Terms of Affection

I like affection. I am a huggy, kissy, wanna be close to my kids kinda mom. Probably has everything to do with the fact that my mom was a "don't mess up my hair" "don't wrinkle my clothes" "I have make-up on" kinda Mom. She still is persnickety but I have learned to love her at arms length, which is what she prefers. Me....well I'm different. I want my kids to know what a good mommy hug feels like. I want them to be able to walk up and throw their arms around me and not sweat the small shit. I want them to know and have felt the safety and comfort that only Mom's arms can bring. I believe that's what they will remember the most. Not whether my make-up was still intake after some hugging. 

The Princess is taller than me. Shocker. She is easily amused at the fact that I am about an inch or two shorter. Her idea of hugging and affection is to drape my arms OVER her shoulders. This way my arms are pulled upwards over her, and I look and feel shorter than I am. Nice. :) But I like it. She still wants to hug me and curl up with her Mom and that's ok by me. She also thinks its cute to hop on my back in public like she is still 7 and not 17. 

I let her. 

Not by choice but because I usually don't see it coming and it takes everything out of me to maintain my balance. Once at the grocery store I fell over. We both rolled literally and rolled laughing. :) Good times. 

Bear on the other hand at 11, PDA is totally unacceptable, but he's still a mama's boy at heart. So we had to come up with a way to hug in public without the embarrassment of hugging your mother. Of course they came after I picked him up from school and went to hug him in public. Major faux pas for a 5th grader. I was schooled that day. I also lost cool points. 

Enter stage right: Fist Bump Hug. 

You essentially just fist bump when you feel the urge to hug in public. I like it, and because he knows its still hugging he sometimes blushes. Which is even cuter! Yesterday he fist bump hugged me in the bowling alley. He even told his dad it was a public hug. So when they fist bump hug they have to "guy" it up and the fist explodes at the end. Typical boys. If shit isn't exploding then it isn't done right.

Hey I will take these terms of affection from my kids. At some point soon for the Princess and shortly thereafter for the Bear, they won't be around full time to hug and kiss on. I only get to kiss and hug on them freely for 18 years, and I'm not wasting a minute. I'll take whatever I can get! 

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Word Police

***Post contains harsh language. Read at own discretion. Don't complain if you were offended.***

At some point I must have subscribed to a daily newsletter sent out by a parenting site. On Monday I noticed my inbox had an article titled 10 Words Moms Shouldn't Say. Curious, I clicked on it. Can I just say....WoW! If this is the measuring stick for my vocabulary around my children, then I am not winning the Mother of the Year Award for 2012 or this lifetime for that matter. The 10 words they selected were:

1. Hate: Ummm let's see, I am pretty sure that I have used this word daily since it was introduced into my vocabulary. My kids have heard it and I am pretty sure I have said "I f*cking hate (fill in the blank)."

2. Stupid: 100% positive I have called Bear's teacher that this year. On several occasions. I know when Princess was dating Douche Bag, I asked her a couple times: "are you stuck on stupid?" Strike 2.

3. Retard: If you pronounce it the way they do in The Hangover, does that count?

4. Gay: Now wait a minute. I have a really good friend who is gay, and my kids know it. Why is this a problem? Besides at 11 and 17, I think they know what it means both to describe sexuality and the way the youth is using it synonymously as stupid.

5. Loser: Not everyone is a winner. Life has winners and losers. The sooner we get kids to wrap their heads around the concept that they won't always win, but it's the heart and effort you give something that makes you better....the better off this country will be. So guess what....sometimes we gotta call it like you see it....loser.

6. Dumb: Yup, sometimes my kids do dumb shit or make dumb choices. When they do, I call them on it. Strike # 452 against me.

7. No: Really? So what we say YES to everything? How stupid is that? Dumb actually.

8. Shut-up: I admit that it is probably not the right choice of words to ask your children to keep quiet. However when "hush" or "keep it down" or "settle down" or "quiet" doesn't work, a hearty "Shut the hell up!" manages to stop them in their tracks. Again, I don't think I ever set out to be Mother of the Year so I'm not that worried that I won't get it.

9. God: Their rationale was that even if religion isn't present in your family life you never know when it could offend someone else by using the word. The context was like OMG! Right. Ummm.... I'm thinking that I violate this commandment almost daily. Sorry Big G, its a hard habit to break. I still don't agree about not being offensive, everyone is always offended by some one or some thing. People need to lighten up and stop taking everything so personal.

10. Bad: Yea, I can see the merits of not telling a toddler they are bad. However at the ripe age of 11 and 17 they need to understand a thing or two about bad. There are bad choices, bad behaviors, bad hangovers, bad choices in men, bad choices in women, bad ideas, and all sorts of other bad things. Now I could use the word shitty but if we are griping about the word bad, I think shitty is bad alternative.


If I had to make an educated guess these words are probably words that moms with toddlers shouldn't use. Got it- check. There are words that I SHOULD try to avoid in my house but I don't always and that makes for some colorful language around my house. So I created a quick list of words I should probably stop using in my house. What do you think?

1. Fuck: What can I say? I really like this word. It can be placed anywhere in a sentence and it brings color, excitement or a laugh. It is a verb, adjective, noun, adverb, and I believe it used correctly it take on ANY part of speech. However, people tend to frown upon its use and no one likes a child who uses the word.

2. Asshat: I haven't been impressed with the military DOD schools and I have encountered many an asshat this year, and it has become the fall back word.

3. Fucktard:  See people get offended by the word retard, and honestly its probably in poor taste to use it considering that I am an educator or used to be when I was employed. Any who, fucktard is a combo of my favorite word, fuck and the offensive retard. You get fucktard. Its a great word! Do I really have to let it go?

4. Ass: See I can combine ass with other words to make effective names. There is the fall back asshat. There is the classic asshole. There is the modern day assbag, and never forget the hilarious ass munch (someone who is always kissing ass.) Yea...not sure about eliminating all these words.

5/6. Cunt: This is a recent addition to my vocabulary. Not that I didn't know what it meant, but I only reserved its usage for one person in my life. Now that I am living in Europe and my closest friends are Brits, it has made its way into my weekly usage, OK maybe daily. See the Brits use it all the time, at least the Brits that I am associating with. So not only people can be cunts, but someone can do something to you and it be "a cunt move".  Or the lovely combo word gunt. That is when your gut hangs over your cunt. It's a gunt.

7. Shit: While obviously the lesser of all the words previously listed, it still can be a pretty powerful word. There are shit heads, shit stains, shit heels and shit sticks. Often times things are compared to shit. Something is hot as shit, or funny as shit, you can feel like shit, or you can even stop the shit altogether.  So yea... I should probably eliminate that one too because I am 100% positive I have used all the shit derivatives around my kids, if not at them.

8. Bitch: It's not sounding so bad after reviewing the other words in my vocab. Maybe I will keep this one. Is it better if you say BEEEOTCH?

9. Dick: This is a perennial favorite and can be used for males and females alike. I think I may have even called my children a dick or two. Not my finer moment but I think they survived. Probably should decrease its usage, which can be extensive. However, I do have to say that my Brits use it in a most hilarious manner: dicksplash.  It's hard to use that word and not bust out laughing!

10. Douche: Yea for obvious reasons you just can't go around calling people douches. Although many are, I certainly don't want to hear my kids use it. However more importantly, I am grateful that I didn't have to explain to my kids what a douche is because I had to explain it to an adult and that was embarrassing enough. For them, not me. So douche- be gone.


So those are the words I should have given up for Lent. Is it too late for that?



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Damn it was COLD!

This past week was PERFECT spring weather! Temps were in the mid 60s, sun was shining bright and it was warm as shit. I was excited because this was Bear's first weekend campout with his Boy Scout Troop since crossing over from Webelos.

I had spent the last two weeks buying all his equipment that he would need as a new Boy Scout and making sure he was squared away for this weekend trip, especially since I wasn't going and Dad wasn't around to help with the packing list.

Then something happened on Friday. The ass dropped out of the temperature and weather and things went south. By the time I was scheduled to drop bear off at the camp site at 4:30 it was a whole 10 degrees colder than that morning.

All I can say is that Saturday was cold as crap and there was a light drizzle. Promising for retaining some heat and not being a dreadfully cold night. Uhhh nope. Skies cleared around 5 or 6pm, and it was clear skies all night. Yea, you guessed it it dropped below freezing.

I picked up Bear Sunday morning from the camp site, and he was a frozen popsicle. Mostly because he wasn't dressed correctly, but he made it through the weekend. I'm proud of him!

His "after action report" was that the sleeping bag worked well and he was warm until Sunday morning. I appreciated that because my guilt was getting the best of me. I am happy to say he had fun, he was no worse for the wear and he learned some good Boy Scout lessons. So over it was a successful campout, but DAMN it was cold!