The Awkward Files

When you have kids you can bet money on them embarrassing you throughout their childhood. They don’t do it on purpose but it is given in to this merry-go-round ride of motherhood. Now I have two boys who have no regard for what embarrassing antics they might put me through. After talking to my parents about certain things it came to my attention that I had no idea how many awkward moments have accumulated this winter alone. And the season isn’t even over yet! Hope you enjoy what has unfolded as much as my parents enjoyed laughing at my expense. I do understand why parents embarrass their teenagers on purpose. It’s only payback.

I am the person responsible for waking up my household in the morning. I make sure the kids are showered or bathed and ready for school. Our old alarm clock finally kicked the bucket so I’ve been using my iphone to wake me up. Well Little Brother thought it would be nice to shut off and delete every alarm ever set on my iphone, a sweet gesture from a three year old. Meaning the other day I woke up to the sound of a bus beeping at the neighbor’s. That meant I had ten minutes to get the boys dressed and to their bus stops. Well we didn’t make it and I didn’t have time to take a shower so I had to walk Little Brother into school with my hair looking a mess. It was somewhere in between Marge Simpson and something from the eighties. We can’t forget the toothpaste residue I had on the corners of my mouth. Yuck, what a slob I must have looked like. Yes, my own fault for letting Little Brother touch my phone. On the upside the kids weren’t late for school!

We had an appointment at the clinic and it was very quiet in the waiting room. I mean you could hear a pin drop quiet. When someone’s grandma asked Little Brother, “How are you doing young man?” With an ear-to-ear grin he replied, “I’m good but not mama, she pooped so much and it was so dinky.” Thanks son for the unexpected surprise. As if never having the luxury of privacy for the last eight years wasn’t surprising enough, now my kids are betraying me to total strangers. That moment of him sharing wasn’t as awkward as having to sit near the grossed out grandma and the rest of the people who heard him for twenty minutes.

Of course there is always the unexpected sneeze Big Brother has when he’s someplace new. It could be the new smells, food aromas, whatever. It’s not the sneeze that is the problem, it’s the projectile booger bomb that always seems to come my way like a mom seeking snot torpedo. I’ve learned to have a keen eye and try to hide or dodge out of the way but my cat like reflexes have turned into slow sloth speed. On numerous occasions I’ve been blessed with a booger bomb while at a nice restaurant or trying to shop. Nothing says I’m a mom like snot stains on your shirt or in one case *gag* on my face. If the sneeze hits me it’s game over.

Then there are the jokes the kids play on me. I’m glad they’ve inherited the trickster trait from me, but after watching their father and I play pranks and jokes on each other they’ve become a little too advanced for me. I can’t trust them to do any favors for me because it turns into a prank. Little Brother loves it so much that he jokes around with his teachers and when he had to get an evaluation done he teased the workers. He’s three, I see a career of stunts, pranks, and laughter in his future. I learned my lesson when I asked Big Brother to hand me my glass of water. He put salt in it! Yuck. Another time I asked Little Brother to pick up his two gogurt wrappers and when I walked away he shoved them into my boots. One day we set out to go grocery shopping and the boys thought it would be hilarious to do something to me. I didn’t notice until a kind fellow shopper showed me. Mind you this was a full hour after we had left the house. They took a pair of under wear and taped it to my pant leg. I don’t know when they did it because someone is always hanging onto my leg, but all they did was point at each other when they got busted. At least it was a pair of their underwear. They are too young to know the many uses for gorilla tape! Now I know why that roll ran out so fast. Big Brother has a bunch of money saved up, who knows, maybe his dad pays him to come up with these schemes.

Other highlights are my shirt being used as a Kleenex, doesn’t matter if I’m home or in public. No amount of timeouts or consequences seem to fase little brother. It’s about the worst habit besides picking his nose. There is no shame in his game. Tell him not to pick his nose and I turn into the human snot rag. The announcements about who farted and proudly claiming it for all to hear never gets old to them, even though I beg them not to share their bathroom humor. There is plenty more I could add but let’s be honest, when it comes to kids there is no end to the awkward files.