In my quest to give myself more of a break as a mom, I've decided I don't need to do what everyone else is doing. I'll give you an example. Deb is really good about taking her kids to the Fun Van. It sounds like such a cool activity, and she's told me about it several times, but I've never gone. I kept thinking I should go, though. I even went so far as to get the schedule online and print it out for my bulletin board. It took me months of looking at that schedule and not going to realize something. I don't want to go. And that's okay. Not going doesn't make me a bad mom. It's just that there are different things I'd like to do. I'm giving myself permission to play to my strengths, and do the things with my kids that I enjoy doing. No one can do it all, right? I just need to decide what's important to me. What do I want to do with my kids? Once I asked myself that question, the first thing that came to mind was reading books to my family.
Now, I don't mean reading books to my kids. I've been doing that forever. I mean a longer story that I read to everyone, Brian included. This is a tradition I've always wanted to start, but the timing never seemed right. Now my youngest is finally at an age where I thought he could handle listening to me read longer stories. (My goal is to continue this tradition even into the teen years...we'll see if they let me...)
I wasn't sure when we were going to work this into our routine. Like everyone else, we're busy, and the idea of scheduling in one more thing just sounded stressful. But I decided to take it one step at a time. We started with a trip to the library. I told the librarian what I wanted to do and the ages of my kids and she gave me great suggestions. We checked out several books and brought them home. Ben helped me pick which one we'd start with: The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary. I'd never read it before, but it sounded like fun.
Rather than put the book on the shelf with all the other library books, I set it out in plain sight, hoping that seeing it often would help me think of an answer to the "when" question.
That Sunday we were getting ready to go to grandma's house for dinner, a good 15 minute drive. Seeing the book on my way out the door, I grabbed it on impulse, wondering if they'd let me read it to them on the way. Turns out, this is an excellent time. After a couple trips to grandma's house, we're now more than half way through the book. We can get in a chapter or two on the way there and a chapter or two on the way home. When I get to the occasional illustration, I pass the book around. The first time we got home without having finished the chapter, Brian circled the block until we finished it (his idea). The second time we arrived home in the middle of a chapter, he was going to do that again, but for the sake of saving gas I asked him not to. I assured him we could sit in the driveway until I finished reading and that satisfied him. LOL. We're all enjoying the story. I mean, with a motorcycle-riding mouse, how can you go wrong?
I don't know if our reading will ever make it out of the car and into the house, but for now I'm satisfied. This is one of those things I've always wanted to do, and I would have kicked myself if I let the years go by without getting it done.
I have a few more things on my "mommy to do list," including getting these kids to the art museum more regularly. It's been years since we've been there. In fact, I don't think Chris has EVER been there. It's not that I think trips to the art museum are an indispensible requirement of childhood or anything. But my dad took me when I was a kid and I have very fond memories of that. It opened up my view of the world. It made me appreciate how much bigger the world is than me. It made me open to "culture and stuff" as my dad would say. So, art museum trips might not be high on everyone else's list, but it's high on mine.
And I've decided my list is the one that matters most.
