Comedy Through The Chaos: Parenting Edition Valentine’s Day Check In

Hello and happy Saturday Cadre Sphere. Good to be with you today. If you wonder who the blue haired lady in red is, I'm Ms. Shannon Paul. I'm a variety of word related things like a comedian, a corporate speaker, a voice actor and a vet MC and a benefit auctioneer. I'm also the proud parent of an adorable 17, almost 18 year old kiddo who happens to be high supports on the autism spectrum. So I'm happy to join you for this Saturday edition of Comedy through the Chaos, our parenting edition. And it's Happy Valentine's Day.

So if you are inclined to Valentine. Happy Valentine's Day to you. I thought I'd show you this. On a whim yesterday I bought him some cupcakes. I thought we'd do our little Valentine's Day cupcakes. He ate most of them, as you can see. But I accidentally, because I didn't read the little, I noticed that they had little signs on them, little plastic signs, but I didn't notice. I did. It's not that I didn't notice. I did not take the time to read the signs. This is on me. Which will come around to the story of what we're going to talk about today for this edition of Comedy through the Chaos.

I did not read the little messages that they had on the sign. So I bought a bunch of really sarcastic Valentine's Day cupcakes. Which is appropriate, I think for me. Not only the comedian me, the Jada divorce did it. So this one says, not sick of you yet. That one says, I'm so happy I settled, I'm so happy I settled. And this one says, you'll do kind of like in the movie about the pig. So that is how our Day Valentine's has started. But it also really did just organically fall in line with, with what I thought we could talk about today in this edition of commenting through the cast about showing up and what that means and how that looks and how it looks differently for a lot of us.

And especially when you're parenting, I think often you have this social media variety of what good parenting is or this, you know, even worse, a sitcom idea of what good parenting is. And we forget, especially if we grew up as a Gen X person, that all of those sitcoms that we grew up watching were curated and written by a very creative person, not necessarily lived experiences. So sometimes if that is the information that we are accustomed to having, I think that we fall in line with, oh, well, this is how I'm supposed to act.

And this is what I'M supposed to do, and this is what it's supposed to look like. And if I didn't do that and I did it wrong. And the, the reality is that we are doing you often the best we have with the resource that we have is some of us are actually crushing it based upon all of the resources we may not have been given, you know, along the journey. And we are just doing a DIY thing through life. And so what I've had to come in alignment with personally is that I'm one of those people that takes a variety of information, I process it the best I can.

And. And I had a great feeling of lack and always feeling like I wasn't showing up just right for my kid as a parent, you know, Definitely. And you hear this often. I think caregivers have that guilt of, well, when I'm here, I feel like I should be working or doing something else. When I'm doing something else, I feel guilty and feel like I should give and be giving care. And so being able to reconcile those two things and two parts of you gets very complicated. It gets very complicated. So I have actively worked on that and reminding myself that it is okay that my life does not look like a perfect Pinterest parenting board.

It looks like you'll do is what it looks like most days. And that is good because there's some days that you could get up and everything can go incredibly smoothly. You're. You're fully prepared, the. Your kiddos fully prepared. And there's other days that pretty much all the energy you have is, I love you and here's a granola bar. And that day works too. So today I am very proud that we are in between. We woke up appropriately. I encouraged him to allow me to tell him good morning. Which is not always something that he is in the mood for.

Some days he is absolutely no, Good morning, mom, leave me alone. But today he is in the mood to be interactive. His personal trainer will come and hang out with them a little while. He is currently outsideing on his own. Very Minnesota kid. Very Minnesota kid. Hoodie, basketball shorts. Even though there's snow on the ground. That is his. That's his jam. And I'm very proud of him because he got up, got his act together, decided he need to go out and get some sun. And he is correct. The sun is good for him.

He looks good in the sunshine. So that's how today is going to look, you know, eventually. Tonight I have a comedy show that I'm doing which will be very interesting. So we'll see how that goes. So I'm excited to see if that. That actually is the least stressful thing I have on my agenda today. I've been doing comedy long enough that that doesn't necessarily stress me out. And I got over the last couple days, the show is sold out. So that is one less thing that I have to worry about, you know, whether I will actually have people there to tell jokes too.

There will be people in the venue, and we will have a good time and talk about a variety of things, including some relationship material that I like to talk about on holidays like this. And that's. That's where we're at, is just riding that rave of presence, figuring out where you are, where you can be all the way up here and give all that you have, or if you're down closer to a trough, maybe you just have a little less to give, but you're still giving what you can, and that is okay as we are navigating this parenting journey.

So what I encourage you to think on as we move into this next week. And. And this is what I do. I keep saying I'm gonna be more about generally journaling. Journaling. You can see how bad I am. And I can't even say the word because I never articulated out why. But I know that it would probably be good for me as a writer to actually write in that way. But I don't. But I do end up coming up with reflective prompts that, okay, when you have that moment that you need to, like, anchor back to something, if I'm ruminating about something, I go, well, what was it that you told yourself you were going to think about throughout this week?

And so this is what I thought I would do. And that's how I usually use my journaling prompt. And so what I am going to think on is how can I reframe the way that I think of being present for myself and my kid? And so I encourage you to do that as well. How can you reframe the way that you think about the way you are present for yourself and present for your kid and. Or the person that you give care for or your favorite plant or your favorite animal, if you have fur babies, that works as well. So whoever you are giving care to, that's a good way to do it and go.

For me, that is finding more times where, you know, I'm, you know, my version of presence is, you know, I'm going to spend a couple of days instead of going, oh, good, he seems occupied. He's outside, go see if he wants me to interact with him. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't. You know, give him an opportunity to kick me out and see how that goes and give him a little more autonomy about how does our interaction go, because that wasn't something I was able to do when he was younger. And now he's got some more fully formed opinions and is very clear on some of those things.

So that's what I'm going to work on throughout the week is just kind of seeing how I can broaden our communication way and trying to do it in clearly not a pushy way. That's what I'm trying to do. But let him know that he can figure out other ways that he wants to interact with me instead of me always coming up with a here's what I think we should be doing. So we'll see how that works throughout the week. I hope that you have a variety of things that are supporting you here in the Cadre sphere. That's why we are continually looking for content.

Even if I couldn't see your comments in the chat today, I do go back through them all. I appreciate everybody that joins us. We will get back to the point that we will be able to see the comments. I know that some of us contributors can't see them as you are putting them real time, but I will definitely go back through it later and so continue to let us know what it is that you'd like us to focus on, provide for you, use as a way to support you when you need it, how you need it, where you need it.

That's why we like that we are mobile and I like that we are continually to grow and adapt and expand. So we will keep working on that. I do plan to be back here next Thursday. Oh, here real quick since I can tell you everybody, deep breath. We're gonna go for a walk because the snow started to melt. So those of you who have been in the wood chip thing, I actually can move some more wood chips today. It's like warm enough so I'm gonna. There's some, some muddy spots in my backyard that I get to put some wood chips in today, which I'm very, very excited and enthusiastic about.

So that will be excited. So you will get more now that the sun is out and maybe we won't be as brutally cold for a while. You get to get updates on Ms. Shannon's woodship pile. So thank you for being with me. Thank you for letting me share a few moments with you on the Saturday morning or whenever you're watching me in the replay, make sure you check in with us. As I said, I should be back here next Thursday at 2pm Central. I always appreciate all of you, and I will leave you, of course, with the fact that I hope that the day treats you well.

If it doesn't, shame on it. Not shame on you. See you all soon, friends.