Motherhood

Little Jack Horner

Introducing “The Young Jack Roberts”

Little Jack Horner sat in the corner
Eating his Christmas pie,
He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum
And said “What a good boy am I!”

This ryhme has a great history, that includes Horner, a thief, being rewarded greatly. Horner was obviouslly rewarded unworthily, inspiring the political rhyme and Horner’s own political taunting, “what a good boy am I.”

What do Little Jack Horner and Little Jack Roberts have in common you may ask? Both the theif Horner and the misbehaved Roberts think that they are “good boys” when in actuality they are far from it. And of course they also share the name Little Jack.

The young Jack Roberts lives in another dimension, just like ALL other children. This was demonstrated wonderfully during the President’s press conference, announcing the nomination of his father, John Roberts, as a candidate for the Supreme Court bench. Click here and scroll down the page to the bottom left hand column and click on “Young Jack Roberts steals the show” to see the video clip. SO FUNNY!

Now, I am not about to rip on Jack Robert’s parents or nanny or whoever raises the kid. My kids have done far worse than this to embarass me (O.k., maybe not really…as they have never shared air time with the President of the United States and turned it into a circus), but if you are a parent, you will know what I mean about being embarassed. Kids can be outright humiliating, no matter how good of job you are doing.

I will say this; I would not even attempt to put my four year old in front of cameras in such a stuffy setting that late at night. I can only think that the reason Mrs. Roberts was talked into it was for “political gain”. She had to know that she was setting herself for a disaster. According to critics, Jack’s misbeavior really will make people “sympathize” with Roberts. The “people in the know” have said so much in the positive towards the child’s bantering that you would think that they put Little Jack up to his misconduct.

So, what am I trying to say here? I don’t know. I am just rambling today. I had a rough day yesterday. Remember the linger longer that I attempted yesterday, at the urging of my husband. Yeah, well, I couldn’t do it! I left 15 minutes into it when he never showed up to help me with my three children who live in another dimension! He was in taking care of his church duties and I was left trying to figure out how to fight my way through a Disneyland style line to gather three plates of food without either dragging my three young children with me or leaving them unattended. Well, I never came up with an answer and I left all upset feeling like a loser because I cannot emotionally handle a stupid potluck.

An announcement was made to let people with small children and the elderly get in line first, but I guess the majority of people in our congregation feel they fit into those two categories. (Or, their manners go out the window because after years of conditioning that the only way to get any food is to get at the front of the line, so, they don’t regard other people) I’m not even mentioning how I felt about being forced to leave my jellyroll pan of brownies, two loaves of french bread, and two large fruit salads behind that I had worked on for two hours the day before, ONLY to go home to eat ramen and toast.

Hey, I have an idea. Maybe it isn’t the children who live in another dimension. Maybe it is all the rest of the world that doesn’t understand that children are wild animals in the process of being tamed? Would you leave three starving and wild tigers in a room full of frantic starving people to fend for themselves while you stood around waiting patiently to get them some substance? NO! I guess I spend enough time with the wild tigers to understand them. I guess I also understand, me, their trainer, enough to know that I can’t even attempt to do certain things with them….such as, a late night press conference, or a linger longer full of inconsiderate people. In fact, if I had it my way, I would tap into their dimmension completely…it’s got to be a lot less stressful.

Animals & Crackers

Shopping at the warehouse
It’s been a while. Sorry. Haven’t felt like writing much. I could use bipolarism as an excuse, but for more than one reason, I won’t. At least I will get one entry into my April archive.

A few weeks back, a good friend of mine and I ventured out to one of our favorite places….Sam’s Club. (We don’t have a Costco anywhere near here or that is the warehouse I would prefer.) Between us, we had three children under three year old. We joined the rest of the desperate homosapiens at the demo tables. Unlike other species, we patiently waited our turns at our chance for little pieces of pizza, smoothie demonstrations English tea cakes, and the chicken salad.

After Sophia complained of the taste of the chicken salad and spit her remaining portion into my napkin, the sweet elderly demo lady offered our girls just a plain Club cracker. They each were delighted as she offered them one for each of their chubby hands.

A few aisles down from the frozen foods, Sophia was trailing behind. She dropped her cracker on the cement floor. The lady standing close by her, yelled out to me that he cracker was now “dirty”. Dirty is a relative term. When you have three children, dropping a cracker onto a floor does not constitute dirty…..if it was a sucker and had been dropped onto the floor of the van and retreived with lint, remnants of cheerios, and other foreign objects then it would be “dirty”. Even then, if I had a bottle of water close by to wash it off, the sucker could still be salvagable(depending upon my childs’ desperation for it and my need to please the child at the time).

So, like any other responsible mother, I yanked the cracker from Sophia’s hand. I said, “No no, Sophia, it is dirty.” Sophia looked at me perplexed, but luckily she is my mild mannered child, and she didn’t yell out, “Mom, you always let me eat my stuff of the floor, it’s not that dirty, just brush it off.” As soon as we got around the corner out of earshot from the very paranoid mother I handed the cracker back to Sophia and said, “Here you go.” Letting her digest the cracker was much easier than hunting for a garbage can, and besides…it’s good for her immune system.

Space Mountain

The Greatest Ride on Earth

When I was about twelve, my whole family together took our first trip to Disneyland. We were one of the greatest spectacles for the tourists. My mom made my dad buy each of us a red sailor cap with our name embroidered on it. This made it easier for her to spot all of us when she wanted to do her quick count check …you know 1,2,3,4,5,6,7..o.k they’re all accounted for. We could have been our very own Mickey Mouse club.

This trip was so much fun. We were all having a blast, until Space Mountain. LG says I can’t tell you Space Mountain until I o.k. it with certain unmentioned family member. Until then, let me just tell you this…it was one of my life’s most traumatizing experiences.

Alright, lucky for you, my family all have the same open-book policy as I do. LG’s family is definitely more reserved, but I honored my husband and got the unnecessary permission from my mom.

So, we all got to Space Mountain. My mom was not in her BEST mental state. She was recently recovering from a mental breakdown and a drug addiction. She was addicted to Valuim for years upon her doctor’s perscription. We thought that Disneyland would be a great celebration, and it was, until Space Mountain.

All of the family waited in line anxiously and we boarded on the Space Car in an orderly fashion. I was the lucky one to board in the back seat next to my mom. She got in first, meaning that when the ride was over, I would have to wait for her to exit to the right before I could make a departure.

If you have never been on Space Mountain, let me inform you. It is building where they have squashed a rollercoaster inside. The coaster is supposed to resemble a ride in Space and it goes very fast and loops up and down and all around. The room is completely dark; the only thing that one can see are the flashing lights (these add to the effect of traveling through space). Throughout the ride, you feel like you had better not reach out with your hands, or you may just lose a limb to a traveling car on another track.

From the get-go, my mom was doomed. She experienced sensory overload of some sort. Ten seconds into the ride, when I should have been like any other kid enjoying the ride, I was quite the opposite. All I wanted was for the ride to be over. My mom was wailing at the top of her lungs. I can’t even describe what she sounded like, but it was something like this, “AHhhhhhhhhhhh, AHHHHHHHHHH, AAAHHHhhhhhhhhhhh, Ahhhhhhh.” over and over again. When I caught a glimpse of her between flashing lights, all I could see was her hands clenched onto the bar for dear life and her face full of real terror.

I kept screaming, “Mom, mom, close your eyes.” “Mom, it is just a rollercoaster.” I tried to comfort her by patting her arm, but this is hard to do when a rollercoaster is traveling at the speed of light. My mom’s screams of terror never stopped throughout the ride. I wanted so badly to make her alright, but I also couldn’t stop thinking, “Why out of the 8 other members of the family, was I the one to sit by my mom on this particular ride?” I was just wishing that Dad would appear magically and switch me places.

Well, the ride was soon over. There is one bonus to Space Mountain. Most people feel it a rip to stand in line so long for a ride that lasts less than 60 seconds. On this day, that 60 seconds seemed like a lifetime. As we slowed down and approached the landing deck, my mom still didn’t stop. She had literally checked out! She was still hanging on for dear life and repeatedly screaming, “ahhhhhh, ahhhhhh, ahhhhh.”
It was as though my mom was possessed.

The people waiting in the line for their turn to board looked perplexed. They couldn’t tell whether or not my mom was joking around. Was she trying to scare them from riding the ride? They were staring. By this point, I had given up on calming my mom down, and I tried not to look all these hundred of linegoers in the eye. I didn’t know what to do.

The family all unboarded, but my mom was not going anywhere. Therefore, I had no choice but to sit and wait for something to be done. Now, everyone knew that my mom wasn’t playing around. All of the potential riders looked at me in pity. The mother of these seven Mickey Mouse club members had truly lost it. My dad shooed the clueless Space Mountain worker to the side. My mom was always teeny (5 feet tall) and my dad big and strong. He leaned over and gathered up my raving mother in his arms. He carried her off to the side. I was finally able to unboard, and was totally immersed by my brothers and sisters wondering what in the world I had done to mom. I explained that she had just lost it. I don’t remember much else after that, except for my dad got my mom a drink and luckily we didn’t have to go home early. My mom came back to her senses at some point.

I know, this story and the last Pomp and Circumstance aren’t funny at all. I have no idea why I am even writing them, except for the fact that out of tragedy can come humor. If you made this incidence into a sitcom, I am sure that people would laugh. I can look back and laugh at both situations. I came out of these scarred, but stronger. And, it is fun to laugh at what life throws your way. My mom experienced a nervous breakdown on Space Mountain, and I was right next to her to witness it…how many people can say that? I bet not one other person in this world.

Tippery

The Hungry Leprachaun

Abigail is obsessed with things from Ireland. Her Kindergarten teacher has turned her into a leprachaun lover by telling her story after story about her trip to Ireland. Last year, all that Abigail wanted from Santa was a leprachacun. Poor Santa had to shop on e-bay to find one, only for LG to say that Abigail was going to be disappointed that it wasn’t a real living leprachaun. (Santa isn’t that good) The obsession is so strong that I was teasing Abigail’s teacher today that I would come and hunt her down if Abigail ever decides to convert to Catholicism, just so that she can be more like the Irish.

About a month back, when the kids and I were at the school library on Terrific Thursday, I pulled a book from the shelf that I knew Abigail would love, The Hungry Leprachaun. (It is out of print so there is no need to link to it) Abigail humored her father a few days later by repeating the story word for word.

Well, this week is National Reading Week. On Wednesday the children at Abigail’s school were allowed to wear a costume that depicted their favorite storybook character. I tried to convince Abigail to dress up with something we had in the dress up box. Laura Ingalls, Professor McGonagall, even Pippi Longstocking would not do the trick. She only wanted to be Tippery, the hungry leprachaun.

On Tuesday night, we made a trip to Wal-Mart to buy the leprachaun hat. Abigail thought that Tippery wore green pants and a purple shirt. I figured that we could dig up a purple shirt somewhere.

On the way home, there was some confusion as to what Tippery did wear exactly. I, being the overzealous perfectionist that I am decided to stop in at the school. I ran up the library hoping that Mrs. McGee could help. The library was locked.

I then became desperate and did the unmentionable, I made sure no one was looking and I snuck into Abigail’s classroom to take a look at the book. To my relief, I made it in and back out to the car with no one catching me.

The rest of the evening I was stuck coming up with The Hungry Leprachaun costume. I tell you, mothers do a little of everything. On Tuesday night, you would have thought that I was the seamstress. I found some leftover material and elastic and sewed the elf looking hat. I dug through drawers for the purple pants, purple socks and green shirt and spent the rest of the night nicking and tucking.

As I dropped Abigail off at school the next morning, she looked just like a leprachaun. When the Safety Kid told me that she looked cute, Abigail turned her head back at me with a satisfied look. I can’t quite place what it looked like but it was a mix between her dad’s goofy smirk and a leprachaun’s smile.

Indeed, I am a good mom. Even if she converts to Catholicism I will still love her just the same.

Feeding Time

Oh no….the bottle is propped!

A short while back, a friend and I were at Chik-fil-A for an evening out. Once in a while, when our law student hubbies are too busy to eat at home, we will go enjoy ourselves while the kids play. Chick-fil-a is where the responsible moms eat. The food is relatively healthy and the playland is safe, but most of all, it is CLEAN.

My friend and I were delightfully surprised when three other women from our church walked in. These women consisted of a single 19 year old, a pregnant 22 year old, and a 25 year old new mother. The new mother had the baby with her. We all delightfully exchanged hellos and chatted about the weather and other trivial girl things (like where the best places are to shop).

I was obviouslly the most experienced mother in the bunch. After I gathered up my three little monkies, I overheard a disturbing conversation. It went something like this:

“Do you know that girl that just had the baby?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe her…her baby was only three weeks old and she had her bottle propped.”

For those of you that don’t know what bottle propping is, see the picture above. The picture shows my FIRST child, Abigail, at 9 months old, enjoying her bottle, even when it was propped.

Now, you may not see the humor in this story, but I found the judgemental comment hilarious. The reason: the woman that “propped” her child, was not a FIRST time mom. The infant that had the bottle propped was her second child. All of these other women in my company: first time moms. They had no idea how many times I have propped a kid with a bottle. (Trust me, it gets more common with the more children that you have)

So, I butted my way into the conversation with,”Don’t talk to me about that, I am a firm believer in propping.” I swear you would have paid money to see the shock in their faces. One chimed up,”Oh, but not when they are so little.” I said, “I don’t know about that. Why does it matter, they are getting fed?”

The responses: “They can choke.” “All the magazines say.” “It is my bonding time.” “They need to look you in the face, it helps their development.”

At this point, I zipped my lips. (I know, it’s a rare occasion.) What I wanted to say is this,”My FIRST child was propped all of the time, and I will bet money on the fact that she will be SMARTER than any of your children. She never choked. We still bonded. And, the people who write the magazines DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN. If they had children, than they would know that you can’t write a magazine telling other people how to parent. Every single child I have ever met has different preferences. Two of my kids were happier to be propped. Come and talk to me when you get a few more kids.”

And by the way, I had a bottle until I was seven, and according to the magazines, I would be a woman with screwed up teeth and a speech impedement. Well, my only speech impedement is I usually don’t know when to keep my mouth shut. And trust me when I say, I never had braces and my teeth are just fine. Maybe if I still had a bottle I would be more succesful with keeping my mouth shut!

Hairbows

70’s style Hairbows

One part of having daughters is dealing with all of their hair things. I think that since we had our first daughter, not a holiday has gone by that we haven’t been gifted some kind of hair thing. If you are a man, you have no idea how many hair things exist in the world. Whenever we recieve one, or the same one again, I always ACT very grateful and I guess, deep down, I have mixed feelings. I am so happy that I won’t have to buy them myself, but bummed that I will now have to keep track of this new one. Even though I am the queen of organization, I have two things that cause me problems: tupperware and hairthings.

At our house we go through barrettes like nobody’s business. Every time I turn around, one of the girls has lost some kind of hair thing, leaving their hair in disarray. I have recently converted to headbands. Headbands seem a little bit harder for the girls to lose. The bad thing about headbands is that at any given chance, Bella likes to pull them out of Abigail and Sophia’s hair, along with a handful of their hair. When we wrestle Bella down to get the headband back, we provoke her agression to the point that she snaps the poor plastic band in half. Leaving all girls involved in complete hysteria.

Well, this blog entry is mostly for my sister Renee, but you may still enjoy it. Renee is 24 today.(and the mother of 3 – crazy) Happy St. Patrick’s Day and Happy Birthday to you, Renee. Renee reminded me of the “Hairbow” story the other day. She informed me that after the years and years that she has listened to the story, she still didn’t know what kind of hairbows we were talking about. I promised her a picture, so here it is. The poor child grew up in the 80’s and completely missed the cool look of braiding two ponytails on each side of the head, and then tying them up in a loop with one of these beautiful fuzzy hairbows.

Now, for the story. It really isn’t that funny, but it shows how desperate I was for entertainment as a child. My sister Shannon and I shared a room growing up. The room was small and sported a set of bunkbeads, a play kitchen set and a dresser. We had hours and hours of fun soaking spaghetti noodles in water atop our play stove. We really thought that we were cooking those noodles, and we loved to eat our homecooked delicatessen. (YUCK!)

Another thing that we loved to do was play Barbies. What girl doesn’t? We would dump out the suitcase full of barbies onto the floor and then proceed to take turns picking the items. We would go through the barbies, then the dresses, other clothes, and end off with the accessories. I don’t know what we did about the shoes with no match, but I am sure that most of the shoes were missing their match.

When these two activities got old, Shannon and I used our imaginations to come up with something a little more interesting. The best game involved the ceiling. If you were around in the 70’s, you know exactly what I am talking about when I say that we had popcorn ceilings throughout our house. Even though Renee wasn’t born until 1981, even she knows what I am talking about. We, unlike many others, never rennovated those popcorn ceilings. If it wasn’t for the fact that we sold the house to someone else, we may have been able to call our house true vintage with its remaining ceilings.

Well, as ugly as the popcorn ceilings were, they were great for one thing, and maybe only one thing. (did you know that they are full of asbestos?)Popcorn ceilings and fuzzy hairbows are a perfect match. They cling to one another like a sweater and a dryer sheet. I don’t know how my sister and I figured this out, but I am guessing it had something to do with me being in my sister’s top bunk, taunting her that I would throw her hairbow over to the alligators down on the floor.

My sister and I would spend hours and hours gathering up all the hairbows in the house that we could find, and then tossing them off the side of the top bunk. We perfected the throw to the point that we could make a hairbow stick every time. As time went on, the game progressed into seeing how far out we could throw the bows. One days our brothers got in on the action, and they showed us how to jump off the bunk and retrieve the bows on our way down.

Shannon and I were never as good as my brothers at retrieving the bows. Most of our hairbow sessions would end with us hollering for their assistance at getting the last few stray ones down. If the brothers weren’t available, I might take one last try at it. Shannon would not dare. If all else failed, we would hunt down the broom and hit down the ribbon. Retreiving the ribbons off of the ceiling were some of the few times that we ever got to play in the snow. We lived in the sunny Southern California, and dancing around in asbestos popcorn ceiling flakes made us feel like we belonged in the movie, A White Christmas.

It’s too bad that fuzzy hairbows are out of style. I guess it is O.k., my girls could never have the fun that we did with them anyway. We don’t have a popcorn ceiling, and coming down on our hardwood floor would not be pretty. And, they don’t have any brothers to retreive the hard ones for them.

Mother Hen

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Poltergeist

It seems that I have blogged a lot about my dad, but I have yet to tell you about my mom. Both of my parents made for my interesting upbringing. I have been to many therapy sessions and talked about my family, but writing this blog has been the best therapy yet. I have found myself laughing about my family, instead of blaming them for my issues. Yes, we were unorthodox and disfunctional, but as I write, I realize that we had some really good times, and I was taught one very good coping technique: laughter.

My mom provided many of the good times. When I was younger my mom was the life of the neighborhood. We must have gone through a box of sandwich bags every day of the summer. She would keep us busy for hours filling them up and throwing them at the neighbor kids. Why didn’t we use water balloons? I don’t know. Probably because sandwich bags were always on hand. Sandwich bags were also much easier to fill….dump them in a bucket of water and Wala…full to the rim.

I have many stories about my mom. My mom’s most apparent feature is that she considers herself to be every child’s mom. She has no qualm about laying a lecture down any time any where. She was always the one cheering the loudest in the stands at the sporitng events. Were those cheers for us kids? Yes. Of course. But, they were also for our coaches, “Good job coach.”, our other teammates, “Way to go Monica.”, the umpire, “Nice call ref.”, and last but definitely not least, the other team, “Good playing Oceanside, you are on your mark today.” I am sure that you could also hear my mom cheering on all the fans in the stands, rallying them up, “Let’s go parents, let’s go.”

When I was in 6th grade, I had finally almost recovered from the 4th grade situation. Then, my teacher chose to show Poltergeist. I, being the sensitive child that I was, as well as sheltered and naive, couldn’t sleep for weeks after viewing the movie at school. I was scared out of my pants. I had nightmare after nightmare. My mom was getting sick of me coming into her room and waking her and my dad up. She started to grill me for details. I never wanted to give them up because I knew exactly how my mom would react.

My brothers, on the other hand, knew exaclty what I was afraid of. By some freaky coincidence, during the same time period, my sister and I had this porcelain clown in our room. I couldn’t even look at it after watching Poltergeist. I was terrified that it would come to life and harm me. At nights, I would gather up every bit of courage that I had, grab the clown, smothering it in my pillow, and as quickly as possible I would deposit it somewhere else in the house, usually in one of my brother’s rooms. I would run back and close the door behind me, feeling mighty accomplished that the clown would not be able to harm me, just my brothers.

Well, after a little while, my brothers figured out what I was doing. They loved to sneak back in our room and leave the clown next to my bed. In the middle of the night, after one of my nightmares, I would wake up to a real nightmare next to my bed.

After weeks of this torture, I finally gave in and told my mom what we had seen at school. She reacted just as I thought that she would, but I was so down-trodden by this point, I didn’t care. First, my mom, gave me a lecture about how I should have told the teacher that I wasn’t allowed to watch movies of that nature. Second, she tried to give me the pep talk that it wasn’t real and it was nothing to be afraid of. Third, she got rid of the clown. And, fourth, she marched down to that school’s principal’s office and gave her a piece of her mind.

Well, of course, the teacher was in trouble. She had to apologize to the class and the parents. A few of the other children got in trouble with their parents. The class then came after me….they knew exactly whose mom had made the stink. Mother Hen of course….she wanted to protect all the children in the 6th grade from that filthy trash of a show. What my mom did or didn’t realize is that she had succeeded at making me an outcast for another year of my life. She did the right thing, but I can only say that because now I am also a Mother Hen. I have to say that if I am ever faced with the same situation, I will want to do the same thing, but I probably won’t just because of the scars that I still carry from the 6th grade.

Poor Bambi

The Classic: Bambi

On Monday, I took the kids to Sam’s Club. I ever so slyly put the newly released Bambi in the bottom of the buggy (that is what they call a shopping cart in TN). I even turned it upside down, so that if the kids did see it, tbey wouldn’t know what it was. (I wanted to give it to them for Easter from the Easter Bunny)

I succeeded at hiding it from them for about 15 minutes. As soon as we stopped at the snack bar, it was over. Abigail, caught eye of it, picked it up, and announced to her sisters: “Look you guys, mom is getting us Bambi.”

About an hour later, after I had managed to put several other things in the buggy too (including Abigail and Sophia), I started to feel guilty about the money I was going to spend. I put several things back, including Bambi. The girls were sorely diasappointed, but I told them that we would come back and get it when dad was with us.

As we were going to check out, Abigail and Sophia glued themselves to the TV monitor that was playing Bambi. (Aren’t those Sam’s Club people smart?) It was at this point that all of my guilt subsided. (I knew that I would have to buy Bambi, if I ever wanted to get out of the store) I told Abigail to get Bambi off the shelf again, and after the girls cheered for a second or two, we were off.

Buying a new movie is HEAVEN to a mother. When we got home, the baby went down for a nap and Abigail and Sophia proceeded to glue themselves to our TV. I was able to get some cleaning and other household duties accomplished without any interruption.

Well, later, as we sat down for dinner, I asked Sophia what she thought about the movie. I fully expected some kind of reaction. I was totally traumatized by the show when I was little and Sophia is my most sensitive child. I was totally taken off guard when I heard her response.

Sophia said,”I like Bambi.” I happily said,”Good, what was your favorite part?” I thought that she would say Thumper or Flower the Skunk. No, this is what my twisted child said,”My favorite part was when Bambi’s mom died.” What in the world?!?! In a worried tone, hoping that she could redeem herself somehow, I asked her frantically, “Why was that your favorite part?” She said,”I just like it because I don’t want Bambi to have a mom.”

Who knows? Maybe my-three-year old was going for the reaction or maybe she needs some serious therapy. Maybe Sophia should grow up to be a hunter and join the Bambi Killers Club. I could only conclude one thing from the conversation, Disney has a conspiracy against mothers. First, they force us into buying their movies with their very skilled marketing. Second, mothers are allowed a false sense of relief when the kids happily sit and watch a Disney movie for hours on end. Then they pump anti-mother doctrine into our kids…think about it:

Disney killed Bambi’s mom. Cinderella’s step-mom is EVIL, and who knows what happened to her real mom. Belle doesn’t have a mom. Mulan wants to be like her dad. The only conversations between Ariel and her parents were with her dad. Sleeping Beauty’s mother poisons her with an apple. Tarzan’s mom got eaten by a tiger. Nemo’s mom…. well, you get the picture. Poor Bambi. Poor Mother of Bambi!!

Loads and loads

Say Downy!

You can’t tell from this picture, but here lies at least eight loads of clean laundry that I have to fold today. I don’t want to admit it, and I am sure that I will get some kind of mean comment for even posting this, but this is a common occurence around here. This is the result of being too busy to actually tackle the laundry correctly, and I am a freak about keeping it all clean.

Now, unless you have three young children or more, you have NO idea about the huge vastness of laundry that I face on a constant basis. I feel like I am accomplishing something by just keeping it all clean, and it at least gets folded and put away on a weekly basis. (Usually, AFTER the kids go to bed so that they won’t sabotage my folding by undoing it all when they jump on it…..as shown above)

When I was a teenager, whenever my friends would be at my house waiting on me to get ready, they all knew that a “SOCK HUNT” was inevitable. My friend, Kristen, named the ritual. The ritual was this: go out to the garage, wade through the mound of clothes on the garage floor (usually at least 20 loads of laundry) and try to come up with two matching socks that Alice could actually wear.(The socks came in all shapes and sizes in this pile because every family member’s laundry ended up in the same place…on the garage floor) This ritual could take anywhere from 2 minutes to 30 minutes. You can’t even imagine the high that we would get when one of us would find two matching socks in a close vicinity.

My mom just could not keep up, and I understand, she had the same mentalilty as I have adopted… at least it is clean. My dad would get so frustrated at times, especially when our piece of junk washer was broke again. He would take 2 or 3 of us kids to the laundromat for a five hour task. We would fill the back of the station wagon FULL of anything that needed laundering in the house. We children would have the joy of, on the way, trying to find a place to sit among the stinky laundry. We then would get to unload it all at the mat, sort it, and fill every available washer and dryer. This may not sound like fun, but we LOVED it. We would get some treats from the vending machine, and feeding those quarters made us feel like we were at the arcade.

The best part of going to the laundramat was knowing that when we got home, everyone would be forced to finish ALL of the folding. Then for a brief hiatus we each could get socks out of our drawers instead of going to the garage floor for a “sock hunt”.

Soccer Moms

Sophia and Bella with Soccer Balls

Soccer moms aren’t what they used to be. Soccer has become something that parents do so that they can put it on their own “parental resumes”. “Oh look at us, we are good parents. We drive our SUV’s to pick up our well-dressed kids from their state-of-the-art daycare. Then we cart them to their private tutor, piano lessons, and soccer.” Whatever happened to actual interaction between parent and child? Now, we pay everyone else to teach our kids the things that we are too busy to do oursleves? Whatever happened to playing soccer so that the family can spend time together?

Soccer started for us on Monday when we went to buy Abigail’s equipment. She wanted the pink ball but the black and white was $4 cheaper. I told her that if she would get the black and white one, I would let her color it with my Sharpies. She always wants to draw with my “off-limits” permanent markers and she totally fell for my ingenious manipulation. Sophia brought her ball to me on Tuesday and asked if she could color hers too. I had to let her. (see the pic above)

Abigail’s first practice was a blast. It was typical of any other like it across the country. You could spot the coach’s kid: she was the only one in full uniform. Then there were the three moms who are so insecure that they kept to their little clique…they are the mom’s of the girls that are the friends of the coach’s daughter.

One of the cliquee moms must have been coerced into letting her daughter play. You could tell because her daughter was the chubby kid who kept interuppting her mom’s “mommy” time on the sideline. She just had to tell her mom that she didn’t like soccer and wanted to go home. Her mom would just embarassingly shoo her daughter back out on the field.

Abigail was the “girly girl” of the bunch. She is taller and faster than the rest of the kids, but doesn’t dare go for the ball. She just kept running out in front of the rest of the herd, looking pretty. LG says that she will be really good at soccer if we work with her to be more agressive. I agree, but, surprisingly, part of me wishes that we could afford ballet instead of soccer. Although, Abigail loved it. She is too young to care about the competitive stuff. She just likes to be with the other girls and squeal as they run.

Bella hated soccer yesterday because she wanted a piece of the action, and wasn’t allowed on the field to play with the sister who she idolizes. As for Sophia, she was traumitized by a fall at the playground. LG and I were pushing her back and forth on this sliding pulley. She hung on to it with her feet dangling 3 feet from the ground. At the end of her longest ride, LG let her plummet to the ground. Sophia screamed in disbelief. She face planted. The poor girl trusted her dad to catch her and all she got was a scraped forehead, a broken ego, and a mouth and nose full of dirt.

I later questioned LG as to why he didn’t catch her. I assumed that if you are a parent trying to let your child hold on as long as she can, that you keep a constant eye on her grip. I assumed wrong. LG said, “I didn’t see her hand slipping, I was waiting for her to tell me when she was going to let go.” He should know better. The kid is as quiet as her dad, if not more quiet. Poor Phia. I don’t think she will ever want to go back to the soccer field.