Tuesday, April 27, 2010

My Song

Once in awhile there's a song that just hits the nail right on the head. It sums up your feelings exactly. In fact, you almost feel like the writer of the song has been spying on your life because how could they write a song that conveyed your feelings to such a degree of accuracy? Today I listened to just such a song. I dedicate this one to my ex-husband and to my mother-in-law....



Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Perfect Bathing Suit For My Mommy Bod

Being originally from the east coast, I used to worship the water and especially loved to go to the beach.  Since I have had children and blew up like a blimp, there are parts of my body that haven't seen sunlight in so long that I consider that skin to once again be solar-virgin territory.  I'm quite sure that if I ever did put on a bathing suit again, that there are laws somewhere that would prohibit such a display.  The reflection alone would cause certain permanent vision damage, let alone the emotional damage that would be done by my thunder thighs and cellulite.

I picture small children running for the safety of their homes and men suddenly changing their sexual orientation.  Young women without children, this is a warning to you.  This is an example of the type of bathing suit that I would have worn without any problems back in my 20's:


And this is the only suit that I would consider wearing in public now:


So if you're ever at a beach somewhere and you see a fat lady walking around with a bathing suit from the 1900's, come up and say "Hi!".  It'll be me....Spongemom Stretchpants!

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Just Another Road Rage Victim?

Yesterday my husband and I took my 16 month old for his very first dentist's visit.  The only pediatric dentist that we could find was about 25 miles away in an area I'm not that familiar with.  It seemed like it took forever to get there.  We missed our exit on the highway once and then got stopped at an intersection for a funeral procession.  We were late and I hate being late.



Finally we arrive in the business park where the office is located.  I'm driving through the parking lot "streets" in the business park.  There's a UPS truck parked on the opposite side of the road and a car coming from the opposite direction.  I went ahead and stopped so she could go by and so I could look and see if I could find any address on any building.  I'm stopped on MY side of the road and the woman passes the UPS truck on my side of the road and proceeds to yell out her window, "Watch out where you're going!"  What?  I'm not even MOVING!  I'm parked, woman!  I'm parked to allow your sorry butt to get around the UPS truck.

Somewhere there's a village missing their idiot.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Makeover and A Meltdown

This week has been a doozey!  My husband has just been forced to quit his job.  We think that he can get with some of the contacts he's made in the car industry and do some work on his own, but that hasn't been set up as of yet.  The guys in the car industry around here are having a rough time of it.  Lots of the car lots are hardly selling anything.  I think in the month of March my husband made $300 and no that's not a typo.  It's not that he can't sell, in fact he sells when no one else is selling.

He told me that he used to work for a company that once flew him out to some convention to sell "talking heads" for $15,000 each.   What he was selling was actually a box which would make whoever was in the box appear to only be a head floating in mid-air.  I'm just telling you what he told me.  So, nobody else could sell these things so they sent him in.  He sold two in one day.  Suffice it to say that he can sell anything.

The Before Pic



So, stress is high and money is tighter than tight.  Honestly, it's getting quite tough to survive.  When I get stressed I stay busy doing all kinds of things.  This past weekend I decided that my 16 month old needed a haircut terribly.  Knowing that we could not afford to fork over $15 or $20 for a haircut, I saw this as my opportunity to save some money.  It wasn't like I was a total novice at this.  When I was a single mom some 9 years ago, I used to always cut my son's hair with clippers, especially in the summer.  I actually got quite good at it.  Most people even said that I did a better job than the people at the beauty shops.

The After Pic



I felt pretty confident that I could handle a quick trim, the only problem was I couldn't find my normal clippers.  The only thing I could find was a pair of clippers that my parents sent to me.  I figured, "What the hay, clippers are clippers", so I put on the number 4 spacer and went to town.  The first swipe or two I thought that the cut looked too short.  "Oh my Lord!", I thought, "I can see his scalp!"  This is cutting WAY too short!  I guess stress got the best of me and I just totally lost it.  You thought that my 16 month old would be the one to have the meltdown, but no....it was me.  I sobbed uncontrollably for about 15 minutes.  The stress of my husband having no job and money being so tight really got to me.  Not to mention I had sheared my precious little baby.  I sent my husband out with some money that we scraped together to get him "fixed".
Poor little guy!  Everything turned out ok, though.  No permanent harm done.  Now if my husband can only get a decent job!  Wish us luck!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

I'm No Den Mother

About a year ago, my middle son joined the cub scouts.  My husband took him to most of the meetings and apparently on the first night they passed around a form and had all of the parents sign up to do a den meeting.  My husband signed me up for April's den meeting.  The theme was "Spring Into Action".  By the way, if you want to make a year go by REALLY fast, get your husband to sign you up for something that you really don't want to do.

 So tonight was the big "Spring Into Action" den meeting.  I worried about this meeting for an entire year.  A week and a half ago I began preparations for the meeting.  I wanted this meeting to be great.  If I'm going to do something, I never go at it half-ass.  So I trek on over to the Boy Scout store and buy one of their books that gives suggestions for things to do at the meeting.  I spent several days scouring the internet and putting together an outline of the events I had planned for the meeting.  The outline was written and rewritten several times.  I wanted to make sure everything flowed just right.

The plan was that I would put in all the preparations for the meeting and my husband would actually run the meeting with help from me.  I planned a cute little lesson involving the various meaning of the word spring and then got into the history of the development of the Slinky toy and various lessons we can learn from the inventor of the Slinky.

I planned fun events like an Inchworm Race, a Egg & Spoon Race, a Balloon Stampede, and a Marshmallow Kick, Throw & Blow Event.  After each event I would hand out little ribbons for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place then at the end of all of the events, everyone would get a ribbon for participating.

I planned to make little pinecone bird feeders and even was thoughtful enough (I thought) to buy $5 a jar sunflower butter just in case there was anyone there with a peanut allergy.  I handled absolutely every detail.
I bought 4 boxes of Kool Aid pouch drinks for 11 kids, just to make sure that I had plenty.  I even went so far as to freeze the drinks the night before so they would be nice and slushy and super cold for them.

This morning my husband says he doesn't feel well.  Great.  I'm thinking, he won't do the meeting after all of this, I'm going to have to do the whole thing myself.  I gave him a copy of the outline of the meeting this morning and the only thing he had to do all day was to read over it and get prepared to run the meeting.  We get there and unpack our van load of stuff and he starts messing up the meeting right from the get-go.  He has absolutely no idea what we are doing.  I cannot believe that I have gone through all of this preparation, gathering of supplies, planning every single minute detail and he can't even read over an outline and do the meeting!

Long story kinda short, I end up doing the whole thing myself.  Kids were running all around like lunatics not even listening to hardly anything I had to say and to top it all off this one kid kept coming up to me and lying and saying that he was 3rd in EVERY SINGLE EVENT even though I clearly saw that he was not 1st, 2nd or 3rd every single time.  I wanted to tell him, "Now son, you're darn lucky that you weren't born 30 years ago because if you had been I'd spank you right here for lying to me and your mom wouldn't even care!"  Back when I grew up adults made their kids mind and everyone else's kids too.  There was none of this running all around not listening to adults.  At least not that I can remember.  We were too scared of getting in trouble.

So now I'm absolutely exhausted and glad that the whole thing is finally over.  I have a brand new admiration for teachers who have to keep order with 20 or 30 kids on a daily basis.  I only had 11 and I thought I would pull my hair out!

Teenagers Annoy Me

Last week I decided it was time to get my 6 year old some swimming lessons. I went all out and bought the private lessons at a nearby community recreation center. The lessons are about $20 each and he'll be going once a week.

I was a little worried that he'd be terrified during the lesson, because he has this fear of getting water in his eyes. Go figure. When I was a kid you couldn't pry me out of the water, any water. Whether it was the bathtub, the sprinkler, a pool, the ocean, a lake, or whatever; if there was water nearby, I was probably in it. My son's aversion to water getting in his eyes has baffled me.

So with much trepidation, the whole family went to his first swimming lesson not knowing exactly what we were in for. The swimming instructor is a very young girl and a lifeguard at the pool. My son did everything she told him to, to my surprise and at the end of the lesson he told me that it was the "best day ever". Great!



I had scheduled the lessons months in advance because I'm a planner. I plan everything. I even carry around a calendar with all of the kids' appointments, just so I can keep on top of everything. We have an extremely busy schedule with cub scouts and two different swimming lessons. I planned my 6 year old's swimming lessons for Fridays at 6:30. Well after the friday lesson she decided she wanted to change the lessons to Mondays at 6:00. Ok, fine. I'm trying to be easy to get along with, right?

Monday at 3pm, she calls and tells me that she has a track meet and can't make the swimming appointment and wants to reschedule! What?!? Hellooooooooooooo, McFly! There's this thing called a calendar, honey, and I suggest you learn to use one!

You know, patience and understanding do not come to me naturally. Whenever I put forth the effort to have more patience and understanding inevitably someone walks all over me. This scenario is no different. No good deed goes unpunished. That saying rings true every single time. I'm thinking about having that painted on my entryway at home instead of "Home Sweet Home".

So I wait today to see if that pathetic little pipsqueak will even call to reshedule the appointment but I'm secretly hoping that she forgets so that I can move on to some other teenager that wouldn't mind making $40/hour! SHEESH! What has the world come to?

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Free To Pee

The weather is absolutely gorgeous here today, clear blue skies and 75 degress. Now that's what I call perfect. It was so perfect outside, in fact, that I could not resist taking my two older boys outside to play while the little one had his nap. It wasn't too long before I noticed my 6 year old in the front yard standing facing a large evergreen tree. Then I noticed that he was peeing on the big evergreen tree. Great! Of course I told him that he was way too old to be peeing on trees in the yard.

My mother-in-law was the one who actually got the kids started with peeing outside on bushes when they were little. We have a big yard and the house is pretty well secluded; enough so that neighbors can't really tell what's going on. I was irritated slightly when she started the peeing outside thing, but it led to something way more horrifying.

My oldest son is 10 and has special needs. We've had a heck of a time trying to get him to not pee in his pants. He still wets at night and has to wear those Goodnight pull up things. Occasionally he'll get so busy playing outside that he won't even stop to pee. He'll just go in his pants. It's extremely frustrating and sometimes embarrasing.

Last year we all went to a festival at a nearby park. There were lots of people to say the least. Do you already see where this story is headed? Now we hardly ever go anywhere. My oldest son's behavior is not that great so unfortunately our outtings are pretty brief and infrequent. Whenever we get up the nerve to take a little outdoor adventure, we always seem to regret it. Either the kids fight or whine or misbehave in one way or another. My husband and I come back more stressed out than when we left.

So we're out at this park festival thing and I have my baby in his stroller. My 10 year old is with me and we're standing in the shade of some trees trying to get out of the blazing sun. We're waiting on my husband to return with some ice creams for all of us. My son is running around close by and I just happen to turn around just in time to find him with his pants around his knees peeing on a tree with people ALL AROUND HIM! I could have died. I yelled at him to quit. I would be lying if I said that at that moment I wanted to act like I was looking around for his terrible mother and pretend that I wasn't her. I will never forget that as long as I live.

My whole life seems to revolve around testosterone and pee in one way or another. I couldn't have called this blog anything but "Spongemom Stretchpants". First of all, I have blown up like a sponge since having kids. I retain water like nobody's business and my entire wardrobe consists of some type of stretchpants now. I have nothing decent to wear. My boys watch Spongebob all the time and I need to get someone to write a theme song for me. Like I've said before it should go something like: Who lives in a cul-de-sac and cleans up the pee? Spongemom Stretchpants!

Friday, April 9, 2010

Isn't Spring Just Awesome?

Took these pictures today because I wanted to get out and enjoy the flowering trees in the yard.  Happy Spring Everyone!


Thursday, April 8, 2010

Deep Thought Thursday

The other week, my husband and I started watching the show Destination Truth on the SyFy channel.  We are now addicted and have watched just about every episode since we discovered it.  We've always liked shows like Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, Paranormal State, etc.  You could say that UFO's, aliens, bigfoot, the jersey devil and anything strange interests us greatly.   We used to love to listen to Art Bell on his nightly AM radio show, Coast to Coast.  Just thinking of that show gets me excited!

Anyway, the other day the people on Destination Truth were on a hunt to find real leprechauns.  There's a couple of things in life that really scare me.  Leprechauns would be on that list.  A miniature verson of a human walking around gives me the creeps.  Now as soon as they mentioned the word "leprechaun", I immediately started saying in my best fake Irish accent, "You can't have me Lucky Charms!"  So since that day that we watched the show I have been craving Lucky Charms cereal.

Last night I finally went to the grocery store and bought the most gigantic $6 box of Lucky Charms cereal.  My husband then proceeds to tell me that he's losing his job after this weekend, the lot that he works for is closing down.  I sat down with a big bowl of my Lucky Charms cereal and told him, "Well it looks like it's time for some Lucky Charms!"  My deep thought for today is:  I wonder if eating Lucky Charms will actually bring good luck.  I mean I plopped down $6 for this box of cereal, the Lucky Charms leprechaun owes me.  The little swirly marshmallows are good and all, but not $6 good.  Wouldn't it be false advertising if the cereal did not actually contain anything that would bring you good luck?

So that's my deep thought for today.  Hey, I didn't promise that the thought would be intelligent, just deep.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Favorite Photos

These are my absolute favorite pics of my boys.  They look like trouble, don't they?





MckLinky Blog Hop

A Mind Is A Terrible Thing

My husband shared this video with me today. At first I have to admit, I thought it was a late April Fool's Day joke because I just could not believe how anybody could be so stupid. I can't remember laughing so loud in my entire life....then I wanted to cry. If you haven't seen this yet, please take a minute to watch it. Remember that this guy used to be a judge and a lawyer. Now he's a congressman from Georgia whose yearly salary is somewhere around $174,000/year. There just are no words for this. After looking for a t-shirt for this, I created my own. Check out this T-Shirt!







Friday, April 2, 2010

Deep Thought Thursday


If I can get some cooperation with a few of my brain cells, I'll make Deep Thought Thursday an ongoing theme on this blog, otherwise we'll have to call it "What's My Name Again Thursday". I'm starting to wonder if all of that drinking in my college days did away with all of my functional brain cells. I'm thinking all that remains are reject brain cells who make me watch Yo Gabba Gabba and lust after Jack Black, but I digress and no, that's not my deep thought for today.

Most mornings around here are total chaos. On school days from about 8am until close to 9am, everything is a blur. My husband and I rush around directing the kids to make their beds, get dressed, brush their teeth, eat their breakfast and help clean up toys. Today was not a school day but no less chaotic. Everyone was rushing around cleaning and getting ready and doing their own thing. My 16 month old snuck into his older brothers' room in the midst of all the chaos. He's not normally allowed in there because there's too many dangerous things for him to get into. Not that I keep knives, guns, and such in my kids room, there are just toys and things in there that are meant for older kids.

So in the midst of all of the chaos, the older kids' bedroom door was left open and the little tyke went right for the air purifier. There's a little bitty remote on the back of it that he loves to play with and pretend that it's a cell phone. He got it, ran around the house with it a few times talking to some imaginary person on the other end of the non-existent phone line. When he was done, he decided to try to put the remote back into the slot on the back of the air purifier. He successfully put it back in the slot and then proceeded to clap and cheer for himself. He was unaware that I was watching him the whole time.

It was at that time that I had my "deep thought" for today. I wondered what might we all accomplish in this lifetime if we were our own best cheerleaders. If when everyone else in the world lets you down or tells you that you can't do something that you do it anyway and then pat yourself on the back for doing it. If we could only focus and accentuate our strengths and focus on what we can do instead of all the things that we aren't or cannot do.

I still remember when my oldest son who is now 10 was an infant. Doctors began throwing out words like pervasive developmental delays, autism, and sensory integration disorder. Being a new mom and unexperienced with anything like that, I remember feeling disappointed that my son was not speaking or walking at the same time that every other baby was. I would stay up at night and wonder what his life would be like when he was older and how his delays would affect him. I became very focused on everything that my son wasn't doing instead of celebrating the things that he could do. I regret that to this day. It's so easy to get hung up on the negative and forget all about the positive. We could say the very same thing about focusing on what we don't have instead of all of the blessings that we do have. What good things are going unnoticed because all of our attention is on what is wrong with our lives? What is RIGHT with our lives? Probably more than we think.




MckLinky Blog Hop

Thursday, April 1, 2010

What I'm Reduced To: The Diaper Saga Continues

I swear the other post about putting duct tape on my son's diaper to keep him from taking it off was not serious...well until now. After nap time today I found my son standing in his crib, no diaper and poo on the sheets. Break out the duct tape, baby! I cannot believe I actually did this.


Jack Black In Orange Tights Makes Me Hot

My 16 month old is obsessed with Yo Gabba Gabba.  I was resistant to letting him watch it at first, but television as a babysitter is cheap, judge me if you want.   So the other day we watched the episode called "New Friends" and Jack Black was on the show.  At the end of the show, he dresses like D.J. Lance Rock.  Jack is rockin' the orange tights and orange shower cap and I've been watching this show over and over and over again and I don't think it's because my son likes it!  I'm sorry, but some perverted side of me is having secret fantasies about Jack in those orange tights. I can't help but wonder what his feelings are on mom jeans?