parenting – Page 48 – Writes for all Mommies

children, humor, kids, marriage, mommyhood, motherhood, parenting

Black Belt Mommy

02/02/2012 WFAM

Here’s a few things you should know about Mad Dog. He’s handsome, incredibly smart, generous and he works a lot of hours. For him long work days are like that he has brown eyes. They are simply a part of who he is.

As I mentioned earlier, he is also an incredibly smart man. He knows that raising two boys, especially the two that I have, is quite a challenge. Since he isn’t available to help out more, he has always encouraged me to enlist the help of babysitters.

I hit the jackpot last year when my hair stylist offered up to help me with the boys on her free days. I was surprised because I had shared honestly about my boys and she volunteered to help me anyway. She finds their extreme energy and strong personalities adorable. She joined in the routine quickly and has been a tremendous help with the boys and especially karate. If you’ve noticed, there have been much less posts about traumatic incidents at karate since she’s joined the ranks about a year ago.

Quite frankly, I owe it all to this sitter. She is a lifesaver.

Now, her lifesaving efforts will soon be over. She starts a new job, will have less free days and won’t be able to lend a hand during the week.

Unless they award black belts to stressed out Moms for their wine consumption, I don’t see how this will end anything but badly…!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Fortunately, with boys as awesome as mine, I can get through anything stone cold sober and with great aplomb. Well, maybe not entirely. Does aplomb have a sarcastic variety?

children, humor, kids, motherhood, parenting

Oops, He Did It Again

30/01/2012 WFAM

T.Puzzle has consistently been getting good and sometimes even great reports from school. I think it is reasonable to hope that while T.Puzzle may not get a perfect report every day, the awful reports are firmly planted in the past.

Ha. Ha.

First, it started with a report that he hit someone on the playground. The details were sketchy but witnesses placed him at the scene of a physical altercation. Bad report number two had to do with him pinching a fellow student over a book. And finally, this is the report that warmed my heart the most, he sassed the teacher (on the upside he had zero incidents of physical violence this day–I’m so proud). Oh, this isn’t the first time Mr. Man has sassed his teacher in this particular manner. It went down something like this:

Teacher: “T.Puzzle it’s not time for the Lego center you need to stop playing with them.”

T.Puzzle ignores her and continues his Lego building.

Teacher: “If you don’t stop right now, you will not be allowed to play Legos this afternoon.”

T.Puzzle: “It doesn’t matter, my Mom is picking me up early so I won’t even be here for centers.”

This was a true statement. Sometimes I pick him up early so he can get Full Speed from school with me. From now on I may be picking him up early to take him to “Mommy and Your Soon-to-be Juvenile Delinquent” classes.

He’s a work in progress…

children, humor, kids, motherhood, parenting

‘Left Out’ Has How Many Syllables?

27/01/2012 WFAM

Full Speed was invited to a birthday party this weekend. T.Puzzle is having a hard time comprehending that he isn’t invited to it. I’ve tried explaining that only the kids in Full Speed’s class were invited and not their brothers and sisters. He can’t let it go.

“Why aren’t syllables invited?” he asked.

“Siblings just aren’t, sweetie,” I replied.

These are the hard knocks of a boy’s life.

children, humor, kids, motherhood, parenting

Santa Shops the Clearance Bins

24/01/2012 WFAM

T.Puzzle asked me if Santa knew everything. I told him Santa knew a lot but maybe not everything.

He pondered this a moment.

“Mom, Santa doesn’t know everything. He gave Full Speed a Hotwheels video for Christmas and we already have that one.”

This was an extremely valid point. What I wanted to say was, “Well, maybe Santa was stressed out trying to remember every, tiny holiday detail and was trying his best not to disappoint anyone and keep all of his commitments to his friends, family and children’s schools. Maybe he realized at a last moment he needed to keep things equal between you and your brother and had forgotten to get a video for Full Speed. Possibly he was frazzled beyond belief and happened to find a Hotwheels video in the Walmart clearance bin for three dollars and he took it as a sign that Full Speed was meant to have that video as a stocking stuffer and he didn’t have time to cross-reference Full Speed’s entire video library before purchase.”

Instead I just said, “He probably wanted Full Speed to have one he could take on trips with him.”

Thankfully, T.Puzzle left it at that.

children, gratitude, humor, kids, marriage, motherhood, parenting

No Question About It

21/01/2012 WFAM

When Mad Dog traveled for work this week, it actually went fairly smoothly at home (please, no one tell Mad Dog this). The boys did go over the hyperactive deep-end one of the evenings he was away. Blissfully, it was my monthly book club meeting and my incredibly patient babysitter suffered the brunt of their antics. So while the week had been good, it was not without its bumps.

Additionally, my cell phone was broken which effectually ceased all my communication with Mad Dog. While he is a champion of text-returning while away on business, connecting by phone with him is nearly impossible. There was an unexpected bonus to this. I was not subjected to his thinly veiled ‘suggestions’ on how to keep things in order on the home front. He often will do this cleverly in question form.

Examples:

1. Did the boys help you bring in the recycle bins?

Translation: Sure hope you remembered to put out recycling.

2. Was the bank busy when you were there?

Translation: Sure hope you remembered the check I asked you to deposit.

You get the idea.

These kind of questions used to push my buttons. Now, they only kind of do and mostly I find them to be humorous.

Fortunately for me, as Mad Dog has evolved, so have his questions.

Examples:

1. How do you manage to look younger every, single day?

2. How did you get so beautiful? (this one is my favorite)

At the end of the day, there is no question about it. I sure do love that guy.