Fads are Crap

I heard the line 'fads are crap' several (at least a million) times as I was growing up... because my parents said it 500,000 times and Jill's said it the other half. That's some of the uh... err... benefits of growing up with only a fence line between you. You get to hear everything twice. At least.

But I am actually a tiny bit thankful that practicality and budget and common sense often erroded any efforts I might have wanted to make towards some idiotic silliness of the 80's and early 90's while my parents were still responsible for what I looked and acted like. I wasn't exactly somebody that wanted all the latest and greatest things either- and even to this day- I'm just someone who wants to stay above the wire of wearing anything ridiculous/boring/hideously outdated and below the wire of wearing anything somebody will compliment you on for being bold or creative or whatever adjective they want to apply.

Joshua's trend endeavors have been minimal. From the age of 3 until he entered a private school with a dress code, wore mis-matched socks. I don't mean brown and black either- I mean Christmas with Halloween and blue stripes paired up with a dinosaur dotted sock. At first it was a little cute and then mortifying and then really, really practical.

It got mortifying when I found out that his socks had garnered the attention of his fellow pre-schoolers and now multiple kids were refusing to match their socks. But it was seriously practical to not have to match socks when doing laundry. And losing one of a pair was never a big deal!


The beloved sock collection... that I was permitted to dispose of under the terms of capturing it in a photo Joshua could keep forever...

I realize a 7-year-old is way different than the teenie tweeny set and the worst is likely well on its way to me. Noah already has some diva status- repeatedly changing his clothes in a day and rejecting selections I've brought home and taking 7 hours to find clothes in the morning. In fact, that is my morning discipline plan when he won't get a move on- "If you don't get out of bed and get going mister, I'll PICK YOUR CLOTHES".

I have to say I was a bit annoyed when Joshua asked for some plaid shorts this summer instead of his standard khaki cargos. Noah the diva already had a stack of plaid shorts but coming from Joshua... this was weird. And when I said I would look the next time I was at Target, I got a funny look and a request for Old Navy. I only exhaled hard once and then faked my smile. I wasn't as aggravated with his slight and even minimal and even reasonable demands as I was with the fact he's just getting too old too fast.

-Sheryl

I Remembered

I remembered what I had meant to post. It was one of those mom moments where you are absolutely so stunned that you don't know whether to holler or curse or to make a life moment of explaining the right thing to do for your children.

But after a long weekend on my own with Alan out of town, and worn out with the variety of screwiness that followed the weekend including a baseball game, team pictures, making a garden, covering for my boss, a cleaning project inside, a toaster oven failure, etc., I was VERY glad to end my Monday with picking my boys up. But it was stinking raining so here we were dashing to the car from school with still thinking about whether we had to negotiate baseball practice AND cub scouts or just scouts or neither depending on how tired we freaking were.

Before I could even put the car in drive Noah hollered he was thirsty. In my ultra-Seattle re-usable bag, I had a stash of juice boxes and fruit snacks and cracked open a fresh Minute Maid apple juice for him. As I was handing it back to him he started screaming like a mad man because HE WAS SPRAYING IT ALL OVER HIMSELF AND HIS BOOSTER SEAT WHILE I WAS STILL HOLDING IT. Some how it wasn't registering to him to just let go of the damn juice box. This wasn't the first time we've done the hand-the-juice-box-back-to-the-pre-schooler-in-the-car-seat-maneuver so I don't understand what the failure was here.

I used Joshua's sweatshirt jacket to clean it up and vowed to wash it when I got home tonight. Now that I think about it I'm pretty sure that I left it in the car. Gimme a break... I carried in a backpack, computer bag, cute blue purse, Target shopping bag, stuffed leopard and a pizza in one shot. I'm not a super hero.

But that little incident isn't what really blistered me. It was about half a mile later at a red light where Joshua handed me his capped water bottle and asked me to "open it carefully". Now Joshua has OCD, is meticulous, is relentlessly careful and as Jill has often said, a 46-year-old man in a 7-year-old body. So telling me to be careful opening a container for fear of a tiny spray of random water that he doesn't want to get on his own flesh or clothes is not unusual.

BUT NO.

This sucker dumped at least half a cup of water or more all over me and my lap and my drivers seat. And all Joshua can say is "See. It does that every time! I don't get it."

I could only turn around and stare.

Really.

Couldn't he have just told me it spilled water every time he opened it?

We stopped at Target and bought Icees and popcorn and a new water bottle.

Remember when we didn't take water bottles to school and instead lined up behind the entire class to wait for the drinking fountain after gym just hoping we weren't behind somebody gross as if that made a difference in the amount of germs we were inhaling off the faucet?
-Sheryl

Why We Have 'Wrinkles'

****This was the post that I thought I lost.... dang blogspot for hiding things in edit mode...

Noah has a level of charm that I have never witnessed from another child on the planet. Random strangers- and best pals such as Jill- fall in love with him nearly instantly and there's no explaining it. Jill LEFT her glitter flip flops for him because that's what he wanted. She LEFT HER FLIP FLOPS FOR HIM. That's what he does. He causes people to be so charmed that they give him the shoes off their feet.

It was that charm that saves him when I'm in the middle of trying to watch his older brother's baseball game while I let him sit in the car and dink around hosing up every control, open every cd, dump out the glove compartment and deposit the contents of my purse throughout the entire square footage of my mom van. He is allowed to stay in the car with me no more than 10 yards away and he was told to not holler at me unless it was super duper important. Which of course as soon as Joshua goes up to bat Noah starts hollering. I bolt over to see what the issue is:
"MAMA! MAMA!! MAMMMMMA!"

"What Noahy?"

"Um. Um. Um... what happens when somebody only has one eye?"

I couldn't be mad. Because his little head was stuck through the window and it was an honest question and to him it was an emergency. And everyone within 49 feet was giggling.

But perhaps his best statement of the week was:

"Mama, I know why God gave me a wrinkle." I was definitely perplexed at where in the HELL my 32lbs 4-year-old had a wrinkle...

"Why Noahy?"

"He gave me a wrinkle so that I don't stick to the potty."

Wrinkle. Crack. We all have a word for it I suppose.

-Sheryl

One Mom-Van with a Touch of Bird Crap

You know you are entering a new level of awesome-ness when not only are you driving around by yourself in a mom-van, but, there's bird crap running down the entire side of the car some how.

I forget about my mom-van when I'm trolling around with kids and all their gear. But there is something entirely wrong with it the minute it's just me, and Disney toons are still crooning away on the CD player's repeat mode, because I'm just numb to it.

I Have 5 Minutes Before Dinner

I have 5 minutes before dinner to get this out. My pal Jill and I have had a friendship that has lasted over 30 years. This friendship endurance can happen for many people- except most people don't start their friendships when they are hardly 2.

One of the main things we have in common is that we've known each other forever- sort of like how you have family members that you love and care about and want to spend time with but if it wasn't for sharing some DNA it would have been hard for your paths to cross. Jill and I are that way.

Something that is similar for us is that we didn't grow up having a sister- Jill was an only child and I had two brothers and now I even have a step-sister and there are sister-in-laws and moms that stopped being moms and are friends. But Jill and I have hung on to us.

There is 2300 miles separating us, 5 kids between us and only 24 hours in a day. But we talk, email and now will blog about the laughable, happy and of course heinous parts of being mamas, daughters, wives, former wives, employees, grunts that do the laundry and heroes that find whatever got lost. We are human and love the funny parts about it!

My five minutes has been shot to hell and has also been compromised by breaking up a fight over blocks and fixing the DVD remote.

Cheers to the first of many posts from Jill or Sheryl.
-Sheryl