Archives for 2012

For Christmas my oldest daughter, Aubrey, was given a collection of classic books that had been revised for her reading level. She tore through “Little Women” and learned several new words while reading “Anne of Green Gables.” I didn’t even realize she’d read “Huckleberry Finn,” until dinner last night.

All three of my daughters sat side by side at the bar in our kitchen, happily eating pancakes and bacon when Aubrey said, “You know… I realized something reading Huckleberry Finn…”

I raised my eyebrows as she continued.

“Huckleberry Finn and Emma are sort of the same type of character,” she said, referring to her five-year-old sister. I tried not to giggle. Emma is the most mischievous of my children. I knew exactly what Aubrey meant but I wanted to see where she was going with this.

“How do you mean?” I asked innocently.

Emma crunched her bacon, flipped her hair out of her eyes and listened intently.

“Wellllll, they both have a lot of adventures and they like to tell lies…”

I reflected for a moment to the four laundry baskets worth of Emma’s folded clothes I had recently discovered shoved under every piece of furniture in their shared bedroom and all the empty laundry baskets that had been presented to me with a smile. In all fairness to Emma, she’s not mean spirited or devious, just a little creative but once you’ve given her specific instructions she’ll obey you to the letter. She’s now given a full laundry basket and instead of saying, “Put this away.” I say, “Put these where they BELONG. In your drawers and in the closet, understood?”

But regardless, calling Emma a liar seemed a bit harsh so I opened my mouth to defend her, “I don’t know if that’s a very nice thing to say about your sister…” I began as Emma thoughtfully tucked her hair behind her ear and nodded.

“Well…. Yeeeeaaahhh.” She agreed.

My husband threw in his two cents, “But Aubrey, Huck lied to protect the fella he ran away with remember? What was his name?”

“Oh, yeah! Jim! That’s right! Huck was trying to help him. Emma just lies because she likes it.”

I made eye contact with Emma, who shrugged, giggled a little, then swiped a pancake off her sister’s plate.

photo credit

Aubrey and Emma, my seven and five-year-olds, have gotten quite good at riding their bicycles. They hop on their bikes and ride around our yard and make laps up and down the driveway. But after several days of circling the trampoline they wanted to branch out and ride their bike to a park less than half a mile from our house. They aren’t big enough to go by themselves so I borrowed my best friend’s bike which has a baby seat attached for Sadie.

I buckled Sadie into her seat and spoke to her sisters, “I’m going to ride on the center line and y’all stay to my right, okay? If you don’t listen and do exactly what I say we will come home. Got it?”

The girls nodded their blond heads and jumped on their bikes. I looked up and down our street and waited until there were no cars in sight to yell, “Go!” We successfully crossed our first street and rode our bikes down a quiet side street headed towards the park. I pedaled slowly to wait for them. Emma wobbled a bit on her bike and looked up at me.

“Don’t look at me Emma! Watch where you are going!” I said as she veered off the road and rode into a ditch and a huge mud puddle.

“I’m okay!” She yelled, dragging her hot pink bicycle out of the ditch and coating her new shoes with mud.

I sighed and waited. We had two more intersections to cross before we got to the park and I was beginning to think this wasn’t the best idea. Emma climbed back on her bike.

“Alright, let’s go!” We had moved approximately 20 feet when I saw a car turn onto the street ahead of us, on the opposite side of the road. It was still several blocks away but I told the girls, “Stay to my right!” I figured if I kept them pinned between me, riding down the center line, and the side of the road, the worst thing that could happen is that someone would end up in a ditch again. But as I yelled for the girls to stay right, Emma swerved hard to the left, crossing over the center line behind me and yelling, “LIKE THIS MOMMA?”

“NO!!! OH MY GOD! YOUR OTHER RIGHT! EMMA!! GET BACK ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD!!!”

I could feel hairs on my head turning gray and I’m sure I shaved a good three years off my life.

“Get off your bike and come over here!” Emma jumped off her bike and walked back to the right side of the road. The car turned off the street before it even reached us.

“From now on, just get off your bike and stand on the side of the road if you see a car coming,” I instructed. It should be noted that at this point I could still see our driveway and should have taken the opportunity to turn around and go home, but did I? You know I didn’t.

We pressed forward, Aubrey and Emma hopping off their bikes every time a car was within sight. We crossed a busy intersection successfully and finally, we could see the promised land.

I rode down to a low spot where I could ride my bike across the grass and rode as quickly as a could across the small hill. I stopped and turned to make sure Aubrey and Emma were getting out of the road and saw a truck turn onto the street behind them. My bike was now sitting on a small incline and as I turned to yell at the big girls to get off their bikes and walk the rest of the way, the weight of my preschooler on the back of the bike combined with the bike’s position on the hill, joined forces and the bike began to fall sideways. Because it was so heavy on the back, I couldn’t stop it from falling and it knocked me sideways as it fell. Sadie cried from her seat (which curved around her, thankfully protecting her arms, legs and her head) as I pulled myself out from under the bike and lifted it back up.

Aubrey and Emma rushed to my side to check on Sadie and me, and the truck slowed as it passed the spectacle on the side of the road. I prayed they wouldn’t stop to check on me— the only thing more humiliating than falling off a parked bike with your baby strapped to it would be acknowledging what just happened with a perfect stranger.

When my family of five heads to The Farm in Curry, Ala for the weekend we are ready for the chaos that comes with it. Including my girls, there are nine cousins— all girls— ranging in age from 12 months to 12 years. The three oldest girls make excellent babysitters and will pick up the three smallest cousins and pop them up on a hip faster than you can say, “Where’d my baby go?” Nine children and around 8 adults stay in my in-laws house, sharing 1.5 bathrooms, kitchen duty and and shared insanity.

There is no such thing as privacy at The Farm, as my mother-in-law, Plum, lovingly pointed out one evening. I was laying in the bed in the room Zeb and I shared with Sadie and laughed until I had tears streaming down my face when I heard Plum banging on the bathroom door downstairs.

“What are you doing?!” She yelled through the locked door, “THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS PRIVACY!”

Shower times should be chosen wisely. You don’t want to get in the shower after Emma and Mary Frances, as they use it as a rinsing station between rolls in the sand pile and shower shoes are required. You also don’t want to get in the shower after the tweens as there will be no hot water left, and you don’t want to get in the shower while any one is running the dishwasher or the washing machine as you will alternately scald yourself and/or freeze to death.

The Farm People, as my children adoringly refer to all of their Daddy’s family, are amazing folks— cut from the same cloth as Laura Ingalls Wilder. If there ever was a nuclear holocaust I’d hightail it to the farm as fast as I could get there because I know without a doubt they would still have running water, transportation (maybe just a mule drawn wagon but they’d be mobile) and possibly a good wi-fi connection. The Farm People do things like saddling horses and go for nature hikes and other things that involve sweat and the great outdoors.

I’m not cut from the same cloth— so while I was zero assistance as they hung beams in the new living room and sleeping loft they built for all the Grandgirls…

That’s my m-i-l on the left. Roughly 30 feet off the ground about to lift a beam that weighs 100 times what she does. And that’s Zebulicious on the right.

Filed under: Things I Could Not Do Without Severely Injuring Myself.

I know my place. The kitchen is where I can be of the most use and where I can contribute to the family. So I cooked. From my vantage point in the kitchen, I watched, laughed and shuddered with fear as huge beams were carried into the living room and hoisted onto scaffolding.

I visited with everyone as dinner was scarfed down then took a post at the kitchen sink to clean up the mess that is inevitably made when cooking for a small army. The adults grabbed hammers and climbed back onto the scaffolding and I enlisted my troops. Faith, Zoe, and Kasey, the tweens, cleared the tables and swept the floors. I sent Emma and Mary Frances, the kindergartners, to clean up the playroom. Sadie and Mary-Ann, the toddlers, giggled and bounced on their bottoms down the stairs. Aubrey and Abby, the smart ones, ran out of sight before they could be assigned a task.

I stuck my hands in the soapy water as the kitchen magically cleaned itself behind me. I reached for a white ladle whose scoop has been stained brown from years of valiantly scooping Pop Pete’s hot chocolate into mugs for little girls exhausted from a day of chasing horses, gathering eggs and digging in the dirt. I rinsed the ladle, placed it in the sink to dry and sighed, thankful, to somehow be a part of this family.

PLEASE GO VOTE FOR ME! Two clicks to vote for me as one of Circle of Moms Top 25 Funniest Moms!! 

I’ve been a little preoccupied lately. This weekend while we were home to visit The Farm People, as my children adoringly refer to my in-laws, one of my Besties introduced me to Draw Something– an iPhone app that will suck up your soul and spit out your bones.

But you will be laughing so hard you won’t even care.

The basic deal is this: you start a game with someone… preferably someone you share a brain with unless you are a freaking artist because this isn’t easy. You choose one of three words to draw and draw it. THEN you submit and wait for your friend to guess what you drew.

But this is where the hilarity starts– they watch what is basically a video of you drawing from start to finish. The whole process. So if you erase or start over 18 times (AHEM to my brother-in-law who redrew a perfectly good sombrero about 12 times) they can watch the whole thing.

It was so addictive that within 24 hours, I had every iPhone owning member of my husband’s family playing. We all stood around in the kitchen, drawing on our phones and laughing like hyenas while we watched other draw terribly.

Take for example, my friend Stacey’s drawing. Do you know who this is????

Kate Moss. Obviously. The hip bones should have tipped us all off.

Here is my very best rendering of a music supahstar.

I don’t think your ready for THIS jelly.

If you don’t know what this is then you obviously don’t have an older brother or were seriously Hot Stuff in high school…

And my all time favorite (that I can share on the intranet without being totally ESCANDALO as my friend Rachel Hawkins would say..) Please look at all the effort my seester put into drawing “knee”…

I don’t care who you are. That is funny.

Are you drawing something yet? 

PS Please give me two little clicks and go vote for me as one of Circle of Moms Funniest Moms– SERIOUSLY it is two clicks! 

Also my friend Rachel Hawkins is on book tour right now promoting her third book Spellbound which is the final installment in the Hex Hall series, if you like YA/ Harry Potterish stuff I HIGHLY recommend. Click on her name above and check out her books! 

This is one of the only pics I have and it’s all blurry. Sorry y’all. 

I’m a pajamas type of girl. Lounge wear, yoga pants, and yes, even velour sweatsuits. If being comfortable is a fashion crime, then call the po-po, because if there’s an elastic waistband involved, you can go ahead and count me in. It hasn’t really been a life long goal of mine to see how much time I could log in loungewear as opposed to “real clothes” (pants with zippers and bras with actual underwire) but as a mom and a writer, nobody really expects me to get all done up.

The teachers in the carpool line only see me from the shoulders up, and once I get everyone to school I come home to do housework or clack away on my computer and no one is here to see me. Many of my mommy friends have similar wardrobes so it was eyeopening and exciting when last Saturday night, a good portion of Greenwood, MS showed up at the annual Cotton Ball decked out in their finest.

I ordered shoes off the internet after searching high and low for something to match my dress and crammed my too wide feet into the shoes like Cinderella’s ugly stepsister. They fit, but every time I pulled them off my feet I couldn’t help but hear Looney Tune sound effects in my head, “BOOOOOOOOING!” as my toes sprung back to their original shape and size. I put on a real bra, and make-up as my five-year-old whispered reverently, “Fancy.”

I squeezed into my Spanx, slipped into my dress and warned my husband, “Do not let me dance in this dress— at the very least remind me not to bend over.”

I barely recognized myself when I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror and as I teetered through the reception hall on heels, I smiled and nodded politely as I passed a tall blonde in a stunning black dress. Three seconds later we both wheeled around and gaped at each other open mouthed.

“Robin?” my friend said.

Ignore all the crap on the floor. I sent my sister this pic because I was trying to decide what shoes to wear. We decided on the shoe on my left foot. I am only posting this pic because y’all asked me to and to prove that I didn’t wear yoga pants.

“Hey! I didn’t recognize you without your ah… um…” we laughed as we left the rest unfinished but smiled and nodded in silent understanding.

All night long I found myself smiling politely then gaping at my own friends.

“You look so good!” We squealed at each other.

It wasn’t easy but I managed to keep from bending over all night— as far as I know, no one saw my Spanx hanging out of the bottom of my dress. I ditched my heels in favor of ballet flats as soon as the band started playing and had a blast dancing. My husband had to drag me away so we could be home by the time we had given our sitter. And as the clock struck midnight I wiped the makeup from my face,  pulled my hair back into a ponytail, and slipped back into my yoga pants and sighed when I recognized myself in the mirror.