Holiday Home Tour AD/HD Style

Welcome! I’m so glad you’ve stopped by. I’m very proud that our home has been selected as a stop on this years Holiday Home Tour! Come on in!

Please feel free to remove your shoes. If you look down to your right, you will notice a boot tray surrounded by boots. Very few boots are actually on the boot tray but rather strewn festively about the floor.

Enter our cozy living room (watch your step!) and be dazzled by the beauty of our blue icicle lights. Note how they cast a magical, blue glow over the multiple toys that decorate the floor!

I hope this won’t disappoint you but…we have no tree. Why, you ask?We are Jewish. We have two very naughty indoor cats. And a tree that sheds needles hung with a multitude of fragile ornaments?!? Hell no.
Moving on….

On my dining room table, you will not see a gingerbread house. If you come back in a few days, maybe there will be one then. I forgot to buy a make-your-own-gingerbread-house kit at the store when I saw it. Then, in typical AD/HD fashion, I thought I had lots of time to get one. I didn’t. My bad.

See my gorgeous home-crafted Hannukah garlands? I hot glued little jewelry boxes onto them and filled each with a chocolate coin. I crafted them out of streamers, ribbon and hand-cut stars. This morning as I was hot-gluing the jewelry boxes onto them, my son said, “Hmm. Ok. Not the prettiest thing. Cool. But…not that pretty.” True story.

I have a Santa decoration up, despite the fact that Santa. Freaks. Me. Out.
I like this decoration because it has a picture of Santa and underneath it, it says HO. Not HO, HO, HO. Just HO. I find that hilarious, for obvious reasons.

Moving on into the kitchen, you will see our family menorah, laden with wax from Hannukahs past. The presents surrounding the menorah were wrapped last night, at the very last minute. Don’t they look lovely all stacked there haphazardly?!

Ok. So my house doesn’t look like a page out of Pottery Barn. Nor do I want it to! We aren’t a cookie-cutter family. Our daily days are filled with chaos, craziness, creativity, light and love. Why should the holidays be any different?!

This year, let your kids decorate the house or tree…and leave it be! Don’t “fix” it after the kids have gone to bed! Show your children that their creativity is valued and that having fun is important.

Want to make your house holiday-perfect? Fill it with light and love.

Wishing you happy holidays!

Blahg

Blah blah blah blah blah.
Blah blah blah blah blah.
Blah blah blah blah blah.

That’s all I can think of when I go to write another post.

I think this has already been established but, as a reminder, I’ll say it again: I get bored easily.

I just read another AD/HD blog that likened AD/HD to walking through life, in the dark, with a book of matches. That is the absolute best description I have ever heard of AD/HD. Sometimes something grabs my attention, a match is lit and it burns brightly. Then it fizzles out and I’m in the dark again until the next interest comes along.

I haven’t been motivated to write about anything lately. I’ve also been distracted by other interests. But this is to be expected; this is, after all, an AD/HD blog! If you expect any regularity on my part, I highly doubt you have AD/HD! If you do have AD/HD, then you totally get where I’m coming from!

Raking leaves

Yesterday, my Dad was telling me how much he hates raking leaves. He feels like it’s a never-ending, thankless task. It’s impossible to be satisfied with a job well-done. You spend the whole day raking, pick up huge piles of leaves, grab a beer, sit on the porch…and watch the leaves fall and the wind blow. By the next morning, it looks like you never raked.

Well. Apparently raking leaves is like housework.

Dishes, laundry, paperwork, sweeping, vacuuming, cleaning, meal planning, grocery shopping,picking up toys…an endless cycle of chore after chore. After chore.

Nothing is every truly done. It’s overwhelming, tiring and quite frankly, it can be soul-sucking.

When my house is clean (like right-before-my-in-laws-visit clean) it takes about 5 minutes for my family to make it look like a tornado came through. They make it look “lived-in”…but that’s because we LIVE HERE! So, I guess they’re doing their job (making a mess) and I’m doing mine (cleaning it).

Nothing is ever perfect. And I don’t need it to be! But, one day I’d love to have a clean, organized house with not a single chore on my to-do list.

This. Will. Never. Happen.

It’s as elusive as a forest floor with no leaves.

Ten Things I Won’t Do Today

1. I won’t check my iPhone right when it alerts me.
(I’ll probably check it within 5 minutes though.)
2. I won’t eat bits of cold, leftover food from my child’s plate.
(But I may eat pieces of warm, delicious food off her plate despite protests of “Mommy, mine!!!”)
3. I won’t ask more than three times for my son to do something.
(No, just two and three-quarters times.)
4. I won’t finish ‘just one more chore’ before I take two seconds for myself to go pee.
(I’ll just finish my current chore, take too long and almost pee in my pants.)
5. I won’t fall asleep on the couch before 9pm.
(I’ll just rest my eyes, like my husband does!)
6. I won’t flip a nutty when I lose my keys for the eighth time.
(I lied. I’ll probably flip a nutty.)
7. I won’t say “..in a second!” when I really mean “…in a few minutes!”.
(I think I can handle this one.)
8. I won’t make lists of all the lists I need to make
(My precious lists!!!!)
9. I won’t listen to children’s music.
(But my daughter will Jedi mind-trick me into it and I’ll be forced to put on Little Bird…again)
10. I won’t beat myself up if I slip up on items 1 through 9.
(Who am I kidding?!?! Of course I will!)

What will I forget today?

That is not the question.

The question is rather:
What will I remember today?

Will I remember how soft my sons cheek felt when I kissed him awake this morning? Or the look of sheer joy on my daughters face when she flew by me on her scooter? Will I remember how gorgeous my son is, flushed with excitement when telling me about his day? Or how adorable my children look, sharing a special snuggle on the couch?

I will forget my phone on the charger, my bag in the house and my keys on the table. I will forget to pick up an essential ingredient for dinner. I will most likely forget countless other things today. But what is truly important–my special moments with my children–will be remembered, cherished.

At the end of the day, when I say goodnight to my sleeping son, I always feel guilty for the mistakes I made that day. I always feel like I should’ve been more patient, more understanding, handled certain situations better. I should be forgetting all of the mistakes made and the patience lost. Instead, I should be recalling all of the wonderful moments that made up my day. For these are the moments that will be remembered many years from now.

All of us moms fall victim to Mother Guilt. It robs us of the credit we deserve to give ourselves! Tonight, as I kiss my sleeping son, I’m going to recall all of the things I did RIGHT today, not wrong. I’m going to reflect on the wonderful memories we made today rather than beating myself up for what I could have done differently.

When you give goodnight kisses tonight, what will you allow yourself to forget? More importantly, what will you remember?

Time Management?!?!

What the hell is time management?!?! How do you manage time?!?! Isn’t that kind of like managing space?!?!

I’ve been told that I have ‘poor time management skills’. No shit, Sherlock. What gave it away? Was it the fact that I’m…hmmm, let me see….always running LATE?!?!?

Apparently, I’m not alone. Trouble with time management is a common effect of ADHD.  I am CONSTANTLY losing track of time, doing things in the wrong order, procrastinating, missing deadlines or, my personal favorite, underestimating the amount of time needed for a task.  Recently, I had lunch with my sister (who is also my BFF) and we were getting ready to leave for a 1pm music class for our daughters. The music class was 13 minutes away, according to my GPS. In my brain though, I was envisioning it to be about 5 minutes away. At 12:45, my sister was encouraging us to leave ASAP.  I secretly thought she was being a little nuts and that we had plenty of time. At around 12:50, we were off to the library in our separate cars and it dawned on me, ‘Holy shit! We’re gonna be late!!!!” I glanced in the rear view mirror and, sure enough, there’s my sis, totally stressing out. She calls me up and says, “We’re gonna be late!!!!! I HATE BEING LATE!!!!”  Sigh. I’m ALWAYS late.

In my family, I’m known for being late. Now, not EXCESSIVELY late, mind you!!!! I’m not the type of person who is AN HOUR late (that’s someone else in my family). I’m just a few minutes late. I always think I’m going to be right on time…but I rarely am.

A common tactic for people with ADHD is to add an extra 10 minutes onto any task. I DO that. It doesn’t work. I think my sister adds an extra 10 minutes onto our times that we plan to meet to account for my lateness.  For example, if I say I’ll be somewhere at noon, she knows I’ll get there around 12:15. She likes punctuality and I’d imagine this probably pisses her off…but I’m her sister so she’s stuck with me. My ADHD husband also has a thing for punctuality. He HATES it when people are late and becomes very stressed out when I cause us to be late (but he’s stuck with me too!). He has this trick he uses to be on time which involves setting his alarm clock 14 minutes fast.  (Why 14? Because he likes that number.) It works for him. But, my brain just isn’t buying it! Nope. I just figure I have about an extra 15 minutes…and that probably makes me later.

People with ADHD often have a different perception of how time passes. I always try my best to be on time. Actually, I get VERY stressed out when I’m rushing because I’m running late. One area that I find very challenging is the morning rush routine. My son needs to be sitting IN his seat at school at 8:25 or he’s marked tardy. I have made some progress in this area lately. I’ve managed to get him to school on time every single morning except one so far this year (a miracle, I know!!!!). The key to my success lies in my routine. If I deviate from it AT ALL…I’m screwed. I need to do everything the exact same way, every day or he’s late. And getting him there at 8:23 and yelling “RUN!!!!!” just doesn’t count.

Ok. I’m getting bored. I apologize for wasting your time in reading this boring-ass post. Also, I’m currently exercising my poor time management skills–there’s lots of stuff I need to be doing right now. Which I may or may not do. I’ll probably go start 10 tasks and have 10 unfinished tasks by nightfall.

Damn it. I just noticed that my husband STILL hasn’t hung our daughters growth chart on the door properly. We got hardware to hang it like 3 months ago. I told him this and said it’s a good example of our poor time management skills. To which he had two things to say:

1. People with ADHD age better. Why? Because we ignore time.

2. I’ll hang the chart today.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Getting ‘squatchy

That’s right, people.
That there is Bigfoot.
On my very own kitchen floor!

Now, when I began this blog (a whole 5 days ago), I decided I would not, ever, put photos of my family on. I am, by nature, very paranoid and do not trust internet security. And I’m not making any exceptions here because CLEARLY this is NOT my 7 year old son. As you can plainly see, it’s Bigfoot.

What is Bigfoot doing on my kitchen floor? Oh. I’m so glad you asked!

He is having the mother of all shit fits.

Bigfoot is unhappy because we aren’t having a costume party. It’s Tuesday night dinner and Bigfoot has posted a sign, specifically requesting a costume party, but his damn parents won’t humor him. Not because they don’t like playing dress up but because they just did this the previous night. Oh, and the night before that too.

Parenting can be challenging.
(What an understatement, right?!?!?)
Especially if you have ADD/ADHD or have a child that does.
Even more so if you AND your child both have ADD/ADHD!!!!

But, you know what would make parenting a lot easier? Personally, it would help me out a lot if my son were dressed up as Bigfoot whenever he has a meltdown. Because, rather than being annoyed and frustrated, my husband and I were laughing our assess off! Now, I’m not advocating laughing at your dear children when they’re upset. I tried not to. Really, I did!!! But, YOU try keeping a straight face when your beloved child, dressed head to toe in brown fuzz, is rolling around making wookie noises on the floor! Hilarious.

Temper tantrums are annoying and challenging for any parent to deal with. For me, having ADD makes it very difficult to handle certain annoyances in an appropriate way. Like many people with ADD/ADHD, my mouth often moves faster than my brain. And I’m not just “not thinking” or being careless with my words, thank you very much!

Here’s the deal:

ADD/ADHD affects the frontal lobe of the brain. Our frontal lobe plays a strong role in our emotional regulation and is responsible for controlling impulses,organization, motivation and “sequential memory.”

So, thanks to my dysfunctional frontal lobe, I often lack the impulse control to sensor my words and actions. In other words, I blurt out things that are better left unsaid. For example, the other day I got freaked out when my husband was driving and I yelled, “FUCK A DUCK!!!” (my most favorite swear word phrase) with my kids in the car. Oops.

Anyways, tantrums can be very challenging for me to deal with. I spent a lot of time thinking about why they are so hard. When my son has a melt down, I feel very out of control. I DON’T like feeling this way. It makes me feel anxious and stressed. This kicks in my ADD and causes me to overreact (lack of emotional regulation…thanks again, frontal lobe!). When Bigfoot threw his shit fit on our floor, my husband and I chose laughter. And what happened?!? It stopped the tantrum in it’s tracks! Go figure! We all started laughing and no one got stressed or upset. We moved on. If only this could happen more often!

What have I learned from this?
Making my son wear his Bigfoot costume around all the time isn’t practical (it sheds everywhere!). Laughing, or at least smiling, when faced with a challenging situation will help me feel more in control of my emotions. And when I’m in control of my own emotions, I am more capable of helping my child regain control.

I accept the fact that this won’t always work. I will most likely NOT smile when faced with certain shit fits. You know the ones–they occur early in the morning, when you haven’t gotten enough sleep, before your coffee and are over things like “I CANT FIND MY BLUE SOCKS!!!!”…and you’re running late. You know what I mean.

But, here’s the thing. I’m trying my best. So, tonight I will be attending our impromptu costume party dinner dressed as a pirate. Again.

Why I don’t hate running

If you’re a parent, with or without ADHD, you KNOW how challenging the morning rush can be! You’ve barely had time to open your eyes, never mind drink coffee, before the craziness begins.

“Mom, are elves from Pakistan?”, asks my 7 year old son.

“Ummm, interesting question. I’m not sure I know how to answer that one. Can I get back to you on that?”, I reply.

“Well, a simple yes or no answer would do.”

I don’t have time to debate the origin of elves right now. I’ve got less than two hours to get everyone ready and out of the house to drop my son off at school. It’s sounds like a lot of time…but where does it all go?? I head downstairs, change over the laundry, empty the dishwasher, cook breakfast, make my son lunch, feed the kids breakfast, clean up from breakfast, get the laundry from the basement, get everyone back upstairs, help get my son ready (read: keep him focused on getting ready on his own), get my 1 year old washed and dressed, get myself washed and dressed, get my crap together, get everyone out to the car and GO, GO, GO!!! I try, (oh for the life of me, I try!), not to sound like a drill sergeant. I try to stay chill. Some days are better than others. Some days are (dare I say it?!?!) pretty easy; other days are impossibly hard. I feel like a juggler with a million balls in the air.

It always strikes me as strange that people think stay-at-home moms have all this free time! Nothing could be further from the truth!

I do have one block of time during the day that I consider my “free time”. After school drop off, I go for a run. I used to HATE running. After having my daughter, I decided to give it another chance and found that I love it. Here’s why….

I let my mind go. I don’t NEED to stay focused on anything. My ADD brain is so restless, it goes a mile a minute all the time. This isn’t conducive to getting things accomplished so I’m always reeling myself in, trying to focus and pay attention. But, when I run, I let my mind wander and go wherever it pleases.

What’s in that water tower? Is it actually water? Oh, look a wooly-bear caterpillar (stop, pick him up, move him off the path). If he’s very wooly, will we have a tough winter? I wonder if I’m ever going to get my laundry put away? Is it true that running causes wrinkles? If so, do I care? Hmm. Maybe I should get a tighter sports bra. What the hell did I just run over?! Oh, a nut. Nuts. Heh, heh, I said nuts. I need to grocery shop. Hey, look at that squirrel! Oh and a chipmunk! Maybe we’ll see an elf! DO elves come from Pakistan?!?!…..

Ahhh, one hour of doing nothing but pushing a stroller, running and stretching. My mind is let off it’s leash and is running free!

Sometimes I feel guilty about taking this time for myself. I could be at home getting work done, out grocery shopping, simply sitting on the floor and playing with my daughter. But this is my time and it’s important. Every mom, stay-at-home or otherwise, deserves this time for herself. When we take care of ourselves, we are better equipped to take care of others. I give myself to my family freely, whole-heartedly and with pleasure every day…23-7.
That other hour is mine.

The Backpack

The Backpack

My husband, son and I worked very hard all morning doing fall clean-up. My daughter had it easy because she was on my back the whole time in the Ergo carrier. We ignored our flower beds all summer so cleaning up was no easy task! Beach time vs. weeding the gardens….no contest!

With our long-put-off chores completed (mostly), we decided to hit the beach. We actually remembered to pack the hiking baby-backpack, water for everyone and baby essentials. On our way, we stopped in town to get some gelato. I put my daughter in her stroller and off we went. We ate our delicious gelato and went back to the car. I put my now-sticky daughter in her car seat while also-sticky hubby packed up the stroller and re-loaded it into the car. Meanwhile, I lost my keys (which occurs roughly 4,567 times a day), got out of the car, went to retrieve them from the stroller and got back into the car. Off we went to the beach.

And here we are, 5 minutes later, about 4 miles down the road, at the beach.

Husband: Hahahaha! We drove all this way with the backpack up on the top of the car!!! Hahahaha!
Me: NO!!! HOLY SHIT!!! ARE YOU SERIOUS???
Husband: Hahahaha!
Me: I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU LEFT THE BACKPACK ON THE ROOF OF THE CAR!!!!
Husband: I can’t believe you got out looking for your keys and didn’t NOTICE the backpack up on top of the car!!!
Me: I’M FIVE FEET TALL!!!!

Now. I’ve failed to mention that this backpack is one of my most prized possessions. It was a gift from my parents (actually to hubby, not to me!) before our son was born. I’ve hiked hundreds of miles with my precious babies in this backpack! Not to mention that it’s just an awesome backpack and I love it!!!

There’s a lot to be said about finding humor in your daily fuck-ups. But not if it ends in backpack road-pizza! But, as they say, all’s well that ends well. Or, as my dear husband just said, “Come on! You have to admit it–it WAS funny! Because nothing happened to it! That’s what makes it so funny!”
Yeah. I suppose so.

Goo Gone

I have problems with organization.

I like things to be very organized and I find it stressful when they aren’t. Yet, almost nothing in my life is organized! When I organize an area, it becomes disorganized in a matter of months. I’m great at organizing things, I’m just awful at keeping them that way. It’s rather annoying.

I just finished organizing the cabinet under my kitchen sink. I need to re-organize every, single cabinet in my house. But I’m overwhelmed by this seemingly gargantuan task and so therefore, I procrastinate. I stress about it not getting done but then still don’t do it. Weird, I know.
Finally, I was persuaded by a large caffeinated coffee to get at least one cabinet reorganized. Here’s a partial list of things I found under my sink: sponges (5), glue, Goo Gone, weird random tools (lots), a pumpkin carving kit, brown bags (approx. 900), bubbles (12), old finger paints, Shabbat candles (3 boxes) and 1 bottle of floor cleaner that has moved with us twice over the past 3 years. What the hell?! Why do I have 12 things of bubbles??? I only have 2 kids!!! Won’t 3 or 4 suffice? Why must I save things needlessly? Like, for example, old floor cleaner that I’m obviously never going to use (I use a Shark steam cleaner that I love!!!) Take a guess: Did I throw away that bottle of cleaner? No. Why? I have no idea.

Know what else I did in my kitchen today? I cleaned my stove top. It wasn’t super dirty but it had some kind of sticky, greasy, alien-like substance surrounding one of the burners. So, I thought, ‘Hell yeah!! A chance to use that Goo Gone I just found!!’ So, I used it. And as I was using it, another thought came to me: Holy shit…is this stuff flammable?! Hmm. One thing you should know about me: Sometimes I like to do things just to see what will happen. It keeps things interesting. So, I clicked on the burner…you know, not to try to start a fire or anything…just to see what would happen. I’m happy to report that it doesn’t appear to be flammable. I will also report that I found it a little disappointing that nothing exciting happened.

Important side note: Apparently, Goo Gone is HIGHLY flammable. Thank you to my dear husband, who also has ADHD, but DOES read labels. He told me that, if I were to read the label, I would see large warning signs on it. Maybe next time I’ll read the label. Then again, maybe not…