Sam drove Momma to the sauce

Disclaimer: blogging from the phone because I can't make myself tear Justin away from his incredibly boring looking game on the laptop.

So today, the air conditioning went out on my car. With humidity and the sweater blouse I wore to work today, that made my body an approximate temperature of 475•. So the drive home on the interstate with the other people eager to leave the city was already going to be awesome.

Then my son decided that yelling, "Momma! Mom! Ah! MoooooommmmmAAAAH!!!" would be most super fun. All the way home. In a sweat box designed for getting state secrets out of very well trained spies.

So when I got home, I was frazzled. Justin was nice enough to take Sam outside and play ladder ball while I cooked so I could destress.

Until...

(my interpretation of sam's wailing)

"momma I will die right now if I don't get raisins! Raisins are the fruit of life and you hate me because you refuse to give me them before dinner!!!"

"momma how dare you put salad on my plate?!?!? I will surely die from the rotten ass this will surely give me from being in my vicinity!"

"mom, you ungrateful slut! How dare you eat your dinner when i clearly need my third cup of juice in the last ten minutes! Surely you can tell I'm dehydrated!!!"

Ughhhhhhh....

After we settled the great juice saga of 2012, we agreed to read books. And that was for realsies super fun. He finds "goodnight gorilla" hilarious which I then find hilarious.

Where is the true hilarity of the night you ask? When my son was pretending to cook on the big stove and I encouraged him to play on his stove. He goes over to the stove and says, "oh!"

To what? He remembered that no less than last Saturday he stashed away two Pringles chips in a bowl in his oven!

He opened it up, grinned with glee, grabbed the chips from the bowl, exclaims, "my chips!" and promptly shoves them in his mouth and runs away! He was soooo proud of himself. And I was bewildered, intrigued, and frankly, impressed.

So when he went to bed, I hit the sauce.

The chocolate sauce. I needed chocolate milk. And it needed me.

Same Sex Marriage Woes

I have many thoughts on this issue. The most prevalent one is, "Why on Earth are we talking about this?"

The resounding answer is any  mixture of the following: hate, the "ick" factor, religion, slippery slope.

The most prevalent argument I hear is religion... with a close second being the slippery slope argument. Let me address them both here:

Religion:

Yes I know the verses exist that homosexuality is a sin. I'm not ignoring those. Too me, it suffices to say, separation of church and state. Your religion doesn't have to support it. But this is a discrimination case as is. If your church or religion doesn't want to support gay marriage? Fine. Don't. Why can't we leave it at that?

"Marriage is between a MAN and WOMAN. That's how GOD intended it!" Yes. And God intended for humans to live sin free lives. And he probably intended on everyone choosing Him and loving Him. And yet we allow atheists, Satan worshipers, perverts, rapists, murderers, etc marry every single day. With no protest. As long as it is a man and woman, there is nothing wrong with it.

By saying marriage between a man and a woman is the only way, does that mean you personally support rapists? Perverts? Adulterers? Atheists? Murderers?

No? That's weird. There isn't any picketing to keep them from marrying, is there? 

Not to mention that we are just picking and choosing our favorite pieces from the Bible. Seems to me God kind of hit on that divorce thing pretty hard too. If we are banning same sex marriage, why aren't we leading a charge to ban divorce? Divorce is mentioned more in the Bible than homosexuality... must have been more important right? And I'm pretty sure "irreconcilable differences" wasn't listed as a valid reason to divorce.

Slippery Slope Argument:

"If we let a man marry a man and a woman marry a woman, then people will be wanting to marry their dogs... or the cats... or their favorite fence post! Where do we draw the line?!"

At two consenting adults, moron.

Geez. This is the DUMBEST most IGNORANT argument out there.

You know how people campaigned to keep women and minorities from voting?

"If we let a woman vote or a Negro to vote, what's next? Can my dog vote? Can my cat vote? Can my favorite fence post vote?"

How ridiculous does that sound? And yet, it is working on so many people!

The bottom line to me is how sad this is. Same sex marriage is in no way a threat to my marriage. Neither is Britney Spears' short lived marriage, Rush Limbaugh's many marriages, or any other argument. It is silly. My marriage is between me, my husband and God. I got married with full intentions of keeping God in my marriage. That was my choice.

Many heterosexual people enter into marriage without God every single day. How is it fair for them to do it and it isn't for two consenting women or men? 

And good grief is this going to be embarrassing in 20 or 30 years. Just like we can't imagine why women or minorities couldn't vote back in the day... and how backwards that was... that's what we will feel like in a few decades when this is a non issue and just a sad splotch on our past.

If homosexuality is "icky" to you and just freaks you out, that's fine. In all honesty, it used to me too. Then I met some amazing people and they happened to be gay. And I was hit face to face with it. Turns out, they are just like us heteros save one minor detail. And I'm not going to pretend that I'm not a little taken aback when I see a man kiss a man or a woman kiss a woman, or I see a same sex couple holding hands... I am most of the time. It isn't something you see every day. But that is no reason to deny them marriage rights.

End rant. Le sigh.

Moments that Make Me Proud

Let me set the scene for you:

Tonight was spaghetti night. For my son, the only thing better than that would be if I served it to him with chocolate milk and raisins (I have a weird kid). Most of you can relate this euphoria to pizza night. The kid is excited.

And now he is covered in spaghetti. He has learned that on spaghetti night, he usually gets a bath or a shower immediately following dinner because, well, he looks like the spaghetti monster when he is done. So he says, upon chewing his last bite, "Momma...shower!"

So off we go to the shower.

Now several months back when we were first starting to mess with Sam and potty training, he started to pee in the shower and I didn't bat an eye. Maybe it is just me, but I know kids pee in the bath tub all the time and just don't say anything about it and since he is a boy and can pretty well hit the drain, I just decided to pick my battles on this (in this case, I'll be picking this battle at an older age). So if you think I'm gross, fine, but he has learned that it is okay to pee in the shower (for boys anyway).

Another fun game we play in the shower is that we sing. Our favorite song to sing is the song that goes, "But you gotta keep your head up, whoa-oh, so you can let your hair down, eh-eh." If I can ever get this on video it might be the most precious thing you've ever seen. He really gets into the "whoa-oh" and the "eh-eh".

Here is the video if my description was lackluster:


The other day we were singing it and we called Daddy in so he could hear it. Sam really likes to perform for us.

Back to last night: We are singing our song and Sam starts to yell for Daddy.

And then he farted.

This caught me off guard. So I turned to look at him mid yell and he has "the poop face."

If you know my son, you've seen it. It is THE FACE that explains everything below the belly button.

And my face went all Maude.

I said, "Are you pooping?" Really hoping that the shadows in the shower were all wrong.

Mid grunt he says, "Momma. Poo poo. Shower."

OH GAWD.

I started yelling, "NO SAM! NO! WE DON'T POO POO IN THE SHOWER! NO!"

Plop.

Poop. In my shower.

I then start yelling, "NO SAM! STOP! DON'T MOVE! DO. NOT. STEP. ANYWHERE!"

He freezes and has the most puzzled look on his face. And I guess I could understand. You pee and poo in the toilet, if you can pee in the shower it only stands to reason that you can poop too.... URG!

I then start yelling frantically for Daddy again. And rinsing the shampoo out of my hair while urging my son to not move an inch, because quite frankly, if he does, I will be cleaning little poop foot prints from all around the shower/bathroom.

I get Justin in there and get him to lay a towel down so Sam can get to the toilet without falling down. He does. Then he hands me some toilet paper to pick up the turds.

Then he leaves! I think his exact words were, "Well here is this. I'm gonna go."

Turds. I'm surrounded by both literal and figurative turds.

I explain to Sam that poo poo goes in the potty. He response to me?

"Oh." 

Once we got the great turd fiasco of 2012 handled, we got back in the shower to finish. Sam then wanted to sing Jesus Loves Me.

I can't tell you how awesome it is to hear my son talk about Jesus. He is 2 and he asks to pray to Jesus, and sing Jesus loves me, etc. I love it.

When he sings Jesus Loves Me though, at the end, this is what he sings:

Je-sus lubs Sam.
Yes, Jesus lubs Sam.
Ta bib-le tells me toe.

Melt. My. Heart.

Testimony Time!

Today's Testimony Time is brought to you by: Love.

And you should know, that today, I'm irritable beyond belief. And while it takes great discipline to do this, and I often fail, I've decided that rooting myself in the Lord today and sharing some Word on Love, maybe I can overcome this. Or at the very least, not lose my cool on someone later because I've lost sight that loving others is loving them in all of our words... not just the ones we have when we are in a good mood.

I find on days like today when I'm feeling particularly irritable, I say things or think things that elevate me above others. Statements like, "I'd never do.... " or "I can't believe he/she did..." It seems innocent enough, but it isn't. It is turning my nose up at someone else's situation that I:

1) Know nothing about.

2) Shouldn't be doing anyway, regardless if they know about it or not.

"My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it."
(Isaiah 55:10-11)

Let's see... if I say something or think something that is hateful (and let's be honest, that's what it is), what fruit will it bear? Hate. That's what. It is right there is black and white.

So what does God tell us to do?

"I tell you the truth, slaves are not greater than their master. Nor is the messenger more important than the one who sends the message." John 13: 16

"So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples." John 13: 34-35

So that person you are losing patience with: Pray for them. Don't vent about them. If you must vent about them, vent to God. I promise you won't be as hateful then.

If something makes you angry at school or at work, would you call up your priest and tell of the bitchy things he/she did to you? How would it differ if you were telling Jesus of your troubles versus stewing to yourself? Think about it really. It changes the whole tone just by who you are telling about it.

So that's my challenge to you (and me) today. Fight the urge to speak evil words. Find a way to turn something irritating into something loving.

"The heart of the godly thinks carefully before speaking; the mouth of the wicked overflows with evil words." Proverbs 15:28

And by controlling your thoughts and words, and by spreading love instead of hate (even if it is silent, it is still out there), maybe your day won't be quite so hate filled (irritating, difficult, etc). Maybe you loving words will go forth and bring you love back. 

*The irony of me preaching controlling the tongue is not lost on me. But had I ignored the Spirit and not done this, I'm sure my day would have gone a lot differently. Even as I type this, I'm being washed with peace. Thank you Jesus! I needed it!

Monkey Junkie

This is Monkey:

Monkey is easily, hands down, Sam's BFF.

He is the cheese to his macaroni (if he could have cheese). Monkey and Sam is like peas and carrots (if he ate any of those).

I feel the need to document this phase in Sam's life and the extent to which he loves Monkey. If I don't, I will regret it, I'm sure.

In the morning, often the first thing  Sam says to me is, "Watch Monkey?"

Because I'm a pushover, I normally turn it on for him while he eats breakfast. No biggie.

As soon as the episode ends, Sam says, "Mo monkey?!" and looks expectantly at me and/or the remotes.

If I tell him no more Monkey, he will then protest by not telling his father goodbye or giving him a hug. True story.

We get to Susan's house where often his first question is, "Watch Monkey?" or he just goes to the tv, turns it on, then asks to watch monkey.

She is pretty good about monitoring the Monkey watchage in her house, so they normally get maybe an episode in the morning and maybe one in the afternoon. This morning after Monkey went off at her house, he protested by crawling in her lap and not telling me bye.

When he had strep a few weeks ago, he wanted to watch a lot of Monkey... to the point that his Daddy was extremely tired of hearing the theme song. I felt bad for him so I said we'd go watch it in our bedroom.

Big. Mistake.

Now, if we tell him, "No more Monkey." He asks, "We watcha Monkey ina here." And points to my bedroom.

Something else we hear a lot of: "No Sam night night. Sam watcha monkey ina here!"

One time, we told him no, and he went and got the remotes (there are two involved) and turned it on himself! (I will admit that it had just been turned off so all he had to do was turn on the tv then hit play with the other remote... but still... he's TWO!)

And I realize I"m talking about Curious George like it is two-year old crack... but that's what it is at my house! The kid is addicted. And I have a hard time taking it away completely because... Curious George is just good wholesome fun! He cute, he's learning, he's very nice and has great manners.

I mean, it could be worse. do do do do do Dora is a work on the nerves. Yo Gabba Gabba and The Wiggles completely freak me out. I'm okay with him not watching a lot of Disney movies or Nickelodeon cartoons.... at least Curious George is tolerable and wholesome.

But we are about to have to stage an intervention.

Text message received from Susan today:
"Your little fart son went upstairs to Jonah (her middle son) and got Jonah to turn on "monkey" in his room. We might need monkey intervention."

He is a manipulative little squirt who is bending the world to fit his monkey fix. He's a monkey junkie.

And he is the cutest, funniest, smartest little monkey junkie out there. Bless it.