Yep, I have been looking forward to this time of the year since the end of last December!
Yeah, I know you guys are thinking Thanksgiving.... Christmas.... but I am referring to family fall outs!! YAY!!! Soooo... Much fun!!
Yeah... me and hubby just love to talk about how some of our family memebers act around this time of the year. We always have to keep track of who done what and who got mad about what and the like.
Well, for my family it has come 2 weeks early!! YAY!!
Today my oldest niece had her baby shower. My 2nd to the oldest sister... who for some unknown reason is the one who always gets her feelings hurt or upset about something. Well... this get together was no different.
My nephews girlfriend came and got all the kids total of 9 and the toddlers stayed with us. My sister did not like the fact that her grandkids were asked to go over to our nephews house while we had the baby shower, as my oldest nieces son got to stay at the house. He is 11!! The kids that were going over to our nephews were 5-8 years old!! Hello!! What 11 year old boy wants to be stuck in a house of 6 5-8 year olds?!
Anyways.... she gets pissed because she thought our oldest sister was sending them over there against their "will". Hey they were asked if they wanted to go and who knows what they said. So... she gets pissed cusses on her way out the door and then her daughters leave too.
Sooo.... now everyone is upset. My preggo niece is upset that her aunt would do that on her day and ruin it, and her mom kept telling her to be quiet and they got into it and all.
And our mom was like "Never fails". Which is soo true! I told mommy if my 2nd oldest sister one year did not complain, get her feelings hurt, or start anything we might want to send her off to the doctors to see if something was wrong with her.
Oh and then my 2nd to the oldest sister and her 2 daughters come back about 30 mins later. So... it was kinda a happy ending.
Yeah... last year... she got pissed at our 2nd to the oldest brother, because he bought my daughter some clothes for her b-day which he was down for unknowingly and he did not buy her 16 year old daughter clothes. Yeah... she cussed him and told him she hated him and hung up on him. Then 4 months later when Thanksgiving rolled around she would not talk to him on the phone and around Christmas she still would not talk to him on the phone... I think about almost a year later she decided to talk to him again. Sooo... Let the family "festivities" begin!!! Yeah, ya'll will get a play by play of the Family Festivities. My mom said why you call it festivities? I was like because it is fun for me... I look forward to this time of year each year. And she just laughed and said well this year should be no different. Hey! I cannot help I like all the drama! All the drama in my family is what I live for... I guess because I am hardly ever part of the drama... but after 27 years of it... it just brightens my holiday spirit looking forward to it. Oh and every once in a while we get a taste of it thru out the year!
Ok... ya'll can think I am totally screwed in the head and wonder how I can take this as fun... but you have to have a sense of humor and a family that seems to never change. Ha...we dont have a lot of drama in our family..if someone gets pissed about something, they just keep their mouth shut. Every so often we will have some drama on my husbands side of the family, but he and I stay out of it. We are non-drama people I guess. I feel like I have enough drama in my life as it is with RA, and 2 kids...4 dogs...and a goofy husband. They wear me out...
I am one of those who stays at home with their kids for the first 4 years of their life and then off to preschool so they can learn to be in a school like enviornment. Then when they get about 8 or so they tend to act like they do not like you and then you begin to think "I gave you the best 4 years of my life and you are going to dis me like that?! I wiped your butt, potty trained you TWICE, and sat up all night with you when you were sick while you slept to make sure you did not choke on your puke!"
I do not get out much... I am a home person. I go to Freak-Mart just about every other day, because I tend to forget things that we need. I have stints of where I will go visit my sisters & brother as they all 3 live in the same house or just 2 mins from each other and I live about 10 mins away from all of them. My life is my hubby and kids. I do not work, I have no profession, I am just me... a use to be cripple, now just a gimp and cripple every once in a while, deformed, hobbling, wobbling, overweight, pred face, going bald, pimple face, broken elbow... mess!
Up until a couple of christmas' ago... I did not look forward to the holidays as I just did not feel in the mood for them. But one year around Thanksgiving, I got the holiday spirit in me for thinking of all the drama that will occur. Gives me and hubby something to talk about. We do not talk much, as when you stay home all day everyday and with just your kids, you tend not to have nothing to talk about.
Well, I am not always on the go. I am literally stuck at home all day. I only have a driver's permit, so I cannot drive unless I have someone with a driver's license in the car with me and the car is gone to work with hubby thru the day. Soo... I like being at home with my son and with my daughter before she started school, but I feel like my life is just slipping away, as I was 19 when we got married and now here I am 3 year shy of being 30 and I feel like I have not accomplished much or contributed much. I mean my daughter is at that stage and it is only going to get worse, and I will eventually feel like a compelet loser, as her nanny who is in her 40's can and will go outside and play with my daughter and I will not because I cannot or fear I will get hurt, because as we all know I am a total clutz! Yeah, I have low self-esteem issues... No, not talented enough for scrapbooking, plus I get easily "bored" with hobbies. Hubby will not buy me anything that has to do with a hobby
I am a stay at home mom too. I haven't worked for a little over 2 years. My life is my family. I need to be home right now because I have a teenager! Being home has allowed me to be a huge part of her life and I can keep track of her so much better. I feel the kids really do appreciate it when mom can stay home. I know my girls like it when they come home from school and I am here. They would never admit it tho! LOL. Joonie, when your daughter gets a little older she will want to be around you again. Especially when she hits middle school and she wants you to take her here, there, and everywhere for their social life. Somehow you are magically transformed into the best mom in the world! There is one huge thing you guys have in common. The kids. When my hubby comes home from work we make it a point to sit and share our day. It gives him the chance to vent work stress and me a chance to vent kid stress. We also do "date night" once a month. We have done that for years. It is easier for us to go out now that the girls are older. But when they were younger, we would put them to bed, watch a movie in peace and quiet, snuggle, and just be with each other. Sometimes we would have a snack for supper and do a candle light dinner after they went to bed. Raising a family in these days is an accomplishment. It still takes all those skills we learned in the working world to balance a family. I love the term "Domestic Engineer". That is what I tell people I do for a living when they ask me lol. I even had one person ask me how much school I had to have to do that lol. I just said it is a lifetime of schooling. You aren't a loser Joonie. I have found that kids need to have another trusted adult besides mom to talk to. They can get straight unbiased answers to questions that they would never ask mom for fear of making her mad or they are just plain embarrassed to go to mom to talk about. My girls and I are very close but there are still things they would rather not talk to me about. I am grateful for the trusted adult in their lives. I feel we all get the stay at home mom blues. It is the most underappreciated job in the world! I wonder if we can get our time differences sorted out and have scheduled chats in the chat room. Crunchy has a great idea about RA meetings! Just have to figure out how to do it in cyber space. I'm really jealous of all of you for getting the opportunity to be "stay-at-home" moms. I never got that. At 6 months, I was forced back to work by my husband. Yeah, I'm still mad at him. And, my jobs were the 50-60 a week. Then there was the divorce and the joint custody and my time with them was really minimized. Do not ever underestimate the value you are giving to your children. Even if they don't realize it now, it will eventually become apparent as they move through life. They will have more confidence when they leave the nest. I have gleaned every possible moment from my kid's lives and they are assured that I love them. But there were times when they did feel the loss no matter how unavoidable it was. I think we lost something important with the women's movement. We needed the same rights as men in the working place, politics, etc. But I don't think we intended to give up our essential selves. For many of us, the greatest job we ever had was being someone's mom. Family dramatics - well, with my parents and siblings, you'd better just go along with my mom. If you don't, you are officially on the outs with everyone and it's like you don't exist. Hmm. I won't put up with that and after 3 years of silence, they've decided maybe they might just have to accept me like I am. Fortunately, with my kids, there being only two, holidays have become this quiet little refuge where we reconnect and devour the goodies. I spent a lot Thanksgivings and Christmas alone so that they could have continuity of holidays with their dad. Now, they choose to spend the time with me. In that, I feel really blessed. HillHoney - Let's put it this way my sister has real mental problems and she was not even the one that fell off the bed when she was a baby.
Her & mom have about the same relationship as all of us other kids. My mom does not do favorites never has. she was always a SAHM. I mean with 5 kids how can you do favoritism? Besides my sister was the baby before I came along so.... you know how that goes.
The drama that is arising is not about the argument du jour, it is more about deep seated feelings of insecurity and being unloved. Your poor sister, for whatever reason, has created an identity for herself of the "family victim" , and constantly needs to find validation for it, proving that everyone treats her and her children unfairly. The problem is, as it is with children who act this way, it does become a self-fulfilling prophesy. The child on the playground who always wants his way, and disrupts every game with a tantrum ends up being shunned by the other kids. It is such a sad, sad thing to watch.
It would be wonderful if your mother could sit your sister down and really listen to her feelings, and try to help her see how her behavior is self-defeating, and let her really feel love and approval from your mother. My guess is that her relationship with her mother is where the problem began, and that's where the healing needs to occur as well.
The low self-esteem you are feeling is what most stay-at-home moms feel. We are on-call dispensing love and care 24/7 and we don't get the kind of kudos for a job well done that we would if we were working out in "the real world". I love that commercial that is on right now, where the mom is invisible, going about her daily chores and caring for the children. That's exactly how we feel, because it is easy to take all that we do for granted.
You need to find something for yourself that allows you time to be someone other than Mommy. When I was your age and in your position I joined my local Woman's Club. I loved it. I could go in the evenings when my husband was home with the kids, and meet other women, have projects to work on for community service that made me feel proud of myself, and rediscover the multi-dimensional person I was. I made friends with women of all ages, and learned so much from those that had already been through what I was going through. The friendships and sense of community I gained are so important to me, even now - 15 years later.
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