Self-Esteem Boosters

Conversations like this happen in my house ALL THE TIME. 

“Please put that hair clip back in the drawer.”

“But I wanna use it.”

“Put the hair clip back.  That’s mommy’s clip, I don’t want it broken.”

“But I wanna use it.”

“That’s mommy’s only clip, you have lots of clips in your room you can use.”

“Only grown-ups use this clip?”

“Yes, grown-ups use those clips in their hair.”

“In your hair?  You’re a grown-up mommy?”

“Yes, I’m a grown-up.  And I use that clip in my hair.”

Five minutes later my daughter lays the broken clip down next to me and smiles, adding “You have pretty hair mommy.”

Perm Press Cycle – Hot Water

My two-year-old picks her butt.  I’m sorry, I have to put it in print so that by the time she’s 15 and asking me to drive her sorry butt somewhere for the 100th time, I can respond with “I’m sorry, you picked your ass one too many times when you were a toddler, I can not drive you.”

My son made the profound annoucement today that he knew what a “crotch” was……………”it’s right in the middle of your butt”.  Is there a need for commentary with such a statement?

Back to my daughter and her bum picking…………..

So she has her hand in her diaper more times than I care to count in an hour.  This “funny” little trick of the trade has started to affect my sleep schedule.  By 2am every night she manages to loosen her diaper enough to allow a steady stream of pee to run out the diaper, through her pajamas, and onto the sheet.  This generates lots of crying and screaming (from my husband) and results in the two-year-old Buddha being thrown in our bed between us due to the fact that last night’s sheets are not yet out of the dryer.

I’ve been looking for alternative ways to tackle this latest of hygiene parenting nightmares and have contemplated moving her to a nudest colony……where this shit, pun intended, won’t matter.  But I’d have to attend some type of exercise boot camp before even entertaining that extreme option……..and it’s probably not a good time to think about removing extra donuts from my diet with this stress and all. 

But enough about me.

I’ve considered purchasing those Hulk superhero over-sized boxing gloves to maker her sleep in, figuring there’s no way in hell those are fitting down her shorts.  I’ve thought about old-fashioned clothe diapers, seven layers of pants, a water bed, suspenders, and panty liners.  I’ve also thought about looking into hand-made toddler spandex to keep the diaper snug in place.  But then she’d want to wear them out in public and it could get a little awkward when questioned about her training schedule for the Tour de France and the fact that she’s only scooting around on a tricycle……

All options considered, I think I’m going to have to wait this one out and hope this “phase” doesn’t end in a lifetime of supply of OxyClean and college laundry baskets full of pee-pee sheets.  Because there’s only so many times I’m going to buy the “had one too many Killians” story from her…mark my words!

Until then, move over honey……..make room for Buddha and her stinky hand while I throw a load in the washing machine.

Face Mask Required

My son is an artist.  Yeah, he’s six-years-old, and most would say that it’s premature to “classify” a kid, but the kid is an artist.  He would choose to color, draw, paint, or craft over anything under the sun.  And he’s good.  Damn good.

Tonight he took his artistic talents in a new direction.

I found him in his sister’s room sketching.  He was diligently pencilling away and the draft appeared to be very detailed.  My interest was immediately peeked when he looked up with devilish eyes and said “mom, you want to be like on my team, I’m running a spy mission op”. 

The only appropriate answer to that question is “let me see that paper”.

I took the sheet of paper and realized he had mapped out the second floor of our residence with detailed pictures hanging on walls, rugs on floors, and family members staged in their last where-abouts.  The main focal point took place in the upstairs bathroom where my three-year-old daughter is shown “taking a dump” on the toilet.  And those were the words used by my son, not me, thank you very much.

When I questioned who were were supposed to be spying on, he immediately answered with the poor victim dropping a #2 on the throne.  Apparently the strategy was to target the weak and helpless.

I innocently questioned whether or not he was going to let her wipe her ass before bombarding her with Nerf gun pellets.  His response was “well, yeah, the smell alone with kill me if I don’t”……yet another confirmation that no biological testing is needed on this kid.

So what’s a mom to do in this predicament?  Choose a side?  Divide the fortresses between good and evil? 

I decided to take the “strategy” into my own hands.

I told my son that I would stake out my daughter in the bathroom to see where her next move would land her.  Once she had taken care of business and moved on to her next Polly Pocket quest I directed my son to the bathroom and conveniently shut the door behind me as he dropped to the floor from the vapors of dung yelling “mom she’s not in here, I think I’m going blind from the smell”.

Know thy enemies my son.

Luke………….I am your mother……………………….

Pay no attention to the body on the floor…

My daughter played dead today.  

Feel free to re-read that first sentence.  I don’t plan on changing the verbiage. 

Yes, my daughter played dead.

I walked in on my five-year-old son and three-year-old daughter partaking in Wrestle-Mania 500 today.  Upon seeing my instant look of “pissed-off-ness” my son jumped five feet to the couch and my daughter literally slumped to the ground and laid on her side with her eyes closed tight in the middle of the living room.  While her eye closure was convincing, she still needs some work on eliminating the wedgie picking before I buy that phony act.

I thought about fake calling 911 just to freak them both out, but I figured they’d turn that into tomorrow’s new game.  “Let’s call 911 after I throw ketchup all over your legs”.  I would probably offer the paramedics a hamburger with that same ketchup upon their arrival.

After I nudged the “victim” to make sure she was alive, she started to uncontrollably giggle to the point where a stranger may have been convinced she was having a seizure – yet another future potential acting talent.  You’ll see her starring in roles on ER and CSI in twenty years. 

When I asked her why she was laying on the ground she told me that she “fell”.  When I asked her why she didn’t get up right away she responded with “you couldn’t sees me down there to yell at me for wrestling”.

Bottom Line – this kid is going to have to seriously work on differentiating her playing dead act with her invisible act before she gets to Hollywood.  Otherwise, she’s destined to end up on daytime television.

(And this stage mama isn’t about to let that happen!)

Three Flu Shots Please!

We dragged the kids in for their annual cryfest flu shots!  Talk about fun times at Ridgemont High.  Our doctor’s office schedules the flu shots for Saturday mornings throughout the fall and kids go in smiling and come out screaming back to back between the hours of 9-11am. 

So Saturday we landed in the waiting room of the doctor’s office with about a dozen other poor working parent saps.  My three-year-old daughter took the opportunity to start her campaign for President within the 12-square-foot jail cell.  Within ten minutes time she had told everyone that she went to preschool, that she was “free”-years-old, that she loved her sister and brother, that anyone should feel free to talk to her parents (whom she named by first names) if they wanted to, that she was going to have another sister or brother because she was “allowed to have just ones more”, oh yeah……and that her left Dora shoe was “weally” bugging her because the velcro wouldn’t stay down.  I thought about inviting them all to Christmas dinner by the time she got done.  Hell, they were probably farther ahead in the “get-to-know-you-talk” then most of our extended family members.

After a painful 24-minute wait and three rounds of ballot casting for the future Miss President, our names were called.  One by one the kids made their way to the doctor’s office.  My five-year-old took his spot on the doctor’s spin stool, Madam President pulled out three books, and my youngest started unraveling the white paper spool that sits on top of the exam table.  All was right with the world.

Then the nurse came in with her appetizer tray filled with the three needles.  She all-too-quickly announced that she would be administering them from oldest to youngest.  My five-year-old immediately started crying.  He “didn’t want a shot”.  He “didnt’ want a shot”.  In case you didn’t get it the first two times……..he “didn’t want a shot”.  So I spent the next five minutes battling him to pull his pant leg up high enough to get the two-second shot over with.

In the meantime, my three-year-old, who typically doesn’t even react to a shot, starts announcing that she doesn’t think she likes shots.  She “weally doesn’t want a shot”.  She thinks we should just “go wite home and get some chicken nuggest and fries”.  We took her input into consideration and continued with the man-holds.

I finally managed to get my five-year-old’s pant leg down so the nurse could poke the needle in…….he immediately began screaming as if his foot had just been run over by a mac truck. 

My three-year-old, who knew she was next, started battling my husband to get to the door.  She probably got it the worst because she was so tensed up.  She got her shot and then joined in the screamfest with my son, who apparently had not realized this his shot was in fact over. 

My youngest had been quietly standing by the door throughout all this drama.  In retrospect I think it was her survival technique - that we may in fact forget about her shot altogether.

While I get the two screaming kids who’s shots are OVER and DONE with, my hubby grabs the youngest for her dose of good times.  She immediately starts kicking, grabbing for the exam table paper spool and pulls that out over her head.  I’m trying not to laugh at the sight of both her and my husband battling the paper, the tray, the needle, and the ever-clever Charlie Brown band-aids that have been opened and prepped to slap on the war wound.  It’s not like anyone would have heard my laughing over the ear-piercing screaming that WON’T STOP anyway.

I missed the final poke……..someone must have been dry heaving in my direction from the millimeter needle that was inserted in his/her thigh twelve minutes ago. 

I do know that the time came when they were all done and they were all SCREAMING!

My son broke his chain of screams with the announcement that he “hates nurses” and “nurses are terrible” and “nurses are the worst thing in the world”. 

My daughter chimed in with the fact that she wanted three suckers.  Apparently the previously promised “one” sucker was a deal made under false pretenses.  This ordeal surely was worth not only a butterscotch lollipop, but also a strawberry and mystery sucker as well…………..how could I argue?

We managed to get coats on everyone and the screaming down to a constant moan prior to exiting the exam room.  We made our way to the front desk and the kids cried for specific flavors of suckers, Dora and Batman stickers, as well as free-trial Dove soaps. 

When we walked back through the lobby the few people that had already met the future Miss President and were still waiting noticed her changed demeanor and empathetically nodded in our direction.

As we walked through the parking lot to the car I let her know that “if you’re going to go into politics the people need to know your human………..and humans cry”.  (This statement was obviously intended to go over her head and make my husband laugh.)

Her response with a stone-cold face:  “I should have gotten four suckers”.

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

I think my daughter was high today.  Okay, so maybe she wasn’t high.  But she is on antibiotics…….maybe I’ll blame that.  Whatever she was smokin’, all I know is that the entire day everything she said was done in “sing-song” mode.  At one point she was telling me that she liked her princess book and it turned into a version of Son of a Preacher Man with “princess book” and a lot of “yes it is…..yes it is”. 

At one point she made up an entire song around the alphabet song with inserted words that associated with anything she saw in the room.  So it was like “A, B, C, D, E for everything, G for grandma and grandpa and grandma and grandpa and grandma and grandpa, H, I, J, K, L, M for mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mmmmmmmmmooooooommmmyyyyyy, N”………and so on and so on.

After a while I thought about taking a swig of her antibiotic so I could join her mood, and more importantly her stage show.  No need for it though, because by noon I was humming and by mid-afternoon I was singing right along with her.  Back-up singing, solos, duets – you name it, we were taking requests by dinnertime. 

We ended our day in Songland with the ever-popular Sound of Music soundtrack with numbers like “Do-Re-Mi”, “Maria”, and the appropriate night time lullaby “So Long, Farewell”.  I ended up having to pull the weight on the big finale, as doped-up girl drifted off to sleep before I could get out “the sun has gone to bed and so must I”.  I was really going for the heart of the audience with that one……hoping to prompt some teary eyes.  But alas, like all good antibiotic drugs, the stage appeal tapered off and we had to get back to our ordinary, drug free lives. 

Just remember, in the words of Barney the purple deranged children’s dinosaur……..”I love you.  You love me.  We’re a great big family.  With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you…….won’t you say you love me too?”

I’m Back!

This is an update for all of my avid readers out there – all four of you.  You’ll be happy to know that I have been slowly gathering my stories from the last couple months and will begin to post them on this sarcastic, Mindless Mom blog site.  They will probably be out of order for a while as I uncover the many locations in which I have been writing, scribbling, and crying………..   

Enjoy!

Mama Needs a New Pair of Shoes

My sister was in town over the holiday weekend.  She brought home a lemonade stand kit.  For those of you unfamiliar with just how insane marketing has become – this would be a cardboard box that contained plain white cups, a generic sharpie market, and a yellow gingham tablecloth. 

The box itself showed a picturesque pitcher of sweet lemonade w/ perfectly labeled signs and “25cent” marked cups.   But the kit itself had no lemonade packets, no glassware, no table & chairs, no megaphone, no miniature elves that help make the lemonade – that stuff would not fit into the 4″ X 10″ box.  The box was just selling an “idea”……….or 3 hours of my sister’s life that she won’t get back.  I figure she paid $2.25 an hour to sweat her ass off – worth every penny, I’m sure.

I digress.

My five-year-old son and my sister set up shop after I delivered additional dixie cups and the lemonade – yes, the actual lemonade.  What can I say? The self-appointed management team on this little business venture was a little shaky.  They set up shop on Labor Day in 85 degree heat w/ sweat-beaded foreheads, politician smiles and lots of traffic on grandma and grandpa’s main drag. 

Business started out slow.  Early on, a few of my sister’s friends made their way from the backyard pool (where I planted myself) to the front sidewalk to make a quarter purchase to help boost the five-year-old entrepreneur’s morale. 

But within thirty minutes time, cars were pulling over to the side of the brim and hopping out for the old-time pink lemonade.  My son was hollering “Lemonade Stand” and sales soared.

I’m sorry to report that I signed a non-compete disclosure, so I’m unable to share with you the secret ingredients of the prized beverage.  But if you were to take a guess, you might start by thinking about an “Old Time” when you lived in the “Country” and drank “Lemonade” – preferably “Pink”.

While rumor has it that my son drank half of the potential profits, he still made out with a heavy cigar box full of dollar bills and change.  When totalled up, that little shit made $12.25!  I don’t even think the kid was out there an entire hour!

Forget garage sales, I’m sending each of my three kids out to local street corners w/ a pitcher of lemonade and a sharpie marker every three-day holiday weekend.  I figure my youngest can start w/ $1.00 shots at the end of our driveway while my three-year-old convinces some neighbor kid to set up, hold, collect, and clean up her princess version of the stand.

All I’m sayin’ is……….mama needs a new pair of shoes!

Whack a Mole

My husband and I blessed my sister-in-law with the presence of our family of five at her annual summer outdoor party yesterday.  We definitely upheld our end of the entertainment value with two children falling off of her swingset slide (and screaming bloody murder), our youngest scattering sand from the sandbox throughout the yard for hours on end, and my husband and I engaging in a hot dog eating contest in our tent seats, all the while pretending we didn’t know who’s kids were screaming. 

But everything my family did yesterday pales in comparison to the showstopping abilities my brother-in-law showcased just past dinner time in the front yard. 

After dinner time a dozen kids were playing in the front yard – football, volleyball, bikes, chalk, you name it – it was pulled out of the garage and being used. 

Five girls (age range 3-13) were bumping the volleyball back and forth to each other in a circle.  A few moments into the game one of the girls missed the ball altogether and it landed right in the flower bed.  She leaned over to pick it up and noticed something moving in the mulch.  Oddly, she didn’t scream, but instead told the other girls to come over because there was a “cute little mole” that they just had to see.

Within minutes, the mole was named “Joey”.  I will call the “naming” girl Angelina Jolie from this point on, as she apparently had intentions to adopt the mole, move it to a third-world country for its own safety from the paparazzi, and fly back to the States to update us on his conditions regularly.

In the meantime, my five-year-old niece had raced to the backyard to tell my sister-in-law the news.  A few moments later she rounded the corner, her facial expressions telling that she wasn’t sure whether her daughter’s story was legit or not. 

A few leg kicks from the mulch pile confirmed her disgust.  She called to my brother-in-law as she quickly announced the fate of Joey to the girls – bye bye.

Angelina Jolie looked heartbroken.

My brother-in-law quickly rounded the corner of the house, half-listened to the mole story, went straight to the garage, picked up a metal shovel and squared himself to Joey. 

I thought this may have been a good time to tell children under the age of 12 to back up or at least turn their heads.  Apparently I was off on this one or didn’t account for my brother-in-law’s Bud Light intake, because instead he instantly whacked the mole on the head.

Angelina Jolie gasped.

The younger kids giggled. 

The first whack didn’t get the job done and was followed by a second smack/thud.  No one questioned whether or not the second whack took care of business.

My brother-in-law lifted the mole onto the shovel, and walked him across the driveway.  Everyone paid their last respects by fake-gagging at the sight of him just before he was tossed into the trashcan.

What I’ve taken away from this experience is the following:  Who needs pet fish and a toilet to learn about the circle of life?  Whack-a-Mole on the front lawn takes care of that life lesson all on it’s own – just be sure to invite the neighborhood kids over before you start the game.

Read from Left to Right

I sat back and watched as my three-year-old attempted to help my five-year-old cheat on his eye exam in the doctor’s office today.  I probably should have been telling her to be quiet or something, but I was too busy laughing like a hyena in my head to say anything audible.  The nurse took care of it for me by re-directing the questions to my son and saying “and how about you tell me this letter and your sister can tell me the next one”.  Who knew his kid sister had half the alphabet down already? 

What I learned from today’s annual doctor check-up is that this may be yet another event that is best with the two of these kids separated. 

They quietly debated who was going to get their blood pressure taken first, giggled uncontrollably as the doctor inspected each others behind, and then turned the “hop on one foot” assessment into a battle of the sexes, barreling into the doctor’s exam table face-first as the event’s grand finale. 

Don’t worry, neither one of them were hurt.  They were much more concerned as to when they would receive their sticker and candy sucker versus a table shot to the shoulder blade.

By the time the eleven pages of required school forms were filled out, the two of them had had just about enough of the friendly doctor and began the chant “are we about done yet?”, as they hung on me like chimpanzees.   By the seventh form, I thought about saying it out loud myself. 

When the doctor handed me the papers, I chuckled as I looked down at half of the sheets reading “N/A” or “Not needed at this time” or “OK”.  I think I could have administered the exam at home and completed the forms with more detail. 

That being said, I thought about saving myself a trip to the doctor next summer.  I pointed to a letter on one of the pages and turned to my three-year-old daughter and said “step back and cover your right eye”…………………….