Things I Want To Teach My Daughter…

There are so many lessons in life that you must live to learn... There are also some lessons that I would prefer you NOT live and learn… With that in mind, I made a list of things I find absolutely necessary to share with you… Some of these are poetic and serene… Others are harsh and to the point… They are all equally important…

Cigarettes are gross...

Always look people in the eye when you’re talking to them...

You are not better than anyone, and no one is better than you...

It’s not the quantity of friends that matter, it’s the quality...

When people talk to you, LISTEN to them...

Make sure you always have a little “eff you” money tucked away for those times when life isn’t treating you the way you want it to... (This one is from Mimi… To both of us really)

Looking like a hooker never impressed anyone...

See the world...

Live to eat, not the other way around…

The pounds will come and go... Don’t waste your life worrying about them… (I should take my own advice).

People remember how you made them feel... Never forget that…

A firm handshake and a genuine smile go a long way…

Go with your gut... It’s very rarely wrong...

Go to college and have fun… But get good grades... A degree will take you places…

Take responsibility for your actions and apologize when you’re wrong…

Don’t be afraid to fail…

If he makes you cry anything but happy tears, he’s not worth it…

Repeat after me: I. Can. Accomplish. Anything…

Don’t sleep around… Guys may have fun with sluts, but they don’t marry them…

Don’t be a sore loser…

If you decide you prefer women to men, your Dad and I will not care, nor will we love you any less… Just promise me you’ll take me to a gay bar…  Just once… I know I’d make you proud…

Don’t take yourself too seriously…

I don’t care how young you are: if you’ve been drinking, call me… Ill get you and your friends home safe… No questions asked…

Never judge people you don’t know unless you’ve walked a mile in their shoes…

Don’t let a day go by without listening to music…

If you’re not married to him, don’t have unprotected sex with him…

The world is too small a place to be an asshole to anyone (unless he/she was an asshole first)…

Don’t be afraid to go out in your sweats with no makeup on… It is quite liberating…

Wear sunscreen…

Despite what your grandparents might tell you, mince meat pie is vile… Take my word for it.…

Learn to say “NO”…

Read lots of books…

When it comes to relationships, don’t settle. Wait for the one who takes your breath away…

Cigarettes are gross…

Rules are made to be broken… EXCEPT MINE!!!!

I’ve got your back… No matter what… Dad and I will always be your strongest allies…

If your not comfortable talking about it, you shouldn’t be doing it…

Tattoos are permanent… Think long and hard before getting one…

Always have something that’s just for you… Be it writing, music, crafting or something equally awesome... And make time for it... It’ll do wonders for you…

Never lose your sense of humor…

Herpes and babies last forever… Use protection…

Stick up for yourself, even if you think it makes you look like a bitch…

Don’t let anyone make you feel like you aren’t good enough…

Sex won’t make anyone love you… Love will…

Don’t be too proud to become a wife or a mother…

Don’t be afraid to take life by the balls…

Never bully those you feel are weaker than you…

Remember to look up from your phone/computer/television screen every once in a while… The world is a beautiful place… Don’t miss it…

Don’t be afraid to show your weaknesses…

Never start sentences with the word “like” or end them with the word “so”… Just don’t….

Don’t hide your intelligence to make a man happy… If he is smart enough for you, he will think you being smart is attractive, not intimidating…

Don’t gossip… It only hurts people and makes you look immature and childish… (Except with me… I love that shit…)

Think before you speak… Diarrhea of the mouth runs in the family…

Use your vacation time… They give it to you for a reason…

It is ok to smoke a joint or two, but anything harder than that is going to end badly… Trust me…

Never ditch your girlfriends because you have a boyfriend…

Try to take a short walk outside everyday… It relaxes the mind and keeps you grounded…

Even when I'm gone, ill always be with you…

Everything is going to be ok…

Seriously though, cigarettes are gross…

Actions Speak So Much Louder Than Words…

Below are the writings of a woman, a mother, who really and truly gets it… Every once in a while we all need a reminder about what’s important in this life…
Perspective--I really needed some today… Thank you Allison…
The Best of Mothers
By: Allison Tate
"Farewell, best of wives, best of mothers."
The words on my Facebook page stopped me in my tracks. They formed my college friend's status update -- solemn, careful words, the likes of which rarely grace my newsfeed. Below, he posted his mother's memorial page, explaining that she had recently succumbed to lymphoma. (Sidebar: I HATE CANCER.) I was drawn to read his mother's tribute, even though I was never lucky enough to meet her.
Katy Gerke raised three sons, and she did so while going to medical school and then practicing as a radiologist. She touched many, many people over the course of her life and work; that is obvious from her tribute page and from the comments on my friend's Facebook post from his childhood friends who knew her. Katy sounds like an amazing person: a world traveler, an amateur French cook, a lover of literature and opera, and a generous and warm hostess and friend. She also inspired one of her sons and several of her sons' friends to follow in her footsteps as a radiologist by sharing her work with her children. The line from her memorial that stood out to me the most, though -- the sentence that caught my heart and placed it firmly in my throat -- was this:
"Among other books, she managed to read her three young sons all 1,200 pages of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. They loved it so much that she then read it to them again."
So often, I get caught up in the minutiae of life and parenting: the truly bottomless laundry, the trauma (mine) of potty training, bedtime battles, time-outs and reward charts, sibling brawls, homework and reading logs and standardized tests, sports and lessons, birthday parties and class celebrations. The details of parenting never end. I go to bed wondering if I am doing it right; I often feel like I'm not. It -- I -- never feel like enough, somehow. Just this first week of school, I beat myself up a million times for the small infractions and dropped balls -- forms I forgot to fill out, folders I forgot to tuck in first grade backpacks, P.E. locks I forgot to buy, the missed school bus on the first day. The "best I can" often feels not even close to "good enough" mothering. It all feels so complicated in the wee hours when I can't sleep because I'm worrying about one or more of my children for one of myriad reasons. Sometimes I feel like all I do is hold my breath and try to tread water.
But it's not really that complicated, is it? To be "the best of mothers," is it required that I be a queen of Pinterest? The PTA president? The CEO of a Fortune 500 company? No. What our children will remember about us is how we lived our lives, how we worked, what we loved, and how we shared that love. They will notice and remember the small acts we do for them every day: the packed lunches, the clean clothes, the new sneakers for school, the homemade, slightly askew birthday cakes, the bedtime stories. They will remember the time we spend with them. It's that simple. It's not complicated at all, really.
We have so much. Maybe, sometimes, we have too much and too many choices. We spread ourselves thin trying to do ALL THE THINGS and to make sure our children do not miss out on anything, that they have every opportunity to succeed, that they never need wonder if they are loved. Really, we don't need all of that to -- as my friend described his mother -- make clear by "action and word" that our families are the most important things in our lives. All we need is to give them our focus, our attention, our eyes, and our voices when we can. We can do that whether we work outside our homes or not and in whatever moments we have. As I have said before, we don't need to be perfect. We just need to be perfectly their mothers.
Make no mistake, too -- our attention is a gift. It takes a long time to read 1,200 pages. It takes time from screens, from texts and tweets, from emails and work calls. There's no way to fast forward or take a shortcut when we give a moment to our kids; there's no app for that. That's what makes it special. That's what makes it an act of love. We all have the equivalent of 1,200 pages we can find for our kids somehow, somewhere, and when we identify those special things, we need to do them. They are the things that matter. They are the gifts that count.
I'm so grateful to my friend for sharing his mother with me and giving me a role model for the kind of mother -- and person -- I want to be. Katy Gerke led a "normal" life, but it was a life remarkable because of who she was to many people, most notably her family. When the time comes to write my memorial, I hope my children will note the work I did and the accomplishments I made, but I even more hope they remember the Little Critter stories at bedtime, the singing in the car on road trips, the after-school Slurpees, and the snuggles in the Big White Bed that happened around that work. These are the details of my life that I hold dear when I put my head on my pillow at night, and I want them to know that. My true legacy will be if I can leave my children knowing how very much they were loved, and if I do, it won't be because I never messed up in my parenting, or because I never forgot it was pajama day at school, or because I packed them lunches worthy of Instagram. It will be because I was the kind of mother and person who could do something like read all 1,200 pages of The Lord of the Rings to three young boys, bit by bit -- and then do it all over again -- just because they loved it.

Where Has My Mind Gone???

I just sat down this morning to write a new post and re-read my last one… I’ll never understand how on Earth I forgot to mention one of your hugest milestones to date…

POTTY TRAINING!!!

It all started with me searching the internet for some tips to try and navigate us through as simple a potty training experience as possible… Then I stumbled upon this little gem… “How to Potty Train in 3 Days”… Or as I like to call it, “The Hole”... Because, after all, I was pretty much sentenced to 3 days of lock down within the tight confines of our downstairs half bathroom with a pee and poo slinging midget… Oh what fun!!!

In all seriousness, you were awesome! I have no potty horror stories to tell… I was released from my prison unscathed… And very proud…

We used my iphone as our timer and picked a fun alarm that sounded like an old time car horn… You loved to set the timer yourself after every trip to the potty… And you know what? You did great! Better than great… You rocked the potty (no pun intended) and schooled all the other toddlers on how it’s done… People wont’ believe me when I tell them how easy this really was… In fact, it was so simple with you that I actually feel bad for all the other mothers out there who are scrubbing poop rocks (your words, not mine) off their ceilings right now…

Another WIN for the Dittrich’s… Remind me to go back and read this after we have your first driving lesson…

In A Nutshell...

So much time has passed since I've last written… I will attempt to bridge the enormous gap from last October until today without leaving anything out… Things change so ridiculously fast that sometimes it’s hard to take it all in… Let alone put it all in words… I have made a promise to myself to not wait so long to write again…

With each fleeting moment, overflowing with memories that sometimes bring me to tears, comes a brand new way of living… Of thinking… A brand new dream of plans for the future… Or of what our future holds… And with it, a new sense of our family and all that it means to us… A little girl growing so rapidly and changing direction like the wind in our faces… Still so warm and gentle and yet also thunderous and powerful… For such a tiny little person you carry an intense presence with you… Sometimes sharp and mysterious but always loving and strong… I want to hold tight to every last one of these memories and never let them go… For they have become the most solid part of my heart and soul…

In the past I have always listed all the current words you’ve learned… There is no longer a need to do that because you pretty much know every single word there is… If you don’t know it yet, we need only say it once and you’ve got it… You understand everything we say, even when you’re not supposed to… I guess that’s a small price to pay for the blessing of having a smart child…

We had our annual pumpkin picking trip on your Birthday last October and it was a blast! You tried with all your might to pick up every pumpkin in the patch… Only to realize how much they weigh and exclaiming over and over again, “It’s too big… It’s too heavy!” I could have told you that my girl, but I know you need to figure all this stuff out on your own… So we let you try time and again until you found one that was the perfect size for your tiny hands… I’m glad Dad and I let you do it yourself… Neither of us had the heart to take the wind from your sail and tell you that most of your first attempts were pumpkins that only a crane could move…  The whole experience made me think to myself, wow, this kid sure is a big dreamer who already seems to have grasped the concept if you don’t succeed at first, keep trying… At age 2 and a half, you get it…  As long as you don’t give up, eventually, you will find your pumpkin…

Shortly after your birthday came Hurricane Sandy… She was a wicked, unforgiving storm that devastated most of Long Island… In the aftermath, our neighborhood and much of the rest of the island felt like a third world country… Lines for blocks and blocks for gas, no traffic lights, very few stores open, no ice, no milk, no heat, no shower, not much of anything… At times it felt like a war zone… Seeing the National Guard Hummers gathered at every corner was a very surreal experience… One that will not be easily forgotten… While devastating to see that many people had lost absolutely everything… It was equally inspiring to see people from all walks of life come together for the greater good and become a united front in the face of adversity… Thankfully we only lost power for a little under a week… I swear between Hurricane Irene in 2012 and Sandy in 2013, you are going to think we turn off the lights and live out of a cooler once a year for fun… I can only hope this year we get a pass from Mother Nature…

For Halloween you were Minnie Mouse and we marched down Bedford Avenue in the Halloween Parade, then trick or treated at all the stores… You were so hilarious marching down the street… You lifted your little legs higher and stomped them down more fiercely than every other kid… Occasionally announcing, “I MARCHIN”… Just the thought of that day brings a smile to my face that I can’t wipe away… Needless to say, you were the most adorable Minnie Mouse of all the 437 Minnie Mouse’s…

After much discussion with your Father, I decided to completely ignore his wishes and get two orange kittens, Myles and McGee (Smy-woos and Duckie)… As Nana likes to put it, it was time for a little fur in our house… After welcoming you into the family then losing Maci two years ago, it was time… It only took Dad a couple of days before he gave in and both cats were sleeping on his chest… He always was a sucker for a sweet furry creature… And I always knew this… Hence my complete disregard for his opinion on the subject… He just didn’t know he was ready for more pets until I eased him into the decision with a little nudge (sarcasm)… They were 5 months old when we got them and are just over a year old now… I had forgotten how much fun it is to have a cat… It had been years since I had had one… They love you to pieces… And you love them too! I am grateful to give you the gift of loving an animal… Sometimes I feel like what helped teach me to love and to care for someone else with no expectations in return, was having pets at a young age… It’s something that cannot be duplicated and that stays with you for the rest of your life… It made me realize that sometimes it’s not only important to make sure your children have everything you didn’t have… But also, and possibly more important, to make sure your children have everything you DID have… This is one of those times…

Once our new furry family members settled in to their new home, we had a brand new series of events to overcome… And right before Christmas… As luck would have it Little Miss Brianna started to climb into and out of her crib three weeks before the biggest holiday of the year… Good times… So we got started setting up your new twin bed immediately… At first it wasn’t so bad… I layed with you until you fell asleep and within a few days I was able to kiss you goodnight and leave you to fall asleep by yourself… That lasted until Christmas night, and then it was no more… Bedtime became a battle for the first time in your life… I was so spoiled with such a good infant who slept through the night by three months old… I was not equipped to accept that it wouldn’t always be exactly that way… WAKE UP CALL MOMMY!!! After a few months of it taking over an hour for you to fall asleep and still winding up in our room multiple times a night, we sought advice from your doctor… And up went a child safety gate in your bedroom doorway… The first night was so difficult… Listening to you beg and plead and apologize to us, even though you had done nothing wrong, was almost enough to break us… As it turned out, you were all talk and layed yourself down and drifted to sleep within 15 minutes… I swear you will be an actress someday… I SWEAR!!! This lasted another few months until your rap scallion little self learned to jump over the gate… Again we had tiny feet jabbing our ribcages at night as you slept sideways across our bed… Little by little you have started to stay in your bed longer each night… Sometimes you sleep all night in there and others you join us early in the morning… What have I learned throughout all this?? You won’t want to sleep with us forever… These cuddly nights, full of togetherness, as we all get some well deserved and much needed rest, will become few and far between… Probably much sooner than I even know… Oh how I will miss these days once they are gone for good… So jump in bed with us my baby… Whenever you want or need to… Because when these days are behind us, I will long to have them back… I just know it…

For Christmas Eve we had Nana and Pop over for dinner and presents… I was a little under the weather but we managed to have a really nice day… They came with a truck load of presents for you and we really enjoyed watching you with them… I think it’s very difficult for them to only see you once a year… So in the little time they get with you, they shower you in hugs, kisses and lots and lots of gifts… Christmas Day I was even sicker and we had to skip going to Uncle Bill and Aunt Sue’s house for dinner… Such a bummer! The three of us had a nice, quiet day… Playing with all your new stuff and relaxing… By the end of the week I was all better and we were able to go to the other Dittrich house and spend some time, all of us together, before Nana and Pop went home… Every December I get so excited for their visit… So they can see how much you have grown and changed in the 12 months they missed you… Also so the three of you can have some quality time together…

Easter was especially fun this year… It was the first time we dyed Easter eggs together and Dad and I got to stage our first egg hunt… The found eggs launched with great velocity into the egg basket… Each one crushing the last into tiny eggshell bits mixed in with yolks and egg whites… Jelly beans and peeps everywhere, our feet sticking to the living room rug… I still pull yellow grass out of our couch sometimes… It was messy, disgusting, amazing and so much fun… Can’t wait to do again next year…

In May we went to see Mimi and Papa… It’s so much fun to watch you notice different things every visit… You still love the pool and the golf cart, those are givens… This time we also went spider hunting every day… And you seemed to enjoy the fire pit more… Probably because Dad spent a lot of time around it, tending to the coals and gathering wood… Nature seems to light a flame in your eye… Like a tiny spark, it is amazing to see you come alive in the great outdoors… You remind me so much of Mimi… And myself when I small… You got to spend a lot of time with both Mimi and Papa… They took you to The Little Rainbow Ranch where you got to meet a whole bunch of farm animals… Chickens, pigs, turkeys, cows, horses and the world’s most noisy, screaming donkey I have ever seen in my life… You got to go back to Homosassa and visit the most “tremendous hippo” in Florida. (Papa taught you to say tremendous in one try… You take after your mother… Ahem) We got to hang out with Patti and Ellie too, which is always so much fun!! We had a big BBQ and most of the family was there… Those moments get to me sometimes… It’s hard to witness you having so much fun with the people I so desperately wish we lived closer too… Bitter sweet… Every time… Luckily we already have our next Florida trip planned for this October… I don’t want to only see them once a year… A week is never enough time and there’s way too much time in between visits…

As the last two plus years have flown by, we have had many proud moments as we watch you morph into something so much more beautiful than any butterfly… The baby girl moments fleeting with each passing day… Being replaced with the sights and sounds of this new, little girl who has brightened our world… Every single day we share laughs, triumphs, hard times and live new dreams… Each day more rewarding and cherished than the last… Who knew life could be so grand? And all because of one perfect little person…

Now THAT was a pretty big nutshell!!!

Too Busy Enjoying All Our Precious Moments…

It’s been such a long time since I have written about all the little happenings in our life… I guess it’s because I’ve been having such a amazing time watching you grow, that I’ve fallen behind on documenting it all… I expect to play catch up very soon… But until then, I give you this…  

 

I Tickled My Granddaughters Feet Today…

By: Mimi Kettrick

…As we sat by the pool in the warm May sunshine. 

This was a special treat since she lives in New York and we retired to Florida. We had just one week together. Her parents went sightseeing. She was mine alone for the day and my heart felt like it would burst. She is two years old now.

We shared tender moments; made up songs, kisses and tall tales as we trampled through the "forest" (that's what she calls our wooded property). She is fascinated by spider webs, butterflies' and dragonflies. I told her how much I treasured just being outside in nature.  She agreed, not knowing what I meant I'm sure, but hopefully planting that seed as we lazily ambled along.

 I wondered…

Where will those beautiful little feet take this much loved child?

What journeys will be hers and hers alone?

I know she will take her first steps onto a school bus and into a classroom all by herself.  It might be a little scary at first.

I'm sure she will have best friends who share secrets as they saunter along on those carefree childhood days.  

Will she take dance lessons and run like the wind as her mother, my daughter, once did?

Perhaps as a young woman she will sashay through her prom and mosey that lonely stride away from her first heartbreak. Lessons learned along her own unique sojourn.

Will I be here when she marries and has her own children to cherish…?    

And one day, I hope a grandchild of her own to love as I do her.

As she tickles her little ones feet I can only hope somehow she "knows" of memories made long ago -  how much I, her grandmother, loved her and willed her to walk steady and courageous and "climb every mountain:" on her wondrous, joyful journey through life.

I tickled my Brianna's feet today…