Learned Something New 10/14/08

Today I learned:
1) That is takes a village to raise a child
I have a friend who says this to me and others all the time and I used to think - phhhhtttt, baloney. But today I made myself sit back and take a look around me to see how the people in my life depend on me and how I depend on them to help with the day to day things that are needed to raise a family. I quit my full-time job this past February and started working at home doing transcription. It has been the best thing I could have ever done. I was lucky that I had my husband's backing and his financial support in the interim while I got myself established with various companies. As my husabnd works out of state I often tag myself as a "single parent" case in point being that he came home last week for a whole week after being away for 6 months and no, he is not in the military. I have always prided myself on being able to get my kids where they need to be and take care of my family which is the main reason I quit my job because once I started to have to lean on others to watch my kids after school it became painfully clear to me that my time was needed elsewhere and an office was not one of them. I love the fact that I am home when the kids need me and can volunteer at the school and go on field trips as my work is pretty flexible. But some of the moms that live around me are not so fortunate that they either need to work or want to work, which their decisions I respect. But I have lately become the chauffuer of many kids and the person who's house is open to them when they want a place to hang out and play or for a snack. It's a double edged sword for me because I love knowing where the kids are and what they are up to, but I am now to the point that I am always watching people's kids after school or taking them to school or picking them up after school and working around other people's schedules. My husband thinks that I am crazy and reminds me all the time that I did not quit my job for to make life easy for everyone else. It's hard for me to say no, especially when others know that I am home in the first place, but sometimes I find it disconcerting that they are so easy to ask can you watch my kids after school for a whole month or can you take my kids to school so they don't have to walk? I take my kids to school anyway and am going that way, but wouldn't it be nice to just have to worry about my own kids and no one elses? Well, last night I sat and thought about it and realized that I need to shut my mouth and go with the flow because everyone has challenges in their lives that require them to have to lean on others and maybe one day I may be in the same situation where I will need to lean on others to help me with my kids. I would hope that if it got to the point where I was depending on others to watch my kids everyday that is when I would make my husband come back to working in state. I also told myself to stop complaining about this situation as I put myself here by not being able to say no and that it is showing my kids a bad example. As I always try to preach to them that if someone needs our help, we have to do our best to help out, but then there is the other side of me that says, but where do you draw the line to those who take advantage of that? Well, in the end I decided to shut my trap and blog about it instead...

Learned Something New 10/11/08

Today I learned:
1) I was right, my son is on an awesome football team
As of today with only 2 games left in the the season, they are undefeated. Today's game was a tough one. They lost their momentum from early on and it got a little scary for a while because it looked like they were not going to score at all. Every game up to this point, we have been the first team to score and the ending score has always been a blow out like 44-0 or 28 -0, but today, it was 6-0 in the other teams favor and we didn't get any points on the board until the 4th quarter. We squeaked by with a win by getting an interception and scoring which brought the final score to 12-6. WHEW!!! The boys learned a lesson today as well. Just because you put the jersey on doesn't automatically mean that you are going to win the game. You got to work to get the win!

PS -- Practice this week is going to be pretty punishing for them :)