Embarrassing our children - the job of parents everywhere

What can I say? I firmly believe it is the job of parents to make sure to have plenty of embarrassing stories, preferably with photographic evidence, of their children’s foolishness.

Why? Well, to embarrass them in front of future girlfriends/boyfriends, of course!

Yes, I am firmly aware that my children will probably be seeking years of therapy thanks to having me for a mom. Yeah. I know. I deal with it. It runs in the family.

Hence - my careful saving of pictures such as these… On a night my kids and I were goofing around, and of course, I had a camera handy. You’d think The Boy would know better than to do this stuff in front of me when I’m armed with a camera. Really. C’mon now.

What parent could resist?

Dancing around and singing: I like big butts….

Showing off the Mr. Universe physique…

Of kids, custody, craziness and me…

Well, all the people who really need to know now know… Sort of… there are still a few who don’t - some who I really should take time to tell and some who it’s safe to say they don’t read this blog, so…

I’m not going to go into a helluva lot of detail here - mostly because the why really doesn’t matter to most people, but…

For the benefit of my kids - I have agreed to give my ex primary custody, and take visitation. There is a long list of reasons why this is best for them - chief among them being they identify better with their father and his religious values than they do with me and my ah… lack of them. It also eliminates this bouncing around during the school session - which is a nightmare. Expect some blogging on that topic in the future… It’s a rough choice for a mother.

And, in the man’s defense - I can’t say my ex is a bad father, just a really bad husband.

Add to this mix that The BF is being hauled off to Phoenix - and you’ve got this little Southern California native preparing to move to the freaking desert. 

Which was the cause of the house hunting chronicles…

Well, custody agreement settled, house found, moving date established… 

For the next six weeks, I go into crazy mode…

Clearing out my list of things to do at work, extricating myself from everything and training others to do what I do (which is to keep everybody else’s stuff organized… They’re in a worlda hurt.) 

Packing up the current residence - getting all that stuff and clutter of life organized and together, and then cleaned up after. The nice thing? The new place is much bigger - like 1,000 square feet bigger - so at least that’s not an issue.

Prepping for a relatively short move - it’s long enough that it can’t be done in a day, but short enough that hiring someone else to do it is not only ridiculously expensive, it’s impractical, as they take a minimum of four days to do the actual moving (hello - it’s 6 hours away! I want my stuff!)

And all the while, trying to keep job going, work on my freelance stuff, do the radio show on Feb 1, still have the kids half the time throughout February, etc, etc, etc.

Nah, the next six weeks are going to be cake.

Silliest Mom Moment - CHBM Collaboration #53

Silly mom moment? Me? Never! But the ladies at Crazy Hip Blog Mamas want to know - so… why not?

Oh gee wow, you want a list? I’ve pulled some doozies, and I’m sure I’ll pull more before this whole adventure is done.

I’m rather fond (ahem, cough!) of the time at that hell-hole called Chuck E Cheese when, “slightly” pregnant and watching my toddler zoom through the tubes with an “extremely” pregnant friend’s toddler, her child decided to “get lost” and have a panic attack, screaming bloody murder in the top-most section of those giant Habi-Trails.

There we both sat in that loud, noisy place, trying to “talk the kid down” when it finally occurred to us, someone was going to have to go in to retrieve her. I being the least rotund of the two, it fell to me to crawl through incredibly smelly maze of tubes (no amount of air handling will ever completely rid those things of the smell of dirty diapers, sweaty socks and greasy pizza) to “rescue” said screaming toddler and triumphantly slide down the slide with both her and my own munchkin on my lap.

Of course, at that moment, I also realized we had become the latest entertainment for all the other parents – who watched with glee (“Better her than me!”) as I passed each “viewing window” and open space. What do you do at that point? Why, take a bow of course. Fortunately, a toddler is too young to be mortified over her mommy’s silly nature. And why we never thought to send a skinny, young and presumably not pregnant employee in after the kid is beyond me.

Are there others? Sillier stories, more embarrassing moments, etc? Why of course there are, but in those cases, I really would prefer to let the past remain the past!

The Pitch - more playing with PhotoShop…

As if I haven’t bored everyone enough…

Honestly, this is fun for me, and the feedback helps me fine tune my playing since other eyes see things I don’t necessarily.

These are shots from our Thanksgiving trip to the lake - and I’ve really been searching for ways to make them workable - the sun was low, there was such a strong amount of backlight (great silhoutte shots!) but the kids were having fun, and so was Mom…

Typical male - The Boy had to find a variety of things to chuck in the water, and so…

That last is my favorite - so typical of my kid … And that’s the one I’ve played with… Variations on a theme:

The Work Files … What do you get when…

You take the mailroom clerk’s four-year-old son, add in the “grappling dummy” we have here for evaluation and pictures, the former cop/marine and martial arts editor guy, and add in the woman who knows that boys like to play rough?

Well… ummm… The pics are blurry because it’s awfully hard to get clear pictures of a flying child (especially when the photographer is laughing so hard)!

Ready? Let the wrestling begin!

Ha! I’ve got you now!

Oh, wait… maybe I don’t!

Take that!

I win! Ha!

Yeah, this is how we spent the half hour before lunch… The mailroom clerk’s wife brought the munchkin in, he was rambunctious and evil little me dragged out the virtually indestructible, designed to be manhandled dummy… It really got fun when one of our editor’s decided to get in on the action and help (he teaches kid’s martial arts classes as well…)

There were the parents all worried I had wound the moster up…

Then came reality - he ate lunch and went out cold for a nap!