A Good Enough Mommy

I gave up today.

I am not a typical Pinterest mommy. I didn't cloth diaper. I didn't take pictures of my kids on the first day of the month. I didn't make my own baby food.

Pinterest didn't even exist until my youngest was 3, so I guess I have an excuse.

I typically use Pinterest

 to pin things that I will never wear.

To pin things that make me laugh- this one is the most repinned of anything 501 times as of this writing.

To pin tattoos that I want

and of course to pin things I want to do for the kids

If one spends too much time on Pinterest, one can feel inadequate in about 100 different ways. I don't make dessert every day. I don't have enough money/time/energy to label everything in my house with wee tiny chalkboards. I don't work out enough. When I do, I don't wear cute enough clothes that I made myself by upcycling t-shirts.

This definitely goes for moms. I don't pack my kids lunches. I don't make them into adorable shapes. My kids won't touch kale. My kids don't  have bedroom signs with adorable saying on them.

We did do bubble art http://www.pinterest.com/pin/210261876323028128/

Once, we made bubble art. I totally micromanaged it. It still hangs in the boys bathroom and looks super cute, but I was a huge pain in the ass when we did it. I didn't want it to have too many bubbles, I didn't want the boys to be covered in food coloring.

Since before my boys were even born, I have liked scrapbooking. I totally get that it's mommy homemaker, but I like office supplies, pictures, and stickers, and scrapbooking combines all those things into awesome fun times for me.

As the boys got older, I discovered digital scrapbooking, which I actually enjoy even more.

HOWEVER, it's so much work. Editing the pics. Laying out the book. Organizing them by event. Putting cute titles on the pages.  And so on... that now I'm behind about 3 years. By the time I get to even editing the pictures, I won't remember why I took the picture of Agent X with the sassy look on his face or Agent N up to his elbows in mud.

And so I've decided not to continue. I'm going to put pictures in books. I'm sure I'll edit some. But I'm done with the titles and the stickers and the ribbons and the papers. Pictures in books because they tell a story of the things we've done and they remind of of the fun we've had. The boys like to hear stories of what we did together when they were too young to remember. And that's what's important.

Old, and getting older.

There have been a lot of things written about the age of people who are involved with church.

What we can do to keep the next generation (if you only read one, read this one- it really spoke to me)
Congregations getting older
How churches can bring young people back from (ugh) Fox News

As I sat around a table with fellow parents of kids from 6th-12th grade last Sunday, I realized something that I know my Assistant Rector who is in charge of youth programs and the Rector who is just in charge in general realized ages ago- we have a problem.

The problem isn't with the kids. It's with the parents. The kids can't get there by themselves.

My kid had never, not once, been to Sunday school. I wouldn't take him. The only reason I went last week is because I have such fond memories of youth group when I was in middle and high school. I also have some not-fond memories, but whatever, everyone has stuff like that in middle & high school. Anyway, I didn't take him before, because for adults, Sunday school is sitting and listening to someone. And then go to church, and listen to someone else. I do not have the patience for that. I need some interaction. I need discussion. I need problem solving. I want to be with my peers, too. And my peers aren't at church. Well, not many of them.

The alternative to listening to someone was teaching, but I didn't want to teach to little kids. I don't like little kids. I teach high school for a reason. But women always get asked to teach little kids. And I teach 5 days a week already. I didn't really want to go teach on yet another day. As it is, I teach 2-3 children church sessions a year, and I dread each one.

I love my church leaders, they are amazing humans, and I know they have very full plates, and I don't want to tell them no. So I just avoid them. Sorry. I know you're reading this. You probably already figured that out, though. I know it's passive aggressive of me.

As I was looking around, I realized 2 things:

• There was no one there who looked like me. I have purple streaks in my hair and a nose ring. I was wearing blue glitter nail polish. I was also wearing clothes from Banana Republic, before you get this image of me wearing a Slayer shirt with a mohawk and a tattoo on my neck (it's on my ankle). I'm not that rebellious, but sometimes I stand out in a white bread crowd. And yet...
• Everyone looked like me. We were all white, middle/upper middle class people between 39 (I'm fairly confident I'm the youngest) and 55ish? 60? I don't know. I'm not great with ages of people who are older than I am.  

I've been mulling this over for the past couple of days. I go to a small church in a midsized but rural town. I go to an Episcopal church which has kept ties with the Diocese and the area is fairly conservative. But the town I live in also has a university, which means by it's very nature has some random social liberals wandering the streets. 

These social liberals have kids. I know, because my kids play with them at summer camp, at school, in the neighborhood. A couple of them go to my church. And the ones who do are pretty cool people. But not enough of them are there. 

I grew up in the precursor to a mega church. It was perfectly normal to have 600-700 people on a regular Sunday. Wednesday night youth group would commonly pack the youth room with kids sitting on the floor after the chairs were gone- 50+ kids on a regular basis. None of the leaders were parents of kids who were in the room. They were college students and young married couples. 

Part of the delight of the youth group was the idea that we were always doing things that our parents would have probably not enjoyed. Singing as loudly as possible? Check. Randomly breaking out into tears over various teenage angst coupled with emotional spirituality? Check. Having that guy reach over and take my hand during prayer and not letting go when it was finished? Check. Wash dishes for an entire camp of people and stick my hands into disgusting drains to clean out the food? Check. 

I doubt any of those things would have happened if my parents were there. I would have gone- I would have been forced to go- but I would have been guarded. I would have been intentionally difficult to deal with. 

After this meeting on Sunday, I realized the draw of the "mega church."  I've been to a mega church. I didn't like it. It felt too fake. But it's easy to get your kids involved. You can plug them into a community that will reinforce some kind of values which you hopefully approve of through peer pressure and adults who aren't their parents. And if you choose to, you can not be involved at all. 

I always thought I would be involved with a youth group. I never thought it would be while my own child (or children) was in it. But when I tried to get involved as a college student, I was discouraged from doing so. I was too young, the kids in the youth group were too old and too close to my age, I wanted to change things too much- this was at a different church than the one I grew up in- and there was a strong undercurrent of "and you are too female, which is not ok with us." So it's been about 20 years since I've gotten active with church, and I'm kind of dragging my feet right now. 

Agent N, the 6th grader, needs to do some stuff without me around. He needs to have positive influences in people who aren't his parents. He needs to sing and yell and dance and cry without us watching. But we go to a small church in a midsized town, and so one of us will be watching sometimes. I'm going to try to get involved with other kids but it's hard when you hear your child's voice yelling (Agent N's normal volume) to focus on something or someone else. And it's hard to talk to kids you don't know when you're... like me. I'm a good teacher because it gives me an in- I have something to talk about. And then the kids tell me stuff, so we have something to talk about together. But put me in a room with random people, especially random teenagers, and I'm awkward as hell. I was about 1000 times more confident when I was a teenager. Now I'm a teenager in an adult body. 

And this brings us back around to the beginning. The church has an age problem. Where are the parents? Where are the college students? I have avoided getting involved because of the demands on my time. But if more people got involved, there would be fewer demands on everyone's time because there would be more people to share the workload. But in order to get someone to want to take part of the work, they have to buy in to the concept. 

I don't even know where we go from here. 

DIY: art for small boys

Agent X and Agent N have a bathroom that is largely their own. It's pretty boring- all tan. It has an awesome world map shower curtain but that's about all.

I bought some canvas at Michael's that was in a value pack kind of thing, and saw an awesome project on Pinterest.

It was really simple, and the boys got to help make art for their bathroom! It was also messy, so do it outside. (note: the lighting in the bathroom was kind of yellowish so I brightened this picture up with Photoshop)

1. get some bubbles & some food coloring.

2. Put the bubbles into 4 small bowls. Add all of the food coloring. You need a lot of food coloring to make the bubbles show up.

3. Let kids blow bubbles onto the canvases. Do this right before bath time. Food coloring will stain skin for a little while & the quicker you get it off, the less time your kids will have blue lips & fingers.

4. Let dry. I let these dry a week- they were actually dry long before that, but I wanted to cover them with a clear coat and not have it make the bubbles run.

5. Spray with clear spray paint.

6. Hang on the wall and admire!

My Kid Is Odd

Agent N is 8. If you have ever spent time with an 8 year old boy you will discover that they are just straight up the weirdest people on earth. They are also hilarious and fun, but only when it's just you and just them. If they are in the presence of ANYONE else, they're weird.

Agent N likes to talk to himself. In the bathroom.

Yesterday, I hollered out to him: "Agent N! Why are you talking to yourself?"
Agent N: "I'm not! I'm muttering!"

I rest my case.

Also note: Agent N is both brilliant and afflicted with ADHD. Before you tell me I can fix that (by that I mean the ADHD, not the brilliance) by feeding him organic, grass fed, PBS-watching beef that was kissed before bed every night, I am telling you to eff off. If you want proof that ADHD is real, come spend 2 days with Agent N. The first where is is not medicated so that he makes you absolutely insane and want to put your own eyes out because the emergency room would be better than spending another minute with him... and the second day, where he is medicated and is the sweet, wonderful boy that I know is inside of him. He is not medicated to oblivion. He is himself. Of this I am not ashamed.

And the brilliant part? That's not just a mom being proud. I thought for a long, long time that he was just a little smarter than normal. Maybe. No big deal. In the past year we moved from one state to another because of my husband's job. The state we just moved from didn't test kids until 3rd grade. Not so in the new state and so year he was tested. Agent N is in 2nd grade and he reads on a 6th grade level. And he prefers math and science over reading. His teacher gives pre-tests in math and if they get two or less wrong, they don't have to take the final test. Agent N has yet to take a math test this year.

I am not bragging. I don't entirely know what to do with this. I am not a math or science person. I often use a calculator to check his homework.

Back to the oddity... as I sit here he has his first friend over from his new school. Agent N doesn't quite know what to do with a friend in the house. Usually he has Agent X to beat up on and that's the extent of it. He has one friend in the neighborhood, let's call him Ranjeet, and that's it. Ranjeet's parents don't let him come into our house, and vice versa. Agent N has been bossy and a little hyper. I don't want him to make a billion friend mistakes and never have another friend in the house. On the other hand, I need to let him learn. I have stepped in once or twice, but generally I have just let him do his thing.

I feel confident Agent N and friend are wrestling upstairs right now. There is yelling, thumping, giggling, and the occasional howl. I'm letting it go until someone cries. I'm just happy he has a friend.