Adult Club | Heir to Blair

Lessons of Three Months Time.

23 Apr posted by heirtoblair

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This kid, he bear-hug loves his momma.

& his momma loves him back.

I came alive as Harrison’s mother over the past few months. The doubts & lack of confidence & inability to focus simply shed away & I’m not sure whether it was from the sunshine in the backyard or being the boss of my own day or his incredible tiny grin. But I came alive in the happiest & most fulfilling way possible, all the way down to my toes until motherhood felt like a calling to my soul. Driving through town with the windows down & groceries in the backseat, I’d flick my eyes to the rearview mirror & catch Harry’s smile & I would think to myself YES.

Yes, motherhood.

Yes, incredible joy & worthwhile sacrifice & overwhelming love.

Yes, I’ve finally got it.

I’ve always been a little off-beat but I think the oddest thing is that the longer I’m with Harrison, the more I mother, the less tired & overwhelmed I feel. Two hours can bring me to my knees but three months home can be a balm to the soul where we’ve figured our quirks & my patience surprises me with its ability to simply roll with the tide, even when there’s a gallon of milk on my floor. To where he’s the beat of my heart & being without him feels like I might as well leave my right arm with him, too. Here, take my kidney too.

Only three months & already I feel lost without his little arms wrapped around my legs but the penchant is still there to count everything & it’s a private joke that only I know when I lift the second half of my sandwich & think “two” & I smile. My new boss must think I’m strange & maybe I am, but I’m a momma above all, even with my fingers flying above a keyboard.

8b97f1148bfe11e1a39b1231381b7ba1 7 Lessons of Three Months Time.

HeirtoBlair500x150 v41 Lessons of Three Months Time.

18 Comments
Filed Under: Adult Club, All about BA, Finding Balance, Harry in General, Life in General, Potential for Doocing, Sorta Staying Home, Things I didn't understand until I birthed a child, Toddlers eat your brains

Moving back to the homestead.

18 Apr posted by heirtoblair

Starting Monday, I will be living at my parent’s house during the weekdays. My new job (so freaking excited & nervous!) is even further from our for-the-love-of-God-please-sell-already house, which means that Harrison & I would need to leave the house by 6:30am to begin a roughly 2-hour commute including daycare drop-off.

That ain’t happening. My sanity can’t take it & my Twitter stream cannot handle any more LOOK HOW LONG IT TOOK ME TO GET HOME! that they had this past winter.

So to cut back the time by roughly an hour each way, Harrison & I will be living out of suitcases on work nights & then trudging back to our home for the weekends. Doug will be doing a 50/50 dance of checking on the house & staying with us. I’m not looking forward to being without my husband so much, but we know it’s temporary.

This is the room I’ll be staying in – one of the guest rooms that has zero of the personality it used to have with college banners & football trophies from when my brother lived in here. I’ll be moving in my desk & computer & I switched out one of the nightstands for a bookcase (I love having my books close). The Momma is clearing out space in the closet as I type. But I’m at a loss as to what to do…I’ll be here 5 nights out of the week without my husband for who knows how long & I am wondering if I should try to bring a little of “us” to this room. Bring pictures of our little family, use a bedspread from home.

I’ll need to remember to bring over Harry’s favorite bedtime books & toys for the evenings. I’ll need to leave a post-it note reminding Doug to water the garden every night. It’s going to be crazy-weird living under my parent’s roof again, except now I’m an adult & it’s so temporary. Hopefully our house will sell this spring so that we can put all this nasty commuting mess behind us for good.

But for now, I guess I’m moving back to the homestead.

Y’all.

23 Comments
Filed Under: Adult Club, All about BA, Finding Balance, I share DNA with these folks, Life in General, Moving on up, Outsourcing Parenting Skills, Potential for Doocing, The I Do's, Things that aren't perfect despite my best efforts

A call for responsible discourse.

17 Apr posted by heirtoblair

Last week it was suggested that I am an abusive & neglectful mother for letting my child play alone in our secure backyard, only feet away while I empty a dishwasher.

“So I unload the top of the dishwasher, then peek out to check. Unload the bottom dishwasher & peek out to check. Wipe down the counters & brew a cup of coffee & head outside for another 30 minutes.” ~from my Babble.com post

The comments poured in, different opinions & questions & then first neglect, then abuse. oh, the rage. It was strong. Not because someone disagreed with my parenting choices or felt they were wrong – I highly expect that for every decision I make regarding my child. I formula fed & suffered postpartum depression & don’t spank my child so if you think I still have a thin skin regarding parenting choices, try again.

My rage came from blatantly flippant use of the words “abuse” & “neglect.”

Definition of child abuse (per dictionary):
mistreatment of child: severe mistreatment of a child by a parent, guardian, or other adult responsible for his or her welfare, e.g. physical violence, neglect, sexual assault, or emotional cruelty

Definition of child neglect (childhelp.org):
Failure to provide for a child’s physical needs. This includes lack of supervision, inappropriate housing or shelter, inadequate provision of food and water, inappropriate clothing for season or weather, abandonment, denial of medical care and inadequate hygiene.

My child playing 10 feet away where I can hear & see him easily is not severe mistreatment. Him learning independent play in a secure environment where I am seconds away is not careless disregard.

It makes me wonder if those that throw those harsh words around so easily have ever seen true neglect & abuse first-hand. If they’ve ever lived with a nine-year-old boy that only weighs 40 lbs because his mother bought drugs instead of food. If they’ve ever had to carry a hyperventilating six-year-old out of a store because a piece of glitter landed on her hand & she had a flashback to years of child pornography. If they’ve ever sat with social workers for hours as part of a home study & heard a little boy say he was given to the devil. Because I have & those are memories that marked my heart forever to where the word “abuse” is as strong as a racial slur or the R-word.

Child abuse & neglect are powerful words, real words that are real in our society. They are the children that are starved & beaten & locked in closets, torn apart at the hands of people they know, molested & left for days. Every ten seconds, a report of child abuse is made. More than five children die every day as a result of abuse. Child abuse is serious & it is a serious allegation.

I beg you to be mindful of the words used to describe another parent’s actions. Are they truly abusing their child, causing danger to the child’s overall well-being? Or is it a simple heated discussion where you feel you are right, by golly?

Let’s talk about parenting. Let’s share ideas & concerns & hopes & fears. Feel free to disagree with me respectfully & accept that I may defend my stance. But let’s have this parenting discourse responsibly.

If you do see child abuse & neglect happening, please call the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453.

128 Comments
Filed Under: Adult Club, Guzzling the Haterade, Open Letters, Things I didn't understand until I birthed a child, Things that aren't perfect despite my best efforts, Unpopular opinions

When I don’t understand but I just love him, love him, love him.

11 Apr posted by heirtoblair

ff2bf2b84aa111e180c9123138016265 7 When I dont understand but I just love him, love him, love him.

Our boy.

He doesn’t talk the way other kids his age do.

I’ve known it for over a year, watching him & practicing & my heart hurting the way he seems to struggle. The way he doesn’t quite form the words & I know that part of him being so quiet is the perfectionist trait he inherited from his momma, not wanting to try unless he knows he can succeed. The way my heart burst one thousand times when he put two words together on his own in January, saying “Bye-bye, moon!” when we went inside & I nearly cried. How many times I’ve cried, out of pure joy when he says a word clearly & in frustration when he is screaming & I’m begging him to please, please use a word or show Momma, but no screaming. How once & twice a week for the past six months, I’ve sat on the floor in speech therapy, taking mental notes for ways to play with him, read to him, teach him to use language.

I don’t understand it because language has always come easily for me, from talking to reading & writing. I may not always know what to say, but I always have something to say. It is so different with my boy, who sits quietly while we race monster trucks & bake wooden cookies.

I know this is a “common” thing, especially for young boys. I hear stories of kids that open their mouths for the first time with full sentences when they are four & stories of apraxia with years of therapy. There are people that tell me to wait it out, that he’ll speak someday. There are others that warn me against waiting too long, that push for a diagnosis. We are doing what feels right for our son. All other opinions are just unwelcome noise.

He is my baby & I am his momma & I love the parts of him that are hard for me to grasp.

Filed Under: Adult Club, Fears, Harry in General, I wish parenting came with a manual, Things I didn't understand until I birthed a child, Things that aren't perfect despite my best efforts, Toddlers eat your brains

On Dating my Husband

3 Apr posted by heirtoblair

datenight On Dating my Husband

It was a gorgeous spring night where the flowers bloomed. I slipped into a little black dress long-forgotten in my closet & curled my hair. Doug pulled a polo shirt over his head for the first time since…well, I can’t remember.

He tells me I look pretty & I smile.

Sometimes I forget how handsome he is.

Sometimes it takes breaking away from our house to remember how much he does for us & that load of dishes he took care of & how pretty our lawn looks thanks to his hard work.

I like watching him try new beers with dinner & he always teases me until I take a taste, too. It makes me feel 21 again at Corner Bar – that time when I told him that I could never marry a man that wouldn’t say prayers with my children & now he kneels beside Harry’s bed every night.

I forget how he drives with one hand on the steering wheel & one hand holding mine & I wonder if we’ll be like this in 20 years, 30 years, 50 years.

I forget that we’re more than Momma & Daddy, more than another load of laundry & a “for sale” sign in the front yard. That the day-to-day can wear us down but our marriage makes that routine feel magical.

But only if I let it.

If I remember the small things that I fell in love with, like the way he gets wrinkles beside his eyes when he smiles or how his idea of a perfect dessert is to swing through Krispy Kreme after an expensive dinner. If I roll down the windows & pretend for a moment that nothing in this world exists outside of us; we’re still the same ten years later but with a few more pounds & responsibilites.

22 Comments
Filed Under: Adult Club, Finding Balance, Life in General, The I Do's