A Little Something Different

Well, I am super excited to announce that I was asked to guest write a post at a parenting website, Humpty Dumpty Parent, and I accepted the offer. I have never guest-written before and so this was exciting and, quite frankly, totally nerve-wracking because I really don't know the audience I'm appearing in front of and let's be honest: I'm not exactly couth, classy, and PG. 

However, I am capable of writing without swearing and being irreverent; I just choose not to, for the most part, on my personal blog. So, for this guest post, I decided to *try* to keep the humor but lose the profanity and horror. And push the heart that I posses - but don't always show - for others to the forefront.

Without further ado, here's the post. (<------ Click on the link)

I'm so sorry to force you into having to go through the extra motion of clicking on the link, and LOVE the five of you that actually will do so. Thank you for the show of support!

Also, I would like to announce that I got hired for my very first paid writing job: writing up my aunt's bio for her company's website.

I will be signing autographs in the lobby from 4-6 p.m. 

How To Get The Most Out Of *This* Appointment

Have you ever heard one of those stories about a pregnant woman who goes in for the gender reveal ultrasound, only to discover that her baby has its legs crossed, is passed the hell out, and will not wake up and move around for the WORLD? And not even a couple of jabs to the kidney will rouse that kid into opening its legs? (The only time you will actually WANT your kid to open its legs . . .)

I have, from people I actually know, nonetheless. So it's not just one of those "happened to my brother's friend's cousin's sister-in-law's sister" kind of thing, it has happened to people known to me and therefore, it was just like it happened to ME.

Okay, not really, but I did feel the gut-punch for them because had it been me, I would have lost my shit and probably told my OB/GYN to reach his hands all up in there and FORCE that kid's legs open. Not that he would have, but clearly, I wanted to know whether or not I was having a son or a daughter, each and every pregnancy. AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. And it would have killed me not to be able to find out when I thought I was going to.

So when pregnant with my first, I heard this tip from some earthly angel - sadly, I don't even remember who - and it was gold. No, GOLD. (See what I did there? I dorked out.)

Just before your ultrasound appointment, drink some orange juice and slam a candy bar to infuse mad amounts of sugar into your bloodstream and kickstart that little beast into basically doing JUMPING JACKS in your womb.

Or just inject a cup of sugar into your veins. Whatever.

I did that (drank o.j. and ate candy, not the injection) in the waiting room before each and every gender-reveal ultrasound and my boys were so excited to show us their balls that they basically wrapped their ankles around their ears and SAT on the camera. Well, except for Brandon. Due to the test results we got early in pregnancy, his chromosomes were tested, so we knew for a fact that he's a boy at 14 weeks along.

Although, in my particular cases, I was SO HYPED UP before each appointment that my nerves and adrenaline alone were probably enough to jolt the boys into doing gymnastics. In the waiting room, I was literally climbing the walls and kept punching Nate while rapidly asking him 95 times in a row "What'sitgonnabewhat'sitgonnabe?" and "Whatifit'sagirl?Whatifit'saboy?" like a total crack addict. 

I'm pretty sure the medical assistant took us back early to save his life. Or probably more accurately, my life. 

Good luck, and to healthy babies all around. *Lifting a sippy cup in salute. A sippy cup filled with vodka.*

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In an entirely unrelated note, what do you think of the new changes to the look of the blog? I apologize for the schizophrenic changes, but I'm trying to find my final (hopefully) look. I really would appreciate feedback, as I see other blogs with weird font that I can hardly read or weird background vs. font color that makes it excruciatingly painful to read. And therefore, I usually don't bother reading them lest the visual trauma causes me to want to STAB SOMEBODY.

But I never know if it's okay to say to them, "Hey your blog design makes my EYES BLEED" so I want you to know that I really do appreciate (and am asking for) constructive feedback. The half-dead looking palm trees and sunset in my background are supposed to have a calming effect as an antidote against the insanity that children life can cause. Plus, they represent my California beach life . . . spent cooped up in our house because I'm half-terrified to take the boys anywhere unless I have reinforcements, a.k.a. either their dad or "my wife" (great friend) with me. So they're symbolic but I am open to suggestions. 

And yes, I am still working on a header photo. I just don't know what to do for it. Open to suggestions there, too.

It Can't Just Be A Walk To The Store

It was a beautiful afternoon last Saturday and so I decided to take the boys for a walk to the store. I pushed Brandon in the stroller and the other boys walked. (No scooters for these guys!) After pointing out various piles of dog shit for the boys to avoid (Cripes, people, pick up after your damn dogs!), and about a third of the way there, Connor suddenly started screaming bloody murder. He and Ethan were walking behind me, so I whipped around and saw Connor holding his face all pirate style. 

I started to ask what happened but my mind quickly put one and three together. Connor was standing next to a rose bush that was jutting out from a fence and halfway into the sidewalk. His hand was over his eye. He was screaming like he just got scalped. Obviously he didn't notice the rose bush and walked into it, and of course, it didn't scratch his face, it had to scratch him right on his eyeball.

So he's standing on the sidewalk, shrieking his face off (which I understood that; it had to hurt like a bitch), and I was trying to pry his eye open to see if this was some sort of emergency situation, but he wasn't letting me. So I was trying to calm him down, trying to get a decent grip on his tear-streaked, wet eyelid while he's grabbing at my hands like a drowning person grabbing for a life preserver, and what did Ethan do to help the situation out? He told me, "Mom, Mom, look at my ship (holding out a small branch), it's breaking apart like the Titanic!" 

Really, kid? HEY ETHAN, I THINK I'M A LITTLE BUSY RIGHT THIS SECOND! Criminy. He has a history of breaking in with critical, important, and especially helpful questions and anecdotes when I'm distracted with his brothers and man, it's frustrating. I said (in the nicest voice ever)  "I'm dealing with your brother right now!" and went back to trying to pry Connor's wet eyelid open. Which is so easy when the muscles seize up to protect the eye.

Finally, I got it open and didn't see any embedded thorns or debris, and so I determined, with all my non-existent medical expertise, that his cornea was scratched and yes, he was going to live to see another day. GREAT!

I have to give the kid some serious credit though - he didn't let go of his prized possession the entire time: a pine cone he had found along the way. Here, his eyeball was nearly gouged from his socket and he held on to that sucker like it was the cure for cancer. WAY TO GO, KID!

He started calming down a bit and so we resumed our walk, with him covering his eye all pirate style with his hand. Eventually, his concern over his eye slowed him down enough that I plopped him into the stroller and sat Brandon on the little shelf up top by the handlebar (this is significant later).

On we went to the store. It's your standard drug store, with makeup and pictures of the pretty girls in the makeup so you know exactly what you'll look like when you buy it. As we were walking down the aisle with said makeup, Ethan suddenly said, "Mom, watch this." He then walked up to a giant photo of a woman's face, and with this knowing little . . . look on his face, kissed her smack on the lips.

I was alternately grossed out and shocked. Grossed out because he put his lips on the filthy plastic cover that seven thousand kids and various other people have touched with their snot-and feces-covered hands, and shocked because when did my kid become a little Romeo?!?

You had to see it. This was no innocent little boy innocently kissing a picture of a purty lady. Something was off. It screamed of "playground kissing dares." It instantly twanged my momdar (a really stupid term I coined just now, consisting of "mom" and "radar"). I think I may have to have a talk with him soon. Like, "Hey Ethan, are you kissing girls at school?" And then, if he is, I have no idea what I will say next . . . "Use protection?" "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" "Make sure there's not snot running onto her lip, she'll get you sick?" Who in hell knows.

Hoookaaay. Well, anyway. Since I was pushing The Pirate and Brandon in and on the stroller, I had Ethan carry the shopping basket of our goodies. When I discovered that the store was having an awesome sale on feminine products, I loaded a couple of boxes into the basket and then immediately realized that Ethan was going to be carrying boxes of his mom's tampons throughout the store and wondered if this was some weird equivalent to sending your guy to the store to buy them for you. (Which I've never forced you into doing, Nate, so you should count yourself lucky. Your son, on the other hand, has just been "broken in.") Since I'm an asshole, I laughed to myself but since I'm ALSO a nice person, I turned the boxes so that their labels were relatively hidden. 

We finally made it to the checkout stand. There, Ethan discovered a Halloween display in which a skeleton's eyes lit up while creaking out scary threats, and he thought it was the best thing ever. So he was making it go off repeatedly and Connor decided that his eye was no longer incapacitating his ability to walk and asked to get off the stroller to watch the skeleton. I unhooked the tray thing so he could scoot out, and as soon as his body left the stroller, the stroller toppled backward and unceremoniously dumped Brandon onto the floor, then landed on top of him.

OH YEAH, that's right. Brandon was sitting on the top. I felt like such an ass for forgetting that the loss of Connor's counter-balancing weight would cause that thing to flip over faster than a hooker for a C-note. I pulled the stroller off of him, made sure he was still alive, then hugged and comforted him while trying not to laugh, because when I'm incredibly embarrassed, I laugh to try to cover up the fact that I'm embarrassed. Which only makes shit worse, like in this case. 

Jesus, Frank, look! First that stupid mom lets her kid get dumped on the floor, then is laughing about it! What in hell is wrong with people?

So Brandon was fine and somehow, the walk home was entirely uneventful - I'm sure because they were plied with the gummy worms I bought them. Then we strolled into the garage, and somehow, probably because the boys started doing shit they aren't supposed to be doing, my bike fell over ONTO BRANDON. I was walking into the house and had my back turned so I have no idea exactly how it happened, but I promise, kid, I'm not trying to kill you.

Someday, we'll be able to go out in public without all this crap happening. I just know it.

Kids can put my potty mouth to shame, Part 2

A while back, I wrote this post about the funny and inappropriate mispronunciations kids make. Recently, I posted on Facebook that Brandon is now saying "pepper" but it comes out "pecker." Because I have such awesome people who have liked the Facebook page for this blog, they came out in force with their own examples, and I would like to share them with you because they are just totally, inappropriately, funny. 

So stop reading here if you are opposed to strong language (KIDS THESE DAYS . . .). 

Or better yet, just pull out the 12-year-old inside of you and giggle away... here are their stories (some are condensed or paraphrased by me):

My nephew used to say Fucky Fried Chicken.

My son's funny one is dump truck, he doesn't pronounce the p and replaces the t with an f. Dump truck = dum fuck.

Don't ask my son to say frog... he starts hopping around on the floor and I swear it sounds like he's dropping f-bombs!

I have a video of my friend's son saying "frog" but it sounds like he's dropping f-bombs!

My niece would replace the "tr" in truck with an "f". One day at dinner a truck drove by the restaurant window with bunnies on it and she screamed at the top of her lungs, "bunny fuck, bunny fuck!"

My mom was in the store with my brother when he was little, and he started screaming, "I want Reese's Penis, I want Reese's Penis." She bought him the Reese's Pieces.

My boy loves saying "clock" but really struggles with the "L" part of it. ~Courtesy of Jason Good.

My 3-year-old daughter's most inappropriate mispronunciation is clock = cock. She even refers to my watch as a "cock", which was particularly embarrassing when she was admiring my "cock" in the grocery store the other day.

We were at a ball game and my 3-year-old daughter was eating peanuts, and announced to the entire section that she "loves peanus."

My 15-month-old is learning new words practically every day and right now "kitten" is "DICKEN!" She's so proud of herself when she knows a correct word that she squeals it out at the top of her lungs. ~Courtesy of Rabitstew.

My daughter says "what's that" but at 11 months it sounds like "shit". Took us a while to figure it out.

Vagina is "PaChina" or "Bajiner." ~ Courtesy of Aums Mama.
(Elizabeth here - I'm TOTALLY going to start saying bajiner. I LOVE that one! I'm super mature . . .)

My kids at 22 or so months would say "Boobies" for "blueberries" and "shit" for "shirt." My daughter still says "penis" for peanuts. And always seems to say it loudly in restaurants. "I want penis! Give me penis!" ~Courtesy of Eating for 3.

My daughter would say "cock" instead of "truck." We went to a Touch a Truck event - it was hilarious!

My nephew (or maybe it was my niece) used to say Chick For Lay. 

"Merry Pissmas" for two years with my middle one! And when we would leave Uncle Phil and Uncle Chuck's house, he would yell, "Bye Fool! Bye Fuck!" ~Courtesy of So Much for The Mother of The Year Award.

My son says "stick" and it sounds like "dick." Today he told me he was going to poke me with a big stick . . . I definitely made him say it again so I could get it on video!
(This is my kind of mom!)

My grandson (4) says "dicks" for "discs" - he wanted to play a game and said to his mom, "open dat door, I need dicks to play with." When she opened the cabinet he saw all the games and movies and told her, "wow Mom, you have a lot of dicks, don't you?" He also calls his scooter a "cooter", as in, I'm going to go ride my cooter." I guess that mainly happens when he's not inside playing with his dicks!
(I love this grandma!)


~And here are some stories that people shared:

Our 4-year-old daughter was trying to say what she saw in the backyard at her grandmother's house, "Daddy, we saw a peter in Granny's backyard, and it was black." (Parents trying to keep composure) "You know, it was hairy, too." Mom: "You mean a caterpillar?" Daughter: "YEAH!"

When my son was about 4 I would take him into the bathroom stall with me because he was a runner... he's also very attuned to smells. The lady next door to us happened to emit a smell. Shane was nice enough to say loudly... with glee... "Mom that REALLY STINKS!"

So my little guy's isn't quite as inappropriate as it is adorable: he loves his ukulele but he calls it his "you-ka-way-gay." Every time I think about it, I smile.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So I hope you got a laugh! Since, you know, that was the point. Until next time, enjoy your peanus, watch out for those dum fucks, and keep looking at your cocks so you're not late. 

Bajiners.

What To Expect When We're Expecting... Company

If you come to our house, you're going to encounter these things:

• Be offered a drink to help you get through the next couple of hours.

• Take a napkin from the napkin holder, and there's a 50/50 chance it was one that Brandon used and graciously put back where he found it.

• Let your crawler crawl on our kitchen/dining room floor, their hands and knees will be a blackish-gray, even though we'd probably mopped just prior to your arrival. You'll also step in something sticky. At least twice.

• Go to the bathroom, you'll smell and most likely step in pee, even though I cleaned the toilet (and Brandon probably helped by licking it) just prior to your arrival.

• Lose a touch of your hearing from Brandon's shrieking.

• Smell/hear between 10-47 farts, depending on the length of your stay.

• Speaking of farts, you'll hear the words "fart", "butt", "penis", "poop", and "handcuffs" about 39 times.

• Hear Brandon ask for beer. He's a little behind in his speaking abilities (but is getting a LOT better) and "beer" is his go-to word for things like strawberries, a stuffed bear (makes sense) and milk (Doesn't make sense. On second thought, yeah, it does.).

• Encounter an errant booger/snot trail on the furniture.

• Repeat yourself 98 times because I'll only be half-listening to you, and half-listening to the UFC-style cage-fighting between the boys. 

• Watch Brandon find and eat something ancient he found underneath the couch.

So. Who wants to come over?

A Quick Update

About six months ago, I wrote about Brandon's speaking deficiency, as in, he was 18 months old and said like, one word. Definitely behind the curve but I wasn't too worried about it for a variety of reasons, and neither was his pediatrician, for the same reasons plus a couple more. (Click on the link above and you can read the older post, newer readers.) 

She (his pediatrician) gave me some good info to help him along (that I passed on in the post), and while I didn't really apply the things she told me with rabid passion, I did work with him once a month here and there. Then, we were going to reevaluate when Brandon turned two to see if further testing/work/witchcraft/rain dancing needed to be done to get the kid to start talking.

Well, Brandon turned two recently and had his well-child visit yesterday. I told her that he had his predicted sudden language explosion (talked about in the other post) and was now saying words like "diarrhea" and even stringing two or more words together, like "eat pecker." However, his pronunciation is a tad off and so words like "pepper" come out as "pecker," and that's totally normal - as any of you with kids have experienced.

So anyway, I just wanted to update you since I know you couldn't care less and probably forgot about it were all crushed with worry and fear for my little guy, and have been waiting with baited breath to see if he was going to be fine by the time he turned two.

You can sleep now. He's fine.

The Sliver Incident

Last week I was a little under the weather as you may have read. It was fun, as it always is with small kids. After a morning spent cooping the younger two up inside, in full neglect mode in front of the t.v., when Ethan came home from school I figured I would take them outside to the backyard. I mean, I can sit in a lawn chair just as well as I can sit on the couch, right?

Well, that lasted about five minutes. Connor got a sliver in the heel of his foot. And not just any sliver, a BIG ASS sliver. A good half an inch long, nice and wide, and buried deep.

YEAH. Of course, he is crying his face off and screaming that it hurts.

Well, kid, I hate to break it to you, but it's about to get a whole lot worse.

I reminded him on our walk back into the house that this is why he is not supposed to be outside without his shoes on. He had been wearing them, but went back in the house, took them off, and came back outside without them and immediately got a sliver. Now, if we didn't have the deck that we did, it would make perfect sense for little boys to be playing outside without their shoes on, but our deck is a sliver nightmare. So therefore we have this rule about shoes. And he broke it. 

And you know how you feel differently about a kid's injury when they received it while rule breaking? Like, when they are climbing on something they know they are not supposed to be climbing on and they get hurt and it's like, "Oh hell no, I don't feel sorry for you, I'VE TOLD YOU NOT TO CLIMB ON THAT!" But if they had been doing something legitimate and got hurt in exactly the same way, all of the sympathy comes pouring out?

Or am I the only asshole that feels that way?

So, in other words, I was mad. We got into the house, my anger building that this even happened in the first place, and he was still screaming and crying and snotting everywhere. I set him on the bathroom counter, washed his foot, and put some teething gel on the spot to numb the pain as best as possible (did you know about that?) while I grabbed all the sliver-removal surgical tools: a needle and tweezers. I sanitized them with rubbing alcohol and as soon as Connor saw me heading towards his foot with the needle, he literally started shrieking at the top of his lungs.

I put the needle down and closed the bathroom window. Clearly, this was going to get ugly. We have neighbors. And please don't be alarmed at my foresight to close the window to contain my kid's screams. I swear we don't abuse them and know all the tricks to "hide" it. It's just that when, while in my house, I've heard the neighbor girl, while standing in their bathroom with the window open say, "Oh, so-and-so, the toilet smells GOOD!" (I'm dead serious. And so was she.) I know that sound travels well. 

So, window closed, I resumed surgery. I hate digging out slivers. It makes me nauseous. I can read bloody murder novel after bloody murder novel and not even bat an eye, but digging out a sliver makes me nauseous. And that fucker was buried deep and I couldn't even tell which end was the entry point. I started digging up one end and Connor was ten inches from my ear and shrieking like he's being scalped and trying to pull his foot away. I was starting to sweat. Progress was not being made. I gripped his foot a little tighter, dug a little more, and thinking the whole time, if only he had put on his fucking shoes.... uuuuggghhh. It could not have gotten any worse. 

Then he started screaming, "YOU'RE HURTING ME, MAMA! YOU'RE HURTING MEEEE!"

At the top of his lungs.

Over and over and over.

Okay, it just got worse. Thankful that I shut the window, but still figuring that the cops were being called right then, I started sweating more and tried digging at the other end to see if I could pop the sliver out of that end. No go, so I went back to the other end and finally got the tip revealed enough that maybe I could get a grip with the tweezers. Nope. So I had to dig more, and I was sweating profusely while my stomach was churning, churning, churning, and Connor was shaking and crying and screaming that I'm hurting him over and over and I was wondering if he was just going to finally pass out to make this all easier and also was wondering if I would actually be capable of hearing the knock from the police over his shrieks or if they'd just end up busting down the door and tackling me to the ground, when Ethan showed up in the doorway and asked the life-saving, sliver-removing, light-coming-through-the-parting-clouds-while-angels-are-singing question.

"Mom, can we play Sack-Boy?"

Are you fucking kidding me, kid? "Sack Boy" is a video game. We're going through this and Ethan is casually asking, over his brother's bloody-murder shrieks and my dry-heaves, if he can play a video game? I gave him the nastiest, hairiest hairy-eyeballed, stinkiest stink-eyed look I could muster and went back to the surgery. 

I was pushing my fingernail in at one end, trying to birth the sliver out of the opening I had dug and grasping the other end with the tweezers and it just wasn't working. Over and over I tried, to no avail. It was getting dire. I was starting to go deaf in the ear closest to Connor, was on the verge of throwing up, and screaming inside my own head, WHY DIDN'T YOU WEAR YOUR FUCKING SHOES, CONNOR? when suddenly, I got a good enough grip and the damn sliver came out.

Jesus. 

As soon as it was out, silenced immediately commenced. At first, I thought I had gone deaf, then I realized that Connor had just stopped screaming and shrieking. Shakily, I wiped my forehead, swallowed down the last of the nausea slobber, put Neosporin and a band-aid on his foot, and put away all the surgical tools.

Hey. Connor. Wear your shoes next time.