There Goes the Bride

 This past Sunday was my Brother-in-Law’s wedding - my husband’s brother. I was invited, but chose not to go for many obvious reasons. My only wish was that I hadn’t been very ill because it gave my husband the perfect excuse as to why I wasn’t there. My husband is an awful liar. You could tell when he fibs a mile away. So, unfortunately he would be correct in telling family and friends why I didn’t attend the wedding. Bummer. I would have at least have enjoyed knowing how uncomfortable he would have been having to produce a reason why his “wife” wasn’t at his brother’s wedding. Oh well...there will be other occasions.

My Sister-in-Law (wife of my husband’s OTHER brother) will be having her second child in April. I am pretty sure that I will be quietly absent from that milestone event as well. He’ll have to come up with some type of story for that occasion, I’m sure.

And then there are all the Holidays in between. I assume my son will be spending all of the Jewish religious ones at my in laws. I’ll get my son and take him to visit very close friends for Christmas and Easter. But what to do about Thanksgiving? I’ve made the largest turkey I could find, to feed 20 plus people for just about every Thanksgiving for 15 years now. I guess those days are over.

My husband and I will have to trade off on Thanksgiving. Since my son went to the wedding, perhaps my husband will allow me to take my son to my best friend’s house for Thanksgiving this year. It will be very festive as my best friend’s birthday is very close to the Thanksgiving Holiday, so she celebrates her birthday then as well.

It is hard when you are breaking away from your spouse while having to go through the Holidays, especially with a child. The child is used to everyone being together and having a wonderful time. Now the child gets tossed between one family and another. It’s confusing and painful...for everyone involved.

Being an only child, with now both parent’s deceased, and no close relatives who live nearby, I grew up spending many, many Holidays with my best friend and her family. I recently asked her if it would be okay to resume that historical pattern. She was delighted. A little overwhelmed, but delighted. I kind of get the “warm fuzzies” just thinking about all of the wonderful times in the past that we’ve spent together during the Holidays. Like her Dad serving us spiked Eggnog when we were only 16! We couldn’t understand why the Eggnog tasted so good, nor why we were so giddy hanging ornaments on her tree! It brings back such warm and loving feelings!

My son is the same age as my best friend’s son, who is adopted. My friend chose to become a single Mom right before she turned 40. I wanted to have my first child before I turned 40. The stars aligned in the heavens for both of us! We both have boys and they are only 3 months apart in age! And both boys think they are “cousins!” In a way, they really are. They see each other far more frequently than my son’s actual cousins.

So maybe this can work, this Holiday swapping thing? As I’ve experienced, families don’t have to be related to be close and have fun! I think I’ve had more enjoyable and exciting Holidays spent with close friends than with relatives who critique your cooking!

I guess another chapter of my life is unfolding. Just like going down the tall Mayan water slide at the Atlantis Resort with my son, last month. I am ready to experience another incredible ride. The ride through the Holiday maze! I better hold on tight for this one, too!

Over Scheduled...Mom?

 We’ve all heard stories and read articles about children being over scheduled with all types of after school activities. And there have been a scattering of articles about parents whom are burdened by their children’s schedules. Lately, I have found myself falling into that trap, even though I always promised myself that I would never over schedule my child. It would be an unnecessary burden on my son as well as myself. Until now.

My son has been going to religious school since Kindergarten (he is now in second grade) and really enjoys going. There are more than a handful of students from his elementary school that he knows in this class. And at this point, it is rather low-pressure religious learning. So, we take him to that after school activity once a week.

Then, because my son has Auditory Processing Disorder, which compromises his reading and writing abilities, we have a tutor come one day after school. My son spends 45 minutes with the Tutor and gets weekly assignments to complete.

Following that is Karate, which my son LOVES and happens to be quite good at. In fact the Karate school advanced him to a more vigorous program, requiring him to go to class a MINIMUM of one weekday as well as once on the weekend! Incidentally, all of the professionals, from his ADD specialist all the way down to his Primary Care Physician, feel that if my son enjoys Karate, it is a perfect sport for him to excel at with regard to his ADD.

Finally, there is swimming. Another sport my son LOVES, only this class happens to be on Sundays. My son was meant to be in water. He thrives in water. To the point of doing forward, aerial flips off of the diving board! And again, as Michael Phipps will tell you, swimming was his way of managing his own ADHD. Maybe it is my son’s, as well.

So here I am, with all of these important, but certainly not necessary (except for tutoring) activities my son is involved in. And we haven’t even discussed how play dates fit in with all of this! Is my son over scheduled? Am I over scheduled? I certainly know that at this moment in time I am, given that I have an antibiotic resistant germ in me that is wearing me quite thin. Going on 4 weeks now. But what about my son?

Most parenting experts will tell you that the most extracurricular activities a grade school child needs is 1 or 2 activities a week. In my experience, my son needs daily physical exercise of at least an hour a day or  else he will be literally climbing the walls. So perhaps all of these extracurricular activities are good for him.

My husband and I have worked out a schedule, which more or less divides which parent takes my son to certain activities on specific days. But then you have to add homework into the mix. My son can barely manage the load of second grade work during his second week of school. I contacted my son’s teacher regarding the issue of homework. I also plan to make an appointment with the school Psychologist. Other than that, I am at a loss as to what to do.

If my son's schedule cannot be modified, I think I am going to ask my son’s teacher whether my son can do some of the homework over the weekends. It would ease the burden on everyone and allow my son the ability to participate in the extracurricular activities that are good for him, while extending his homework load across 7 days rather than 5.

As for me? I’ll still be over scheduled. But I will either enlist help to manage either dropping my son off at certain activities or miss them entirely if I feel his schedule is getting out of hand. I guess you’ll just have to continue to call me, the “Over scheduled Mom.” Stay tuned.

On Celebrating Holidays

I was quite saddened during this past Jewish holiday called Rosh Hashanah. And I anticipate many sad holidays to come. At least for a while.

I am not Jewish. My husband is. Before we got married, by husband requested that we raise our children in the Jewish faith. Not comfortable at that point to consider converting to Judaism, we elected to raise our child through what is known as Reform Judaism. In Reform Judaism, at least one parent must be of the Jewish faith. In more strict areas of Judaism, the mother of a child MUST be Jewish in order for the child to be considered Jewish. This is not the case in Reform Judaism, where only one parent, mother OR father has to be Jewish.

I chose to raise my child to be Jewish for several very important reasons. My first is that although I am a spiritual person, I do not have any direct connections with any particular faith, as my parents were not very religious. My feeling is that if a child is going to experience a religion, this child should be exposed to religious family gatherings, rituals and traditions on a fairly regular basis. I felt that although my husband was not terribly religious (and is even less so now), that at least there would be my husband’s family who would introduce and carry out these important customs for my child to eventually relate to and internalize.

We have been sending our son to religious school, at the Reform Temple we belong to, for going on three years now. Our son enjoys his religious classes and we can tell is learning, and retaining a fair amount of his studies. But now that my divorce proceedings are underway, I’m in between a rock and a hard place.

Since I wasn’t raised in the Jewish faith, I am hardly equipped to truly raise my child with the customs and traditions that become assimilated into a person if the religion is practiced routinely, beginning in childhood. I did take a 7-month Introduction to Judaism class along with a 3 month Beginning Hebrew class...still, I feel lost. My husband has practically no interest in celebrating the Jewish Holidays. In fact, he blew off the second day of Rosh Hashanah to go to the Jersey Shore with his friends. He is working on Yom Kippur, the most holy of all Jewish holidays. And he is planning to be at a convention the first 5 days of Chanukah. My husband’s family wants nothing to do with me, so there goes the family support for the traditions and customs. I am at a loss. I did not choose to do this alone. Had I ever thought I would be teaching religion to my child by myself, I would have at least chosen a religion who’s customs I am much more familiar with. But it is not fair to my son to suddenly redirect him towards a different religious path at this point.

Since my husband is choosing to disregard the holidays of his own religion, I felt that the minimum he could do would be to drop our son off at religious school, pick him up, and do our son’s religious homework with him. My Rabbi, a warm, sweet, loving woman, is going to help me learn more as my son and I go along. She wrote down family get-togethers and child focused events, such as helping to build a Sukkah (an outdoor dwelling where all meals are eaten and you can choose to sleep in the Sukkah, weather permitting, for 8 days. It is actually a celebration of the harvest season and typically is celebrated in the Fall.), as well as some Chanukah family events we can attend together.

It is somewhat comforting to know that several of the children in my son’s religious class have also been in one of his classes at his elementary school, so I am at least familiar with some of the parents at our Temple. Still, I feel overwhelmed and abandoned in yet another area of my son’s and my life. I chose to do this in the best interest for my child and with the understanding that I would have family support. Now, I have none of that, and I am resentful. I guess I just have to resolve that this is yet another area in my life where my son and I are going to plod through as best we can.

And, of course, it doesn’t help matters when my son loudly asked in Temple the other day, “Mommy, when is Christmas?”

School Already???

That was the phrase uttered by my son just the other day. I have to admit, the summer has certainly flown by. With the exception of a planned vacation, much of the summer has just whisked its way through many hot summer days.

I don’t think I was able to see my friends as often as I planned. I did spend more quality time with my son. But except for a few cute movies and an exciting theatre excursion, we really didn’t take advantage of the summer activities as we usually do.

I think much of it had to do with the almost endless clean up from the tornado that hit our town at the beginning of June. There were weeks and weeks of clean up going on in local parks and pools. That certainly put a damper on our outdoor activities.

Daily day camp occupied my son who almost always came home exhausted. And we had a reading tutor come after camp twice a week. With almost daily homework given. Except for the endless laundry, summer really hasn’t felt like...summer.

We didn’t use our outdoor grill even once this year (I plan to rectify that next year!) Except on his camping trip with his Dad, my son didn’t have the energy or time to even catch fireflies, as we did together last summer. There were very few gatherings or get-togethers with even just my friends.

And now school is back in session. By the time this blog is posted, my son will have completed his first day of Second Grade! I am as excited for him as he is. But also wary. With higher-grade levels bring larger homework loads. I wonder whether my son can deal with the greater workload. Or will I be writing many explanatory letters.

My son will be heading into school with a long list of modifications already outlined by the professionals who follow him. But will he need more? Will the school provide him more?

The one relief I have, that I blogged about last year, is that the PTA came up with an interesting fundraising idea this year, to help out overburdened parents (such as myself!). The PTA sent out  flyers at the end of the school year, last year, offering to have every single item your child’s new teacher requested, for the new school year, available for a reasonable fee! All the way down to 24 sharpened pencils! Heck, it is worth a few dollars just to have someone else sharpen 24 pencils for me! Each child would be presented with their own, boxed supplies (almost like a gift!), presented to them on the first day of school! No dragging of heavy items into school the first day. No misplaced pencil cases, erasers, notebooks. Everything is right there waiting for each particular child whose parents chose to utilize this service.

As I was walking through Staples last week, I saw several frantic Moms, with trails of their children, holding pieces of paper with their school supply lists. The Moms were blowing hair out of their eyes while their children complained in unison that either the items Staples had were not the right brand, too large, to small, or just plain sold out. As I quietly picked out the proper ink cartridge for my printer, I just stood there and smiled. No sharpening of 24 pencils for me this year! I have plenty of other things to do!

Cruisin’

I must admit, I was scared taking my son out of the country for the first time, by myself. My security in knowing that I could carry it off was prompted firstly because I was very familiar with the Carnival Cruise line. Secondly, because I had already been to our destination, the Bahamas, several times, including once by myself.

For the most part, the beginning of our cruise went off without a hitch. My son never left my side for a moment. The Jet Blue television stations the entire flight to Orlando, Florida occupied him. And he followed instructions while rolling his own luggage to transportation areas and through airports.

We were taken to the cruise ship and again, my son complied through security, all the way through check in, and finally to our room. Since we were up early to begin our adventure, we rested in our room until everyone was called for attending the mandatory boat drill. Once that was over, we went back to our room, changed into swim attire, and went up for a bite to eat and some serious swim play!

The boat was equipped with three amazing slides! One was a twisty, swirling slide, while the others were straight, but steep slides. I chose to just relax on a lounge chair and feel the warm Caribbean breeze rush by me as my son continuously used these slides, no exaggeration, for 2 1/2 hours!

From here it was off to get changed for dinner. My son wanted to take advantage of Carnivals’ Camp Carnival, with children his own age. I perused the shops before picking my son up from Camp Carnival and retiring for the night.

The next day we docked in the Bahamas! Ahh! Home, sweet home, for me! My son was excited because at his annual physical the week prior, he was told he reached 48 inches! The minimum height requirement to use ALL of the water park rides at the Atlantis Resort, which was our destination!

My adventure son turned me into adventure Mom! He convinced me to go down the steep, Mayan float rides (twice!), the adventure slides, and I convinced him to go down the lazy river! Then our fun began to slide downhill.

It was nearing late afternoon and my son wanted me to go down the River Rapids. I agreed until we proceeded to the top of this ride. The only way I could describe it would be an enclosed roller coaster with a float. My fear of heights, I conquered, but an enclosed roller coaster in a float, was my limit. I sadly announced to my son that I was too afraid to go through the rest of the ride, but if my son wanted to go, he could. There were eight and 9-year-old boys behind us, so not to lose face, my son chose to go down. I promised to meet him at the bottom. My son came out a bit shaken up. He admitted that it was scary. He only wanted to do calm, safer water activities from then on.

Now here is where our fun goes downhill. I was trying to take a photo of my son coming down a slide. I kept edging my feet closer to the edge of the step to get as close a picture as possible. My left flip-flop slipped off the edge of the step, I didn't want my camera to get submerged in water, so I held the camera high in the air with my left arm, reached with my right hand to break my fall, but my head hit the metal handrail while my right hip broke the fall on the step. I also got a deep abrasion on my right knee. But I saved my camera AND got the picture of my son!

The next day, we were back on the boat. My son was going down all of the fun slides at the top of the ship he had gone down before. I was lounging my sore body on one of the lounge chairs, again, taking pictures of my son as he came down the slides. Out of nowhere, it started to downpour. Since my son was on the swirly slide, I took cover under an overhang near the steps where I knew he would be coming back down. I didn't see what happened, but some concerned parents, who saw what happened, waited at the bottom of the steps, as my son came down, crying and holding his head. I ran over and brought him to the overhang, and saw that the whole right side of his face was bleeding from abrasions. The parents, who DID see what happened, said that he was at the top of the spiral staircase when they closed the slide and told everyone to walk back down. Brandon looked out, I guess tried to find me, saw no one in any of the lounge chairs, panicked, because he didn't see me, slipped on the very wet stairs, and fell down 3 flights of spiral stairs! Then he slowly made his way down to the bottom where these parents were.

I immediately took him to the medical center. They cleaned and dressed his wounds. They said that I should put ice on his face (I saw them earlier for my bruised face from my hitting the handrail the day before), so we both went back to our room and each put ice on our faces. They asked that I bring him back later that day, which I did, and he was medically cleared. I still felt bruised and beaten.

Since we would be leaving out of Orlando airport, I scheduled an overnight stay at one of the hotels on the Disney World properties. My hope was to see even a little bit of Disney before we returned home. No such luck. By the time my son woke up and we disembarked the ship, my son was showing signs of being ill. Once we got to the hotel, I quickly bought some children’s cold medicine and because my son said he was hungry, but too cold to sit in the dining room to eat, I chose to spend the $40 on a hamburger and French fries, via room service and gave my son his medicine. I felt some sniffles coming on, but I was nowhere as sick as my son.

As I wrap up my blog, I am disappointed to say that we never left our room, nor saw any part of Disney World, other than from our room. My son DID say that he wanted to come back next year, so that might be our adventure for next summer.

My son is feeling a lot better, although as I type this, my head is stuffy, my ears hurt and my throat hurts. Among my other bruises. However, through it all, I had an exponentially wonderful time with my son, which I wouldn’t trade for the world!

And selfishly, I proved that I CAN be a single Mom even through calamities and illnesses, I am ALWAYS able to take care of my little boy!!