And in desperate times, you look to older siblings for help!

With the recent death of both grandpas, I was left feeling like I needed a bit of help and support. I had six jetlagged kids up at random hours (some with fevers), work commitments and was parenting solo because Daddy-o was overseas for a week for funeral celebrations. Let’s just say, I’ve seen easier days.

Help is a funny thing. Some people offer to help, but we don’t take them up on it. Is it because we don’t think it’s a genuine offer? Is it because we are selective about who we think is actually capable of helping us?

During my recent tricky times, I found out the things that were most helpful for me:

Bossy People
I realized that when someone asks “What can I do to help?” it is too vague and the response is almost always “nothing”. The person needing help is too exhausted to come up with a plan. The offerer needs to take control and just deliver. One friend dropped me a quick e-mail to let me know she would be delivering dinner on Wednesday and Friday of that week. Not giving me a choice was paramount in the effectiveness of this help.

Visits
I was feeling a little loopy in my state of sleep deprivation. Hanging out with kids around the clock didn’t exactly help my sanity. I was also carrying a bit of guilt about being too exhausted to actually do anything interesting with the kids. Having visitors provided a great distraction.

Hands-On Help
Delivering food is a winner. A casserole drop-off brings me a ridiculous amount of joy. I don’t even care if it doesn’t taste good or my kids stick their noses up at it. It removes the dinner issue from my plate. That’s all that matters.

Taking kids for play dates also ranks high. During my week alone with the kids, I slept for three hours a night. While I function well on little sleep, this was pushing the limit. Try doing that for several consecutive nights. Actually, don’t. Reducing my kiddo head count for a couple of hours during crazy times will make me love you.

So what have I learned? Say “yes” to anyone and everyone who offers help, and when I offer it, I’ll be specific about what help I’m going to provide.

What do you do to lend a hand to a friend in need? Do you accept help when you need it?

Pa on his last day at the farm with Oma and his 16 grandkids

Two years ago I was pregnant with my sixth baby and boarded a 15 hour flight with my five small children. I was horrified to discover that the airline had put me beside a small child traveling alone. As if I didn’t have enough kids to care for on that journey.

A few months ago, I blogged about a flight I was on with a lovely elderly gentleman who was bravely traveling with his wife who had Alzheimer’s.

Imagine my surprise when a few weeks ago I boarded a 15 hour flight with six kids only to discover who was traveling alone beside me this time: An old guy. With Alzheimer’s.

That was just the tip of the irony iceberg this holiday season.

We traveled half way across the world to spend time with my sick father-in-law. Four days after arriving, my own father died back at home. Yep, you heard that right – I leave the country and my own dad decides it’s a fine time to pop off. Between my dad’s death and my FIL’s cancer, my son mentioned that he was experiencing some unfair events in the grandpa department.

He also noted that there is one grandpa who is still fighting fit. He was referring to my 96-year-old grandpa, his great-grandpa. What is the secret to this old guy’s long life? From my observations, it would seem that the tricks to his longevity include never eating vegetables, indulging in a whopping bowl of Jell-O and ice cream every day, setting yourself up with about 400 great-grandchildren and staying married to the same woman for 75 years.

A few days ago, our overseas journey came to an end. We wearily walked through our front door, only to be greeted with a phone call informing us that my FIL had just passed away. Seems the best time to die is shortly after my family leaves the country.

Has it been a great holiday season for my family? I could come up with a few reasons to grumble, but we’ve somehow managed to take the advice of my 95-year-old grandma: life is for the living and there’s no time to be sitting around waiting for people to die. So, in spite of it all, we did some living.

As we head into 2011, I’m mourning the loss of my dad and FIL, acting as amateur grief counselor to my kiddos and thinking I may just spend a bit more time over the next year sharing bowls of Jell-O with my grandpa.

Mothers can have bad days – kids misbehave, work gets on top of you, the house is a dump, your husband is being useless, etc. Mothers often tell me that when they are having a bad day, they think of me and they instantly feel better. The chaos in my life provides them with some comfort in those manic mama moments.

But I have to let you in on a little secret: it’s not that bad. In fact, it’s pretty darn good. Sure, I don’t get a lot of sleep and nights out on the town are few and far between, but that’s what I signed up for when I had six kids.

Between my babies, business and blogging, there are quite a few balls in the air. So the question is often asked about how I manage it all. I could go on and on, but since this is a blog and not a book, I’m keeping it short with just a few little things that are firmly entrenched in my brain that help me get through my busy days.

Keep everything in perspective
When things are hectic at Mabel’s Labels and stress is creeping into our lives, my business partners and I look at each other and remind ourselves of this: We are making labels; we are not saving lives. This is not to downplay how seriously we take our business. If a customer has not received labels on time, that is a dire Mabel 911 situation. Should we let it keep us up at night? Probably not. We’re better off engaging in more proactive responses such as finding out what went wrong and changing our system. Fix the mistake, move on and remember: no one died.

Don’t take your kids so seriously
My kids are kids, not projects. Don’t obsess over whether your kids are academically gifted, going to get MVP or be chosen for the competitive dance team. When my kids grow up, they will be like most others – they’ll get a job. They may become teachers, bricklayers, doctors, bus drivers, parents, whatever. Hopefully they’ll have a fulfilling personal life. I want them to be happy and the best people they can be. Stop taking them so seriously and worrying about what they’ll be later, instead of what they are now.

Don’t take yourself so seriously
You’re a parent, not a miracle worker. You’ll make mistakes and feel crappy about it. So learn from it and move right along. Dwelling is pointless. Sometimes as you try to balance all your roles, you’ll notice everything becoming unaligned – several balls you are juggling come crashing down at once. On those days, order pizza, give the kids bowls of cereal for dinner, let them watch too much TV or go to bed without brushing their teeth. I think they will be OK if they don’t have veggies with dinner two nights in a row. No one is going to turn you into the bad mother police for letting the kids eat hotdogs off their laps on the family room couch. While they’re doing that, for goodness’ sake, go get yourself a well deserved glass of wine!

So this Mother’s Day, give yourself an invaluable Mother’s Day gift. A healthy dose of perspective will make you happier than a dozen roses or new pair of earrings ever will.

I posted a blog recently about the value of saying “No” to kids. The gist was:

1) Your kids will be fine if they don’t get what they want all the time.
2) If you’re going to say “No” then be sure to follow through – unless you like to lead the double life of parent and white noise machine.

I just discovered another good time to say “No”– when it comes to buying them nice things. Ya know why? Because they don’t care.

Months ago, in spite of my no pet policy, my cheeky friend promised the kids a fish. She arrived at the house with a tank and all the fishy trimings. We negotiated that a fish could join us only after we moved into the new house in March.

March arrived and we moved into the new house. It is just lovely – big enough to suit our family, sitting on a quiet court and backing onto fields and ravines. The kids’ days are full of road hockey, catching tadpoles, chasing deer and trampolining. Soon summer will be here and they’ll be passing their days basking in the pool, enjoying all the water fun summer has to offer.

On moving day, the kiddos had all been shipped off to various locations. When they arrived home to their beautiful new house that evening, they screamed in unison:
“Did we get the fish??”

Daddy-o and I looked at each other, rolled our eyes and thought: we just bought a new house, and all they care about is that stupid fish!

And that is not the end of it. I had decided (OK, my bank account decided) that we would not be buying new furniture for the house. I made one little exception. With the three girls sharing a room, I thought it would be nice to ditch the garage sale beds they had been using, and replace them with three new little beds with fresh and fun bedding. They excitedly picked out the beds that were being used by the athletes in Olympic village.

So you can imagine my frustration when I go into their room at night and this is what I find:

So if you are the kind of mama who worries about your kids doing without stuff, I think you can stop. Just go buy them a fish and let them to sleep on the floor. Clearly, that is all they need.

People often tell me I make things look easy. I think the reason I make things look easy is because they often are. A perfect example is the neighbourhood Easter egg hunt I recently organized. Please note that when I say “organized”, I am using the term very loosely. I sent out an e-mail to everyone on the neighbourhood e-mail list. It was the same e-mail I sent out last year.

So I managed to get some cred and kudos for doing pretty much nothing.

The e-mail included information about how many eggs to stuff per kid in your family, what area of the park to hide the eggs in (based on kiddo ages) and what time to have it done so that we would be ready to start on time. Oh, I also told egg hiders to bring plastic bags with them in case they came across some dog poop or other park treasures.

That’s it. That is me organizing the egg hunt. Note what I didn’t do:
- I didn’t stuff eggs for kids in the neighbourhood;
- I didn’t hide eggs for kids in the neighbourhood;
- I didn’t go and clean up the dog poop in the park before the egg hunt.

Surprisingly, with all that I didn’t do, I still got a handful of e-mails from highly appreciative mamas. They all mentioned how remarkable it was that with six kids and a business I could find time to organize the egg hunt. I reminded them that forwarding the e-mail from last year took me about 15 seconds. Regardless, these appreciative mamas unanimously came back with “Well, someone had to send it out – so thank-you!”

Perhaps a case can be made for the old expression: “if you want to get something done, ask a busy person to do it”. Maybe all of us busy folks have just figured out the real trick – don’t just make it look easy, make it easy!