Did you hear about Virginia and their safe haven law being abused when parents of teens dropped their bad teenagers off at an emergency room?

Well, I just read a hilarious blog post on Bern This, You Always Have Options about how Nebraska is willing to take any child for any reason from anywhere.

Is this a repeat mistake? You know, like when the United States and Australia was viewed as the “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” for the criminals and ex-cons of England? Remember how that got totally out of control and before long they were creating their own wild, wild west and refusing British Rule?

Good luck Nebraska.

Instead of threatening a “time out,” which lately has been lacking effective authority, I’m switching to, “You want me to drop you off in Nebraska?”

I would probably use far more expletives around my children if my husband didn’t crap his pants every freaking time and correct me as if I am the “naughty” child and he the parent.

Susie-Do lets her kid say “oh shit,” my husband would flip his wig. Somehow her kid knows not to say it in public. Some people are very touchy about cussing or potty mouth.

Sometimes an expletive is just plain called for.

I’ve discovered that my self-censorship in my everyday life has resulted in my behaving as though I have curse-word turrets syndrome at my book club.

Because I can.

It’s like I hold it in all month and every curse word I’ve held back comes gushing forward during that singular evening with my adult girlfriends. They just laugh hysterically (and probably wonder what I’m like at home).

It’s an indescribable pleasure to let the F-Word fly freely.

The last 24 hrs. . . .

ZAAAACK! I needed that cocoa!

Mama, my bum hurts.

Yeah, Cinnamon burns.

Zackary! I MADE that bread. Why would you smoosh your favorite bread in the carpet?

Zacky!! You didn’t eat any of those pills did you? Open your mouth!

Is that yours Zack? Daddy isn’t going to like you taking all his stuff off his shelf.

Didn’t I JUST tell you not to get up there and not to play with vitamins? We must be hard of learning today - you and me both!

A whole bottle of syrup Zack!

The Sharpie on his sister’s furniture was the. last. straw. Zack went to bed without dinner, after daddy got M-A-D!

I think the poor boy is under-stimulated (bored) with me at home. He’s gets in a lot less trouble on the days he goes to school.

Photos Source: Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me

“Mrs. Clinton’s recent candidacy was a moment of reckoning for women of her generation, who treated her run as a mirror in which to examine their own lives. With Ms. Palin’s entry into the field, a younger generation of women have picked up that mirror, using her candidacy to address the question of just how demanding a job a mother with such intense family obligations should tackle.”

An interesting story in The New York Times, about what Sarah Palin represents to women: A New Twist in the Debate on Mothers.

Conservative women, who have traditionally criticized women for working, are super-excited about Sarah Palin being a mother of 5 and being a potential Vice President.

Feminist working mothers are questioning whether Sarah Palin can pull off being a good mother and be Vice President.

I’m so confused.

Image source: www.johnmccain.com

If you’re a regular reader of Blog Fabulous you’ve likely read a comment left by my friend Rebecca. She’s the lawyer with the progressive husband Brett, also a lawyer. She’s coincidentally the one who recommended Hanky Pank Thongs, which I reviewed today. Hopefully, she took my advice about Hanes mens briefs for post-partum comfort. Steal Brett’s britches!

Well, she gave birth to Anders last week, a boy. But, he had to go back to the hospital for jaundice.

They’re home now. Hopefully for good. He’s a healthy baby boy and I have no idea who much he weighed.

Congratulations Rebecca & Brett! We’ll expect to hear a lot from you now that you’ll be home on maternity leave with “nothing to do all day.” LOL.

Images Source: Rebecca’s Facebook.

I hear mothers talk about how sacrifice is “worth it” for their kids. I especially hear this if mother’s have given up something valuable - economic independence, dreams, ambitions, time, goals, careers, autonomy, hobbies, interests, etc.

When did I - as a human being - lose my inherent value? Was it when I stopped being the child so worthy of my mother’s sacrifice? Or was it when I became the mother, expected to sacrifice everything for my children, and then say, “it’s worth it?” Or was it when I turned 18 and stopped being a legal child?

I’m just curious how one human being has elevated value over another - children over mothers specifically - but then somehow they grow out of it?

Dear Kate Gosselin,

I’m a huge fan (I watch for you, not for the kids) and I think you really should be Time’s Person of the Year, as I suggested and you should win an Emmy because you’re have about the only show on TV I can still watch with my kids.

After the most recent cupcake episode where you very tensely said you didn’t want the kids to put the frosting on so they wouldn’t get dirty . . . well, I want to offer you a little advice about dirty kids. Not because I think you should be perfect - I prefer flawed people - but because you’ll enjoy motherhood more and for sure the kids will enjoy childhood more.

THIS is what a dirty kid looks like.

Now in the face of this you have two choices. One is to discipline them good so they never even think about getting dirty again, and the other is to laugh and throw some mud back at them.

Now, being realistic about your obvious anxiety and discomfort in the face of disorganization, messes, and dirt, I realize a mud fight with the twins and sextuplets is probably out of the question.

However, the beauty of children is that they - and their clothes - are WASHABLE.

This is my friend OxyClean. I regularly have a child’s clothing soaking in it for a week. I’m a much lazier housekeeper than you, I don’t stain treat and I don’t scrub, if a week in OxyClean doesn’t do the trick, then I’m not above throwing it out. But, it’s good stuff - Ainsley was wearing her favorite white outfit during our spontaneous mudfight and it came clean.

There’s no way on God’s Green Earth that I would want to do laundry for 10 people, and you obviously deserve the Good Housekeeping Award for keeping a house of 10 people presentable enough to be on TV every day.

But, dirty and messy kids really isn’t the end of the world.

It can be pretty fun.

Image Source: Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me

I was at a social event the other day and there was a New Mommy.

Anther woman, who’s youngest child is around 11 or so, says to New Mommy as she puts a itty-bitty blankie over the infant’s legs, You know you’re not supposed to keep them too warm, and she turned to me with a knowing grin and WINKED.

There was this moment when I thought, OMG! Is she screwing with New Mommy for FUN?

You know as a new mother it doesn’t matter where you go or who you surround yourself with, there are more experienced mothers there who will tell you you’re doing it wrong. You know - to be helpful. Right? I mean, why else would they follow you around muttering conflicting advice like:

Make sure to swaddle them tight. Don’t swaddle them so tight. Don’t get the water too hot. No one likes a bath in cold water. Babies like cold milk. Don’t microwave the bottle. Don’t burp them so hard. You really have to whop them to get the burp up. Don’t let them sleep on their backs. Babies sleep best on their backs. Put socks on their feet. Babies overheat if you overdress them. The baby’s hungry. Don’t overfeed the baby.

Did I get hazed in the Sorority of Motherhood? I wondered.

Is that what we do to women? We know it doesn’t really make much of a difference whether the infant gets a blanket or not, but we follow the mother around preying on her new constant companion anxiety, telling her we think she’s screwing it up?

I had a similar moment when after I’d said “I Do” the first time I got married and I realized how completely like hell marriage can be.

I looked around at all the knowing looks and chuckles, from more experienced wives, and I realized - You KNEW everything in all those fairy tales were a big fat lie and you perpetuated it on me anyway! AND you think it’s hilarious!

It was only AFTER I was stuck that they would speak candidly and honestly about how difficult and trying marriage is - how it would suck the life out of you if you didn’t develop defenses. I thought it was like joining a Sisterhood of Wives - they don’t share any of their coded truths and secret passwords until you’re already screwed.

My advice to my pregnant friend Rebecca - tell em to F#$& off when they come after you.

In the same vein as the Normal Breasts Gallery, which I wrote about earlier this week on both Blog Fabulous and Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me, we have The Shape of a Mother.

Both galleries are beautiful and artful acts of passive resistance to the media message “You’re not good enough.”

Real mothers have boldly photographed their own bodies and posted them on the website to document what mothers’ bodies really look like. They also share how they feel about these new Mommy Bodies.

This new type of media is revolutionary because it bonds women together in a way that’s difficult to articulate.

Passive Resistance.

It’s radical that women are responding to a constant deluge of media images of our bodies, selling an absurd fictional ideal, with images of the truth.

Image Source: Twins: The Aftermath on The Shape of a Mother.

I’m in the middle of FEMININE MISTAKE, THE: ARE WE GIVING UP TOO MUCH?
Leslie Bennetts, the author brings up the idea that, as she puts is, motherhood is a Temp Job.

Being a mom is a temp job, and if you take that temp job and become completely dependent on your spouse, that makes you so vulnerable,” says Sylvia Law on page 100. The odds that your spouse will die or fall in love with a younger woman or have a midlife crisis are pretty good. Of course you can’t depend on a guy - just read the divorce statistics.

Motherhood is a vital temp job - vital to society, vital to the family, vital to women and vital to children - but a temp job nonetheless.

She says it’s ludicrous for women to give up their entire careers and professional ambition for this 20 year temp job when it’s unnecessary and puts women’s financial security at risk.

While you’re a full-time mother for a good chunk of time, she argues, you have a profession for much longer.

Women shouldn’t be giving up a validating and exciting 40-50 year career for a temp job, when they can have both.

Kids. Grow. Up.

People. Get. Divorced.

Our job is to get them to grow up so they leave home. (If your kid is still in the basement at 40, that’s failure at your mothering job. If your daughter and her three kids are still in your basement, that’s failure at your mothering job.) We’re here to raise independent adults who contribute to society.

If we are successful, we are no longer needed. We’ll still have a function as mothers, but it won’t be enough to build a purpose and an identity around. In fact, many women find that it’s not enough to build their identity around in the first place when the children are still young or once their children are in school.

Women who have shed all identities other than mother, even if they remain married and financially viable, suffer from an identity crisis when children leave and their purpose is gone.

What do YOU think?