TheMommyBlog

We’ve straightened our stockings, checked teeth for spinach, and smelled breath in cupped hands. I think we’re okay. Big thanks as always, to Joelle of Moxie Design Studios, with whom I’ve been working for what seems like centuries. But the good centuries, like the eighteen hundreds in France, or Elizabeth’s Golden Age, whenever that was, and not when they were at war with Spain.

Oh! And before you forget, Mother’s Day is this Sunday!

Get Mom a copy of my heartbreaking work of staggering genius, Mommy Confidential: Adventures from the Wonderbelly of Motherhood from Amazon. They have quickie shipping! *wink*. My mom has several copies, and she’s read them all. True story.

“...Funny and well-written. The world has been in need of a maternal humorist since Erma Bombeck died.” –Lulu.com Radio

“Every Mommy’s Best Girlfriend: Reading Melinda Roberts’ new book is like spending an evening with your best girlfriends. [She reveals] the truly tender, life-altering, and heartbreaking moments of motherhood in a way that no other book on the subject does. And Roberts is not just funny ha-ha. She’s I-can’t-breathe-I’m-laughing- so-hard funny.” –A. Sydow

So come back and see me! I’ve got the blender on!

Hang tight, me hearties, we’re launching a new site. I don’t even know if this is going up. But! Keep coming back, because it’s going to be fun. I just love surprises!

Oh hey! We’re live!! Welcome!

My mom raised us in as gender-neutral a household possible given being a divorced mom to a boy and a girl born twelve months apart. See? That's still funny to me. I chuckle.

Never one to let biological determinism taint my Weltanschauung, I set about raising my children the same way. The first flags went up as the boys both became mobile, and then a whole field of flags flew up once our daughter was born. They liked all the same things, but viewed them verrrry differently. According to sex, I must wearily admit, as another naive parent falls victim to belief in nurture over nature.

Give my daughter a sandwich, and she will open and close a corner, making kissing sounds. Give one of the boys the same sandwich, and he will chew it into the shape of a gun and wipe out the entire household.

At least there's the public school system, ready to teach broader ideals, such as Healthy Choices. I'm dying over their Healthy Choices. They dutifully spit out the exercises, essays, drawings, and principles, and then come up with something out of a NEVER, EVER DO THIS manual.

I give you my daughter, making Healthy Choices by exercising with her jump rope, drinking lemonade, and wearing a helmet while riding her skateboard. All in a hoop-skirted, puffy-sleeved, eighteenth-century ball gown.

I don't even have the energy to go into why this is so bad but if you've been around a while, you'll see the overall pattern. You know, the one that looks like a giant turd.

I was sitting at the curb for school pickup today and was the first car in line–the one you'd have to turn in front of to enter the school parking lot–when a very nice lady came around in her large black SUV and took my bumper off.

Two of the parents who were there the last time that happened were there again today, slack-jawed. Both parents wondered how I could be so cursed–they've each known me for years-and how I was I ever going to pull out of this spiral. The kids were full of questions and all got out to gape at the headlight hanging by a wire. I started to cry. Stupid crying.

When we got home, all three children hugged me and said they were sorry something else happened. Logan asked when I would be getting paid. Daphne brought me her bunny to hold.

After a while, she crawled into my lap and said, "At least your face isn't so red anymore, and I can tell you're starting to calm down."

Dylan touched a finger to my face. "I can still see a tear."