Laugh With Moms

My friend just sent me this email and I loved it.  So I thought I would share it all with you.  Enjoy on this snowy Wednesday morning in the Northeast.

 A man was sick and tired

He wanted her to see what he went

through so he prayed:

‘Dear Lord:

I go to work every day and put

in 8 hours while my wife

merely stays at home.

I want her to know what

I go through.

So, please allow her body to

switch with mine for a day. 
‘ 

God, in his infinite wisdom,

granted the man’s wish.

The next morning, sure enough,

the man awoke as a woman…

He arose, cooked breakfast

for his mate,

Awakened the kids,

Set out their school clothes,

Fed them breakfast,

Packed their lunches,

Drove them to school,

Came home and picked

up the dry cleaning,

Took it to the cleaners

And stopped at the bank

to make a deposit, 

Went grocery shopping,

Then drove home to put

away the groceries, 

Paid the bills and balanced

the check book.

He cleaned the cat’s litter box

and bathed the dog..

Then, it was already 1 P.M.

And he hurried to make the beds,

Do the laundry, vacuum,

Dust, And sweep and mop

the kitchen floor.

Ran to the school to pick up

the kids and got into an argument

with them on the way home.

Set out milk and cookies and

got the kids organized to do

their homework.

Then, set up the ironing board

and watched TV while he

did the ironing.

At 4:30 he began peeling

potatoes and washing

vegetables for salad,

breaded the pork chops

and snapped

After supper,

He cleaned the kitchen,

Ran the dishwasher,

Folded laundry,

Bathed the kids, And put

them to bed.

At 9 P.M.. He was exhausted

and, though his daily chores

weren’t finished, he went to

bed where he was expected to

make love, which he managed

The next morning, he awoke

and immediately knelt by the

bed and said: -

Lord, I don’t know what

I was thinking.

I was so wrong to envy my

wife’s being able to stay

home all day.

Please, Oh! Please,

let us trade back.. Amen!’ 

‘My son, I feel you have

learned your lesson and

I will be happy to change

things back to the way

they were.

You’ll just have to wait

nine months, though.

This has been voted

Women’s Favorite

E-mail of the Year! 

 

 

 

 

I confess, I may have overscheduled my little 7 year old this winter.  Right now he is currently on a travel hockey team, takes skiing lessons once a week and is in his all school play.  It seems like every night is something and sometimes two things in one night.  Last Wednesday, he had to stay after school for play practice and then I had to pick him up and rush him over to his ski lesson.  As we were driving over there, he said, “mom, I am really tired.  Can I not ski today?”  That made me pause, because he never says he is tired.  He is like the Energizer bunny and has no stop switch until he is asleep.  But your inner struggle as a mom starts to work its magic and you quickly go through all the things you are supposed to do in this teachable moment.  We are firm believers in once you start something, you need to finish it.  If you don’t want to do it again next year, then that is fine, but you have to finish what you started.  Also we try to teach the value of money in that mom and dad paid for this activity that you really wanted to do and to miss a lesson is a waste of that hard earned money.  But then I thought, he said he is tired and wants to take a break, so why don’t I just let him take a break while his sister does her ski lesson.  So that is what he did.  He had a snack, did some homework and watched his sister ski, not once regretting his decision.  But I took note of the situation and realized that I have to be more careful what I sign the kids up for and try to stick to my rule of one activity at a time, especially when you have three kids.  There is so much for these kids to do these days and yet sometimes it is nice to just stay at home, eat a nice home-cooked meal and play with all those toys you got for Christmas.  That my be “boring” sometimes, but sometimes boring is good.

What can I say about Vegas?  We were lucky enough to be able to get away for a long weekend to Las Vegas over the New Years weekend.  My mother and father graciously accepted the job of taking care of my three cherubs while my husband and I headed to the Wild West for some fun in the sun.  Although very little time was actually spent outside in the sun.  We met my sister and brother in law out there and we had a blast.  The trip to Vegas was supposed to be a surprise trip for my hubby for his 40th birthday where he could partake in a few of his favorite pasttimes, most notably a UFC fight and gambling of course.  So I thought I would put a little list together about all the things I learned in Las Vegas:

1.  You can actually get women sent directly to you by one phone call for all types of services.  I think the guy in room 1684 (right next to us) might have held onto those cards they pass you on the street and called the number at 4am.  It was a long and educational hour.

2.  What are people doing bringing their children to Las Vegas?  Seriously, what is there for them to do?  And how do you explain all that graphic information that they pass out to you as you are walking down the street?  It is like baseball cards with naked women on them, are they supposed to collect these?

3.  All the casinos are the same.  They for the most part take your money, have no windows, and have the same bleary eyed people trying their best to win their money back.  We even went to the newest, hippest casino/hotel for a night (Aria)  and yet I couldn’t tell the difference between that and the Bellagio once you got sucked into the place.

4.  Some people have a lot of money and some just don’t.  Both sets of people paid for each and every new hotel that gets erected on the Las Vegas strip.

5.  There is no Planet Hollywood restaurant in the Planet Hollywood hotel.  We must have walked around that place for hours looking for that. 

6.  Going to a UFC fight is a whole adventure in itself and requires a completely separate wardrobe and vocabulary for both men and women.  My hubby loved it and had to sit through all ten fights.  Who knew there were ten fights when only three are actually broadcast on Pay Per View when you watch it at home?  Being the dutiful wife, I watched all ten with him as my sister and her hubby went out to the casino to gamble and win.

7.  What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.  Which is why I rocked it out one night in a short black dress and tall black boots that my friends from home joke that they have never seen me wear at preschool drop off.

8.  Time is completely irrelevant in Las Vegas, you have no idea what time it is until your body decides to fall asleep while sitting at the blackjack table.   When I asked what time it was and somebody said 2am (which would be about 5 am to me), I was shocked.  But then again I hadn’t been outside in over 24 hours.

9.  Drink lots of water.  Even the water is dry out there and you wonder why you have a constant dehydration headache.  It could also be the cocktails you started consuming at 10am while sitting at the blackjack table, but that is even more reason to drink that water.

10.  It is a real bummer to fly 5 hours in the middle seat following a weekend in Vegas.

Despite all that, I would go out there again in a heartbeat.  We had so much fun just being together, knowing that our children were in good hands at home, and not to much that kick ass facial I got in the middle of the weekend.  It being my first facial, I fell in love with esthetician who also massaged my hands and feet while the gunk was doing its magic on my face.   Heaven.  Vegas is so alive at all times that it is invigorating to be a part of it.   So if you get the chance head to Vegas for a weekend (that is all you will need), you won’t regret it.

Due to an unfortunate incident involving my cute and adorable 2 year old, a glass of water and my laptop, I have been out of commission without a computer.  Truth be told, we do have an alternate computer but it is downstairs in the cold, dank basement so very little time was actually spent sitting at the computer down there.  Only the basics were completed and those were completed with winter jacket and hat/scarf.  I would have liked to have gloves on as well, but it is hard to type when you have ski gloves on.  Anywho, santa brought me a new laptop and I have already been reprimanded for having a glass of water on the same table as the computer!  We have had four laptops in 5 years, each one ruined by an industrious, adorable two year old.  Not sure what that says about us and our supervision of two year olds or our laziness in putting the laptop away when the two year olds are in the vicinity.  When my son was two years old (he is now 7), he systematically pulled off every letter on the keyboard.  Have you ever tried to put the letters in the right places on a computer keyboard?  Almost impossible by memory, not to mention he broke off most of the pieces that would allow you to snap them back on.  That was computer number 1 down the drain.  By the way, this always happens the day after the warranty runs out.  Maybe this time my hubby sprung for the extra warranty!  Anyway, computer number 2 met the same exact fate that computer number 1 suffered at the hands of my next two year, my daughter who is now 4.  Didn’t even know it was possible to pull each letter off and yet both of my children managed to do it in the 3 minutes it took me to take dinner out of the oven.   And you know the fate of computer #3, technology and water do not mix.  So this time, I vow to put the computer away when I am not using it, keep all liquids away (as I sit here and sip my iced tea) and buy all extra warranties that I can (hubby just informed me that he didn’t buy the extra warranty, what??????)  I guess we will never learn and we should just start saving our money for computer number 5.  Glad to be back in cyberspace and back to writing on our blog.

It is hard to believe all the fun that gets packed into these long summer days.  It is no wonder the summer just flies on by without any warning.  We have a short summer here in the northeast this year due to some make up snow days and the upcoming labor day being late causing school to start befor the labor day holiday this year.  So needless to say we have been jam packed with action since school let out.  This past Friday, we had the day of all summer days.  We started off with a nice bike ride (about 5 miles round trip) on the beautiful bike path that runs through our town.  Immediately following that we headed to the beach for some sun and fun.  The kids dug in the sand, rode the waves on their boogie boards, swam in the pool and had a nice snack to round out the day.  Immediately following that we went out for pizza with my mom (my kiddos call her mimi) and headed to the Balloon Festival to hand over our hard earned cash.   As CC said in the previous post, amazing how fast a wad of cash goes down at an event like that.  The kids had a great time and blew through the 30 tickets we had purchased in record time.  We topped that off with some ice cream and cotton candy and called it a day.  The kids were bathed, placed in their pajamas and were asleep before their heads hit the pillow.  And that is a feat for my oldest who seems to thrive on  very little sleep.  I had a hard time believing I could actually find a day that would leave him exhausted.  But I think we did and they all woke up the next morning eager to see what we had on the agenda.  These long summer days are exhausting for us all but in the dead of winter we wish for more days like these.

Hard to believe that my kindergartener is currently enjoying his last day of kindergarten.  Where does the time go?  It seems like just yesterday I cried my eyes out as he boarded the bus on his first day.  Now I may cry my eyes out when I see him get off the bus this afternoon wondering what I am going to do with all that energy this summer!!  Anyway he has had a great kindergarten year and my goal that he learns to love school seems to have been accomplished this past year.  The getting up in the morning to go to school not so much, but the actual school he seems to love.  He couldn’t wait to board the bus today because they were letting the kids sit wherever they wanted.  As he got on the bus and walked towards the back, his smile covered his entire face.  He slid into the third seat from the back (one of the perks of being one of the first bus pick ups) and grinned out the window at us as the bus pulled away.  Utter childhood happiness radiated from his face as he headed toward his last day of kindergarten.  On to first grade where there is a bit more expectation and a lot more homework.  He is not going to like that too much but we won’t tell him about that until the fall.  So here is to a fun and enjoyable summer, if the sun will ever make an appearance around here.

On our recent trip to the Midwest, we heard that phrase only three times as we sat on the tarmac for three hours waiting to take off from the Baltimore airport.  But let’s start at the beginning.  We arrived for our 8 am flight a little early giving us some time to grab a few donuts and orange juice from the lovely Dunkin Donuts in the airport terminal.  As we were enjoying that healthy breakfast, they announced that our flight would be delayed by about 45 minutes due to weather in Baltimore.  They even pulled up the radar to show everyone just exactly what was happening in that part of the country.  So we wait the 45 minutes and we board our family of 5 onto the airplane for our quick flight to Baltimore.  As we are getting ready to leave, they assure everyone that our connections in Baltimore are also delayed and no one should have any problems catching their next flight.  So the plane backs up and starts moving towards the runway and keeps going making a complete circle and bringing us right back to the gate.  The captain announced, “sorry about that folks, but we had a passenger that had an anxiety attack and we decided to let him off the plane rather than have the anxiety attack escalate in the air.  We should be on our way momentarily.”  With that, we sat for another ten minutes when the captain comes on and says, “sorry folks, but due to the delay we have run into additional weather in our area and will have to wait about 30 minutes to clear.  We are continuing to monitor your connections and everyone should be OK catching their connections in Baltimore.”  After about 25 minutes, we pushed away from the gate and finally took off on our way to Baltimore.  We arrived in Baltimore about 12:15 pm which was about 30 minutes after our flight to the midwest was supposed to take off.  And low and behold that flight was exactly on time and had left promptly at 11:45pm without delay.  Since we missed that one, we were able to catch the next flight to our destination which was scheduled to leave at  4:15pm which gave us a lot of time to really get to know the Baltimore airport.  So during our 4 hour layover in Baltimore, we ate lunch, played games, watched airplanes and people.   We made shapes out of pipe cleaners, colored in coloring books and the kids played their Nintendo DS games.  We headed down to the gate and boarded the plane which was on time.  We pushed back from the gate, pulled up into what I like to call a parking lot of planes and sat there waiting for take off.  The captain comes on, “Hi folks, this is your captain and we are going to holding here for a little bit while the storms on the western corridor come through.  You can use your cell phones so if you want to call ahead to people, it will be about an hour and a half.”  With that he clicked off and a big murmur went through the plane discussing whether he meant we would be sitting there for an hour and a half or whether we would be arriving an hour and a half from when we actually left.  The flight attendent then comes on and said, “What he meant to say is that the flight will be an hour and a half once we take off.  We don’t know how long it will be until we take off, it could be 5 minutes, 30 minutes, we just don’t know.”  So we sat, and we sat and we sat, and we sat.  At the hour and a half mark, the captain comes back on and says, “hi folks, we have some more bad news.  Some planes are starting to take off, but we haven’t been given a time from the tower as to when we will be leaving.  Right now the western corridor is still closed so we are just going to have to wait until we get more information.”  Meanwhile our kids are being so good, the flight attendents are playing games with the whole plane, handing out every available snack and drink that they have and constantly reassuring passengers who were asking the same questions over and over again.  After about an hour the captain come on to say, “We are getting a lot of questions about why we don’t just head back to the gate to wait and then try when the weather clears.  If we do that, we will lose our place in line and it will take even longer to get out of here.  So we will just have to wait it out and hope they clear us to take off as soon as possible.  So we continued to sit and sit and sit for another hour when the captain comes back on to say, “hi folks, we have given it our best college try to get out of here.  So we are going to head back to the gate, you can get off, get something to eat, use the bathroom, stretch your legs and then we will get back on and try again.” 

So with that we head back to the gate after three hours of sitting in that cramped airplane on the tarmac, we all got off, went to the bathroom and stood in line at Subway that was about 20 people deep all from our airplane.  After about 5 minutes where I think about 3 people actually got their sandwiches, an announcement comes on saying that we all need to get back on board right away.  At this point it is about 8 pm, our kids have had nothing substantial to eat or drink since lunch, but we got out of line at Subway and climbed back on board that airplane where we sat again for 20 minutes while they tried to round everyone up at various restaurants inside the airport.  At the 20 minute mark, we were waiting for 3 people to get back on board while the flight attendents try to assess whether these people were still planning on taking this flight.  Eventually they got back on with their take out bag of food, which only made it worse for all of us who weren’t as fortunate to have actually gotten food on the 15 minute “break” at the airport.  It was actually kind of funny when these three people got on board because the whole plane booed and people yelled out “you better have brought enough for everyone”.  With that we pushed back and were cleared for take off, getting into our destination 10 hours after we were originally scheduled to land.  It was definitely the most memorable trip we have ever taken.  I have to say that my children were incredible.  We did not have one meltdown or hysterical fit during our entire trip out there and they kept each other thoroughly entertained during our 4 hour layover and 3 hour wait on the tarmac.  They deserve a gold medal for their behavior and got a ton of compliments about how awesome they were throughout the whole ordeal.  I am extremely proud of them and ourselves for having such great kids.  I also would like to give a shout out to Southwest Airlines and the flight attendants on the flight out of Baltimore who were so nice and helpful and who I believe kept our airplane from totally going insane.  Everyone was really calm and I chalk that up to the flight attendants who kept everyone in good spirits.  I also want to say that we received vouchers from Southwest Airlines for use towards a future Southwest flight that I totally was not expecting.  I didn’t think they would do anything since it was weather related, but they did and I truly appreciate the vouchers.  I don’t think other airlines would have done the same thing.  Luckily our return trip was without delay and we arrived back at our regularly scheduled arrival time.  Thank Goodness!

Every night for the past month or so, my son comes into my bedroom with his entourage in tow.  By entourage I mean, blanket, 2 stuffed animals and his little sister with very similar entourage.  They both come in my room, but he takes the leading role and thinks of these grand stories with appropriate facial expressions and body language to describe what is going on his room.  Every night has been something different and involves whatever it is we have been talking about or what he has been talking about in school.  Last night, they come in, with him coming all the way to my bed and his little sister hovering near the door.  It occurred to me last night that she was just along for the ride and probably thinks he is insane to try this every night but she would much rather watch the show than sit in their room waiting for his retreat.  Anyway he says, “Mom, there is a green monster eating a huge dinosaur right there in my closet and there is a brown wolf with big, sharp teeth knocking on the window”, all with wide eyes and shaking with fear.  I just burst into laughter because he had combined all three stories he told from the last three nights into one big story tonight that he truly believed would be the story that got him and his sister access to our bed for the night.  Now I am all for a little snuggle, but if you give that kid an inch he will take a mile.  He would then every night expect to crawl into our bed and fall asleep.  That is just not gonna happen because momma needs some downtime at the end of the day.  Following the fit of laughter that shocked him to his core, I told him, “that was a good one bud and I appreciate the thought that went into that one, but it is just not going to happen and you need to get your little buns in that bed pronto”.  The use of the word “pronto” is a throwback from my parents and meant to us you better hustle or else.  He takes one withering look at me, shakes his head, then hangs his head and walks out without another word, taking his sister with him on the way out.  All I could think of was “And the Oscar goes to…my little buddy who has a flare for the dramatic and isn’t afraid to use it.”  Too funny!

Today was one of those days that just made me so happy to be exactly where I was.  My six year old son has had a bad cough and a slight fever the past two days and this morning after the holiday weekend did not feel good enough to go to school.  My husband and I had planned to go golfing so my little one staying home from school put a different slant on those plans.  On a side note my son wrote a note in his kindergarten writing to us that said, “TKU MOMANDDAD FR TKG CRMEWNIMSK  ILVMOMANDDAD”.  Translation:  Thank you mom and dad for taking care of me when I am sick.  I love you mom and dad.  Reading that little note made tears come to my eyes and then made me laugh because he was putting out all the stops for a sick day.  Anyway the two girls were scheduled to go to the home daycare they attend one day a week.  I got the girls ready and drove them to “school”.  When I got back to the house, my husband and son were dressed and ready for a day on the golf course.  My son had the biggest smile on his face and thanked me on the way out the door for letting home stay home and come golfing with us.  We then had to have a big discussion that this was a very special day, not to get used to it, you have to go to school to learn all the great things like writing and reading,…etc.  So we had an awesome day on the golf course, it was beautiful and sunny, my son got to drive the golf cart with the help of us, we had lunch together, we played all right and got in all 18 holes.  My son looked at me while we were eating lunch and said, “this was the best day ever”.  I was so glad that we decided he could stay home and come with us to the golf course.  It was so nice for my husband and I to have that time to spend with just him and he was so happy to have both our attention for the day.

We then went to pick up the girls and came home to play.  They decided to make all these signs and hang them up around the house that said, “ILVMOM”, “ILVDAD”, “ILVGMU (grandma)”.  Very cute.  Then they turned on some music (the KIDZ BOP CDs they have been getting from the McDonalds happy meals-great toy by the way).  I was reading in the chair and looked over to see my youngest just dancing away with her dollie, not a care in the world.  I wanted to take a picture, but knew it wouldn’t do the moment justice.  When she caught me watching her, she just smiled and kept on dancing.  Completely adorable.  Then all three climbed in my lap and we read books for about 20 minutes with no one fighting or pushing for space.  We were all just content to be where we were at that moment.  It was a great day.  Life is good.

Last Saturday started like any other.  I woke up around 7 am, looked out the window to check to see if it was raining.  This is important because if it is raining I don’t have to wake up all three kids for an 8am soccer game.   This particular Saturday, it was raining and I was thanking the weather gods for another glorious rainy morning.  I jumped on my email just to make sure that the game was in fact cancelled when I read the subject of the email from the soccer coach:  “The game is on.  See you in 15 minutes.”  So that sent me immediately running up the stairs to arouse the 3 sleepy children and encourage them in a nice pleasant voice to “move their behinds we have a soccer game to get to” (about 10 times in a matter of 10 minutes).   As I am running around like a chicken with my head cut off, my husband quietly says, “you know, the game can be cancelled if you want it to be.”  This made me pause for a second, ponder that for 2 seconds and then quickly decide that I would like to be “supermom” today (which in hindsight was my biggest mistake of the day…never do that!).  So I bustle the kids and all the gear into the car hoping for a little help from the kiddos in doing their own seatbelts.  No such luck and we finally pulled out of the driveway at 8:05am.  Meanwhile I was trying to do some deep yoga breathing and telling myself that she’s only four and it is OK if she misses half of the game.  Anyway we got to the field and everything was soaking wet and a nice misty rain was falling from above.  My daughter had a blast playing soccer in the rain and even scored a goal.  Nice.  Meanwhile my two year old could not be put down on the wet grass and completely detested the misty rain that was continually falling in her face.  My son continually badgered me with requests to go to the playground which was about 200 yards from the soccer field and was greeted with an escalating ”no” each and every time.  I don’t know how many times I explained to him the “reasons” for not letting him which included by the way, scary people who would like nothing more than a whiny 6 year old, your sister has to watch you play every sport under the sun (well rain today), the playground is a puddle of mud and ending with a resounding “because I said so!”.  Anyway eventually the game ended and we all piled into the car for some munchkins from Dunkin Donuts and a short-lived stay at home.  At around 10:30 we had to leave to get my son’s pictures for baseball which was the last place I wanted to be with three children under the age of six.  I had the 6 year old running around with his teammates and the other two running up and down the bleachers in the gym while I was trying to fill out paperwork for the pictures and continually shooting my eyes in three different directions trying to monitor my children’s whereabouts.  Whew, sweat was poring down my back and my patience was at an all time low.  And as always the pictures were running behind and the wait was excruciating.  Right after that we all had to run to my son’s baseball game where my 4 year old daughter decided to pull out her worst behavior in about 2 years.  I would say, “don’t push your sister” and she would look right at me and push her.  This resulted in multiple time outs which did nothing to improve her behavior.  A friend at the field, took one look at my haggard look and asked if she could help in anyway.  Which I appreciated tremendously, but really I just needed to get these kiddos home where I hoped, if there was a god, that  some of them would take a long leisurely nap.  Once we got home, I put my daughter in timeout for her behavior at the ball field and within 2 seconds she was out.  The poor thing just needed some rest after a long week of activity and it showed in her behavior.  After the 2 youngest took their naps, the day took on a much nicer and slower pace that resulted in lots of fun and laughter and taught me three important things along the way: 1) insist on naps when the behavior is horrible 2) you can turn it around even when the day looks like a total loss 3) being supermom is completely overrated.  Here’s to fun Saturdays whatever those days might look like.