March 27, 2014 by Allison Hendrix

The Truth behind Mommy Magic

Mommy magic is the ability to make a scraped knee feel better with a band-aid and a kiss. It’s that sixth sense that knows where to find a lost lovey at bedtime. It’s how a million little details quietly get done to make a birthday special.

Last night I returned home to my family after a short trip away. As I was putting my children to bed, we were going over our checklist for today. I asked Campbell if he and Smokey, our hamster, were ready for the Pet Parade at school the coming morning.

He rushed over to the cage and cried as he remembered ,“Mamma, Smokey escaped a few days ago and I didn’t make a float! Why hasn’t he come back?”

Tears, and fear of having no pet for the Pet Parade, ensued. After he shut down my idea of Smokey being an ‘Invisible Hamster’, I kissed his head and said I would find him.

Today at 12:30, I showed up at the Pet Parade with Smokey, the Escape Artist hamster. Campbell was overjoyed because I had worked my Mommy Magic.

But it’s not magic at all, is it? Let’s rewind.

I went to bed last night wondering how I was going to find a nocturnal hamster. Was he under the kitchen sink? The bathroom sink? In a bedroom? I laid in bed waiting. Praying. Hoping. I heard a ruffle at 2am. Was it Smokey?

I put on a headlamp as to not wake my husband. I crawled around the floor…in my nightie…with a headlamp…following the noise for an hour and a half. I finally caught him.

I returned him to his cage but wondered how long before he escaped again, after all escaping is his specialty. So I put the cage in the bathtub, a double barrier of sorts. At the moment, I think I’m brilliant.

Come today about 2 hours before the Pet Parade, I tweak the wires of the cage for the journey to school. It appears secure. A quick shower later, I return to an empty cage. Thankfully he hadn’t gotten far and it was an easy capture.

This time I grab a deep kitchen bucket, one with walls too high to scale. We hop in the car. I exhale but a little too soon.

At a stoplight a mile from school, I see the hamster on the passenger floor mat jetting into the crawl space leading to… who knows where. The engine?

I pull into the Publix parking lot and, in desperation, buy celery and peanut butter to lure Smokey out of hiding. Not immediately, but it worked. Ten minutes later, I arrive at the Pet Parade.

There are spaceship-themed wagons with astronaut dogs. There are chickens on a hay-rides. There are princess cats, Ballerina bunnies, and Magician dogs.

I show up with a dirty kitchen bucket, a dishtowel shoved into the bottom, and Smokey peeking out from underneath. Although uncharacteristically uncreative, I’m thrilled with the result, a living hamster.

When Campbell saw his beloved pet, his eyes looked into mine and sparkled. “Mamma! You found him! You’re the best!” He carried that rodent around with such pride letting his friends take turns ogling over it.

I had a secret story today that nobody else there knew. As I looked around this amazing display of pets and parents, I realize that I’m surrounded by a lot of secret stories. The dad who snuck out of an important meeting just in time to see his daughter twirl with her cat. I watch a mom work her magic as she calms her anxious son’s nerves over parading in front of a crowd. Whatever she whispered into his ear worked.

The truth is mommy magic is simply the result of an unexplainable love that makes us do over-the-top ridiculous things to delight our children, to avoid catastrophic meltdowns, and to bring peace to our loved ones souls.

We can find missing shoes because our minds never shut off. As we walk from a bedroom to a garage, we’re cataloging everything we see for future use…a channel changer peeking out from a couch…a shin guard in the pantry…a stuffed animal in the backyard.

This deep love also makes us willingly, and without hesitation, give our time, sleep and energy to our children. Love is interesting like that and sometimes doesn’t make sense to an outsider. Because finding that hamster was important to my son, it was important to me. You may spend hours making a birthday cake shaped like a Lego robot to create that magical moment for your child. Or you may go to 7 stores looking for the perfect pair of shorts that don’t have an itchy tag in the back. Maybe you work an extra job so your child can play club soccer.

Or maybe you have simply brought peace to a home that desperately needed it.

Today I celebrate mothers because you make magic happen each and every day. Your stories may never be told and your sacrifices never acknowledged, but you change the world around you with your love.

♥Allison

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March 2, 2014 by Allison Hendrix

The ridiculous and effective way to stop Sibling Fighting

Need a fresh idea to get your kids to stop fighting? Sometimes the most effective solution is ridiculous and right in front of you. For two weeks, I’ve been driving around town with Nerf gun bullets on the outside of my windshield. I forget that they are there until people stare, point, pretend to shoot at me, and ultimately laugh. Other kids get a kick out of them in the car-line at school, particularly the high-school students.

Let’s back up a bit. My children have been fighting in the car recently. It drives me crazy. I’ve tried time outs, loss of privileges, pulling the car to the side of the road, strategically seating my children away from one another, and even positive reinforcement tactics. Somewhere between their close proximity to one other and a few sensory issues (mostly mine), that stuff just isn’t working for us.

“You’re breathing too loud!”

“You crossed the line onto my side of the seat!”

“Stop humming to the music.”

What ultimately ends the fighting is my mean-mommy-voice yelling “ENOUGH! I’VE HAD ENOUGH!”

Here’s the thing, I don’t like yelling, nor want to. I truly believe there is always a better option…but sometimes I just can’t find that solution in the parenting books.

So a few weeks ago when my youngest shot my windshield with a Nerf bullet in protest to my new rule of ‘No Eating in the Car’, I had an idea. I explained to my three children, that I would leave that Nerf bullet on the windshield if they didn’t fight on the way to school.

Guess what? Nobody fought. In fact, they laughed, were kind and complimentary to one another, and acted as if they were on the same team. The ride home from school that day was the same way. With dark clouds in the sky, they chatted for 30 minutes about what would happen to the Nerf bullet if they windshield wipers went on. Their laughter was contagious.

So the rules to our Nerf Bullet Game were established:

Every day that you don’t fight, you may add a Nerf bullet to the car.
Every time you disagree or complain about anything, we turn on those windshield wipers and a bullet is removed.
You may not relocate somebody else’s bullet without their permission.
A bullet though may be relocated or removed by mommy at any point.

Not only are my kids not fighting in the car, I’m enjoying listening to them interact and plot the destination of their next bullet.

I’m obviously not suggesting that everybody go put Nerf bullets on their windshield to keep their kids from fighting, but I am suggesting that sometimes we can’t find the answers in the parenting books. We need to stop feeling inadequate that great parenting tools aren’t clicking with our family.

Each family is uniquely designed and made up of specific personalities. Parenting is not one size fits all. What works for me, may not work for you, and that’s ok. I’m learning that sometimes an unconventional idea is exactly what my family needs to push through a tough phase to move on to the next.

Our family was struggling in the car and we needed to break that cycle of fighting because, only then, were my kids at a teachable place to address the deeper issues of respect and tolerance. This game will hopefully not be around in a month, because I’d prefer to drive around town not looking like the victim of a Nerf Attack, but it broke our cycle of fighting and yelling, and has allowed us to engage in more effective conversations about changing the way we treat each other.

So consider embracing that unconventional idea that just might click with your family. You may find your instincts are more effective with your children than anything you read, and that adding a dose of laughter to your area of greatest frustration, opens the door to joy where yelling once reigned.

AllisonHave you checked out our Intentional Parenting or All Things Kids board on Pinterest? I’d also love to invite you to receive future posts by the House of Hendrix below and join our Facebook community. If this post resonated with you, you are welcome to share it through the icons below.

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February 11, 2014 by Allison Hendrix

Quirky Valentine’s Tradition

Quirky Traditions

When I was dating my husband 16 years ago, he told me to get dressed up because we were going to a fancy restaurant for Valentine’s. I anticipated the evening all week and enlisted the help of my Tias to pick out the perfect outfit. When he arrived, the tias asked where he was taking me. He said with a tinge of excitement, “I was thinking we would head to the Harvest House for dinner”. They looked at each other in a panic. Rookie Mistake.

You see, we were living in Atlanta and he didn’t think to make reservations. That evening we were turned away from half a dozen places before reluctantly entering this hole-in-the-wall pizza dive…clearly over-dressed. It was dark, empty, and a bit seedy. My then boyfriend looked so defeated.

As it turns out, the thin-crust Margarita pizza was absolutely delicious, the pitcher of beer perfect, and we laughed our way through the evening. It was a tradition in the making.

For the past 15 years, while the rest of town is scrambling for reservations, we find a pizza dive on Valentine’s. It feels like our romantic little secret. Our children love hearing the story behind our February 14th tradition.

So we embrace the quirky things about our relationship or family, even the missteps, because they often make the richest traditions.

Simple expectations

I adore Valentines because it comes after the intensity of Christmas and before the spiritual heaviness of Easter. It is fun, flirty, and fabulous. I start wearing red ballet flats beginning February 1st and add a splash of pink any opportunity I get.

My husband however believes Valentine’s is a Hallmark created holiday. He is not “a consumer” by nature and believes this is a day where men are guilted into overpaying for flowers and cards. It’s shocking how different we are.

So I decided early on, I did not want to be a wife filled with a sense of Valentine’s Entitlement. I deserve a card, flowers, a date night? You know that mindset…what is he going to do for ME? As women, we can create a unspoken standard of expectation. How fun is that for a guy? It’s not.

So I simply shifted my focus off of myself and onto delighting him. It is so much more enjoyable and fulfilling. As it turns out, it makes him want to reciprocate, not because he has to, but because it feels good to be shown love.

Sometimes, the love just looks different from what we see on commercials. Last week when my husband was pressure washing the driveway, he melted my heart with this.

So if you find yourself disappointed by the lack of romance coming your way this year, shift the focus off of yourself. Use the day as an opportunity to show the love, not just receive it. And if you are in a relationship, appreciate the unique gestures from his heart, whether it be pumping up your tires or sending you a text on the way home from work. A man who lavishes gifts does not love deeper than one who does not. Gratitude is always the easiest way to keep entitlement away.

Kids in the Classroom

Confession: Last year I signed my son’s name on all 15 Valentine’s cards for his classmates. But here’s the thing, I didn’t just sign his name in my regular handwriting. I did it in a ridiculous child-like scribble so it would appear that he had done this himself. Mrs. Geer never suspected a thing.

Valentines at school has become quite the festive event. This week as we chose cards to give their friends, my boys said it was “creepy” to say things to their friends like ‘Be Mine, I Dig you, We were meant to be’. They have a funny point.

Here are the cards they decided upon which we snagged off of Pinterest.