Motherhood with a Teenager Reveals Blessings

Let me know if you've heard these phrases: "Just wait until they start talking back to you. Just wait until all they do is sleep all day. Just wait until they eat everything in sight. Just wait until they're taller than you. Just wait until they're teenagers. Just wait..."


When a fellow mom prefaces advice with those two words, "Just Wait," I want to smack her a little. I hear it quite often, because gobs of people have lived through motherhood longer than I have. The truth is, no matter what stage of motherhood a woman is in, her future shouldn't be discussed with fear and annoyance. Her present is hard enough as it is, so how does it help anybody to dismiss what's happening now and indicate it's only going to be worse someday?


We have all heard horror stories about the teen years. We shouldn't trek blindly or naively without being prepared for the worst, because some of the worst is surely going to happen. Our paths will be tumultuous. The terrain will be rocky. We'll cross wide, gaping holes without bridges. Slippery hills and uneven ground will bring us to a halt at times. We know. Veteran moms don't need to warn us. We were teenagers not so long ago ourselves. Our husbands were boys, and we were girls. If we really tried, we could recall all of our crazy stunts and the poor decisions we made as teens. We can't believe our own parents survived. We are baffled that we were never kidnapped or lost or worse. We know, Just-Wait-Warning moms. We know what's coming.


As we sit around waiting for the worst, we can try to appreciate the best of our teens. These curious creatures are still the same babies who once were merely a dream to a newlywed couple. We can still see the glow in their eyes and dimples in their cheeks reminiscent of the toddler years. Their sense of humor has wittily evolved from that of the second-grader who loved the tired old Knock-Knock Orange and Banana joke.


Bits of the worst may be in our future, but for now, I'd like to share how I learned to appreciate the wonder of my present teen while picking up dirty laundry.


Laundry is an issue for our family...you know this because I've told you how my system moved from highly inefficient to simply okay. Six people create many loads of laundry, so each child has a hamper in his or her room. Our rule for the past year has been that each child should be placing dirty clothing into said hamper. It sounds simple, yet they do not always do it. Many days, I find clothes and pajamas behind the bathroom door, draping down the stairs, next to the basement couch and in every mom's favorite place: on the floor right next to the hamper. Right next to it! Many times I've been infuriated by this practice. I've beckoned for children to run up two flights of stairs, for the sole purpose of reminding them of proper laundry rules and insisting they follow the rules right then and there. I've cursed under my breath for the inconvenience. I've thrown my hands up in the air, wondering, Will they ever do it the right way? My way?


Some days, I am surprised when I find hampers full of clothes and floors cleared of the heaps of socks and undies. I do love and appreciate those days.


It was one typical day when the clothes were lying beside the hamper when I woke up to my teenage blessing. The sun was shining through the windows, which is pretty rare in our town during winter, so I was in an especially inspired mood. Everybody was at school and work. My Broadway Showtunes Pandora station was cranked up to a volume nobody in the house but I could tolerate. Seeing the jumbled mess of clothes next to the hamper, when nobody but I was home to move them, jolted me.


For a split second, I grumpily thought I should leave them on the floor until school was over, then make darn sure the offending child placed them where they belonged. Then, my mama heart softened as I realized that I will not be cleaning up clothes forever. Someday, there will be nothing left on the floor. The kids will be grown and gone, and I'll long for the days when I could pick up after my babies. My kids. My teens.


There will be no toothpaste on the sink. No unmade beds. No Lego pieces. No evidence of children...anywhere.


I started to cry. I began to mourn the years that are slipping away from us as fast as rockets, and I slowly and deliberately picked up each piece of smelly clothing from the floor. As I dropped them into the hamper, I said these words out loud:


"Thank you for sending me these children. Thank you for keeping them healthy. Thank you for everything we have, even the messes. Please keep them safe. Please keep them healthy. Please help them know how much I love being their mom. Please keep them mine."


As we learn to navigate our new roles as moms to teens, I hope we'll be strong in remembering how much these kiddos still need us. They aren't grown up yet. They forget. They are tired. They want to hang out with friends or read or watch their favorite shows. They're kids. They probably loathe laundry as much as we do.

 

One of my best friends gave me a cherished recipe, with these words of words of wisdom taped to the back of the card:

There's No Use Crying Over Melted Crayons

One of the most rewarding parts of sharing my life with you guys is hearing how my words make you feel. How they move you. How you relate to them. How when you read them, you believe they could be your words.

Lately, I've learned that these words of mine have a tendency to bring on some tears. After bumping into people at school, around town and online, I've discovered this common theme of crying. I'm honored to be able to move someone to experience such extreme emotions. I am a deeply feeling person, so I suppose that's why I communicate that way through my writing. I love taking you to that place in motherhood where you might be afraid you're missing out on the daily growth of your child, so you pay extra attention to the little moments. I enjoy transporting you back to your childhood, playing in the yard with your hard-working dad. I know from experience how much strong friendships can make or break a woman's journey through adulthood, so if I can help you think about your own girlfriends and how much you cherish them, then I've done my job as your go-to blogger.

On the other hand, I also love to make you laugh. When my readers tell me that their car is also a junk bus or that they clipped my article from the magazine and sent it to their daughter, I couldn't be more proud. You guys are still telling me about your laundry horror stories. At least once a week, I hear from mothers who say they, too, stink at laundry or dishes or some other horrid household chore that has become "ours" by default.

Isn't this the way of motherhood? One day we're crying, the next we're laughing? These swings of the pendulum can even exist within the same day or the same hour for some of us. It has happened to me, on a random Monday in March. Would you read and listen and think about if it ever happens this way to you?

Working in a rush before school yesterday, I discovered that several different colored crayons had been dried with a load of clothes. The entire inside of our dryer was coated in a layer of blue wax, with small flecks of yellow, green and red dotted throughout as well. The clothes, belonging to all four kids, suddenly had the appearance of a funky tie dye mixed with toddler "art."

So many thoughts ran through my head when we uncovered the mess.

None were poetic.

Many were profane.

We reached out to Google and Facebook for advice, of course.

I wanted to take pictures for you guys, but I was so overwhelmed, I just couldn't.

I reminded myself to be thankful that certain pieces of clothing were not in the load.

Mark left for work, knowing it all would be waiting for him when he came home in the evening. 

I secretly wished he would say "screw it" so we could finally buy a new dryer.

We didn't have time to tackle any of it in the morning. I kept telling myself how much worse my life could be, and then we left to go on about our day. The rainbow colored dryer and speckled clothes were going to be dealt with later, because I needed to drive Marshall to the public library for a field trip. The sun had only risen a few hours earlier, and as we were walking along the sidewalk, I spotted something incredible. Just in front of the steps that led up to the library's main doors, we noticed one lone tree. No longer was it white with snow, as it had been for so many months. Instead, it had turned to a healthy brown, with little bits of red popping up all over its branches. Itty bitty red buds! I stopped to stare at them, to make sure I wasn't imagining them. They were real.

New life!

Spring!

It's coming, and we need it. Winter tends to brings drear and clouds and gloom. Blah. Spring brings sunshine and colors and cheer. Yes! In honor of Spring and new life, I'm writing a tear-free post today!

A full day has passed since I found the melted crayons, and this is what I know:

The dryer is cleaned, thanks to my husband's elbow grease and hours of scrubbing. The clothes are not, but they're only clothes, and we have more. I'm no longer worried about what I was worried about yesterday. That mess is in the past, and now I will move on to the next, while we celebrate the joys that are sprinkled in between them.

Dumped Legos...Birthday boy...Forgotten homework...Cello concert...Lost glasses...Reading lover...Ruined jackets...Art showcase.

My blog's tone changes often, just as mothers do, just as children do, just as seasons do. The tearful posts, the lighthearted posts, the informational posts, the "we've all been there" posts...they are all here for you. I hope that the right ones find you on the days you need them, and that you'll come back for more.

Tell us about your laundry mishaps. What do you love about Spring? Do you experience the ups and downs of motherhood? If you ever think of a topic you'd like to see covered on Mama Loves You and Chocolate, Too, just shoot me a message.

I'd love for you to find me on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/mamalovesyouandchocolatetoo

http://mamalovesyouandchocolatetoo.blogspot.com/

I Bet You Are Better at Doing Laundry Than I Am

You would think that after doing laundry for my family for over fourteen years, I would be an expert. That I would have learned ideal ways to maximize my time and our space to make this chore manageable. My mom does it. Mark's mom does it. They have great systems. Mine? It's horrible. I curse laundry duty. I despise it. I don't need to tell you why laundry is frustrating. You know the reasons...all of them.

I was probably pretty good at it when there were just two of us. I don't remember laundry being a chore before we had our kids. It's like it didn't exist, although I know our clothes were cleaned and folded every week. With the arrival of our first child, I actually looked forward to laundry day, as the intoxicating aroma of Dreft wafted through my home each day. Next came a baby girl. Her clothes were so beautiful and sweet. Soft fleece jammies, lacy dresses, perfect purple socks. How could I not want to wash and dry those tiny threads to keep my baby comfy and clean?

Then, we moved to Japan. That is when all the fun of doing baby laundry went down the heated toilet. Our machine was an all-in-one model. Wash and dry in the same machine. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Of course not, because it was worthless. The machine was tiny, and it took eight hours to dry a load of towels. We had no other choice, as our home could not hook up to American appliances, so we invested in typical Japanese laundry equipment (a portable clothesline for our miniature balcony), and I resorted to hanging our clothes outside like everybody else.

It wasn't horrible, as there were only four of us, and two of them were still small. As years passed, you all know that I popped out more kids, who then continued to grow. Now we have more people with bigger clothes, and so even though we have a regular washer and dryer again, we have now reached the new problem of just never being caught up with laundry...ever. 

Every few years, I try to establish a new system that will make doing laundry a little easier...one that will save us from the piles and piles of unfolded clothes, merging into one giant heap on the floor of my laundry room. Thank goodness that room is in the back of the house, where no guest would ever go unless she makes a wrong turn. It's a disaster. Our moms do not dare help with our laundry, as they cannot decipher which piles are clean and which are dirty.

I started enlisting the help of the kids about four years ago.

Here was my old method. You'll see my mistakes, I'm sure.

1. I wash all the laundry in the same temperature water, not sorting by color, fabric, etc. It's faster that way.

2. When I remember, I move the wet clothes to the dryer.

3. When they're dry, I take them out and throw them in a pile on the floor.

4. Repeat steps 1-3 every day or so, for the rest of my life.

5. When kids finally run out of clean undies, pants or whatever in their rooms, or I just can't fit anything else on top of the clean pile, I declare it to be "Laundry Day."

6. Kids scream, kick, fight, whine. I make them drop everything and help with laundry. (Even though I have done the hard part of washing and drying it).

7. We use our misfit collection of laundry baskets to transport clothes to the family room. Clothes are dumped onto the floor-recreating the big pile. The little boys like to have the clothes dumped directly on top of them (for fun, of course).

8. Everyone takes a basket, fighting over who gets to use the biggest/best ones, and then they all dig through the pile to find their own clothes.

9. An hour of clothes flying through the air on a weekend morning is not anyone's idea of fun, especially when Mark is constantly barking at the little kids to stop climbing on the pile, start helping, keep their underwear off their heads...you know the drill. Wait? You probably don't do laundry this way.

10. At the end of this part, we are always left with a huge mound of socks that nobody wants to bother sorting. Sometimes I just put it back into the laundry room till the next weekend.

Over the years, my friends and I would talk about our laundry methods. Mine seemed to be the worst, but I just didn't see another way to make it work. How could I move away from simply creating a big pile of everyone's clothes? How could I create less fighting among the whole family when I need help with this chore that is for everyone's benefit? I just do not have time to fold it all right out of the dryer-obviously the best method.

Eventually, after watching what works for the grandmas and gaining some insight from a very wise friend of mine who taught me I was handling each piece too many times, I decided to make some changes.

I purchased color-coded everything. I bought collapsible hampers for each room, which are lightweight enough for the kids to take downstairs by themselves, and breathable in case I don't get to the clothes for several days. I eliminated our diverse batch of laundry baskets (some which were way too small to be worth keeping), and found large, sturdy ones for each person. We all know which one is ours, so there's no fighting over who gets "the good basket."

Our laundry system has been modified to be the best it's ever been, and probably the best it will be while our kids are here. Yes, I know kids can actually wash clothes, too. Maybe that day will come. For now, I'm home each day, so I can do it.

I still follow my original Steps 1 through 3 in almost the same way, except I've added something new for myself. I make sure to have everyone's empty, color-coded basket in the laundry room when I'm ready to empty the dryer. Instead of dumping the clothes straight on the floor like I did for so many years, I sort them right away, directly into each person's basket. I line the baskets up along the wall by age, plus I know whose color is whose, so I don't have to think too much while I toss in their t-shirts and pajamas. It's so much easier to tackle one load at a time! (Like I didn't know that before, I just was too overwhelmed to make it happen). Once in a while, if I'm really organized, an entire load will be designated to a specific hamper. So, if the hamper comes from Reese's room, I know those clothes can go right from the dryer into his black basket. Simple!

My laundry room is so much neater now! There are still a ton of baskets taking up the entire floor, but that's because we have a big, beautiful family to clothe. I'm so thankful for them!

Have you mastered your own laundry system yet? Have you always been a pro? Are you like me and were always looking for tips?

Here are some other brilliant ideas that friends of mine had given to me through the years as I sought laundry advice:

-Keep a small plastic dresser in the laundry room just for kids' socks. Never worry about sorting or taking them to bedrooms, especially if you have kids wearing the same sizes.

-Have your hangers ready when it's time to take the clothes from the dryer. Put your shirts directly onto the hangers instead of in the basket first and then on the hangers later. Handle pieces as few times as possible!

-Install a tension rod in the laundry room for shirts that need to be air dried.

-Play music or watch Netflix while you're sorting/folding laundry.

-Teach your friends what you learn! Although one of them may seem to have it all together, she's probably a closet laundry amateur.

 

I'd love for you to find me on Facebook:

 

https://www.facebook.com/mamalovesyouandchocolatetoo