One of Those Days: The Mommy Diaries

By Jana Miller

One of Those Days gives a lighthearted look at life full of kids, chaos, and mayhem. Learn how to survive Diaper Disasters, a house full of snakes in The Snake House, and green-colored children in Happiness is a Purple Crayon. It seems most of author Jana Miller's days turn into one of those days, but she has learned to go with the flow with lots of love, laughter, and faith. Using life lessons gained from her experiences growing up with the best friends and worst enemies of her childhoodher four older brothersshe teaches her children all about life, while they, in turn, teach her what life is all about.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490821283

Jana Miller

Jana Miller is a stay-at-home mom and humor columnist. Her column "The Mommy Diaries" is featured in two local newspapers, the Wayland Reporter and the Kalona News. She draws her inspiration from her country childhood experiences of growing up with four ornery brothers and from her own five children. Jana lives in the country near Wayland, Iowa, with her husband, five children, loyal dog, and too many cats.

Book preview

Jana Miller

ONE

OF THOSE

DAYS

The Mommy Diaries

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Copyright © 2014 Jana Miller.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™ All rights reserved.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-2127-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-2126-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-2128-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013923772

WestBow Press rev. date: 01/02/2014

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Mommy Diaries

Chapter 2 Different Stages

Chapter 3 In Sickness and In Health

Chapter 4 Laundry Daze

Chapter 5 Unfortunate Events

#1: The Accident

Chapter 6 Unfortunate Events

#2: A Lost Child

Chapter 7 Unfortunate Events

#3: Locked Out

Chapter 8 Gray Hair

Chapter 9 Feline on the Roof

Chapter 10 Chaos and Mayhem

Chapter 11 Chaos and Mayhem

Chapter 12 Chaos and Mayhem

Chapter 13 A Joyful Noise

Chapter 14 Diaper Disasters

Chapter 15 Toy Recycling

Chapter 16 Wheels and Motors

Chapter 17 Road Trips

Chapter 18 Potty-Training 101

Chapter 19 One of Those Days

Chapter 20 Hoot Owls and Camp Outs

Chapter 21 Parking Lot Snooze

Chapter 22 A.M. Mayhem

Chapter 23 Family Festivities

Chapter 24 The Gauntlet

Chapter 25 Dust Bunnies

Chapter 26 Mushroom Madness

Chapter 27 Happiness is a Purple Crayon

Chapter 28 The Money Pit

Chapter 29 The Snake House

Chapter 30 War and Peace

Chapter 31 Who’s Who?

Chapter 32 Un-Washables

Chapter 33 Grandpa John

Chapter 34 Mouse Hunt

Chapter 35 The Bathroom Shuffle

Chapter 36 Better Late Than Never

Chapter 37 Backyard Road Kill

Chapter 38 A New Phase

Illustrations

About the Author

~ Dedication ~

To

Whitney, Walker, Delaney,

Kinzey and Jaicey

You are the stars of

this book, and my life.

~ Acknowledgments ~

Writing is a solitary pursuit but I found that it takes a village to produce a book. I deeply appreciate everyone in my village who had a part in this project with special thanks to the following people:

My husband, B.J., for encouraging and supporting me in my writing even when that meant you had to cook supper for the kids.

My parents, Lynn & Ruth Graber, for never doubting this book would someday exist.

My best friends and worst enemies of my childhood, my brothers; Barry, Brent, Corby, and twin brother Gene, who all have starring roles in this book, and who provided me with lots of inspiration, intentional and otherwise.

Ann Weir, my grammar guru, who helped me navigate the foreign language of English grammar which made this book so much better.

My West Bow Press publishing team who helped make my dream take shape, and for their Christian values and standards.

And finally deepest thanks to my Lord and Heavenly Father for the gift of writing, I hope it will further the glory of His name.

If you can find humor in anything, you can survive it. - Bill Cosby

~ Introduction ~

This book is a funny collection of true stories. Each chapter is its own story, and they are not chronological as most are stories about my own children but some are memories from my childhood.

At a Christmas family gathering in late December of 2004, I made an announcement to all assembled that I was beginning a new venture of writing a humor column for the local paper called The Mommy Diaries. I explained that these articles would appear once a month, and the premise of the column was a lighthearted look at life as a stay-at-home mom. I also told the group of around forty people, which in addition to my own husband and children, included my brothers, their spouses and children, and my parents, that I planned to include some experiences and situations from my own childhood. The editor suggested I get permission from everyone I may mention in my stories. The reason was to reduce the number of libel or slander suits I may get filed against me.

My four brothers looked momentarily worried but that was to be expected considering the amount of torture they inflicted on me during my childhood. I assured them I would not be humiliating anyone in public. Wanting to be fair I prepared my family about the potential of having their name’s end up in print.

I explained further that since I did not want the bother of having to call them up every time I mentioned them I had written up what I called a blanket permission draft, which needed only a verbal agreement on their part. My draft was called The Mommy Diaries Miranda Rights, which read as follows:

To my immediate and extended family; everything you say and do, everything you have ever said or done, everything you will say or do in the future, can and will be used in my articles as I deem appropriate. You have the right to complain about and/or deny anything written, and I have the right to ignore your complaints and denials. Thank you in advance for all of your cooperation and inspiration, intentional and otherwise.

Once I mirandized my family, I commenced writing my articles, and surprisingly enough, I have never received any complaints from my family. I am grateful to all of them that they allow me to write about them. They are fascinating subjects to observe and interact with, and I am sure many psychologists would agree with me.

This book is not a how-to book for parents or moms. It will not tell you how to be a better mom or a super mom, and especially not an I-can-do-it-all-and-have-it-all-mom. It may not tell you what to do when you have a child that resists potty-training or one that scribbles on furniture with crayons, and it for sure won’t tell you what to do when you have a house full of snakes.

What it will do, hopefully, is make you laugh a little, or a lot, help you relate to someone else slogging through the trenches of parenthood, and cause you to delight in the memories of childhood. My prayer is that One of Those Days will help you find the humor and faith in everyday life. And in these stressful, sometimes depressing, and often troubling times that we live in, I have found humor and faith to be the best guides for living life.

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CHAPTER 1

~ The Mommy Diaries ~

I am sure you have heard of The Princess Diaries. This is nothing like that. For one thing, she is young, fresh, and still looking for her Prince Charming. I am not so young or fresh, and I found my Prince Charming, B. J. Miller, about twenty-eight years ago. I have been married to him for the last twenty-five. Her knight has shining armor and rides a white horse. My knight’s armor has been left at the cleaners, and his horse is under the hood of a giant SUV. No minivans are allowed in this kingdom, which controls twenty-five country acres surrounded by cornfields in southeast Iowa.

The princess has her whole life, fresh with possibilities and dreams, stretching before her. We are settled comfortably in the long middle span, a lot of living and dreams behind us, but a lot of living yet to do, and more dreams to accomplish.

After reading my yearly Christmas letters for many years, my family and friends encouraged me to write for real, as they called it. While making out my resolutions in the early hours of the Year of our Lord, 2005, I was suddenly inspired to do just that. After all, I was not getting any younger and was not going to get any less busy, not with five children. So with a six-month-old baby on my lap, toddlers at my feet, and kids running amok through our house, I inhaled deeply and took the plunge. I began to write. And then I wrote some more. And then I continued writing as my dream of becoming an author crept ever closer. I submitted my work in the form of articles to our local newspaper, The Wayland Reporter, and a column titled The Mommy Diaries was born.

A lot has changed for me after becoming a stay-at-home mom in the spring of 1998, after working full time for more than a decade. My oldest two children, Whitney and Walker, were five and three years old when I quit my job to stay at home. I have to laugh when I think of the comments I made to friends. For example, I told them outrageous lies, such as Now that I am a stay-at-home mom, my house will be so clean all the time! and I’m going to have so many hobbies and do all kinds of crafts and decorating. The biggest whopper of all was this: I’m going to work out at least one hour every day!

A big surprise for me was that the reality of a twenty-four-hour/seven-day-week lived-in house is pretty much a twenty-four-hour/seven-day, messy house. When I worked outside the home, I could do laundry a few evenings a week, clean the house on Saturdays, and know that it would likely remain in that state since no one was home from 6:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. all week. It followed the housecleaning theory of relativity which states a clean, empty house tends to stay a clean, empty house, but a messy, lived-in house tends toward depreciation at the speed of sound. Or something to that effect. I don’t know. I could be mixing up some scientific theorems.

We had two children at that point: a daughter named Whitney, born in 1993, and our son Walker, born in 1995. They spent their days next door with a day-care provider while I worked a mentally-tiring, optimism-stealing, energy-draining, fifty-hours-per-week job that I hated. I wanted to stay home after we had our first baby, but money was tight, and I needed to work for the insurance. After my husband’s job changed, I was able to stay home and found that full-time living at home with two little ones created a lot more messes, dishes, and laundry. But I loved every minute I was there.

After five years of what I call our sane years, three more baby girls came along: Delaney in 2000, Kinzey in 2002, and Jaicey in 2004. The mess tripled, the laundry quintupled, and the chaos - there is no mathematical term that could do it justice.

I have found that every mom is a working mom whether she stays at home with kids or has a career. Since I have been both, I think both are super moms. My cape just happens to have formula and coffee stains on it and is frayed at the edges. And it lies under a pile of smelly laundry instead of hanging on a padded hanger, crisply ironed, in a perfectly organized closet. I used to be a very organized person until I had children. Now I just organize chaos. I did learn that for every mess I clean up, another mess develops in my wake. Once I accepted the fact that my house would never be completely clean, I was much happier, and that equaled happier kids and a happier spouse.

Some friends asked if the rewards are worth the one paycheck. For us, it is worth every moment. We have everything we could need, and while we have to make sacrifices on our want list, all of them are material things that we can survive without. We just may not always want to. However, I still regret that I missed out on the first two baby years of our two oldest. I did not realize how many little developmental milestones I was not there for until I was able to experience them with our three youngest. I love that my husband and I have been given this huge blessing of raising our children. And for those who say you cannot love a fifth child as much as the first, well, those people do not have five children.

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CHAPTER 2

~ Different Stages ~

I realized one day that kids go through different stages in their relationships with their moms. It starts when the much-anticipated Mama, changes to the endearing but seemingly never-ending Mommy, and then overnight becomes Mom. The title of Mom is interchangeable