Author: jenzug

Mayhem in the Hood

One of the perks of living in an urban center is that you get to witness the occasional riot in your neighborhood. Last night was one such night for the Zugs when a party ended at the rental hall next door to us.

Around 11:30, just before SNL started, a stream of firecrackers went off in front of our house. Bryan, who was already in bed, put on his pants and went down to stare threateningly from the front porch. It worked, and four cars sped off as soon as he took his post. Fifteen minutes later when we were back in bed, we heard more firecrackers out the back door. When I went down to check it out and to call the police, I found hundreds of teenagers swarming the streets around my house.

Soon there was a police car in front of my house, one behind, and one on each of the two corners a block south, and they treated the scene like a riot – staying in their cars, not engaging, but slowly pushing and disbursing the crowd. The whole ordeal took about an hour, and then it was dark and quiet, like nothing had ever happened.

I must have the right personality for living in a neighborhood like this. Never at any moment did I feel afraid, though I knew there was the real possibility things could turn for the worse and a cop car could get turned over. I was irritated by the swarm of self-centeredness and the blatant disrespect. They hovered in the middle of the street, fighting, chatting between cars – all this happening directly in front of the cop as if he didn’t exist. And oh the teenage girl squealing – that was the worst part. It hurts my ears.

I love my house, and I love my neighborhood. Most of the time it is a pleasant neighborhood. Where else can you walk to the park and the library and the wine bar and the cupcake shop? This incident does not disillusion me. I am here to stay.

Want to see what happened? Watch this video…

Book Club: Raising Your Spirited Child

Most of us find ourselves facing an array of labels spoken and unspoken that affect how we think, feel, and act toward our spirited children. If we are going to build a healthy relationship with them, we must lay the labels out on the table, dissect them, and then redesign those that make us and our kids feel lousy – the ones that cloud our vision and hide the potential within.

I like how Kurcinka begins the book, in chapter two, with a deconstruction of how things currently are. She asks the reader to consider how we think about and talk about our children, and how that might affect our relationship. Negative labels can perpetuate dread, can discourage, and can send the wrong message to other adults in the child’s life, such as a teacher. But as she says in chapter one, sometimes our spirited child’s personality traits are actually strengths when understood and well guided.

It seems difficult to comprehend in the moment of an explosive episode, but ‘redesigning’ our labels to reflect a more positive quality can help us as a parent relate differently, and it can help our child think of themselves differently. So I sat down and thought of the labels I use for Ruthie. All but two would be considered negative, but that didn’t surprise me. The most difficult part of the exercise was coming up with a corresponding positive trait, because I’m just not sure I could catch the vision for some of these. To be honest, I had to use a thesaurus.

  NEGATIVE LABEL   REDESIGNED LABEL
  stubborn   persistent
  strong willed   confident, assertive
  obstinate   tenacious, steadfast
  explosive   intense
  dramatic   dramatic
  independent   independent
  impatient   keen, restless
  demanding   ambitious

I felt the exercise was helpful in reminding me that Ruthie needs time and direction to grow into these traits, and that as an adult these traits will actually be an asset.

You don’t need to list your labels if you don’t want to, but I’m curious what others thought of this chapter?

The Great Purge of 2007

reorganizedI purged this bookshelf in our living room of everything that has been dumped there by sheer convenience. I removed all the books that had no reason to be there except that I was too lazy to take them downstairs where they belonged. This collection now reflects what Bryan and I are currently reading, or plan to read.

It took me about twenty minutes to sort and rearrange, and another twenty minutes to sort the displaced books on the shelves in the basement – all while the kids napped.

When I break my projects down into simple tasks like this, it doesn’t seem so bad. Are you overwhelmed by crap to sort? Take one hour, and tackle one corner, or one flat surface. YOU CAN DO IT.

Online Book Club

I’m excited that so many people are on board for discussing this latest book I’m reading: Raising Your Spirited Child. I always get more out of books like this when I can be inspired by the things others are seeing that don’t jump out at me, so thank you for your willingness to come along on this journey with me.

When I get a chance, I will be posting next on chapter 2, which discusses the labels we give our children.

The Great Purge of 2007

clean bed!I hate everything. More specifically, I hate everything in my house that makes me sneeze, trip, or stub my toe. It all. must. go.

I spent all morning, the other day, cleaning shit out of my room that didn’t even belong there. Toys? Used diapers? Size 2T pajamas? DOES NOT BELONG IN MY ROOM.

I sorted through everything, including jewelry and shoes and perfume and anything else I haven’t touched in a year. IT ALL MUST GO.

I should have taken a ‘before’ picture, but frankly it was so embarrassing I might have never shown my face in here again. I had crap piled on my dresser half way up the mirror, toys on the floor in the corner piled up to the top of the dresser, and enough wadded up used tissues next to my bed to make me look like Dolly Parton were I to stuff them in my bra.

clean room!I am a slob as it is, and my bedroom is the LAST place in my house to get cleaned.

But NO MORE! I am purging my house of all useless junk! Room by room I am going! This room only took me a couple of hours in one morning while the kids snuggled in my bed watching Nickelodeon.

I took out trash, I gave things away to friends, and I dropped the rest off at The Goodwill.

Today I finally got around to vacuuming.

Hallelujah.

Do you have crap in your house that must go? Set your timer for two hours and see what happens. I dare you.

Book: Raising Your Spirited Child

Spirited kids are the Super Ball in a room full of rubber balls. Other kids bounce three feet off the ground. Every bounce for a spirited child hits the ceiling.

I started this book today. The subtitle is ‘a guide for parents whose child is *more* intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, and energetic.’ Sounded like the book for me, and from page 1 I have found great comfort and validation from someone who gets what it’s like to be me.

The author, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, chooses to use the term spirited because difficult, strong-willed, and stubborn have negative connotations. A spirited child is lively, for sure, and creative and full of energy. But spirited children possess personality traits that can actually be strengths when understood and well guided. This is the basic premise of the book.

She seems to understand the randomness and intensity of the transition between good moments and bad moments, and the unpredictability of what will set a child off, and the persistence to scream for forty five minutes over toast cut the wrong way. She talks of the fear that we parents feel that we may have done something wrong in our parenting to create such behavior.

On the bad days, being the parent of a spirited child is confusing, frustrating, taxing, challenging, and guilt-inducing. You may wonder if you are the only parent with a kid like this, scared of what is to come in the teen years if you don’t figure out what to do now in the early years.

This book feels like a breath of fresh air, like a little piece of sanity. She even includes a chapter to give parents tools in keeping their cool on the bad days. Also, her definition of ‘spirited’ includes more than stubborn or explosive kids. She also includes kids who are more sensitive, more intensely inward, and more fearful and clingy than other kids – the kind of kids who are not content until the blankets on their beds are just right, or the tags on their clothing are folded down, or the bumps on their socks are smoothed out.

This book is for parents with kids who are more.

Rather than reading the entire book, then writing a review at the end, I may journal online as I go. If anyone would like to pick up a copy and read along, it would be nice to do a virtual book club through comments!

Gettin’ Scrappy

IMG_5785
My girlfriend, Sarah, has been coming over on the Monday nights that Bryan is out of town, and we scrapbook together. When Ruthie was a baby I made scrapbook pages throughout her whole first year, and filled a second scrapbook of other family fun stuff. But by the time Thomas came along I was deep into writing and blogging and creating videos, and decided I only had space in my brain for only one hobby at a time.

I have missed scrapbooking, though, for the tactile nature of it, and for the fun of designing with color and image. So once I got my craft area set up in the basement I decided to give it a go again, only on a much leaner time commitment – one evening every other week.

It’s funny to watch Sarah scrap, too. She held out for the longest time, swearing she would never get into such a thing, that it was cliche for moms to scrap. But oh how I laughed when she showed up at my house with scads of paper and embellishments and tools, all neatly tucked into pretty organizers. I love it when the mighty fall.

Ever since I took these pictures of the kids drinking hot chocolate during the SNOW BLAST OF 2007, I envisioned a page like this, and it makes me happy to have created it.

In Praise of Bryan Zug

hung in the right spot!Yesterday afternoon Ruthie and I went to a birthday party, and while we were gone my super-husband cut the grass. We get into at LEAST one fight every summer over the reel mower we own (I love it, he hates it), so it was a big deal that he just decided to cut the grass and not complain about it.

He also hinted at another project he accomplished while we were gone, but wouldn’t tell me what it was. After spending the entire evening outside by the fire pit (first fire of the season!), I finally went in to find Ruthie some warmer clothes. It was then I noticed our large framed print in the living room had been hung on the wall correctly! And it looks great!

Bryan had given me a few concert posters from Over the Rhine for my birthday a few years ago. It took a year and a half to get one framed, then we hung it on the existing nail which was positioned lower for a smaller, horizontal print. Finally, a year after THAT, my print is hung in the right spot.

Yay for Bryan!

I hate coming up with titles to posts like this.

It’s Saturday afternoon. The kids are asleep, Bryan is snoring on the couch, and Return of the Jedi is on cable (HD!). I have just enjoyed a relaxing hour of catching up on some beloved blog reading – as much as two months worth of posts! That may sound overwhelming to some, but to me it was just the thing I needed to do. There is a lot of ‘to-do’ lists in my life, and as much as I love my blogs and my blog friends, I have at times put them before the other necessary facets of my life. It has been refreshing to spend the last few weeks not obsessively checking my feeds. I read two books, for instance. And now, as I have time to sit and enjoy my blogs in a time and space that is not full of other noise, I find I enjoy the experience of reading them more because they are not seen as another item to check of my list. So if you have missed my presence in your comments – go check your email now because I think I’m all caught up!

Learning from the Little Things

There are days when Ruthie teaches me many things. Like the days when she pretends to mother her purple teddy bear – feeding it, wrapping it in a blanket to sleep… and disciplining it. I often find her setting the bear in a nearby chair, cheerfully explaining to it the reasons for a time out, and when the whole thing is over she gives the bear hugs and kisses and moves on to the next thing.

I am in awe of this. And usually quite relieved.

I am in awe that, despite all my dysfunction, it is the healthy forms of correction that she imitates in her play. It is something I had always attributed to luck, relieved that she did not point an angry finger or spew swear words or speak harshly.

But the other day Ruthie taught me something else.

Bryan was out one night at a business dinner, so I was on my own with the kids at bedtime. I tend to rush the process, as by that time I’m emotionally spent and need to retreat into my introvertedness. Shortly after I came down to the kitchen, Ruthie peered through the door and asked me to do something. I was rude. She started crying. She asked for it again. I was rude again. She cried more and begged. And like a bratty twelve-year-old, I said “FINE!” and stomped upstairs to do what she had asked, and stomped back downstairs, saying something completely ridiculous like, “ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?”

Yeah. I did that.

After a few minutes I, of course, realized how ridiculous I had behaved, and how rude. Love is not rude. So I hung my head, and quietly went upstairs to apologize. When I snuggled onto her bed and came nose to nose with her, she popped her thumb out of her mouth and said sweetly, ‘Did you come to say you’re sorry?’

In that moment I knew luck had nothing to do with the way she interprets her mother. It is about grace.

I have often lamented over why God would give a control freak like me a daughter who is equally stubborn. It seemed to make better sense to give me someone more willing to comply with my shortcomings, who doesn’t do things that naturally draw out the ugliest parts of me. But it is becoming clearer to me how God is connecting me to my daughter through the connection of our personal journeys. She is teaching me as much as I am teaching her. She is part of my journey, and I am part of hers, and we are learning together. One without the other would leave nothing with which to challenge, and we would remain as we are – selfish and depraved.

As I am prompted by God to apologize to Ruthie, he is teaching me humbleness, and she is learning the process of reconciliation. She gets it. She is understanding, as seen in her pretend scenarios, the graceful way to correct. And she is understanding, as seen in her prediction of my apology, that mommy is not always graceful. She is understanding sin and redemption, even if she doesn’t know the language.

I find comfort in this, in knowing that I am not alone in this journey of motherhood because God is with me, in knowing that God takes even the broken parts of me and uses them to make something beautiful.

Hello Again. Can we start over?

Uck. What an ugly day yesterday was. I did pull my head out of my naval, though, and walked the kids down the street for some hot chocolate at our local coffee shop. On the way home we stopped at a grove of trees across the street from our house where they played chase and hide and seek. It reminded me of tromping through the woods at our cabin in Northern Minnesota where I loved playing in the ‘deep deep woods,’ as I called it.

We stayed in that time and space for longer than I wanted. I kept trying to edge the kids home so I could numb them with more television and go about my pouting, but they giggled and squealed and begged for ‘one more minute.’ I finally gave in and submitted to their wisdom, agreeing that fresh air and running was the better choice for the evening.

Carrie’s and Christy’s comments on yesterday’s post were encouraging in an ‘I hear ya, sista’ kind of way. I almost didn’t hit the ‘publish’ button because I thought my depressing dribble contained too much pouting. But I try to be real here, working it all out no matter how ugly. Like them, motherhood is all I ever wanted, and never much cared for building a career. I’m smart, I have an education, and I’m skilled, but I always believed that staying home with my children was the better choice for me.

I still believe that, and I have no regrets. What I need to do is start living like I believe it.

This is only a test. If this were an actual emergency I would be using all caps.

My babysitter is sick today (poor thing, she’s fighting something ugly), so I am without my afternoon of writing. I hate how this makes me feel, and I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with lost expectations. I’ve had many meaty things in my head this week, and I was really looking forward to having some space to flush it all out. Now I just feel deflated.

Ruthie slept for an hour and a half, so I took the time to figure out how to make a linked ‘button’ for my home page – something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile. And now that Ruthie is awake we are watching Peter Pan, and I will read a book. I find that I cannot steal away these short moments during naps to write through my most burning thoughts, for if I am interrupted by a waking child I become angry and bitter at her presence for intruding on ‘my time.’

I’ve learned that there is very little ‘my time’ in motherhood, and often the lines defining ‘mine’ are blurred by compromises and interruptions. I used to resent this, but I am adjusting – though not seamlessly. I recognized early on in my Recovery that I mother from a foundation of selfishness, and the whole house suffers if I am not happy. We all need time to recoup and re-create – to sabbath, as we call it in the church – but the purpose is to give us energy to do the work we have chosen to do, which in my case, is motherhood. I sometimes hold on to the method of my rest too tightly, hence the disappointment when things do not go as expected.

I have not discovered the balanced tension of being a writer and a mother, and fear the two are not compatible. Kyran at Notes to Self touches on this topic. She writes:

This is the central paradox of my life, for that matter, of any life that tries to encompass motherhood and art simultaneously. It is what I am usually trying to work out in my writing here. The writer belongs to no one, while the mother and wife are willingly indentured. There is never equilibrium, because life is never static. Just a lurching kind of motion between one truth and the other. This stagger that is my life.

Even as I try to write this essay, which has turned much more meaty than I intended, I find myself racing against the duration of Peter Pan, and it literally makes my head hurt. The writer/mother multitasking I do makes me tense and distracted, so now on top of everything else, I’m feeling tired and irritable. Where has the time gone? Is it really that late? What the hell am I making for dinner? Three hours I normally spend re-creating so I can be a better mother, I have spent thinking bitterly about being a mother instead of accepting What Is and embracing the afternoon with my daughter.

That is a sad place to be.