Welcome to my circus.

September 28, 2018
by Maralee
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Mom Moment: The Silver Lining of a Messy Table

I spent the first half of the football game stress cleaning the kitchen (as per my usual). The second half I went to watch it on TV with my husband and THIS happened at the kitchen table. It’s a mess. And there’s also a mess of toy cars in the living room, a mess of superheroes in the basement and a mess of art projects taped up all over the house.
I’m not mad.

www.amusingmaralee.com
It’s taken me a long time to get to this point- the point where the messes don’t bother me. The mess is annoying, but it isn’t a problem. It’s a blessing. The mess means the kids weren’t fighting. They were engaging in creative play. They weren’t on phones or screens of any kind. I got to watch the game uninterrupted while they made that mess.
I’m glad I’m raising the kind of kids who make messes. They’re playful and artistic and they’re collaborators. These are important life skills. Just like the skill to clean up after yourself, which is one I’m about to go remind them of.
Wish me luck.
Continue Reading →

September 26, 2018
by Maralee
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Miracle Babies Throw Tantrums Too

I came home late from a work meeting the other night. I snuck into the rooms of my sleeping children and kissed their sweet cheeks. As I tiptoed into the room of my six-year-old it struck me how big he’s getting. He murmured something unintelligible in his sleep when I rubbed his hair and whispered that I loved him. There’s just no sweeter moment than starring at your sleeping children. It took my breath away as I studied his face and remembered what a miracle his life is. Multiple doctors told us this child could never be created or carried to term. He was an impossibility. And yet, here he is. As I felt that deep gratitude in my heart, I also felt certain of something else:

Miracle Babies throw tantrums too.

This kid is so extremely precious to me. He can also be selfish and annoying and whiney and he can pitch grumpy fits like you wouldn’t believe. He is an entirely normal six-year-old with an anything but normal beginning. I find so much beauty in that contrast, although it has taken some adjustment for me.

A baby who comes after a loss is still just a baby. A baby who comes after a long wait is still just a baby. A child who joins your family after a complicated or lengthy or expensive adoption process is still just a child. And the mom who receives them is still just a regular mom, as much as she might wish she were something else– something more special.

There are ways in which pregnancy loss, adoption and infertility have fundamentally changed the kind of parent I am. I do appreciate my kids in ways that may be unique. I’m thankful every day that I get to be their mother. I’ve learned things through this process that have changed and influenced me in ways that can’t be undone. And I’m thankful for that. I don’t want to go back to being the mom I would have been if I wouldn’t have experienced these hard times. My perspective is different because of what I’ve experienced prior to parenthood, but my mothering journey is mostly the same.  Continue Reading →

September 24, 2018
by Maralee
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Dear Son, Our Work Together Isn’t Done Yet

I woke up early to come wake you up. Even though you don’t need me to. Even though you’re capable of waking up on your own to your own alarm clock in your own room. Every day you become more independent and every day I’m wondering what my role is in your life. My motherhood job description keeps changing and I’m doing my best to keep up and change accordingly.

www.amusingmaralee.com

So I woke up to wake you up so we could spend some early morning moments as just the two of us, the way it used to be before all the other kids came along. I treasure these times of hearing your heart and laughing at your jokes. It’s important to me to know what’s going on in your life— what classes you love, where you’re struggling, and what your friends are up to. But today we didn’t have any of those conversations.

Today we spent all of our 20 minutes alone together arguing. About breakfast cereal.

We didn’t have the kind you like so nothing else could be discussed. We needed to talk about how “dumb” our current selection of breakfast cereals is. How it isn’t fair that I don’t have to eat breakfast if I don’t want to, but you have to eat breakfast. Then while I was making coffee, you poured the sugary cereal you knew you weren’t supposed to have first. I turned around, saw what you did and poured it back in the box. You sighed and huffed even though you knew the family rules about cereal choices. You poured a bowl of approved cereal and acted like it was eating poison to have to choke it down. You grunted and groaned your way through and then left the table. . . leaving a mostly full bowl of cereal behind. I called you back. You stomped and whined. You finished the cereal. You went off to school. Continue Reading →

September 20, 2018
by Maralee
1 Comment

I Am Not My Profile Picture

I recently had the privilege of working with Nebraska Public Television on a short parenting segment that will be used as part of a child abuse prevention campaign. It was a new experience for me since up to this point I’ve been just been writing my thoughts and doing some work in radio. Thinking about being on camera brought on a wave of new thoughts and such self-consciousness.

I went to the taping and things went a lot more smoothly than I had imagined. It was great to meet other women who were passionate about their work and to feel like part of a team. I also enjoyed sharing the experience with a friend who documented it through her photographs and kept me from getting anxious. I’m learning it’s hard to get nervous in front of a friend who watched you give birth—no pretensions left.

So as I was enjoying my leisurely drive home from what felt like a professional day of vacation from my normal mother duties, I remembered how bad the day before had been. I was NOT in professional hair and make-up. I was in a t-shirt and jeans with food crusted on them at about the height my almost-toddler’s fingers reach up on my leg when he’s begging to be picked up. TV personality I was not. But it was the frustration in my voice and the irritation in my heart with my kids that was the most discouraging to me. Who is this person?

Here I am delivering a message of second chances for your kid, when in my own house I occasionally stomp around like a tantrumy toddler. It was tempting to think, “Forget it! Who am I to give any wisdom to other parents?” But then I thought about who I want giving wisdom to me. Continue Reading →

September 17, 2018
by Maralee
3 Comments

The Hazards of Being a Woman Who Cares a Lot

I got a present in the mail yesterday. It was a t-shirt with one of my favorite quotes on the front.

“I care. I care a lot. It’s kind of my thing.” –Leslie Knope

It was a gift from a friend who grew up in a fostering family and now runs an organization that provides support for foster parents and the kids they serve. She and I have never met in person, but we get each other. We are both women who care. We care a lot.

When I saw the shirt, I was surprised that it knocked something loose in me. I am not a very emotional person, although I am a very passionate person (if you find that confusing, so do I). Sometimes emotions are sitting in me somewhere and it takes something I wasn’t expecting to knock them loose and send them through my heart and that’s when they turn into tears. Music does this to me regularly, but yesterday it was a t-shirt.

I tried to figure out why. It was the sweet thoughtfulness of the gift. It was knowing I have community on this foster care advocacy journey. But it was also something more. It took me a lot of hours to figure out that emotion was coming from the validation of what it means to be this kind of woman. It is both a blessing and a curse.

I am a woman who cares a lot. As proud as I am to be that kind of woman, I also know it creates problems for me. There are so many times it would be easier to not care. Caring means you spend hours researching and then writing emails to advocate on behalf of people or policies. Maybe that turns into action. Maybe it doesn’t. Caring means you sometimes cry in meetings where nobody else is crying (and being a not very emotional person means you are angry at yourself for crying in the first place). Caring means you sometimes make enemies when you’d rather make friends. When you care a lot, it’s hard to remain silent in the face of what seems like injustice even when that would make it easier to get along. Caring means you want things to be better and you believe problems are fixable. It isn’t an option to sit back and hope things turn out for the best, even when you know your attempts at problem identification and problem solving are going to make people uncomfortable. Continue Reading →

September 14, 2018
by Maralee
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Foster Care is Uncomfortable (Radio Interview)

Once a year I get to have a conversation about foster care with MyBridge Radio. I love getting this chance to address some of the common reasons why people won’t become foster parents. I love sharing our story and it’s important to me to be honest about the joys and the struggles.

www.amusingmaralee.com

This year the focus was “Care Enough to Get Uncomfortable” and I think that’s such an accurate description of foster care. Whatever else it might be, it IS uncomfortable. I’m glad to be able to define and explain the ways we’ve seen that play out.

You can listen to the radio interview below, I’ve got some commentary (it’s just impossible to squeeze in everything I want to say) and then beneath that I’ve posted links to my relevant posts. If you have questions based on what you’ve heard and read here, I’d love to see them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.

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September 12, 2018
by Maralee
2 Comments

My Adopted Kids Don’t Need to be Grateful

Three of my kids celebrate the anniversaries of their adoptions this month. It’s a time of year we tend to have a lot of big and small conversations about adoption within our family. We talk about what know about their lives before they came to us, what we remember about the day we first met them, the adoption process, and their ongoing feelings about being adopted.

During all these conversations, I am very conscious that whatever message we give them within our home, there is a constant message society will give them. The moment they entered our lives and likely anytime they tell their adoption story for the rest of their lives there will be an expectation on my kids. People will expect them to be grateful.

It’s true that adoption doesn’t generally happen because things were going so well in the biological family. Adoption often happens because there was a major breakdown in the family structure. There may have been abuse, neglect, addiction, domestic violence, dysfunction, mental health problems, poverty or medical issues. (I want to be really clear that this is not always the case. I have good friends from stable families who chose to place children for adoption because they wanted those kids to have the same kind of upbringing they had, but wouldn’t be able to provide at that point in their lives. I have so much respect for those women and their families.) When we can see this dramatic before and after of a child’s trajectory, it is easy to project on them that they should be grateful to not be raised in that difficult environment. We can see how they have “escaped” a painful life and been handed a sweet one in exchange, but when we see things that way we fail to acknowledge the very pain of adoption. Continue Reading →

September 7, 2018
by Maralee
2 Comments

When Your Financial Pain Goes Viral

I’m not sure when the moment came that I started to feel a little conflicted about our current obsession with compassion voyeurism. Maybe it was the photo that went viral of a Chick-fil-A manager praying with a guy who was asking for food. Maybe it was watching a video of a little girl selflessly sharing her food with a homeless guy. It might have been the video of the kid getting shoes from his classmates. Or maybe it was the annual event on my local radio station where poor people are given gifts and then they sob about how much this came at just the right time. Each one of these can be an inspiring example of the way we should be living with compassion and empathy towards those in need. But is it in some way robbing that “needy” person of their dignity to record them in that moment of vulnerability and then broadcast it to the world?

We have been in a tight financial spot for the last. . . well, forever maybe. Things have been especially hard over the last year, but having six kids has meant that things have always been a bit of a struggle. Because I try to be pretty open on this blog, I’ve thought about writing about our financial struggles at least a dozen different times, but the reality is that financial struggles are shameful in our society. They just are. I couldn’t find a way to write about them without feeling like I had to explain exactly why we’ve been in the spot we’re in and at some point that just felt like I was being defensive because these decisions are intensely personal.

All that to say, we have had many opportunities to be the recipients of help and there are lessons we’ve learned in the process. Lessons we often don’t hear about because of the shame involved in learning them.

When I see these videos, I can’t help putting myself (or my kids) in the position of those receiving help. I try to imagine what it would feel like to receive much needed money or food and be filmed while in that position of humiliation and helplessness. I would feel thankful for the help, but would I be okay with being filmed? Is that just the price you pay for receiving assistance these days? Would I be okay with my kids being filmed receiving a gift at school and having that posted for the world to see so the people who took pity on my child could be praised? Continue Reading →

September 6, 2018
by Maralee
2 Comments

My Kids Need Siblings Even When They Don’t Want Them

I have a lot kids, but you wouldn’t know it if you stopped by my home while my older kids are at school. I mean, you probably would know it from the amount of laundry waiting to be washed, or the dishes stacked on the counter, but you wouldn’t hear the kind of chaos that has defined my life for the last decade or so. My five oldest kids are at school for various amounts of time during the day (preschool through middle school) and it’s just my littlest son and me.

I am not used to this.

When my oldest son was our only child, I had no idea what I was doing. He was a high-maintenance kid who wanted to be chatting with someone every waking moment of the day. He NEEDED brothers and sisters to hang out with. ASAP. He was two when we added our next child (via foster care and adoption) to the mix.

My youngest is pretty calm and quiet, happy to sit next to me and play cars by himself. This is new to me.

www.amusingmaralee.com

As I’m adjusting to this new world, I’m noticing something. I rarely have to discipline or redirect this child. He is so easy to manage and easy to please. At first I thought that might have been because he was an exceptionally good child. But I don’t think that’s it. I think he just isn’t getting into the same kind of mischief as my other kids were who were constantly having to deal with a sibling. He’s almost four years old and he’s been the baby his whole life, with people deferring to his needs and involved in other big kid activities so he could have more of the attention. I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s not that he’s just a good kid, it’s that we’ve made his life easy. . . maybe too easy. Continue Reading →

August 29, 2018
by Maralee
1 Comment

I’m Sorry the Zucchini Bread was Late (living an interruptible life)

I wanted to make zucchini bread for you to enjoy when you came by this evening. It was supposed to take 10 minutes to assemble and then 50 minutes to bake. I started it two hours before you were supposed to arrive. And still, it wasn’t ready on time. I’d like to explain.

You see, the first thing I needed was the bowl that goes with my Kitchen-Aid mixer. I used it earlier when I made dinner, but I expected it to be washed and waiting for me when I went to make the zucchini bread. I looked in the drying rack and couldn’t find it. So I asked the child who was supposed to wash the bowl where it might be. Turns out the child who was supposed to wash the dishes had traded chores with the child who was supposed to sweep the floor, but the child who was supposed to sweep the floor THOUGHT he traded chores with the child who was supposed to load the dishwasher. So the floor was swept, the dishwasher was loaded, but a massive argument ensued about who should hand wash the last dishes— the child who was originally supposed to do it or the child who traded for that chore but THOUGHT he traded for the dishwasher chore? I mediated that dispute, the dishes eventually got washed and I thought I was ready to go.

I went to grab the parts for the food processor so I could shred the zucchini, but they weren’t where they normally are. That’s when I remembered I had used them already that evening to make mashed cauliflower because one of my kids hates mashed potatoes and is always asking if I’ll make mashed cauliflower instead so I did and it turns out he hates that too. And now all the food processor pieces were sitting dirty in the dishwasher, so I had to grab them out and wash them and by this point whatever child was responsible for hand washing dishes was long gone and no help to me.

So now the process of assembling ingredients that was supposed to take 10 minutes has already taken 25. But I can do this! I’ve left plenty of time to account for this kind of nonsense. Continue Reading →