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A Mother’s Back to School Prayer

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Sweet Baby Jesus.

It never fails. Two days before school starts back, my kids start busting out random profanities and vulgar sounding words that aren’t technically bad, but sound like something Ralphie’s dad might yell at a rusty old furnace.

Take for example, Aubrey’s question before her last day of preschool, “Momma,” she said innocently, five minutes before we walked out the door to say good-bye to pre-K, “I hope Spongebob doesn’t have a penis.”

I had a moment of panic, which is now very familiar, wondering if this would come up in conversation during her last day of school.

Last week, Sadie sat on the floor playing with Zeb’s iPad while he read a magazine nearby.

“Dammit!” His four-year-old yelled.

Zeb: What did you say?

Sadie looked him straight in the eye, “Dammit.”

Zeb: WHY did you say that?

Sadie gestured to the iPad game she was playing, “I missed dat fing.” (What the what y’all!?)

Her other favorite word these days is “Hootananny.” She likes to run around the house, preferably pantsless, yelling, “Hootananny, hootananny! Hoot, hoot, hoot!” I don’t know what she thinks it means, but I feel sure she thinks it’s profane– she enjoys it a little too much.

Last week we were driving around in our *Patty Peck Honda Odyssey, we had just left the grocery store and I was going somewhere in the same parking lot so I hadn’t buckled my seatbelt. Judy (that’s my van’s name, obviously) said, “Please fasten driver’s seat belt.”

*Click the link to like Patty Peck’s FB page. I’m going to be hosting a chat on 8.8.13 at 8pm cst about everything road trips!

Aubrey, my nine-year-old, groaned, “UGH! Judy. CALM DOWN! She’s gonna get out in a second.”

I fastened my seat belt to stop the dinging.

Aubrey: It’s like you have to FEED her to get her to be quiet. Like you have to put gas in her and put the seat belt in the seat belt thing so she will shut her… her… GASHOLE.

I choked a little, “Her WHAAA?”

“Her gashole.” Aubrey said with a straight face.

Aubrey: Ding-ding-ding. Shut your gashole Judy. ‘Fasten your seatbelt.’ Shut your gashole… you know?

The more times Aubrey said, “gashole,” I could see the wheels turning in her brain. She loves words like I do– loves to turn them over in her head and test them out loud to see how they feel on her tongue. She comes up with puns all the time that make us both laugh out loud and I could tell she had stumbled across a word that intrigued her, she just wasn’t sure why, yet.

“Gashole. Do we need to put some gas in Judy’s gashole, Momma??” She asked, looking for a reason to use the word.

I sighed. (I do that a lot.)

Me: Aubrey, you need to stop saying that. It sounds like a really bad word.

She looked at me, puzzled, “It does?”

Her almost white eyebrows scrunched together in thought. I could see her mentally ticking off every obscenity she knows– then it clicked. Her eyes widened and she gasped, “OH! I’m sorry, Momma!”

“No worries,” I said.

Then after the first full day of school, my kids had a water balloon party at church to celebrate the end of summer. They wore their swimsuits and I packed a bag of dry clothes for each of them to wear when they finished. I dropped them off for the water party and went back afterwards as they ate dinner. They were then supposed to report to their classrooms for Wednesday night Bible study. All of the classes are divided by grade and since school had just started back, everyone had moved up a class.

Sadie, now at “Big School” (4K), had finally moved out of the nursery and into a real classroom with her sisters. But she was so tired from her first day of school and playing outside for two hours afterwards that she was roaming aimlessly around the fellowship hall trying to figure out where she should go.

Me: Sadie, go in the classroom with your sisters.

Sadie: I don’t bewong in dere.

Her face was red from the heat and her eyes looked sleepy.

Me: Yes you do! Go in there with your sisters.

Sadie: I DID GO IN DERE AND DEY SAID I DON’T BEWONG AND I’M NOT WEARING ANY PANTIES!

She burst into tears as I picked her up and confirmed the latter part of her statement. Apparently she had found her dress but her underwear had been more elusive.

I helped her calm down, step into her underpants and took her to the big classroom with her friends. She cheered up quickly, sang along with her teacher and listened attentively for over 30 minutes. As the class dismissed to the playground to wait for everyone’s parents to pick them up, my seven-year-old, Emma, made her way to me in the back of the room.

She leaned forward, cupped her hands around my ear and whispered, “I’m not wearing any panties.”

Sweet. Baby. Jesus.

Which leads me back to the fear, paranoia and general sense of doom I experience this time of year as my children are unleashed upon people who are not related to them. So this morning, as I dropped my kids off at school,  I said a little prayer:

Dear God, 

Please let my kids behave, I don’t want their teachers to have a hootananny on their hands. Please help my kids to remain fully clothed at school or to at least not tell everyone if they’re going commando– otherwise I’m gonna look like a total gashole. 

Amen

 

 

My 6-Year-Old Drops the Eff Bomb, Learns About The Birds & The Bees, Then I Do a Shot at 4pm

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If you’ve read my book you know I’ve had “The Talk” with Aubrey, my oldest, about a dozen times. She was four-years-old when Sadie was born and while little two-year-old Emma was unwrapping her new baby to look at her toes, Aubrey was jumping up and down on the bed yelling, “HOW DID SHE GET OUT?! HOW DID SHE GET OUT?! HOW DID SHE GET OUT?! HOW DID SHE GET OUT?! HOW DID SHE GET OUT?! “

Aubrey, at the ripe old age of eight, has known the down and dirty for a looooooong time. In addition, she’s learned a few bad words over the last year that we have discussed ad nauseum. Every time she learns a new word at school she comes home and tells me. I tell her what it means and that if she says it at school she will be in deep, um, well… sh*t. *ahem*

A man I respect a WHOLE lot has said that these days you should have “The Talk” with your kids before second grade to make sure that they are getting their first bits of information about sex from you instead of some kid on the playground. I’ve been looking for opportunities to talk about this with Emma since she is in first grade, but the child is so sweet and innocent! She’s curious but she’d rather disassemble the pencil sharpener to see how it works than to wonder where babies come from. An opportunity hasn’t presented itself so I’ve been reluctant to give her extra information.

After school today, Emma perched on the kitchen counter while I cooked dinner and chattered away. She spoke of Valentine’s Day and a certain little boy’s name she had been writing in hearts on the back of her worksheet. (Sidebar– a totally different little boy than the one she said she was going to marry last week. #WorriedAboutThisOne)

Then out of the blue she said, “Somebody said The Aff word at school today!”

Me: Whaaaaa?

Her eyes got big, “YOU KNOW… The AFF word!!”

Me: The Eff Word?

She nodded.

Me: Oh? In your class?

Her: No. In another class.

Me: How do you know they said it?

Her: I heard it! (She beamed.) I have GREAT ears!

I snickered, “Oh… well, then. Do you know what The Eff Word is?”

She nodded her white blond head. “Yup.”

I don’t know why I did this. Y’all!? WHY did I ask? I don’t think I really believed her, so I said, “What is it?”

And that sweet innocent little baby looked me straight in the eye, with her index finger halfway up her nose, and said, “F***.” Matter-of-factly. Nonchalant. No biggie.

This face. This face is the one that looked at me and said that word.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I turned my face away from her and let out an all purpose snort. I turned back to her with a straight face.

Me: Who told you that?

Her: Aubrey.

(I was FILLED WITH A FIERY RAGE which she saw in my face.)

Me: Oh. Did she tell you what it means?

Her: Nope.

She looked scared.

(Deep breath. I gave her a hug.)

Me: You aren’t in trouble. I want you to talk to me about this stuff, okay? Did she at least tell you how bad it is?

Her: Oh YES! It’s the worst! The MOTHER! The Queen Mother! The F Dash Dash Dash word!! The worst word in the whole world!

I nodded my head. “Right. And it means having sex. Do you know what that is?”

Her: Uh-uh.

Sweet Baby Jesus. Help me, help me, help me.

I cleared my throat. “Um well…” I launched into a brief but thorough AND anatomically correct description. Her eyes got huge. I took another deep breath.

“Do you have any questions?”

She shook her head, ” Um, NO. This is weird, gross, funny… and a little confusing.”

Me: Agreed.

Then my husband came and picked up all three girls to take them to church so I could do this podcast interview. Fingers crossed she doesn’t tell everyone in her class what she just learned.

When did you talk to your kids about sex? How’d that work out for ya? 

ALSO if y’all could vote for me in this contest I would really appreciate it! Scroll down to my name and click the button to vote. That’s it! Two clicks! 

 

Emma Was My Favorite– For 5 Whole Minutes

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Zebulicious has been out-of-town since yesterday, so this is Day 2 of solo bedtime duty. I made the mistake of posting this on Facebook earlier:

She did all of that. Aubrey “couldn’t find” any of her school clothes and wanted me to “help” her. Translation= do it for her because she didn’t feel like it. Before I could even respond Emma said, “I’ll help you.” She laid out their clothes, put pajamas on Sadie and picked up around the den. My heart swelled with love for that little peanut.
I was excited about getting the girls in bed and getting to watch The Bachelor while following Jennifer Weiner’s live Tweets without shame or judgment from the Hubster, since he won’t be home until later tonight. I sent the girls to brush their teeth, picked up in the kitchen for a few minutes then almost had a heart attack when THIS walked into the kitchen.
As I may or may not have mentioned, Zebulicious and I have been watching A  HELLA lot of The Walking Dead and I am the biggest scaredy cat of all time ever. So when I say my heart STOPPED for a few seconds. I mean to say– IT STOPPEDED. Then this happened:

I almost died laughing when right after I called Emma in the room I overheard Sadie say to Aubrey, “I know, wight??” Then she toots and tells us all about it.

I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

I’m not bragging about my kids anymore on the Internetz. POUNDSIGN: I’m a liar.

If Emma’s careers as an assassin and/or cat burglar don’t pan out, I’d say she’s got a future as a makeup artist.

Happy Child’s Day– Said No One Ever

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Yesterday on the way home from school my eight-year-old, Aubrey said from the backseat, “Momma, I made you an early birthday present at school today.”

My birthday isn’t for another month.
Me: Thanks baby! What is it?
She passed me a card she made that actually said, “To Momma, From Your Eldest.” I’m not kidding when I say I am raising Anne of Green Gables over here.

What other eight-year-old do you know that uses “killjoy” casually in conversation??

I glanced at the card before passing it back to her to read out loud to since I was driving and she had written her poem in yellow highlighter. Aubrey read and while I gushed about how much I loved it, my six-year-old, Emma started sucking up.

Emma: Momma when we get home I’m going to make you a really, REALLY awesome card. Just like I did for Mother’s Day, and kind of like the one I made for Daddy for Father’s Day but BETTER…

Emma got quiet for a second then said, “HEY! How come there is a Mother’s Day AND a Father’s Day but there’s no such thing as Child’s Day!?”

Insert maniacal laughter from the front seat.

Me: Because EVERY day is Child’s Day.

Don’t forget to hop over to my FB page, I’m giving away 2 copies of Ketchup is a Vegetable today through Friday (11/30) & have lots of other giveaways as well!

Emma (6yo) Weighs in on Election

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Emma: Momma do you want Mitt Romney to be our president or Barack Obama to be our president for four more years?

Me: Ummmm, neither really.

Emma: WELL, Barack Obama’s favorite food is chili and his favorite sport is basketball…

Me: Okay.

Emma: Mitt Rom-in-nee’s favorite sport is riding horses and his favorite food is granola. AND he has 18 grandkids.

Me: Where are you getting this stuff?

Emma: It was in my Weekly Reader. I really like chili… BUT also? I really like horses too. I don’t know who I would vote for. That’s hard.

Me: Tell me about it.

Aubrey Said: I Know. I’m Blossoming.

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After baths tonight, Aubrey, my seven-year-old, thought it would be a good idea to shake her head back and forth a la wet dog. She got down on all fours… in her skivvies to increase the effect.

Her three-year-old sister found this hysterically funny and while Sadie laughed Aubrey stopped to giggle with her. She stayed frozen for a moment then said to Sadie, “Hey! Push my on button!”

I have no idea what previously conceived notions Sadie had about an “On Button,” but without skipping a beat, she reached up, put her hand on Aubrey’s backside and, rather rudely, accosted her. Aubrey and I cackled with laughter.

Me: WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING?!

SADIE: I jest gived hur a good game!

For the love.

Later when I was tucking Aubrey into bed, I whispered, “I can’t believe you are going to be in second grade next year.”

Aubrey said, totally serious, ” I know. I’m blossoming.”

My people are random. RANDOM, I tell you. What’s the most random thing that’s been said at your house lately?

Update: I gave Emma (5yo) my iPhone to listen to a lullaby playlist while she went to sleep. I just went to check on her and saw the glow of the iphone illuminating her face as she studied the screen.

Me: Honey, you can’t play with it just listen–

Emma: I didn’t bite it.

Me: Huh?

Emma: I didn’t bite it. I didn’t bite your phone.

Me: Um. Okay?

I laughed because obviously, she just bit my phone. Which raises two important points:

1) I’m not sure she’s mine because I am and have always been, an excellent liar.

2) This is why I have an iPhone case that was practically made by Rubbermaid.

Obviously I snickered.

Emma laughed too, then said, “I’m just thinking about boys underwear. That’s why I’m laughing.”

What the HAIL, ya’ll?

I’m Still Kicking Boos!

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So HEL-LO. It’s sort of been awhile since I really blogged. And I’m mostly sorry but not really because I’ve gotten to SEE so many of you in the last month at book signings and such and it has been wonderful. So I’m sorry I haven’t blogged but if I got to see your sweet little face then I am NOT sorry that I was talking to you and not on the computer.

December: A Total Blur.

I had about six book signings in three different cities in two different states. I was on the radio for the first time, did my first television interview without dying (Hooray!), had a birthday party for Sadie who turned three-years-old. (Sigh.)

I turned another year older, bringing me to a grand total of thirty-four glorious years… and oh, yeah, had Christmas at home with my hubby and kids. Which was amazing. It rained the entire time and we all wore our pajamas for days on end. We ate. We slept. We gave each other gifts. Seriously, it was perfect.

I’ve been on the road a bit more since then. And I’ve got to say… I love it. It’s hard and stressful in ways that I hadn’t anticipated but it’s my dream job. This is the job I daydreamed about when I was a kid but was too embarrassed to admit to anyone.. so the stuff I don’t like? I’m just going to suck it up and deal with it.

Currently Zeb’s little brother, Zack is chillin’ at the crib with us and my kids are freaking loving it. This morning I walked into the kitchen for coffee and found Zeb, Zack and all three girls like this:

7:00am game of Headbandz & a guitar lesson

When you are a kid the definition of awesome is your cool aunt or uncle who doesn’t have kids yet and can give you all of their attention. Hence: Zack.

He played the guitar and sang while I cleaned the kitchen tonight and my kids climbed all over him. He’s taught them how to play a few things on the guitar Emma got for Christmas and is currently in the garage teaching them how to play the drums. (You’re welcome, Neighbors. I’ll send you my in-laws’ phone number so you can call them personally and thank them for their very thoughtful Christmas gift.)

I walked in the kitchen a few minutes ago and found Emma on Zack’s shoulders and he was confused.

Zack: I don’t even know how she got up there. I didn’t help her at all.

Me: I believe you. I’ve met her.

Aubrey was trying to play the guitar and she glanced up to say, “My finger is in that H place.”

I’m no musician but I can kinda read music from the years of piano lessons my mother forced upon me and I know there’s no “H” in music.

Me: “H” place? Huh?

Aubrey: You know… not up above but down beloooooooooow.

Me: Oooooh! THAT “H” place.

So we are still up to the same shenanigans. My kids continue to make me laugh and cry on a somewhat daily basis and I’m working as hard and as fast as I can to write it all down.

I’ve been working on the second book which has been mostly a hot mess for the last year as I’ve been writing. But now the book is beginning to take shape and I’m in the process of revising, rewriting and editing so I can send it back to my agent. (Do not ask me how long this will take or when you can buy it– because the answers are “Forever” and “Never if I don’t finish writing the damn thing.”)

So that’s what I’ve been up to for the last month. Traveling, working, writing… laughing at my kids.

What have you been up to?