Tag: unconditional love

humor, motherhood, parenting

Your People

WFAM

Family vacations are stressful.  Why is that?  Maybe because you plan weeks or months in advance and there are expectations that everyone will be cheerful and have fun doing extraordinary and often expensive activities.  So, the pressure is ON.  Have fun OR ELSE!  You throw in an aversion for crowds and noise, put me on a cruise ship full of screaming kids and there isn’t anyone or anything that can save me or whoever ends up in my path.

We were standing by the balcony overlooking the main floor of the ship when T.Puzzle accidentally stepped on my foot.

I snapped.

My temper shorted out and I yelled at him to ‘Quit it!’ or ‘Cut it out!’ or ‘For the love of all that is good and decent in the world, STOP STEPPING ON MY FEET!’

To an outside observer it would seem that it was an innocent mistake by a distracted nine year old boy.  They wouldn’t know the back story of how this said boy steps on my feet religiously.  If he could bottle his accuracy of squashing my toes, this kid would give a trained sniper a run for his money.

The squashed toes were the icing.  The pressure of FUN was getting to me.  I looked at Mad Dog in despair.

He said, “I know with our family we are going to have highs and lows.  While the highs are tremendous, there are days when you are so frustrated that you want to give our children up for adoption (I’m politely paraphrasing this last part).  You have to accept the good with the bad.”

This made me pause.  He was right, of course, but why am I always so ready to fly off the handle with the people I love the most in the world?  I wouldn’t snap at a friend if she stepped on my toes.  I would laugh it off and be on my merry way.

The difference is the amount of shared history.  When you live life with people day in and day out, your truth seeps out whether you like it or not.  You let the ugly flow because on some level you know that these are YOUR PEOPLE.  They love you unconditionally.

If you can be your truest self around someone, and that includes all the stuff you hide from 99.9% of the rest of the population, then you know you feel safe with them.

Every one of us is complicated.  Most of us strive to be our best.

If we are really lucky, we can be our worst, too…

3 times over.

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children, family, gratitude, health, kids, motherhood

Love is Patient, Love is Kind

WFAM

I’m actually kind of speechless. Since I am a writer what does that make me? Wordless?

I cannot wrap my brain around the fact that we were given the greenlight to have my dog come home. About two years before I started this blog, we had to relocate her because T.Puzzle wa allergic to her. It was heartbreaking to lose her but it was the right thing to do. He basically had a runny nose for the entire first year and half of his life. I knew as soon as the words ‘dog allergy’ left the doctor’s mouth, my dog had to go.

As the years have gone by, T.Puzzle’s health began to improve. His eczema vanished, he outgrew his egg allergy and he had less and less sick days at school. Recently, I had started to suspect that his dog allergy had diminished as well. For my own peace of mind I scheduled an allergy test. It showed a vast improvement in his dog allergy which means my little, white fluffy ball of love can come home!

She is not a perfect dog and certainly no longer a puppy. She is sometimes a dog only a ‘mother’ could love. It is also very possible T.Puzzle may not respond well to having her around. There are a lot of variables I have no control over.

What I can control is how much I love her. I plan to care for her for as long as I have her. I want to give back to her at least some of the unconditional love that she has given me. She sat with me every day while I had the worst morning sickness of my life during my pregnancy with Full Speed. She would snuggle up for the long haul when I had yet another pregnancy related migraine or vein infection in my legs (yes, it is miraculous I endeavored pregnancy twice). It was during that time that she taught me about loyalty, patience and love.

Her official return date is early next week. I still can’t believe she is coming home. The good news is, she never once has left my heart.

Newborn Full Speed is carefully watched over
Newborn Full Speed is carefully watched over
T.Puzzle gets a little love
Baby T.Puzzle gets some of that unconditional love
bad day, health, mommyhood, self care (or lack thereof)

A Frightful Sight

WFAM

Starting off the new year has been a bit rough. All family members have been displaying varying symptoms of illness. I think the post pic of T.Puzzle properly captures how we all are feeling (bad and sad).

I am a Type-A personality. Unfortunately, I do not have the physical constitution to withstand the demands of having this type of personality. When I get sick, I get hit hard. Call it stress, call it being run-down, or call it whatever, I hit a serious rough patch about seven p.m. My body aches had reached a level 9 and my throat pain was at about a 7. The chills I was experiencing were out of this world. I was heading into the 72 hour range of having flu symptoms and was downright miserable.

Inevitably, Mad Dog and I discussed how to get me medical intervention. After some heated discussion (heated only on my part because of my 100.5 fever), the best solution was to call TeleDoc. It is a service offered through Mad Dog’s insurance that will diagnose your ailments through a phone call and if they deem necessary, call in a prescription for you.

I was offered Tamiflu (an antiviral) and took it. Mad Dog was sent out into the night to our 24 hour pharmacy to get it. I took it and felt an immediate improvement in body aches and fever (my throat is still killing me). Tamiflu is a slight contradiction. It can cause nausea which is awfully counterproductive if you felt nauseous in the first place. However, since it improved my symptoms overall I’m not going to knock it.

I now realize real love is blind. As I sat at the table yesterday feebly attempting to consume some food, I was surrounded by my three guys. I hadn’t showered in three days, had the same clothes on from the day I first got sick and my face had broken out. No one at the table cared. They were happy to see me even if to look at me was a little frightening.