Yay for crazy holiday hats and and the cute little boys who wear them!

If you’re a fireworks enthusiast, please be considerate of your neighbors and BE CAREFUL :)

HAPPY 4th of JULY!

Mean girls suck, too...

Every summer my daughter goes to day camp. She absolutely loves it and looks forward to it all year long.

This year, the camp has started having theme days which are kind of like spirit days at school. Recently, the theme was superheroes and princesses and N was pretty psyched about it.

As princess and superhero day approached, however, I began to have doubts about the merits of this particular theme. For one thing, my daughter is going in to third grade—most of her old princess dress-up clothes don’t even fit anymore.

I pointed out to her that most princess dress-up clothes are made for younger kids and a lot of girls probably won’t participate because they’ve outgrown their princess dresses. I even went so far as to suggest she dress as a superhero instead,

“We could make a really cool costume out of stuff we already have!”

I was met with a look that fell somewhere between abject horror and unwavering determination to tune out her obviously insane mother.

It became clear that my daughter fully intended to ignore me and my sensible advice so I backed off.

The next day, she came skipping out of her room with a frilly light green Tinkerbell princess dress (yes, I know Tinkerbell isn’t a princess but Disney apparently does not). While she looked adorable in her almost too small dress, a bad feeling settled in the pit of my stomach as I hugged and kissed her goodbye.

N is a sweet, sociable, happy-go-lucky girl who gets along with pretty much everyone but when she came home from camp that day, she didn’t seem like herself. She was lying on the couch watching TV, looking pretty sad and dejected.

I sat down and asked her if everything was alright.

After some gentle prodding, she told me that she was the ONLY girl in her group (besides her counselor) to dress up and that when she arrived, the other girls pointed and laughed at her.

One perpetually mean girl looked at her and sneered  loudly “Isn’t Tinkerbell for babies?”

“And what did you say?”

She replied softly “I said no”

I wanted to annihilate those girls for hurting my baby, for crushing her spirit like that without a second thought.

I proceeded to do try and undo some of the damage.

“Tinkerbell is NOT for babies. You know that, right? They make clothes for grown women with Tinkerbell on them. Not Cinderella, not Sleeping Beauty. TINKERBELL.”

“And you are NOT a baby. You’re actually older than a lot of those girls.”

The thing is, my daughter may be several months older but she is very innocent and unjaded and perhaps a bit sheltered.

Unlike a lot of girls her age, she still likes fairies and princesses and mermaids…exactly the way an eight year old girl should be, IMHO.

Don’t get me wrong—she’s NOT the victim of a plot to keep her artificially immature or anything. She’s just been exposed to different things and really,  in some ways, she’s more sophisticated than her peers—she’s able to talk to adults about a wide range of topics and she has an understanding of the world that a lot of kids her age don’t possess. While they’re obsessing over Hannah Montana and High School Musical, she’s watching British science fiction (The Sarah Jane Adventures) and NOVA and Dinosapiens, reading chapter books at a 5th grade level and pursuing her numerous artistic interests.

But at heart, she’s still very much a little girl and I love that about her.

That night, I told my husband what she told me, how much it hurt me to see her like that. We both voiced the same sad thoughts…

She’ll probably never fully put herself out there like that again. Sad.

Something that she loved to do will always be tarnished by the memory of this day.

A little piece of childhood innocence was lost today…

The next day she told me that the mean girl who said “Isn’t Tinkerbell for babies?” plays Elmo games on Sesamestreet.com in the computer lab.

Pot? Meet Kettle.

I told her to call the girl out publicly for playing Elmo games.

I know on some level that was bad. I know two wrongs don’t make a right. I know turn the other cheek blah, blah, blah…

But this girl is always so mean and until she gets put in her place, she’s not going to stop. I know this from experience—and really, it’s BASIC human nature.

For the record, I’ve never been mean to anyone unprovoked. It’s not who I am. But if you fuck with me past a certain point, you’ll get it back in kind.

That said, if I have to choose between some 8 year old mean girl and my daughter,  I’m choosing my daughter—I won’t fight her battles but I WILL teach her to stand up for herself.

And I make NO apologies…

I’m sure at least a few of you are DYING to tell me how wrong I am. Just keep it civil, please.

In other appendage news…  Awkward Boners—they’re EVERYWHERE!
(hat tip to Danny)

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”

And my son, completely serious, says

“What mall?

Who’s the fairest OF THE MALL?

Get it?

Come on…you know that shit is  funny.

SMILE!

And wonder of wonders…I managed, somehow, to get my house clean and almost all the laundry washed and folded (but not all put away because apparently, when ALL our clothes are clean, we have too damn much to fit it our drawers. The solution? Don’t do laundry as often! Wait…no…I mean CLEAN OUT our drawers and put the stuff we no longer wear in the yard sale pile(s).

Anyway, my stepmother came, as promised, but didn’t even spend the night. Part of me was relieved because, honestly, I don’t enjoy house guests all that much, but the other part of me was kind of mad. We don’t see you for over two years and you can’t spend one damn night?

I was also irritated because I put a LOT of time and energy into cleaning the bedrooms since she would, presumably, be sleeping in one of them. Of course I’m happy that the rooms are now clean but if you only knew how much pressure I put on myself to get all this shit done…only to find it was actually unnecessary. I even bought vodka (not the cheap stuff either) and organic orange juice for her. Hmmph.

The party was small and thankfully so because when you have two four year olds, two eight year olds and one very loud and curious (read: into effing EVERYTHING) two year old running around in a small house, all sugared up from cake, bickering over toys and balloons, hootin and hollerin’ and generally causing serious mayhem… Well, suffice it to say, any more kids might have made my head explode, as well as the heads of every adult in attendance (my husband, two other parents and two grandmothers).

The cake was awesome, if I do say so (homemade with some help from Bettty Crocker, with truly homemade chocolate icing), the food was okay (pasta, breadsticks and pizza from Pizza Hut because we are KLASSY) and the whole thing lasted about two and a half hours (just long enough).

When it was over and the kids went to bed, I promptly plopped my ass on the couch, with full intentions of watching True Blood but instead fell asleep for nine solid hours. Staying up til 4:30am the night before, cleaning (and writing for The Green Mom Review) just about killed me yesterday so I was totally okay with sleeping contentedly on the couch all night. I was, however, very grouchy this morning and pretty much snarled at everyone until I had coffee.

Shortly thereafter I had a little jungle adventure when I had to look for my cat. He’s a formerly feral kitten who kind of adopted my male cat, and thus our family, too. We got him fixed and now he’s this small, chubby, sweet little thing with a big old overbite.

Anyway, I noticed the night before last that I hadn’t seen him in over 24 hours. I had a feeling he was next door in this insane rainforest of a backyard. The girl is a renter and is never  EVER home so I put on jeans, sneakers and a long sleeved shirt (it’s like 90 degrees and 100% humidity.mind you) and climbed the wooden fence. As suspected, he was back there but he didn’t look right.

I climbed and scooted and crawled around and under all kinds of crazy stuff to get to him and he kept scuttling away. Spider webs of mammoth proportions were everywhere and about a thousand mosquitoes were swarming around my face (did you know they’re attracted to carbon dioxide?) and the little fucker wouldn’t let me get closer than about 2 feet. I even tried to bribe him with food but he scuttled away and over the back fence. I KNOW he’s sick or something but I can’t help him if I can’t catch his wily ass.

The bright side? The house is wicked clean for the first time in ages and we won’t be here tomorrow to mess it up. WIN.

This Week on IzzyMom:  Mean Girls Suck

The real story is that my stepmom will be here in TWO days. She just called me up out of the clear blue and told me she was coming for my son’s birthday on Wednesday. I’m glad she’s coming because she hasn’t seen my kids in two years. TWO YEARS (her choice, not mine).

I’m not glad, however, that I only have two days notice to prepare—that just isn’t enough. You see, my house has become something of a shithole in the past year. There. I said it. And I have way too much shitholey-ness to address and no time to do it:

• my carport only needs an old sofa, or perhaps a bench seat from a long-gone car, to make it truly white trash—it’s crammed with bikes, scooters, a spaghetti pot (WTH?), leaves, spider webs, a rusty old wagon, empty chalk containers, old jump ropes, a couple traffic cones and numerous pairs of dirty, outgrown fake Crocs that I keep saying I’m going to clean and give to Goodwill but probably never will

• the status of my backyard is what used to be a “work-in-progress” (soon to be downgraded to “abandoned-project” status) and it looks like complete crap.

• 98% of my grass died over our cold, dry winter and thanks to the recent weeks of torrential rain, bajillions of monster-sized weeds have taken up residence EVERYWHERE, even in the cracks of my driveway

• Earlier in the week, in a feeble attempt to address the clutter, I started going through stuff and getting ready for a yard sale. I have stacks and containers of yard sale shit everywhere

• I have about 15 loads of laundry to do to get the giant piles out of the bedrooms and hallway

• my sofa slipcovers are profoundly filthy. I tend to resist washing them because they’re the biggest pain in the ass to put back on but now I have to…

• The dustbunnies on my baseboards and in the corners probably have teeth

• every door, doorframe, glass door and mirror in this house needs a good wipe down thanks to sticky, dirty little hands that must. touch. everything.

• my kids…they make messes faster than I could ever hope to clean them up and getting them to do it? Puh…don’t make me laugh. The drama, the crying… They win every time.

• the clutter. OMFG…the clutter.

When did everything get so out of control? Ugh…I don’t know. I just know I have more work than I can possibly get done and two birthday parties to get ready for (one for school and one for home) And? I haven’t gotten birthday presents yet, either. How did I let everything get away from me to this degree? Where do I even start?

I’m not kidding about any of this.  I swore we’d never be those people who had kids and then became filthmongers and yet here we are, mired in it.  I’m truly overwhelmed and disgusted with myself and I can feel the anxiety building. Thank God for Xanax…

All I really want to do is take a nap.

Someone please tell me I’m not alone. Lie to me if you have to.

————-

So what happened? Read the follow-up here

The People’s Party 2009
open-invite pre-BlogHer party
Thursday, July 23, 2009  8:30-11pm
Sheraton Chicago X (”Ten”)

Hosted by:

The Bloggess
IzzyMom
Motherbumper
Mrs. Fussypants
Playgroups Are No Place For Children
Velveteen Mind

Make sure you RSVP!!!

Sponsored by:

Interested in sponsoring The People’s Party? Contact Megan!

Then? Repeat EVERY SINGLE DAY so you never, ever become complacent or forget that you have NOT reached your goal…mostly because you sit in front of your computer all day. Ahem.

/self-loathing

But lo, there’s a new kid on the wig block and they’ve made it their mission to insure no bald-ish baby girls are ever mistaken for boys, thanks to their Baby Bangs. Scariest part? It’s not a joke.

Sure, your daughter will never be mistaken for a boy again when sporting her Baby Bangs but DAMN THEY’RE UGLY!

Something tells me these will be a BIG hit with the beauty pageant moms who seem to function under the premise that  natural, un-bedazzled little girls cannot be considered beautiful.

But wait! It gets better because in addition to beribboned baby wigs, there are also… Get ready for it…

Creepy...

HIGH HEELED BABY BOOTIES.

No, I’m not shitting you. Yes, I’m completely serious. And while I think the baby wigs are dumb and rather unattractive, they cannot even begin to touch the Heelarious shoes. Freaky factoid? They’re apparently a pretty hot seller.  But WHO buys this shit? Even as a gag, who would actually put those stupid things on their baby???

Not creepy!

Is it possible I’ve gone through a wormhole and ended up in some bizarre parallel universe where people DON’T think babies in wigs and high heels is creepy as hell?

My oracle tells me you can soon look forward to baby spray tans and tiny little Lee Press-On nails for the diaper set. Add a wig and some heels and see how SEXAY your baby can be!

Dontcha wish your baby was HOTT like mine…dontcha wish your baby was a freak like mine?

I suspect I’ll get at least one or two comments from people saying “Baby Bangs and Heelarious heels r soooo cute! Ur just jelus u dint think of it first and u jus hate pageant moms cuz ur baby isnt pretty”

Do you get all offended when you see a cat nursing kittens or a cow nursing a calf? Does that get your nether regions so worked up that you have to complain to their humans that it’s obscene and shouldn’t be done in public?

Do you have the urge to roll your eyes and complain loudly that said cat and cow should go feed their young in a public bathroom so your eyes do not have to be assaulted by the utterly (or udderly…heh) offensive image of…of… MAMMALS EATING???!!!

This latest and most tiresome shitstorm is about a poster, displayed in Manchester UK (in a hospital, no less) in which a toddler (fully clothed, you nasty pervs) is pretending to breastfeed a doll. Why? Because it’s completely NORMAL and NATURAL and that’s what the poster is trying to communicate. Of course, this LOGIC is completely lost on the folks who have so many issues and hang-ups that they routinely get porn and eating confused. Pity the poor fools…

Just imagine how much good they could do if they protested something TRULY outrageous like the systematic rape of women and girls in Darfur or the stoning to death of innocent women by fundamentalist Muslims or the disgusting abuse of food animals in factory farms right here in America.

But no…protesting the act of sustaining life the way nature and God intended it is SO MUCH MORE IMPORTANT to eradicate because HELLO? It involves TITTIES and BOOBIES and HOOTERS and we all know those are to be used STRICTLY for profit and amusement. And think of American corporations like AT&T—how are they to continue making millions selling pay-per-view porn in reputedly family-friendly hotels if mothers are using them in public to titillate men FOR FREE?  Think of the implications! Think of the loss of revenue! They MUST BE STOPPED!