you know you’re a SAHM when… October 19, 2007

I don’t know if you remember the Jeff Foxworthy “you might be a redneck if…” series. The jokes were never high class, but they did always make me laugh. I was thinking about some of those jokes today and thought that stay at home moms could definitely have a similar list written about them. If I had the time I would make this into one large list, but since I don’t, as I come up with them I’ll list them here.

So the first one is….(drum roll please)….

You might be a stay at home mom if you actually have to remind yourself not to eat the food off the floor.

Unfortunately I’m actually serious here. One thing I’ve noticed since I had my second child is that with having twice the motherly duties to fill my time, one of the things that gets put on the back burner is eating. Yes, of course I feed my kids (so put down the phone, no need to call CPS), but it seems like between feeding my daugher, keeping the house clean, driving my kids to their various activities, and the seemingly constant need to feed my newborn son , before I know it it’s 4:00 pm and I realize all I’ve had to eat that day is half a cup of cold coffee and a handful of cheerios.

Today this hit an all time low. I was cleaning the floors for what seemed like the tenth time today (something I am a bit of a fanatic about), and as I bent down to pick up a rather large piece of cracker that had fallen on the floor below the table, I instinctively picked up the cracker and lifted it towards my mouth. It wasn’t until I had almost closed my lips around it that I realized what I was doing. I had to stop and remind myself that even though my daughter does leave quite a bit of crumbs under the table they don’t qualify as a meal. I should be eating actual food, not just the crumbs off the floor and food left on my daughers plate.

So let me stress on all you moms out there, we do the most important job in the world, lets eat like we deserve it!!! Yes, I promise to follow my own advice.

God & poker October 16, 2007

I grew up around poker. It was something my family did together. I’m not talking big money games or late nights, but whenever my family gets together the chips usually end up on the kitchen table. This is something I don’t really enjoy doing without family around. In fact, on a trip to Vegas a couple of years ago, I spent exactly five dollars in the slot machine, not even a single visit to the blackjack table. Since marrying into my family a few years back, by husband has also enjoyed this strange family tradition, and over the last couple of years has even enjoyed watching the occasional professional poker game on ESPN.

A couple of nights ago, after the kids were in bed, he found one of those games on and sat down to watch it.   Something about it caught me as very strange: One of the players kept praying to God to help him win, and the wife of the other player (who was in the audience) kept praying for God to help her husband win his hand.  Now maybe I’m wrong, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know what God is thinking, but it seems to me that God has bigger issues to deal with than who wins that poker game!!!  I realize that maybe they were praying because they had their last dollar riding on that game, and without winning their kids wouldn’t eat that night.  I would like to think that no one is stupid enough to put their last dollar on a poker game, but sadly I know that’s not true.  I would hope that if I was the wife of the man who put our last dollar on a poker game I would be praying for my husband to grow some brains, not win the game and therefore encourage his habit.

This somehow reminds me seeing clips of various awards shows and watching people such as fifty cent (gosh, I even feel ridiculous typing his name) thank God for his win.  There is lots of places I could go with that one, but I am reminded that God teaches us not to judge, so I’ll just say once again that I think God has better things to do than keep an eye on who is winning a grammy.

I just try to imagine my daughter in Sunday School and the teacher asking what she would like to pray for at the end of the lesson, and her response being: “I’d like to pray that my daddy wins his poker game”.

How ridiculous does that sound?

thank goodness for lycopene October 15, 2007

What is it about kids and ketchup? I recently learned that Baskin Robbins once tested a Ketchup flavored ice cream. I guess it didn’t go over so well, but I bet if it had been left to three year olds it would have made it to the stores. Even as an adult I admit to being a ketchup lover. A serving of french fries just isn’t the same without a big puddle of the red stuff to dip them in. But according to my older brothers I was an even more avid fan of this much loved condiment as a child, they love to recall stories of me pouring it in my milk to make my own special version of “pink milk”, and even I remember spreading it on bread for a snack. Yes, just in case you were wondering I have long since outgrown these unappetizing habits, but it seems my three year old is headed down mommy’s path.

A recent trip to walmart lasted longer than expected (what trip to walmart doesn’t) and since it was after lunch time, I took my daughter into McDonald’s for a happy meal, something I don’t feel quite so guilty doing since they now offer milk and apples instead of just fries and soda. As we are enjoying our lunch I started to notice that not only were the chicken nuggets going through the ketchup before heading down the trap, but so were the apples. The Apples!!!!! Yuck. As I saw this I tried to hide my total disgust in an attempt to avoid giving her some sort of complex which would result in hours of therapy years from now (I can just imagine her coming to me at some point telling me that the reason she can’t get into Cornell being due to a self esteem issues that stemmed from this moment). Ever since then, if we are eating something dipable (is that even a word), she asks for ketchup. I started to notice to notice her wiping any remaining ketchup on her place up with her finger and licking them clean. Today it rose to a new level. After eating a well balanced lunch, she was left with an empty place except for a puddle of ketchup in the middle. I guess she thought it was time to skip the middle man and go straight to the source, because she skipped the finger step all together and started licking the plate. Wow.

I try very hard to adhere to the “pick your battles” rule, and so I’ve decided to just let this run it’s course. Besides ketchup is full of lycopene and it’s good to know that in an emergency situation she could happily survive on ketchup packets alone for at least a solid week.

what ever happened to common courtesy? October 15, 2007

So I’d like to preface this by saying that I am in no way the biggest class act around. I’ve been known to forget to put my napkin in my lap at a nice dinner on more than one occasion, and I’m not sure I really even know the proper placement for silverware at the dinner table.

That being said, I do think manners are important, and the most important of all manners is courtesy. On several occasions over the last few years I have noticed that common courtesy is not so common anymore. One of the biggest examples of that was that upon moving to California I noticed that rarely would anyone hold the door for strangers in public, and when I did I was given strange looks. To be totally honest for awhile I agreed with the stereotype that Californians were just ruder than the people I had grown up around in Montana (something that I learned to be totally untrue).

Over the course of the last month or so I have had the unfortunate experiance of finding that my generation needs to go back to manners school even more than I thought. Now I don’t want to go into details, god forbid that the poor mannered are actually reading this, but…

When I was growing up one of the most important things that was drilled into my head was the importance of saying “please” and “thank you”. Even the biggest favor seems like no big deal when the recivers says a simple “thank you”. This is something that we work dilligently hard on with our daugher, and our son when he’s old enough and I hope they grows up to be some of the dying breed that actually write thank you notes.

Something else that comes to mind is the art of being a good guest. We have had the unfortunate experience of having some very poor house guests in the recent past. I was taught to go out of your way to be grateful when you are a house guest and also to go out out your way to be a good host. My recent experiences had my husband and I doing several things to make sure that our guests would be as comfortable as possible and help them have a relaxing, enjoyable visit. Not a thank you was uttered. Yuck!!!

So what’s my point with this whole thing….well I’m not totally sure. But I’ll say this, remember what your mother said: “remember your pleases and thank yous”

all my random thoughts October 15, 2007

So you may be wondering what my plans are for this blog…well, I am sick and tired of having random things happen in my life or hearing random stories and telling my husband “I should blog about this”.  And to be perfectly honest I think he’s pretty sick and tired of hearing me go on and on about these things.  So I guess I needed an outlet for my thoughts, a place where I can tell the world about the crazy things that happen when you’re a mother of two small children.  Also a place to have some adult conversation (hello…not the naughty kind), my three year old is really not interested in these things.   This world is a crazy place, and I’d like to rant a little bit (even if it is just to two readers)