June 20, 2008

Doing What’s Necessary

Filed under: Motherhood, Blogging, Business — holly.schwendiman @ 4:56 pm

I’m amazed at how many things can be about business these days. From the business of motherhood to an office in a high rise, business continues to flourish, grow and change. Change seems to be the one constant in the universe. But keeping up with it can be a real challenge.

I’ve often wondered why that is. I think the real reason is that although we often hope for change, even work for it, we are scared of it and we resist when it comes. It’s hard to let go of our comforts and routines, even when they are causing us discomfort or struggles. They’re like the adult’s version of a baby blanket or favorite toy and we cling to them just as fiercely.

The mark of a good leader in any business is the ability to do what is necessary, especially regarding change; to look it straight in the eye and find new ways to adapt. It’s not easy, in fact pain is usually a factor. The good news is knowing the opportunity that comes with every situation. When you focus on that, when you starve the problems and feed the solutions good things happen.

I’ve had to make a few necessary changes lately as both a mother and business owner. I’ve had to give a little more space to my children as they explore some independence. I’ve had to let go of some business ventures online because there are just so many new options out there with blogs, etc. that I can’t possibly compete with and don’t really want to try. But even as I make these necessary changes I’m putting a smile on my face reminding myself that I’m simply making room for what’s coming next and it will be bigger and better!

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June 10, 2008

Bricks and Such

Filed under: Family, Funnies, Sharing, Motherhood — holly.schwendiman @ 9:22 am

I’ve been working on a post for a few days now that’s still not finished. I can’t seem to find 5 minutes to rub together to spend at my computer this summer. When I do find a few precious moments I can’t find the motivation to do what I wanted! At any rate, shorts and funnies are fast and easy and I have another great one today. My son is the culprit again.

A few days ago we were walking out of the movie theater. As we approach the car my son pipes up and says, “Son of a brick” which brought an onslaught of laughter from mom on the drive home. Great parenting hugh?

I remember when my daughter was his age and also very susceptible to words and influences. The one I remember her sharing was the day she asked us if “bull-uh-sh**” was a bad word. I couldn’t even answer.

I’m not sure why it’s so funny but there’s just something about your little ones sharing what they hear in cuss words that’s down right hilarious. Bricks and stones may break my bones (just ask my brother who recently lost a match with a boulder) but mispronounced swear words will slay me! Bwa-ha-ha.

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June 5, 2008

Not To Be Outdone

Filed under: Family, Funnies, Sharing, Motherhood — holly.schwendiman @ 4:17 pm

This afternoon my daughter had two girlfriends over to swim. One of the great advantages to my son being 5 years younger is that he doesn’t quantify friends based on age or gender so he happily joined the three in their water fun.

It wasn’t long before the request came to add some water balloons into the mix, so being the good mom that I am I dutifully filled and tied enough for each child to have two. (Don’t judge me, I’ve been filling and tying balloons for three days now. *wink*)

A few moments later I look out the window to see all three girls using theirs in their suits as boobs. I’m safely hidden behind screened windows so they don’t know I’m watching and laughing my backside off inside. But not to be outdone, my son is seen shoving one of his down his swim trunks. *eye roll, giggle, snort*

Ah the joys.

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June 3, 2008

The Responsible Parent

Filed under: Parenting, Motherhood, Intellectual — holly.schwendiman @ 2:53 pm

My friend Kelly has challenged her readers to participate in defining their view of responsibility for her Pass The Torch Tuesday project and as responsibility is huge with me I knew I couldn’t pass this up. So I’ve chosen to define what a responsible parent is to me.

I don’t have a perfect little definition paragraph for an answer. I only have my reasons for knowing it’s important, my personal experiences with it and my goals and direction as a parent.

Given that I believe that we live in a society that is largely lacking responsibility, I think the root of the problem is found at home in the way children are taught or not taught to be responsible. This means the parent must be responsible too for you cannot give that which you don’t have.

Some would say that my judgment of society is harsh. If you wonder why I think our society is largely irresponsible I ask you to look around and see how many people spend valuable time, resources and energy playing the blame game, excusing themselves or their actions, caring only about themselves or any combination of all these attitudes. We have become masters at believing there is always an escape, at believing that only ourselves matter. Just look at one simple example of the controversial topic of abortion. Look at the energy and resources spent arguing this consequence. It isn’t even viewed as a consequence of a previous action or decision, it’s disguised as an issue of choice.

I was taught that you can choose your decisions but not the consequences. That for every action and decision there was a corresponding consequence. This is at the top of my list of important elements in teaching my children what responsibility means. The world will not teach it. In fact it seems to me that society today cultivates an attitude of acquiring skills to aid them in attempted side-stepping of the consequences of their actions. Some even believe they’ve succeeded. I believe with every fiber of my being that no matter how long you may delay a consequence it cannot be erased and often the harder one works to eliminate it the longer the trail of additional offenses and consequences will follow.

Further, I was taught the the right for me to swing my fist ends where your nose begins. This is another critical principal to me as a parent to teach my kids. This means you have to think about someone other than yourself, you have to learn how to respect yourself and others in every sense.

The hardest part of all this as a parent is not just the burden of teaching your children correct principles and moral values, but more importantly how to let your children have the experience of making their own decisions to learn the consequences for themselves. Because at the end of the day, the true teacher is experience. The close shadow to this teacher is that of example and truly the lessons taught are often the ones we don’t even realize we’re teaching. Do as I say and not as I do never works. No, this as in all things has to start from within.

I don’t have a Harry Potter wand or a crystal ball to help navigate these troubled waters. But clinging to the principles that are most important to me will help me charter the course. I know that patterns of behaviors don’t correct themselves, that what you feed is what grows. I know that I want my kids to understand the most basic and fundamental principles of responsibility that I was given as a youth. So for now I can only charge ahead to the best of my ability to teach them personal accountability and basic respect. And a little positive motivation from time to time can help a great deal, now where’d I put that chocolate?

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June 2, 2008

Good News

Filed under: Family, Parenting, Sharing, Organizing, Positive Impact, Motherhood, Balance, ADHD, Recreation — holly.schwendiman @ 1:42 pm

I set up my Mii account on our Wii Fitness this morning and to my delight it calculated my BMI and weight in the normal region. Yay! Now, I didn’t really need it’s balance and muscle assessment to know that I’m not in great shape and my body is weaker than it should be but who knows, maybe it will help me work on that. One thing I learned with Dance Dance Revolution is that exercise in the form of some entertainment works well for me. So I’m hopeful. I also took heart in my first rounds of yoga exercises and balance games that I placed in the top three of my family members who have been doing it for a week now. I’m also delighted that the pool season is back because I can do so much more with my joints in the pool than in other exercise settings.

In other good news today I’m happy to report that I found another solution that is helping me with my summer vacation parental strain. As my husband and I talked last week, I realized that no matter how many things we did or planned to keep our daughter busy the fundamental problem wouldn’t be addressed. My ten year old daughter has ADD and that means her brain doesn’t organize things naturally, or at least the way most of our brains do. It’s why she’s always asking to do 10 things at the same time and why she spends 5 minutes of quiet time complaining of boredom. So I decided to take my last organization attempt during the holidays a step further. I printed out calendars from my Google calendar for each of the kids. One page was a month overview and then each week broken down on a single page with the hours of 6AM-5PM each day. My thought was if I made their planning visual not only would they better understand time and feel some control over their activities, they might also see how much they really have.

I’m happy to report that so far so great. They are both working at filling in their wants on their calendar and mom helps fit in some needs (a.k.a. chores) and catching the vision. This morning we planned out this week which took about 10 minutes compared to our first attempt last week which took about 20 minutes for 2 days. Progress. I’m finding it helps me too because the time we block for academic review and games is small enough that none of us go crazy. In fact, this morning they both asked if we could do it longer so that’s a plus for mom.

Speaking of time, mine is up so that’s all for today on the blog! *giggle*

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May 29, 2008

Surviving

Filed under: Family, Parenting, Sharing, Emotions, Motherhood — holly.schwendiman @ 1:54 pm

Today marks the third day of summer vacation for my kids - that is the third day without holidays or special circumstances as their last day of school was actually last week. Day one was a fiasco for me. The kids had a great time but it was basically friends and playmates all day that ended in some less than stellar decisions; including throwing mud in the pool *grrrr*, attempts and skinny dipping and messing with the pool pump which really freaked mom and dad out. While these things weren’t the fault of our kids, it was a result of their friends and their actions and led for many discussions and new ground rules. *sigh* Day two went to the opposite extreme with no friends accompanied by plenty of whining (despite my new sign) and fighting. So today I started the day different with a brainstorming session on rules and consequences and calendaring out our plans and activities. It’s been a better day and I’m hoping to keep things rolling. I even scored getting in some math and problem solving with some creative games this morning. Go mom! So there’s hope that I’ll survive this summer.

Speaking of hope, there is a need for much of it for a loved one right now. This past weekend my son’s birthmother was stricken with Sepsis and she is currently battling for her life in ICU on a ventilator and dialysis machine. All that can be done is being done and the roller coaster ride is wild. She is having hours that are good and hours that are bad. This was so unexpected and so our hearts and prayers are full for her and her family right now.

Life can turn on a dime. I suppose that’s the good thing to remember on all those other manic and survival days.

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May 20, 2008

Influence

Filed under: Family, Parenting, Sharing, Emotions, Relationships, Motherhood — holly.schwendiman @ 12:24 pm

Influence is a powerful force. So many times we make decisions in our lives based on influence whether we recognize it or not. Many blindly give all power to influence blaming it for “making” them do or say things, or not. I have a real hangup with responsibility so that doesn’t fly with me, but even knowing each of us has the control and power to make our own decisions I readily recognize how powerful influence is.

A few weeks ago I was reading a book that described a powerful scene where influence played a nasty hand. It made me think on my own life and how many times I may or may not have done something that wasn’t me but that I felt pressured to do for appearances or acceptance of peers. In the book, it was a traitorous blow from one brother to another and the consequences were devastating. In fact, neither ever truly recovered from that split decision that was made more for the friends present than for the one making it.

Sometimes you know when you have a profound influence on another person, sometimes you don’t. I think I prefer the ones where I don’t know because you don’t have any reason to ask the ‘what if’ questions. Take my youngest sister for example. I knew the influence I had in her life and consequently I frequently wonder how things might have been different if I had been around longer for her. You see, I was ten when she was born. Having a ten year old daughter now is a stark reminder of how baby crazy girls can be at that age. All my daughter wants to do is babysit for people and hold babies. So it was with me and the timing was perfect to have a new baby sister. I treated my baby sister like my own china doll and she received it very well. In fact, it used to infuriate my older sister because she’d always choose me over her; a personal triumph for me that I secretly relished. Moreover, because she was so much younger than me I don’t remember any sibling struggles or frustrations like I do with those closer to me in age. Our relationship was always different, bordering on parent like for me. I was her protector, her nourisher and a lot of the time her care giver. And then I moved a thousand miles away to begin my new life as a wife. She was only ten and I can’t help but catch myself in thought sometimes about how my influence may have helped her if I’d been around a little longer, especially have a ten year old daughter now.

When I think about my own life and people who have influenced me, my feelings and decisions I find myself smiling. Some have added needed drops in my confidence bucket even though they never knew it. It makes me happy to remember those unseen and unknown influences and even happier to think I may have done the same for someone else sometime. I hope I have.

There’s the famous saying that you may not mean the world to everyone but to someone you may mean the world. I think that’s a good thing to remember when thinking on the intricate web of influence. I think it’s important enough to stop and think about once and while, to take inventory of the type of influence I am on those around me and to work on being the best one I can be, to be a lifter instead of a leaner.

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May 13, 2008

Educational Entertainment

Filed under: Parenting, Sharing, Motherhood, Success — holly.schwendiman @ 12:19 pm

Sometimes I feel that I could write endlessly about the experience of having no TV in our home. It’s amazing to me how much I’ve noticed, the little changes and big ones all from one decision. One of the things that I learned a long time ago is that you can’t simply remove things, they require replacement if you want success. It doesn’t matter if it’s thoughts, habits or tangible uses of time the rule is the same. So when we talked as a family about not paying any more for any TV to come to our home we also talked about the other things we could spend that money on. So today I share some of our tangible replacements and their enthusiastic reception.

Behold my last order from Oriental Trading: A full box of summer fun:

I splurged on the hoppity horse style bouncers. I remember these as a kid and my 5 year old begged and pleaded. But the delight was well worth it and we’ve all had hours of fun since their arrival. The kids were blown away that mom still knows how to bounce on them and even challenged a race.

They couldn’t wait for school to be out to dig into one of the activities, so I let it buy my Sunday afternoon Mother’s Day nap. It was a little rock and gem set. The kit included a brick with rocks and gems trapped inside the plaster brick. They had to chip away until they could remove the rocks and then could examine them with the little magnifier and identify them based on the poster that came with the set.

I love that my kids are enjoying spending their time doing things that are fun and educational and not just watching hours of TV programming that dulls their senses and whittles away at their morals. Another post for another day. *wink* Meanwhile, the suspense and anticipation of all the surprises in this box are treasured by this mom - almost as much fun as Christmas.

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May 12, 2008

Blessed

Filed under: Family, Adoption, Sharing, Emotions, Motherhood — holly.schwendiman @ 9:58 am

Yesterday was Mother’s Day and it was truly one of the most wonderful I’ve had. There was a time when I dreaded this day, a time in childless years when it tore my heart to shreds. A time, when I remember being told in words, actions, and looks many times how I was not a mother though I desperately wanted to be. Many women with similar experiences continue to struggle on this day even years after finally becoming mothers. I’m grateful to say that while I remember those I truly enjoy Mother’s Day, not just for my own mother and memory of motherly influence in my own life but because I appreciate so much more the blessing of being a mother now. And look at the loot besides!



Can’t beat that. I am so blessed and spoiled!

Now, if I can just stretch my luck and blessings long enough to get all my stuff backed up I’ll be most happy. I’ve got a bad feeling about my computer. *furrowed brow*

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April 23, 2008

52=Fun

Filed under: Family, Sharing, Motherhood — holly.schwendiman @ 2:41 pm

Who knew how far $3.32 would go to buying hours of fun and smiles? This is like that super duper crayon pack with the built in sharpener I always longed for in elementary school. I look forward to great shares of mystical artwork on the driveway.

Kind of makes you want to be a kid again doesn’t it?

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