Dear June, a little inspiration please

June Cleaver, I am not.

But, damn it, I try real hard.

Since making the decision to stay home and focus on raising our babies, things have been less than perfect in my mind, though. I seem to apologize to Boy Wonder on an almost daily basis. Envision this scenario:

He walks through the front door and is immediately met with, "I didn't get a chance to pick up the living room. Dinner is cold. I kicked the dog and drank all the beer. Today SUCKS!" (OK, I didn't actually drink the beer, but some days it definitely crosses my mind ... a lot.) And then I stomp off because he says, "It's OK. You think I'm worried about it and I'm not," instead of commiserating with me or getting upset.

My husband is freaking amazing and ridiculously laid back a majority of the time. He gives me the time I need to be pissed off at my lack of organization, letting me rant and rave about all the things on my "to do" list that haven't gotten done and then when the kids are in bed we pick up the house together, he sets up the coffee maker and I get a few hours of restless sleep.



Did I mention my husband is amazing? Good. Just wanted to reiterate in case you missed it, because I've put him through a lot while on my journey.

In the last few months, he's been even more wonderful as I've tried to take charge of our home — tried to. I started going through clothes and donating bags full to the Rescue Mission because I just needed them gone. I don't have the patience to hold onto things, waiting for yard sale season, when I'm in the mood to throw away. Instead of throwing away, I donated to a good cause. While doing that, I was bit by the recycling bug and every piece of paper I didn't shred went out in the blue bin. Baby items no longer in use were packed away and put in closets. It felt really good to start getting things organized around here. I was feeling a little more like June, and I still do some days.

But, I spend a lot of my time lately thinking about the crap I feed my family, the crap I throw in the garbage can, the crap I buy at the grocery store. Most of it is crap, or recyclable and goes in the bin outside, and more and more I want to do my part to teach our kids how to live healthy and sustainable lives.

What prompted this? A whole lot of things, starting with some pretty horrendous swelling when I was pregnant with Beanie. Word to anyone reading this who has a bun baking — Frank's Red Hot is not a healthy additive to anything. Holy sodium. Crazy high blood pressure and excessive water retention left me looking like a horrific, bloated version of myself, in a hospital gown no less. Not attractive.

Now, I know salt isn't all evil. In moderation it's a great way to boost flavor and clean canker sores. Villainizing salt is not where I'm going with this. Simply put, that experience left me reading labels when I was pregnant the second time around and has snowballed into this eatlivebreathehealthier-ness I'm trying to capture. Reading multiple blogs focused on natural remedies, health and good food and other tidbits strewn across the Internet hasn't helped me continue believing everything is fine and dandy the way we've been eating and living. It's only made it easier to recognize the crap in our lives.

Enter "trying harder to be June."

The kids would be thrilled if I let them eat Welch's fruit snacks and animal crackers for every meal. I could give the Boy food made from contents of a box for dinner most nights of the week and he wouldn't blink. But that's not how I was raised. I was essentially raised by a June Cleaver, only she worked 40-plus hours a week outside the home, and I have trouble not comparing my life now to how I was raised — because I want my babies to have that same childhood. We had fresh homemade chocolate chip or peanut butter cookies a few times a month; most of our meals were homemade, rarely from a box and if we ordered out it was pizza; my mom still scrubs the kitchen and bathroom floors on her hands and knees; my sister and I were raised working in the garden in the summer so we could have canned vegetables all winter.

I have a long way to go to wear my mom's shoes, but I've started making a concerted effort. This is an effort that I need to have become a routine of sorts. We already put in a garden each year, now we need to love and nurture it so we can eat more unprocessed foods. I'm tired of throwing my vegetable peels and coffee grounds in the trash, so my next big project is going to be figuring out the most reliable method of composting. I have a regular love affair with my kitchen, and we've been having a rendezvous on an even more regular basis. And recycling? I pity the guys who come on Mondays; my goal is to have the bin full to overflowing each week.

What prompted this? I want to see my babies grow up so I can see their babies some day. I want to be a healthy mom. My kids may be better off financially if I were working full-time, but I want to be the one to raise them and being a workaholic means I would never see them. I want to be there for their "ah-ha!" moments, not read about it in a note left on the table for when I get home.

My childhood was fantastic because I wasn't holed up in the house watching television or playing video games. Instead, we were raised in a time when we were still allowed to truly experience being a kid. I played outside all summer long from the time I finished breakfast until it was time to get ready for bed. My bicycle saw more miles than I can wrap my mind around and I sported a tan only a kid who swam like a fish and played in the dirt could.

Much like my husband, my childhood was amazing because it let me be who I needed to be.