My toddler, the racist

Allow me to explain.

I am an extremely liberal person. In many ways. I am blatantly truthful, I wear my emotions on my sleeve, I see all people as equal and worthy of receiving the same priveledges no matter who they are, and maybe most importantly, I am absolutely convinced I was a gay man in my past life. That said, I side with the democrats in almost every area, my parents and twin sister do too.

My husband's side of the family (most of them) is Republican to the max, Troy's in the middle, and Avery will be a democrat able to choose whatever she wants.

Avery was born on November 4, 2008, the day Obama was elected as president (which was suuper cool besides watching my mom keep one eye on the TV for election results and one eye on my vagina for the arrival of her first and only grandchild).

So, for Avery's first birthday, my dad got Avery a black baby doll partially as a joke because we are whiter than white, and partially because of the whole Obama election/birth thing.

I thought it was really cool because we are totally totally totally adamant about teaching Ave not to judge people based on how they look.

Avery doesn't seem to be as thrilled. Every time I see Barack Obaby (that's what I named the doll), it seems to be in a not so happy place. What the hell, Avery?

We are working on it...

Text -Mex

My mom is literally the coolest person on planet Earth, but is hopeless with technology. Even still, she is obsessed with texting. When she first started her text affair a few years ago, my sister and I would each get a text that said simply, "Sup?" like 400 times a day, which was really cute and equally hilarious.

I taught her how to use a Blackberry, which was one of the greatest achievements of my life, however, she lives in Mexico most of the year, and uses a Mexican cell phone that most likely uses T-9 (which would be absolutely impossible to teach my mom) so I just put up with her spelling errors until she returns to the states.

Observe my dear mother trying to tell me she loves my blog:

God, she cracks me up. Love you so much, Mom.

Please get your toes out of my salad

"I may or may not have eaten an entire box of macaroni and cheese. Hint: I did"

This was a text I sent to my friend Jackie last week. Because it was true. Because it's impossible to not eat what Avery leaves behind and whatever is left over. People always say that once you have a baby it is hard to lose the gained weight because of your metabolism and hormones and or whatever.

"Excuses Excuses," I say!

I am constantly surrounded by cookies and cheese and juice and quesadillas, it's horrible.

When I was single I could starve myself diet so easily. Now I know why I see so many mom's with fupas. I'm sorry for judging you, fupa lady. Actually, I still do, sorry.

On the topic of food, my daughter has taken to sitting on the dining room table while we eat, and we're ok with it because it's the only way she will actually eat. Troy literally said, "Please get your toes out of my salad" to Avery last night. Don't judge. We're young and have no idea what the hell we're doing this is our first child.

On another note, do you ever see those news specials about "how fat Americans are" and they zoom in on someone's fat middle section while it jiggles as the fatty is walking down the street, like totally unaware that millions of people are about to watch her in total disgust? I hate that, it's so mean.

PS. I have no idea why this is underlined and have no idea how to fix it so it's staying like this.

Toothpaste fairy

Moms are expected to take care of everything around the house. The cleaning (especially difficult in my house because my husband is OCD very clean), the cooking, stocking the house with everything necessary, and pretty much everything having to do with keeping the child(ren) alive and happy. No one thanks you for it, no one promotes you or gives you a bonus for it, it's just expected.

And, I am not complaining, I love my job, it's not easy, but I love it, and I'm good at it. I have to be conscious, however, that if I were to ignore Avery for 12 hours, if she were still alive, she would look like Stewie in the episode of Family Guy where Lois is gone (don't remember why she was gone, but think of this image often... )

But regardless, my mind is a warehouse-sized file cabinet of things to do, people to feed, whose laundry to fold, what window to clean, whose birthday to remember. And I only have one kid. Oy.

There is no one to remind me to get these things done, I am solely repsonsible for remembering everything. Understandably, I forget some things once and a while. For example, I'll forget to re-stock the wipes in my baby bag (back off, it only happened once), or I'll forget to buy more eggs. My husband and I use different brands of toothpaste, and in this case of forgetfulness, I didn't realize my husband's toothpaste was low.

Front view:

Side view:

I can't even imagine what he would have resorted to if I hadn't discovered this pathetic flattened tube when I did. Would he have filleted the tube and scraped out the insides with a razor? Who knows, I wish I had set up a secret camera. I can assure you that he would have just powered through it until toothpaste fairy came and replaced it though.

Friggen hilarious.

Magical Easterness

Saturday Mission: Get Avery's Easter bunny pictures done.

While still in the mall parking lot, in our car, I see a severely handicapped woman violently twisting and jerking while she walks, smiling as if she is just thankful to be on her feet. I notice that she is amongst a sea of unhappy, perfectly healthy mall shoppers leaving with their unimportant purchases grumpily dragging their children to their SUVs.

This scene deeply moves me and I say to Troy with tears, "Life can be so unfair," to which he responds, "It makes you appreciate what you have," followed quickly by, "move it, fatty" to the, well, fatty walking slowly in front of our car. That made me laugh really hard because men burn out on sensitivity in like 0.225 seconds.

Anyway, we arrive to the line to see the pedofile in a rabbit suit Easter bunny. Daddy takes out the video camera to capture the magical Easterness, and we start getting excited! Picture time:

The funniest part of this photo is not my daughter flipping out in terror, or the creepy, possibly dead pedofile in a suit Easter bunny (who literally did not move once)...

But look at my face! It's like "Everything is fine! Everything is fine! I love this! I look happy... DON'T I LOOK HAPPY?!"

What a day... and it's only 3:30! I love being a mom.

THOSE parents.

Anyone that knows our 16-month-old knows that she can be quite a jerk handful in public places- especially restaurants. She has a signature piercing squeal, that accompanied her, truly, right out of the womb (which was so cute in the hospital- but then again I was on a LOT of pain medication, so we can't be too sure of exactly how cute it really was...) and has stayed with her to the present day.

Needless to say, whenever we decide to go out to eat, I assume the role of someone who is going into battle. I armor myself with binkies, sippie cups, drugs teething rings, toys, books, multiple changes of clothing, diapers, and snacks, and try to prepare for the worst. When at our battlefield destination we load her up with sugar packets and napkins and whatever array of free shit happens to be on our table, and regardless, most of the time, that nasty squeal monster possesses my daughter's body and ruins our meal. Which sucks.

The only thing that calms Avery down is Dora. That's right... Dora the friggen Explorer. Not mommy, not daddy, not drugs teething rings, not assortment of free table shit. So, the predicament is, how do we get Dora to show up to dinner? I mean, hiring the actual Dora to make a appearance to a restaurant every time we ate out would be super expensive not to mention impossible because she's a damn cartoon.

So, we borrowed my in-laws portable DVD player, brought it to a restaurant, plugged it in to an open outlet (trashhyyyyy), popped in a Dora DVD and instantly turned into THOSE parents. It... was... uhhhhmaazzinng.

Troy and I had a beer. We laughed. We cried. We talked about having more children. All while everyone stared at us in disgust and Avery totally zoned out and learned how to say "bees" in Spanish.

Gracias Dora, gracias.

the mom tank

The number of thankless, sleepless, frustrated moments in a mother's life far outweighs the number of magical rewarding moments. I wish I could say that every second spent with my toddler looked like us frolicking, giggling, and skipping through a never-ending hillside of flowers and butterflies while holding hands, but it really looks more like us sitting on the dirty kitchen floor, yelling at each other, trying to get the other to release her grip of the Windex. And even while the Windex moment is how most moments look, once in a rare while, something will happen that fills up my mom tank and allows me to get through all the ugly moments until the next beautiful thing happens. Here is what happened...

I took this picture yesterday:

As you can see in the background, the once-folded laundry has been strewn about the room by my crazy monster darling daughter, and I snapped this picture on my iphone probably as a means to procrastinate finishing my job, but regardless, right after this picture, she takes off the hat and looks me in the eyes, places the hat on my head and says, "hat on mama?"

First sentence! I can't quite explain what it feels like to be able to have an open line of communication, even if just for a moment, with someone who you love more than anything, but have never really been able to understand. I mean I get it when she grunts and points to her empty sippy cup and says "juice!" but to watch this precious thing, who, merely 2 years ago, was a bean-sized bunch of cells in my uterus, articulate a full thought in front of my eyes blew me away. These are the things that truly makes motherhood the coolest, most rewarding job on the planet.

So, dear Avery, feel free to pee on the floor when I let you run around naked after the bath tonight... Mama's mom tank is full!

Sofia's WTF moment of the week: The Appliance Repairman

So... our piece of shit super fancy microwave AND oven both decided to stop working within a couple weeks of each other. And after about a week or so of not being able to make my sweet daughter Easy Mac delicious and healthy meals, we gave in and called a appliance repair man to come check it out. We patiently waited for his arrival anywhere from "8:00-12:00", and he unapologetically arrived at 12:35 as if trying to prove to us that we should never underestimate the stereotype that repairdudes will ruin your entire day.

Anywho, he explains to us that he is the best repairman in Las Vegas and won 2 awards for being the best... which made me think about an award ceremony with a bunch of dirty worker-guys in jumpsuits accepting rusty awards, so that was nice. (In southern rednecky accent: "I just want to thank my ma, my paw, and all those thur appliances that dun broke down.")

So, he took down the microwave, (actually, my husband did because he is like the tallest guy in the universe, which caused award-winning repairman-man to thank my husband for being a "tool" to get the microwave down... haha... dude totally called my hubby a "tool") then he looked at the wires in the back, grabs some sort of wrench or pliers or something and tweaks a wire and said microwave is fixed, which took less time than it takes to heat up Easy Mac delicious and healthy vegetables.

TTTHHEEEENNNNNNNNNN he tells us we owe him $135 for labor. Tall Handsome Husband Troy says "wait.... but it took you 5 seconds to fix it" to which Award Winning "Tool" Name Caller To My Husband -Man says.... "But, I got my tools out."

WTF?!

At the request of my biggest fan...

I am pleased to announce that my biggest fan has requested a shout-out! Here it is!

Dearest Chelsea Bloggins Robbins,

I think you're supa fly and I wanna be your internet bloggin' buddy so we can do it bloggy style all night long.

Love,

Sofia Beer.