Friday Funnies

One thing I'll say for sure about having kids: they are an endless source of entertainment!  Even when they have pushed my patience to the limit, they can always make me laugh.

My little Sarah is a dancer.  And by that, I mean she loves to move to music... any kind of music.  She has a particular fondness for Salsa, and will bust a move just about anywhere, even in the middle of a Mexican restaurant!

Charlie likes logic.  He likes to know how things work, and he likes to try to figure it out for himself.  He also, likes to dance.

Recently, I decided to try to keep a running log of the amusing things that I've heard around my house... the things that my children uttered that were funny or clever.  Anything really, that made me smile.  Here is a sampling of what I have so far:

Backstory: As a reward for behaving at Target with Daddy, Charlie came home with a package of Gogo's (little bitty plastic strange-looking toys)... he promptly lost his favorite one, the grey one which he had nicknamed, The Dude.
Setting: Me and Sarah up in the bonus room, while Charlie is at school.  Sarah is supposed to be cleaning up toys.  All of a sudden she yells out, "Mom! I found The Dude!  Charlie's gonna be so surprised!"

Another day, Sarah has been complaining of a scratchy throat.  So she comes up to me and says, "Mom, could you get me a little something for my froat?"  To which I reply, "A little something like what?"  She pauses, and thinks about it for a few seconds, then comes back with, "um, like... how about... a SUCKER??"  Can't blame the kid for trying...

Setting: the wedding reception of two dear friends.  Charlie has been dancing up a storm all night, the life of the party!  He comes up to me and says, "Hey, Mom... did you see myself dancing?"

Setting: at home, on laundry day (meaning, I'm wearing clothes I would normally be wearing only to work out in).  Charlie looks at me and asks, "Mom, did you get those shorts at Belk?"  And I say, "No, why?"  "Cause they're the same color!"

Early in July, we took a family vacation to Florida, the highlight of which was going out to the Kennedy Space Center to watch the last launch of the shuttle Atlantis... the last launch of any shuttle ever, in fact.  The weather was threatening all morning, but finally, the skies cleared and Mother Nature smiled on us, and the launch went off without a hitch.  Shortly afterwards, it began to rain.  It was a long day, and by the time we boarded the bus back to our hotel, we were all running on nothing more than adrenaline.  We were hot, tired, hungry and thirsty.  Sarah had been whining at me about how thirsty she was, and after I gave her the last of my bottle of water, she turned to me and said, "Hey, you know what?  You know what's outside that I can drink?  Fresh water from the SKY!"  I laughed and asked her, "are you cute?"  She looked at me dead in the eyes, and in the most serious voice replied, "No, I'm RIGHT!"

A couple of days later, as we're driving around Kissimmee, Charlie observes that there are signs for Disney everywhere. He heaves a dramatic *sigh* and wishes aloud that he could go to Disney one day.  I explained to him that a trip to Disney was very expensive, and we would have to save for a while before we could do a trip like that. He says, "How much does it cost to go to Disney?"  And I reply, "For the four of us to go for a week?  About six thousand dollars."  [based on my most recent "wishful thinking" online trip planner, staying on Disney property, park-hopper passes, dining plan, etc.]  Nonchalantly, he says, "Well, you could just go on Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune and then you'd have six thousand dollars!"

If only it were that easy, my son... 

Out with the old, in with the new

Well, here it is.  My shiny new blog about... well, as the title says, a little of this and a little of that.

My old blog is still there, just in case you want to go back and take a look.  Part of the reason I quit writing there was simply the name.  I hate it.  It isn't representative of who I am, or what I'm about.  Yes, at the time, I was a stay-at-home mom, and that was my only occupation.  However, I have never, EVER considered myself a "housewife".  That's an antiquated, narrow-minded moniker to describe a woman who stays home, whether by choice or by necessity, to care for her children and home.

When you think of a "housewife", what sort of images does your brain conjure up?  A neatly dressed woman in a perfectly pressed apron, perfectly made up, not a hair out of place.  A woman who has dinner on the table when hubby arrives home from work, whose house is spotless from top to bottom.  All the laundry is washed, folded and put away, nary a stray pile to be found either in the living room or on a bed.  The children are polite and well-mannered, and never, ever speak out of turn.

I've got two out of three on that last one, and majority wins in my opinion.  But my house isn't spotless... far from it in fact (not that I'm proud of that; it's just my reality).  And if you really want the truth, I hate to cook.  I do it because I have to, not because I love it.  I wish I loved it.  It would make meal planning and preparation so much more of an adventure for me than the drudgery that it is.  As for laundry?  It is quite simply the bane of my existence.  It's never ending and exhausting.  I will freely admit to, more than once, going through an entire weeks worth of clothes without ever having removed them from the dryer.  Again, I'm not necessarily proud of that (matter of fact, that was a while ago) but it's reality.

One other particularly nauseating image that rises up when I hear the word "housewife" is the image of the doting and obedient wife.  I don't wait on my husband, nor does he expect me to.  I don't go around cleaning up after him; if his dirty unmentionables don't make it into the hamper, they don't get washed.  Period.  I've got two kids, and I don't want three.  We're both the grown-ups, equals in this relationship.  No one is subservient to the other.  True, he has been the "breadwinner" in our marriage since day one.  But that doesn't mean he's the "boss".  I do the books, I pay the bills, and I try to keep everyone on schedule.  I used to get paid for that!  I'm also not the only one who deals with the kids... my husband takes on his fare share of bathing, tooth brushing, tucking into bed, and when the occasion called for it, changing poopy diapers (thankfully, those days are behind us!)  The word "obey" was deliberately left out of our marriage vows, and quite frankly if he'd wanted that word included, we wouldn't be married.

My decision to become a homemaker (blech, don't like that one much better than housewife, but anyway...) was both a choice and a necessity; had I gone back to work after my son was born, I would have spent at least as much on childcare as I brought home!  So why on earth would I go back to work just to pay someone else to raise my child??  Nope, not me.  And I loved being home with my babies.  When they were so tiny, and every day was a first.  When their little personalities started to assert themselves, and they were so impressionable, I'm so blessed and proud that they got their guidance from me, and not a virtual stranger who may or may not share my values on child-rearing.

Now, don't get me wrong... I'm not bashing women out there who do consider themselves housewives; who love to cook and clean, and dote on their hard-working husbands.  If that's who you are and what you want to do, more power to you!  I'm just saying it's not who I am.  And it's not what I want to do.  I'm also not saying that my husband doesn't work hard.  He does.  But so do I.  

Now that my kids are older, people start asking, "what are you going to do when they're both in school?"  Honest answer?  I don't know.  I'm 35 years old, and I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.

Which is why I started the blog in the first place.  To keep an account of the changes going on in my life, to have someplace to share my thoughts, feelings, even complaints and frustrations.  I am a wife, and a mother, but that's not all I am.    

So, here we are.  I'm not making any promises, and I don't know exactly where this will lead, but I hope you'll join me for the ride.