The apple doesn't fall far...

When it was time for my mom to take me shopping for a training bra, I really didn't know what to expect. And I guess my mom didn't either. We found a suitable selection and off I went into the dressing room. I remember looking at the contraption in my hand - all straps and clasps and thinking that this was for the birds. I finally got it strapped to my body and told Mom I didn't think that it fit. She asked to come in and I let her. Thus was born one of my most embarrassing moments. I had the bra upside down. Straps below my arm pits and the triangular cups (they aren't really cups in a training bra) inverted and pointing toward the floor. My mom isn't the mom who stops and assesses and says in a soothing tone, "No, sweetie, let's try this again." My mom laughed. Loud. Across-Dillard's-department-store loud.

Tonight, I was planning to take pictures of my new yard helper. He had stolen his big brother's Transformers helmet and was pushing his bubble mower around. I walked inside to get the camera and when I came out, he had taken the helmet off and put it back on. Please enjoy. And feel free to laugh. I did. Across-the-neighborhood loud.

My scary Mom

I'm going to get killed for the title of this post. And the picture. This is the first of many posts to come about my mom. Why? Because she's worth it!!! (Mom, please stop reading at this point).

Okay, the real deal is that my mom is stand-up comic fodder. I have so many good lines and stories about my scary mom that, well, it just needs to be shared. You are asking, "But, Dori, what about your Dad?" Believe me, there are Dad stories coming, too. But, like a really good story, we need to build the characters. We'll start with Mom.

I once described my mom by saying, "She wears Army boots." I think that's the first time I realized that making fun of my mom would get me laughs. Interestingly, my mom spent most of my life in high heels. She's got killer legs and army boots would have been a shame. But, you get my drift. You must already have a small picture building in your mind.

The real way to describe my Mom is to say she's Diane Chambers from Cheers. No, I'm not kidding. It's like they took my mom, ever-so-slightly exaggerated her, and threw her into prime time for us all to marvel at.

She corrects my English; "What (and she always manages to pronounce the 'h'), not wut, Dori..."
She's read the dictionary for fun...twice. I thought I'd stump her once by asking her to spell Tchopotoulis (as in the river in New Orleans, not EVEN a real word), but guess who was the fool??
Although she was raised in East Texas, she has no accent whatsoever. Almost like a robot...
She plans her driving trips to the minute. Seriously, her itineraries will show that she's leaving Dallas at 8:00am and arriving in Arlington at 8:42. And she arrives at 8:42. Sometimes I wonder if she purposefully drives faster or slower to maintain this impeccable record.

This woman managed to raise a daughter who's been likened to Ellen DeGeneres and Dharma. I personally don't know how we managed to become best friends. I'm an attention black hole and she's an opinionated wall-flower.

Anyway, welcome to a glimpse of my mom. I hope this serves as a good jumping in point for stories to come.

I took this picture this past weekend - you can see how scary she is. You might also note that she has on two pair of glasses. That is a post for another day.



Here's a picture of her when she's not so scary. My dad is kryptonite to her scariness. And, you can see that she's beautiful and that I'm totally full-of-it. But that won't stop me from posting.



BTW - she will probably comment that it only takes 37 minutes to get from Dallas to Arlington...

Also, BTW - my kids don't think she's scary at all.

Prime Real Estate

I have always been amazed at how a 2-year-old's little body can take up an ENTIRE queen bed. When ours sleeps with us, I wake up clinging to 2 1/2 inches of mattress. I hang precariously over the edge, and one wrong move will land me on the floor where the Stegosaurus figure he had in his hand when he crawled into our bed waits for me like a death trap. Last night,I finally witness his artistry as I walked into my bedroom to discover our stowaway.

Notice the arm extension and the angle of the body creating the maximum distance. Really, I can only give this position a 8.0. It would have been a 10.0, but as you can see, he didn't have full big-toe extension for maximum length. Also, the right arm could have been a little straighter. He's done better..

How you know you are really, really pregnant

My 2-year-old, who I'll refer to as Mr. Honesty, has a new habit of using the word 'too.'

He says it all day.
"Is too hot?" - to any food on his tray
"Is too cold?" - to any drink handed to him
"I'ne too big?" - to me after I got on to him for riding the cat

So, this morning as I'm getting ready for the day, I was standing in my bedroom in my undies. Mr. Honesty comes trotting into the room and stops cold in front of me.

"Wha'sat?" he asks, poking me in the belly-button.
"That's mama's belly button." I reply.
"Tha's your belly?" he asks, moving his hands to either side of my belly button.
"Yes, that's mama's belly." I reply.
"Is too big?" he asks, nodding his head and looking up at me with his earnest blue eyes...

Mr. Honesty and Mom's belly

Maybe we should quest for Bigfoot...

Rarely does Chad obtain photographic evidence of my lack-o-common sense. This is one such occasion. It is worth telling just for the creepiness of it. Warning to my Uncle Mike, you WILL NOT like this story nor the aforementioned photographs.

We had a wonderful trip together to Caddo Lake. We left the kids with other people and stayed in a little cabin on the water. We spent two days floating, fishing, reading, and talking on the lake. I had this really neat idea for a picture. I was going to get between the trunks of two cypress trees and hold myself there while Chad took a picture. I thought the kids would like the goofy picture of Mom. Most of the cypress trees grow out of the water in gently sloping pairs. Chad kept telling me it was a bad idea. He sited many good reasons; spiders falling from moss, gators (which I told him were so rare that we'd never see one), falling and hurting myself, the fact that I was pregnant and didn't need to be crawling around wet tree stumps in a swamp, etc.

We finally reached a compromise. If we found a spot that looked safe and met his approval, he would take the picture for me. This became my quest. And soon enough, I found it. A perfectly paired set of trunks coming out of the water - one with a foot-sized knot on it. The knot would hold me until I was ready for the shot. I said, "Turn around, there's the spot!" Chad replied, "That would be a good spot except for the huge spider."

Sidenote - Chad and spiders have a very strange relationship. They bite him as often as mosquitoes bite most people. I thought at this point that the word 'HUGE' was another over-exaggeration on Chad's part born out of his fear of spiders.

I balked, rolled my eyes, and asked him to show me the HUGE spider. When he turned the boat around and came back to the tree, this was on that perfect foot rest of a knot:




Oh, and remember that gator we would never see?????

Rites of Passage

We have a new piece of furniture. And hopefully with his new addition, my husband and I will have ransomed our own bed back from the toddler tyrant. We went to Toy R Us last night to look at toddler beds and Chad was mesmerized with the race car beds. I tried to point out the less-expensive, more aesthetic wooden toddler beds. Never taking his glazed and perhaps slightly teary eyes off the plastic siren, he responded dreamily that he'd always wanted one of these when he was a kid.

He allowed me to go home and research the bed. I found one locally on craigslist.com (75 bucks!!!). So, I got a good deal, fulfilled my husbands long-lost, childhood desire (please don't worry excessively about him as he's an only child, and believe me - was not deprived), and further cemented my place as the world's best mom.

My work is done!



Update:
Apparently, the car was not sporty enough.


adding his own stickers

whose bed is it again? I hope I didn't just lose my husband to his childhood dream...

GPS

Sometimes, I believe my kids see God more clearly than I.

In the car the other day, my two oldest asked me if we could listen to country music. I have a Rascal Flatts CD on my iPod, so I put it on. When Bless the Broken Road came on, my oldest started asking me questions about the lyrics. He's a 'lyrics guy'. Most of the song is a metaphor, so we discussed what it meant when the singer says he started out and lost his way and that those who broke his heart were like northern stars leading him to his true love.

This is like being in white water rapids wearing my 2-year-old's floaties for me. I'm divorced from their dad and remarried to Chad - you can see how careful I have to be about labeling past relationships as 'mistakes.'

Anyway, we were on the topic of losing your way and I thought it was a good opportunity to bring God into the conversation. I was telling them that God wants what's best for us and that if they kept praying and talking with God and growing in that relationship, they'd end up with the love of their lives - the one that God meant for them, i.e., the desire of their heart. But, I also wanted them to know that God can work in our experiences even when we aren't walking on the path that he originally intended us to travel. We were talking about our own paths and God's path when my 9-year-old said this:

"So, God is like a GPS. If you get off-course, he can just re-route you."

Star Wars Mania

When I was around 8, I had a Barbie Dreamhouse. I didn't have a single Barbie, but I had the Barbie Dreamhouse. That's where my Star Wars figures lived. That's how much I loved them. I still remember the day our poodle chewed the head off of Darth Vadar. I found the body in the front yard, cordoned off the area, created a grid, and searched for his head until dinner. I never recovered it. Burning the plastic Lord Vadar in the back yard on a pyre of oleander sticks seemed only appropriate.

Recently, I bought my two older boys Lego Star Wars for the Wii. Little did I know the effects it would have. The game loosely follows the movies - there are cut scenes once you've completed your mission. The same characters die at the same intervals. So, the boys thought they were quite the Star Wars experts. Obviously, I needed to school them. We set out to watch all 6 movies; and now - my kids are schooling me.

For instance, I didn't know the names of all the bounty hunters Jaba sent out after Han Solo. But, after my oldest introduced me to Wookieepedia.com, I'm quite learned (MD, that's for you). I thought the "alien in the orange suit" was just a bounty hunter. Who knew he was Bossk (which means 'devours his prey' in Dosh), a Trandoshan bounty hunter...

Now, my kids ask me questions I'm ill-prepared to answer. Like, "Mom, if Anakin had never gone bad and he had grown to fight the Emperor, would he have won? I mean, Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan knew that his midi-chlorian count was off the charts." I answered with all the pompousness I could muster. Put your best monocle-on-the-eye face on and speak with a British accent, "According to the prophesy, Anakin was the chosen one, so he would have eventually beaten the Emperor and returned peace to the galaxy." I'm not sure of the answer, but the absolute cockiness of it gave them satisfaction. I get 10-20 of these questions a DAY.

Could I have been this obnoxious as a Star Wars fan when I was 8?
Two words...oleander pyre.

I gave in...

I have really funny kids. I do. You can ask people who know them. At least, I think they'll tell you that they are funny. Either that, or I have the greatest friends on earth - who all laugh appreciatively at the stories. I like the idea of blogging where my grandmother and mom can come out and catch up on said funny stories without having to brave MySpace (*gasp*). Plus, I can't convince my husband that MySpace isn't a dating website.

So, here I am in a safe zone - ready to share these really funny stories. And probably some pictures to go along.

This is fun.