It's a Mom blog. Whatevs, I'm still cool.

I am, according to myself, a very good Mother.

I think proof enough is that my son wanted to marry me for the first 5 years of his life. Now, he wants to marry his sister. Whom I have also raised impeccably. You may think that's gross and weird but you'd be wrong. It's just complimentary and indicative of perfect parenting.

My perfect parenting advice is not to spank. I don't know of any kids that got spanked and didn't end up listening to Korn, fornicating before 14, and cutting the legs off of a homeless cat.

I didn't get spanked and I ran over my bible so people would think I was even awesomer than I actually was.

Adrian has never and will never need anything close to a spanking. If he does something moderately wrong, like laughing too happily or saying "I love everybody" too loud, I can ask him politely to stop and he will end up apologizing in the fetal position and complimenting me for an hour. It's very hard to ever be anything but pleasant to him because he punishes himself so much better than I ever could.

Ellis, on the other hand, is different. Getting in trouble aint no thang for her. She'll just look me right in the eyes and say "k" after I have just given her a monologue of the importance of not taking her off her diaper to throw at the dog after he steals the cookie she wasn't allowed to be eating anyway.

Adrian has a completely illogical fear of flushing the toilet. He thinks the worst thing that can happen to a human being is to flush a toilet and for the water to come overflowing instead of going down the hole. However, we have thoroughly explained to him that if that happens, Dad or I will kill the poop monster with the plunger and he won't get in trouble. But, seriously,  FLUSH THE DAMN TOILET.

I don't care how much you love your kids, their day-old Browns floating in the superbowl and stinking up the east side of the house for the third time this week will make you reconsider swatting some offspring-ass.

We tried politely requesting, I promise. Then we had a sit-down talk. Then we told him he would lose 10 minutes off his bedtime. I thought the mere threat of this would be enough. But no, I had to enforce this new law last night to keep his little bowel movement-having self up to code.

I happened to enforce this on the same evening that I decided to also enforce the new law,  "You and your sibling can't take a bath together anymore because your genitals are different and it's getting weird". Adrian was excited but Ellis was ready to trade me in for one of the moms on Intervention.

She had already had her bath and was in her pajamas when she realized Adrian was getting into the bathtub. She screamed with glee and delight and I, of course, had to stamp it out like the ogre that I am.

Ellis: Baaaath! Bubba! Yayyyyyy!

Ellis: (smiles and takes off pants)

Mary: No, little snickerdoodle angel. We already took a bath. This is Bubba's bath.

Ellis: Oh no you fucking didn't!

(this was said as more of a facial expression than actual verbal communication)

Then we had a meltdown. It's hard to explain to a 2 year old about siblings and awkward genitals so I just tried to calm her down by giving her candy. Just kidding.

I pulled her out of the bathroom and shut the door and asked her to calm down and take a deep breath. She did, and stared at me with a request of a reasonable explanation of why I had lost my damn mind.


Mary: Bubba is too bi-
Ellis: waaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Mary: Deep breath, Ellis. You need to listen to me.

Ellis: K (deep breath)

Mary: Bubba is too big to take a bath with someone else. He needs more room. It's going to be hard at first, but we'll find more ways to make your bath fun, okay?"

Ellis: K. (happy) Bath.

Mary: Okay, you stay here and watch The Sopranos while I go clean up dinner.

2 minutes later, Adrian sprints out with wet hair, laughing hysterically and screaming "Look at Ellis!" over and over again.

Ellis has removed her clothes, except she looks like a velicoraptor caught in a net the way her shirt is stuck around her neck and pulling her arm in an opposite direction. She has both her legs stuck in one side of her pull-up. She is joyfully yelling "bath" and "bubba".

I grab her and take her to her room, where I calmly put her clothes back on and alternate asking her to take deep breaths and trying to explain why I am being so horrible and unattractive.

That's when she screams noooo like an emo pre-teen and yanks her Elmo pants out of my hands and swings them at my face.

That's when she got put in time out.

As I went to clean up the kid's bathtub messes, I noticed an awesome turd floating in the toilet. That's when Adrian lost 10 minutes and subsequently bawled like I had just kicked his Guinea pig into a field of hungry eagles.

Ellis was taken out of time out after an apology and a lengthy explanation she could not possible understand, and she went to join her brother in the living room.

I went to my bedroom and took 114 deep breaths, took some IB profen, and went back out to make bedtime snacks and good decisions.




This is what I found.

Apparently, camaraderie is highly enlightened after going through such horror. I can't believe they even made it up and to school today, knowing the traumatic experiences they had last night.