A few days ago, Jerri tagged me to do the Real Moms meme. I don’t often do memes here but this one is fun so I decided to do it. Also, I was very inspired by the Real Mom answers over on Kerflop and on Oh My Stinkin’ Heck.

It all got started by Kristen and the rules are as such:

Put up a post “Real Moms [insert what you do here]”, followed by an explanation, a picture, and a “Real Moms. Making ….”.

Generally a Real Mom to me is anyone who doesn’t pretend that parenting is easy or simple or straightforward and who doesn’t think that their own children are perfect and every other parent around them stinks in comparison.

That said, there’s also this:

Real Moms…

… cling to their morning coffee like it’s a lifeline. Seriously, this morning I had to make a phone call before the coffee was even poured and I was worried I was going to sound like an incoherent moron without my caffeine jolt.

Real Moms…

… don’t ask questions when their four year old dresses herself. (Also, if you look in the background you’ll see Real Moms pile crap up on the couch to stop their toddler from climbing up and throwing herself off it.)

Real Moms…

… disguise the fact that their toddler is still in pajamas at noon by encouraging a rousing game of dress-up and just sticking the costume right over the top.

And Real Moms…

… let their kid shred the toilet paper because, hey, at least it’s keeping her quiet, occupied, and out of trouble. (Plus, she is just as thrilled to pick it all up afterwards and put it in the garbage, so that’s good too.)

Tag time. I tag Chantal, Amy, and Laura.

Awww, my sister just celebrated her one year anniversary with her boyfriend. And it’s true, we really DID like him when we met him. I love mush.

Who else is willing to admit to watching Dancing With The Stars last night? (Or perhaps Dancing With The Washed-Up Stars With Several Instances Of “Who?!”)

I confess – I love this show. I miss Mario Lopez from last season because damn, he could dance, even if he did only come in second. Still, last night was entertaining. Thus far I am really liking Ian Ziering who surprised me by actually being able to move and did a great job. It also helps that he’s dancing with Cheryl who is the real star.

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Here’s a fine example of embarrassing and also a way of providing ammo for your husband to make fun of you for the rest of your life.

Recently, while looking for something on the bookshelf, probably a book, duh, I found this:

And I started laughing so hard, wondering which of George’s ex-girlfriends had given him a Curious George doll of all things. I was almost crying from the laughter, assuming that he had just forgotten to toss it or something.

Sherry: Hahaha! Oh my GOD! Who gave you this lame-ass present?! Curious George? HA!
George: You did.
Sherry: Wha?
George: You gave it to me.
Sherry: No!

(Yes?)

Um. Uhhh. Oops.

Aww, a Curious George doll keychain for George. How cute! Ahem. Sigh.

Heehee, This “new” feeding method made me giggle. The Tru-Breast! (thanks Kerflop)

Hayley and I went to the library today. We were supposed to go yesterday for story time and to pick out some books, but on Friday she hadn’t been feeling well and then when we woke up (late-ish) on Saturday we discovered Winter was not done with us yet and the weather was just terrible. She was disappointed but I promised her that unless frogs were raining from the sky (pardon my Stephen King reference) we would go today.

Breanna woke up from her nap at 12:30 so at that point Hayley and I got ready and we left Breanna with George. It was much better out today. The sidewalks and streets had been cleared and the temperature wasn’t bad. The only real problem we faced was the wind while walking there; it was pretty strong and it was blasting right into our faces.

I actually had a flashback to my childhood, and an unpleasant flashback at that. I have very long eyelashes and when I was little sometimes – for no apparent reason, usually – my eyelashes would flip under and get stuck under my eyelid. All of my eyelashes. It would look like I had none at all because they were ALL in my eye, under the lid. Those were fun times, let me tell you. There was usually a great deal of screaming and crying as I begged my mother to pull them out while also insisting that she should NOT TOUCH MY EYE AT ALL. I’m sure it was as much fun for my mom as it was for me. Truly.

Anyway, with the angle and force of the wind, when we were about halfway there, it suddenly blasted my eye and all of a sudden there was blinding pain in my left eye. Luckily I knew exactly what it was so I didn’t rub at my eye, making it worse. Unluckily, we were in the middle of a sidewalk with no public bathrooms available since most of the buildings around us were either residential or office buildings. I didn’t even have a mirror in my purse. There was a bus shelter a few feet ahead though and Hayley was in need of a break anyway so we ducked in there and I willed myself to be calm as I carefully plucked my entire row of eyelashes up and out of my left eye. JOY.

We finally made it to the library with no further eyeball incidents and Hayley enjoyed herself, picking out books at random. We came home with a nice large collection for the next two weeks. I even managed to find two for myself. I’m in the process of re-reading The Poisonwood Bible, my favorite book ever, so I didn’t need any fiction. However, I’m in the middle of a serious Africa kick (hence my choice of re-reading that particular novel), so I took out a photo book of Africa and also a non-fiction book called A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa.

Walking home was much easier since the wind was behind us that way, and we got home quickly. Next time, though, I’m taking a backpack or a messenger bag to carry the books because 15 books in a doubled-up plastic bag gets heavy quickly.

We sat on the couch with Breanna and I read three of the books to Hayley, saving the rest for later. In fact, tonight after I put Breanna to bed, Hayley was still awake and she called to me and asked if I could please read her one more book. I don’t know how it is that I’ve never read Alexander and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (though I had at least heard of it) but it is my new favorite book for young kids. It’s so funny and it is also easy to relate to it. Hayley thought it was hilarious but I bet that it will come in handy the next time she has a less-than-stellar day and I can refer to the book.

And on that note, I think I’ll have a cup of green tea, a muffin, and take a look at one of my own books. It’s fun raising bookworms.

The funniest Harry Potter-inspired comic strip ever. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I was talking to my mom earlier, maybe around 2:30, and she told me that she was doing housework. She told me about how she had done laundry, straightened up the bedroom, dusted, washed her floors, and she was in the process of cleaning the bathroom. I paused and said, “Wow. I’ve had a shower, and uh, yeah that’s about it.”

I felt so disappointed in my lack of motivation compared to my Mom the Cleaning Machine(tm) that I hung up and did some cleaning up in the bedroom, washed the dishes, did some laundry, cleaned the kitchen and the table, and I feel a little better now. Sheesh.

Anyway, the reason I had called her was to tell her that I was featured in a section of the Montreal Gazette, in their Saturday Extra section (page B2, woo). It included a link to my blog and some quotes from me and it was very nifty and made me sound articulate and witty.

My first reaction was, “well this is really cool!” My second reaction was to suffer from some mild performance anxiety as I realized that now a bunch of new people would come here and what on earth would I write about?

Luckily for you, I remembered a funny Hayley story from earlier this week, so hi to all the Gazette readers and here’s what had me laughing hard enough that I cried the other day.

Last weekend George’s sister was visiting and she gave Hayley a five dollar bill. It was meant for her piggy bank but instead, she decided she wanted to keep it in a wallet. I gave her one of my old ones and she was very happy to stuff the bill inside. When she went shopping with her aunt the next day, she took her wallet in a purse but didn’t spend it.

Fast forward a couple of days. George was heading out for a bit one evening and we needed toilet paper. He was just intending to stop at a nearby convenience store where you can get four rolls for a couple of bucks. He didn’t have any actual cash on him and didn’t want to bother with the bank card for two dollars, so he asked Hayley if he could borrow the five dollars from her and said he would pay her back the next day after doing the grocery shopping.

Oh HELL no. Hayley was outraged and refused to let him take her money, perhaps not understanding that she would get it back in about 12 hours. George said it was totally her right to say no and said it wasn’t a big deal so he went out and used the bank card and that was the end of that.

Or so we thought.

The next day, George’s dad called and asked if he could take Hayley out and have her over to their house for supper. We said that would be fine, so Hayley got dressed. Then, thinking she might go to the store, she pulled a chair out from the table and dragged it over to the buffet. She climbed up and opened my sugar canister, and pulled out an almost-full bag of sugar. Underneath the bag was her wallet!

When I asked her what the heck she was doing with her wallet in the sugar canister, she looked at me and said, “Well I didn’t want anyone to take my money.”

It took me a long time to stop laughing, but in between I managed to explain that no one would take her money and she didn’t have to hide it from her parents, that we respected her enough to not just take it after she had said no.

It was damn funny though. What a monkey.

This blog post is hilarious, only because it’s someone else instead of you. Kind of gross, perhaps, but hilarious nonetheless.

Breanna is clearly my child. We had several nice, warm days (well, warm for March around here anyway) and a lot of unpleasant rain that wiped out the vast majority of snow. There were lots of big patches of lawn and it looked very Spring-like indeed, even though I know better than to expect Winter to really be over so soon.

Breanna loves to go outside and loves to look at Hayley playing in the snow but she’s still just a bit too small to fully appreciate it herself and she gets frustrated trying to walk through snowbanks.

Last night it started snowing, and it’s still coming down now. I just pulled the vertical blinds aside at the sliding doors so Breanna could look outside and the snow on our balcony is up to about her hips.

The look of utter disgust on her face was priceless. If only my head included a built-in camera so I could have taken a picture of the dirty look she gave the snow. I’m sure it’s the same face I make when faced with yet another Winter day.