Barbara Bloom's Blog, page 8
November 29, 2012
New Baby Girl: A Bright World
My life has been on a super fast path for the last two days. Two grandchildren have been born in the last two weeks. Meet Alexis as she try’s to open her eyes while looking at the bright world ahead of her. She is a beautiful healthy baby as she weighed in at 8 pounds 11 ounces with a full head of brown hair. Juggling my family life raising two children under the age of five and making the time to welcome a new baby to the world has been very busy. My daughter Allison went into labor on Tuesday November 27, 2012 and we managed to make it to the hospital fifty minutes before the baby was born.
Breanna made it through a full day of Kindergarten and then our family headed to the hospital. Bre has a perfect attendance record in school and it is important to me that I keep it that way. I told my husband as we were driving to the hospital that the baby was waiting for us to arrive at the hospital before she decided it was time to be born.;)
November 28, 2012
The Next Big Thing Blog Hop with Barbara Bloom, author of Your Shoes My Shoes
What great fun this is going to be! I’d like to thank K.D. Emerson of http://masterkoda.com/the-next-big-thing-blog-hop for tagging me in the Next Big Thing Blog tour. The Next Big Thing Blog Hop with Barbara Bloom, author of Your Shoes My Shoes.
Your Shoes My Shoes by Barbara Bloom
1. I write children’s books in rhyme with a seussical style to them.
2. I published two books on the same day this year in September 2012.
“Run Hide The Monster Is Outside”: A Tale With A Twist
“Here Comes Pixie Pie”: Here Special Day At The Rodeo Fair
Run Hide The Monster Is Outside by Barbara Bloom
3. “Here Comes Pixie Pie,” is volume one of a series. I am currently working on book two.
4. I have always had a pen and/or pencil in my hand since an early age in my elementary school years when I first began to learn to write. I took the step forward to share my work with the world this year in 2012. The first book I published was, “Your Shoes My Shoes.” The book is written in rhyme and is all about shoes for boys and girls. We all love shoes!
5. I started writing because I have a deep passion for making children smile. My goal when I write is to create a magical quality moment for both the parent and the chiId simply by reading a book. I truly believe that if we plant the seed to read a child will succeed. I write books to share laughs and giggles with children around the world.
6. My influences are Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, Mo Willems, and P.D. Eastman.
7. I am working on a new children’s book which will be released in the next couple of months. One of my goals is to create audio books for the books I currently have published. I am looking forward to sharing “Here Comes Pixie Pie,” at the Harris County Library in February 2013. I read my books at the local schools and currently have openings for the year 2013. If you are interested I can be contacted on twitter @smart_scarlet and/or smartscarlet@hotmail.com I would love to hear from you.
I have tagged the following authors:
Sarwah Osei-Tutu
http://highslowsinbetweens.wordpress.com/
Bruce Goldwell
http://FiveStarIndieAuthors.com
November 22, 2012
Thankful: Enjoy Your Family
I wanted to tell you and your family that I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. We are enjoying the Houston Texans game right now on television as they play Detroit. It has been many years since Texas has ever experienced a winning team and on that note, “I would have to ask have they ever had a winning team?” If you are in Houston it easy to want to jump on the Texans band wagon after a 9 – 1 season. Sonic is passing out free cherry drinks after the winning game on Tuesdays.
My twenty year old daughter showed up at my home last night. I had been forewarned that this way happen by her boyfriend a few days ago. He has plans for Thanksgiving without her.
Last night I thought I was going to get lucky because my daughter and her boyfriend were having car problems. I told the boyfriend that was a sign from God that they shouldn’t go anywhere. I had told them, “I am going to bed!” Well the door bell rang at ten p.m. after the phone rang over and over. I pretended not to hear it in my sleep. Sometimes while practicing tough love things do not always go as you would like but it is important to step back and look at your situation. I didn’t have any choice in the situation because I will not create a scene in front of the children nor anywhere near my home. I had told her she had better bring a hospital bag and a diaper bag full of supplies because she is do (today) but I knew that wouldn’t happen. In the mean time she looks ready to pop with her baby due beore today and on her final stretch until birth. If she doesn’t have the baby at my house the doctor plans on inducing her on Tuesday at 10:45.
I do not want her to have the baby here because she needs to hold full responsiblity for the birth and after birth. She doesn’t have diapers, clothes and baby essentials ready. It would be terrible if she goes in labor and I am responsible for everything because I am the only person there to protect the baby to make sure “she” has what she needs. Can you imagine having a baby with nothing ready? I mean not even one pack of diapers at home nor a baby bottle washed in the cupboard for emergency if for some reason she cannot nurse. I do not want to be in that position. It would be a very easy way out for my daughter.
We are going to a friend’s house for Thanksgiving. I made my home-made egg noodles which we all love. I have a special request from the family every year to make them. It is a simple recipe but a tiny bit time-consuming because for two days you are drying the noodles as you flip them every hour or two with a spatula while shaking flour on top of the noodles if needed. The kids like the egg noodles so much that I have to guard the ones that are drying.
Homemade Egg Noodles (Serves 6 – 8)
Ingredients
4 cups flour
4 eggs
2/3 cup lukewarm water
salt, pepper to taste
bowl
rolling pin
pizza cutter
large pan
In large bowl combine 4 cups of flour, 4 eggs and 2/3 cup of lukewarm water. Mix the ingredients and knead the dough into a ball. Cut the mixture in half and set the other ball to the side. Sprinkle flour on your counter. Place the dough on top of the flour and start rolling out 1/2 of the dough with your rolling-pin until the dough is flat like a pie crust. While rolling out your dough occasionally sprinkle flour on the top of the dough. This will help your dough not stick to your rolling-pin and counter. Make sure your dough is not sticky and if it is that means you need a dusting of flour on the top of the dough. Hint: Also check underneath the dough.
Now cut strips of noodles with your pizza cutter. The strips should be approximately 2 – 2 1/2″ long and 1/2″ wide. When finished gently use a spatula to lift the noodles and make sure they are separated. You may need to sprinkle a little flour on top again.
Let dry for an hour or two and gently flip the noodles over. Repeat process for approximately two days.
When you are ready to cook the noodles, boil 4 cups of water for the noodles. You can also substitute chicken broth for the water. I like to split the water and chicken broth 1/2 and 1/2. Example: 2 cans of chicken broth and 2 cups of water. The noodles cook quickly and you may need to adjust and add more liquid. Add salt and pepper while cooking and enjoy!
Once again, Happy Thanksgiving. Your Shoes My Shoes, Here Comes Pixie Pie, and Run Hide The Monster Is Outside by Barbara Bloom e-books are on sale @ amazon.com for you @ only .99 for the holiday weekend.
November 21, 2012
Inspirational Story: Survival with Troubled Teens
My Shoes – My Story by Barbara Bloom
It took me years to figure out why life doesn’t come with a book of written instructions. The answer is really simple: we are writing our own life journals. As we walk each day through our own trials and tribulations full of happiness, joy, pain and sorrow, we are writing the book.
I am a mother to four young adult children. I have been through perhaps my greatest trial with two troubled teenage girls who are now troubled young adults. The parenting challenges I experienced raising troubled teens consisted of extreme psychotic issues, drug dependencies, and troubles with the law. For years, I felt like I was a passenger on an out-of-control freight train as my daughters drove the train full speed ahead while they sat laughing side by side in the front engine compartment on a one-way path of destruction. As a mother, I was always striving to get one step ahead of the troubled girls, but shamefully I was always one step behind. I lost all my friends due to living with troubled teens. I was forced to live a daily life that was crumbling apart as my heart was being mentally and emotionally ripped out. I was always making excuses for my family and the girls due to the chaos in my home. I begged daily in-person and on the telephone for anyone to help our family. My only therapy was when a stranger would listen, and I lost my identity due to the trauma I was experiencing. We didn’t have family to step in and offer help. The only family we had to count on in crisis was my immediate family, which consisted of my current husband, who is stepfather to the children, one son, and the two troubled daughters. It was lonely and depressing going through my day-to-day life and sometimes I felt as if we were a freak show, full of problems that had no explanation. I remember how hard it was sometimes to just catch a breath. A neighbor once brought flowers to my home after one of my daughter’s overdose nightmares, and I will never forget the thoughtfulness she showed.
I have learned how to treasure simple moments while experiencing trauma. One survival skill I practiced when my life was out of control was using simple positive affirmations. As I pushed forward, I thought to myself, When the going gets tough the tough get going. I would remember, Where there is a will there is a way. Daily, my only way of survival was to practice and process very simple positive thoughts. I had to talk to my inner self. I remember telling myself that I did not have time to give up, and, while pushing forward, to remember that tomorrow would be a new day. This is one way I would grab my inner strength, for I knew something was always better than nothing. My wounded soul was constantly open and I was barely able to refuel my energy for each day. When living with chaos you do not have a clear mind and the pain feels like you are experiencing death seven days a week.
Sleep was just a word back then. Who could sleep knowing their teenager had gone missing and you had no clue how to find them? It would have been very easy to find the girls if they were at an innocent sleepover. I taught them right from wrong and I was the parent that always asked many questions: who, what, where, when and why? I expected the questions would be answered, but instead the girls walked out the front door without permission or crawled down from their second story bedroom window in the middle of the night. I cringed each time I had to call the police to file runaway reports. I would find myself cleaning my girls’ rooms when they went missing, searching for a piece of evidence of where they might have gone. I would even wash their clothes and dig through their pockets just trying to come up with a small clue. I drove for miles and miles, which turned into hours and hours around the city. I even posted flyers many times. Kinko’s store knew us so well they gave us a discount on copies.
While my children were running around doing as they wished with their oppositional defiance disorder, they put their own family into danger. I was subjected to a society of people who were mixed up in crime as I went into unfamiliar neighborhoods and spoke to strangers looking for my daughters. Sometimes the girls did not return for days, which at times turned into weeks or months.
When you are a parent of troubled teens you live moment by moment. You are constantly subject to the circumstances created by another person’s actions or choices. The girls chose the part of society where fast money talks combined with sex, drugs, and thugs. I sought out many treatment plans for my daughters. They both went through the processes of behavior hospitals admissions, psychologists, doctors, law enforcement intervention, and special assessments in school. The problem with the situation with my girls was that they didn’t care about anything anyone said or recommended; they only cared about their own choices. After the age of eleven, they would be missing 98% of the time. Neither one of them stuck around for a doctor’s script for medication or for counseling.
The following is my survival story and how I made a change in my life. When you reach the point that you can admit you have lost all control and you have tried everything within your power to help your child’s situation, it is time to reanalyze your life. I came to the point where I had to hand my problems over to God and be willing to accept that there were no immediate answers. I had to accept there may never be an answer.
When you can honestly admit to yourself and to everyone else that you have a teenager who is totally out of control, this is a huge first step.
The second step is when you decide to quit giving excuses for your teenager’s actions to everyone, including yourself. You need to make a sincere promise to yourself that you will back off from the teen’s problems and let your child suffer the consequences that follow their action or crime.
The third step is to acknowledge the chaos of your daily life while recognizing what it is caused by and realizing that you have lost control of your own life. The extent of your problems and the amount of time that you have been living in this situation creates your next step.
I finally understood that my only option was tough love.
It was my time to move on as a parent, wife, mother and human being. I knew that every step I would take would require two steps forward and one step back. I needed to recognize that taking my life back would require baby steps. I also had to admit to myself that I could fix some things in my life, but I wouldn’t be able to make my life as it had been before.
I had to be willing to accept the unknown of the task of practicing tough love, for this was a new path I would be taking. It was time to walk away as I didn’t want to be considered an enabler in my troubled teen’s situation.
One day I woke up and declared independence and vowed that I would not be a victim of somebody else’s circumstances anymore. I was tired of the violence, chaos, and emotional stress, and it was time to let go. I decided it was time for me to take back the control of my own life, for I knew that if I didn’t my own children would destroy me as they were destroying themselves. I would have to look deep within myself and find a higher power. There were only two things I could count on to make change in my life: myself and the two shoes I walked in to get through this. I had to learn how to practice tough love for both my daughters. My daughters are now nineteen and twenty-one. They are both very much alive, but due to the way they continue to live, I am still forced to continue practicing tough love. Both young adults continue to be involved in a dangerous society.
An interesting aspect of their story is that neither of my two girls ever hung out together. They both walked separate paths in different directions while on the same kind of troubled journey. Seldom did they ever meet on the streets through their daily lives. When they did, it was only by coincidence.
In 2011 my life changed drastically again. I had to adopt my two grandchildren, both under the age of five, a boy and a girl. I had to drop the “grand” in grandmother as I stepped into the role of being the children’s only mother. With the grace of God I have accepted my life the way it is. It isn’t an easy task. I have experienced domestic abuse from a prior marriage and the double trouble of two out-of-control teenagers. But I am a survivor. I tend to push myself forward by taking on different adventures and experiences since I have come out of my own mentally abusive shell. I can tell you some things in life do not ever go away, but they do get better when you are taking control of your own choices.
A little bit more about the new me:
I volunteered for the position of homeroom mom in the Pre-K this year. I joined MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers), and I have gained many friends since I started practicing tough love. I joined a group called ICX (International Culture Exchange), and this year I decided to learn how to operate my own website. I write a blog on smartscarlet.com. In the past two years, my husband and I completed the process of becoming a Foster Licensed Home, and I became an author of my first children’s book titled Your Shoes My Shoes. The book is written in rhyming verse, wonderfully illustrated, and a fun journey all about shoes, “For we all love shoes.” If you like Dr. Seuss, you will enjoy Your Shoes My Shoes. It is available on Amazon.
More than anything, my traumas and triumphs have taught me that by staying positive we can do this together!
You can follow me on twitter @ smart_scarlet.
Black Friday Sale: We All Love Shoes!
Black Friday Sale! A rhyming shoe book the family will love @ only .99 cents. Paperback available. Perfect stocking stuffer for the Holidays! *Five Star Reviews* Your Shoes My Shoes by Barbara Bloom
http://www.amazon.com/Your-Shoes-My-Love-ebook/dp/B0086CUV08
Only .99 cents: For all girly girls that love the color pink!
Here Comes Pixie Pie: Her Special Day At The Rodeo Fair: Barbara Bloom: Amazon.com: Kindle Store. Black Friday weekend special @ only .99 cents. Paperback available. Perfect stocking stuffer!
November 19, 2012
A New Baby: One Born One Expecting
Splitting my writings between my current daily family life which is pretty much normal and the down and dirty real life talk about my young adult children is a struggle. I have lived many years in a dark society due to both of my daughter’s choices and actions. I have been practicing tough love for a few years for two of my daughters. One daughter I have had to take tough love to a higher level because I am protecting two young innocent children which I adopted in December 2011.
I am going to share my next struggle with you. As I practice tough love I have been presented with another extreme challenge.
When I woke up yesterday morning November 18th, 2012 I held two family titles for a total of six people. A mother to four young adults and a grandmother who plays the mother role to the two grand children which I adopted as her own in December 2011. When I went to bed last night things changed drastically. A baby was born last evening by my adult daughter which is the mother of the two children that I am now responsible for and my responsibility is to protect the children emotionally, physically and mentally.
I am talking about my twenty-two year old daughter which I have had to practice tough love with a higher level. This is my daughter that has lost all rights to her children in December 2011 due to not following through with things she needed to take care of for two years. Her actions changed two children’s lives forever not to mention my own life. I live by facts in black and white. I do not ever assume. I may have an intuition about something but I make sure I collect all my facts before I even take on an opinion. This is where I hold my pride because that is a skill I have learned how to acquire.
My daughter talks as if she has changed many of her ways since the adoption which was only 11 months ago but she doesn’t have a right to have a baby so quickly after not being able to take care of her two first-born children. We haven’t seen her in over a year and she lives in a different state which definitely makes this situation a little easier because of distance. The hardest part is a new baby is affected. I have the baby’s half siblings with me and I am now a grandmother to a child I cannot see because the mother’s actions are not healthy for the children I am raising.
I would love to write and pretend everything is normal but then I wouldn’t be real. I wouldn’t be me.
It definitely would be easier to pretend that everything is normal in my life because I am a happy-go-lucky person. I am true to myself, my friends and family. In my heart and soul I do not like living with the negative or wrong choices that others make. I am a mother who is forced to live two sides of the fence because I have to protect the babies I am raising but I am also a mother to a troubled young adult.
I have another daughter twenty years old expecting a baby before the end of this month. This is the other half of my double troubled daughters which I also have to practice tough love on a daily basis. She is not ready for a baby. She can barely take care of herself. I have learned to be careful when I choose to step in and help because if you step in too early to help you can end up picking up all the pieces and you will now have all the problems dropped at your door step.
That is another story for another day as now I need to sort out my emotional current situation. I received new-born pictures by email today.
An innocent child has been born. A new baby boy. This is the only important fact which occurred on November 18, 2012.
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. I love my readers and look forward to hearing from you. Life at a moments glance is not always what it may seem. I understand how hard life is while we walk through our journey of many unanswered questions.
Sincerely,
Barbara Bloom
November 18, 2012
Drugs And Addiction: The Aftermath
For the days of tomorrow
Feel full of sorrow
As my heart Wilts with pain
Longing for my loved one back
As my tears roll down the drain
She was born last
She was as sweet as she could be
She was a lot like me
Her blue eyes are now hollow
Her body is frail thin
Her heart is cold
Just nineteen years old
As the story goes
It was a drug of her choice that she chose
When she fell
She touched the tip of hell
Now an outcast
Her mind isn’t stable
Her body isn’t able
She is mentally lost
Her sanity was the cost
She’s lost within herself in a world only she knows
She is full of laughter where ever she goes
Far from one’s reach
Not ready for someone to teach
Not wanting to hear anyone preach
Looking straight into her eyes
I am looking at my daughter in a disguise.
Written By: Barbara Bloom
My Little Hero: Spidey Boy 3
I can fly
Two fingers drawn on each hand
Knees bent with his back slanted at a stand
I can fly says the little man
Watch me he says as he puts on his suit
He then slips on a Spiderman boot
He grabs his mask and asks for help
Not finding the leg hole he lets out a small yelp
Spiderman’s twin has now been transformed
A little Spiderman has been born
All the villains in the town have been alerted and forewarned
He jumps up on the end table and says mom look at me
He flies over to the couch making sure everyone will see
Standing tall with his head tilted at an angle
With his imaginary webs in his wrists set and able
Shooting them across the table
He believes he has the power to solve it all
He is cute as a button standing only three feet tall
I have to tell him be careful and not to fall
A little boy three
Spiderman he wishes to be
He loves to help those in need.
Written By: Barbara Bloom
Believe
Loving
Loved
Been loved
Never better than the man above
My shoes my story
There is no glory
It is a moment in time
With only survival in my mind
A breath
To breathe
Staying on my knees
Talking to our God above and telling myself to believe.
Written By: Barbara Bloom
