Parental Irresponsibility

I love Katy Perry.  Seriously…I do.  Her tunes are bouncy, she’s beautiful in that classic sort of way and she can rock a night brace like none other.  But did you know she used to have blonde hair, a different last name and sing Jesus songs?  Talk about the cross-over of all cross-overs!

Anyway…if you have a small kid you know that out of 5 million words in a day, they’ll hone right in on the nasty inappropriate ones…repeating them loudly in church, school and grocery store check-out lines;  meanwhile, you’re left standing there trying to defend your pathetic lack of parental monitoring.  When this happens, I usually blame the public school system.

For Cali’s first three years of life, the only television channel she watched was Noggin (pre-commercials).  It was also during this time that she ate oatmeal and eggs…and never begged for stupid toys that squirt cookie dough and glow-in-the-dark paint.  I can’t really pin-point the exact time we exposed her to the other televised programming for children.  All I know is that after that, she started swilling Bubba Cola, walking like a hunchback, picking her nose and wearing peculiar things upon her head.  She also refused to eat roughage.  Truth be told, she became plumb ignorant.

(See pics below for verification)

So back to Katy Perry.  My kid is also a big fan because I have my iPod chuck full of her tunes.  We’ll have the sunroof open, cruising down Slappey Boulevard, singing about extraterrestrials and fireworks.  It was during one of these jaunts that my iPod’s battery died and we were left with nothing but talking space.  So she’s back there, slurping on a Slurpee, looking like a hillbilly when she asks:

“Mama.  What’s a menage a trois?”

A WHAT THE WHAT?!

“A menage a trois.  Katy Perry talked about that’s what she could have might have did last Friday night.”

*crickets*

And in my most brilliant parental save-a-scene to date, I replied:

“Chinese food.  It’s Chinese food.  She had Chinese food last Friday night.”

Katy…consider yourself censored.

Strange

I came across these pics last night and just shook my head.  They were taken when Cali was about a year old….and I’d noticed her light was still on after I’d put her to bed.  When I opened the door, this is what I found:

Four years later and not much has changed except her shoe size.  God love her….

Summer Vacation and Low Expectations

First day of summer vacation here.  When I say “vacation”, I mean the kid is out of school and in need of food and festivities.  Cali is one of those kids who has to be engaged from the rooter to the tooter; otherwise, she’s like one of those “Lord of the Flies” kids.

Every summer vacation starts the same.  Planning the calendar, scheduling stuff, making treats.  But after the 5th day in, I’m usually screaming, “Dear god make the pain go away!!”  And Cali is screaming, “I hate you and want new parents and a mansion!”

So this year I’ve set my expectations rather low.  I accept that I’m not one of those Bloggy Moms who appear to lead perfect lives via their websites.  I like to tell myself that they drink heavily behind the scenes and wear girdles.  I also accept that my kid isn’t one of the angels from a GAP commercial who skips and smiles.

So maybe this summer will be better, what with the bar set so low and all.  It’s 8 a.m. and Cali is out there in the pool jabbering loudly to the dog….no doubt making ALL the neighbors clap with delight.  Ordinarily this would bother me.  Today, it does not.  I went outside in boxers and no make-up.  Ordinarily THIS would bother me…but today it does not.  May have something to do with the PMS.  It’s hard to say for sure.

At any rate….here’s what’s on today’s agenda:

*  Construct a fairy house

*  Try to keep Cali from eating all the Jello cups in one sitting

That’s pretty much it.  I’ll post pics later to document my success or failure.  Hopefully by then I’ll have pants and make-up on.

Free Printables…for to entertain your kid.

So my offspring is on Spring Break this week.  Lookit.  I’m jumping up and down with joy.  It’s actually not terribly bad this year because her Daddy also took some time off to run interferance.  Thanks to Murphy and his shoddy list of laws, it went from sunny and 80 degrees to cold and rainy just about the time Spring Break started.

So.  Inside activities.  Yesterday was jigsaw puzzle day.  She did manage to walk her fanny down to the lake and fetch some nasty snail shells for me to clean.  Sometimes I wonder if she wouldn’t be happier out there in the doghouse, free to wander with abandon.   I’d take her to the Mall, but that’s like slow suicide, so I’ll have to come up with something else.

If you want some free printables, here’s a list of my faves.  You’d be surprised how long a kid can stay busy with a glue stick, scotch tape and a stack of printable fun times and crafts.  Some of these sites are for the Mamas…scrapbook and journal ephemera and whatnot.  Get busy!

(Click on images)

Familyfun.com

Kid Printables

DLTK Printable Crafts

Activity Village

Crayola

Paper Glitter

Karen’s Whimsy (Vintage paper dolls, ephemera, etc.)

Go Make Something (Collage art)

Graphic’s Fairy (Free vintage clip art)

Jingerup (Prints and patterns too cute for words)

Art-e-Zine (Vintage resources)

Living Locurto

Dollar Store Magic Times

I’m addicted to the Dollar Store the way Ezel is addicted to crack.  Seriously.  I’m like MacGyver up in there.  So I figured I’d periodically share some of my Dollar-ific creations….feel free to totally rip off my ideas.  In this economy, I encourage you to do so.

‘Pretty in Pink’

*  Glass cylinder vase: $1

*  Three (3) silk flower stems: $3

*  White satin ribbon: $1

*  Scrapbook paper: $1

TOTAL:  $6 of royal cheapness!

Another variation…also $6 (Dollar Store):

My Kid is a Liar

All kids lie.  I know this.  But when it becomes pathological and blatant…it’s disturbing.  For instance:  The pictures above?  Yeah, I found those on my camera after my kid swore on her American Girl’s life and a stack of bibles that she had NOT touched my camera.  Like I wouldn’t find this out?!  And look at her snide little face!  It’s insulting and condescending.

What’s it going to be like when she hits the tweens?  I know I need to prepare for it…but most of my brain doesn’t want to imagine the type of lying scenarios that will likely go down.

“No, mom!  I swear to Granny that I didn’t sneak out of the window last night and go hang out with a homeless man, who was NOT a stranger because he offered me something to drink.”

I take minimal comfort in knowing that I’m smarter than her.  I think.  But will I be one of those Mama Snoops?  The ones who root through their kid’s drawers and pockets while they’re away at school.  I don’t want to be that mom.  But over the weekend, I came upon something while cleaning her room that jarred me to the bone.

She’s a slob.  I won’t deny it.  So I expected to find the usual junk.  Stale cheerios, lip-gloss smeared all over the bookcase, Gushers with no gush in the middle.

What I did NOT expect to find were sugar packets hidden like bags of crack cocaine.  I found close to 15 of them…hidden in the trunk of Strawberry Shortcake’s car, in the Squinkie gum-ball machine, up Tinker Bell’s dress, inside of a Happy Meal toy that was inside an old Christmas tin that was at the bottom of her toy-box.  A few of them were shoved under the flaps of her Fisher Price pop-up book and I found the last few in Polly Pocket’s horse trailer.

I was appalled.  Frightened. Befuddled.  So as I’m standing there waving a sugar packet in front of her face, all I’m thinking is, “In a few years, this sugar packet is gonna be a fat bag of weed.”

Of course, she reminded me that these were mere allegations and ran outside to harass the cat.  I used to worry about her being imprisoned for life due to her committing some whack and heinous crime.  After witnessing her not-guilty plea to Mom vs. Liar, I’m convinced she could hoodwink the most experienced and seasoned prosecutor on the circuit.  With aplomb.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love my kid.  But she’s killing me, people….and there ain’t nothin’ soft about it.

Online Parental Surrogates

Here’s my theory.  Kids these days are born with some bio-cryonic freak gene that makes them computer-savvy at the ripe age of fetus.  I’m just about sick of my 5 year old making me look stupid.  Sometimes I want to get in her face like a Marine drill sergeant and call her names like “Maggot” and “Meat”.  I know that sounds harsh, but the kid is a smack-talker.

So much so, in fact, that her Daddy and I have stopped playing Wii with her.  I don’t have to sit there while some punk kid yells “Boo-Ya!” in my face every time she makes a hole-in-one or knocks me off a horse.  So I got up and walked.  I figure eventually Cali will run into another smack-talker in the wide world of sports and she’ll get what’s coming to her.

I know there are some hard-core moms out there who have made a vow to god and all things holy that their child will never come within 3 miles of a video game.  I’m not one of those moms.  I’m the mom who puts her kid on a leash in the airport.  Don’t judge me.

So anyway….I decided to post my top 5 websites that act as surrogates when I’m bloated and PMS-ing.  I promise you, they’re all kinds of clean and educational and violence-free.

1)  AGKidzone (American Greetings):

2)  Hub World:

3)  Fisher Price (ideal for the wee ones):

4)  Barbie:

5) Funbrain (mucho noggin stiumulation):

I Like Jello

“Children are living beings–more living than grown-up people who have built shells of habit around themselves.  Therefore it is absolutely necessary for their mental health and development that they should not have mere schools for their lessons, but a world whose guiding spirit is personal love.”

~ Rabindranath Tagore

My husband and I both agree that our daughter is teaching us far more than we could ever teach her.  Things like patience, endurance, restraint, anger management.  Those are the prime lessons she’s teaching us these days.

It’s like Cali is Hurricane Katrina…and I’m one of the looters who just stole a flatscreen TV and is wheeling it through 3 feet of water in a shopping cart.  I’m assured that her behavior and disposition  is due to her brilliantly creative and imaginative mind.  As if this should comfort me.  I don’t care…I’ll admit it.  Sometimes I wish she was a blooming idiot so I could sit down and catch my breath.  Didn’t I read somewhere that Einstein’s mother became a hardcore whino and morphine addict shortly after he turned 2 years of age?  No?  Hm.  Thought I’d heard that somewhere.

I am in NO way implying that my kid is an Einstein.

I’m just saying that she’s got the brain of a criminal.  Or saint.  It could go either way.  There are some days when I fall down on my knees, cross my fingers and shake them at the sky, chanting, “Please don’t let her go to the dark side, please don’t let her go to the dark side, please….”

Yes.  The line is THAT thin.  Then there’s that weird voice in my head that periodically reminds me that I’m 100% responsible for the way she turns out.  While I know this isn’t entirely true….I know that I’m at least 85% responsible.   This responsibility rattles me.

I wasn’t exactly born with the god-given maternal gene.  People assume that every single woman in human captivity is born to be a mother.   Lies!  That doesn’t mean that these women are unfit or “less than”….it just means we have to work a little harder.   And I’m working my hiney off over here, people!  It sickens me when I see the text-book soccer mom looking down her nose at the mom who is doing good to show up on time with the kid intact.

If I’m at a playground with a bunch of other child-bearers, I’ll usually drift towards those whose kids are running around half-naked and filthy dirty.  I like to avoid the moms who point out that your kid’s pants look exactly like the ones they dumped off at Goodwill last month then ask you what church you’re a member of.  Really?

The grossly immature side of me would like to toy with the emotions of women like this.  Like maybe come back with, “Yeah?  Well I saw your husband on the East side last weekend at the Buckle Bunny and he sho nuff wasn’t looking like a Baptist preacher to me!”    While this may be a blatant lie….it’ll make her have to call her primary physician and ask for a nerve pill or two.  Not only that, she’ll most likely avoid the playground and that’s one less snoot to deal with.

Alas….I have matured.  Sort of.  All this parenting stuff has made me look at life differently.  Like maybe I need to take off my serious glasses and put on Cali’s ignorant 3D glasses held together with a piece of elastic, then run around the front yard half naked eating a banana.  Because somewhere along the line, I was misled into believing you HAD to be a serious parent all the time in order to keep the kid in line, otherwise no one would ever be allowed to come over to your kid’s house for a sleep-over.

I’m done with being concerned about the opinions of others.  No longer will I hold my child back from being magical because I’m worried about what the neighbors might think.  Who cares what the neighbors think!  The Trice family is weird as heck!  This isn’t a secret.  Everyone knows about it.  We grill out every Friday night while Cali dances in the drive-way listening to ghetto music blaring from the car stereo.   I’m the mom on the street that is constantly hanging out the door, cussing under her breath, screaming for her kid who ran off.  Again.

If encouraging Cali to live her life full throttle means we’re the oddballs on the block, then so be it.  What kind of mom would I be if I crammed a small child into an empty pickle jar and poked some holes in the lid.  Because that’s essentially what I’d be doing if i tried to squash Cali’s spirit.

Sometimes I’ll watch her sleeping and think, “Kid.  I hope you grow up one day and become super famous so you can publicly thank me and your Daddy for the sacrificial love you were given.”

And sometimes she’ll crack open an eyelid and say, “Please, mom.  Don’t be a mommy-martyr.  It sickens me.”

Then I’ll have to go look at baby pictures to remind myself of how cute and fuzzy she used to be.

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Family: They Don’t Build ‘Em Like They Used To

Get this.  Last night we were eating at the Cracker Barrel because that’s where the kid wanted to go for Valentine’s Day.  So we’re sitting there, cramming pot-roast, meatloaf and pancakes down our gullet and commenting on the lack of diners.  Across the way, I spied a family of five.  On one side of the table sat the parents.   On the other sat three teenage girls.  Every slap-dab one of them had their heads down…intent upon texting, playing ‘Word Mole’, watching YouTube videos, updating their Facebook status.

I sat and watched them for a good 10 minutes.  Not one single word was said amongst them.   I told my husband to discreetly turn around and check them out.  Of course, he whipped around like his chair was on fire to gawk at them.  They didn’t even notice.  Nor did they notice when Husband nearly set himself on fire with a lit kerosene lamp.  Everyone else did though.  I don’t doubt that a few people soiled themselves whilst laughing.

We “tsk-d, tsk-d” like a couple of senior citizens and shook our heads.  Meanwhile, our kid is hunkered over in the corner pretending to play a video game on a Valentine card she got from school.  Five minutes later, she shoved an entire cathead biscuit in her mouth and periodically swallowed.  It was like watching a snake eat a gopher. Disgusting yet fascinating.

But at least we were interacting!  Although, who am I to judge?  That family could’ve been talking to each other with their mechanical devices.  I’ve been known to pick up the cell phone and call Husband at the other end of the house to ask for bacon and cough drops.  So maybe my perception of family communication is a bit antiquated.

Maybe all this high-falootin’ technology has actually brought some families together.  But I’ll tell you this right now here today.  I don’t care how far our technology advances….I’m still gonna force my kid to look me in the eyeball and talk to me with her mouth.  She may hate me for it, but I don’t care.  I’M the decider.

Now I must go plug in my cell phone so Husband can reach me, should he try to set himself on fire again.

Preskool High Times

I’m fixing to bequeath some knowledge to ya’ll this Monday morning that will make you start eye-balling these “artistic” younguns under a whole new light bulb.  At first I thought it was cute.  Giggling children, clustered together, sharing their artistic dreams and visions over craft paper and piles of markers and colored pencils.  Oh how refreshing.  The sound of a child’s laughter.  Took me all of about five minutes to recognize that “laugh”.

The first time I heard that laugh was outside a Goodwill store on the east side of Columbus, Ohio.  Two homeless guys leaning up against a fence, middle of winter, camo-green spray paint all over their faces….laughing like hyenas in heat.  Which, of course, got ME to laughing.  So there we were.  Two huffers and a chick, laughing until the huffers soiled themselves and the chick walked off in disgust.  This was my first exposure to huffing.  I was a bit long in the tooth to just be learning about this stuff – 22 years old.  But I went to Jesus School, people.  Mkay?  Huffers aren’t tolerated in Jesus School.

From then on….if you wanted to be my friend and hang out with ME?  Then you better not have been a huffin’ fool.  It just don’t make no sense.  Sticking your stupid face down in a paper sack chuck full ‘o demon paint fumes and breathing it all in like a bouquet of daisies.  It goes way beyond ignorant.  So far, in fact, that I can’t find the appropriate wording.

So imagine my disgust and horror when I see my 4 year old daughter squatting underneath a picnic table in the back yard with two Crayola Silly Scented markers stuck up her nose, rocking back and forth in a state of ignorant bliss.  I’m sure I reacted the same way a mother would react if she found her 2 year old shooting up heroine over the kitchen sink.  She didn’t even blink when I snatched those markers out her nose.  ”Witch’s Brew” and “Dragon Drool”.  I knew I should’ve never bought these stupid markers!  I should’ve listened to that small quiet voice that was saying, “Now, you know your kid is gonna get high with those things!”  But I shook it off and dropped the box into my Target shopping cart.  Because no parent wants to believe their 4 year old’s drug dealer has a name like Crayola.

So.  No more scented NOTHING in our house while the kid is still under the roof.  I had to put my Sharpie markers under lock and key like top shelf liquor.  Looking back to my own childhood, I think I know why I had such a vast collection of Smelly Stickers.  Didn’t have a thing to do with sticker collecting.  It had everything to do with Jesus School.  Essentially, Smelly Stickers were like Christian huffing.  I was a huffer in sheep’s clothing.

The apple never falls too far from the tree.  But at least I had the good sense to keep myself inside…unlike my kid.  All squatted down under a picnic table like a Neanderthal.  So keep your eyes peeled, parents!  Listen out for that maniacal laugh, then look for a pack of Crayola Silly Scents markers.   I don’t why I’m shocked by any of this.  It’s not like Crayola is trying to be subtle.  They clearly tell you:

With zany names and scents, these markers will not only spark children’s imaginations but also keep them laughing.

• Available in 8 ct.
• Includes – Scary Movie, Dragon Drool, Freaky Phoenix, plus 5 other fun color and scent combinations!

I smell a boycott coming on.  Who’s coming with me?!