Mothering Mayhem: Life with the Wild Boys

As promised to those who follow me on Facebook (or as the crew I partied with last night refer to it "the Facebook"), here is the highly anticipated "Jen parties with senior citizens" explanation blog. Life with the wild boys, it sometimes necessitates a break from children in order to maintain one's sanity.  Hence the institution of "date night."  This blog deals very minimally with the wild boys.  More about Mommy this time around.  So I apologize to those of you who need more Gav and Gabe antics.  There will be plenty to come. A little history.  For those of you who don't know me that well, I am a total music junkie.  It is ALWAYS playing around me, and my tastes are really all inclusive (with the exception of anything involving accordion...I just can't do it, I've tried.)  The cop is stunned constantly by how quickly I can switch from a Vivaldi mood to The Jackson 5 to Kesha.  And the wild boys have been totally brainwashed by me. I...

One of the most dreaded times in parenting is puberty.  The cop and I have survived it three times thus far, and my only real comfort in having two more kids was that I would have a really long time before I had to deal with it again. Wrong. Blame growth hormones in milk, whatever. My six year old is apparently a teenager.  Sure, he's only fifty pounds and no, he's not all freakishly pizza faced yet.  But sweet Jesus, his attitude is straight up 15 year old boy.  And so I thought I would share with you, loyal readers, some of our more eye twitching moments as of late.  These moments have all spawned from his increased vocabulary, and some phrases I really didn't expect to deal with for another decade. For example, "I don't even LIKE you Mom."  Sure, this should make me catch my breath.  Probably all of those mothers who are actual competitors for Mother of the Year out there would sit down and have a serious, heartfelt chat with him about ho...

Let's talk about terror, people. First off, I know you're all shocked I'm back so soon. But this is important, it really is.  Today, I have faced true terror, and this chronicle shall serve as a catharsis for me. And let's address the obvious here. I'm pretty hard to scare. Not to toot my own horn, but I do deal with delinquent teenagers on a daily basis.  I have been in to high schools, juvenile halls, hostile court rooms and houses full of bad guys.  Before this job assignment I have worked with people in rehabs, in jails, and in prisons.  I have dealt with drug addicts, murderers, rapists and thieves people.  But never before have I been subjected to class time with 24 six year olds.  And that, that my friends, is real fear. There are a lot of pressures you face as a parent, but none come to play quite as dramatically as the pressure to measure up to other parents.  To accomplish this task most parents enlist an inner circle of sorts....

It's been a long time, I know.  Chaos has swallowed whole the Casa de Testosterone. And I'm here, really and truly, just to let you know I'm still breathing. Barely. School started.  And within a week, soccer started. Two different teams, two different practices, two different games on Saturdays.  So for almost a month now we have existed from one even to the next, barely catching our breath.  Gavin started school with a cold.  Almost a month later, he's almost better, and the rest of us have it.  We've done school, we've done soccer, we've gone with friends to learn how to make home made tamales, we've been to concerts, we've been to swim parties, we've been to the ER.  And this, my friends, is parenthood. And here is a snippet of 24 hours.  Just 24 hours of a holiday weekend, just so you know what you've been missing.  Sunday morning with four head colds means no church, because you can't go to nursery oozing green snot, and I can...

Remember a time when summer vacation meant that you had a break? Way, WAY back when, when you actually got two months reprieve to recover from the rigors of learning cursive and multiplication?  Yeah, me neither.  I know it exists because we are smack dab in the middle of it. My teacher friends are cavorting and having fun, while I'm cursing them for failing to supervise my delinquents for at least a few hours a day, thus propelling my workload into astronomical amounts of arrests and court time and making me seriously consider moving to a country that forces it's children to attend school always. ALWAYS. That being said, welcome humble readers to Mayhem Mother's halfway through summer tribute to her quickly vanishing sanity.  Because if the work load increases, the stress increases, which means things that the wild boys think are trivial cause me to drink heavily and swear like a sailor as soon as they aren't in ear shot.  But that hasn't been going as well as I ...

Here I sit, logging in this morning at nearly 9:00 am, and it's already in the mid 80's.  I'm told we may get thunderstorms, which accounts for the humidity.  I'm also told it will be around 100 again, despite the storms, WITH the humidity.  Day seven of the heat wave, or is it eight...I've lost count and the only thing I know for sure is that I wake up and my head is filled with obscenities.  The wild boys, however, they wake up refreshed, energetic, ready to take on the world, and ready to stop my heart on a daily basis. The wild boys appear unaffected by the heat.  This is actually a wonderful thing, since they think being inside is a punishment and we all suffer for it.  So when the heat kicked in we filled their pool on the deck, made a household rule that as soon as it's in the upper 70's the boys are exempt from all clothing except swimsuits, and have resigned ourselves to the fact that we may need another mortgage for PG&E and the water b...

Hola all. I would apologize for the delays, but we all know it's cheap and meaningless. Sure, I love the writing, but sometimes things keep us apart. Like what, you ask? Well, since our last encounter it's been stomach flu, traveling, field trips and graduations.  You know what it hasn't been? Sleep.  One day though, I'll be reunited with that long lost lover as well. Until then, however, I am back to regale you with tales from the wild boys.  Let's start with a little history lesson.  Once, a long, long time ago, before I had children (I should maybe add another long or two, because it's really been a while), I was one of those incredibly subconscious people when it came to human excrement.  Sure, we know everyone does it.  There's even a book. I've read it to several children now.  But as a high school and college student I was one of those people who would actually seek out abandoned bathrooms if I absolutely HAD to go in public.  I don't thi...

Having just narrowly made the tax deadline, I was once again reminded of the classifications assigned families by income.  I would like to preface this blog by assuring everyone that the cop and I, we are in no way wealthy.  There are no true public servants that are.  People working for the government making a ton of money? Yes, you're right to loathe them. We do. But we do ok.  And this becomes an issue for me because we are now tasked with raising our children in a family that is economically comfortable, which is a foreign concept for both of us. You see, the cop and I, we were raised po'.  See, that's my joke. Too poor to even afford the extra 'or' at the end of poor. Me for considerably longer than the cop.  He had several years of slight struggle as a kid.  I remember my entire childhood being something like that.  And here I should clarify.  We both grew up in families with parents who worked, and who, in the worst of situations, st...

I was wandering through the Denver airport earlier this week, flying home from a flyspeck town in Wyoming with a three hour layover.  In front of me was a little girl, about Gavin's age, holding her grandmother's hand and clinging desperately to her doll with the other hand.  The doll was clearly well loved and looked like it never parted from this girl, ever. For a fleeting moment I looked at that little girl all in pink with beautifully braided hair and color coordinated shoes with her precious baby doll and had a moment of longing.  That realization that I will never, ever, have a child I can dress in an outfit I bought to specially coordinate with her doll. I was almost sad. Almost. But not quite.  Because then I flashed back on my oldest two children, the girls, when they were teenagers.  And just recalling it I got goosebumps and felt my pupils constrict in panic. I shook free of the terror and couldn't contain a deep, evil belly laugh for the little gir...

March brings St. Patrick's Day to the Casa de Testosterone.  It's a joyous time, filled with numerous celebrations for the Irish woman and her little temper prone wild boys.  One of our family traditions in this wonderful month is a semi-local Celtic Fair. Part of you have now officially declared me nerdy beyond repair.  That's ok, I've long since accepted that. In fact, when I got my first Star Trek related t-shirt and was so giddy I called people to tell them about it I accepted my status.  But for those of you judging keep in mind this is not just a fair full of people in costume (although it is that, which makes for fantastic people watching), it is also full of highland games, jousting, awesome music and whiskey tasting.  So you want to judge? Tell it to the ripped guy in the kilt tossing a caber.  The one who just came from the whiskey tasting. Go ahead, call us weirdos. I dare you. So me and the wild boys go to the fair every year with my folks, ...

Hola long lost blog buddies! So here I sit, having snuck away from bed rest healing from the most recent plague.  I apologize for the delay, but this past week was Gabriel's birthday.  This means several things. First, it means the birthday party coordination. True, it was just a small family gathering.  However I feel obligated to make every birthday party an obscene celebration of me surviving pregnancy of the child in question.  Therefore my house still looks a little like the Avengers may have had an after-party here.  There are helium balloons hidden around every corner.  Iron Man confetti is sprinkled willy-nilly throughout the carpet. And my children are covered with full sleeve Avenger tattoos.  It's wicked, really.  Another birthday obligation, however, is the yearly scrapbook.  Each year I make a scrapbook for each boy highlighting all the wonderful things we've done through the year.  I give myself a deadline of their birth...

A brief note to the loyal few.  Late January and the weather has taken an unseasonable change into the low 60's after several weeks where we barely made it out of the 20's, and this is one happy Momma.  My reasons are numerous.  First, the previously mentioned glorious weather.  Seriously, it is beautiful outside and I am grinning like an idiot as a result of a little vitamin D type lovin'.  Second, I'm on vacation.  That's right folks, a real honest to goodness week off of work.  I convinced the cop to also take a week by getting him (yes, him, honestly....I mean sure, I also benefit, but really, it was for him) a few nights away in a gorgeous ocean side hotel in Monterey (we leave another day, I'm not so bad that I would be blogging on a romantic getaway) as a Christmas gift.  And lastly, it is a getaway sans children! Now loyal readers, you were just automatically divided into two camps.  The first is the super jealous, wishing...

Here I sit, returning after the holidays almost (yes, almost) recovered from the adrenaline overload that accompanies two children under the age of six at Christmas. And how was our low key holiday, you ask? Well, we all survived and I feel like that's a plus. Care for a glimpse into the insanity, loyal readers? Lets start the week before Christmas, shall we? Christmas shopping complete but nothing wrapped, a full week of work ahead before a lovely five day break for me and nine day break for the cop. We really felt on top of things at this point. After all, it was just work and wrapping presents. We could do that... But then, in the true fashion of working law enforcement, something came up. I went to work on Tuesday and found out that on Wednesday I'd be flying to Wyoming for an overnight trip. Ok, not really a panic situation... I made my travel arrangements, arranged for the loving grandparents to pick up the hooligans the next night until the cop got off, and s...