Posts Tagged: Children

Children — 5 Comments
4
May 12

Shoeless Joe. How do these things happen?

Tonight we went to eat Mexican.

This doesn’t happen often because my husband is not a fan.

Which is a good thing.

Because I really love it.

So I don’t get the chance to overindulge very often.

We get to the restaurant and put our name in.  I see my friend Karen who asks, “Jamie, why are you taking a picture of the floor?”

Here’s why.

How do we not notice our child is barefoot?

Well, he made it to the booth.

And we actually made it through the meal.

After a filling platter of tacos what do you want to squeeze down your esophagus into your tight belly?

Ice cream.

Yes, Shoeless Joe made it to the ice cream parlor.

And after getting home and putting on a pair of socks and tennis shoes, he got into bed.

Do you have a shoeless joe in your house?

Pets — 8 Comments
3
May 12

I heard the toliet flush.

Another death in the tank this morning.

Every Thursday, our high school starts an hour later.

So it was just me, my senior (about to leave me forever) and Tebow (the black lab, who will never leave me for I am the only one who runs with him.)

As we were walking out the door, I heard the toilet flush.

“The black goldfish died.”

What we just bought him?

So my high school student disposed of the fish before the eight year old got home.

*  *  *

Much later in the day, the eight year old and I were in Wal*Mart.

“Your black goldfish died.”

Why, oh why do I say such things?

We ended up looking at the fish.

“Here get some guppies. They always have babies,” I hear myself say.

I mentioned how they have babies as much as we have ground beef for dinner.

That’s all he needed to hear.

“Mama. When you are working, you need to take a chair and sit with your computer and watch the fish. When an egg comes out you race over to the little tank and put the egg in it.”

Oh dear.

“Joe,” I explained, “they don’t lay eggs they have live babies.”

His eyes got wide as pecan pies.

“You scoop them up the minute they pop out.”

Great.

This morning we were down one animal.

Tonight we are up five.

Who knows where we’ll be tomorrow?

Who has guppies out there? Can you really keep their babies?

Children — 11 Comments
2
May 12

I wanted drama. So I lied.

I lied.

I just wanted to feel more important and most importantly, wanted Bitsy Beckham (name changed for the Facebook age) to think I was important.

It’s time again for MamaKat’s writing workshop and I’m choosing Number Two: Tell about a time an adult caught you doing something wrong.

image credit

*   *   *

I was five and Bitsy was seven. Our house were separated by a chain link fence.

Bitsy would play, play, play with me ~ until it was time for her older school friends to come over. I stared at them dancing around her backyard at a Brownie meeting thinking if I looked pitiful enough surely they would ask me over.

Nada. No invite ever came.

Bitsy only played with me when it was convenient.

I had enough.

I wanted Bitsy to invite me to Brownies d*mnit!

So I thought up a lie and I thought it up quick.

I was going into the hospital on Friday to have my tonsils extracted — or so I told Bitsy. As the week went on, the story grew and grew.

But Brownies came and went that week and I was still on the other side of the fence. Curses.

*   *   *

A rainy Thursday night.

I lay in bed saying prayers with my Mama when there was a knock on the front door.

Very odd.

“Tracy, could you come out here?” my mother’s voice echoed down the hall. (I went by Tracy back then but that is a whole notha’ story.)

I tiptoed down the dark hall, turned the corner and saw Mr. Beckham, Bitsy’s nice-looking, terribly kind father, clad in a all-weather coat, dripping wet.

His arms bursting with presents.

“You don’t look like a little girl who is having her tonsils out in the morning,” was all he said.

ARGHHHHHHH!

The most humiliating moment of my life and it happened at age five.

What about you? Has a tale ever come back to bite you BAD?

 

Mama’s Losin’ It

Children — 2 Comments
29
Apr 12

Sometimes you just got to roll with an 8 year old.

When you have two children close in age it’s easy to always lump them together in outings. At least for me.

With our busy lives, efficiency indicates that after school, we go to the library together. We go to the pool together. Heaven forbid, we go to Wal*Mart together.

Lately, I’ve tried to reverse this trend and on Sunday afternoons and when my daughter has play dates, I  spend a part of the afternoon with my son alone. (But not on the pipe together. I’ll stay on the bank with the camera phone, thank you very much.)

 

Though I suggest the activity, I’ve learned that things run smoothly if I let him set the tempo, the rules – basically run the show. Without being disrespectful for the most part.

Today I suggested tennis.

Great.

For my son, this equated to a crawfish catching expedition.

 Just roll with it.

As I walked into the television room to find two of the hotdogs I’d planned on feeding the family tonight in a homemade crawfish catcher….I just rolled with it.

After walking to the park…

When he crept back in the bushes slipping and sliding in the teeny creek to set his trap – in his new shoes we were to play tennis in….I just rolled with it.

 

He's in there somewhere....

 

When we got on the court and batted the ball back and forth, running here and yond…well, you know.

The same went for taking a break at “half time”  to run down to the creek to see two hotdogs still floating in the cage in the creek.

And here I sit typing away…for I’ve learned to bring my laptop whenever there might be a possibility of water and crawfish.

 

 

Yes, best to be prepared even when rolling with it.

Can you roll like an 8 year old or are you more squarish?

 

 

Midlife / parenting — 5 Comments
27
Apr 12

No more brace face. Or I’m a bad mommy blogger.

I don’t brag on my kids. My dad bragged way too much on me and if anything, I am too slow to praise mine in front of others.

No, I don’t brag about my kids. I blog about them…which is probably far worse.

My son, my dear almost-ready-to-graduate-son got his braces off yesterday.

Before….

 

And when I picked him up an hour later.

 Yes, I am taking pictures these days not only for material for posts but because…

He is leaving me!!!!!!!!

A friend who has another senior son has been posting pictures on her Facebook page of their middle school and high school years.

Every time I’m tagged in a post and I look at some great moment in my child’s life, I can’t help but think…

WHERE WAS I? WHERE WAS MY CAMERA?

Maybe this blogging thing is my record.

Like scribes we are recording our families’ evolution…for whomever in the world happens to click on the blog.

Is it right?

I really don’t know. When my father saw me vigorously twittering on my phone he said, “It’s just not natural.”

I don’t know if it’s natural but my son turning into a young man is very natural — but most unnatural to me.

After four years he got his braces off yesterday.

What I’m really wondering is how did the rest of him change so fast in four years — without any money or brackets or wires?

What about you? Are there things you won’t post on a blog or Facebook?

 

Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction — 8 Comments
26
Apr 12

Solitary Confinement…please.

Quiet.

Linking up with Mamakat’s Writing prompt this week, I chose number 3:

List the top 10 things you miss about being alone.

 

10.  The warmth and security of a snug straightjacket.

 

9.   Not spending two hours of my day cleaning the house from the marauding hordes who spent the night here.

 

8.  Sleep.

 

7.  No dog to walk, no tortoise to pick weeds for, no fish’s water to de-chlorinate and no cat trying to trip me as I stumble towards the kitchen every morning.

 

6.  The color purple. Okay that has nothing to do with being alone — but I love the color purple.

 

5.  Cooking for one. (And making things I like to eat that no one would touch.)

 

4. Taking a shower for longer than three minutes and shaving more than once every two weeks. Though it’s rather a novelty at parties to talk about my braided leg hair.

 

3.  Sleep.

 

2.  A clean car. Well, maybe my car wouldn’t be clean — but at least it wouldn’t be wrapped in orange HAZARDOUS WASTE tape.

 

1.  No background noise of TV, computer games, fighting, interruptions to referee the fighting and my brain humming with constant static.

 

And it would be BORING.

Not to say I couldn’t recharge with a few days of alone time, but from one who battled infertility and persevered through two domestic adoptions….

I thank God for their bodies and all their ENERGY, mess, noise, itty bits of paper everywhere and the Indian Burial Mound of tangerine peels that was discovered petrifying  behind the couch yesterday.

Yes, thank God I’m not alone.

But that’s not to say I’ve forgot how on the occasional weekend.

What about you? What is most pleasing about having solitary time.

 

Mama’s Losin’ It

Children — 2 Comments
24
Apr 12

You can never have enough.

“You can never have enough bras. It’s not the same with socks. You always have enough socks.”

My 11-year-old daughter in Wal*Mart this afternoon.

She was pulling the full court press for more bras.

Not just any bras.

Bras with padding and cups.

Yes. They make these for pre-adolescent breasts.

Wait. I can’t even say breast.

It’s a prepubescent chest.

Then she got all excited about outfitting me.

“Mama, you’ve got to buy this so you’ll look like a teenager again.

This is what teenagers are wearing?

That wasn’t what my first breast shield looked like ~ at all.

But I did buy her one more bra with a smidgen of padding. The only underwire she’ll be wearing for the next few years will be on her braces. (If I can help it.)

She picked one with a peace sign over her heart.

For as she said, “One more just in case….you never want to run out.”

Funny, for me it’s the socks I tend to lose and not the bras.

What about you?

 

 

Children / Midlife / Uncategorized — 6 Comments
14
Apr 12

The cord has a teensy tear. And mom has a teensy tear.

 

A person lies under that lump of blankets.

My son.

Our son.

Dad, son and mom were on our way to an Accepted Students Day at his chosen college. Festivities began with breakfast so we got an early start. Hence the comforter and the sleeping senior in the back seat.

From someone who has googled “What freshman need for college” (it’s basically a list like you’d pack for summer camp without the sleeping bag), I figured any organized activity from the school will help me in the next few months get my first child off to college.

Many of you have done this.

And then many of you have young children and this point in their lives heading to college seems as far away as Jupiter.  (Jupiter is still a planet, right? Planets seem to be in such a state of flux these days, I’m never quite sure.)

Yes, it seemed like yesterday I was teaching him his planets. Jupiter is the big one. With the red spot. Mostly all gases they say.

Or he was going with Mr. Troy on church outings to the telescope in Rutledge.

Now overnight I’ve become a tag along “mom” who is overly interested in uncool things.

 

Sitting in the auditorium with the other parents, it seemed like yesterday I was sitting in one with my mom. Out in the middle of Texas — a three hour flight and 2 day drive — from my home.

How did I get in the mom chair?

That’s what struck me today.

With how time roars by, there’s no way in a I’ll ever accomplish all I’d like in the time allowed on this earth. My mom who was sitting with me at my orientation now sits three months from her 80th birthday.

Though she looks damn good for 80 (as I’m sure I will) there’s not much time left for her to save the world.

Same goes for me.

No, today I realized one of my greatest accomplishments lay under a blue comforter on the drive to South Carolina this morning.

Kind of takes the pressure off.

You’d think I’d feel better.

But nope, I still feel like Pluto – first they welcome me as a planet and then they don’t need me in their galaxy anymore.

What about you and this whole children growing up thing?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Children / the looney-bin — 5 Comments
11
Apr 12

I respectfully disagree iPhone Lady. A smoothie is food.

“Everyone knows a smoothie is in the food group.”

Silence.

“Are you suggesting it’s a type of water?”

*   *   *

 

After sending the children off to school, I tried to call my husband.

Putting the phone on speaker (as is my custom) — I noticed that it was very, very quiet.

Examining the itty speakers on the phone, a pink gooey substance clung on their bitty woofers.

Dear Mother of pearl, the smoothie.

With only 5 minutes till departure for Morgan County Primary, I made an error of epic portions — I handed my eight year old my phone to play a game.

I had fixed him a fruit smoothie for breakfast.

My phone had ended up in his smoothie. I knew it.

Everything seemed okay, till I plugged in a charger.

The smoothie immersed phone wouldn’t recognize the charger. After cramming every charger in the house into it’s backside — NOTHING charged my phone.

Have you ever been so mad you spit tears?

Late this afternoon, I had the above mentioned conversation with the iPhone Lady on the Apple hotline.

“What is wrong with your phone?”

“It won’t charge. Something is stuck in the port and I can’t clean it out.”

“Something is stuck in there?”

“Well, no. My son stuck it in a food sort of thing and I think there is residue in the port.”

“What?”

That’s when I got ‘Ma’amed” by the iPhone Lady and told I was screwed.

Any advice on how to talk to iPhone people?

And John if you read this blog post,

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

This is a total fabrication. What will I dream up next?

 

 

 

She told me that no one would talk with me for a service related question unless I paid $69 some odd dollars for protection not including water damage.

 

I was thoroughly confused at

 

 

Children — 4 Comments
9
Apr 12

Road Trip Rules. What’s your Top Ten?

Road trips.

That’s what this week’s Monday Listcle is all about. “A list about ten things ROAD.”

So here goes.

10.  Kill.

 

9.   How I never fly anywhere any more.

8.   That said I do a lot of driving — with children. Tip number one.

Limit potty breaks to designated rest areas. Only leave interstate for gas and food.

The one thing that supersedes this is Mommy can leave the interstate anytime for coffee.

I do try to “hold it” with the kids till the next rest area. My sister could teeter in a bottle parked at rest area if her young kids were asleep and she didn’t want to wake them.

 

7. Let sleeping children SLEEP.

Never ever, wake a sleeping child on a road trip. EVER. Not even when you get to the hotel. Sleep in the car with them.

 

 

6.  Talk radio.

Most probably a sign I’m aging. Music used to be enough to keep me alive and kicking. Now if I’m really sleepy or bored — I listen to people talk. The Oprah network on Sirrus has saved me.

 

5.  Take children’s shoes off before they get in and hide them…

Nothing turns me into a bull staring at a red cape than getting to a rest area,

having a bladder set on BURST and a child unable to find a shoe to shuffle with me to bathroom.

 

4.  Drive somewhere with your husband.

Without the children, we eat when we want. Yell with abandon at the Garmin lady when she keeps insisting we make a legal U Turn. And arrive at our destination still happy that we decided to leave home in the first place.

 

3.  Order onion rings at drive-thrus.

No comfort food that your crazed-travelling-with-children self eats on a road trip has any calories. In fact, it enlarges your breasts and shrinks your rear.

 

2.  Sometimes mommy needs Silence.

No Disney channel, no movies, all games must be on mute. No fighting. No talking.

No unnecessary breathing.

 

1.  And most importantly, buy gas in Georgia and wine in Florida.

You’re taxed on the converse in each state.

 

What about you? Any road trip rules?

 

← Older Entries