The Ballard Five

Five Easy Steps to Keeping a “Youthful” Appearance **

1. NEVER wash your make up off. Leaving it on at night simply saves you time in the mornings, AND gives you 15 minutes of extra sleep. This also saves you money, since you are merely refreshing your make up each day.

2. Speaking of sleep, go to bed NO EARLIER than midnight. A maximum of 6 hours of sleep is plenty. Anything more and you’re wasting daylight. Side effects may include a narcoleptic-like existence…you get used to it.

3. Eat like a toddler. As in, grab the left-overs off their plates as you are cleaning up their mess. This will sustain you most days until you eye the Easter candy and nearly put yourself into a diabetic coma.

4. Milk baths. I like to use Similac Sensitive…but only AFTER it has been consumed by the 5 month old. Then and only then will you benefit from its therapeutic effects.

5. Take short showers. Don’t over hydrate your skin by taking a shower longer than 5 minutes. 3 minutes is sufficient to remove the residue from aforementioned milk baths. Besides, your children can (and will) do more damage during your 5 minute shower than three days worth of supervision.

If you follow these simple steps you can also look as rested, refreshed and youthful as me!

**Clearly, this is not an actual recommended regimen.

Sometimes (many times) as a parent, you fail miserably while trying to do the right thing. Sometimes those things can frighten or even emotionally scar your children. Sometimes those fears have the potential to send your children to therapy when they get older. Here are two “gems” from this weekend.

Sophie took a sudden interest in Easter on Friday night. Not the Easter Bunny-candy-eggs-baskets version, but the REAL reason we celebrate Easter. I talked to her about Jesus dying on Good Friday, and that we celebrate Him coming back to life on Easter. She asked how He died, so we talked about the Crucifix. You know, the GIANT Crucifix that is front-and-center at church every week when we go to mass. The Crucifix that we have hanging in our own house and on every single rosary she has ever seen. The Crucifix that I was certain she had noticed before. Not so. This was totally new to her and she was horrified at what they had done to Jesus, rightfully so. I tried my best to put a positive spin on it for her, letting her know that He did it because He loved us and wanted us to get into Heaven with Him one day. She didn’t buy it. So she insisted on getting into our bed Friday and sleeping with us…because she’s scared of Jesus now, and the Crucifix. When we went to mass on Easter Sunday, it was the first thing she noticed as we walked into church. She looked at me with wide eyes and said, “Mama, is that the real Jesus?” (Strike one)

After spending all day visiting family for Easter, we brought home a van load of candy, and other Easter goodies along with three tired little girls with very high blood sugar. They got all sorts of candy, and small toys from grandparents, aunts and uncles. One of the things they were most excited about were some glow sticks that I told them they could take to bed. We got them in their pajamas, brushed their teeth, said prayers and tucked them in. Then Walter snapped the glow sticks and shook them up. Sophie asked me what would happen if we broke them and poured the water out, and I casually mentioned that they were poisonous, so don’t try to open them. She came in our room not ten minutes later crying hysterically that she didn’t feel good. I knew this wasn’t true because she was fine just minutes before. I finally got her to tell me what was really wrong and she confessed that she didn’t want her glow stick any more. She was afraid it would poison her. In fact, she thought it was best to just throw it away. So we did. I tried to convince her that she would need super human strength to break it open, but she couldn’t be swayed. I sent her back to bed only to hear her and Lilly BOTH crying just minutes later. When I checked on them again they told me that they didn’t want Lilly to drink hers and die. So Lilly’s got thrown away, too. Drama! Lilly then proclaimed that there were to be “no more glow sticks in our house” and that was that. Scared of glow sticks…(Strike two)

Twice, TWICE, in 48 hours I managed to turn something that should be fun (Easter and glow sticks at bedtime) into terrifying and traumatic experiences for my girls. I wonder what I’d have to do to scare them away from Play-doh and Chuck E. Cheese???

When I was in school my parents always told me that they didn’t care what my grades were as long as I got an “A” for effort and an “A” for conduct. That way they could be certain that I was trying my hardest and behaving when they weren’t around to watch me. And that was enough for them. 

However, being the type-A, perfectionist that I am, it was never enough for me. I was the kid who got a 99% on a test then fretted and stressed about the 1% I got wrong. I lost sleep, I cried, I pouted, you name it. I was a nervous wreck in school. And that’s just me. It’s who I am. I have impossible standards for myself and end up disappointed when I don’t achieve “perfection”. (More on this in a later post.) 

And then I had kids. I believe that there is a degree to which everyone goes a little nuts when they have kids. Kids are messy, and loud, and break stuff. They don’t listen, or follow logic. It’s like living in a frat house during rush week with tiny little (adorable) drunk people. Every. Single. Day. Add them to my household and you’ve got yourself a mama that may look put together on the outside but is screaming and pulling her hair out on the inside. Sometimes those screams escape me. As a sharp word, a moment of impatience, or sometimes the scream itself. When that happens, I suddenly feel like a failure, a jerk, the worst parent on the planet…an asshole. 

These moments make me realize that I’m really only about 80% good at parenting and 20% of the time I totally suck, drop the ball, or flat out don’t have a clue what I’m doing. But you know what? I’m trying. I’m trying my damnedest and by-golly I get an “A” for effort! 

I also realize that my own girls are good kids (Like really, super, awesome kids!) and that they get an “A” for effort, too. They really do try hard every day to be the best kids I could ask for! True, there are days when the conduct could use some work, and at times, they could be better listeners or even be nicer to each other, but all day, every day they are trying 100% to be good kids. That’s all they have to do. And that’s enough for me. 

Lilly has an imaginary being that comes around now and again. That’s the normal part. I know lots of kids have imaginary friends or pets that they play with and talk to. Lilly’s is named Al and he’s a bully. We don’t know a lot about Al, but we do know that he has purple hair and lives in the sky. He pushes her, takes her toys from her (how?), calls her names and is generally mean to her. She gets pretty tore up about him at times and calls him her “pretend bully”. She often retaliates by spitting on him. (Something she didn’t learn from us.) If you were going to conjure up something, I don’t know why it would be a bully to terrorize you, but she gets points for style and creativity on this one. 

On another note…each of the girls have a favorite lullaby. Sophie likes to hear the Beatles “All You Need is Love”. Lilly’s go to is “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. I started singing “Baby Mine” to Evelyn and that’s her favorite. In case you’re not familiar with that one, it’s the sweet little ditty off Dumbo…an absolute tear jerker! Lilly likes to sing to Evelyn too and just this morning was doing a bang-up job at Evelyn’s lullaby. Except I noticed something. She was singing “baby mama” instead. It takes that song to a whole new level. (More creativity points for Lilly.) Now if only I could find out who Al’s mama is, we could sit down together over some imaginary coffee and settle things between our children before somebody gets hurt.