The Main Mouth

Let me re-introduce you to The Mouth. This was the Punk Rock Mouth at Halloween...I could not dissuade him from this costume, even with bribes.

He is a punk rock kid all the way.




He is also a Drama King...yeah, I said King.

This was Community Theatre, last month, in a children's play called "Wizard of Wonderland". He was the Cowardly Lion, to rave reviews.

Both our heads swelled :)

This kid cracks me up...like snorting in laughter, have to keep from peeing on myself laughter.

When we were homeschooling, I actually had to make a rule about foreign accents and impressions during school time because we couldn't get any work done!!

So, yes, he's a funny kid and a rock and roll kid...and he's mine.

Reasons Why I Love This Child...

Some of you may remember that this is my youngest child...Mr. Funny.

You can clearly see why I call him Mr. Funny...he didn't get his resemblance to Groucho Marx from me.

I decided to do a little post about each one of my children, because I haven't posted about them recently and I miss them due to the fact that I see them for about 30 min a day now.

So here is my Top 5 Reasons that: I LOVE MR. FUNNY

5. He "pants" his 12 yr brother on the playground today and when I asked him why he did it he said, "Because the girls told me to...You have to do what girls tell you to Mom".

4. He can recite almost every commercial he has ever seen and finds a way to insert them into almost every conversation he has...today's commercial was for mouthwash. As he breathed onto his father's face to prove that he had indeed brushed his teeth before bed, he says "Freshens your breath while it kills germs!"

3. Last week we broke in the new fire pit by having a weenie roast for dinner. Mr. Funny slaughtered everyone else with the number of weenie jokes he came up with(it was an obscene amount of weenie jokes overall)...and covered his mouth and giggled at every-single-one-of them.

2. Every Sunday morning when I emerge from my bedroom after getting ready for church he gasps loudly and says "You are beautiful, Mama!"

and the #1 reason why I love Mr. Funny:
...every time I look at him my heart swells and I get a lump in my chest that makes me want to stop time right now while he's still small enough to crawl up in my lap and keep him like this forever :)

Late Post from the World's Worst Mom

In my mind I am an old lady. Here I was, all satisfied with myself for posting about Father's Day and The Sweet One's birthday and about half way through my shift at work today, I realized that that I totally missed posting about The Mouth's birthday, which was on the 5th.

Now this may not seem like an unforgivable crime unless, like me, you are prone to montage-type hallucinations of the future in which your children have been driven to the Psychiatrist's couch my something you have said or done. Side note: a lot of my futuristic hallucinations involve my children in therapy...nevermind.

So, without further ado:

This is The Mouth.

I have named him The Mouth for blogging purposes because, well, he talks a lot. I plead the 5th on where he inherited that trait :)

So, his birthday was a couple weeks ago, but in my defense Hubby was in the middle of a very long medical ordeal and despite trying my best to keep that separate from my son's birthday celebration, my brain really wasn't focusing at the time. A couple of years ago The Sweet One decided that he was too old for cake and ice cream birthday parties anymore so we started a tradition of taking him and a couple friends to do something cool on his birthday. I think he was turning 13 at the time, and this was an outward way to express his "teenage-hood". So, it goes without saying that of course, his little brother was suddenly "too old" for parties as well. We've been doing the "special day out" birthday for the two older boys ever since.

This year, The Mouth decided that he wanted to go to the local go-kart track/amusement place for his birthday. Because of Hubby's medical issues, guess who was left to go go-karting with four 11 yr old boys? Correct. So, we show up at this place, which is slammed because it's the first Saturday of Summer Vacation. As soon as we check in and get our bracelets guess what happens?? The bottom falls out of the largest storm cell to pass through in several weeks. I literally checked the weather on my phone thinking that certainly this was like a rogue tropical storm that I wasn't aware of. That's how wicked this thing was. We didn't even get to ride the go-karts once. In fact, no rides for us at all. Everyone (which in this particular park happened to be about 200 people) had to hang out in the arcade to keep dry.

So, we're shoved into this tiny arcade, which is already loud and stuffy, waiting for the rain to stop. We wait...and wait...and wait. Thirty minutes into it we decide to go ahead and have our pizza now since there wasn't anything else to do and it sure beat standing at the windows with our faces pressed against the glass.


One Cheese pizza did not really help the situation at all since it's life span was exactly two minutes long. Now it had been raining for an hour and I was starting to severely sweat the fact that I was supposed to have these boys home at a decent hour, we hadn't done anything fun yet and all the cheese pizza was gone. I finally tracked down a manager and did my best "I know this isn't your fault, but I was just wondering where my money is going since we are standing here doing nothing and the sun is going down" face. As overwhelmed as she was, and believe me -with an arcade built for about 50 people that was now holding about 200- she was way overwhelmed, she really was great. After talking with her and asking Birthday Boy what he wanted to do, it was decided not to postpone for another weekend. I mean, it's summer in the South...it rains ever day here during Hurricane Season. Postponing it didn't guarantee anything and even the children knew it.


So, she made us an offer we couldn't refuse: $40 worth of arcade tokens and three games each of Laser Tag. This is a picture of four 11 yr old boys discovering a real "vintage" Ms. Pac Man/Galaga game. He totally asked me if he could have one for his room. I teared up a little. Two hours later all the tokens were gone, all the Laser Tag games were played and everybody had bag of useless crap from the token store.

I did get them all home by bedtime and no one cried, fought or broke any bones. In Boy-Land that's a home run kinda day. I missed having Hubby with me to navigate the mess but somehow even in the midst of all of his medical drama he had the time to text me...."Sucks to be you :)" Jackass.

In the end they all raved about what an awesome birthday it was, which was good for me to hear since the entire time I was staring out the window at the tree branches flying by, I was explaining myself to my child's imaginary-future-shrink. I learned that boys will always be happy if you feed them and give them game tokens and that laser tag is so a real sport. I'm just happy I lived to tell the tale :O

Happy Birthday to my Mouth! Hope this year is super awesome, just like you.

The Sweet One turns 15!

You probably can't tell from this picture, but this is The Sweet One. Today is his 15th birthday. I can not wrap my brain around having a 15 yr old child. I'm not old enough to have a 15 yr old child! Seriously, I'm not. Those in my personal life already know this story, but since blogging is about rambling and preserving your thoughts, it bears repeating.

I was 15 yrs old myself when I gave birth. I had been 15 for all of about 30 days when I got pregnant. Hubby and I were troubled teenagers...I'm not even sure troubled is the right word here. Troubled actually sounds like too light a term...severely handicapped might be more appropriate. The story involves a lot of background and dredging up junk, which I'm not going to do for the sake of posterity, but suffice it to say that I was safer with him, even if I was getting pregnant, than I was at home and having someone to focus on rather than self-destruction really is probably the only reason Hubby lived through those years. So, whether we were ready or not, at the ages of 15 and 17 we brought a child into the world.

Having The Sweet One saved my life...both our lives. Suddenly there was this other person there. Someone that we were responsible for, someone who depended on us, someone who would love purely without conditions. He was such a sweet baby. I wish I had a scanner so I could share baby pictures, but then it's probably better that I don't or I'd have to change the name of my blog to something sickly sweet like "Our Happy Little Boys".

We worked so hard to do it right. Hubby worked 3 jobs until his body failed him from exhaustion, then he worked 2 jobs and still does sometimes. I went to school. It was the only thing I had left because I wasn't old enough to get a job. We weren't old enough to lease an apartment, so we lived with our parents and then friends, for years it seemed. Happily I can report that I finished school, dropping out was never an option, while I worked full-time. Notice I didn't mention a shot-gun wedding. Even then we believed that we weren't mature enough to handle learning to be parents and learning how to be married at the same time. Eventually, after lots and lots of "on again/off again" we did marry. This, we have learned, makes us some kind of extraordinary couple...because you know, boys who get girls pregnant are supposed to leave and teen moms are supposed to have kids by different dads. That's what we get told anyway. I guess we just didn't get the memo.

I won't know for years, but I wonder how our ages at the time have affected him. I have made my share of mistakes for sure, but I'm not totally convinced that was because of my age. All new parents are idiots I hear. This is an "on the job training" kind of thing. But, I can tell you this. He is a wonderful young man. I am so proud of what Hubby and I have done together. We knew that if we weren't actively working against it, the things that tripped us up and held us down were going to get passed along to our children. We have worked tirelessly to make sure they have a fair deal. I stand back in awe sometimes at the person we are raising. He is super, almost scary smart. He loves science, and classic literature, greek mythology and comic books (he gets that from me). He loves rock and roll music. He's learning to play the guitar.

He will be learning to drive this year, God help me. He spends time writing stories. He loves babies and has been serving in the nursery and 2/3 yr old Sunday School at our church for a couple of years now. He starts 9th grade in 2 months. He gets nervous around girls...well I think so anyway. A mom can only see so much while she's spying from across the room :) His room is covered in rock posters and his desk is covered in novels. If I were a 15 yr old girl I'd think he was awesome....but I'm not. I'm his mom and I'm a little biased to say the least.

I am so looking forward to the teenage years. He knows the story about himself. He connected the dots on my age a long time ago and it's something that has been discussed to death around here. To look back at where I was at this same age is so surreal and so completely satisfying. My son has never known what it was like to wonder if I love him, he has never (to my knowledge) considered his life a waste and he has never know what it was like to face this world alone...my job isn't done by any means, but I sure am proud of the job I've done.

Happy Birthday Sweetheart!

A Family Affair

I normally don't blog during the weekend, but The Ankle Biters are sleeping in this morning. Late sleeping is not something that normally happens when Hubby is home, but he is sleeping too. Why am I awake when there is no one else awake? Because I am cursed with Internal Weekend Alarm Clock. Monday through Friday I have to drag myself out of bed, sometimes at 8:00 AM even, to face the day and the only reason I can do that is because I know that if I persist in stumbling I will stumble into the coffee pot. Truly, the idea of coffee is the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning. Sad. However, on the weekends, for no explainable reason, my eyes spring open at daybreak. Depending on the time of year this could be as early as 6 AM! This happens on vacation too. It truly is one of the most frustrating things. But, I digress. The reason all my men are sawing logs like lumber jacks this fine October morning is because we had us a night on the town last night! WooHoo!
We had been planning this since last week, but money was too tight last weekend to allow it so we aimed for this weekend. Our aim was true, or more importantly, the check cleared the bank, so we decided to take the boys out on the town. The best part about this story is that we didn't tell them anything. I spent the whole day secretly texting Hubby and looking up movie times when there weren't busy-body boys looking over my shoulder. Finally, we settled on a plan and Hubby came home half an hour early to start the fun. We told The Ankle Biters to change clothes because we were going to town. They were somewhat incredulous about that one. The Mouth, my 10 year old son, decidedly announced that we must be doing something great because they were being made to dress up. To this I answered that being made to wear CLEAN clothes is not the same as dressing up. I do have to add that when he said "dress up" he means that I handed him a polo shirt and a pair of jeans, but he was however still wearing his sandals. Go figure. We got them all loaded up, after we shoo'd away a new FEMALE friend that came to visit my oldest (14 year old) son, who I will name The Sweet One. This female visitor is monumental in our house and I'm going to devote a whole post to her later. Trust me, Mom has things to say. So, we finally get them all in the Grocery-Getter and we head out. There is much speculation in the back seat about what our destination is. I hear all kinds of chatter going on but no one guesses correctly. We drive to the next town over and pull into the Walmart. Groaning happens in the back seat. The Mouth spouts off, "You made me wear a shirt with a collar to come to Walmart??". Hubby suppresses a snort, which he has to do a lot when The Mouth speaks. I tell him again that clean clothes are not the same as dress clothes and we head inside. Hubby's plan is to get them all new baseball gloves. He and The Sweet One are playing softball with the Church League and The Sweet One's glove fell apart at practice Thursday night. The Mouth isn't playing ball yet, but has shown a considerably amount if skill and will probably start playing city league ball in the Spring. My chest swells with pride! My 7 year old, Mr. Funny, isn't big enough to play, but we don't want to leave him out so he gets one too. We spend a little time looking and trying on gloves before we finally decide which ones to buy. Mr. Funny ends up with a new ball as well because he is cute and we are suckers. Any other excuse I give you would be a lie. So, we look around a little more and Mom decides on a new bread knife. (The back story on this is that there was only one. I complained about having to buy a cheap knife that probably wasn't sharp enough to slice bread, came home to try it out and promptly sliced my finger open. Lesson learned.) We FINALLY check out and Mr. Funny announces that he likes restaurants. This is his way of asking if we can go out to eat. Again suppressing a snort, Hubby tells him we'll think about it. By the time we make it to the van, Hubby tells the boys that we can eat out tonight, making it sound like a last minute decision when in fact we had planned for it. We drive to Wendy's, eat our food and load back up, to go home the boys think, but we had more in store for them. When we drove around the corner to the Theatre the back seat got VERY quiet. I think they were all holding their breath. Afraid that if anyone breathed it might blow away any chance they had of seeing a movie that night. Because we have just bought the house and had to save for a year prior to that to be able to afford the house, we have not been able to see many movies lately and further more the boys know not to ask. So absolutely no one asked to see a movie at all. Trying not to smile, I told the boys to come up with me to see what was playing. The smiles on those faces...that is what I was waiting for. To see pure joy on the faces of my Ankle Biters...that is worth the effort and saving that went into planning our night out. So, we spend the next 3 hrs watching movies we have each seen more than 100 times, but with the added bonus of 3D. Because we had seen them so much, the best part about the whole experience was saying the lines along with the characters and noticing things and sounds you only notice on the big screen with megawatt surround sound. It truly was one of the best theatre experiences of my life and I got to share it with my most favorite men on the planet. Watching them watch those movies, the smiles and laughter (like they'd never seen it before), the dancing and twitching, these are the reasons we save and plan and spend and stay out until midnight. These are the people that make my life worth living...they are my reason.