Thursday, September 27, 2012

On being their unorthodox mom...

I LOVE being Mom. As I am working on wedding stuff, I am pondering the life and times of the Bride-to-Be and her little sister. It's been a lot of fun to remember things.

I fall into the category of being a very unorthodox mom.

My children are aware of it.

This is why this e-card is so funny to me.




Let's talk about some of the more unorthodox moments of family memories ---

I had a serious accident while I was pregnant with the Bride. Rolled my car several times down into a ravine. Not a scratch on me - just a seat belt bruise. Then When I was pregnant with the Softball Princess, I had a little fender bender. Well, here is the unorthodox response to these incidents 

WE CAN"T HAVE ANY MORE CHILDREN ---- MY DAMNED CAR INSURANCE CAN"T HANDLE IT.

Fast Forward a bit - the Bride-to-Be is learning to talk ---- I work so hard with her to master her first word ---- that word was DADDY!!!!!! I was thrilled beyond all measure that this went this way. Why - you might ask? Because at 2AM when she was awake and wanted to watch Barney Video's, she would stand in her crib - rattle the side - and scream DADDY!!!! I would calmly roll over in the bed and say "Honey, she wants you." Then I would go back to sleep while he learned the Barney Songs. Didn't work with the Softball Princess - Daddy was onto my deviant behavior then.

We called the Pacifier --- the STOPPER --- Why? Because when B2B would cry -- one of us would say as we gave it to her --- STOP HER. Thus the name.

Softball Princess wanted to go to B2B daycare so bad, they did not take children under 3. Well she didn't know that, and we were having a little delay in our potty training... Unorthodox Mommy says --- when you are potty trained we will see if they will let you go to busy box. Bingo --- three days --- potty training DONE.

Oh -- school memories are far too numerous for this writing. But here is where collusion started. They had been taking notes all these years. But there are a few worth talking about. Projects --- we are a project family.

Creating the sea floor. ---- Princess and her Friend Cort - had to do this one --- Of course MOM finds out THE NIGHT BEFORE --- so here we are building the sea floor in my dining room ---- needed some kind of "backing" to shape the paper mache. Search - search - search - find NOTHING. Realize that screen wire will work and take the screen off the window and cut said screen into shape. YES I DID....... Unorthodox - that's me.

Then there was the Valley Forge Project --- Build a diorama of the area. Little log Cabins, a tiny little boat, River --- all fairly accurate. Actually started ahead of time for this one. Project is due on Friday. At three AM Friday morning, the B2B (maybe 10 at the time) appears at my bedside (anybody else freak out at being awakened because someone is staring at you) and when I creak open one eye she whispered "Mama, it was snowing at Valley Forge." So at 5AM ---- Mom is in the driveway in her t-shirt and underwear, with HER toothbrush, white paint, and a butter knife "SNOWING ON VALLEY FORGE"

Then there was my personal favorite --- the family tree project. Not another last minute --- Oh yea mom - project. YUP. Had to have information for four generations removed. Mom gets on the phone -- and starts gathering information --- (thank you Grandmother and Aunt Becky) and we start filling in the tree information. Tree gets all filled in and the B2B then informs me that "pictures give me extra credit". Unorthodox Mom - who has no access to these family pictures - promptly goes online and proceeds to print random pictures from FLICKR. We stole those relatives -- blatantly stole those relatives. That project has now become known as the ADOPTED RELATIVE project.

Now there are thousands of these kinds of stories. We drive each other batshit crazy. We laugh at each other and ourselves. But above and beyond all that --- we love and we love and we love.

Guess there is not too much you can say that is unorthodox about that.




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