the Laser Tag games were played and everybody had bag of useless crap from the token store.

I did get them all home by bedtime and no one cried, fought or broke any bones. In Boy-Land that's a home run kinda day. I missed having Hubby with me to navigate the mess but somehow even in the midst of all of his medical drama he had the time to text me...."Sucks to be you :)" Jackass.

In the end they all raved about what an awesome birthday it was, which was good for me to hear since the entire time I was staring out the window at the tree branches flying by, I was explaining myself to my child's imaginary-future-shrink. I learned that boys will always be happy if you feed them and give them game tokens and that laser tag is so a real sport. I'm just happy I lived to tell the tale :O

Happy Birthday to my Mouth! Hope this year is super awesome, just like you.

The Sweet One turns 15!

You probably can't tell from this picture, but this is The Sweet One. Today is his 15th birthday. I can not wrap my brain around having a 15 yr old child. I'm not old enough to have a 15 yr old child! Seriously, I'm not. Those in my personal life already know this story, but since blogging is about rambling and preserving your thoughts, it bears repeating.

I was 15 yrs old myself when I gave birth. I had been 15 for all of about 30 days when I got pregnant. Hubby and I were troubled teenagers...I'm not even sure troubled is the right word here. Troubled actually sounds like too light a term...severely handicapped might be more appropriate. The story involves a lot of background and dredging up junk, which I'm not going to do for the sake of posterity, but suffice it to say that I was safer with him, even if I was getting pregnant, than I was at home and having someone to focus on rather than self-destruction really is probably the only reason Hubby lived through those years. So, whether we were ready or not, at the ages of 15 and 17 we brought a child into the world.

Having The Sweet One saved my life...both our lives. Suddenly there was this other person there. Someone that we were responsible for, someone who depended on us, someone who would love purely without conditions. He was such a sweet baby. I wish I had a scanner so I could share baby pictures, but then it's probably better that I don't or I'd have to change the name of my blog to something sickly sweet like "Our Happy Little Boys".

We worked so hard to do it right. Hubby worked 3 jobs until his body failed him from exhaustion, then he worked 2 jobs and still does sometimes. I went to school. It was the only thing I had left because I wasn't old enough to get a job. We weren't old enough to lease an apartment, so we lived with our parents and then friends, for years it seemed. Happily I can report that I finished school, dropping out was never an option, while I worked full-time. Notice I didn't mention a shot-gun wedding. Even then we believed that we weren't mature enough to handle learning to be parents and learning how to be married at the same time. Eventually, after lots and lots of "on again/off again" we did marry. This, we have learned, makes us some kind of extraordinary couple...because you know, boys who get girls pregnant are supposed to leave and teen moms are supposed to have kids by different dads. That's what we get told anyway. I guess we just didn't get the memo.

I won't know for years, but I wonder how our ages at the time have affected him. I have made my share of mistakes for sure, but I'm not totally convinced that was because of my age. All new parents are idiots I hear. This is an "on the job training" kind of thing. But, I can tell you this. He is a wonderful young man. I am so proud of what Hubby and I have done together. We knew that if we weren't actively working against it, the things that tripped us up and held us down were going to get passed along to our children. We have worked tirelessly to make sure they have a fair deal. I stand back in awe sometimes at the person we are raising. He is super, almost scary smart. He loves science, and classic literature, greek mythology and comic books (he gets that from me). He loves rock and roll music. He's learning to play the guitar.

He will be learning to drive this year, God help me. He spends time writing stories. He loves babies and has been serving in the nursery and 2/3 yr old Sunday School at our church for a couple of years now. He starts 9th grade in 2 months. He gets nervous around girls...well I think so anyway. A mom can only see so much while she's spying from across the room :) His room is covered in rock posters and his desk is covered in novels. If I were a 15 yr old girl I'd think he was awesome....but I'm not. I'm his mom and I'm a little biased to say the least.

I am so looking forward to the teenage years. He knows the story about himself. He connected the dots on my age a long time ago and it's something that has been discussed to death around here. To look back at where I was at this same age is so surreal and so completely satisfying. My son has never known what it was like to wonder if I love him, he has never (to my knowledge) considered his life a waste and he has never know what it was like to face this world alone...my job isn't done by any means, but I sure am proud of the job I've done.

Happy Birthday Sweetheart!

Free-Range in Alabama

So, I found a new blog that I like and it got me thinking, as these things sometimes do.
The blog is called FreeRange Kids and the author is Lenore Skenazy. Apparently, her idea of parenting is causing major backlash and creating national attention. Her radial idea?? Let your kids go outside and play. Don't hover. Leave the Purell in your purse, or (gasp) you stay inside and let them go outside BY THEMSELVES.
I know. Pull yourself together. She advocates unstructured, unsupervised free time for kids. She lets her son, who is 9, ride the subway to school. They live in New York City. She advocates letting your child ride his/her bike around the neighborhood, to the park or library, walk to school, etc. She recommends letting kids over the age of 8 stay at home by themselves while mom runs to get some milk, or even while waiting for mom or dad to come home from work....didn't we used to call that "latch key"? Lenore goes on to explain that in other countries children over the age of 6 or 7 walk to school, which is sometimes miles away, as well as take the subway and sometimes a ferry to school. Her ideas have caused some problems. I read about her in the Christian Science Monitor, but apparently (according to her blog) has had to give interviews with all major media outlets to defend herself. Of course she has her supporters...a lot of them. So many people echo the same response on her comments section, " I played outside when I was a kids and I'm fine!"

I must admit that I am a free-range parent. I didn't know there was a name for it until now. In fact, I really sort of saw myself as a little bit of a mixture of relaxed and lazy when it came to parenting because I tend to compare myself to the other moms I know. In my circle of peers children are well-behaved, clean, never making messes and if they do it's never a problem for the mom to clean up after them. I live in the land of June Cleaver. So, I am actually thrilled to have a word for my parenting style: I am a Free-Range parent. I force my boys to go outside and threaten bodily harm if they come back in "one more time!" I meanly insist that they play basktball or ride the doggone bikes we spent good money on instead of playing another Wii game or having 10 more minutes on the internet. I went back to work this year and just could not force myself to allow them to return to the local public school due to the escalating gang violence, so I did what I thought at the time was the only thing I could do, I decided to continue homeschooling. My 15 yr old son supervises and assists my 10 and 8 yr old while I am gone. It helps that I don't work in the mornings. They each have a list of chores that have to be done when their father comes home from work. If their work or chores do not get completed my children will be punished. Yes, I spank my children. The older they get the less they get spanked because obviously they catch on pretty fast so spanking isn't really a common occurance, but I think the fact that it could happen is enough. In fact I think it's been like a once a year occurance for my teenager for the last couple of years. This year it was because of a spiteful sassy remark he gave me within earshot of his father (big mistake) and last year because we found him playing with matches, burning paper in his room...both highly worthy of corporal punishment in my opinion. Do I apologize for my parenting, certainly not, however I can be made to feel like I don't have it all together. Today I feel better about myself. Today I have learned what I knew all along, now I have backup, that kids who are given independance and expected to fend for themselves to a certain degree grow up to be self-sufficient, well-rounded and happy individuals. Like I said, I already knew that, but it certainly helps to hear it from another mom. Thanks, Lenore!