Mom's Top 10

Here are the Top 10 ways to know that you are a mom:

1. You spend hours (and I do mean hours) cleaning your master bathroom. You enter that bathroom later to find a giant, bright pink, blow-up bat and a pile of Easter post-its next to your toilet.

2. A certain six year old gets out of the car and turns to you saying.... "I hope you don't get the job."

3. You sweep, dust mop, and polish your floors, take the supplies and put them away, only to return and find a perfect set of Great Dane foot prints in the middle of the floor.

4. New red shoes make you cry with happiness.

5. You spend at least thirty minutes a day doing math problems that you thought you would never do again.

6. You are so worried about letting your child express themselves that you let them create art work.... on the floor.... with chocolate milk. (I borrowed this one from my sister.)

7. You express your artistic side by trying to perfect your "Dinosaur in Crayon"... the kid thought it was a monkey.

8. The only person's hair you don't fix at your house is your own.

9. You will use any form of bribery to encourage the proper use of a toilet.

10. When you take the time to shower and properly groom yourself, people ask you what you did differently.

Finally Better

I am finally better. For lack of more articulate terms, the flu sucks!

During my visit to the ugly underworld of illness, I, being the supper observant person I am, observed several undeniable truths.

Truth #1)- No offense to feminists or anything but men don't keep house.
My husband is particularly wonderful at picking up the reigns when I am unavailable. He does laundry, cooks (very well), takes kids to school, oversees homework, and does it all with a great attitude. However, my house falls completely apart. Men clean (or call it cleaning) in a way I will never understand, taking on projects that no one cares about and leaving messes staring you in the face. For example the table won't be cleared for three days but all filters of any kind will be changed.

Truth #2- I do way to much for my children.
Bless their lazy hearts. Did you know that if a child is not given the exact clothes to wear they cannot dress themselves? Or that if not told specifically they will not brush their teeth?.. and if asked to put away their clean, folded laundry, but not followed and helped with every step, they will just throw them in their floor?

Truth #3- In recent years I have come to think of myself as lazy, but, after 4 excruciating days of laying around, have discovered that I am actually allergic to sitting for long periods of time.

So being sick, although no fun, was a learning experience.

Today I am going to clean (and not one filter will be changed), cook (mine is better), and probably still do to much for my kids.... baby steps.

An Early Visit

Remember this guy?


Our home received an early visit from his sister:

In case you can't tell, she is shooting red, plastic forks as arrows.

Love is a crazy thing.

Here it is in Black and White

Yesterday I substitute taught for a 7th grade English class. It was gory. However, I learned a valuable lesson from these 13 year-olds.

Racism is alive and well.

For lack of a lesson plan another English teacher stepped in and wrote a thought provoking journaling prompt.

If you had the power to eliminate racism by making everyone the same race would you?

The first thing that struck me was that every student (regardless of their race) assumed the one race would be white. The majority of the papers I read (I did not read them all) suggested that we should not go to one race because "God made them that way" but could not give the reasons this was significant. Not one paper I read suggested that we already belonged to one race... the human race. Most of the papers had phrases written that were obviously direct quotes from adults "the problem is that you can't understand them." etc. There were some lovely things written about the world becoming a boring place if it was all one color (once again always white). One student assumed in his paper that if we all went to one race that meant that all black and Hispanic people would be dead (he consequently was Hispanic himself). One child made an uninformed stab about closing the boarders... but by far the most horrific thing I read was this: My parents are from ??????? So they are racist. Down there the black people shoot you, but here they are all nice.


At the end of the day I felt as though I had been shot. I thought we had come so far, but we still have so far to go.

I came home weary and disheartened, opened my e-mail and found an emotionally charged message that had been sent in mass to myself and others, regarding why Muslims could not be good Americans, sighting many of the teachings from the Koran. At the end it beseeched its readers to please send this message to everyone they knew.... because Barack Obama is going to be sworn in on a Koran and we can't have a Muslim running this country..... I wept.

I had no idea that misinformed was the new black. (Pardon the pun).