Helpful Mom

Life has had it’s share of unexpected health problems and surgeries.  You never know when bed rest, pregnancy complications, car accidents, or sickness will crop up.  But one way to easy these issues is to have a plan of action prepared just in case.  Personally I’ve gone through all of these things and can tell you will live to tell the tales, but the best way to successfully make through is to accept help.  In some cases you will have to ask for help.  I know this is not easy for most moms to do, we want to be seen as capable of doing it all.  But when you are recovering it is more important that you take the time to heal properly than look like you have it all together.  So with that said here are a few coping skills.

After my back surgery I had two months that I was not allowed to lift, twist, bend, or pick anything up more than 5 lbs(including my 6 month old baby!), or sit up for more than 20 minutes at a time.  So we had to arrange for someone to come to the house each weekday from 8:30am-6pm.  For some of you this may be easier than for others but think of everyone you can, family, in laws, friends from work, church, old college buddies.  If everyone you know can give one day the job can be done.  In order to make it easier for all the different people coming in and out of the house each day I wrote up the girls daily schedule so I didn’t have to do lots of explaining each day.  By having friends come to the house the girls were more comfortable with random people caring for them because I was still there, just other people were doing the work.    Also by having a daily schedule and sticking to it makes things smoother for your kids by keeping life familiar.

While you are laying in bed your house could be going to pot unless you can recruit some help here too.  To keep this simple I wrote up a list of the weekly cleaning chores listed by room and where the cleaning supplies could be found.  When you are on lots of pain meds the last thing you want to be doing is explaining what needs doing, how you want it done, and where everything is over and over again.  So by writing it up the questions can be kept to a minimum and makes it easier to ask for that help.  Most people who are willing to help take care of your kids will ask what else they can do to help, please let them help with cleaning, laundry, preparing dinner, or picking up some groceries on their way to your home.  Friends are willing to to help more than you think you just to be willing to ask, you’ll be surprised.  And you might even fun since you get a whole day to reconnect with  friends.

If you know that bed rest or surgery may be possible, or impending get prepared.  Set up your regular bills to be automatically paid online.  Freeze lots of meals that you or your husband can thaw and reheat.  Get caught up on your laundry.  Record lots of movies, or borrow them from friends, or the library.  Stock up on groceries staples so you’ll only need the basics like milk and fresh fruit to be picked up periodically.  Get out those magazines that have been piling up, and those books you never get a chance to read and enjoy.

The other thing I have done is during those time periods is still try and connect with my girls even though I couldn’t physically care for them.  When I felt up to it sit up and read with them.  Or lay on the floor and play with them.  Feed them their food.  And most important in our home, just lie there and cuddle with them.

PS I kept the list of household cleaning so I didn’t have to rewrite it out for each episode that required helping hands.

PPS A huge thanks again to all those special people who have helped our family out over the last number of years

Coming Thursday, March 26 at 6:30pm for FREE at Genesee Community College in Batavia.  I have yet to be able to take my girls to see the Bubble Man, but we have heard from friends that he is amazing!  And I can’t wait to take them to see him.  Perhaps this will be our chance!

Celebrate GCC’s Open House with a night of nonstop BUBBLING with everyone’s favorite man of suds: The Bubbleman! Its lots of bubbling trickery, sudsy silliness and big bubbles, tiny bubbles, HUGE bubbles! A THOUSAND bubbles!

Experience Genesee! The best of GCC’s faculty and staff again host this SECOND ANNUAL EVENT–featuring A HUGE MENU of FREE mini-funshops to kids and families including: Pottery! Cartooning! Make your own Movie! Telescopic Star Gazing! Science show and CSI! Fashion!! And LOTS LOTS MORE! Make a night of it! FREE SNACKS! FREE DAYCARE and OPEN GYM for the kids! OR—bring the kids with you to these funshops!

Are your kids like mine? My oldest is an absolute stuffed animal fanatic. We try to limit the number that come in the house because they are everywhere and they want everyone they see, but they sneak in no matter how hard we try. And we haven’t mastered the sneaking them back out, Katrina has a memory like a steel trap remembering that random animal at the most inopportune times, especially if you’ve gotten rid of it. She’d most likely remember it the day after you’ve dropped it off at Goodwill ;P And did I mention she wants to sleep with each and everyone of these precious pets? So after weeks of bedtime calls for animals she couldn’t find in her ever decreasing bed we decided we had to come up with a plan.

We decided to get one of those nets for her room to store “extra” animals in. Fortunately for us I was able to get two hanging towers off Freecycle so I got them for free and one for each of their rooms so we were able to enforce the same rule with both girls. They were so excited by their beautiful towers that they both willingly went along with the plan immediately. We let them each pick a handful of their absolute favorite animals to sleep with and the rest all go in the tower. They can ask to play with any of the others whenever they like but they have to be put back when they are finished. And if they want to sleep with different animals they have to trade one of the animals in their bed for one in the tower to keep things reasonable.

There are various types of these nets or towers to choose from or you can establish a simple rule of for each animal that comes in you have to get rid of one you already have and have your child choose who goes.

Did you know that speech therapy is provided by the state for free? When Katrina was young she took a looong time to speak, and when she did finally start talking it didn’t make a lot of sense. Not even to her parents who are home with her most of the time, so when she got to be about 3 years old that is when we started to get a bit concerned. Before that we kind of wondered if there was a problem but figured that some kids are just slow talkers and she’d eventually get it. Fortunately when bringing the concern to our Dr. attention he referred us to our local school system who promptly called us back and got the ball rolling to set up the necessary testing needed to evaluate if she had a problem or not.

Testing? It sounded scary to me and wasn’t sure how they were going to make my 3 year old take tests. But it turned out that Katrina loved it, couldn’t wait for the next tester to come play with her. And that’s exactly what they did, play with her. They came with toys and books, and activities to engage her and get her to say certain words so that they could see what problems she may have. They tested 3 different areas in case it was more than a speech problem. Physical abilities were tested to make sure she was capable of the skills a child her age should be able to do, mental abilities for understanding and cognitive abilities, and speech issues. It turned out she was only making intelligible words 30% of the time, the tester said it was like she had made up her own language. She had an arched tongue that would get tired, so she would start a sentence making sense but end up saying nonsense words because her tongue was tired.

So what to do? Turns out testing and therapy is totally free through the state as part of the No Child Left Behind grants. So not only did they evaluate her for free, coming to our house, on our schedule to do it. But they also arranged speech therapy on our schedule at our home! Do to her age and her abilities they scheduled a wonderful lady, Carrie, to come to our home twice a week for a half hour to work with Katrina. She started out by doing a bit of her own evaluation so she knew where to begin and then took it from there. I think, or maybe it felt like, that for the first year all they worked on was the letter F sound, getting Katrina to play games like Go Fish to get her say the Ffff sound over and over. Watch my mouth, see how I say F. Lots of books and games that would get Katrina to speak and practice saying the sounds. It was amazing how that little time a few times a week made such a huge difference.

It wasn’t overnight, more like over a year a half before she was a talking machine. She loved Ms. Carrie, both girls did actually. Mikayla would get up in Carrie’s lap and both girls would play games with her while I watched and learned while doing the dishes. And I enjoyed that time talking with Carrie too and was sad to see that time come to an end. But I can never thank Ms. Carrie enough for the gift she gave my child, restored speech.

Oh I would just love to take Mikayla to this!  She loves pigs, I don’t know why, but she just does.  The Gates Public Library and Rochester Central Library are  offering another of their great free programs that we love so much.

Daisy, the world’s most famous pig, is coming to Monroe County for a free Pig out on Reading program. Daisy is the only pig who has ever been invited to appear at the US Capitol. She has traveled all over the United States and been on TV and in newspapers around the world.  She and Farmer Minor are bringing along some of her favorite books to share with kids of all ages along with their families. Wear your overalls, and be the first to “hog” and kiss the sweetest pig in the country.

The program will be at the Gates Public Library on Saturday, March 7 from 10-11am, registration required-call 247-6446.   And again the same day Daisy will be appearing at the Rochester Central library at 2:30pm in the Kate Gleason Auditorium, no registration required.  Both appearances are completely free and for all ages.

This is a quick simple trick for getting your preschoolers to let you clip those nails!  Since both of mine are girls it makes it easier, I simply say if you let me clip your nails I’ll paint them when I’m done.  Argument over.  Don’t know if will work for everyone’s kids like mine but if you struggle to get your kid to sit still for a manicure like mine did it may be worth a shot.  Get a few crazy colors on clearance and let them pick what color they want.  Tonight my girls are sporting a different color on each hand and foot but they are short and cared for.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a bargain shopper.  I love garage sales, thrift stores, consignment shops, hand me downs, and those back of the store clearance end caps.  My favorite is I actually had a coupon for a garage sale once!  No joke!  I have actually turned this “addiction” into a thriving home business buying and reselling online, a great after hours job to feed that need for something un-child related.

So when a friend from MOPS mentioned Freecycle I was intrigued, other people’s old junk for FREE!  Where do I sign up?  It’s a Yahoo group that you have to apply to join.  Basically it is focused on keeping stuff out of landfills so if you have something you want to get rid of but it could be reused, fixed, repurposed, and want to avoid throwing it out you can offer it through your local areas group and it will get added to the list and emailed to the members, who in turn can reply to the listing and request it.  You pick someone and arrange a time for them to pick it up from you.  And in turn when someone else lists something you can request it, you may or may not receive it.  But if you do it’s great because it’s free, you just have to pick it up.  We have received some great things-a single jogger stroller, kids clothes, boots, shoes, books, toys.  A week ago I received a bag of stuff that included brand new sealed kids toothpaste, pullups, toy storage nets, and a bunch of toys that thrilled my girls.

And it works to get stuff out of the house too.  You know that clutter us moms are always trying to get rid of.  Or that thing that is missing a piece is exactly what someone else is looking for cause they are missing the other parts.  We tore out an old slate floor a few years ago and we were able to have people come take away all of the old slate to be repurposed for their garden walkway, and the old wood flooring was also taken away to be used to make boxes and for a youth group bonfire.  And when we redid our bathroom all the tiles were taken to use in craft projects, the shower doors found a new home, and so did the old sink and vanity mirror.  It felt great to keep those things out of the trash and know that we can benefit too.