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Rebranding

I do not make New Years Resolutions per se. However, I do set one goal that I will strive towards all year long. Last year, I decided I was going to learn to bake bread - and what a crazy year of baked bread it was. See, all my bread started out dense, and they all resembled paper weights. While not great for eating as sandwich bread, it all made excellent breadcrumbs. So, I learned from the mistake and made a change the next time. Each time I tried to make bread, it got a little bit fluffier, a little bit more delicious, and a little bit easier to do. 

This blog started out as my way of putting my thoughts out there. At the inception of the blog, it was just geared towards other mom's, with no other audience in mind. I felt like men already had all the advantages in the world, why should I give them yet another platform? However, that is quite cruel. The one place men are perpetual outsiders is in parenthood. 

With this in mind, I have decided to rebrand the blog, and the Facebook page. Much like the name says, we want all the real parts. We don't want to just be another mommy page vying for everyone's attention. We want to be a page that commands respect from all, because we include all.

-C

Things I Whisper To My Daughter

I was delighted to find I had, at long last, been published by POPSUGAR again. Despite the numerous edits, and changes, I still think it is a lovely piece. You can read it here: How to Encourage Your Daughter. I would love for you all to share the piece to anyone with a daughter, or anyone expecting a daughter. 

I also want to encourage you to submit your own work here... we will do minimal editing to your pieces, and allow your voice to be heard. 

Please send all submissions to: alltherealpartsblog@gmail.com

Thank you to everyone who has supported this from the beginning, and I cannot wait to see what this year brings for the blog, and for the Facebook Page. 

-C

Wayward Child

Our latest post comes from someone I personally have known since I was in sixth grade. Through the power of Facebook, we were reconnected some years ago. Her situation is not talked about often enough, and I am honored to have a space for her to express her art. She wrote this beautifully haunting poem about her oldest child, and I hope it touches your heart the way it touched mine. - C

Kate was born in Colorado. She has two sons that are now teenagers. She hosts a YouTube channel called advoK8great, where she is a burgeoning lifestyle change coach. Kate firmly preaches the ideals of Believe, Practice, and Evolve. You can also see her work on her Tumblr page.









An Ode to My Child


Encouraged to write About something more.
So here I am to say aloud There are many things of which I am not so proud. What happens when You were a child yourself when you began? To birth a child at 14 seems absurd... But you persevered, Year after year, Only to find that child had a different idea in mind.

For it’s life and future, One that you NEVER thought you’d have to endure. I can’t seem to find the words to say That I feel I failed this child at some point, some way. How do I say Secrets I’ve kept from society? All in an effort to prove, I’m just as good as you. With a child that seems to prove otherwise... Disregarding all you taught, The things you stood for and showed them to NOT - Disobey. Betray. Yet, You see the regret. You feel the shame, the hurt. And by this point ran yourself into the dirt.
Feeling alone. Depressed. Your actual self regressed By ideas and opinions imposed By those whom will never know your path, Or the child’s path. You just hope for self love at last. At some point I may disclose, The hurt that has been imposed. But for now I’ll hang low, Feeling alone in the misery, That is apparent day after day.
I seek the right words to say, That my child chose a life in gangs. And my heart hurts, my stomach pangs, Knots in my throat A sure loss of hope. Will "my son" ever be mine again? Or is he trapped in this stupid fucking cycle of shit sin? Sentenced to 3 years in a juvenile facility.
It breaks my heart to see.
On our first visit the truth to our “system” made evident. When he enters with tattoos on his face... I feel nothing but utter disgrace. Sick to my stomach, Knots in my throat, Holding back tears, I feel I lost hope. How did this happen? He was suppose to be “safe” in this prison. Yet I see the fallacy.
And I’m disappointed - Full responsibility, to myself I've appointed. And I don’t know what to do. Hurt each time I see you, For the face I once knew. Is it never more, never more? My heart is so damn sore. Was this a matter of survival? Backed into a corner?

-K8

You may not take this poem with out permission from this page, or the author. Thank you!

Poop-tastrophe

Well, I am beyond thrilled to share our first contributor piece. The response to and for this little project has been overwhelming, and has brought me such delight over the past couple of days. Please make sure you share the page, share the Facebook Page, and also make sure you follow us! So, without further ado I present Genevieve.  - Caitlin

Genevieve  is mommy to two kids and one of the bloggers from That's What She Crafted.  She spends much of her week keeping her busy household running as smooth as she can while dashing back and forth from various volunteering tasks at her kids' schools.  After the kids are asleep,  she fullfills the itch to be crafty through sewing or knitting while binge watching a variety of movies and shows.  Each day is a task in trying to find her inner super mom and taking it one "hurry up we need to leave NOW!" at a time.

Poop-tastrophe

For those of you who have read Caitlin's "I Guess I Write Now", you'll know that there was an incident with her youngest and poop. That was her version, and her take on the delights of having a three-year-old with a mind of his own... Now for the very first time you'll get the other side because, that's right folks she was at MY house when this poop-tastrophe occurred.

......

Just a quick back story on our friendship - as you know Caitlin is an Army wife, living the nomad life. Me? Not a military wife at all... an Air Force Brat once upon a time, so I understand the dependent side of being a military nomad. I did not marry a service member, yet we move just like they do. My husband is an engineer, and in our 10 years of marriage we have moved 5 times! This does not include the times I moved "back home" to teach on my own during our first year of marriage. Some of you will remember that teaching jobs and the recession didn't mix well. 

In January 2016, we moved to the brown, drab, and desolate desert of the Southwest from the green, perfect lushiousness of the Pacific Northwest. Can you tell that we missed all the green and water?  We knew basically no body. My oldest was in kindergarten, and I ended that school year about the same amount of people as when we first moved to the area. 

Then fall happened - a new school year, and a new routine! We walked to school like we planned, and what do you know? There's this nice other mom who didn't mind making awkward small talk with me! She wore Doctor Who leggings to pick up, I thought oooohh!! someone who could share in my geekiness! She then sealed the deal she wore Harry Potter leggings - she is a Slytherin, but my Hufflepuff heart accepts all, or maybe my Ravenclaw brain knew she wasn't one to let run away. We continued the small talk branching into chats about fandoms and then one day she gave me a post-it note with her name, number, and permission to text "whenever."  Pretty sure we didn't even make it back to the house before texts were flying back and forth.

In any case that was the beginning of the beautiful, but awkward, first friend I made at my kids' school.  It didn't stop at texts, we shared kid birthday's together, went on that elusive forth base mommy date, cried when our husbands were yet out of town again, and had dinner at each other's houses. It was perfect.

.......

We were in the honeymoon phase of our mommy love affair - she even ended up moving down the street from us. We could yell (or text) from our driveways at each other that the garage door was open, or that the dogs were out!

Then we, really I should say I, ruined it... We decided to up and move. Just 8 hours away, but none the less move away. Before we moved away for good we decided on a last hurrah; this was to be an end of the year pizza party with water balloon fun, but life got in the way and we had to cancel. See my mom died, fuck cancer, and through it all Caitlin was a text away. She armed with lemon bars and a solid shoulder to cry on. The end of May was absolutely traumatic. Yet, I needed some fun too and so did my kids.  So, pizza party was back on for June once we returned from funeral services and taking care of various things. 

Pizza day arrived, and it was the first thing I had been truly excited about. Caitlin was bringing Sangria. I had 200 water balloons filled for the five kids. Homemade pizza dough was made the night before, and toppings were in little bowls ready to top dough and get shoved in the oven. We ate. The kids changed into suits and played their hearts out. The grown ups relaxed, chatted, laughed. It really was the perfect family affair. Then the youngest three, ages 3, 4, and 4, decided they weren't going to wait for me to fill the last few water balloons. They wanted to play upstairs in our loft. Cool. Here are your clothes, change, have fun. Big kids, ages 7 and 8, continue to play with the water balloons and squirt guns. Grown ups still blissfully enjoying each other's company. We can hear the kids up stairs playing with the Hulk hands and Duplos. 

Then the big kids are done outside, and come into to change. Suddenly, all hell breaks loose, and my oldest is calling down from the upstairs bathroom, "Umm guys? Can someone come help me?" All grown ups stop, look at each other, and wonder why the seven-year-old needs help?  I call up, "No you can change on your own."  He responds, "Ummm but there is poop on the toilet."

Now, if I could have had a camera and snapped Cailtin's face it would have been the perfect face for utter panic. She knew it was her kid's poop. She. Just. Knew. She BOLTED up the stairs as the other three grown ups in our group sat staring at each other.  Then we heard, "Honey get up here!"  At this point I assumed there was probably poop all over my bathroom.  Toilet, sink, cabinets, floor.  I mean that was the tone of the "get up here".

So her husband goes up, comes back down, and confirms there is poop. So, what can you do? I dash upstairs with some Clorox wipes to see her looking back at me with pleading "OMG how is this happening" eyes with her three-year-old in front of her as she tries to strip him down. The poop, the toilet and the floor? No big deal. Not for this former cloth diapering mama! Poop is poop. I ask about clothes and if she wants a bag for his clothes or to toss them. She asks for baby wipes to clean him down. I laugh and tell her to use the tub and the handheld shower head. Now she's hosing down Tiny.  Her husband and my husband are wiping things down. I'm grabbing clothing of my 4 year old daughter's that might fit and end with a bright yellow "bike for dad" shirt from Thailand, striped undies, and I think pink shorts.

In all of this there is laughter as we discuss how now our lives are forever sealed by poop. For my husband next security clearance, they will be asked, "How well do you know this family?" And they can respond, Poop Level. We are Poop Level friends - we've been in the poop trenches together and made it out. The kids continued to play, and we brought her blood pressure back down with another glass of Sangria. 

Overall, maybe not the perfect evening for us all, but looking back... maybe it was. I mean this was  poop-tastrophe June 2017, I know there will be other poop-tastrophes in my life time. I mean I'm a mom - sh!* happens. This is the one that sealed a friendship between two families, one that is sure to survive the distance from this move, and the moves that are bound to happen in the future.  We will never be more than a phone call or a text away. 

Currently, I'm waiting for her and her brood to come visit. I mean we bought the house with a huge basement for people to visit right? Or if she decides on a mommy vacation and have the basement all to herself, totally game for that too. Maybe our kids can get into some different sort of -tastrophe but at least be in it together!

- Genevieve

My Secret...

In hind sight, I can maybe, kind of, sort of see why POPSUGAR didn't want to publish this. Yet, at the same time... I feel like I cannot be the only one that feels this way. Statistically, it would be an impossibility for me to be the lone person in this category. Now that the holiday has come, and passed, I feel even more comfortable posting this...

Alas, I present another failure - may it make to laugh a bit, and send it off to the people in your life that would appreciate it the most.  

There’s One in Every Family

As Halloween drew to an end, I began to notice Christmas décor popping up in stores. The inner sigh I heaved was as deep as any I have ever heaved… Christmas before Halloween is just wrong. Yes, there is such a thing as decorating too early for Christmas. Yes, there is a “war on Christmas”, but it’s not exactly what you are initially thinking. My war on Christmas is strictly to keep Christmas in December, where it belongs. I don’t want sparkly trees, elves, and the fat man to show up while I am pigging out on small Snicker bars, and wolfing down mini-KitKats! I just don’t. At the beginning of November, I saw people hanging Christmas lights up. I heard some local radio stations playing Christmas music! Discussions of how many Saturdays were left before the big day arrived kept popping up in radio ads. As I deep eye rolled over this I realized, and not for the first time, that I am a Grinch.

There is one in every family.

I am the one in mine.

This actually doesn’t bother me the older I have become. I hate Christmas. There, I said it… I hate it. I won’t lie, pictures on Facebook or Instagram of the piles of presents under people’s Christmas trees make me want to shout profanities. Is it a status symbol to be able to fill the entire underneath of the Christmas tree? I hate it. I hate feeling like I have to buy Christmas gifts. To me, it cheapens what Christmas really ought to be about, and no amount of colored lights, loud singing, or candy canes make that feeling go away. Because I am pretty sure that is all my kids care about, and I am sure that is all your kids care about… the freaking Christmas gifts.

I usually wake up dreading all the bills we will have to pay come the first of the year over all the toys we had to buy for our children. There is nothing more brutal than trying to keep up with Black Friday ad’s, Toys’R’Us commercials, and the children’s little friends whispering about how awesome all their many things are. Last year at Christmas we were visiting family, and I literally cried as I bought Christmas gifts for everyone. It was so bad, that I washed my hands of buying Christmas gifts ever again. My husband is now in charge of gifting at the holiday, and it is honestly the best choice I have ever made.  

As a parent, I always find myself walking a fine line between spoiling our children rotten, and giving them the bare minimum. My oldest is old enough to thoroughly understand the concept of embarrassment, and jealously. As a young girl, there were very few Christmases full of the flurry of brightly colored paper; there were very few Christmases were I felt a feeling of abundance. I don’t want my own children to feel the feelings I have about Christmas, but I also don’t want them to expect the world offered to them each Christmas morning.

Furthermore, I am not sure Santa is really a great idea either. Don’t get me wrong, Santa is a’coming to our house, but I don’t think I like Santa. There is something about a giant fat man crawling down the chimney, peeping to see if you are sleeping, and then leaving gifts that just screams Horror Genre. Then he flies away on his sled pulled by eight tiny reindeer? Please. It’s a believable as the damn Elf on the Shelf… which we do have, and is currently riding in the Millennium Falcon that lives on top of the kitchen cabinets.

………..

The good news is, I am extremely good at faking Christmas cheer. Even more good news is for every Grinch like me, there are literally dozens of others that are exclaiming their love for Christmas from the roof tops… literally, in the form of their many colored lights, and animatronic deer set to Jingle Bells. I guess I am glad for that, because otherwise the world would be pretty drab around Christmas if we were all Grinch’s.

I probably won’t ever like Christmas, but I will continue to fake smile my way through the many renditions of Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, and The Little Drummer Boy. I will trim the Christmas tree in grumpiness, hang the stockings with care, and then wrap the gifts. I will always be an active participant in the season, despite hating it, because I love my children and I love my husband. My hope is that they will remember that, like the Grinch, I was there year after year to catalogue, critique, and be present for each Christmas. I’m their Grinch, and I think they need me around just as much as I need to be around… because nothing makes a Grinch more of a Grinch than being left out.

Btw - your welcome.

Inconvenient Me

I am not sure I have met one person that doesn't doubt their own self worth. Even those very confident people must worry about how they are viewed. Surely they must...

Yet again, this was passed over. I wish they would tell me why they don't want to publish these things, especially when I see things like this posted on Facebook...

So I present: Inconvenient Me

There is one thing I understand about people, and that is, as a whole, they love convenience. It is part of the reason social media is so huge, it gives everyone the most convenient and easy way to “stay in touch”. All anyone has to do is slap a “Like” or “Love” on something, and they now feel a part of your life. It’s actually very voyeuristic, the way social media has made us all. We have all become strangers to each other, just watching what happens from the outside.

While I may have a pretty package most days, I have rough edges. My husband does weird things like Deployments and TDY’s… we live a nomadic, lonely kind of life, and it’s hard for people not in the military life to understand me. Honestly, I am pretty sure it is hard for people IN the military life to understand me! We have three children, and two dogs, and our house is frequently very loud and chaotic. I have no chill, handle things with little to no grace, and I swear like a sailor. Who would want to even be my friend?

I am very inconvenient.

Our boys are only thirteen months apart in age… to say the youngest was a mistake is not accurate, but he sure did arrive a bit quicker than we planned. Our daughter is some kind of old soul gifted to us by the angels, and I often find myself astounded by her. I can see why the children have as many friends as they do, and it makes my heart glad. They are the kind of people that other people will think about when they are not around. My husband is also someone people think of when he is not around, but I am not so sure people think about me when I am not around. I don’t think anyone actively thinks to themselves “I wonder what Caitlin is up to?”

This used to bother me more when I was in middle and high school than it does now. I desperately wanted to be in the popular crowd, be invited to all the parties, and do all the cool things. I wasn’t popular and I didn’t get invited to do the cool things. In middle school, I was frumpy and awkward – I had bad acne and my parents were going through a divorce. The first two years of high school I was still awkward with acne, but now my father had graduated to full blown alcoholic. Who wants to hang out with the girl whose dad is a drunk? No one. That’s who.

After my Ma rescued my sister and me from my father, the last two years of high school didn’t really go the way I had envisioned either. I discovered things like marijuana and alcohol, and let’s just say I made some bad choices. What’s more is I continued to make bad choices all the way until I was 21! My learning curve was kind of on a bad bell curve, or something... Now that I am older, I know many of those choices and actions I did were in a deeply desperate attempt to get people to like me. At best, I think I was tolerated by people. At worse, I think people hated me. I don’t blame any of those people from when I was younger for those thoughts – I didn’t really like myself.

Despite all the growth I have done in my heart and soul, I still have that nagging feeling that people just don’t care. That it is actually too hard to care. That they are too busy with more worthwhile, and interesting people. Everyone wants to be friends with that gal that can complete an Ironman, or has the means to go to Disney World all the time. Everyone want to be friends with the fashionista momma, or the makeup-mom, or the good-at-telling-jokes mom. But what about all the moms that are just wondering if you think about them? What about moms like me… that used to be the desperate girl in school everyone made fun of? Who wants to be friends with us?

.....

I want to be friends with you. I want to see all the pictures from babyhood to toddlerhood and into school age. I want to drink coffee, or a diet coke, with you and I want to laugh at how dumb we used to be when we were younger. I want to hug you when you realize your parents are aging, and we are losing our grandparents. I want to cry with you when you stumble upon that day you realize you are all done having children. I want to go to the gymnastics meets, the cheerleading competitions, the football games, and the band concerts. I want to glory in all of your mundane things you do every day, because to me they are divine.

To me, you are the friend I will always chose. You know how to do real life, and you will always be worth the text message, the phone call, or the handwritten letter. I will always keep trying to be your friend, because I know that like me you feel inconvenient. So, come along, we can be inconvenient together. 

Always.