Wonder why not?

Well I may be opening myself up for a firestorm of opposing viewpoints on this one, but I’ll risk it, ’cause I’m gutsy like that.

It’s important for me to leave my children. Sometimes with my husband, sometimes without, but definetly without them. For years, many women–my own mother included–felt (and likely still do) that leaving your kids is selfish, that they need us daily in their lives to nurture, nourish, nest. And while I think that three hundred sixty or so days of the year this proves true for me, the other five or so days I need to myself, with friends, or with my husband.

I love these little people, but I often need a break, too.

I love my little goofballs. It’s fun to leave, but always great to get back home.

Over the years, our kids have come to understand that mom and dad need some time alone to remember and reacquaint with who we were before they were in our lives. We prepare, we call often, we relax.

Then we return home to them, reassuring them that they truly are the lights of our lives and often the centers of our universe, but that, in order to be the best parents we can be when we’re together, we can’t always revolve around them.

It seems that a few days apart is good for all of us? What do you think? Do you ever take a trip to be a ‘couple’ and is it worth it?

Hmmmm….I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks about this!

Our three little kiddos are back, and ready for some chills.

world-famous author and blogger (well, she will be!) sat down with the idea of creating a super-cool book about Richmond history for little kids. I had an epiphany when my son once asked me while walking together on Brown’s Island, mom, what are those markings on that footbridge?

Three years later and a few thousand sold books under our belts, we’re thrilled to publish Richmond Rocks Spooky Sequel. I’ve always been a ghost-story junkie so it was tons of fun researching all the cool (and plentiful!) ghastly Richmond tales, only a few of which are suitable for kiddos.

Recognize this guy? He makes an appearance in the Spooky Sequel.

We’ll have retail information soon as well as a final arrival date for our books, another joint venture with Richmond’s Palari Publishing, and we’re thrilled that this is a 100% local project.

I’m amazed at my talented teammates.

Our photographers of Hayes and Fisk the Art of Photography have captured Richmond’s spooky spots and our illustrator and local cool-guy Knox Hubard has painstakingly brought our three little adventurers back for another trip with their mama.

For more information on signings, at which we donate 20% to schools, organizations and non-profits, please contact Kate Hall.

And, because we have to ask, please like Richmond Rocks if you’d be so kind on Facebook.

It is 3:49PM on a Sunday. I am between times that I am “on”, because I work in the mornings and the evenings on Sunday, with a long stretch of what feels like waiting in between. And every Sunday afternoon I think I will exercise but all I want to do is nap. And then my youngest asks to watch a movie and I am too tired to say no. And then I am sitting in the playroom scrolling through Netflix and anticipating my pillow and blankets and it hits me.

The guilt.

I look at his eyes while his eyes look at the screen and I think to myself, “what am I doing to this child?” And in that split second I

Author Nicole Unice

jump on the guilt train, and it chugs along, me thinking about what this second movie of the day is teaching him, and what he will remember about his childhood, and how this television is poisoning his brain and sucking his soul right out of his eyes into the vaporous mist of cynical and empty media, and how he’s probably getting ADHD from watching so much TV and not breathing fresh air, or eating organic veggies.

All this, while surfing Netflix.

And I walk away from him, little and curled up and alone on the sofa, and I think about how I should be playing a card game with him or initiating an art project or building a fort or telling him a winsome parable that will point him back to spiritual realities. But I am too tired to act excited about cards or art or forts, and I really don’t know how to tell five year olds really great parables, especially when I just feel guilty about it.

Guilt doesn’t lead anywhere good.

The train picks up speed and the thoughts don’t stop, and my heart jumps in my chest and I feel a lump in my throat, because I realize how I am deeply lacking–how my ideal and my reality–in mothering, in loving, in leading–are so, so far apart. And then I am sad, because I want to be all and do all and I want to do it really well, and sometimes I wonder if I get confused about what really matters, and I get all twisted up in identity and desires and the vast chasm between my reality and my ideal, and it feels so heavy and burdensome and I am more tired and now I feel defeated.

It is late and school is cancelled, and so I ask my oldest if he wants to go to the grocery store with me, and he surprises me by saying yes.

And he is older now, he is old enough to venture down an aisle alone and pick out doughnuts, and he is old enough to have normal conversation with, and in the privacy of the dark car I ask him about school, and he tells me with an almost adult tone about how he thinks school is good, and he talks maturely about how he is “taught really well”. And I remember that earlier this week my heart was pierced with guilt because I thought school was going so badly. And here, in the comfort of darkness and side-by-side conversation, I get to hear his heart, and I get to receive grace.

Being a mom is a scary proposition. Sometimes I am causing wounds. Sometimes I am mending them.

My pastor said today that in Isaiah 40, when God comforts his people, he proclaims the good news that we’ve “received from the Lord’s hand double for [our] sins,” and he told us that the double God offers is not only forgiveness, but using our broken places to bring beauty to our lives. And that God is the only one who can take what is broken and painful and sinful and not only forgive it, but redeem it into something good.

And somehow, in between the movie watching and the grocery buying, there was a sweet picture of that redemption. Because every day I am not enough as a mom. But every day God is enough. And in those guilty moments, I plead for his grace, and he provides for me. I won’t do it right, I just know I don’t. But I don’t do it alone. Our God is there, shaping, working, redeeming.

And the truth of grace is deeper than guilt, so I let the truth wash over me.

Grace trumps guilt every time.

This is Nicole. You should read her stuff–she’s the bomb (my opinion but also a verifiable fact.)

Richmondmom.com called Letter to Stay at Home Moms.

When she sent us the post it immediately resonated with me although I had no idea how many thousands of moms all over the country would read it, many of them commenting as well. As of today, 300 folks shared it on Facebook, which is like being given a gigantic gold star from the internets.

Although a couple of commenters wondered if she was being truthful and/or condenscending, most were thrilled at the sheer appreciation Nicole expressed at what is often a job with few extrinsic rewards.

Being a gal who truly tries to keep a fair and balanced viewpoint, I didn’t want to leave out all the working moms who may have been reading Nicole’s post feeling a little put out that they weren’t recognized in her eloquent thank you note to the at-home mama contingent.

credit: TheLittlehenhouse.com

So, here goes:

If you’re reading this and you’re a working mom (full-time, part-time, sometime), I appreciate you. I appreciate the fact that you have to deal with cranky customers, demanding managers, and annoying “reply all” emails, many of them including requests to be “removed from this email list.”

I appreciate that you may get dolled up to hang out with people all week in order to bring home the bacon when you may just feel like cuddling with your cuties in front of cartoons or playing in the park. (And by “dolled up” I mean in a really nice dress with spit-up and/or snot on one or more sleeves.)

It may not be uncommon for you to emerge from your workplace after eight hours realizing that the large orb in the sky is actually the sun and not the fluorescent light bulbs that have surrounded you as you work.

You have to switch gears quickly, going from being slave to the workplace to slave to your family often without catching a breath in-between, in high heels and while typing emails on your iPhone.

You beg, borrow, and steal time when you can to attend school functions and dutifully send in treasure-box treats, notes of thanks to the teacher, and order forms for crap the PTO swindled encouraged your kids into selling. I realize that the latter resulted in you taking said solicitation into the workplace, perhaps resulting further in annoyed sighs of passers-by because, they too hate having to sell stuff at work.

A lady once told me that “Working Mother Magazine was the worst thing that ever happened to the American Family” and I don’t know about that, but having two parents working outside the home has it’s own set of challenges as does living on one income in many cases.

I get that you are often the cheerleader for overwhelmed, overworked colleagues when you often need your own support group, and I’m happy to be a member of this group to get you through. Warning: Our meetings may require as much wine as they do whine.

*All moms are working moms, some just work for folks other than their bosses, and for paychecks instead of kisses.

NicoleUnice

By: Nicole Unice

I have needed to write this for a long time.

I was standing over some chicken last night and it came to me that I have so much to say to every stay-at-home mom in this little blogging land. I was cooking that chicken and it tasted good. It tasted good, I tell you. I don’t know how many of you mommas out there can make consistently good chicken but it is not me. I tasted a little piece of that chicken and I thought holy poultry I finally made a piece of chicken worth eating. That’s the kind of mom I am. I’m sort of scattered, absent-minded, can’t-keep-a-calendar kind of mom. I’m all over the place, one foot at work, one foot in the kitchen, one eye on the email, one eye on the chicken.

Maybe that’s why the chicken is usually bad.

But my overall impression of my mom-ing is that I’m mediocre. I’m just OK at it. For whatever ideal image I hold in my mind of a mom, I’m doing OK. Maybe it’s because I’ve never made a scrapbook. Notice I didn’t say I was mediocre at loving my children, because I love them something fierce, something wild, something that can only be summed up in one word: lioness. But we are women and we are made up of all kinds of materials, and some of us are really good at being at work. And some of us are really good at being at home. And many of us are just doing what we can to survive, and that’s worth appreciating too.

So when it comes to my mom-ing, I need my stay-at-home mom friends. I need my mom-friends who know the bus schedule and why we have September 26th off this year. (Yom Kippur. Thanks Suzy). I need my friends who do sub-committees for PTA and go on field trips and become the room moms and send me emails. I need my friends who have room in their heads for details like teacher appreciation week and ice cream socials and room in their hearts for preschool playdates. Women who handle preschool playdates are made up of some special stuff.

But it’s not just the things those moms do to support the school. It’s their ever-presentness. There is something about my SAHM friends that lets me let down. When I am with them, I want to talk about teachers and tantrums and sleepovers. I want to know what to expect in middle school and how do you handle a tween boy and what to freak out about (not really that much) and what to let go (most of it).

And I love my stay-at-home mom friends and I want them to get their due. Because staying at home means there are no manager check-ins or bonuses or annual performance reviews. There is no “employee of the week!” or special parking spots or even email-shout-outs. There certainly aren’t raises. Or paychecks. And we live in a world that likes to measure our performance so when you get measured you feel good. It’s not a good system, but it’s our system.

So if you are a stay at home mom, can I tell you something? You are awesome. I give you superior in every area of life. You multi-task. You meet your children at the bus (and sometimes my children). You host great kid parties. You run schools. You appreciate teachers. You are smart. You are talented. And you have given yourself to the task of serving your children, and my children. If you are a woman of faith, then you are also shaping your children’s worldview. You are teaching them and showing them the best kind of love, a love that shuttles and shuffles and signs homework, a love that isn’t always perfect but is always present.

And some of you think that you are failing at that, but you are hard on yourself and you probably don’t have anyone telling you enough that you are doing a great job. But sometimes the main part of your job is just showing up. You are going to bed tonight tired and you are waking up to start again, every single day of the week. You read books about parenting and children and good dinner for tonight. You probably make good chicken. You are so good at what you do.

You serve me and every other part-time, work-at-home, or full-time working mom. Because you are present, we breathe a little easier when we are absent. So if you’ve ever felt like less than–if you’ve every felt overlooked–if you’ve ever wondered if it would just be easier to go back to work and decide that work isn’t work without a paycheck–let me say, on behalf of every mom that works–we need you. We appreciate you. You make the world go round. And today, right where you are, you make a difference.

Nicole Unice is a works part-time, writes part-time, and cooks chicken as little as possible. Find out more about her blog & books at her blog or connect on twitter @nicoleunice or Facebook at Nicole Myer Unice.

Check them out here. Comment on our Facebook page and let us know your favorite posts of 2012 from Richmondmom.com too. We love to know what our readers think!

-Rainbow around The Moon by Meghan Mack

-Mom Arrested for Letting Her Kids Play Outside by Kate Hall

-Does Birth Order Matter? In My House, That’d Be a YES by Katie Mardigian

 -Letter to Working Moms by Nicole Unice

-The Benefits and Risks of Circumcision by Rhonda Day

-Are You a  Good Mom? by Alex Iwashyna

-Real Richmond Parents our collective group of amazing writers, always visited!

-What the Kerfuffle is Really About by Tara Casey

-The Little Engines that Could (Do the Chevy Road Trip Challenge) by Kate Hall

-A Girl Named Ib by Meghan Mack

-The Low-Down on Slushy Magic *as Seen on TV by Kate Hall

-Bigger Than Brackets, A Lesson in Loyalty by Cheryl Lage

-How Chick-fil-A Lost a Fan by Rachel Reynolds

-Fifty Shades of OMG by Kate Hall

When Nicole and I realized that we both had our first books coming out in May, we jumped at the chance to review each other’s work.  Here is my interview about Nicole’s book She’s Got Issues.  You can also check out her interview about my book, Four Seasons for Charlotte, HERE.

Nicole, what inspired you to write this book?

 It was such a fun thing to connect with Rachel Reynolds. Right as I was releasing She’s Got Issues, she was releasing Four Seasons for Charlotte. We thought it would be cool to ask each other some questions, author to author. To read Rachel’s interview of me, you can click HERE.

Rachel, your book is about your daughter’s diagnosis with a brain tumor. You chronicle her treatment and her tragic death, but also the power and strength in community. What was one unexpected thing that you experienced from writing and publishing the book?

This may sound funny, but I was truly surprised at how interested people were in hearing our story.  Originally, I put my ideas on paper as a way to process my thoughts and feelings around that incredible year of our lives.  As I shared some of my writing, people kept saying, “You should turn this into a book.”  After hearing it from people outside my closest friends and family, I thought that maybe I did have an interesting story to tell. 

What was the hardest part of the writing process for you?

As I wrote and edited the book, I found myself reliving 2009 all over again.  Those emotions and memories were sometimes difficult to process.  It was great to relive the happy memories of times that we shared with Charlotte but writing also reminded me why I was telling our story in the first place.  That empty place in my heart ached a little every time I edited the book.

Four Seasons for Charlotte touches on the very real process and emotions of a parent losing a child. What would you say to someone who’s experiencing this kind of grief?

Grief is such a powerful and complicated emotion.  Everyone seems to process something like the death of a child in a different way. There are two big lessons I have learned on this journey: No two people grieve in the same way and there are no hard and fast rules for the process.  The grief often comes and goes in waves. Sometimes the waves are tiny ripples and sometimes they are tsunamis.  Navigating grief is about learning to ride the waves.

In your experience, what’s the best way friends and family can support someone who’s experiencing severe or terminal illness (either themselves or their child)?

If a family is living in crisis because of a severe or terminal illness, it is very   important for them to learn how to accept (and delegate) help.  In our experience, the community wants to help but they sometimes need a little bit   of direction.  If you are trying to help a family in need, think about what you can do and just dive right in.  No good deed is too small.  Offer to do a load of      laundry, bring a meal over to their home, babysit, deliver an extra cup of coffee, or just distract your friend with a fun evening out.  Living in crisis is scary but knowing you have a community behind you willing to help makes all the difference in the world. 

So who should read your book?

I think this book will resonate strongly with any parent who has lost a child but I hope that it will give insight to anyone who is also supporting a family in crisis.  While every family’s story is unique, we learned some valuable life lessons in the year of Charlotte’s illness.  Everyone has challenges in their life and has to find ways to manage stress.  There are common threads in our story to which I think almost anyone can relate.

Find out more about Four Seasons for Charlotte and connect with Rachel on her website.

We met up at the Virginia Fine Arts Museum to get a sneak preview of Mummy: Secrets of the Tomb. The exhibit begins with a 21 minute long 3-D movie.

Us: OOH! Free glasses!

We are not photographers. We are writers, dammit.

The lights dim and Jean-Luc Picard begins to narrate Mummy: The Inside Story. And no, Nicole, did not realize who Patrick Stewart is, but we’re still friends.

The Movie: Why is Ancient Egypt so fascinating?

Alex: The same reason social studies class never got past World War I?

Nicole: Past? I thought Ancient Egypt was before World War I. And do you think we can keep these glasses?

The Movie: Penis joke.

Alex: That was a penis joke.

Nicole: I think you should be the one who mentions it in the article.

We are next introduced to the mummy who is the star of the exhibit. Jean-Luc explains how through hieroglyphics, we know his name and occupation.

Nicole: How did this narrator learn hieroglyphics anyway?

Alex: He’s using a Universal Translator. (It’s hard being friends with non-Trekies.)

The Movie: His name is Nesperennub. Pronounced Nes-per-en-nub.

Alex: People think they can pronounce Iwashyna, too, but no one comes up with Ee-vah-shen-ah.

Nicole: My husband’s Russian ancestors were smart enough to cut their name to Unice. It used to have lots of extra letters in it, too, but most people still say YOU-NICE.

Alex: But you aren’t.

Nicole: Shut up.

Meet Nesperennub.

As the lights come up, we are ushered into the Egyptian exhibit.

Alex: Awesome. My kids could come with me next time and destroy a pot that survived 3000 years. That would be a new record for them.

Nicole: Well, for older kids, this could make the SOL’s more tolerable. Is there a hieroglyphic for SOL? 

We ooh and ah over the real Nesperennub until Alex runs over to a giant Ankh, the symbol of life, and also of Alex’s adolescence.

Alex's was silver.

Alex: I wore those.

Nicole: Really? It’s a little big.

Alex: Not that one. But close. I also wore lots of eyeliner and didn’t shower much.

Nicole: How very Egyptian of you.

Alex: Shut up.

Nicole: You could try to bring the trend back. This statue could double as an amulet, if you got a big chain for it. Do they sell those here?  

Yes, VMFA does.  hinthint

Although you won’t get our intrepid naration, we definitely recommend going to the Mummy: Secrets of the Tombexhibit, which runs from November 19th through March 11th, 2012.  Anyone from upper elementary age to adult will enjoy it. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is open daily from 10-5 and until 9 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays. As always, admission is Free for VMFA members, children 6 and under, and active-duty military personnel and their immediate families.

Tickets are $15 for adults, $12 for seniors 65+, students with ID, adult groups of 10+ (after noon only), and youth ages 7–17 .Tickets can also be purchased by calling 804.340.1405.

Editor’s note: There are super-cool programs for teachers, teens and more related to Mummy: Secrets of the Tomb.

NicoleUnice

by Nicole Unice

This was not a usual morning. I don’t normally go to the grocery store on Monday morning. I don’t normally buy doughnuts and sit in the grocery cafe for a few minutes before preschool drop-off. And I certainly don’t usually notice a man like this.

He sat alone, perched on the edge of his chair, uncomfortable, perhaps. His glasses were grimy and his clothes were dirty. I glance over at him and saw a tentative blink, almost a half-sleep before he opened his eyes slowly again. His eyes looked at no one and no where; perhaps he preferred to stay dazed then to be all the way alive in his reality.

Something about his posture and position as he sat two tables away from me and my preschool son was grippingly sad to my heart. He looked like a lonely and beaten man; perhaps homeless. But more than his dirty clothes or swollen hands, what squeezed my heart was the abject facial expression. The empty gaze. The way he sat and drank his water as if he hoped no one would notice his presence. The way he appeared to want to be invisible.

On my left sat a group of retired men; busy huffing and puffing about a sports score or business deal. Never did any of those ten eyes look toward the man who sat alone. A man quickly sat down at the table next to me. Unwrapped his sandwich intensely and began to pound on his phone. For all I knew, he was playing Angry Birds, but his expression said “busy, preoccupied, don’t talk to me.” He never looked up.

I guess it was the lack-of-usual in that morning that made me notice. That made me sad. That made me wish I could do something for the maybe-homeless man sitting in front of me in the grocery cafe. I guess the lack-of-usual made me pray, too; that God would tell me what to do. That God would give me a specific instruction if He wanted. So I ate my doughnut and got my son a napkin and kept saying, “God, anything? God, anything?” And I sipped my coffee and from two tables away I noticed his thumb.

It was bloody, a little. With some black cracked skin around it. It was raised and swollen and it looked like it probably hurt at one time. It was an old wound that still bled.

My son has a bloody thumb too, the result of eczema and handwashing and the crazy weather patterns of Richmond in the fall.

Go buy him some antibiotic cream. said my head. Or God. Or the mother in me.

That’s crazy. I said back. But I finished my doughnut and got up and went to the pharmacy aisle. The closer I got, the more the I complained.

He’ll think I’m so weird.

He’ll be offended.

He’s probably not homeless, or broken or beaten and certainly doesn’t need a mom giving him cream for his thumb.

But then I had a smaller, stronger voice inside that told me that yes, he did need a mother. And that we all need a mother sometimes, and there is no shame in that.

So I picked up the cream and the liquid bandage I used on Desmond. I paid for it and walked over and I pointed at his thumb and showed him my son’s. I smelled smoke and dirt and I saw that he was missing some teeth. He told me that it was a blister but it wouldn’t heal. I showed him the cream and told him how I used it on Desmond.

And he said, God bless you. 

And I turned away, back to my normal Monday, and thought, He just did.

Nicole Unice is a Richmond mom, a doughnut-eater and a word-lover. You can find out information about her writing and speaking at www.nicoleunice.com