Friday, December 28, 2012

BoyMommy Resolutions I Can Keep


It’s almost 2013, and I have finally figured out that I am setting my expectations too high.  So this year, I’m keepin’ it real.  This year, I will

  • Not lose any weight.  In fact, I might gain a little or I might stay the same, but I certainly will not lose any.

  • Ignore “that smell” coming from the general direction of the boys’ bathroom.

  • Continue to be the only woman in my social circle who wears a skirted swimsuit.


mikwright.com


  • Celebrate my annual 39th birthday, for the 2nd year in a row.

  • Visit Target at least once a week, if not more.

  • Wear my bus stop sweat pants whenever I damn well please, and I will ignore the rolling eyes and the suggestion that I burn them.

  • Allow my children to wear holey jeans and mismatched sweatpants to school.  If they don’t care, why should I?

  • Not volunteer for anything else, thus freeing up more time for me to finish watching all 9 seasons of Greys Anatomy.

  • Cultivate a relationship with my dust bunnies, whereby I give them names, attribute personalities to them, and treat them as houseguests instead of feeling guilty about their existence.

  • Take afternoon snoozers and rationalize my habit by reminding myself and anyone who criticizes me that my children get home from school at 3, so technically I’m workin’ swing shift.







Tuesday, December 18, 2012

I Set the Elf on Fire.


I set the elf on fire.

It was an accident, I swear.

I’m sure, by now, you’re aware that there are OVERACHIEVING moms, some of my girlfriends included, who keep making the rest of us look bad by posing their elves in clever positions to the delight of their young offspring.  I’m not that mom.  I am the mom who jolts awake after being in bed for an hour because I realize f*ck, I forgot to move that damn elf.

Neeny has been with us for several years and he is THE most effective bad behavior deterrent in the history of bad behavior.  He magically appears when we return from our Thanksgiving travels and he doesn’t leave until he returns to the North Pole with Santa on Christmas Eve.  Last year, when the boys’ behavior was bordering on Naughty, Neeny didn’t return one morning, but he left a note that explained that he had returned to Santa and had reported on their Naughtiness . . . and perhaps Santa would give them another chance if their attitudes improved and they listened to their mama.

Can you picture me doing my best Dr. Doofenshmirtz laugh and wringing my hands like an evil cartoon villain?

Sunday night, I actually remembered to move Neeny.  I put him in the playroom inside a lamp, figuring he’d be safe since we rarely use the light in that room.

Lo and behold, Medium decided he wanted to use his easel so I turned the light on for him, forgetting that Neeny was sitting directly ON the lightbulb.  I walked in about an hour later to turn off the lamp after Medium had cleaned up, and I smelled something odd.  Sniff, sniff.  Hmmmm.  Sniff, sniff.  It smells almost like plastic burning. 

Insert audible gasp here.

I rushed over to the lamp to grab Neeny without anyone under 10 seeing me do it, but he was fused TO the hot lightbulb.

I turned off the light and peeled him off the bulb, but alas, he had a giant, charred, steaming black hole where his little plastic tummy should have been.  I almost burned a hole all the way through his felt, cotton-stuffed body.  I blew on him like I was trying to cool down microwaved mac and cheese.  Once he stopped steaming, I threw him behind a picture frame and prayed the boys wouldn’t notice he was missing.

Hubby arrived home from work and I announced that I had to go to Target.  “Neeny caught on fire.  Explain later,” I called as I headed out the door.  No worries, I thought.  I’ll buy a replacement at Target, put him in the same spot and the boys will be none the wiser.

Target was sold out.  

Not time to panic yet, but I will admit that my armpits were feeling a little persweaty, I could feel my face getting red, and I lost all ability to take a deep breath.  I asked the salesperson if there were any more in stock “in the back.”  You know, the magic “in the back” where they store all the hot items so they can feel like heroes of The Right Stuff proportions when they burst through the swinging doors with whatever product you can’t live without?  No luck. 

I knew I had seen them in other stores, but I needed one, like, yesterday.  I sent out a mass email to all the moms in my neighborhood via Google groups.  I headed to another store to look, and when I asked the sales representative if they sold the Elf on the Shelf, he answered me with a confused look as if I had just asked him if I could borrow a kidney, and said, and I quote, “a wha?”

Has this guy been living under a rock?  Does he not have his own Pinterest account?  Is his self-esteem not reliant on his creativity and his ability to Edward-Scissorhands several craft projects at once?  

The next store was the same story as I encountered a young sales associate who obviously has not been inducted into the secret sorority whose mascot is a creepy plastic doll dressed in non-flame-retardant clothing.

At this point I had visions of myself in my basement at 2 in the morning, sewing a tiny little coat for Neeny so that I could hide his GIANT GAPING HOLE.  At the 4th store I started to panic as I mentally documented how my colossal failure as a parent was going to scar my children for life, robbing them of their innocence, their belief in magic, their faith in humanity, and essentially ruin their very childhood. 

And then it happened.  A mommy in my ‘hood emailed that the elf freaked her kids out and that I could have theirs, for free, and that it was sitting on their front step just waiting for a new home.  I double-checked that it was the older, skinnier, scarier elf and not the newer, chubbier, more cherubic-looking elf, which simply would not do. 

The BoyMommy family is again in ownership of an Elf on the Shelf.  Apparently he got his hair did last time he went to the North Pole as he now has reddish hair.  You know what he does NOT have?  That charcoal smell.


Thursday, December 13, 2012

The Official 2012 BoyMommy Toy Guide


It’s that time of year . . . the time when annoying commercial ditties get stuck in your head and replay themselves in a loop until you want to shoot yourself in the eye with a Nerf gun just so you can fortheloveo'pete make it stop. 

No?  Just me?

I have decided that I was destined to be a Boy Mommy.  I get Diabetes just thinking about the saccharin-sweet Tinkerbell/Barbie genre of cinema.  I’d sit through 10 Monster Jams before I’d watch a My Little Pony dvd.  The colors alone . . . the purples and pinks and fuchsias . . . it’s like the animator  vomited a bag of Skittles.

Not that there’s anything wrong with girls and all things girly.  It’s just that I was clearly not cut out for the job of being a mommy to girls. 

That being said, I made a list of 10 annoying toys that I will NOT be purchasing, AND they’re gender neutral so they are equally offensive to both boy mommies and girl mommies!  (I’m all-inclusive here at the BoyMommy blog site.)

In no particular order:
1.  An antique doll
When Hubby and I were dating, my mother would make him sleep on the couch in the living room when he visited for the weekend.  Apparently she thought I was as pure as the driven snow. . .  Aaaaanyhoo, she’d be dusting in the living room later and be confused because her antique doll, which was perched on top of a book case, was always facing the wall.  Turns out Hubby was a little freaked out by the thought of glass eyes peering through his soul while he slept, so he’d face her the other way when he visited. 

I mean, she's holding her hand under his
nether-regions in order to CATCH the poop . . . 

2.  Doggie Doo
Germans love David Hasslehoff.  Apparently they also love picking up dog feces.  This is the notion perpetuated by the Doggie Doo commercial, which portrays children having so!  much!  fun! By picking up fake (let's hope) poop that excretes itself from a toy dog.  If my children find picking dog sh*t up so exciting, they are welcome to walk our real dog and trail behind him with a plastic bag.

3.  Sling Shot  
Like I need a toy that will turn simple household items into projectiles. . .

It's okay Pig.  It's just food.
It's not Love.
4.  Pop the Pig
No surprise, but it’s manufactured by the same warped minds that brought us Doggie Doo.  I just feel bad for the pig, you know?  He stuffs his craw and then he eventually eats so much that he pops.  Maybe he’s an emotional eater.  Or a recovering anorexic.  It’s not my place to judge. . . .

5.   Dreamlight
I will not give this company my money for one reason: their theme song is so nails-down-a-chalkboard, grating-on-my-nerves annoying!  The product is a stuffed toy with a plastic back that lights up and projects shapes onto the ceiling.  The funny thing is, my niece has one and Small loves to play with it, but only during the day.  There’s no way in h-e-doublehockeysticks he’s going to sleep with that thing in the room.

Look kids!  A SnowGlobe!
Shake it.  See what happens . . . 

6.  Ecosphere
My brother-in-law, the Cluer, bought us one of these as a family gift about 10 years ago.  It’s a glass ball with water in it that contains a little shrimp thing and algae and other science stuff.  And it sits on a shelf.  And you look at it.  And it collects dust.  UNLESS, you shake that b*tch up like it’s a snow globe and then stuff it in a moving box that’s headed for a storage facility in New Jersey for 3 years.  Hypothetically.

7.  Kids Boxing Gloves  
Seriously?  There’s no way this would end well.

8.  Bottle Cap Jewelry Kit  
Children can make jewelry out of bottle caps.  I just can’t see the point of purchasing this kit, simply because if my children look on the counter on Sunday morning they’ll have plenty of bottle caps to suit their little jewelry-making desires.

9.  The Love and Grow Baby Doll  
This is *awesome* because once they grow out of the doll phase, they can use all their baby-raisin’ expertise when their poor decision-making skills are rewarded with their own reality show on MTV.

Yours for the low-low price of $19.99
(Plus shipping and handling.)

10.   Stompeez  
They’re advertised as “slippers with personality.”  Um, I’m okay with my slippers being non-personality-having.  They’re slippers.  You can WALK in them.  You can JUMP in them.  You can even STOMP in them!  How do I know all this?  It says so in the commercial.  I'd like to meet the marketing genius who thought a good selling point would be that you could walk in them.  What’s next?  Socks?  I think this is the gift for the kid who was really bad this year . . .