Laura Ingalls | All that makes you…

Watching “old” sitcoms with our kids.

Do you remember Doogie Howser, MD doing things like an “emergency” pelvic exam…ON HIS GIRLFRIEND? Well, he does.

Our three boys love watching Doogie Howser, MD with all its nerdy, dated glory and friend Vinny makes them belly laugh. We didn’t remember the show dealing with such “racy” topics that have required some previewing by us before letting our little guys watch. If you could have seen my husband and I running for the remote when Vinny was showing off the condom in his wallet he was planning on using that night.

Doogie and Vinny, as played by our 12 year-old IDENTICAL twins, were last Halloween’s hit, (only with adults over 35 who knew who they were.) It took an entire can of black hairspray to turn Avery into Vinny.

This picture shows how much they look like normally…

“Who wants to watch Little House on the Prairie with me tonight?”

Peter, “Why would anyone NOT want to watch Little House on the Prairie!”

I’m thinking Peter would make an awesome Laura Ingalls next Halloween. You have no idea how happy it makes me to watch Little House.

Peter wearing my scarf and offering me a poison apple. Wrong show but you see what I mean with thinking he could rock Laura Ingalls this fall.

I always find it hilarious when the kids don’t connect that the actors are not REALLY the characters they portray.

We rented Smurfs to watch with our boys. Peter, then seven, announced when he saw Neil Patrick Harris, “DOOGIE IS IN THIS MOVIE! THERE IS DOOGIE HOWSER!”

Avery, who is twelve, looked at his younger brother with a very annoyed and sophisticated look said to Peter, “That is NOT Doogie. I read this book and Doogie is not in the story at all.”

I don’t know if I should be worried about them all but I did what came natural.

I laughed at them all and told them they are all a bunch of DING-A-LINGS!

I explained, for the thousandth time that these are all actors and that was indeed Doogie but playing the part of another person in a different movie because he is an ACTOR!

Good Lord. I know one day they will be adults and watch “Harold and Kumar go to White Castle” and I would LOVE to be a fly on the wall when they see all the things “Doogie” does in that movie.

It may wreck my boys forever.

Do your kids watch any “old” TV shows? You have to love the DVR. It may turn my kids into super geeks, but I am ok with that.

Thanks for letting me share,

-Abbie, All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing. allthatmakesyou.com

P.S. ALF terrified them! Bahahaha!

Want to feel old? Doogie Howser — OK, Neil Patrick Harris — turns 39 today (todayentertainment.today.msnbc.msn.com)
Happy Birthday, Neil Patrick Harris! (wired.com)

There is a reason I have a sense of humor about my life with our three boys. If I survived the ridiculous childhood I had, they will be fine. I am going to share with you one of my own childhood stories. Sit down and I will try and paint a mental image and while you laugh at my misery, please remember that nothing is funny until the smell of rotten eggs is gone.

Our family usually hung out at “The Farm” all day on Sundays. We lingered in my grandmother‘s massive kitchen cooking dinner from all that came from the garden and the barn. My Mamaw made a cake from scratch and without a recipe. They had three daughters and the daughters had six granddaughters and eventually, much later, a grandson. Picture my childhood being like an episode of “Designing Women“.

When I was about eight my grandmother told us girls to go get some fresh eggs for a cake. I now know, since their wisdom is immediately bestowed upon we women the moment we become mothers, that they were just getting rid of us.

My grandparents always had a couple hundred chickens, among other animals. I sincerely thought I was Laura Ingalls. I had long brown hair and I loved a dress, (still do) but I fancied myself a tomboy. My cousin, who is about the same age, and I headed off towards the chicken and cow barn.

Since we were sent on a “busy” mission and the eggs had already been gotten for the day the chicken’s nesting boxes were empty. We kept looking and finally found a nest that was full. I held up the hem of my flowered sundress and my cousin loaded up all of the eggs and then I held them close.

I walked across the cow pasture, climbed a fence (as the gate was to heavy to open) walked across the yard (so as to shake them up really good). When I walked in the kitchen, proud of the major score of eggs we found, NOT in the chickens boxes on the wall but in the corner in a nest on the ground my grandmother gasped, “My Lord child! You didn’t get those eggs from that old nest by the cows your Papaw was supposed to get rid of, did you?!!!”

And then the eggs began EXPLODING! Exploding in my sundress and the stench of rotten eggs was less offensive than the dead baby chickens that were all over me when I let go of the hem of my sundress which was less offensive than being stripped naked in front of my entire family and hosed off in the front yard.

It took twenty-five years before I would eat an egg. Go ahead and laugh, I am.