Laugh With Moms

As I was perusing facebook, I noticed that a lot of people are writing a note about themselves titled 25 Random Things About Me.  I like to read them and learn funny little things about my friends, but I find it and facebook in general to be a little on the voyeurism side and am a little leary of doing my own note.  I am a little less forthcoming in that arena, but thought of one random thing that reminded me of a funny story that actually changed the course of my life.  Over ten years ago, my friends from graduate school and I decided to take a “last Spring Break” trip before we finally entered the world of the gainfully and foreverly (totally not a word, but thought it sounded good) employed.  We walked into the AAA travel office and booked a 7 day cruise to the Carribean paid for by good old Uncle Sam in the form of our student loans.  As a matter of fact, I will finally pay off that trip this year!  Anyway as the trip got closer and closer, we warded off our favorite pizza joint (where we could each put down about 4 huge slices in one sitting) and went to the gym in earnest.  We were all single and looking forward to having an awesome time together and getting a great tan.  On the way down which consisted of one flight from St. Louis to Miami my luggage got lost.  How that happened, I still do not know, but is completely problematic when you are leaving on a boat in a matter of hours that will not see land for another 48 hours.  Luckily for me, I had packed a bathing suit and an extra pair of underwear (thanks mom for the advice) in my carry on, so for the most part I was good to go.  The cruise line otherwise known as the “fun ship”, graciously gave me 30 dollars of credit to buy what I needed on the ship (which by the way only covered one pair of cotton granny underwear) until my suitcase could be flown to Puerto Rico and delivered to the boat when we docked there in 48 hours.  Again, luckily for me my  friends and I  were roughly the same size and we had all gone shopping together for clothes for the trip (again with our student loan money) and so I had some really nice clothes to wear that I had helped purchase.  As we were leaving the port, we were madly waving at no one in particular and commenting on the various groups of cute boys that were assembled on the deck.  Two groups stood out, the New York boys and the Preppies.  Two very different groups, New York boys dressed in black, slicked back hair with loud New York Italian accents.  The Preppies, dressed in various pastel colored (pink even!) polo shirts, khaki shorts and which we would learn later terrible Boston (southie-straight out of Good Will Hunting) accents.  My friend Kiki (totally not her name to protect her identity) was more partial to the New York group whereas Roxy (totally not her name either) and I were partial to the Preppies.  Anyway the drinking started the minute we stepped on the boat and continued until the boat docked back in Miami seven days later.   Here is a tip for going on a cruise, drink continually you will be the only ones walking straight during rough seas.  We got to our table for dinner and were assigned to the table of the “Misfit Toys”.   The three of us in our early twenties decked out in our best (well my friend’s best in my case-suitcase was still MIA), two men in their early 40s looking to hook up with girls in their twenties, a couple that could not be more different from each other and rarely spoke, and one single guy with creepy tendencies and a penchant for very uncomfortable comments.  Dinner every night with them was interesting and by the end we just decided to get drunk playing beer pong and miss dinner altogether catching the midnight buffet instead.  After dinner the first night, we entered the night club for a night of dancing and lots of fun.  That night we met both groups of the guys we had spied from the deck and decided that the New Yorkers were a little too much into themselves and a little boring.  So we made our way to the Preppies who were already talking to another group of girls and convinced them to enter the dance competition with us.  Yes, dance competition.  The things we will do with multiple drinks in the system.  Anyway my partner and I, who I will call Sully, made it to the finals, but lost to one of the New Yorkers.  A little while later, the music got a little slower and I wound up dancing with one of the Preppies (the one dressed in the light yellow polo) and ended up talking to him for the rest of the night.  I loved to hear him talk with his terrible accent which consists of not pronouncing his “r”, but adding in an “r” when it is not needed.   The next night we made it to Puerto Rico where my luggage was waiting for me and we spent the night at a night club there almost missing the boat and getting scared to death by a drunk Puerto Rican hiding in a statue.  The rest of the week, we spent every waking moment and then some with the Preppies.  We went on day adventures to St. John which was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been and St. Maarten which was one of the most interesting places I have ever been.  In St. Maarten our cab driver decided to take us to the Nude Beach otherwise known as Orient Beach and left us stranded there without a ride back to the boat.  Let me just make one note about the nude beach, we did not go nude although we did put our blankets down on the nude side of the beach.  Also as a lesson I will take with me for the rest of my life, the people who actually go nude on the nude beach are not the people you actually want to see nude.  For example, the at least 80 year old man who swam up to the dock and laid right next to one of the preppies and the family who had two girls under the age of 10 with them (not as shocking now as it was when I was in my early twenties–I was from the midwest, we don’t see things like that out there!).  We spent everyday with the preppies and I unwittingly started to fall and fall hard for the one in the yellow polo.  Luckily he had other and better shirts but I will always remember the yellow one.  Anyway one night on the ship, after our first kiss, he asked me “do you like colored lights or white lights on a Christmas tree?”   At the time, this was just a question, but looking back it was a hint that this wasn’t just a casual vacation hook up.  That one question signified our compatibility and unknowingly that our futures were already linked.  Yes that’s right, I married the guy in the yellow polo shirt, with the endearing yet terrible “southie” accent that I met on that cruise.   When we said goodbye on the cruise that day, we had no idea what the future would hold.  He lived in the Northeast, I lived in the Midwest and still had some of my graduate school work to finish.  But I think when we both left there, we knew something incredible had happened that week and it would definitely change the course of our lives.  Everytime he came back from a trip with his friends, his mother would ask “did you meet anyone special” and this time, he said, “yah, ma, I did”.  A year later I moved to the Northeast to figure out if this “thing” would become something more and three years later we were walking down the aisle on a beautiful July day.  The Fun Ship it was, but it turned out to be a lot more than that.  We sent a letter to Carnival Cruise Lines about 5 years ago to tell them how that one trip changed the course of our lives and sent a picture of our son at the time.  They were really excited and invited us back anytime for an anniversary trip on our dime of course.

My morning rush compared to those of you out there is pretty laid back.  I usually only have one to get ready and on the bus, but that is it.  I don’t have to rush off to work or get anyone else to day care, etc.  So for me the morning rush isn’t really that stressful, but still contains a lot of reminders to get clothes on, brush teeth, eat breakfast, etc. before that bus comes rolling down the street.  I don’t even have to get him to a bus stop as the bus stops right in front of my house.  This morning though my son decided it would be fun to start playing his Leapster which he has not really even looked at since the Nintendo DS and XBox have entered our home.  After many threats of taking the Leapster as well as all video games out of this house, he finally got everything he needed to get done seconds before the bus turned onto the road.  As he is standing there waiting for the signal to cross the street, he looks back at me with big eyes and sad face and says “mom” really quietly.  I said, “what bud?”.  He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, “my puppy”.  His puppy is a stuffed animal that he got last Friday after a quick trip to the doctors office that revealed an ear infection.  A little puppy that he got at the checkout counter at CVS as we were paying for his antibiotic.  A little back story on this issue, he has thrown up at school twice this year.  The first time, the first week of school in the cafeteria at lunch, which resulted in a school-wide intervention to reduce his fear of the lunch room and get him back in there for lunch.  He was refusing to eat in school and was fearful of the cafeteria itself.  Funny but true, poor little guy was traumatized by the whole episode.  Anyway this past Friday, the nurse called me to say he wasn’t feeling well and was really upset.  She said his tummy hurt and looked like he was going to throw up.  So I pulled the grilled cheese I was making off the stove and hightailed it to the school, hoping I could get there before he threw up.  Unfortunatley I did not and he had episode number two at school, but luckily this time he was already in the nurses office.  Once at home,  he complained of his ear hurting and therefore deduced he probably had an ear infection and got him into the doctor resulting in the ear infection diagnosis and subsequent trip to CVS.  Yesterday before school, my son said he didn’t want to go, he “hated” school, he was afraid he was going to get sick again.  We talked about it and he said, “mom, do you think I could bring my puppy to school?  That might help me, if I feel scared again.”  I thought that was a great idea and reminded him to keep the puppy in the backpack and he could only take him out at rest time.  So today when he looked back at me with those sad eyes, pleading with me to do something, I immediately ran up the stairs to his room, grabbed the puppy,  ran back down the stairs, only to be two seconds too late.  As I came out to the porch with puppy in hand,  all I could see were his sad eyes looking back at me as the bus was driving away.  That will be in my head all day and I know that for the most part he will forget about the puppy and have a great time at school.  He has gym today so that alone makes it a good day for him.  But at rest as he is settling down, he will feel sad and that breaks my heart.  You want to say to him, if you hadn’t been messing around with your Leapster this morning, you would have had plenty of time to  think of the puppy and get him in your backpack because those are the facts, but it doesn’t change the sadness I feel seeing him drive away with tears in his eyes.  I am going to have shake it off (or blog it off for that matter) and get on with the rest of the day.  I just hope he will too.

My 4 year old son had a friend over today who happens to be a girl.  They have been friends for a long time and play really well together.  First they started off playing a game then doing a puzzle and then the imagination started to flow.  I was sitting on the floor in the next room with my 11 month old totally consumed with how precious my baby is.  I happened to look up for a second to see what the 4 year olds were doing and I had to take a second look.  My son was completely naked and his friend was in the process of taking off her dress.  I stopped what I was doing and asked them what they were doing and my son responded “we are going to play bath mommy”.  I told them both to get their clothes on and to find something else to play.  My son was trying his best to negotiate saying “I will just put my shirt on mommy”.  I finally said “put all your clothes on right now or you will go to your room”.  Thankfully, I can still pull rank when needed.  I thought about it after and how innocent they both were having no clue about the opposite sex at the moment.  Just give it another 10 years and I may have to pull rank again but hopefully not.

Today my baby boy turns six and I am wondering how did that happen?  How did six years already pass from the day we leisurely went to the hospital, stopping for donuts and at the police station to make sure the car seat was in correctly, to have him.  His delivery in retrospect was very easy.  My water had started leaking at about midnight the night before but I wasn’t sure that was what it was since it was my first time.  But no contractions started and they told me to come up in the morning, but not to get there too early as the doctor wouldn’t be done with her rounds yet.  So hence the stop at the donut shop and the police station.  Anyway when I got there I was 4 cenimeters dilated and they admitted me to the hospital.  Once I was settled in the room, the nurse offered me the epidural (although I was feeling nothing) which I gladly took.  I am no hero here and I always equate the epidural with novicaine at the dentist (would I have a tooth pulled without novacaine and the answer is always no!!).  So the anesthesiologist came in and placed it in on the first try and the rest was history.  My husband and I watched football, had lots of laughs about our birthing classes and waited for the birth to occur.  Three hours later I was ready to push, but the doctor was in delivering another baby so we had to hold on for about 30 minutes in which we “practiced” a few times with the nurse.   The doctor finally arrived and the pushing started and kept on going for 2 hours, but thank goodness I had that epidural and couldn’t feel a thing.  And at 6:35pm he arrived screaming his lungs out and bringing tears to his parent’s eyes.  I couldn’t believe it when they laid him on my chest, this was my little baby looking up at me.  I was a little nervous about breastfeeding, but the nurse was awesome and taught me everything I needed to know in about 10 minutes.  And that little “sucker” took to the breastfeeding immediately and never let go!!!  Could he eat.  Anyway the first night in the hospital, that little guy screamed his head off while “bedding in the room” causing the nurse to come in to instruct us how to soothe him and didn’t that little guy quiet right down.  Man was I in trouble I thought when this guy comes home and it is just me and his father who can sleep through anything.   So for the next six years, my little guy has lived life full throttle.  When he learned to roll over, he rolled over multiple times.  When he learned to walk, he immediately started to run.  He does everything at full tilt and brings life and energy into everything we do.  It has been an amazing 6 years and I can’t wait to see what this little guy does in the years to come.  Happy 6th Birthday Buddy!!

Hi my name is Daphne and I am addicted to coloring.  I am a 34 year old mother of 3 and I love to color.  This is the one activity that when asked, I will almost always say yes.  It is not just the coloring, it is the perfection with which I have to color.  I meticulously stay in the lines.  I adhere to the correct color scheme, there are no purple princesses in my book.  I color the entire page, no part of that page is left without a crayon mark.  Sometimes when I have to color a snowman, I even use the white crayon just so I know I left no part of that page without “color”.  I regularly buy the 64 and 96 count Crayola boxes of crayons with the built in sharpener to ensure that my crayons always have that sharp tip for small coloring spaces.  Sometimes my youngest daughter wants to “help” and will make stray lines across the page and I inwardly cringe at her intrusion into my work of art.  We are talking Elmo, Disney Princesses, Curious George and the stray page brought home from preschool almost on a daily basis.  I think I am actually starting to rub off on my middle daughter as just yesterday she checked the front cover of the Elmo coloring book to make sure that Zoey was orange and painstakingly outlined the area she was going to color before she used an even and unidirectional (not sure if that is even a word, I am now making up coloring words) coloring stroke.  For a three year old, she’s got some skills in the coloring area and I couldn’t be more proud.  It is a problem I will have to address and will probably involve a time of withdrawal as my kids get older and out of the coloring stage.  Maybe then we can move on to paint by number.

Interesting combo and luckily they did not come into contact with one another, they just happened simultaneously.  For Christmas this year, we were the “lucky” recipients of an XBox 360 and all the fun that goes along with that.  We even got the Guitar Hero World Tour which if you have never played, is so much fun and appeals to my inner rock star that I was sure was long forgotten.  Anyway my son and I had been playing the Lego Indiana Jones game on the XBox when my youngest daughter was down for a nap over the Christmas vacation.  So this past Saturday as my daughter was snug in her bed taking her nap, my son and I sat down to continue our quest to conquer Raiders of the Lost Ark.  About 1 hour into the game (yes 1 hour!!!), my youngest daughter woke up and started to cry a little bit.  Since she had only slept for one hour, I was hoping that maybe she would fall back to sleep.  After about 3 minutes, she was completely quiet again and I was relieved that she would get her full 2 hours sleep.  Therefore my son and I continued to play the game.  During this time my 3 year old daughter was negotiating with me about some much needed time spent with her, coloring and playing her beloved mickey mouse memory game.   So now on the agenda for my Saturday was: 1)conquer Raiders of the Lost Ark, 2) color 2 pages of the Disney Princess coloring book 3)play one game of Mickey Mouse Memory and oh yeah clean up from lunch, throw in laundry, vaccuum and clean the bathroom but who really needs to get that stuff done.  Anyway after about 20 minutes, my youngest daughter started crying rather loudly and I thought I better go up and get her as she doesn’t seem like she wants to sleep any longer.   As I ascended the stairs and rounded the corner into her room, I could smell it.  When I opened the door and saw her body, hands and crib I thought I was going to vomit.  There was poop everywhere.  She has recently gotten into that lovely stage of loving to undress herself and run around naked.  But before she went to take a nap, I had used one of my “mommy” tricks and had put a  onesie shirt on her with the snaps at the bottom to prevent this very thing from happening.  As I closed my eyes and opened them again to ensure that I was seeing what I was seeing, I marveled at how clever that little stinker ( I mean that in every way possible) was.  She had managed to take off her pants and wiggle her way out of that shirt without unsnapping obviously and had gone to town with the contents of her diaper which is probably why she woke up early from her nap in the first place.  Needless to say she was carried at arms length right to the tub and was scrubbed from head to toe, the sheets were triple washed along with poor mickey mouse who will never be the same, and the crib was given a much needed and overdue scrub down with a topcoat of Lysol.  So if there is a lesson to be learned here, it might be don’t spend so much time on the XBox momma, you have a lot to attend to.