Tired Mama.com

Facebook is good, bad and other.

My son wants to be on Facebook.

Sigh.

His school decided to have someone come in and talk to all the kids about being safe on Facebook and guess what? Now everyone in his grade wants to be on there. Most of these kids didn't even know it existed until the 'talk' and now it's the place to be.

I had always told my kids that they couldn't be on Facebook until they were thirteen but that's still ten months away for my son. 

I'm on Facebook. My fifteen year old daughter is on Facebook. When my son tells me EVERYONE he knows is on there he's not kidding. I've looked and most of his buddies really are on there.

I don't know what to do.

I do know enough about the privacy settings on FB to limit his activities. I suppose I could demand my son's password and go on there regularly to check on what he's up to.

My son is going to get on Facebook eventually. I'm afraid that he may go on there without my knowledge if I clamp down and so no to him now. But he still seems too young to be on there for my comfort. I'm afraid of who my son might meet on the internet and what he might learn.

But I also realize that my boy is smart and I also know that I have to trust him and let him grow too.

Blah.

I still don't know what I'm going to do. I'm really torn on this one.

Double blah.

Reality Check

Two days ago I was reminded that I can go from being a totally exasperated, snappy and impatient Mom to being a totally protective, paranoid and smothering Mom in less than a second. 

In the blink of an eye.

In the moment it takes for one's heart to skip a beat - to stop.

It happened when a Doctor said to me, 'I don't like the look of this and I think we should run a few more tests. I want you to take him over to the hospital. Now.'

Everyone is fine.

But ah, the guilt will live on for a while yet - a long while yet.

Sigh.

Learn from me

IF you happen to have a young child in the house and you HAPPEN to be in the bathroom standing at the sink doing their hair in the near future and IF you're over uh, thirty?

DO NOT put your hands on your child's shoulders and take your face and put it next to theirs and smile in the mirror at the two of you.

Because if you do, your skin will look OLD and WRINKLED and well just, AWFUL next to your child's gorgeous creamy even-toned plumped complexion.

Trust me on this one. Do not try this for yourself.

I'm still trying to recover.

No. Just no, okay?

I knew that parenting would be a challenge. I knew I would make mistakes.

What I didn't realize before I became a parent was how much negotiating I would have to do.

And I'm okay negotiating with my husband and for work.

It's the negotiating with my kids that is starting to drive me crazy.

There's the bedtime negotiating. That whine for just five more minutes.

There's the homework negotiating. The plea for putting it off for a while.

There's the 'who gets to sit in the front seat' fight that I seem to always be negotiating.

There's the ' yes, you HAVE to wear your winter coat to school' discussion I must negotiate EVERY flippin morning.

You know what? It is wearing me out.

All this negotiating, and the bickering that goes along with it, is driving me crazy.

I need a vacation. A looooong vacation.

Where should we go?

Spelling is tough

My nine year old daughter came home yesterday with a note from school explaining that she was going to be tested in 'spelling' in a whole new way.

No longer will my daughter just be given a word to spell during the test but she now has to use the word in a sentence, and apply a specific pre-determined grammatical concept to it.

The letter that explained how the spelling tests would work and how they would be marked was a full page long. For. a. fourth. grade. spelling. test.

Is it just me or is life getting um, harder?

I haven't been able to do my son's math questions for about a year now. Did I ever learn this stuff?

Does anyone know what happened to all the worry over acid rain? That was the big environmental issue when I was a kid. Did we solve this problem?

Oh, and is there still a hole in the ozone layer and if there is why don't we hear about it anymore?

And perhaps most importantly, does anyone know why and when they stopped putting toys in cereal boxes?

Someone? Anyone?

I am so old.

Sigh.

Cranky Mama

People can be annoying.

Now there's a shocker.

Some days when people are annoying I can take it. Sometimes I can just shrug my shoulders and let things go.

Other days, especially when I've stayed up until 2 am the night before writing, and then get up at 6:30 with my kids I just get uh, cranky.

Today? Today I'm cranky.

So, if you're the lady who got involved in my business yesterday and I happen to run into you today I may just say something nasty to you.

Honestly? I want to say something rude. I want this person to get out of my life and to stay out of my business. I want to use four letter words when I talk to them.

I won't.

But I want to.

Look out, world. Tired Mama is tired and cranky and annoyed today. Tired Mama wants to stamp her feet and um, yell and cry.

Blah.

I think I'd better go take a nap - this toddler side of my personality is not pretty.

Ah-ha! Darn.

You know those 'ah-ha' moments that Oprah and people like her talk about? Those moments when something you didn't know before suddenly becomes stunningly clear?

Well, I had one of those moments tonight.

I was picking up my children's discarded coats from the back hall floor and I asked my ticked off self, when my kids would finally be old enough to come in the door and hang their coats up themselves.

And then I thought to myself, they probably won't do it until they have to pay for their darn coats themselves.

Ah ha!

I think I'm right.

I'm sorta depressed by the thought mind you, but I think I'm right.

Is nine years old too young for me to force my child to get a job to pay for her own clothes?

I thought so.

Sigh.