Mothering Mayhem: Life with the Wild Boys

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...