Open letter to my Grey Matter

Dear Cerebellum and the Sparky little Inhabitants therein,

I miss you.  Your loss has left me a foggy hot mess.  I have enough left in me to understand that  I was at one point a competent and functioning human being, but not enough to help me reclaim my former cerebral glory. You are cruel to leave me so.

I mean... I know we have had our differences and all, but can you find it in you neurons to forgive me?  It was only 5 or 6 years of shots of hard liquor followed by Irish Car Bombs!  I didn't mean it....  Well, that's a lie.  I had a great time but I realize now how hard it must have been on you.  ...And those one or two times on the Super Spinny Redneck Carnival Ride Of Death really weren't my fault!  My husband made me do it. ...And I never meant to land face first in the dirt all those times I got thrown off the horses!  You can blame that on my abnormally large, dense, and heavy skull coupled with a faulty sense of direction.  See!  It wasn't really me!

I am also so very sorry I made you watch Twilight.  I kept going even though I could hear your pitiful screams as your bright little electric lights were snuffed out one by horrified one...  I regret that now and wish to make amends.

Come back to me!  I need you for phone numbers, my children's names, pediatrician and OB appointments... I need you for company.  I am so tired of just laying on the couch and staring at the remote knowing I am supposed to remember something but never figuring out what important TV show I missed...
Do you realize that I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT GAME OF THRONES LAST NIGHT?  My one saving grace is Hubbs DVR'ed it... See what I have been reduced to?  See what madness you have driven me to? I am a pathetic shell... a badly xeroxed butt of my former self.

Everyone on the Internet says you will come back to me eventually (like the second trimester) but I cannot wait!  How can you make me suffer so?  After all that we have been through?  I am nothing without you...

Please...

I have lost that conscious feeling...

Name Game

Conversation with Sass Monkey the other night:

Me:  "We are trying to pick out names for the new baby.  What do you think we should name it if it's a boy?"
Sass:  "We... we... we should name it GUN-MAN!"
Hubbs and I snicker.  This has been a favorite name of Sass's for some time now.  It is entirely of his own creation.
Hubbs:  "Well... what if it's a girl?  What should we name it?"
Sass:  *looking very serious* "I don't like girls."
More parental snickering.
Me:  "But honey, it might be a sister."
Sass: *Looks dismayed*  "But I already have a sister!  I want a brother!"

Alright then.... lemme get on that.....  :)

In his defense... sisters are kinda brutal....

*Heavy Sigh* (Eye Roll) *Facepalm*

Okay... start by reading this.... http://www.babble.com/baby/readers-respond-why-im-pro-formula-feeding/.

Did you read the comments?  You should because that's where all the "fun" begins.

     That's right... I'm the  "Pie Hole" Mom....  :)  And for those of you who know me and this blog... well, of COURSE he had a ravenous pie hole!  He still does!  You should have seen how fast dinner disappeared last night... oh, AND the bedtime snack.

     Where have our manners gone, folks (not to mention our sense of humor)?  Manners and compassion are what separate us from the wild beasts.  Though I must say, some of those commenters make a pack of rabid wolves look pretty civilized.  And I'm not talking about the "elbows off the table", "no burping in public" kind of manners (those are not mandatory in my opinion), I mean the ones that let us all live together in some semblance of harmony.  I'm talking about the ones that will someday help us all to understand that we all bleed red, love our families, and can get along. Some of us have let our need to champion our beliefs, ANY BELIEF, cloud our understanding of what is just personal choice and what is actually harmful.  We have lost sight of what really needs changing in this world. (a.k.a. world hunger, women's/children's rights, oh how I could go on...) Have an opinion, get passionate, but do it in an intelligent and effective way.  Quote statistics, back your ideas up with facts and well written pieces, use a semi-colon or two... I dunno... but just vomiting your vitriolic nastiness up for all the world to see in the comments section doesn't do anything but hurt feelings and make you look petty.

     I am passionate about the boob vs. can debate, we all know this.... The Nipple Nazis really get mah dander up, but I would never accuse one of them of being a bad mother or not caring about their child just because we have chosen different feeding paths.  (You see, there are so many other very valid reasons I could pick from to judge them!)  I AM concerned about what values are being passed down to their children as far as love and acceptance of the life choices of others.  I mean... my kids may go to school with theirs.  I don't want my children being subjected to their on-the-spot-no-questions-asked judgy-ness or the "ish" that their progeny picks up from being raised in that environment.


Diversity is the spice of life, ya'll... negativity just f*cks up the recipe.

Oh... and show some love to Rebekah @ Mom-in-a-Million / The Stay At Home Pundit.  Her badassery knows no bounds!

Food! Glorious food!

.... and I have emerged, relatively unscathed, on the other side....

     I think the soul crushing, brain cell annihilating morning sickness has finally subsided.  Hence this post.... I am once again a functioning (sort of) human being capable of eating solids and remaining vertical for extended periods of time.  I will be brutally honest.... there are gaping black holes in my memories of the past few weeks that I know are lost forever.  If some funny sh*t went down... well... it's gone now.  Sorry guys.  But onward and upward, right?  Right.

     I would also like to say that Hubbs has been awesomely amazing for this last bit.  He basically got to play single Dad for a month or so... cooking all the meals, dishes, laundry, wrangling the wigglers... all of it.  He was a super SUPERDAD!  Nothing makes you appreciate a man more than when he says "Why don't you go lay down.  I don't want you to throw up on the kids.  I've got this.".  And now that my gag reflex is approaching normal, I will be able to show him how much I really, REALLY appreciated all his wonderful help.....  Get your minds out of the gutter.  I'm gonna make that man a pot roast.  My... what filthy little minds you have....

     Just to give you an idea of the extent of my absenteeism in my family's day-to-day existence, Sass has actually started to ask me if I will be eating dinner with them every night .... and then does a happy dance when I say yes.  Sprinkles just gives me the hairy eyeball and wonders who that stranger is at the end of the table, but such is the way of things, right?  We urp, we birth, and we keep on truckin'.......  Gawd, I just made that sound a special sort of sexy, didn't I?  Yeah....

So I will be coming by to say "hi", visit a spell, and apologize for my silence these last few weeks.  Truthfully though, I wouldn't have been much fun.... smelling of vomit and bloating and all.....  Again with the special sexy?  :)

I am tired Level Orange...

     Ya'll.... I do think I may have been run over by a Mac-Truck....  My agency  plans one major conference a year and guess what?  It was last weekend...but I survived (barely) and now things can go back to what I consider normal (but what DCS may consider unsafe.)

     I would also like to report that the conference went well and everything thing that I was in charge of went smoothly.  I met tons of great folks and learned a lot about lots of things... some of these things I thought I would share with you.

1.  Ladies... our badassery know no bounds.  Back-to-back 14 hour days of meeting, greeting, schmoozing  and assisting while 2 months preggo and morning sick and nobody ends up with urp on their shoes?  Yeah.... I am a pastry-shaped-effing-superhero.  We all are... because we are Moms who get shit done.

2.  My husband is a better parent than I am.  My 4 days alone with the kids and everyone is a cranky mess, the house smells like a blown-up diaper, and I am begging for death's sweet, sweet release.  His 4 days alone with the kids and everyone is happy, the house is relatively clean, and the laundry is done.  Way to make me look bad, Hubbs....

3.  Becoming a parent has ruined me on quiet, comfy hotel rooms.  Ya'll know.... quiet is bad.  When the house is quiet... something is getting drowned in the toilet, smeared on the walls, or dropped down a vent.  I spent 3 nights waking up every 30 minutes because it was TOO DAMN QUIET and my subconscious knew that something, somewhere was going down.

4.  If you wear a polo in hotel, folks in suits wearing fancy cologne with think you are staff.  Even when you have your agency's logo emblazoned in bright colors across your boobs.  No, I do NOT know where room 736 is or when the bar closes...  Do I really look like I need a drink?  Wait... maybe I do?

5.  Hotel food will eff you up.  Like, Oh Gawd I had better get this over with before the room attendant gets in here to straighten thing up, otherwise they are going to think I murdered a skunk slowly in here.


So these are some of the things I learned this long.... long weekend.  I apologize for being absent last week but I promise to get back to my regularly scheduled programming.....

WW... House Robinson

Oh yessss....

Because of this...

And this....

AAANNNNDDDD this...

Exhaustion Is Coming.

Now THAT'S some good parenting!

Hubbs and I know we are good parents because:

1.  My 18 month old thinks she can hang with the big boys... and then actually can.

2.  My son won't take crap from anybody... not even us.

3.  As Sass and I flipped through Googled pictures of wasps discussing why we should never try to catch those in our butterfly net, he began to ask questions like "Where is dis one from?",  "Is dat its nest?",  "Where are da nests?", and *gulp* "Can I see one?".  Genuine curiosity... albit about something that may become problematic later on, but curiosity nonetheless.

4.  Sass can unwrap a foil covered chocolate egg all by himself in less than 10 seconds and Sprinks is in the early stages of figuring it out.  Got to start them early!

5.  Have you seen Spinks "Shark-Eye"?  Legendary....

6.  Both children can identify McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's separately... and have their favorites. (Yet they still both eat broccoli with great gusto... luck of the draw, I guess.)

7.  As I was vomiting loudly and uncontrollably one evening, this conversation happened:

Me:  *Huuuurrrrrlllll*

Sass:  "Momma, are you sick?"  I turn to see both children watching me intently from the bathroom door.

Me:  "Oh Honeys, you don't want to be in here.  Momma is just fine.  I just need a moment..."  *Huuuuurrrrrlllll*

I feel a small hand begin to rub little circles on my back as the other attempts to hold my hair back.

Sass:  "Momma, is da baby blob making you sick?"  more back rubbing...

Yeah... these are some good kids....

What little things do you see in your wigglers that make you feel like a successful parent?

Oh.... I have a sign for you....

     My daughter signs.  She is getting really good at it, too... but no wonder as she refuses to speak.  And she can, speak that is, it's just that verbal communication is too boring... or beneath her.... or too frustrating.  Who knows, right?  At 18 months she only uses a handful of words consistently (by this point her brother was using complete sentences) but understands a whole lot of scary about what we say.  She gets it, but verbal communication isn't her bag, baby.  All Hubbs and I know is that teaching her to sign has been the difference between ear splitting shrieks of anger and frustration and fewer.  We are going with fewer.

     You know how some kids, when they learn that they can finally be understood by those lumbering food machines called adults, will use every opportunity to tell you as loudly as possible everything that they think?  Yeah.... she's not one of those BUT she WILL walk up to you, thump you on the chest with her fat little fist, and throw the "milk" sign at you like she is a Crip and you are a Blood and shit is about to go DOWN.  I have never been told "Now, bitch!" in such a quietly forceful way.  It is a little intimidating....

We have gotten no small amount of attention from strangers in public over this.  For example...

     Last weekend at the zoo, we had stopped to get lunch at their wonderful little cafe (with the badass hamburgers) but we had waited a little too long so the kids were completely batshit with hunger... you know.... because we OBVIOUSLY never feed them.  *sigh*  Hubbs went up to order and I sat with them at the table attempting to keep the situation under control.  Sass was his normal Speedy Gonzales of words and whining and Sprinkles decided to add her two cents.  "EAT!" she signed at me.  "EAT!  MILK!  FOOD NOW!", while thumping the table for emphasis and punctuation.  Being a natural hand talker I told her "Wait" and pointed to Hubbs in line up front,  "Daddy is coming soon." I spoke to her.  Not pleased with my answer she kept up with the signing with an angry face and a few guttural shrieks thrown in for good measure.  I began to roll my eyes until I noticed one of the Yuppie Moms (yeah, I judge like that.  When you have the perfect ponytale, a monogrammed and quilted diaper bag, with eight screaming and incredibly unruly kids, I am just going to assume you are hauling this hot mess back to a White Esclade and let's be done with it.) having one of those "that kid is "different" but don't stare" moments with her child.  Ponytale looked up and saw me watching.  She gave me a sweetly conspiratorial smile and turned back to her boy for a hug.  What the....?  Wait.  She thinks my kid is deaf?  And that was one of those "The More You Know" CBS syrup moments?  Huh...  

     It wasn't that she thought Sprinks was deaf that made me want to get all bitey (if she was, we would learn sign language and move on) it was the smile afterward.  It was... condescending and pat-you-on-the-head belittling.  It was "Aren't I Such a Good Parent For Explaining This Unfortunate Situation To My Sweet Baby Boy".  It made the hair on the back of my neck stick up and my hackles rise.  Is this how it is for families with children who have disabilities?  How do you not kill folks?  You are saints!  You are amazing!  Why are playgrounds and PTA meetings not covered with the broken bodies of parents like Ponytale?  I would call it justifiable ...   I was a hairs breadth from standing up and pulling something primal... but then the food came... so I didn't.  And because we are, after all, somewhat civilized.  *growl*

But you see Ponytale, it's not me you have to worry about....  She's fierce.

Pants Ass-assination....

I love Dr. Seuss.  I love his Red Fish and his Blue Fish!  I love his Sneetches with stars or not upon thars!  I love his Cat, Hat, and all of that.  I even love the Zax (but I will admit to being partial to the South Going one).  Oh mah gawd.... and "Too Many Daves"?  There are never too many!  (Especially You, Oliver Boliver Butt, you are my favorite.)  But when I saw Ninja Mom's "Character Assassination Carousel", I wanted IN... because of those damn green pants.  You heard me.  The.  Green.  Pants.  The story is actually called "What Was I Scared Of?" but in my scarred preschooler psyche it was (and is still) called "The Pale Green Pants With Nobody Inside Them!"

Doesn't sound too bad, huh?  Well, just let me show you....

It starts out innocently enough.  That cute little yellow guy is out for a walk in the moonlight....

Doesn't he look sweet?  Not a care in the world... until...

Wait?  What's that up there in the corner of the page coming from the deepest, darkest part of the wood?  Ghost Pants?  Pale GREEN Ghost Pants?  Now, I'm no fool but I have seen "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and I know that when ghosts missing their important bits come streaking out of the deepest, darkest part of the wood, they are hell bent on blood and total destruction.  Run Little Yellow Man, Run!

What kind of children's book is this?  I mean, look at him!  He's terrified ..  And the pants don't stop at chasing him through the forest... Oh no!  They find him at the Supermarket...

(What is Up with that pale green Butt?  How can you have a finely sculpted pair of glutes when you have nobody inside you?  Talk about an unattainable body image!)

They find him while he's trying to relax and go fishing....

(Wait.... how are the pants rowing?  Super spooky pants magic, that's how!)

Then there is the most disturbing of the attacks.  *The following may not be suitable for young viewers* After spending an inordinate amount of time wedged uncomfortably in a Brickle Bush trembling in abject terror...

(Just look at that poor little yellow face!  Oh when will this emotional torture stop?)

our thoroughly abused yellow friend is forced to leave the relative safety of his Brickle Bush by starvation and dehydration.

(Just look at the rings around his eyes, the defeated slump of his shoulders... this guy is one small sneeze away from a nervous breakdown)

Having lost all patience, the malevolent outerwear decided to pounce...

Ah!  The lost innocence!  The capturing of this egregious act in such lurid detail between the cardboard covers of this bedtime-book-gone-wrong is almost too much to bear!  How I weep for you, Little Yellow Dude!  You can almost see his mind begin to break in his red ringed eyes as the Stockholm Syndrome begins to take hold...  Survival at its most base and desperate level....

See the blankness in his eyes?  His brain has shut down to spare him the conscious understanding of his personal hell....  The horror!  No Sweet Yellow Man!  The Pants are not your friend   ... but he can't hear me for he is lost..... *sob*

Check out all of the awesomeness here.  There is an amazingly hilarious list of past assassinations that will leave you wondering why you thought "Goodnight Moon", Curious George, and many, MANY other "beloved" children's classics were ever a good idea.  :)

And check out Lisa at Wine & Glue for her take on that naughty, subversive little Pigeon in "Don't Let The Pigeon Stay Up Late!", and "TAG" Jesse at Do Your Job!  You're it!  Let the hijinks ensue.....

Substitutes ARE awesome!

Hi ya'll!  May I introduce Christy and her delightful blog called Mother of the Year.  Don't let the title fool you, though... she's just as depraved as the rest of us.  ;)  This incredibly brave woman actually wanted to have her work appear on my blog!  Really?  You're sure about this, Christy?  ;)

So, without further adieu, I will hand the mic to Christy and let 'er rip, girl!

My name is Christy and I am today’s substitute blogger…kind of like a substitute teacher, only cooler. I don’t know about you but I had some pretty lame substitute teachers in my time. Of course, we all loved having subs because subs didn’t know the rules, your seating chart, or even who was who. You could sit wherever you wanted and claim to be your best friend and the sub wouldn’t know the difference.  “Yes, Mrs. Substitute, our teacher always lets us pass notes and have pop in class!”

 Sometimes I wonder if subs really were as dumb as they seemed or if they just didn’t care….like when I babysit. “Sure kid, cuss all you want. Not my kid, not my problem. Have as much candy as you want. Not my kid, not my problem….unless you’re staying overnight, at which point your sugar-induced self becomes my problem.” Joking (especially if any of my friends are reading this)!

 I definitely don’t do these things when I babysit. The children are fed strictly healthy foods, watch only educational shows, and recite *insert personal religion here* verses all day long when I babysit. *snicker, snicker* If you’re not religious at all, we discuss the meaning of life, but we don’t go over the circle of life unless it pertains to the Lion King.  I don’t even want to have that talk with my own daughters, let alone another kid. That’s your job!

I have every intention of having “THE TALK” with my kids via handing them a couple of pamphlets and asking if they have any questions. Of course, they will be horrified and answer no. They probably won’t look me in the eye for a couple of weeks, but that’s okay. Once the awkwardness passes, my husband and I will no longer have to have code-words so that’s good. We currently spell things out but I know it’s a matter of time before my oldest daughter says, “What’s birth control?” We will then act dumb and pretend to not know what she is talking about. “I just heard you say that you hoped to get your p-e-r-i-o-d next week because the b-i-r-t-h c-o-n-t-r-o-l failed last night when you were having s-e-x! So what is birth control?” Damn kids and damn schools for teaching the damn kids to spell. Who says literacy is good thing? I can’t even have private talks with my children anymore. Forget having a little privacy, there isn’t a place in this house that doesn’t get busted in on by a little person within 30 seconds. Spelling was our last plan of action. Now what?

As you can probably tell, I’m not ever going to win Mother of the Year. If you want to read more about my failures as Mother of the Year….or just need to feel better about your own parenting, check out my blog at http://notgonnawin.blogspot.com/. It’s great and guaranteed to prove to you that you are not the terrible mom you think you are!