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...