This Is Me Maria

Being a young mom is an incredible challenge. There are 5 basic things every young mom needs in order to not only help raise her children, but develop herself into a successful adult. I had intended to publish all five at once but each section is long enough that together they are a bit too long for me. I’ve broken them down into 5 posts for your reading pleasure.

Creativity

All moms can use a dose of creativity; young mothers especially need creativity to navigate the murky waters of motherhood. Whether it is getting a cranky toddler to stop crying when you are at your wits end, figuring out how to cook food that isn’t from a box or trying to juggle your overloaded schedule; creativity is a key ingredient to success and sanity.

In the early years of motherhood I found that getting in touch with that part of me that was still very a much a young person and strapping on my creativity boots, helped me deal with my needy son. Creativity doesn’t have to be about scrap booking or painting a mural on your child’s bedroom walls. Let your child and your surroundings inspire your creativity to help you accomplish your most daunting tasks. You may find that your new found creativity can extend into many aspects of your life.

While you may have a hobby or a career that helps you define yourself, one of your crafts is also being a mother. Own your craft, grow into your uniqueness and allow yourself to be good the mother that you are. The best way to do this is using your own unique creativity.

I used to often find myself comparing my parenting skills with that of the other parents around me. It is easy to get sucked into a vortex of worry and self doubt. Especially when your the path ahead is not always clear and despite your lack of life experience, you are forced to carry on.

Realize that you will have your own unique way of parenting and your journey will be very different than that of those around you. Learn and grow and prosper from your unique experiences as a young mother. You have SO MUCH to offer your child.

My mom died when I was a girl. I don’t think about her often and I can probably count the number of times I’ve cried about her on one hand. A psychologist might tell you that I haven’t yet grieved for her. What that means for me is that I don’t like to talk about her or even think about her. Whenever I start to weep for her, I stop because I feel foolish. I feel too old to be crying for my mom.

Unfortunately being a mother reminds you of your own mother. Today my children were playing on the sofa in a mound of cushions, building tiny rooms made of the square brown pillows that litter the seating through out the house.

I was reminded of this time my sister and I were trying to build a fort out of pillows and sheets. My mom started to help us but she went all out. Taking mattresses and cushions apart, using sheets from all over the house, building this elaborate fort system through out nearly our entire home. It was fantastic and surprising and an afternoon I’ll likely not forget.

I always worry that I am not creating good memories for my children, but I recently realized that part of who I am comes from the unique memories I have with my dad and even my mom. Spending late nights drinking coffee at a bookstore, taking long drives to all these old little towns, listening to all kinds of crazy new age music and listening to NPR.

I have to remember that my family is making our own memories, just a different kind. Library trips, ice skating, watching movies and working in our yard with our dogs playing nearby.

Our street is plagued by huge non fruiting cherry trees. While they are extremely beautiful they are also an extreme hassle. Our property was on the front lines of four of these huge beasts along with a giant maple tree and myriad of trees causing all kinds of havoc.

I am an organic eating, tree hugging, environmentalist just as much as the next crunchy Washingtonian but even this was more than I could handle. Two of the offenders were in our drive way (or what was left of it thanks to the roots) and were threatening the street, our foundation and of course the leaves and petals stuck to everything and an inordinate amount of time was spent raking and scraping and still foliage ended up all over our vehicles and inside our house.

So the only logical thing to do was remove them. While I was and am sad to see the beautiful trees go, our front yard is slowing becoming more manageable (a huge relief when the backyard and every other inch of the house is in dire need of repair). We still rake TONS of leaves from the trees on neighboring properties but our grass isn’t rotting away anymore and we no longer need two 90 gallon yard waste cans to dispose all of the debris.

I’ve had several neighbors comment on our removal of the trees, but of course all they had to do was drive by and admire them. We had to clean up after them and we would be paying for the damaged foundation and we would be paying for the broken sewer (like old my neighbor had to 10 years ago for a cool $20k). We will be paying for a new driveway that would otherwise be in great shape. Our driveway is bigger than your average driveway too, so again more money out of our pocket.

So now I would like to put some new smaller more manageable trees in their place. Some small - medium sized weeping white flowering cherry trees. I would hope to prune them and keep them from over taking every thing as these other trees were allowed to do.

I am Googling like crazy to find what I can but if you have any tips to share, it would be greatly appreciated!