Tag Archives: teenagers

Watching Old Sitcoms With Our Kids

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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!

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My Boys Put Me on a Dating Website? I’m Married!

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Hmmmm…I see a bunch of Match.com emails.

I dismiss thinking it is spam.

Then I see I have people liking me.

Shut the front door!  Seriously?

Do I open and risk it being a virus or do I risk finding out I am SOMEHOW on Match.com?

I open.

They are welcoming me and show me the 18 WOMEN THAT ARE INTERESTED IN ME! I am a MAN who is interested in 18-27 year olds???

My zip code is listed and these are LOCAL WOMEN!!!

Oh…my…word!!!!

These kids must have used my computer and created an account by clicking a Match.com ad?!!!!


Find girls? Why sure if I am a little boy! I will click you and log onto your website via my mom’s accounts because she doesn’t have passwords on HER computer.

I do now AND what bothers me most?

They don’t know my birthday!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Said from a mexican restaurant men’s bathroom, “What did we ever do to you mom?!”

–Abbie and I love sharing with you, “All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing.”   allthatmakesyou.com

Who Taught You Everything Bad?

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Everything BAD I ever learned, I learned from a cousin!

First Cigarette

My cousin was 16 and I was 12 and she had to drive me somewhere.  She pulled over and stuck a cigarette in my hand and said, “You’re going to smoke this.  I am going to smoke a cigarette and if I do you will tell on me, so your going to smoke one too.”

Birds and the Bees and Other Stuff

I knew where babies came from long before my friends at school and then I knew about all the stuff middle schoolers do before they even think about making babies.  My older cousins told me about what was happening in junior high.   It terrified me as an elementary school kid.  It is also probably why I was scared into not even having a boyfriend until 9th grade.

First Encounter With Police Officer

It was the Fourth of July and a different cousin and I were using cigars to light fireworks down a dirt rural road. I found out that night that not only were we too young to smoke even a cigar but fireworks were illegal in Michigan.

Sneaking Out

I learned to push my car down the driveway so that we didn’t wake up the parents.  I also learned to push start a stick shift, which is no easy feat for a 15 year-old and a 16 year-old that weighed less that 100 pounds.

Sneaking Into Bars and Getting Served at 16 

This was easy back in 1988.  Hair was huge and makeup went on with a putty knife.  They couldn’t see how old you were through the layers of on gunk on our faces and shoulder pads definitely make a young girl look older.

Trip to Canada Requires a 24 Hour Alibi 

You could drive 50 minutes and all you needed was a drivers license to cross the border.  There were no cell phones so you just needed to “sleep over at a friends.”

Blonds Have More Fun (I know better now)

A gallon of pool chlorine dumped on your hair will give you a “sun-kissed” hairstyle for summer.

There is even so many more things like, you can drain a chocolate covered cherry with a toothpick and spit in it and feed it to your babysitter.  Want to get even with your sister?  Put neon poster board in your house windows that announce when your sister started her period just before her afternoon school bus goes by.  Stay out past dark and know you are in trouble?  Just toll around in the dirt and smear lightening bugs all over you and tell your mom you were abducted by aliens and that is why you didn’t make it home before the street lights came on.  Moms can’t yell if they are laughing.

I have said it a million times, long line of wack-a-moles is where I have derived my lineage.

This all was learned through cousins, (who probably learned a lot of it from my mom who acted like THEIR older cousin..

Your friends are afraid of your parents.  Your cousins aren’t, at least mine were not.  My mom was passing many of these “gems” onto the cousins that eventually taught me.

This is why we live ten hours away from my own kids cousins.

They are all OUR CHILDREN and Lord knows we were bad, bad, bad.

We heard regularly how bad our mothers were from anyone in town.

I am not telling my kids.  They think we come from a long line of book readers and college class takers.

I am breaking the cycle with silence and denial.

These kids all think I am so boring and square.  They say things like, “You want some NUTS and then they all giggle like I don’t get it.”  They make up songs about drinking beer because it rhymes with Brittany Spears.

Peter confessed and told me a limerick he learned on the bus.

I was so disappointed.

Cannot believe I am saying this but, I would have made my Mom proud.  The one he told me was so boring I couldn’t have him walking around teaching other kids this lame rhyme.  I gave him a good one to share on the bus the next morning.

Yes, my Mom taught it to me & it has “ding dong” in it. I’ve yet to be called by the school  office for any of them…but this one, I thought I might.

Then he asked me who King Kong is.  Never mind.

😉

We have cousins in town this week.  Three girls and I am in heaven.  I know they are all telling each other things they don’t want me to hear and I know they are all learning bad things.  I know this because I hear them upstairs after midnight giggling uncontrollably.

I realize I have to let them have a little fun, but we have all been having a LOT OF FUN!

We stayed at a minor league ball game until almost 11 last night.  Mitchell caught a ball and then stood at the dugout and had a player sign it and then he gave it to his cousin, Eileen who is in 3rd grade.  I was so proud.

Who did they chase down to have their picture taken with?  A police officer.  Such smart kids!  I once convinced an entire Detroit Swat team to let me and a car load of boys go, return our alcohol, (driver was not drinking) and write down directions to the club we were going to, when I was 16.  I told them that when I told my dad that they stuck a gun in my face and frisked me he would not be happy.  I also told them it would be insane to think that a 16 year-old girl could be stealing cars and taking them into a Detroit alley to be chopped.  I mean, really, a helicopter with a spotlight on us?!

See, my kids do not need to hear ANY of these stories!

-Abbie, All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry, and hopefully cry laughing.

allthatmakesyou.com

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Hatfield’s and McCoy’s

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.   Our Peter’s first grade teacher’s names this year were

Hatfield and McCoy.

Hatfield to left and McCoy on right.

Dont they look ferocious?

I fuzzed them for privacy.

I cannot make this stuff up.

It is the end of another school year and my oldest boys have finished their first year of middle school and our youngest has finished his first year of first grade.  Avery in red and Mitchell in yellow.  They are receiving a citizenship award. Here is Peter receiving a “Future Scientist” award. He is in the pale yellow.

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God and That Sense of Humor

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I just wanted one picture of my nieces at my boys soccer game during their visit last February to NC.  One is a teenager and wasn’t enthusiastic about photo op.  The other niece, while far more enthusiastic, missed her opportunity to smile when her unbridled energy caused her chair to flip backwards. I hit the clicker and as I looked down to check the photo and I saw she was upside down!  No worries as she was fine but…priceless.

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

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Neighbor Kids and My Unfortunate Full Monty Moment

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I am the one female in our house. The one female with zero privacy. The zero privacy has not really been a big deal because I have the attitude that we all have bodies. I have the same parts as the next girl. I don’t want to be so private that my boys become “Peeping Toms” to figure out why girls shirts are lumpy.

I have a line though.

No one, not even my husband comes in while I am “shining my belly button.” I use the room where they all go number one and number two, but I am in there having private, quiet time. Girls don’t poop. They tinkle and our belly buttons require shining. This is all a very complicated lie because I don’t want my husband to think of me “releasing hostages,” as my boys call it.

When I had kids I began locking the door. It worked for a little while. When our older boys started crawling they would just sit up against the door and cry. When they got older they pounded on the door. Then when they could walk and talk and jimmy a door they would yell, “MooooooooMMMMMMMM!!!!!”

I would answer back, “I am in the powder room.”

They would then try and open it and I would say, “It is locked.”

And they would sweetly say, “Oh, I will get it.” and then they would pop the lock and come right in.

It has never occurred to them that I locked it to keep them out. It was always as if they were doing me a favor picking the lock so I wouldn’t have to get up and open it.

So I hid all of the shish kabob skewers!

Ha! I will show them.

If you come to my house and you notice a little rattle in the door knobs when you turn them, it’s just dried spaghetti noodles.

Peter is a resourceful boy and at 18 months old he could pop a lock in no time. When I took away the shish kabob skewers to give everyone some much needed….ehhhemmm…PRIVACY, he found the box of spaghetti noodles. They do not work well to open locked door.

He can’t open doors anymore (so I won), but our door handles are the big losers because they are filled with Peter’s foiled attempts at rudeness.

This leads me to several years later on a hot summers day and another…

“ONLY ABBIE HAS THESE EMBARRASSING THINGS HAPPEN TO HER STORIES”

It is mid morning and after doing my housework I announced I was going in to take a shower. I left the boys with their buddies in the driveway playing squirt gun wars.

I am all lathered up and facing the shower head with my eyes closed.

I turn around to rinse my hair and open my eyes to find…

all three of my boys and all of the neighbor boys standing there, in a line.

The door was locked! I know I locked it!

Remember, I do not lock it for them they think, despite years of explaining that mom needs private time. They just unlocked it while I had my back to the door.

We have a large shower with clear glass walls.

There is nowhere to hide.

“Can we have a Popsicle?”

They are all just looking at me.

“Out! Yes, and GET OUT!”

They all just turn around and walk out like, no biggie.

I am thinking I have to call their moms and tell them they saw me naked as a jay bird. I am thinking this is just a naked body. But it wasn’t…

I had to call the moms and tell them what their boys saw.

I knew I was going to have to explain that I watched a stupid Oprah show and got a Brazillian bikini wax to get ready for bathing suit season. As if having a Brazilian bikini wax wasn’t traumatizing enough!

Why? Why? Why is this always my timing with embarrassing moments? It couldn’t just be embarrassing enough for the neighborhood to see me full frontal naked I would also send an entire generation of boys into their teen years thinking their girlfriends are freaks because they have hair…”there.”

Abbie, All that makes you… allthatmakesyou.com

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“Only to me…”

Moment You Realize You Have Done Too Much For Your Kids…

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One of the downfalls of trying to be good parent is perhaps you have helped them TOO MUCH.

One of the older boys was voicing great frustration while replacing his shoes laces after I washed them.  When I told him to just try again, (I have shown him how to do it right) his reply was, “I have tried it three times!”

I cannot help but laugh.  I could make a tiered red velvet cake at his age, alone.  I remember my mom handing me the keys to her Mazda when I was eleven and her saying, “Go get some bread and milk.” And I did.  Doesn’t mean that it was right, but I could do it.  He genuinely could not get his shoes laced up.  He was mad and he was mad at me for not doing it for him.

Here I am at a much younger age than my son and I guarantee you I laced all of those shoes.  I mean if I was going to go to school with THREE PAIRS OF SHOES, I had to know how to lace them.  Why did I need THREE pairs of shoes for one day of first grade?

So am I a good mom or am I the dreaded, “helicopter parent?”

I show him, again, how to start the laces.

Has anyone else found boys around twelve to be completely exhausting?  I try so hard to make them try and use their brains and figure things out and to learn to look for what they feel inside is the right thing to do.  They are such a funny mix of little boys and big kid.  They seem to have no common sense.  Is it me or does it seem like we had more commons sense when we were our kids age?  

For instance at Christmas they were mad we wouldn’t get them an iPhone, (what planet are they on and if they are telling the truth what planet are ALL of their friends parents on?)  When we explained why and data fees and that twelve year-old kids don’t need one their reaction was, “Fine, then I will ask Santa for one!”

Let me know how that turns out.

Is it because so many things are easier and simple to do that our kids are lacking the daily drive to “make something work?”  What do you think?

– Abbie allthatmakesyou.com

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Teenagers? I just want to survive two, twelve year-olds.

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We watched “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” with our boys last night.  Honestly,  the thought of watching it didn’t appeal to me as I don’t like sad movies.  We are going through some growing pains with our twin twelve year-olds and we thought it might be a good idea to make them realize WE MIGHT DIE AND YOU SHOULDN’T BE SO STINKING MOUTHY TO YOUR PARENTS!  Messed up, isn’t it?

People kept telling us how lucky we were to have all boys.  It was going to make the teenage years so much easier from a parenting perspective.  They said things like, “Boys are a handful when they are toddlers but the teenage years will be so much easier.”  No one said anything about what two, twelve year-olds might be like.  I can tell you what I have observed in our home.

If you are ALMOST a teenage boy in our house…

– You are getting man parts but you still have to pinch the end “of it” to talk like you have done since your diaper came off.

– No one else’s feelings matter if you don’t get what you want.  This includes your little brother who has caused all of the worlds injustices because he cannot reach the upper kitchen cabinets to help unload the dishwasher.

– You don’t know how to make jokes and the results are horrible, awkward moments for your mom when you tease a friend that you think they are checking out your mom or you think it’s funny to tell visiting family members about the time your mom had to bring you underwear to school because you “tooted” and you “released a hostage.”

– Your voice is getting as loud as a mans but you are still yelling at the frequency of a little kid.

– The entire world revolves you and your desires.  This means no one should ever have to clean up after themselves and your mom should be waiting by the stove with her oven mitt in one hand and a skillet in the other.

– You openly discuss what you have learned in health class and want to talk to your mom about sperm and “wet dreams” because you still tell your mom everything.  You scream at her things like, “I just want to know if this “SPERM” with the “FISH” that is going to shoot out of my pee-pee is a liquid or a solid?!”

– You get mad at your mom if she laughs or thinks anything is funny, (including the massive concern over the diameter of sperm.)

– Your parents are morons and you mumble under your breath that everyone is an “idiot” which doesn’t matter because your mom is one too and she wont notice.

– You have amnesia that you just got in trouble for calling people an “idiot” and act like you didn’t know your not supposed to.

– You scream that your parents are not letting you make your own decisions and you still sleep with an arsenal of stuffed animals.

I cannot wait until fall when our twins turn thirteen.  I hear it gets much easier.

Abbie, allthatmakesyou.com

Don’t mess with the Mama or her son who inherited Mama’s sense of humor…CRAP!

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This morning we had a particularly hard time. Big boys were wild. It was like a fraternity party. Running around, snapping each other with rubber bands and laugh/screaming in the car on the way to school. My regular requests to “tone it down” and quit yelling in small spaces was met with smart comments, eye rolling and then belly laughs at comments that weren’t meant for me to hear. I decided I would give them a taste of their own medicine.

Remember, I am not even allowed to say goodbye when they get out at the drop off line at school.

As soon as that door opened up under the school awning, and in front of the middle school students, I began yelling in a crazy muppet voice, “Bye, bye, bye, BYE!!!! Buuuuyyyyieeee!…”

Only one of the twins were out of the suburban and the other was half way out. The one that was out pivoted and face dove over his brother that was in process of exiting the suburban. I had a giant “twin meatball” rolled up and they somehow managed to shut the door.

Then the frantic, “What are you doing?! Are you crazy?!”
I’m holding up the whole line and kids are looking at me in my pjs in the drivers seat. I was invisible every day before when I never talked. No one ever noticed that I was in pajamas and was wearing yesterdays makeup.
I calmly say, “That is how you guys act. You never listen to me when I ask you to dial it down. Now get out and go to school. What I did was funny and every kid knows what it’s like having a parent. Now get out and have a good day.”

They open the door and this time I made sure they shut the door and I locked it while simultaneously rolling down all the windows. I yell, (again) “Bye-BYE! Bye!!!!!!!!! Bye!” They never listen to me the first time I tell them something either. They are run-walking down that sidewalk towards the school.

Flash forward to my awesome afternoon. I have spent the day getting a much needed root canal that was leading me towards a life in prison due to my very short temper and lack of patience with three boys. The kids are home and I am sharing the front porch with Mitchell.

He says, “You know that crap you pulled on Avery and I at school today?”

I say, (with a very coy smile) “Yes. Do you get my point?”

He says, “Yeah, you were right my friends did think it was funny…when I told them you drink ALCOHOL the whole way to school in the morning.”
Never mind root canal relief…I’m sure I will get a shortened sentence due to first offense.

I may be on the “No Chaperone” list after this field trip.

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This is the ridiculous story of how I may be banned forever from chaperoning any field trip at school again. It is the story of how when faced with someone’s probable MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT OF THEIIR LIFE I am standing with someone else’s son trying to determine whether to tuck her boobies back in or RUN...

This little corner of the Renaissance festival looked like an Ewok village from Star Wars. There were old-fashioned street vendor carts selling things scattered around. Some were open like the one in the above picture and some were closed like an old-fashioned wagon. This one in particular looked like the fortune-teller’s wagon in the Wizard of Oz. It had a little metal side porch for the person inside to get in and out. It had been raining fiercely and it was letting up. There was a woman who sold perfume in the porched wagon and had peeked her head out the window to see if it was safe to come outside. She then decided to step out onto the metal stoop of the wagon and held her hands to the sky, palms up to determine whether to venture out further.

Renaissance festivals are bawdy by nature and the costumes are made for every size and shape. It is a very “one size fits all” costume assortment. This woman was dressed like a peasant in a long brown dress with a large elastic boat neck and elastic waist. This woman was on the larger end, (I have to say it now so you understand later) she was at the largest end of the peasant dress spectrum. While this boy and I were bee lining it to the porta-potties we were also walking directly towards the bottom of the wagon stoop steps as the peasant lady decides to venture off the wagon and takes one step down and the back of her dress catches on the metal stoop.

The back of her dress catches but she continues the downward momentum but her center of gravity shifts and she is now going face down, feet up SPLAT into a mud puddle…but her dress stayed on the top of the porch. Well, most of it did. The neck was around her ankles. and she was face down in soppy, soft mud.

Do none of the people who work these festivals believe in bras? Is this the hidden underworld of the traveling renaissance people? Is the “Renaissance World” not about history but about women who don’t believe in wearing undergarments?!

I am standing there. This woman is laying there with one boobie off to the side and pointing straight at us and the other boobie is pointing down towards her feet and she lifts her head and spits out the mouthful of mud, (with the same shocked expression and manerism as if socked by a pie in the face) and I just realized this boy I am chaperoning is going home and telling his mom and dad that. “Mrs. ______ and I were alone at the field trip and we saw a naked woman.”

I am frozen. The boy is frozen. We are both frozen with eyebrows raised and eyeballs hanging out. Do I reach down and tuck her boobie that is closest to us under her? Or the other boobie that is further away? Do I lift her up and let her boobies hang where they are supposed to be for all to see? Her head is at our feet and she is looking at me.

I then realize this boy is now going home and telling his parents, “Mrs. ______ and I were alone at the field trip and we saw a naked woman and Mrs. _____ touched her boobies.“ I turn my head and look at this boy just as strangers began throwing their rain coats on the poor woman. Thank God. He and I walked briskly forward to the bathrooms not saying a word.

I failed. I am the girl who if there is a possibility to get a curling iron stuck in your hair it will stick in mine. Like stick “Lucille Ball style” on the top to your scalp and you don’t have to hold it because it is holding onto the roots and is perky like a cartoon curling iron.

Like a cartoon curling iron hidden under a towel turban until you unveil it to the hairdresser for help. Like so embarrassing you have to send flowers to the salon the next day as bribery hoping they forget your name.

Here is a naked peasant woman with boobies trying to run away from each other and I froze. Perhaps when I have to answer for this God will understand. Perhaps there is a “pass” for “curling iron girl” or “exploding egg girl”. For now I will have a moment of silence for “Peasant Woman” and say a thank you for the people who did come to her aid. I bet they never had rotten eggs explode on them and get stripped naked and hosed off in the front yard. I bet they never had to bribe a hair salon.

https://allthatmakesyou.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/exploding-eggs-and-nakedness/

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First half of this story from the day before

Chaperoning boys school field trip and the unthinkable… (allthatmakesyou.wordpress.com)

The exploding egg story

Exploding Eggs and Nakedness…Typical Sunday with Family

https://allthatmakesyou.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/exploding-eggs-and-nakedness/