Long Days, Short Years, Stiff Drinks

Now that I have two children of my own, I realize what a judgmental (and wholly naive) little shit I was before I was a parent.  I cannot tell you how many times I sat high and mighty on my perch of ignorance and internally shook my finger at actual experienced parents for doing one thing or the other that I would never do with or to my own children.  If this were the college days drinking game, I'd be drunker than Cooter Brown, somehow managing to guzzle my drink while eating every single one of my pinheaded words. Things I used to say I would never do that I now do on the regular include: I will never bribe my kids to eat meals.  Ha!  We do this literally every.single.meal.  "Finish your dinner and you will get dessert" is a daily bribe offered to our Threenager and no matter how painfully long it may take, he earns that chocolate like it's his J-O-B.  I will never use a screen as a digital babysitter.  Good gravy was I wrong on this one!...

Yep, I'm still on crutches.  Let me re-phrase that.  I'm still on a crutch.  I'm down to one but I think my husband would agree, that doesn't make it suck all that much less.  I'll spare you my sob story, because in the grand scheme of things, a knee injury is pretty minor.  Obviously, it could be much, much worse.   But when you have a three and a half year old, six month old, and husband who is working twice as hard as he usually does (and that is saying a LOT, because he works his ass off every damn day, in and out of this house) it doesn't feel all that minor.  You really long for the return of your mobility and position in the household. A few observations from the trenches: Grocery shopping in a "Mart Cart" is super humiliating.  The Man could not WAIT to snap my photo riding in that beast of a vehicle and if he ever shows it anyone, I will die.  Do not get me started on how ridiculous I felt when I threw that puppy in revers...

A friend of mine threw herself a super fun birthday party Saturday night.  Plans were to attend a Pole Dancing Class  as a group then head over to BRC for dinner. Never afraid to shake my money maker and having enjoyed being a spectator while many a professional twirled her way around the pole for the money, I figured this activity was right up my alley and I arranged a hall pass to attend.  Lucky for me, my baby daddy was fully supportive of my desires to stretch my stripper wings and agreed to stay home with the younger while the older stayed the night at my mothers.  Let the slutty games begin! You could tell everyone was a little nervous when we first started showing up and gathering in a room equipped with six poles for your dancing pleasure.  Thankfully, our host foresaw this possibility and came prepared to lubricate our nerves a bit with wine and champagne.  I jumped on that and after pounding a dixie cup of liquid courage I was ready to...

My husband travels frequently for work.  Thankfully, of late it's only been for a night or two at a time. Handling dinner, clean up, baths and bedtime for both boys all by me lonesome usually leaves me frazzled at the very least and bordering on psychotic at worst.  More than once, I've actually threatened to take away bedtime stories in a last ditch effort for peace while I am "allowed" to put the baby down and Boy Wonder is left to his own devices downstairs.  Seriously?  Sacrifice the child's literacy and mess with the sanctity of the bedtime ritual, for what? So that I can feel a little less stressed while my three year old son is asked to be super grown up and be alone, yet again, so I can tend to the baby's needs?  It's enough to make me drown in tears of guilt. Tonight was different, though.  Maybe it's because I got most of dinner prepped and cooked well ahead of time so I was a little less edgy.  Maybe it's because The Smilus happily ...

We participate in a wonderful play group that meets on Wednesdays.  We've been at it since our now 3-4 year olds were crawlers and many of us are now on our second or third child creating a new round of rug rats to keep the group going when the soon to be big kids start school. Today when we arrived at the hostesses's lovely home, we learned how to lock a child in the car in three easy steps. Step One:  Throw your keys in your backpack while pulling your baby out of his car seat. Step Two:  Realize you're standing in an ant bed, run stomping and screaming to knock those evil mothers off of you, and decide to move the car. (Pat yourself on the back for having the foresight to move the car to avoid the ants on the way out.) Step Three: Ask your older son, still strapped into his car seat, to hold the backpack while you move the car up a bit and close his door. See?  Wasn't that Easy?!  Now he's all locked up all safe and sound. WAIT!  My son i...