Tag: kids


May
2018

Being a Parent is 90% about being roasted

categories: Blog, Kids

That was a tweet on Twitter.  I wish I could remember who so I could give them credit.  I totally agree with this tweet.  And since I have a few budding comediennes in the family, I get roasted quite a bit.  But it’s OK, I actually find it pretty hilarious – most of the time.  There are also those times though that are just plain embarrassing.  These are a few of my roasts:

Dinner with family visiting

My sister came in town for a visit with her family for a weekend and she had never seen our house before.  They were going to stay the weekend at our house.  Now, you know if you have kids that it’s scary to have people stay over night b/c you don’t really know what all is lurking in your kid’s rooms.  I knew we had to do a thorough deep clean.  I cleaned all the bathrooms – even the showers!  We finally cleaned the kid’s rooms and this wasn’t me just telling them to clean and them shoving everything under the bed and in the closet.  I knew that wasn’t going to fly with adults staying in their rooms.  I actually put on my hazmat suit and went into each of their closets – the horror.

It took days maybe weeks to get the house into decent shape for company.  I even cut the glitter glue out of my daughter’s bedroom carpet.  She managed to spill half a bottle of glitter glue on her carpet.  Don’t ask me how because they aren’t allowed to have any glue in their rooms.  But this glue had dried into a hazardous shape.  I mean it basically dried into a knife and like it would tear your foot off if you stepped on it.  Luckily, it was in a corner of a room and I had placed a book on top of it so it wouldn’t tear my daughter’s foot off.  However, company was coming and what if they picked up the book unknowingly and ended up losing a toe.  I couldn’t have that.  So, I got the good scissors and hacked away at the carpet.

My daughters were watching me do all this and apparently taking notes.  My sister and her family arrived and we pretended that our house is always this clean even though inside we were feeling like visitors in our own home – lol.  The only thing amiss was that there were gnats circling our heads occasionally.  We must’ve thrown so much junk in the trash cans that gnats flocked to our house from around the globe.  We probably had Costa Rican gnats here.

Anyway, all was well until the last night we had dinner at a nice restaurant and I made the mistake of mentioning cleaning.  My daughter’s eyes lit up and she was like now that you mention cleaning my Mom went crazy cleaning the house before you came!  She spent weeks!  She was running around like a chicken with her head cut off.  I really wanted to clamp a hand over her mouth at this point but that would’ve been rude.  She continued.  She even cut stuff out of our carpet and tossed everything out of our closets!   She kept telling us why do we have to be such big pigs..  Yada Yada Yada..  Ya, I definitely got roasted like a pig that night.  But I was laughing pretty hard in an insane put me in a straight jacket sort of way.  :-p

Craft time

The one time I made the signs for the Girl Scout cookie booth but they turned out awful and I told everyone my daughters worked really hard on them.  My daughter was in the background with a shocked look on her face like she didn’t know what I was talking about.  lol.  Ya, totally called me out.

Mother’s day

All the moms got invited up to the school for Mother’s day tea at my daughter’s preschool and the kids had prepared an All About My Mom worksheet for all their moms.  So sweet, right?  The teacher read them out loud that day for fun.

Just to give you some background: I was very pregnant with my third daughter at the time.  And my mom had been in town visiting for a couple of weeks to help out.  So, the question on the sheet of paper was – what is your Mom’s favorite thing to do?  So many cute answers – my mom loves quilting, my mom loves cooking, my mom loves reading to me, my mom loves … well, me.  All the moms are oohing and aahing – oh, how sweet.  Isn’t that precious!  Then, we get to me and my daughter had written – my mom’s favorite thing to do is…  Watch TV.

Really?  You couldn’t have put laundry, or dishes, or all the other things I do – maybe b/c I complain too much about those? – lol.  I admit I was watching alot of TV at the time because I was trying to entertain my mom without talking since I was a hormonal very pregnant person.  As soon as my mom started talking about how I should take Livatox (liver cleanser – you’d have to know my mom), I would discreetly turn up the volume.  But usually I don’t have a whole lot of time to watch TV.  Needless to say, everyone in the room was laughing – some a little too hard. :-p  Ya, definitely roasted that day.  :-p  Or as my daughter likes to put it: Roasted, Toasted, ….   And Grilled.

Homework

Then, there’s the time my daughter’s teacher roasted me.  Whenever I would help my daughter with her homework in Kindergarten or First Grade – can’t remember which.  I stopped helping with homework early on!  My daughter’s papers would come home with, “Read the Directions..” or “Needs work!”.  Whenever my husband would help her with homework, the papers would come home with, “Great Job!!!” and a sticker.  Or, “Your daughter’s really progressing!” and a sticker.

It was kind of demoralizing and a running joke in our house.  I still occasionally put in my two cents with homework though but I’m not really sure if I’m helping or hindering.  :-p  Common core is not my forte.  Like, why should we have to explain in words why 2+2=4?  I loved my daughter’s answer for one of these math questions.  It was an addition word problem question and she answered it: 3+2=5.  Then, the follow up question was: How do you know this answer?  And she wrote: Because I read the words or (becs I red the wrds in her first grade spelling).  I was like Yes, Exactly!!!  Self explanatory!

What do you want to be when you grow up?

My one daughter roasted herself at her preschool graduation, then me.  Her preschool put on a big celebration where all the kids were supposed to think about what they wanted to be when they grow up.  The teacher took pictures of them with their chosen dream occupation and they played a slide show at the graduation.  The kids all were holding signs like, “Engineer”, “Doctor”, “Astronaut”, “Scientist”, and there’s my daughter with her sign that says, “Checkout Lady”.  And she even had this exhausted, miserable expression on her face as if she’s been dealing with difficult people all day – lol.

The room erupted in laughter and I could tell she felt bad but she played it off.  Later, she asked me why everyone was laughing at her and I told her, “well there’s nothing wrong with being a checkout lady but it’s just that people don’t usually think of that as their dream profession, it’s more like a necessary profession.”  She said, Mom aren’t you going to have to be a check out lady?  B/c at this point, I had been staying at home with the kids for 10 years.  I was like well I don’t know  – I felt bad but I played it off as well.  :-p

I know there are a million other times I’ve been roasted.  Those are just the ones that I can think of in the moment.  Marshmallows do taste better roasted though don’t they?  I think so.  Though I do kind of fantasize about the day when my kids are older and they have kids of their own and I get my chance to roast them.  I imagine being kind of a Betty White (as opposed to Betty Crocker) grandmother.  Though I’ll use some of Betty Crocker’s products to make the grandkids some yummy treats.  But I do tell the kids to please invite me to their family dinners on occasion so I can do an impression of each one of them when they were little at the dinner table.  It would just make my life to be able to come full circle with that.  :-p  Although, I may not get invited back.  Whatever – It’d be worth it.  :-p


Feb
2018

Pet Cemetery

categories: Blog, Kids

Having animals is a great way to teach your kids about death.  So begins our foray into having pets with kids.  When the kids were little, I would think there is no way I’m adding to my workload by having pets and small kids.  Having small kids is so. much. work.  Besides our own house looked like a hamster habitat with tunnels and slides everywhere, shredded toilet paper all over the floor, etc.  Don’t ask how the toilet paper got shredded all over the floor but small kids like to shred stuff – like whatever they can get their hands on.  Styrofoam is definitely a favorite.  Kids: “Mommy we are having so much fun!  We made snow in the living room!”.  Me: “Oh for the love of …  “.  That stuff is so hard to vacuum up – you feel like you are in a snow globe with all those pieces flying around – an angry mom snow globe.  But now that they are getting older and able to take care of things a little more (in theory), I figure let’s try it.

It has definitely increased my workload or my wordload because I’m constantly having to tell the girls to feed them and water them and clean up after them but the little furry animals are so worth it.  It’s hard to have a bad day when you see a little furry animal nibbling on a piece of apple – too cute.  And I get to hold a little furry animal while watching a movie – instant stress reliever.

One of my daughters is pretty allergic to cats and dogs so we needed to get something non-allergy inducing.  Therefore, our first foray into having pets was fish.  We thought my daughter definitely can’t be allergic to fish and we were right.  So, we got 5 of them and in about a month we were down to only one.  I remember my daughter coming downstairs one day laughing hysterically and saying that Flashy, her favorite fish, was swimming upside down and waving Hi to the rest of her fishy friends.  She was having so much fun!  I was like uh oh.  She was devastated when I informed her that Flashy was in fact dead.  I mean, it was a full on telenovela.  With three girls, there’s alot of emotions in this house.

I don’t remember being that sad when my pets died when I was little but maybe that was because we had so many.  Everytime one died, it was like – eh – I have 20 others (we lived in the country).  Maybe we developed that toughness over time though because, it seemed like every morning one of the cats got killed when we turned the car on because they crawled up inside the car to keep warm.  It was pretty traumatic.  Also, we did things differently back then.  If they got sick, then my dad put them out of their misery.  He was the executioner.  :-/  My poor dad.

Fish were so much work though and they weren’t cute and cuddly so I thought we have to get something furry next. We decided to go with hamsters.  We went to the pet store and I had my daughter take a big whiff of the hamsters to see if she was allergic.  I had her inhaler and benadryl ready.  All went well.  No hives and no asthma.

But we did have a Saturday night live skit going on at the pet store.  The sales lady really did not like hamsters and said everything she could to dissuade us.  We learned from her that:

1.) Hamsters stink – like, really stink. It’s not just the cage- the rodent itself really stinks.

2.) We were worried about allergies- lo and behold, everyone in the store she used to work at was allergic to them..

3.) Hamsters bite- she wouldn’t let the kids touch them unless they are wearing heavy duty gloves.  Their teeth are big.

4.) She says-how about a big rat? Those are better and more friendly too.  Or a hedgehog.  Or a sugar glider- we don’t sell them but they are supposedly really fun.  Or a ferret.  Or a guinea pig.  Or anything but a hamster.

5.) I asked if they sell alot of hamsters because I was concerned it would be gone by Christmas.  My daughter had a specific one she liked and it wasn’t possible to put it on layaway (😛).  She said yes they sell alot but people usually bring them back after a couple of weeks.😬

So, needless to say, we bought the hamster anyway with lots of trepidation.  It never bit us. It was the sweetest hamster ever.  I was expecting it to turn into Godzilla any day but it never did.  We named her Flynn.  It did however end up dying a week later.

We kept it in the basement just in case my daughter ended up being allergic to it.  And one of us left the cage open.  It got out and one of my girls discovered it was missing in the morning.  They were searching all over the basement for it.  I was getting ready and told them I’d be down in a second.  I  just said in passing that it might have gone in the pipes down there or something.  My daughter was like hmmm pipes and then it looked like a light bulb went off in her head.

She runs back downstairs and then after a couple of minutes I hear alot of screaming.  Oh great, why’d I have to say pipes.  Well, they followed all the pipes in the basement and decided that it might be in the sump pump then they decided it probably wasn’t.  My other daughter looked in there and said I think it is.  They ran and got their Flashlight Friends (little stuffed animals with flashlights on their bellies) and shined them into the sump pump.  There was Flynn floating on the top of the water – dead.  Ugh.

We gave her a proper burial the next day.  I was not going to fish it out of the sump pump at the time.  Though they wanted me to take her out and give her mouth to mouth – I had to assure them that she was definitely dead.

After a couple of weeks, we thought we’d get another hamster because we felt bad about the first one.  We picked a hamster that looked exactly like Flynn because that’s what our daughter wanted.  But he was nothing like Flynn.  We called him Bryon jr because Bryon never got a namesake – we have all girls.

He absolutely never stopped going, going, going.  He was not at all afraid of heights.  Everytime he encountered a drop off, he just did what we would call, “easy does it”, and slowly lower himself until he dropped about 4 feet and bounced like rubber.  The first time he saw a ceiling fan, he had a little hamster explosion.  If you can imagine this, it’s hard to imagine, but a hamster starring in a horror movie and about to get slaughtered.  That’s what he looked like.  He let out a hamster scream/gurgle and raised his hands up in the air and everything.  We thought he was having a seizure.  He was hilarious.  He ended up dying after about a year.

We also got a mouse who is super sweet and docile.  She doesn’t move much – she likes to just hang out.  Her cage does require more maintenance though.  But she is very timid and scared of heights which is funny because she has the ability to climb more so than Bryon jr did.  She is still alive and happy and sweet as ever.  I highly recommend a mouse except you will have to clean the cage out more frequently.  When we went to buy our mouse, that same lady at the pet store got down to my daughter’s level and looked her right in the face and said, “Are you prepared to clean that cage out twice a day?”.  Lol.  She apparently doesn’t like mice either.  :-p  You really don’t have to clean the cage out that often – maybe twice a week, but sometimes we do just once and it’s fine.

Now, we have ventured into being guinea pig owners.  They are so sweet!  We have 2 girl baby guinea pigs and we love them.  They are pretty docile.  You can just sit and hold them while you watch a movie.  They aren’t as on the go as hamsters (I guess depends on the personality), but the ones we have aren’t.  They get to be about the size of a half loaf of bread is what we are told so you have to have enough space for them.  I imagine they will be sitting at our breakfast counter eating cereal when they get older.  :-p

UPDATE: We’ve already lost a guinea pig – it died.  One tip: don’t get the calm ones at the store – apparently, it means they are half dead.  At least, that’s our experience.  Or maybe the one we have is a a serial killer.  I don’t know – but she’s better off in a cage alone regardless of what the lady at the store said.  She did not like having a roommate.  She kind of bullied the other one.  So, use your judgement on whether to get one or two.

The reason I titled this blog post Pet Cemetery is because animals have a short life so there will be alot of death involved and everytime my kids will be like, “I would give anything to have Flynn [insert every animal name here] back.  ANYTHING.  I would give up EVERYTHING in this house.”  And all I can envision is our poor little hamster coming back from the dead like the movie and dragging itself up the driveway and knocking on the door.  I’m baaaack!  Of course, we wouldn’t even hear it knocking because it’s so small.  It would be waiting out there a loooong time.  Then, one of us would probably just exit the front door one day and smush it so it’s not that scary but whatever.  I guess that’s why they have a scary cat not a hamster in that movie.  I need to watch that movie again or maybe I don’t.  Creepy.  And girls please don’t say you’ll give up EVERYTHING – it freaks me out!  :-p


Dec
2017

Potty Humor

categories: Blog, Kids

All of us parents spend so much time in the restroom when we have little kids right?  It’s like 30% of our lives are spent in there when they are little – especially public restrooms b/c they always have to visit the restroom in every store it seems.  Personally, I always wait until I get home b/c I don’t like public restrooms but they can’t.

Well I bet we all have some stories to tell from that.  This one is one rather elaborate bathroom story from when my kids were little.  It’s the type of experience that gets ingrained in the psyche.

We went on a trip to Chicago for a few days when the kids were little.  On the first night, we had reservations at the the American Girl Doll store for dinner and shopping.  My husband, of course, wanted nothing to do with it. He found something to eat elsewhere. Every time he does something without us, I imagine he’s getting his hair blow dried some place and a massage. That’s just the vision that pops into my mind. Maybe because that’s secretly what I want to be doing. Lol.

We sit down to eat and I realize they offer unlimited refills of sweet tea. I thought this is not good. I end up spending the entire evening alternating going to the restroom with each girl.  Not sure I even ate.  I should’ve just told them to lay off the drinks but I don’t think I realized what was happening. Sometimes you’re just on auto pilot as a parent, right?  They must’ve been flagging down the waitress over and over again for refills while I was in the restroom.

Every time I took one girl to the restroom, the other girls were chugging sweet tea, so by the time I came back to the table the next girl was dancing around. Of course, they don’t tell you they have to go because they don’t want to miss out on anything – they just start dancing around. So you have to be able to read body language. My kids literally turn into ducks – they squat and stick their butts out and walk in short quick steps. It’s the darnedest thing to see.

Apparently, I scheduled the dinner too late in the evening because the American Girl store was going to close about 20 minutes after we finished dinner. The girls really wanted to shop but there wasn’t much time left. I asked everyone if they had to go to the restroom one last time and of course they said no (definitely not!) because they wanted to shop before the store closed. The second we get out of the American Girl store and they lock the doors on us, one of the girls says they have to go to the restroom really bad and they are doing the duck walk so I know it’s bad. I’m like Ugh! The closest place was a fancy steak and seafood restaurant!  We were on Michigan Ave.

Well, I knew this was an emergency so we went in and I begged the restaurant host (Maitre d’?) if we could use the restroom.  It was an emergency and he saw that I had a girl duck on my hands so he reluctantly said it’s around the corner. There was a long line of women dressed nicely but when they saw my duck they said we should go on ahead. We go on ahead and right when we get in the doorway of the restroom my daughter stops walking and says, “Uh Oh!” and I look down to see a big puddle (or more like a lake) forming at her feet – in the doorway of the restroom that has a long line into the hallway.

She tries to help me clean it up but we couldn’t manage to get any paper towels to come out of the really convenient automatic paper towel dispenser (I hate those things). My daughter gets an idea to tear off the tiny triangle of paper towel that’s already sticking out of the dispenser and soaks it in the huge puddle of pee then flings it with a frisbee-like motion into the trash can.  Poor thing – she actually thought she was helping.  Pee flies everywhere.

There’s a lady standing at the mirror touching up her makeup – must’ve been on a date night.  She didn’t realize she was in the splash zone of my kid’s pee accident.   I still can see in my mind the lady cringing and flinching when the pee flies off that soaked paper towel and splashes her.  I apologize to the lady and tell my daughter to please not help me.

Meanwhile, back at the pee puddle, I see my other daughter hovering over the puddle of pee as if she’s trying to see her reflection in it and she starts gagging and dry heaving and I tell her to leave the restroom before she adds to the mess.  I know I wasn’t saying all this in the most pleasing voice either.  I might have used the words, “Get Out!” to both of them.

Now, I’m looking like mother of the year in front of an audience and I can’t get any paper towels to come out of the super convenient, automated paper towel dispenser. I dance around in front of the paper towel dispenser frantically waving my hands and arms and finally get one paper towel to come out. I throw it on the floor over the pee and take off out of there because I’m absolutely mortified and not convinced I’ll be able to get any more paper towels to come out anyway. And, at this point, I was just looking like a circus side show act that everyone was literally just watching with their mouths hanging open.  At least they weren’t making a video of it.

On our way out of the restaurant, my husband is on his way in and tells me that the third daughter now has to go to the restroom to which I reply – You. Take. Her. – in my exorcist voice.  He walks by looking confused like – Okay I will.  And I’m looking at him like – Okay do that.  So then I have to wait outside in front of the full length windows with my kids visibly upset and one of them soaked from the waist down in severe wind chill while people eat their expensive steak and shrimp and wait for my husband to come back out.

That wasn’t painful at all.  Just another day in the life with kids.  :-p  I know all of you Moms can relate.  We all have our stories that our husbands only hear about but don’t always have to live through, right? 😉  And our husbands may have their own stories that we never hear about b/c they don’t think that much into it, eh?  Life is too funny.