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Winning With A Side Of Mom Shaming

We had the best time running our photo caption contest. All of the entries were so good that one might say they brought sunshine on a cloudy day. I may or may not be watching the weather report while writing this. So without further ado, the winner is…

This one by Katy Morgan wrote our judging criteria for us – it actually made us laugh out loud the first, second, and third times we read it. And you are in luck because she writes a blog, so you don’t have to limit yourself to this little slice of hilarity, you can skip on over to Katy In A Corner and enjoy the whole Awesome Pie!

Now we have been questioned by more than one person, whether or not this photo might be a wee (wink, wink) bit embarrassing for the boys. Well, how should we put this? Um, NO! These imps set this up. We have chosen not to show our kids faces, so we often take “blog” pictures. Erin’s boys OFFERED to pose for this picture after her Christmas card worthy photo shoot. They turned around, she clicked, and only saw the full design of their mischief upon uploading. We called it “How Bloggers’ Kids Get Their Revenge”.

So exploitation tizzy resolved? No? Then we are all in luck because the vehicle of our penance has hit the interwebz in the form of Mom Shaming. Like all good things cyber, it is a spin-off of a spin-off. Through my exhaustive research it appears to have started with Dog Shaming. Then Mommy Shorts morphed it into Baby Shaming. (We can feel your panties bunching through our routers, relax and check it out.) And now The Divine Secrets Of a Domestic Diva balanced the scales of justice and brought us Mom Shaming.

Ellen: History lesson over. I was going to make you a time line, but I used my last scrap of poster board to make my sign of shame.

If you look closely you can see the light shining through my sign to reveal that it is a dollar bill visual aid. So not only have I outed myself, I re-purposed, too! That has GOT to be worth double penance points.

Erin: So Ellen calls me as I’m walking through the door from my JOB into a house full of disgruntled kids to make my own sign.

Ellen: Priorities. Two photo fails and five hours later, she succeeds in making her own little cultural contribution to the webz.

What’s the big deal you say? Just you wait.

Erin: This is my dirty little clean laundry secret. Everyone is always telling me how organized I am because…

Ellen: Basically you keep five kids fed, dressed, and delivered places approximately on time?

Erin: YES! But this bag of socks is the bane of my existence and the sucker of untold amounts of time out of my life.

Ellen: You certainly are being dramatic for a little internet funny.

Erin: Remember the five kids? Every. Single. Morning. They come traipsing into my room to rummage through this bag, strew its contents across my floor, and scrabble like chickens over the pickin’s. My fourth grader complained the other day about how much his feet hurt. On one foot he had a sock that barely reached his heel and on the other foot he had a man-sized sock pulled up to his knee!

Ellen: Surely there is a simple solution to this. Have you tried giving each family member their own lingerie bag to put their…

Erin: Stop! Yes, I’ve tried that! But we just ended up with bags of single socks!

Steve and I have tried paying them 10 cent per pair matched, but they putter out at about $1.20 and drift away.

We’ve tried Sock Folding Movie Night, but everyone starts to feign illness or sleep to get out of it.

We’ve thrown them away and started over, but . . . IT. JUST. KEEPS. COMING. BACK.

Ellen: Like a cyst?

Erin: No! Because from what I understand, Dr. WebMD, you can surgically remove a cyst. There is not cure for this! It is truly my shame.

Ellen: Shame seasoned with a fair amount of hypocrisy.

Erin: Are you REALLY throwing gasoline into the boiler of my steam train of shame?

Ellen: Don’t you remember writing about your room being your oasis? It sounds like you could really only achieve that Nirvana with a maid, laundry service, and a pitcher of whiskey sours.

But you know what? I think we need one more shaming meme to complete this penance.

Erin: I don’t know if I can stand much more catharsis, but . . .

Ellen: So to complete my confession, while I’m posting pictures like this, prompting people sing my praises in our comments section…

Don’t you wish you could be awesome like me?

Ellen: Swing the camera a mere 90 degrees and this is the view into my dining room . . .

Or maybe you don’t.

Erin: Gavel slammed. Hail Mary, penance complete.

If you want to join in on the fun, hop on over to the Blogging While Mom Facebook Page and add your own confession. It’ll be a relief, we swear.

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How Our Kids Mark Our Homes As Their Own Like Tomcats

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When you first have kids, it’s a bit of a shock to your system. Until that bundle of joy is placed in your arms, it’s hard to fathom how thoroughly he or she will take over your heart. And then you realize that they take over your home, too. Toys . . . and shoes . . . and sippy cups . . . and plastic crap. Everywhere.

But what we are discussing today is the advanced level of take over. This is the level where they have embedded themselves into your homes like ticks on a hound dog. We’re not talking about blocks scattered across the floor; something that a simple sweeping up will fix. We’re talking about them entrenching themselves into your home, into the mechanism of its function so thoroughly that you don’t even recognize it anymore. We’re talking about a take over that is as insidious as cat pee because it assaults your senses at every turn, but oddly enough, you don’t see it anymore.

10 Signs Of Advanced Take Over

1. Remodeling is undertaken to meet their specific needs.

Erin – Five school aged children need a lot of homework space. So we transformed our living room into a study-carrel-bookshelf-storage-masterpiece of efficiency. It is beautiful, but it was for them. Momma might have enjoyed a nice new treadmill. (Okay, I admit it, I love those bookshelves, but still.)

2. They take over remodeling projects that were not specifically undertaken for them.

Ellen – Behold the nook for my treadmill. What’s that you say? Where’s the treadmill? Exactly. My children overtook this years ago and inexplicably christened it “The Hobo Casino”. Only a cold-hearted person who hates unicorns ad fun could dismantle a casino for hobos.

3. They do not limit their take over to one section of the house.

Ellen – One corner of my kitchen has an undercoat of magnetic paint so that I can display a portion of their prolific production of writing and art. At least it is contained to one corner. (It’s not contained to one corner.)

4. They require the purchase of their own major appliances.

Erin – We have an extra refrigerator in the garage for extra water bottles and lunch boxes. And check out the 5 dozen eggs. I had no idea this is what my life would come to. Remember the good ol’ days when the extra fridge was for beer?

5. They inspire the purchase of ridiculous pieces of furniture.

Ellen – Somehow, some way, my youngest convinced us to buy this bed for her. I do not make impractical decisions like this, but maybe a lifetime of foisting hand-me-downs onto her weakened me to her pleas. We will never be able to use this as a guest bed for an adult, it weighs a ton (we can’t even move it to repaint the room), and it has about 48 and a half steps to disassemble it. It’s Ellen’s folly, but Jellybean’s victory.

6. They redefine the standards for art.

Erin – Now I actually think a fish doodle from my kindergartner is art. And I frame it like art. I have become one of THOSE parents.

7. Artistic hierarchy is ignored. Design concepts are forgotten.

Ellen – There is no art caste system in my home. Papier mâché angel cats mingle freely with honest-to-goodness sculptures that we paid good money for. Really, it’s just a lesson in equal rights.

8. Centerpieces are no longer created to compliment your decor or celebrate the seasons.

Ellen – What can I say in my defense? I have the Death Star with a backdrop of Hogwarts as my centerpiece. Don’t tell Pinterest. Please, We’re on shaky enough terms as it is.

9. All sensibilities for the finer things in life are set adrift.

Erin – Before kids, I had fresh flowers beside my bed. Now, I have coffee filter flowers there. But you have to admit they are more hip than silk flowers. It’s upcycling for crying out loud!

10. You never want this phase of your life to end.

Our kids mark our homes like tomcats, but we must confess, we wouldn’t have it any other way. They put the joy and adventure in our lives. Plus they make pretty good scapegoats.

How Our Kids Mark Our Homes As Their Own Like Tomcats.

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The Softer Side of the Coco Room Apocalypse

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So, in a previous blog with Erin, I wrote about the craziness of redoing Coco’s (13) room and the havoc it struck on the rest of the house. {Coco Room Apocalypse} I now feel ready to defend, I mean explain, myself. There had been an epidemic of teenage redecorating in her class and we were one of the last to fall victim. We should have painted during the summer, but as Coco put it, “We were too busy living life.” Well, we started living the high life of cleaning and sprucing up the week of Thanksgiving. (I know, bad timing. I already acknowledged this in the other post.)

So Jellybean (11) was helping me and chatting with me as I painted. She says, “You should have known we would hate pink and purple when we were old. I’m going to save time when I have kids and paint my girls’ rooms blue to start with.”

This indeed sounded like a good idea as I was drowning hummingbirds and butterflies in Caribbean Blue. Coco, Frank, and I had already spent hours removing the trellis wallpaper border that completed the garden gazebo theme.

By the way, just don’t do wallpaper. The horror on the Home Depot clerk’s face when I began my request, “Where is the wallpaper…,” was only trumped by his relief when I ended the sentence with the word, “remover.”

Garden Gazebo Theme. Pregnancy hormones must have deluded me into thinking wallpaper border and stenciling were good ideas.

In my defense, Coco’s room was decorated 11 years ago when Jellybean overtook the nursery. Eleven years. My Coco is not so much a pack rat as a prolific creator and collector of stuff. She then tends to bury this stuff away and then promptly forget all about it. So really, she is more of a happy-go-lucky squirrel than a nasty old rat.

So due to this squirreling, I am finding a treasure trove of Coco-ness shoved in boxes, books, and under furniture. My favorite find was the foreword to her first novel crediting her sister for inspiring the title.

I could go on (there was A LOT of stuff), but the specifics of my child’s preciousness doesn’t have to be detailed here. But, it all tugged at my heartstrings. It also made me grateful that I had gotten pushed into the whole re-decorating slippery slope. (And believe me; I did not embark on this project willingly. You feel kinda attached to the dozens of pansies you lovingly hand-painted for your first born while six months pregnant with your second. Hmmm… or maybe I just felt attached in the sense that I did not feel like sanding and priming all of those suckers. I’m going to go with mother’s love over laziness, just for the sake of my next point).

So here is why I am grateful, even though I’m a little cracked from the whole snowballing project. Do you think that a surprise walk down memory lane would feel like warm nostalgia five years from now when Coco goes off to college?? No! It would feel like sucker punches! Sucker punches that could land me curled around a teddy bear longing to turn back time.

So I’m glad I didn’t have the forethought to decorate a 2 year-old’s room with her future teen self in mind. Otherwise, this massive clean-out might not have taken place until she leaped from the nest. So criticize something else, Jellybean. I’m letting Coco project HER view of self on her room and I’ve assembled a nice box of mementos that I can choose to open when I WANT that trip down memory lane.

So if you need me, I’ll be the one floating down the River “De-Nile” ignoring that Coco has 5 more years to squirrel away new landmines of preciousness for me to find.

Oh yeah, and in response to Jellybean’s pleas that her room, too, be repainted, I say, “In five years, all this can be yours.”

-Ellen

Finished product. It was worth it, right? Right!?!

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I have so much hair and shed so much that we gauge how much hair I clean out of the shower drain by what size animal it most resembles. We have found that anything bigger than a ferret requires professional plumbing intervention. Ellen

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Erin’s Oasis or Is It a Mirage?

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Ellen – It is January and my house has not seen complete order since the weekend before Thanksgiving. It is bringing me down. The walls are closing in. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to honor Coco’s request to redo her bedroom in the manner befitting a teenager. Here is the insanity: I started all this on the Monday before Thanksgiving. Get me some Haldol because I am clearly psychotic. Even before the holidays began, I started out so far behind the eight ball that I was not even in the billiard hall.

Erin–My friend Ellen is one of the smartest people I know. I am not blowing sunshine up her you-know-what, but it’s important to note this in light of this decision she made. I understand her rationale. Truly, I do. Frank had extra time off the week before Thanksgiving, so she would have help. BUUUUTTTT, if she had asked me, I might have mentioned that decluttering a teen’s room (eight bags of trash, no lie), stripping wall-paper, repainting a room, picking out a new bed, painting old furniture to match the new room, and putting the whole damn thing back together IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HOLIDAYS might be a tall order, even for her. She pulled it off, of course, and only had one meltdown much later in the holidays when Shutterfly’s site got twitchy as she was trying to finish her presents.

Ellen – Um, had more than one meltdown, but I try not to take every tantrum public. And Erin is presenting the summary of the story as seen from the end of the tunnel of hindsight. The project snowballed, people! Snow! Balled! We were just painting the room to match the comforter she got for her birthday this summer. I did not know I would be digging through the basement searching for the vanity that I remembered was left as a “gift” from the previous owners of our house, because Coco expressed interest in a $900 Pottery Barn Teen vanity. I did not know that aforementioned vanity would take 8, yes 8, cans of spray paint to cover its dried-out surfaces. I did not know that the first bed would come damaged. I didn’t know; but I should have known.

HOWEVER, I have now found a scapegoat for all of my misery, and her name is Erin. It is really Erin’s fault all of this took place in November, because she was busy dragging me and my crew all over the countryside this summer making us have fun. We should not have been splashing through waterfalls, we should have been painting!

BUT, this room project is going to be fodder for another blog because quite frankly, it is too soon. Too soon! So, what I want to talk about is how Erin keeps her zen in a house filled with 7 people, 4 of which are boys. I did ask her advice.

Erin– I am not a neat person by design. Ask my poor sister or my college roommates. I tend toward disorder and chaos, but I was holding it together. I was getting it done. The fifth kid was a game changer. Our slight shift in number represented a cosmic shift in our universe. We had become the very embodiment of the scientific concept that systems left to themselves tend towards disorder. Um, yeah, and then some. My newly super sized crew meant that I needed to learn some new skills and quick or we would be invited to star in the next episode of “Hoarders”. Cue my lovely friend, Lauri, our organized Sister. We all think she rocks. She assessed the situation and gave me advice. Proud to say that we are now clean-as-you-go converts. Occasionally, we let this golden rule slide, and things start looking like a market in Calcutta in no time flat.

The close proximity of so many people means that occasionally all you desire is to breathe your own air and listen to yourself think. To this end, we also respect that one room in the house is the Oasis. For us, it’s the master bedroom. No clutter, no mess, no dirty ugly reminders of the business taking place in the rest of the house. I can’t be the evil ogre mom and outlaw food in the family room (I LOVE popcorn with my movies!) nor do I feel like harping on every errant shoe, belt, or ball. But I will disappear into the Oasis and take a load off. I will put my head down on a well-made bed and pick up a neatly stacked book from my bedside table and drift away for a few minutes. Pure heaven.

Ellen– It is a wonderful system, but just listen to what it has spawned. Loopholes developed. The order may be a Mirage. But hey, I would settle for things looking good at a distant at this point.

Erin– So, one piece of advice was to make the beds every day. Great idea. Everything looks neat and tidy. Mental space opens up. Deep Breath and AHHHHH. Well, my peeps did not get the memo. I was violating the Dymowski Law of Inertia. They were going to resist this change in their momentum. My brilliant offspring, mostly because they are future men, have taken my edict to make beds and morphed it to their own ends. They make their beds once a week and then sleep on top of their freshly made beds with whatever blankets they can find. This is why I had to bring in the big guns. There is a genetic laziness that could threaten our happy, little home if left unchecked.

Ellen– I personally think it is an IQ test and that they passed. But clearly the Sisterhood Secret is to clean-as-you-go, because it is easier to sweep up a mole hill than to sandblast a mountain. I have used this technique, but like intense cardio, I have let it slide during the holidays. But I defy anyone to say that this technique would have succeeded against the Coco Room Apocalypse. If I can ever get to baseline again (take the Christmas decorations down) I swear I will once again clean-as -I -go.

And just in case you think I’m one of those uptight women that needs a Valium if the vacuum tracks aren’t lined up in the same direction or if you think I am using hyperbole for comedic effect; I have two words for you: photographic evidence.