VOTE FOR ME!

It's election day! Or at least that's what it looks like to me...

You know how Election time rolls around in your city/county/state/country and it's like the world explodes in red, white and blue. There are signs every where and all of a sudden your city is the perfect poster board for a campaign and by day three you're already wishing all the signage and personal advertisements were down? Lately, that's the way the mommy blogosphere has looked to me. It's plastered in pastels and ads all screaming the same ad-age, "VOTE FOR US!" Now I give the mommies one thing and one thing only here, props for remembering the fact that your blog is about being a mommy and the life that comes with it, so the 'me' to 'us' switch, total kudos. But that's about it.

See when MF got into blogging in general, it was (and still remains) to be able to bond with other moms, to listen and look into their lives, have a sense of "it happens to someone else too", and maybe most importantly to help mold her sense of how she does and doesn't want to parent. Taking and leaving whatever advice, rules, and style she wants from her ever widening set of mommy bloggy friends. But as I dink around the the mommy blogosphere lately it's really started to bother me. Maybe it's the Christmas spirit getting into me, but holy moly blogging has gone commercial and I'm thinking that it's a train I don't want to catch. It's a whole hierarchy thing and it blows my mind. Everyone is competing to be the best mommy blog, have the cutest kid, get the raddest giveaways. Pardon the Not-A-Mommy for a moment but where did the kids go? Your kiddos are the reason I look at your blogs, and so are your trials and triumphs of mommyhood. I read your blogs because I connect with you on some level even without having given birth myself. I see what I will and won't try and yes sometimes make the large realization that I am not ready for the plunge with kids that you brave women have already taken. No siree I'm still ok with handing them back at the end of the day. And now here you are campaigning to be the BEST mommy blog around. I'm not sure that's how it works though, in my honest opinion it's a total word of mouth thing, one friend reads your little (or not little) blog for the first time and then one of two things happen: either they give a little shrug and the word meh barely passes their lips or their brain goes OMGmustreadeverypostthiswomanisamazing/hysterical/brilliant and then when they are done they tell a friend who has the same one or other moment and the cycle continues. It's one or the other but campaigning, all it does is give someone the option. But you know what some of the top mommy blogs, I bet they didn't campaign much, in fact most of them probably rose to the top on accident, and would probably tell you they never thought it would go so far. For example, Single Dad Laughing ok ok ok so he isn't a mommy but maybe it should be the parenting blogosphere instead, because this guy shot his little star to fame in a heart beat. How? He accidentally went viral. Like the Black Plague viral, and well if you have no idea what I'm talking about then just think about it like this, you've just been introduced to someone who falls into the same category as George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Ryan Reynolds, we're talking Top 100 sexy men, and this guy is on the list or at least he should be and in the mommy bloggy world, he would be. Point is people, campaign or not your blog will go where it goes and do what it do.

The Minivan Arguement.

Recently MF has had enough with her not so little sedan. Dinging doors with other cars and practically breaking her neck to get the little man into his seat sometimes is just not cutting it anymore. The final decision (Hubs included!), to get a minivan. GASP!

"Oh my gosh I will NEVER own a minivan" or "I won't be THAT mom" and my personal fav, "anyone who drives a minivan is a HORRIBLE driver"

Ok so I may have uttered one or two of these phrases, even this week perhaps (if we're totally honest I guarantee I've said all three before, sue me). But I bet you a penny candy you have too.

What's the big deal? It's practical, there is plenty of room for a growing family, all their stuff and even a few extra kids when called for. Oh but the backlash has been interesting. You'll find your friends standing on drastically different sides, maybe even different sides than you would have pegged them for, usually however it boils down to whether or not you're a Minivan Mom or an SUV Siren. Thus I give you the arguments:

The Minivan:
Ample leg room
More seating
Fold away seats
Sliding doors
Storage
Good gas mileage

The SUV:
Nice leg room
More seating
Fold away seats
Higher riding for a better vantage point
Good storage
OK gas mileage

Wait... those are AWFULLY similar lists...interesting. In fact I'm having a hard time deciding if one is truly better than the other, it seems to me it's more about personal opinion. At least we can hopefully all agree that minivans now are way better than minivans way back when.oh so sexy...

What about you? Any pros/cons? What did you choose?

Did You Know?!

That there is a song that you're supposed to sing while playing with your wee wee? No really it goes something like this:

"La la LA la la LA LA!"

There is even a cool little hand motion that we wont show you.

Green with envy.

When it's Saturday night and you're knee deep in diapers, spit up, toys and your husband is watching the game and you're trying to mentally transport back to dance clubs, girls night out and hot dates. I am 100% jealous. Ok, maybe not all the time but a solid 50% at the LEAST. Because from my point of view, it's Saturday night and I'm home alone watching reruns of Law and Order (of the SVU kind because we all know that it's really the only good Law and Order there is). So yeah you've been changing diapers all day but I would love to be putting my little one to sleep and curling up next to my hubby. There are a lot of things that I hear mommies would trade their single friends for, but baby we would trade you right back.

To be out of the dating pool.
To have someone to come home too.
To have that little person who at the end of a day cranky or not falls asleep and you can't help but melt because they're yours always and forever.

Those are only the top three. But holy moly there are days where I am so jealous that your kid is throwing a fit, that you have applesauce dried onto your shirt and that your husband was such a butt last night. Yeah even that last part.

parenting in a team of 3

MF and I are close, close enough to practically be Sister Wives minus the whole double marriage thing, yep love him but Hubby is all hers. I'm selfish, I'd like my own. But dear Hubby had to go out of town this weekend for work, had to in a come-back-to-no-job-if-you-don't-go kind of had too. No big deal right? MF is a stay at home super mom any way, two days is no biggie, she's used to 7. Oh but you are wrong, so very very wrong. See two days is a big deal when the night before Hubby is slated to leave MF ends up in the hospital for the second time this week. I think this requires a flashback.

Tuesday MF ended up in the hospital, a whole day in the hospital. Hubby took the day off work, MF's Mommy came down from Seattle to help with Monkey and her downstairs neighbor took over until she could get here. A few MRI's, three (count them THREE) Lumbar Punctures (read as: spinal taps, or as MF described them "like my Epidural without the numbing") and not many answers except for "water on the brain" and MF was back home. She's been having really scary vision issues and monster migraines over the past several months and just recently her Optometrist decided it was a bigger problem than we thought and sent her to a Neurologist who sent her to the hospital on Tuesday to run the tests so they could be run now and not in a month. For all that we got "water on the brain" and a new slew of medications. For about 12 hours after her recovery things looked like maybe they were getting better and then they weren't. Her vision was getting worse and the headaches were back and turning into full blown migraines, and fast.

Friday I was getting off work (where cell phones are only allowed on breaks) and found two things "when are you off work?" and a missed phone call both from MF, separate that's fine but together the two things made me worry especially after the weeks earlier events. I immediately dialed her back. Yep, it's official she needed to go back. Her mom was already gone so Hubby was coming home from work 4 hours early, I was closer so I swung by my itty bitty apartment grabbed a couple things and changed and grabbed her. Hubby must have drove fast because he was already there. So I drove MF to the hospital and we waited, waited and waited. Two hours after getting there we were finally led to her freezing closet with a gurney and introduced to the charming and fatherly RN Al who helped monitor her pain and give her harder drugs than either of us ever imagined to help her symptoms. After spending a lot of time there with her we decided that now that she was settled in an actual room and was officially going to be staying overnight it was time for me to go home. So I did well, I went back to her home where Hubby and I finished figuring out the care plan for Monkey for the next day. We got help from a couple of MF's wonderful friends but with everyone else's schedules it was clear that I was going to have Monkey most of the day until we could go pick MF up from the hospital and she was going to have to stick it there alone. Not ideal for her, but I was actually relieved I could help as much as I could. Monkey doesn't normally spend that much time in other people's homes so it was nice to know he could at least be with me in his, someone he spends a lot of time with and some where he is extremely comfortable. And boy the second I picked him up I knew he was feeling better. Normally unstoppable and goofy he was quiet the whole day and observant. Plopped into my car and on the move he smiled and laughed when I played peek-a-boo and then crashed. And hard, he was out cold. The morning and all the movement and new people had obviously exhausted him and he took a nice long nap. Several hours, lots of playing and way more cuddling than he's done with me since he was a bitty baby and we could finally go pick up MF. He was extremely confused and quiet as we drove to the hospital, even more reserved when we were walking in. When we finally got to MF's room he didn't know what to do. This was his mommy, in a very weird place and she had been gone for a very long time, he was reserved but he looked happy to have her back.

Overall, it was a long weekend for all of us. I'm glad she's back and hopefully the medication and everything they gave her to help does just that. But I wouldn't have traded anything for being there for them this weekend. All the stress and worry over MF and trying to keep Monkey's life relatively normal among the chaos, it's been hard for all of us and it's not quite over because Hubby isn't home yet so he knows but I'm sure doesn't feel like everything is quite ok, but he will be soon. Let's hope for no Round 3 of this shall we?

Did You Know?!

MF: Bec! Did you know that if you're thirsty in the bathroom, that you can just sit on the counter stick your foot under the faucet and suck the water off your big toe?!

Way to be creative duders.

Every Mommy has a Single Friend

Tonight was the epitome of what a friendship between a Mommy and her Single Friend looks like. I walked out of work, hopped in my car and zipped over to my Mommy Friend's (MF) house and showed her my outfit for the day. I wasn't rubbing it in that I had gotten dressed today and she hadn't, or that my make up was done and hers wasn't it was simply because a mere week ago we had splurged (yes splurged) and gotten a sitter, whoa. Really? WE got a SITTER. As far as the two of us go, it's almost non-existent. And an even bigger deal, we went SHOPPING. Ok really, you must understand that as far as MF and I go, we try our best to go places with Baby in tow and more often than not we succeed, however as Baby has become a Toddler we've come to realize that going out anywhere is quickly becoming something that we can't do. He's fast, on the move, loud and giving us a whole lot of NO with a hip out these days. To say the least it was an accomplishment and boy did we run with it. We went to PDX (normally not an option due to distance), we went to Nordstrom's Rack (sure, if we want him to pull every piece of clothing off of every single rack), we sat down to eat (without making sure things were out of reach), and although this time there wasnt a reason, we still shared a dressing room. Yeah, we're that close. Sidetrack much? Yes. Where were we?

Ah yes, the epitome of a Mommy Friend/Single Friend relationship. Tonight when I showed up at her house to show her my outfit it was to show that on my second day of work I wore the skirt that we bought together on that rare shopping trip, (see there WAS a link there) as a true blue friend she also offered me dinner knowing that I was tired from being at a new job career and working a second job and going to school. Have I mentioned she's an awesome Mommy? And that it rolls over now and again into taking care of me, and her hubby (who is really another very big child, but hey what hubby isn't?) Problem being she had managed to find the weirdest Minestrone recipe either of us had ever seen, and bought the ingredients without really paying attention to the fact that it didn't make sense. Sound familiar anyone? This resulted in a quick Toddler free trip to the grocery store to pick up items. It wasn't until we were out of the car walking through the parking lot that this is our life right now, in a nutshell. Me in heels, skirt, blouse, earrings, big ring, hair done, make up still looking good. MF in jeans, teeshirt, Crocs (ok not the big foot ones the cute Mary Jane style ones), messy bun no make-up.

...Yeah...she's a mommy, I'm single and it shows.