Tag: school

Life, Love, Parenting

A Golden Day

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Today was a small shiny snip-it of a GOLDEN day for me.

(Don’t know what I’m talking about, refresh your memory about my blog title here.)

So often I doubt my mothering skills. I agonize over how much time I’m NOT spending with T helping to develop his brain and knowledge. I agonize over having to ask for help with his homework because I literally can not be there after school every day. I feel guilt for someone else having to pick up my slack. I feel guilt because my decision to go back to school takes away my time to be his mom, to be his BEST mom.

Is anyone else making me feel guilty? NO! I think my mom LOVES being teacher again and getting to be there while he learns to read and amaze at his intelligence.

But I still feel it. I still question my EVERY parental decision. Dave came to visit before heading up to the “Great North, eh” and I couldn’t wait for him to have T read out loud to him – all the while wondering if he would feel I hadn’t done enough.

Does he EVER, for one second question my devotion to our son and the hard work parenting (mostly alone) is? NEVER! If anything he’s be overly encouraging and constantly telling me how proud he is of me (I still struggle to accept these kinds of complements).

But today. Today was MARVELOUS! Today I walked away from a one on one conference with T’s K5 teacher thinking “Jess, you’re doing awesome!” And that was by the time I got to the car and excitedly called Dave to share all the awesomeness she had just shared with me. While she was talking, it was more a “Oh, wow, maybe I’m not totally screwing up on a regular basis…maybe he isn’t suffering from my hurried ‘here, T, copy these words while mommy fixes dinner’ or ‘hey, bud, let’s think of all the different ways we can count to 20, 50, 100’ over breakfast since I just remembered there was that second part to “homework” and we didn’t do it last night….”

It was a truly amazing little snip-it of golden. And after the last couple weeks of feeling like the crazy in my brain was going to burst from realizing that maybe I am feeling a little bit of a difference because of the med decrease – I NEEDED THIS! I’ve been proud of him a million times since he was born.

Today I was proud of me too.

Life, Love, Parenting, Scatter Brained

Bad blogger, bad!

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I’ve always been one. I mean this is the umpteenth time I’ve started a blog, gotten pretty good and then slowly let it slide to the back-burner. Please don’t think for one second I haven’t thought, “man, this would make a good blog” or “I should write about this feeling” because I have, so many times!

Sometimes the issue is that I’d like to write about something (OH WOULD I) but because my blogs are public, there’s no way I could write about a certain situation (and the feelings it created) without people knowing what, where, when, AND worse! who I was talking about. It’s a little frustrating because really, so much I want to write about!

I’ll sum up the last few months with one word: S T R E S S F U L.

  • I started classes in May about a week after we arrived.
  • The rental is not as ideal as I thought it would be.
  • I desperately wanted a new puppy.
  • I got said puppy, fell in love, Boo became less stressed, but I became more stressed.
  • I finished 4 classes this summer with a B+ or better.
  • Dave deployed.
  • T was enrolled in pre-K: all day, every day. Where is my baby?
  • I started Fall semester: retaking Microbiology (because my excellent grade of B+ is “too old”) and I’m taking an Old Testament class (oh yeah, I’m enrolled at a private Christian college…more of a challenge than I expected)
  • Deployment has been SO MUCH MORE stressful in extremely unexpected ways.
  • T misses his daddy and San Diego in very expected but heartbreakingly painful ways

I don’t know how I would be doing so well in school if it weren’t for my parents. I wish I could take them out to dinner to say thank you, but I know they wouldn’t let me, and let’s be honest, it wouldn’t be enough to really sum up all they have done to help T, Dave and me out.

The positives? I feel closer to Dave emotionally, spiritually, romantically, etc. now more than ever. Some how we have been able to be each other’s rocks of support from thousands of miles apart. Emails, calls, Google hangouts: they’ve been a true blessing over the last few months. It has been amazing to see just how connected to Dave T had become in the glorious year we actually got to spend together in San Diego. (Also, heartbreaking, but I’m trying to focus on the positives…) Sporadically, I have been reminded of the awesome friends we have made over the last few years in our military journey together. These reminders have always come at truly needed time.

In any case, I’m trying to find center and get back to a routine that involves more time for NON studying me-time. I’d like to think that will happen before Christmas break. 😉