What Women Fantasize About (G-rated)

Note - despite the title of this post, it doesn't contain inappropriate material. Or at least not much. ;-)

My husband asked me one day if women struggled with fantasizing about other men. I just laughed.
"Oh, honey," I said. "We fantasize about a lot of things...but men really aren't one of them."

One of the key differences between men and women that men will never understand. Men fantasize about women. Women fantasize about...having enough alone time to get done all the things we want? Maybe that sounds selfish. Maybe it is. Maybe we are selfish in our fantasies because that is the only time we can ever afford to be selfish - the rest of the time, we are too busy taking care of everyone else!

Here's a short list, by no mean comprehensive, of things women fantasize about:

-sitting on the couch, in a perfectly clean house (that someone else cleaned), sipping wine (or sparkling cider for teetotlaers like me) and watching Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell movies

- eating magical chocolate that makes us thinner with each bite

- waking up in the morning looking like we just spent 3 hours getting ready, without actually having to spend the 3 hours

- going shopping by ourselves, without any kids, and coming home to happy children and dinner already cooked

- sitting in church with our husband and adorable, well-dressed, well-behaved children, who sit still and  quietly through the entire service

- bras that make us look good, but feel like we're wearing pajamas, and shoes that look like stilettos, but are as comfortable as bedroom slippers

- finding our favorite brand of clothing, in our size, marked 80% off

- fitting into last year's swimsuit (jeans are applicable too)

- taking a two hour bubble bath with a good book and NO interruptions

- a world where snakes and spiders do not exist

- having a bathroom all to ourselves, so we can scatter our makeup, curling irons, and hair products with impunity and never have to worry about whether the toilet seat is up

- painless childbirth (Hahahahaha! just the thought is hysterical!)

-getting 12 hours of sleep every night

- being served tea and scones from a beautiful china teapot at four o'clock each afternoon by our personal maid just like on Downton Abbey (possibly while watching Downton Abbey...)

- sometimes, I must confess, we fantasize about our husbands getting to experience our monthly periods or, even better, labor! That way they can understand what we go through and show much more gratitude for our forbearance as each month passes without an axe-murder occurring...

- and finally, one of my favorite fantasies, which crosses my mind nearly on a daily basis (including today), looks like this:

Le Sigh. Don't we all wish...

Okay, now pull your head down out of the clouds and go scrub something and find something about your actual life to be thankful for!

Then eat some chocolate and pretend it's magical chocolate that makes you thinner. You never know...it could happen....

Now, what about you, women everywhere? Anything you want to add to my list? (G-rated comments only please!)

You can't please everyone

 You can't please everyone - so the saying goes. Nowhere is this more evident than in the life of a mother. The more children you have, and the older they are, the more opinions they seem to have between them, and it can drive you crazy trying to keep up with all their likes and dislikes, especially since those likes and dislikes can change daily, if not hourly. ("What do you MEAN you don't like carrots? Yesterday you refused to eat anything BUT carrots! I bought 6 bags of carrots and now...") And yet, somehow we still find ourselves trying to make everyone happy.

A perfect example of this is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. "PB&J?" you say. "But that's so simple. How could it possibly be complicated?" Watch and learn, my friends. Watch and learn.

1. The bread. James and Gabs are gluten intolerant, which mean they have to have special gluten-free bread. Daddy has a strong dislike for gluten free bread, even the homemade one, so he has to have regular bread from the secret stash. Joseph and I can go either way, depending on how we're feeling and how much gluten free bread we have left. Elora isn't supposed to have bread at all yet, although she likes to scavenge for crusts on the ground when I'm not looking.

Then, of course, is the question of toasted vs. untoasted. James wants his untoasted. Gabs and Joseph like theirs toasted. If it's gluten free, I like it better toasted, but if it's regular bread, I like it untoasted. And Daddy always wants his toasted.


2. Peanut butter. Once again the allergies come into play. James, Joseph, and Daddy are all peanut butter fanatics, so we buy peanut butter in the giant container at Sams. Gabriella isn't really supposed to have peanut butter yet, because she's only 2, and I am allergic to peanuts, so we have almond butter. Fortunately I think everyone likes creamy (unless grandparents are over, in which case the crunchy question enters the equation...) And don't get me started on thick vs. thinly spread!


3. Jelly. Or jam, depending on which you prefer. Everyone seems to have a different favorite flavor. Daddy likes grape jelly. James like "orange jelly" which can mean either apricot or orange marmalade depending on what we have in stock. Joseph likes strawberry. Gabs likes strawberry or raspberry. I like apricot or raspberry, but I'm rather particular about my brands, because I really hate the taste and idea of high fructose corn syrup, and it's hard to find a jam that doesn't contain it. (Trader Joe's has some good ones, and Bonne Maman, which you can get at the regular grocery, is also a good HFCS-free option too, although it's expensive!) And then there's always honey...

4. Presentation. Once all the options have been chosen, there is the question of how everyone wants theirs served. James freaks out if you cut his sandwich in half (which is unfortunate because then the jelly from his giant sandwich runs all down his arms...), while Gabs can't actually bite into her sandwich UNLESS it's cut in half. Joseph doesn't want a sandwich at all - he wants one slice of toast with peanut butter and the other with jelly. Daddy usually opts for just peanut butter toast, unless he's in a particular sandwich mood. And I...well, at this point I am just lucky if I get to eat at all.

And did I mentioned that Elora doesn't even EAT PB&Js yet? I'm sure that will throw a whole new level into the madness.

Forget it. From now on we are all eating steak. It's one-size-fits-all!

At this moment I feel a bit like laundry that has been put through one of those old fashioned wringers - the kind from before modern washers and dryers, where you had to feed the laundry through and turn the crank and wring out all the water so you could hang it on the line. I feel like a limp, soggy, floppy puddle on the floor.

My head is pounding. My heart is racing. I look down and notice I have blood on my jeans. I think I still have blood on my hands, too.

See, today was the first time in 5 years of parenting that we had an "emergency." I say emergency in quotes because it turns out that it really wasn't that bad. I overreacted, and I am feeling kind of stupid about that. But in order to understand exactly why I overreacted, you have to understand my childhood.

I was an extremely accident prone child (ok, and teenager...and adult), and I hurt myself a lot. Now, lots of kids hurt themselves. Bruises. A few stitches. Maybe even stepping on a pin or a nail. Except I took it to the next level...I managed to hurt myself in the worst possible way that nearly always resulted in some kind of major surgery. I had had 3 surgeries by the time I was 11 years old to fix various body parts I'd broken in some strange way. And the worst one of these was the time I cut my thumb off. I won't go into gory details. The doctors were able to sew it back on and it works just fine. And while it was fairly traumatic at the time, I don't think it "scarred me for life" in the psychological sense. It was painful at the time, but I got over it. Honestly I wouldn't really put my accidents on my list of regrets.

But today....today my history became much more traumatic because I experienced it from a parent's perspective. Joseph and James were fooling around with the coffee table, trying to pick it up to prove who was the strongest. (Boys! Honestly!) Joseph dropped it, and the sharp edge landed on James's big toe. Screaming and bleeding ensued, and when Mama took his sock off, it looked like the cut extended all the way around the toe, in essence cutting the top of the toe off. (Turned out it was two different cuts, and they just looked connected because of the blood.) I freaked out, started putting pressure on the bleeding, and called both Robert and my mom with the "it's an emergency" call, certain that history was repeating itself and my not-quite-four-year-old son had just cut his big toe off. They both dropped everything and rushed over, bless them, and Mom stayed with the other kids while Robert and I took James to Doctors on Call. It took less than an hour, wasn't broken, and turned out to be just a deep cut that the doctor superglued (yes, superglued! evidently superglue has replaced stitches now days?) his toe back together and bandaged it up, and we came home.

Part of me feels very ridiculous for freaking out and overreacting so much. I mean, I have 4 children, and I thought I was used to the minor injuries by now. Robert and I are definitely not the "rush your kids to the emergency room for every minor thing" parents! (At least, I thought we weren't...) I also feel bad for pulling Robert away from work and wasting his and Mom's time with something I should have been able to handle on my own. I mean, I could have washed his toe and superglued it and put a bandage on it myself, for crying out loud!

Somehow I think it was just facing the possibility of my son going through the same thing that I had that unnerved me so much. I am so very grateful that he wasn't badly hurt - praise God for that! But I still feel like collapsing in a chair and trying to calm my fractured nerves! (Okay, I admit it - if I drank alcohol, today would be the day...) Chocolate. I am badly in need of a chocolate fix! God's de-stresser for moms who don't drink...

Desperately in love...again...

I have a confession to make: I have never liked babies. It sounds terrible, but it's true. I liked kids once they were old enough to talk and play and interact, but I always thought babies were rather boring. They just cried and slept and lay there...they didn't do anything. And they kind of all looked alike. With 4 younger siblings,
I spent a lot of time around babies and babysat a lot, but I never was really a "baby person." I believe at one point I even swore I was never having any!

When I was pregnant with Joseph, my first baby, I was actually really worried that I wouldn't like him. I was excited about having a child but I thought I would just have to endure the baby phase until he was old enough to be interesting. Everyone kept reassuring me that I would love MY baby once he was here, but I was afraid they were wrong, and I felt secretly guilty over it. Well, of course they were right and I was wrong. I feel deeply and completely in love with this 9 pounds of baby boy and never got over it! I wouldn't leave him at all, with anyone, and I didn't really even like to let other people hold him. I had to take a grad school final that I'd missed while giving birth to him about a month after he was born, and it almost killed me to leave him for those 2 hours. Robert had to come to UNM with me and hold Joseph in my office while I took the final so I could see him the very moment I was done, and I couldn't concentrate too well because I kept thinking about my baby while I was supposed to be writing...I had been planning to go back to grad school after taking a semester off, but that final convinced me otherwise. I was never leaving my baby again!

Joseph as a baby

When James came along, only 14 months after Joseph, I didn't feel ready for another baby. I loved Joseph so much that I worried I wouldn't be able to love James as much. Once again, silly me, I was proven quite wrong. I fell in love all over again with James...but I still loved my toddler Joseph every bit as much. It was like those commercials for Double Mint gum: "double your pleasure, double your fun!" Two babies to play with, two babies to obsess over and worry about and adore.

James as a baby

 When Gabriella was born, it was easier. I knew I would love her just as much, and I was REALLY excited to have a girl simply because I hadn't had one yet. Everything was so different with her because she WAS a girl - it was all new and exciting. Pink clothes and ruffles and tiny dresses...oh my! I was in heaven.

Gabriella as a baby

But when Elora was born, I worried again (can you tell I'm a worrier?!), not that I wouldn't love her, but that I wouldn't be so excited. We'd already had boy and girl babies, so there wouldn't be anything new there. Fourth baby in five years....everything had already been done. We knew exactly what to expect; how could there be any more surprises? Well, you'd think I'd learn, considering how often I had been wrong! Her very birth was a surprise - with a quick, quick labor and extremely easy delivery, right into the hands of her waiting Daddy, since nobody, including the midwives, got there in time!

and...Elora!

 It was such a sweet and perfect moment, just the three of us, and I have the fondest memories of Elora's birth out of all of them! There were a few rocky months in getting adjusted to having 4 - as I discuss in this post - but mostly that was because of the older kids. Elora  was my favorite because she couldn't destroy anything yet! ;-)

To my relief, my fears of not being as taken with this fourth baby were groundless - I am every bit as crazy about her as I was about all the others! 6 months old, she is so sweet and chubby and fun. Our favorite nickname for her is "Elorable" because she IS! She is so interested in everything her big brothers and sister are doing that she will sit and stare at them for hours. She wants SO badly to participate in everything that she is scooting/army crawling across the floor and grabbing things off the table. Her enormous smile is punctuated by her two little teeth that finally popped through. She can stand up holding onto things and I wouldn't be surprised if she just started walking one of these days and skipped crawling all together. I love her differently - but every bit as much - as each of my other children.

It is such an amazing thing to me that you can love 4 children - and one husband - SO much that they are all the most important person in the world to you...at the same time. Love is the only thing that multiplies when you divide it. (I like this kind of math!) I think I have finally learned this lesson and I will not have to worry if I have another baby - or even if I have 10 more babies! I know that I will fall in love with each and every one of them.

Halloween?

It's October, which means you can't go anywhere without being accosted by all manner of creepy-looking paraphernalia: skeletons, ghosts, vampires, tombstones, leering pumpkins, and *shudder* spiders, among other things. Some people (ahem...our neighbors) have even gone so far as to start decorating their houses with "Halloween lights," a garish orange parody of the Christmas lights I love so much. I hate taking my children to the store during this month because I don't want them too see all the horrible decorations and costumes. However, I am kind of conflicted about Halloween as a whole.

Growing up, my family never celebrated Halloween. No costumes, no trick or treating, no parties. Usually my mom would buy a bag of candy, just in case any neighbor kids stopped by (which, living in the East Mountains, they usually didn't!) and let us eat a couple of pieces. Once or twice we went to "Fall Carnivals" thrown at churches, and I seem to remember one where we all dressed up as Bible characters. (I must have been about 6 because I remember I wore an old pillowcase and was Miriam and my brother Isaac was Moses and Mom put him in a basket.) Usually we celebrated "Reformation Day" instead, because as any good homeschooling kid knows, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses of protest against the Catholic church to the door of the church in Wittenburg on October 31, 1517.

I understand the reasons why my parents chose not to celebrate Halloween, and I respected them, even though I felt (and still feel) that it was highly unfair that Satan had stolen the holiday of dress up and candy, two of my favorite things! Once I hit my twenties, my sister and I dressed up in our homemade Renaissance costumes and went out with friends to dinner on Halloween a few times. But now that I have kids who are old enough to actually notice, Halloween has become an issue I have to deal with.

My husband came from a Christian, Bible-believing family who had a different approach to Halloween. Their kids always dressed up and went trick-or-treating. For the first few years we had kids, we'd talk about what we believed about Halloween, but we never really had to decide because they were too little to really do anything. We dressed them in their Batman and Superman and Pooh bear pajamas, just because it was cute, and we passed out candy to the neighbor kids. But this year they are getting older and we still haven't decided on a strong conviction one way or the other.

I believe that there are many aspects of Halloween that definitely ARE wrong and demonic. I don't approve of all the ugly and scary things, simply because I don't think they are edifying or glorifying to God, and I wouldn't let my kids dress up like them or decorate our house with them. But I admit I don't see anything inherently wrong with dressing up in costumes. Or eating candy! I don't want my kids to go trick-or-treating because I don't feel like it's safe, and somehow it seems rude to me to ask other people for candy! Especially because they would certainly never be allowed to "trick" someone who doesn't give it to them!

This year Robert decided we should go to the "trunk or treat" event that's being held at a nearby church. And I am making all the costumes. Gabriella's favorite movie is Cinderella, and the boys like it a lot too, so we are all going to be characters from Cinderella. Gabriella will be Cinderella, of course, and I have already started working on her dress. Elora will be one of the mice, and Joseph will be Prince Charming, and James will be Bruno, the dog (because honestly, that is who James likes best! ;-) And if I get around to it, I will be the fairy godmother and Robert will be the Grand Duke.

 I love sewing costumes, and I am really excited about making them for my kids. As for the whole "Halloween Issue," we may just have to take it on a year-by-year basis. Ultimately we will do whatever Robert thinks is best, because he's the boss of this house! ;-) There is no specific Bible verse that says whether or not to celebrate Halloween...but there is one that says "wives, submit to your husbands." And I trust him to make a good decision because I know he listens to The Boss.

What about you? Do you celebrate Halloween? Why or why not?