JellyMom blog

Lisa Barker

Chatty Son is Music To My Ears

Sometimes when a mom chooses to stay at home, she worries that her education will go to waste.  Little by little caring for little ones kills off brains cells.  We cut everything at the dinner table into tiny pieces.  We’re doomed to forever speak in the third person.

And then your child turns ten-years old. 

He soaks up every detail of every subject that interests him like a human sponge.  And he informs you about those topics every chance he gets.  At first this makes the remaining years of parenting seem like three consecutive life sentences.

I’ve taken to calling my ten-year old Encyclopedia Brown.  Want to know about sharks?  Ask my son.  He knows the difference between each type dating back to pre-historic times.  I can’t remember the brand of orange juice I buy.

Want to know about the solar system?  My son can tell you about God’s work in such detail that you’d think he was God’s personal assistant when the world was created.  Yet, this is the same child that can’t remember to zip up his pants. 

But if you want to know exactly how to jump through the molten lava in the Mario game, he will tell you step-by-step.  I know.  Once we walked to the church and he didn’t take one breath the entire forty-five minute journey.  I can play Mario in my sleep, yet I’ve never once actually played the game in real life.

The secret is to look as if I am busy and enjoying what I am doing.  Sure enough, my boy will interrupt because he has something sensational to share with me.

Every stage of childhood is unique with its own challenges and blessings.  Sometimes my ten-year old and I simply annoy each other.  I nag because he has to do chores.  Ugh.  But more often than not, he’s my right hand man.  He wants to please.  He wants more responsibility.  He wants to soak up that praise more than any trivia he’s memorized.

So one day I slipped a love note in his lunch. It had been a particularly hard week and he’d made it difficult for me to ‘catch him doing good.’  So I told him how much I loved him and that I was sure that we could work through this time together.

My son floated on air once he read the note.

Help, We Are All Being Held Hostage

You’ve got to be really, really ill to want to stay home in our family.  My eldest daughter had a fever one night.  Her head felt like it had swelled five times its size and her throat and ears ached.  Still, she dragged herself by her teeth down the hall to the bathroom and took a shower.  She was bent on going to school.

But she only summoned the strength to stand for five minutes.  She was desperately sick with the flu and reluctantly went back to bed on my command.

Soon enough, the four-year old awoke.  My daughter tried to stifle her breathing.  If he heard even the faintest noise from her room—like the death of a skin cell—she would be found out.  Sure enough, she inhaled and he pounced.

“Rachel’s home! Rachel’s home!  Rachel, are you home?  Are you sick? Are you staying home all day?” and so began his incessant chattering.

“Momma!” she croaked.

“Aiden, leave your sister alone.  She doesn’t feel well.”

There is no one who looks more disappointed than our four-year old when he can’t visit with an ill sibling.  And being under the weather is one thing, but being sick and feeling guilty is too much to bear.  Eventually, Rachel gave in and camped out on the sofa.

“Rachel!  Move your feet!  I’m sitting there!  Move your feet!  Momma, Rachel’s not moving her feet!”  He pestered her until she woozily sat up.  “Play Candy Land with me!”

She relented.

“NO!  I’M RED, YOU’RE BLUE!  I WIN, NOT YOU!”

Her head must have felt like shattered glass.  This is why my husband drags himself off to work everyday no matter how he feels.  He’s got an office all to himself.  If I had a room all to myself at home, I’d be in it.  I’m sure the teens feel the same way.

But there is no escaping the little one, though I’ve tried.  I have to lock the master bedroom door as well as the bathroom door to ensure a few moments of privacy, but sooner or later somebody picks the locks and I am found out.  Even my husband will ask what I am doing.

“What do you think?  I’m in the bathroom!”  (Oh, sure, it’s just me, a bag of chocolate and a stack of magazines to catch up on, but they don’t need to know that.)  Everybody has their hiding place and stashes of goodies to soothe them.

We don’t know when the four-year old took over the house.  It was probably when he started screaming “NO!” as a two-year old and then whined through age three.  We’ve given up.  We’re being held hostage – HELP!

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©Lisa Barker - Jelly Mom™ is written by Lisa Barker, mother of five and author of "Just Because Your Kids Drive You Insane... Doesn't Mean You Are A Bad Parent!" and is syndicated through Parent To Parent™. To publish Jelly Mom™, buy the book or leave comments, please visit http://www.jellymom.com. Sign up for the complimentary Jelly Mom™ weekly newsletter and receive a BONUS GIFT!

Top Signs of Volunteer Burn-out

One of the best things parents can do for their children is to volunteer in the classroom or for an after school sport or club.  But sometimes parents, especially moms, can over-commit and that can quickly lead to burn-out and resentment.  Post the following list on your refrigerator to help keep your volunteerism in a healthy range.

 
You might have volunteer burn-out if.
 
1.  You know the teacher's planner better than she does and she has to ask you where to find such and such in her classroom.
 
2.  Whenever you eat pasta you think of a dozen wearable art projects you can make with it.
 
3.  On the average there are more kids at your house daily than you have actually given birth to.
 
4.  You have a PDA to keep track of all the things you volunteer for.
 
5.  Your husband, sitting next to you, has to call you on his cell phone just to schedule some snuggle time.and you have to clear it with the P.T.O. first.
 
6.  Whenever you hear the timer on the stove or the alarm in the morning you snarl because it reminds you of how much time you DON'T have.

7.  You've started volunteering for more projects to get out of the ones you are already committed to.

8.  You realize that you're in this for life, which is funny because you no longer even have one.
 
9.  You spend more evenings out than you do at home but you're not having any fun.
 
10.  You're away from home so much you need to be reminded where it is.

11.  You know exactly how many days, hours and minutes until the next holiday break.
 
12.  You're thinking of committing a petty crime so it will show up on your next background check and prevent you from volunteering.
 
13.  Your child innocently asks for dinner and you give a thirty-minute speech on how all you do is give and you've got nothing left to give.

14.  You fantasize about sending a bill for your time to those you volunteer for or wonder if your time and talent are worthy of a tax write-off.

15.  That sarcastic voice in your head is demanding to be heard and you're only too happy to oblige.

16.  Every time somebody praises you for your volunteer work you eye them suspiciously, certain that they will give you more to do.

17.  You've decided that the Golden Rule is for sado-masochists.

18.  The kids want you to volunteer for some activities on the weekend.  At home.
 
19.  You've contacted the witness relocation program to hide you from the committee chairperson.

20.  You're thinking of going back to work full-time just to cut down on your workload.

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Lisa Barker - Jelly Mom™ is written by Lisa Barker, mother of five and author of "Just Because Your Kids Drive You Insane... Doesn't Mean You Are A Bad Parent!" and is syndicated through Parent To Parent™. To publish Jelly Mom™, buy the book or leave comments, please visit http://www.jellymom.com. Sign up for the complimentary Jelly Mom™ weekly newsletter and receive a BONUS GIFT!

I'm A Soul Woman

I tried one of those self-tanning gimmicks.  It took me almost an hour to choose from all the products and if I had just spent that amount of time in the sun, I wouldn’t have had to spend twenty dollars on an experiment.

Everybody’s going to know I got a tan out of a bottle if it goes bad.  1) I’ll have a complete body rash.  2) I’ll look jaundiced, or...  3) I’ll look like George Hamilton.

It turned out to be none of the above.  Instead I developed a fascinating case of upper body acne.  Lovely.  Now I know what I missed out on in high school.

It’s been two months and the acne still hasn’t cleared.  It’s like my skin said, “Let’s party!” and my pores said, “Bring it on!”

You know a lot of women my age—pushing forty—go under the knife to look twenty years younger.  Ha!  I have them beat by five more years.  And now I have a sudden urge to read Teen magazine and join the Drake Bell fan club.  Okay...I joined the fan club two years ago.

Have you ever done that?  Have you ever expressed an interest in the younger generation?  You can really creep your teens out when you express an interest in a celebrity their own age.  Of course, you can’t slobber all over the guy’s picture—or marry him unless you’re a forty-year old and a celebrity yourself—but you can say, “My he’s quite a talented young man!” right?

Pbbft.  I have Drake and Josh dreams.

Now I’m not saying I need to start staying 30 feet away from children, I’m just saying that occasionally I dream of a television episode.  In its entirety.  I think the boys are cool.  I think they’re talented.  I think it has something to do with the Nickelodeon station being on 24/7.  I think I need to move this column along.

So I got the tanning products.  I loyally slathered it on and worked the cream into my skin.  I denied that I was on a carrot-only diet.  I gave up.  The inside of my clothes were not stained (because it washes off), but I certainly wasn’t about to let my husband see my grimy laundry.  “Geez, woman, don’t you shower??”

“Hey, I wash!”  I yelled down the hall after my husband, just as my eldest emerged from their bedroom affecting their best “Yea-ah, whatever,” look.  I hate to lose.

“Hey, I had one of THOSE dreams last night...”

“Mother!”

“I’m a soul wo-man, dada da dada da, I’m a soul woman!”

One thing is for sure.  I might be a pimply old woman with an odd orange hue to her skin, but I can dance!

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©Lisa Barker - Jelly Mom™ is written by Lisa Barker, mother of five and author of "Just Because Your Kids Drive You Insane... Doesn't Mean You Are A Bad Parent!" and is syndicated through Parent To Parent™. To publish Jelly Mom™, buy the book or leave comments, please visit http://www.jellymom.com. Sign up for the complimentary Jelly Mom™ weekly newsletter and receive a BONUS GIFT!

• Previous Posts:

• Chatty Son is Music To My Ears
• Help, We Are All Being Held Hostage
• Lost & Found: One Mind
• Cooking Up a Comedy of Errs
• Watch out! It's The Estrogen Express
• Top Signs of Volunteer Burn-out
• Signs That You Are a Chocoholic
• I'm A Soul Woman

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