We live in a semi-civilized society. At least, I’d like to think that we do. 

As a mom of 3 children under the age of eight, I would like to think that I have learned a few life lesssons.  Certainly a few lessons in etiquette.  You don’t change a diaper on the table at Applebee’s.  If your toddler has a meltdown in the supermarket, you grab the milk and the bananas, pay for them and get the hell out of there (apologizing to every employee on the way out for the cart full of groceries that you are leaving)

And I learned some new lessons last night….

You don’t go to a restaurant on New Years Eve with 13 adults and 15 children (even if said restaurant is considered a “family restaurant”).

One would think that such a simple statement would be enough, wouldn’t one?

One would be wrong.

So let’s get a few things straight, in case you are already planning your soiree for next year:

1.   You don’t go out to a restaurant with 13 adults and 15 children (oh?  Did I say that already?)

2.  If you are dumb enough to do so, then when you get to the restaurant and see that they put the 15 children in the main dining room and the 13 adults in their own separate room, you speak up and say to the hostess “Hey!  This might not be the best idea!  The other 50 customers in the restaurant may not appreciate being so close to 15 semi-supervised children under the age of 11!” (and you certainly don’t smirk and say “Better them than me!”)

3.  If the hostess/owner assigns one lonely server to your party of 28, you cut him a break.  Perhaps you even say something to the owner/hostess about needing another server assigned to your group?

4.  When the overworked server still hasn’t brought the drinks to the children’s table, yet has already started bringing out appetizers to the adults and is approaching your table with a tray full of glasses and a pitcher of water, it is acceptable to suggest that the server give the water to the children instead.  It is NOT acceptable to scream “Where’s our water?” less than 2 minutes later.

5.  If you are told that, due to the separate checks issue, each partys food may come out at separate times, don’t just start grabbing entrees off the tray and passing them out to anyone who happened to be seated at the time.  I am still shocked that the waiters didn’t deck us at that point!

That was my New Years Eve.

And while I had a wonderful time being with my friends (we have spent New Years Eve with the same 3 other couples and their guests for the past 12 years), the evening was just an etiquette nightmare.  I’m not saying that I consider myself Emily Post, but I spent a good portion of the evening apologizing both to our server and the other people in the restaurant.

I’ve already sugested a Progressive Dinner for next year.

The Queen learned how to climb out of the Pack & Play while we were on vacation.  When we go home, it only took her 2 more days to figure out how to climb out of her much-taller crib.  We knew this day would come (although I have to say that she is a pretty slow learner…Prince #1 was hopping out at 17 months, Prince #2  at 19 months.  She waited until 25.5 months).

Long ago, we decided that we get rid of the crib when our youngest was done with it.  I know that some people keep their cribs just in case their grandchildren need a place to sleep when they visit.  But since Prince #1 is only 7, the thought of saving a crib for (what better be) a minimum of 15 years is not a very appealing one.  Besides, by the time my kids have kids, our crib will surely be considered a deathtrap!

Listed it on Craigs List for $150 (kind of high, but it was AVeryExpensiveCrib and is in excellent condition) and already have 6 emails from people wanting to buy it.

And now I don’t want to sell it…

How can I sell the thing that has been such a big part of my children’s life to this point?  I used it for all 3 of my children since the day they came home from the hospital.  They slept in it, played in it, puked in it and shit in it (no – I didn’t include those last two in my listing….Lysol does the trick).  I slept next to it when they were sick and perfected the art of the “one hand & a knee” method of lowering the sides.

Getting rid of the crib means that they are no longer babies.

And I hate it!

Anyway….

Have you joined the Internet brouhaha (2nd post down, entitled “Amazing”…then Google ”Lego Fruit Snacks” to see how people are completely losing their shit over this) over the latest Kellogg’s plot to kill our children?  Have you voiced your outrage?  Have you told your store to pull this fruit-snack-o-death? 

Then I have to ask….are you (or your kids) that fucking stupid?

Do Pepperidge Farm Goldfish have your kids digging in the fish tank at Petco for a snack?  Do Teddy Grahams have them chewing on their favorite stuffed animal?  Do Dino-Nuggets have them gnawing on a bone at the Museum of Natural Science dinosaur display?  Do Gummy Worms have them digging up your rosebushes like a stoned guy in search of Doritoes?

No?  then why do you think that congealed high-fructose corn syrup that vaguely resembles a Lego is going to suddenly cause an epidemic of children munching on their toys?

(oh – and here’s a little piece of info…perhaps we were a “test area” and got them earlier than the rest of the country, but I bought these things almost a year ago…and even my then-1-year old didn’t see them as free license to chow down on the Lego SpongeBob Chumbucket at my sister’s house)

So let’s look at 4 basic points:

1. children who are so young that they want to put everything in their mouth are too young to be around swallowable Legos in the first place.  Oh – they have an older brother who likes Legos?  not Kelloggs fault if you can’t put those Legos out of reach of your younger child.
2. older children who are so stupid that they want to put everything in their mouth are too stupid to be around swallowable Lego’s in the first place.  Oh – they have an smarter brother who likes Lego’s?  not Kelloggs fault if you can’t put those Lego’s out of reach of your dumber child.
3. Children who are too young to know what they should and should not put in their mouth are probably too young to be eating fruit snacks in the first place!  Fruit snacks ARE NOT FRUIT.  When they are too young to scream “I WANT CEREAL STRAWS” in the middle of Costco, you don’t need to be giving them crap & chemicals to appease them.  That usually doesn’t hit until they are 3.  And if by 3 they still don’t realize that Lego’s are not food, then please see #2
4. See that picture of the Legos on the box?  The picture that looks exactly like a real Lego with the sharp corners and brilliant colors?  Yeah – the fruit snacks look nothing like that.

So while the Internet Moms whine and moan about how Kellogg’s is trying to hurt their child and quite a few people are already plotting their lawsuit against Kellogg’s, let’s not forget one basic and very important fact:

If you are that upset about them, YOU DON’T HAVE TO BUY THEM!

June 16th, 2008

Happy Birthday Elizabeth!

(I’m spending the day playing Princesses and having tea parties)

When your daughter wakes up from her nap with a 102.5 fever and a horrible croup-y cough, do you

1. panic and rush her to the hospital?
2. call every mom you know and ask them what should be done before rushing her to the doctor?
3. rush her to the doctor and insist that she be seen at once?
4. have the doctor paged every 5 minutes until he calls you back?
5. call the doctor’s office, ask the nurse to call you back because you need her to call in a prescription for an ear infection, then snap her picture and blog about it while waiting for the return call?

Can you tell that she is the 3rd child?

Oh – and is it horrible that I am now excited that I may be able to use my coupon from CVS for a $25 Gift Card with any new prescriptions?  We NEVER have prescriptions to be filled!

When I was a child, we belonged to HoityToityPool.  Every day we would get in the car and be there by noon and stay all day, often ordering in dinner of pizza and staying until they kicked us out at 8:00pm.  I never heard my mother complain once about the 6-8 hour days at the pool…it was just something we DID.

Now it’s my turn to be the mom and I’m dragging the kids out after 2.5 hours.

The last time we had a pool membership, Prince #2 was just a year old and Prince #1 was three.  The possibility of The Queen hadn’t even entered in to our minds…actually, Brad was obsessing about having a third and I was so overwhelmed with two that I was avoiding sex at all costs (yes…ME!) since it seems that I get pregnant whenever Brad & I share the same towel!  Thank goodness we closed down the factory or it is highly likely that I’d be wearing a maternity bathing suit right now!

But I digress…..

Yet it was easy.  The boys really didn’t go in any water deeper than my knees and since it was a zero-entry pool, I could keep an eye on both at the same time.  And they were too young to be asking me to buy them a $4 hot dog at the snack bar.

This time around, I’ve got a 7-year old who can stand in the entire ”family side”, a 5 year old who can stand in about 80% of it (and neither of which can really swim, although #1 has less of a chance of drowning than #2, since he can dog-paddle…their swim lessons start June 30th!)and an almost-2-year-old who wants nothing but to stay in the baby pool.  And they both want the $4 hot dog and get quite pissy when I pull out the peanut butter & jelly that I packed.

And I can’t figure out how my mom did it….especially those years when my brother (who is 9 years younger than me) was always in the baby pool or had to be in the big pool, but held all the time.

Perhaps Mom was just hoping that I would drown (which would also mean that I would stop asking for the $2 hot dog….sounds cheaper, but it was the early 80s!) so she didn’t pay much attention to me and didn’t drive herself crazy trying to be in two places at once?

That must be it!  I knew if I thought hard enough I could justify my continuing to call her the Meanest Mom In The World!

Anyway - back to business…

I present the next installment in the Series That Never Fucking Ends “100 Things About Me”

10 Things About my Husband and Kids 

1. Brad has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from BigBasketballCatholicUniversity….and is a retail manager.  He got a job stocking shelves right after graduation to have an income while he looked for a “real job”.  The problem?  He decided that he really didn’t want to go in to Engineering.  Soon he was asked to enter the Management Training Program and has been in retail ever since.  He switched companies about 4 years ago to a much larger and more stable company and loves his current job.  People have asked me if it bothers me that he is “just” a retail manager.  Those people can kiss my ass.  My husband works his very-cute-butt off for his family and will do whatever he has to do in order to provide for his family while keeping me home with the kids.
2. So now that I’ve made Brad out to be this wonderful man/great provider/saint, let me tell you that it pisses me off that he seems incapable of pronouncing the letter “K” when it is in the middle or end of a word….he eats “brexfast” and “axes” me questions all the time.
3. I am also the envy of many of my neighbors because of him.  While other husbands come home from work and flop on the sofa or refuse to help with the kids, Brad comes in, gets changed and plays with the kids so that I can get stuff done.  He is completely whipped truly believes that I am working all day as well and always gives me a break as soon as he gets home.
4. Prince #1 has Autism.  I don’t talk about it often because he is high-functioning (thanks to a WHOLE lot of therapies that he gets 4 times per week).   In 4 years he has gone from a boy who used to throw such fits that I ended up with a bloody nose at least once a day and only communicated in sign language, to a fully-integrated-in-to-the-public-school-system little boy who just has some “quirks”.  Luckily we have a fabulous school system and they provide all of his services and solicit my input on every step of his education (which actually gets annoying after a while)
5. Prince #1 has an extremely high tolerance for pain and will never complain.  Because of this, I often won’t realize that he has an (all-to-frequent-but-not-frequent-enough-for-tubes) ear infection until the puss is running out of his ear.
6. Prince #1 is a genius.  I don’t say that in a “my child’s shit smells like a botanical garden” way.  I say that because he has been spelling and doing math problems since he was 1-year old.  When he was 4 years old and out playing with chalk, he was writing out and solving math problems in the street while other kids were drawing pictures of flowers.  He plays piano by ear (and not just “mary had a little lamb”…he has taught himself songs by Queen and Foreigner, just by hearing them on my iPod).  If he wasn’t so socially stunted, he would easily be able to skip two grades.  This isn’t me puffing up my kid, this is the 3-times-per-year discussion I have with his teachers and therapists (they actually recommended having him skip a year or two….I declined because of the social issues)
7. Prince #2 is both my “cuddle bunny” and my “drama queen”.  I haven’t yet decided if he is suffering from serious middle-child-syndrome, if he is just a master manipulator, or both.  One of his favorite things to do these days is to let me know, while I am yelling at Prince #1 for some infraction, that he certainly didn’t do that horrible thing!
8. Prince # 2 has absolutely no concept of time.  Ask him when he went to InfernoBoy’s house, for example (they’re now best friends) and he will tell you it was last Tuesday…even if it was that morning.  He loves to tell me “Mommy – I love you forever, and sometimes on Tuesdays!”
9. The Queen loves to clean.  Hand her a paper towel and she starts dusting everything in sight.  I’m thinking that this is really going to come in handy in a few years.
10. The Queen put to rest any residual doubts I may have had on that “nature vs. nurture” argument.  Sure, she wore a bunch of pink when she was a baby…but she also ran around in a grey “I’m the Big Brother” t-shirt.  And yet she has no interest in boy-stuff.  She’s all girl, complete with her own shoe fetish!

Shit – do I really have four more of these installments left? 

Dear Stupid, Silly, Horse-faced Woman Behind Me:

I offered to let you go in front of me.  Several times, in fact.  You declined.

Once you saw what I was up to, you had the option of changing lanes.  Instead, you chose to mutter under your breath, sigh heavily and roll your eyes.

Get over it…because the next time I see you, I’m going to dash to make sure that I get in front of you JUST TO PISS YOU OFF!

So to you and all of your obnoxious too-rich-to-worry-about-prices-buy-a-$175-hamburger-just-so-you-can-claim-to-literally-”shit gold” friends, let’s get a few things straight:

• Yes – I know that poor people and old ladies clip coupons.  You know who else clips them?  Stay-at-home moms who have husbands that work 60+ hours per week and don’t see their husband’s paycheck as anything but a gift that he is giving to his family.  A gift that she sees as her duty to stretch as far as she can.  That’s MY job.  We got by just fine before I started using coupons.  Now that I have freed up an average of $150-$400/month (the amount is rising each month) in grocery money, we are getting by muchmuchMUCH better.  I’ve already paid for us to go to DisneyWorld this year.  A few more months and we’ll be staying at the Grand Floridian…and paying in cash.
• No – I am not scamming the stores by getting all of this stuff for free.  I am merely taking advantage of advertised sales coupled with promotions by the manufacturer.  Your little crack about me wearing my Steelers t-shirt while stealing from the store was neither clever, nor original
• Yes, I am buying 5 diabetes monitors and getting them for free with coupon while getting an additional store credit.  And no, I don’t have diabetes (not that it is any of your business anyway).  But do you know who DOES have diabetes?  The people living in the retirement home down the street.  No – not the one with the $250,000 entrance fee.  The one the OTHER way down the street…you know – the one filled with people just one late Social Security check away from eating dog food?  After I leave this store, I’m taking the monitors straight to them…I do it every month…so bite me bitch!
• Have you ever been to this store before?  On a Saturday morning?  A Tuesday afternoon? Thursday night at 9:00pm?  Guess which one is the slowest time for the store and guess which time I have chosen to shop in order to inconvenience the fewest people (hint:  I’m typing this Thursday at 11:00pm)?  I know that I add an extra 3.67 minutes to my checkout time and I know that extra time can be unbearable when one is trying to get home to watch a marathon of “CSI” reruns.  I’d rather piss just one of you off than a whole bunch of you. 
• No – this isn’t a full-time job for me and yes I do have better things to do.  My full-time job is playing with my children and raising them to be good people.  This is just the “paperwork” that keeps The Company (my family) well “in the black”. 
• Ask the cashiers – they know me.  I don’t get in line until I am completely organized, don’t try to use expired coupons, make sure that the product I am buying EXACTLY matches the coupon and don’t try to use a third-party check from Nigeria to pay.  And if the register makes a mistake or shortchanges me my “bonus bucks”, I’m not going to argue with him.  I’m going to thank him and go straight to the customer service desk and get out of everyone’s way.  The same cannot be said for the “casual couponers” that I get behind all the time.  
• And as a matter of fact, I am using a gift card from the store, which requires fewer steps to pay than that Visa you have clutched in your hand.
• I don’t really care if the clerk hates coupons.  He is getting paid to move an item over a screen until the register goes BEE.  I’m even bagging my own groceries, even though most people will make him do it.  Why should he care if he is scanning a coupon or a pack of Pampers?  Can I tell you how many supermarket cashiers have exclaimed “WOW!” as they handed me 6 bags of groceries and I handed them $5?
• And finally, I know that you only eat organic, free-range, grass-fed beef that is lovingly led to slaughter to the sound of Bach, as well as hydroponically grown vegetables (don’t want to let our food touch that dirty icky dirt!) and are convinced that I am only feeding my family the highly processed crap for which coupons are readily available.  You know what is also available?  Coupons for the same stuff you like….and I get that stuff at less than half of what you pay.  I’ve got a pantry full of Cascadian Farms, Amy’s Organic and Kashi products that I paid literally next to nothing for.  You continue to pay full-price.  Who’s the fuckwad now?

In conclusion:  Get over it.  I’m not going to go back to paying full retail just because you have a bug up your ass about an extra 200 seconds.

Sincerely,

Your friendly neighborhood Coupon Queen

(I feel much better now)

Something has to give, and I don’t know what it is…nor is there anything that I want to give up (aside from scrubbing toilets, but that isn’t really an option).

I don’t know what has happened recently.  My children are still wonderful and I love my husband….I just can’t figure out why any of them tolerate me any longer.  There just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day to get everything done and I find myself fantasizing about finding Martha Stewart and Mary Poppins and wringing their scrawny necks for setting the bar so high. 

Yes – it’s my own doing and I should just get over it.  But that isn’t going to happen.  It’s not in my personality.  I guess that is why Bree VanDeKamp is my favorite TV character….I understand her completely (aside from the part about the string of murderous lovers….at least I’m pretty sure about that part)

What’s strange is that the last two weeks have seen a decrease in my obligations.  My role as President of my mother’s club is all but over (nothing left but the end-of-year paperwork due by the 30th), pre-school is over so I have one less child to shuttle around, CCD is over, Prince #1 stopped having homework two weeks ago and the countdown to no longer having to deal with Satan’s Spawn is in single digits.

And I find myself praying for rain. 

Why?  Because when it rains the kids can stay inside and I can get shit done.  But with the weather being annoyingly beautiful the last few weeks (aside from the random one-day-monsoon), the kids want to be outside playing with their friends which means I need to be out there with them.

And how do I react to this incredible gift that I have been given of being allowed to stay at home and chalk in the driveway, swing on the swings and have water-gun fights with my children?  With resentment, a short temper and perpetual distraction.

I have 3 loads of laundry constantly sitting in my room that need to be folded with another 2 loads daily behind them that need to be done (especially now that they are playing outside and literally rolling in dirt). 

The thank-you notes still haven’t been sent from the Prince’s birthday party two weeks ago, the living room floor hasn’t been mopped in two weeks. 

I haven’t made a really nice (AKA “from scratch”) meal in over 3 weeks…it’s been frozen pizza, hot dogs, chicken nuggets or chicken on the grill with side dishes of chemicals straight from the box/mix. While this may be what the other four members of this house prefer eating, loading them up with high fructose corn syrup, salt, fat and powdered cheese is something I swore I would never do.

And let’s not even talk about the dining room…the “dumping ground” for everything that I need to get out of my way, but don’t want to take the time to run it upstairs, downstairs or out to the garage.

And as for sex?  There are Buddhist monks getting laid more often than me….and it certainly isn’t Brad’s fault or for lack of trying on his part.  It’s just that he often goes to bed with the kids (he has to be up and at work by 5:30am most days) and I usually need the time after the kids go to bed to straighten the kitchen or just have the first “me time” of the day.  The result?  I end up falling asleep on the sofa and not waking up until Brad is leaving for work.

I know what you are thinking (aside from “could this chick possibly whine a bit more?”).  You are thinking “Why doesn’t she give up the blog?  Why doesn’t she step away from the computer and fold that laundry or put away the dishes in the dishwasher?”

The answer is simple….I love you guys.  I really do.

Since I started this blog I have met so many people that I consider kindred spirits.  Not just from you people who read my ramblings, but especially from the wonderful blogs that I have found (click on links in the last sentence…I didn’t think this whole “link to other blogs” things out too well and I got shit to do as soon as I hit “publish”).  You people are just so fucking REAL, and there is such safety in the (not very) anonymous world of MommyBlogging (yes BusyDad – you’re a MommyBlog as far as I am concerned).  Sit at a playground with local woman and confess to not being a SuperMom and you get a bunch of looks that say “what’s wrong with you?”

Say the same thing on a blog (or read it on someone elses)  and you find yourself with more support and similar tales than anyone (including yourself) will admit to in real life.  I place a great deal of value on the informal support group that can be found in the MommyBlog world.

And I know that these feelings of inadequecy and frustration will pass.  They always do and I find myself back on track and happily scrubbing the tops of the door mouldings once again.

But for now, I will continue my wallowing….

Thirty.Fucking.Minutes (although the first 10 minutes were spent trying to remember where I stashed the ironing board)

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t iron.  I hate it and so I purposely buy wrinkle-resistant shirts (the ones from Eddie Bauer are fabulous) and then stand over the dryer like a vulture to grab the clothes the minute they are done.

And then a Chicos outlet opened near me.  I’ve been behind on the whole “Chicos movement”, having been very happy with Coldwater Creek.  Until I finally visited the outlet…and then I was hooked. 

The problem?  It seems they are not that big a fan of the wrinkle-resistant lines.

So here I am, a 39-year-old SAHM who doesn’t know how to iron and doesn’t want to pay the triple-rate for dry cleaning a woman’s shirt (as opposed to a men’s shirt).  I couldn’t even get the stupid karate patches on right!

Any idea if the wrinkled look is coming back in to style?

Are there any “Ironing For SAHM Failures” out there?

Oh well – it’s off to a stupid home sales party for a company that I have never heard of and as near as I can tell, they just sell stickers with words on them.  I’m only going for the wine!