Posts Tagged ‘motherhood’

Okay, so I’m a little ahead of myself, and the season. But after the winter we had around here, we could all use a little spring.

1. The dust-bunnies start hop-hop-hopping across your living room. 
2. The tips of your kids’ bikes sprout through the snow.
3. Your vacuum sucks up the last of the 137-piece toy Grandma gave the kids for Christmas.
4. Your snowman is now a big snowball with eyes and the scarf you’ve been looking for since Valentine’s Day.
5. The days are longer. (They just seemed longer during the winter).
6. The sun rises earlier. And so does your son. And daughter.
7. Your kids bring home a spring school project — lions made from yarn and lambs made from cotton balls — which immediately join the dust bunnies in the living room.
8. You finally get the snowsuits on the triplets.
9. Your toddler, who just got over her fear of the Santa Claus at the mall, is traumatized by the sight of a giant rabbit in a floral vest waving to her outside Sears.
10. For the first time since November, “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” DVD is available at the video store.
11. The baby finally learns to crawl – right through your freshly planted flowerbeds.
12. The sun streams through the window, melting the Ho-Ho someone left on the recliner.
13. Mud coats the rock salt in your mini-van’s door runners, allowing them open more smoothly.
14. It’s time to sign the kids up for summer camp and fall sports.
15. Spring Fever replaces the low-grade fever your pre-schooler had pretty much all winter.

Portions of this list originally appeared in Parenting magazine.

Check it out: Jen Singer’s Are You Ready for Toddlerhood? is in the March issue of American Baby magazine.

I love the smell of soccer field in the morning.

Magazine editors always want me to end sweet. That’s why the original ending for yesterday’s “What I Miss Most…”  post here on MommaBlog was “…having an entire day without kids – and not missing them terribly!”

Barf.

I guess it’s their way of atoning for letting me rake motherhood across the coals. Yet every once in a while, I wonder if they’re right. (more…)

by Jen Singer

For the newish moms out there:

What I miss most is…
…using my tweezers on my eyebrows, instead of using them to retrieve Barbie’s shoes from the heating grate.

…dreaming long enough to find out whether George Clooney wears boxers or briefs.

…having an entire conversation that has nothing to do with poop. Aw, geez! There it is again.

…accessorizing with jewelry and scarves, rather than marker and what appears to be butternut squash & corn.

…dashing out with my car keys and some Chapstick, instead of packing up like the traveling circus just to go to the mall.

…showering without someone opening the door and handing me the phone while saying, “Some lady wants to talk to you.”

…to read a book anywhere but my car, because the baby naps only in her car seat.

…reaching the bottom of the laundry pile. For days.

…my purse, which I haven’t seen since I bought the diaper bag.

…non-animated television programs.

…sauntering through parking lots, supermarkets and Target without having to shout, “Stay by Mommy!”

…sex.

…uninterrupted telephone conversations. And, did I say sex?

Share, share, that’s fair: Tell us–What do you miss, Mom?

Need more giggles like that? There’s plenty of them in Jen Singer’s Stop Second-Guessing Yourself parenting series. Filled with helpful and funny quotes by MommaSaid.net’s fans and loads of advice and humor by MommaSaid’s founder, Jen Singer, you’ll get what you need — just as soon as you can hide in the bathroom long enough to read a few pages.

For more information on where to buy them, visit My Books.

You know you’re transitioning from one season to the next when you can’t find matching shoes. We have one red boot still missing from the summer, as are the matches for two right-footed sneakers that belong to my children. No matter. They don’t fit anyone here anyhow. (more…)

I was making a Staples run to pick up the tickets for my upcoming Kiss Cancer Goodbye event when they made their request. My boys wanted a stapler, some Wite-Out and some modeling clay. I didn’t ask questions. I figured that my sons had some sort of school project. Besides, I was in a hurry, so I dashed out the door with my list and bought what they’d asked for. (more…)

She saw the whole thing.

“So, first you dropped off brownies in your son’s classroom,” my friend Joan said when I ran into her in the school hallway on Friday.

“Then you stopped to coach one of your soccer players in the hallway,” she observed. “And now you’re going to a presentation on the school’s new spelling program.”

Worst of all, she called me the s-word: “Super Mom.”

I know what it looked like. I’d actually made brownies from scratch for my son’s birthday celebration in school, but a real Super Mom would have made sugar-free carrot cake. Yes, I’d mentioned to one of the kids on the soccer team that I coach how well he’d played the previous weekend, but I am just an assistant coach. The head coach has way more responsibilities and clout. And besides, Joan was going to the same meeting. (more…)

I cannot, will not save the elephants. It’s not that I don’t care about them, or the fact that, as one e-mail sent to me this morning implored, they may go instinct within 15 years. I care. I really do. But some days –okay, most days– I can barely manage my own wheelhouse let alone take on the fate of wild animals half a world away. (more…)

Reason #243 why I never get to the bottom of my laundry.

Answer:Question: “Where’s the tape?”

That’s my yard. But that’s not my kid. Or my trumpet.

I didn't sit down for a good six years.

We were passing by the community playground on Saturday when a dark thought hit me: I don’t miss that at all. It was so unexpected, it actually made me catch my breath. (more…)

You know it’s time for the Semi-Annual Culling of the Kids’ Closets when you find Pee-Wee Herman in an underwear drawer.

As I opened my son’s dresser drawer yesterday, I jumped as though I was an expendible character in a horror movie — perhaps Laundry of Chucky. Even after 12 years of motherhood, I just don’t always anticipate stumbling upon such things as Pee Wee Herman staring at me from among a pile of boxer shorts and white crew socks. But there he was, and there went my Sunday afternoon mellow.

The rest of my son’s room has been blissfully uncluttered for much of the summer. Now and then, his bed goes unmade for hours or even a day or two. But I just start singing “Kung Fu Fighting” or “Copacabana” and suddenly, he’s speed straightening his room. Anything not to hear about Lola, “she was a showgirl,” from his mother, with Dad as back-up singer. Hmmmm. Maybe we need dance moves?

But stumbling upon Pee Wee was a sign to me that it’s time to figure out which clothes can stay and which are too small and/or too ratty, the nicest of which will be donated to the church. That way there’s more room for things that fit.

So I whipped through his closet until I had a pile of “Wow, that hasn’t fit in two years” and “Is that ketchup, or blood?” I put them in large plastic bags and we hauled them downstairs to the dining room, where I’d just pawned off boxes of “I have no bookshelves for these” and “I read this four years ago” on the annual library book sale.

As for the drawer, I haven’t had a chance to cull it yet. Frankly, I’m afraid to open it back up. I mean, who knows what I’ll find there? Oh, Pee Wee knows. That’s who. And that’s a little scary.