Category Archives: Family

Silly Little Sentences

Posted in From the Mouths of Babes by

Sisters:

Isabella: Cora, think of something to ask Google.

Cora: Shamrock paper.

Isabella: No, it has to be a question.

Cora: Shamrock paper!

Isabella: A question! But not something like when are mom or dad going to die. Google’s not a doctor….

Cora:

Dad, can I call you mom for short?

Isabella:

Let’s sit at the table and talk about Smores. Maybe that will get mom and dad interested.

Isabella:

Mom, I love little cakes. They taste like heaven. Unless they use poop as an artificial ingredient. Who wants poop with sprinkles?

I love those 2 silly girls!!

Innocence

Posted in Family, Isabella/Munchkin by

The other night as I was making dinner and Isabella was doing homework, she casually said, “Mom, did you know that on YouTube they have videos of naked people having sex?”

Well that was not the conversation I was expecting to have on a random Monday night in March.

In my head I’m thinking, “Yes of course I know that! It’s called porn! There’s all kinds of porn out there.” Then I switch to, “Wait a minute, how do you know this? Did someone tell you? Have you seen it? What exactly did you see?” And from there, “What should I say? Do I acknowledge it? Do I brush it off? Is this a teaching moment or a funny ‘remember when Isabella brought up porn’ moment? “

Turns out that with kids, if you wait long enough, you don’t have to do anything and they’ll just keep going.

“Why would anyone want to see naked people having sex? That’s like so gross. I don’t even like to see you and Dad kissing.”

And there it is. The sweet innocence of youth. For her it’s not about political or societal taboos or what’s right and wrong or even an intrigue into something much older than her. To her it’s giggle worthy and on the same grossness level as puke or salad.

We’ve tried hard to keep our kids innocent for as long as possible (though we can’t plan for everything). They don’t watch violent movies or overly romantic shows. We don’t talk about very adult topics in front of them (little pitchers have big ears!). We even have a code word for sex – Cheetos [You know, if I want to hint to CJ that I’m in the mood, I’ll say, “Hey, want to have Cheetos later?” It’s worked pretty well. Neither one of them has caught on to the fact that sometimes mom and dad eat Cheetos in their room late at night after they’ve gone to bed].

Rabbit hole: at work we have many different systems and each of those systems has their own release schedule. They also all have their own release names. One team names their releases after Super Heroes. Another has gone with Pokemon characters. Yet another one was using natural disasters for a while until they realized how depressing it was to say “The Chernoble release is scheduled for next month”. Well, the manager of one of those systems sits next to me and their releases are named after comfort foods. So they had the Cheetos release a few months ago. I tell ya what, it was an interesting day for me when I heard her say on a call, “Yep, that one goes in Cheetos….Well Cheetos is on schedule right now but can be moved to later if need be….Let’s keep that in there because I’d rather go with Cheetos than Mashed Potatoes”.

Where was I? Oh yeah, protecting the innocence of our kids.

Isabella then added, “My friend at school told me about it. She watched it.”

It’s disturbing that a 9 year old has watched porn already. However, I remember being in grade school (6th grade maybe?) and finding my friend’s dad’s stash of Playboys. We were fascinated by both what was inside and also by the fact that we’d found something secret and forbidden. It was naughty in an exciting way. Back then, this kind of stuff wasn’t as readily accessible as it is today which made it that much more exhilerating.

Isabella then changed the subject and moved on. I was spared from having to really do much of anything. All I said was, “I don’t want you watching any of those videos so if you’re with a friend and they want to watch it, you need to say no and tell a parent.”

She nodded in a way that indicates that would be the only logical thing to do and continued about her homework.

Meanwhile I was left with a lot to think about. And suddenly with a craving for Cheetos.

Interview with Cora

Posted in Cora by

A few weeks ago I did an Interview with Isabella. Now it’s Cora’s turn!

Miss Cora will be 5 next month and is our fearless, funny, sweet, wild child. She’s a Tomboy who loves Batman, Transformers, super heroes, jumping, running, and coloring. She loves to help mommy and daddy and has a big heart. She’s a tiny little powerhouse who’s the opposite of Isabella in many ways…and also very much like me.

Q: What’s your favorite food?

Apples. Just because.

Q: What’s your favorite color?

Dark blue.

Q: What do you like about school?

My friend Allie.

Q: What do you want people to know about you?

That I’m smart. That’s it.

Q: What are your interests?

Playing with my tarantula car. It’s a Hot Wheels car you know. But actually I like jumping and playing with Isabella more than that.

Q: Who is your favorite person?

Isabella. And Lily and Will from school.

Q: What do you like about Isabella?

She jumps with me.

Q: Who would you be if you could be anyone or anything?

Hmm…Flash cuz he runs fast like me. And Green Lantern is fun. Well, I want to be all the super heroes.

Q: What are your final words?

I like you!

And I love her too. A lot!

Adventures of the Week: Moo Mechanics at the Movies

Posted in Family by

It’s been an interesting week. Course, most weeks are around here. Here are a few highlights.

City Slicker and the cows

My sister lives on an acreage in Iowa. It’s about a 45 minute drive – an easy one that I’ve driven a hundred times.

But Saturday, we had a new experience.

We were about 15 minutes from my sister’s house, I was driving, the girls were in the back coloring and CJ was napping. I came around a corner on a winding country road to see a man with his truck parked on the shoulder and he was flagging me down. I had a few seconds to assess the situation and here was my thought process:

Oh there’s a dude in the middle of the road wearing camo pants and a jacket….with a scruffy beard….he looks suspicious…why is he waving his arms at me….is this a serial killer?…if I pull over will he maim us?

So I did the only logical thing. I yelled at CJ to wake-up while elbowing him.

“Wake up! CJ! Wake up there’s a man in the road! What should I do?”

“Stop the car.” He said.

Fine. Be logical.

So I stopped and rolled down the window. The man came up to the car.

“Hi there ma’am. Sorry for the inconvenience but were moving cattle. We’ll be done soon.”

I looked ahead and sure enough there were 3 people on horses guiding about 35 head of black cows down the road. Ok maybe that made more sense than a serial killer redneck.

Kind of.

“Sorry to hold you up.” The man apologized again. “But better that than running in to a cow. That would be a bad day for everyone.”

Indeed it would be.

Black Panther Experience

Saturday night CJ and I excited went to see Black Panther. We’re huge Marvel comics book geeks so we were stoked!

We get our popcorn but the theatre wasn’t ready yet so we sat in the bar area and waited. There were 3 other groups of people there: a high school aged couple, 2 college girls, and 4 other teens. The girl with her boyfriend yelled over to me and CJ asking how much our popcorn cost. I yelled back, “$14!”

Just then one of the boy’s in the foursome starts laughing and mumbles something about her under his breath. The girl yells, “Are you laughing at me?”

“Yeah!” He says defiantly.

She stands and says, “How dare you laugh at a black woman who is about to see Black Panther!”

Then the boy says something in Spanish. She freaks out and threatens to throw her drink at him while the other 2 girls start cussing him out.

It was at this point that I felt very uncomfortable. Should I step in? What if it escalated? I really didn’t want to get involved.

Our theatre was finally ready and everyone went in. Fortunately nothing more happened.

But the loud mouthed girl who started the whole thing? Yeah, she sat right next to CJ.

Police Supporting Mechanics

On Tuesday I took my car in for an oil change over lunch. No big deal.

A few hours later when I left work and walked to my car, I noticed something inside the back window. I took a closer look and saw that it was a vinyl sticker that said, “I SUPPORT MY LOCAL POLICE”.

What the what?

I peeled it off and tried to figure out who would put it there. It was not in a place the girls could reach and it hadn’t been there that morning. It could only have been one of the mechanics. Did they think I wouldn’t notice?

I was ticked and immediately called the dealership to inform them of the shenanigans from one of their staff. Of course they denied that anyone there would do that but I held firm that it had to be them. They did apologize and promised to investigate.

Over dinner I told CJ about it. He gave me an impish look and said, “Oh yeah…I put it there a month ago.”

What the what?

#feelingsheepish

Blinded by Love

Tonight CJ was reading to Cora. She was sitting on the floor and he was in the chair behind her. I noticed she hadn’t brushed her hair after bath time so I got her the detangler spray and the brush.

She squirts the detangler once, missing her hair by a long shot.

“Ow! My eye!” CJ yells and falls over to the right while covering his left eye. “She got me!”

Naturally I laugh. That’s how I show sympathy.

She squirts again.

CJ jerks to the left and covers both eyes. “She got me again! In the other eye! I can’t believe it!”

At the point I have so much sympathy for him that I double over with laughter.

I quickly recover and get him some eye drops and a cloth, then I help Cora.

I’m not a monster.

Just a city slicker who accuses innocent people of vandalizing my car.