Get to know me

(Please tell me you get the Jon Lovitz reference here. I always loved that SNL skit. Unfortunately, SNL is pretty tight with their content and no YouTube reference has been found yet.)

This is blatant self-promotion. And I hate promoting myself, which is why I don't have a book deal yet. At least this is what I tell myself. (Ugh. There were way too many first person pronouns in just the past two sentences.) The truth is that I do want people to notice me; I just don't want to be the one drawing attention to myself. I think that I just want to be discovered and then sit there shyly, saying, "Who me? You want to give me a $250,000 advance on a book? Oh, alright."

I get jealous when I hear of other bloggers who get book deals and get angry at women who are able to put together book proposals with an infant and several small children in the house. (You know that you hate them, too.) Yet, I do believe that I've been given a gift for humor and honesty, which most of the time are the same thing. At least they are for me. It helps me take life a lot less seriously. And since I believe gifts are God-given, I feel an obligation to share my talents whether it be with a handful of people or thousands.

I always think of that parable in the New Testament about the three slaves who were given bags of money commensurate with their abilities. The two with the most bags of money multiplied it. The third man was given one bag of money and he buried it, figuring he didn't have enough money to do anything worthwhile. The master was not pleased with number three. Sometimes I'm afraid I'm burying my talents. Other times I'm afraid that any attempt to showcase my talent will be excessively narcissistic. I either fantasize about being at the top of the heap or am busy burying myself beneath the heap.

Humility is a balancing act and I have horrible balance.

All these mental gymnastics are just to let you know that a friend and former colleague of mine recently asked if I would write a get-to-know-the-blogger type article for a local parents' website. I know it ain't Oprah or anything, but I agreed. I love to write and it gave me a chance to distill just what my family and I are all about and why I write on a regular basis.

So, basically, I'm sharing with you a link on my blog to an article about ... my blog. I realize this is a little circular. Enjoy the ride.

The view from the patio

coffee and a view

My two biggest fears are that I'll be perceived as a narcissist for seeming to record every fart and belly scratch on a blog and that my children's years with us will slip through my hands undocumented. I seem to be at war with myself. You don't want to be in my head. It's a jungle up there.

I keep this blog as a record of their childhood, my perceptions and feelings about it, our daily lives and what we value. Because in the end, I want our children to know that our family is a place where they are always accepted and loved, as trite as that sounds (another fear of mine), and thereby a soft place to land when the world is rough. I want them to learn what we value and confidently take that into the world with them. We feel that only by being their sole home base in the early years will they learn to be confident in the world. Confidence starts at home. Not in a classroom. Not in a group setting. Not in being properly socialized. In fact, I saw my son's confidence erode when he was in a group setting. He's become so much more confident over the past few months, even in social situations.

One of my other challenges is not to be reactive in how I raise my children. I have lots of opinions about the status quo. I don't believe, for instance, that preschool is necessary. Or even traditional schooling institutions, for that matter. I want to be sure however, that I'm doing what's right for them based on, well, them and not what I don't like in the predominant system of education in this country. I don't want blinders on, but I do. I need to shut the world out to focus on them and what they need. But I also need to take the blinders off to ensure that I see what in this world will benefit them best. I am at war with myself, again. The jungle is quite thick up there.

One of the reasons I write is because I think. A lot. It's actually one of the things I can do that the kids can't touch, disturb (except on those days when I can't really hear myself think), lose, flush down the toilet or otherwise destroy. They can steal my breakfast, but they can't take my mind.

the putting green

I'm not even sure why I chose to start writing this morning. Maybe it's because I'm alone with my laptop and my thoughts on a beautiful patio that my husband built over the weekend. The view is stunning from here. My husband's putting green (yes, he built himself a putting green) and flowers and herbs and my vegetable garden. All my husband's vision. All of it embodies what we value. Hard work, vision, slow and steady progress, doing for ourselves. The restructuring of the side yard was several years in the making. Click here for more photos.

Instead of hiring someone or renting a stump grinder to remove an enormous stump in the way of the new patio, my husband chopped away at it with an axe for a whole year.

Instead of bringing in extra dirt to fill in the raised beds for the vegetable garden, we shoveled in the rich dirt from the previous garden.

Instead of bringing in extra dirt to fill up the holes between the beds, we used the dirt removed from the patio area.

In fact, instead of hiring someone to do it for us, he did it himself and it took over a year to clear and level the area. He did it after a full day's work and on weekends and while doing all that being a father and husband entails.

And, of course, as I wrote those last few lines, I worried that you would think I'm bragging. The jungle is extra thick today. I don't want to brag. I just want to tell you how wonderful my husband is and how much I appreciate the way he thinks. He's the kind of man I want our children to be like.