Adventures In Motherhood

As we begin our +24 hour ‘round the clock travel back in time, and back home to Colorado - leaving our daughter in Thailand and two sons in Seoul, Korea on another flight bound for the west coast - I can’t help but reflect on our extraordinary vacation and the top things I learned not to do in Thailand, in no particular order: 😎 1) Send our 18-year-old Thai-legal drinking-age son to the pool bar for a bucket of three beers in Phuket.   What were we thinking? He came back about twenty minutes later with two beers (one for himself and one for his 20-year-old brother), both of which they were already sipping.  “Where’s the beer dad and mom planned to share?” I asked, laughing.  “I already drank it at the bar,” he replied, “while baby boy here was having his mango smoothie.” He said, pointing at his 15-year-old younger brother. Bruh. We didn’t think he needed specific instructions to bring a beer back to his parents, who paid. I knew something didn’t add up wh...

I asked for it. Afterall, we expected him to secure a job by age 15, to be organized and excel at his studies, and we even piled on home responsibilities like trash, yard work and cleaning his toilet. Then, to top it off, we moved half-way across the country after his high school graduation with our youngest two children, leaving he and his older sister to fend for themselves in college on the west coast. Nevertheless, I was shell-shocked when my son called the last week of his freshman year of college to level the news. "Mom, I want to stay in Oregon this summer," he said. "I never wanted to move to Colorado anyway and I have a job lifeguarding again making over $21/hour, 40 hours a week," he continued, as if it’d been rehearsed. I held my breath, in shock. Or not in shock; I'm not sure what reaction I had other than my sheer will not to overreact. Truth is, my parents did the same thing to me, moving my senior year of high school and then forcing me to come ho...

We pressed delete on endless scrolling this summer and now the Surgeon General has our back.  Instagram, Tik Tok, Reddit, YouTube, endlessly scrolling, his head hunched over staring at his Iphone screen, this was not the 'epic' summer I wanted for my 17-year-old son! Having purchased his own Iphone for his 13th birthday during the pandemic, our son was addicted to the dopamine hits his technology promised without fail.  As parents, we had tried to ' wait til 8th ' with our third child as we had our older two, though the pandemic lockdown just before his April birthday softened our stance. We hoped the Iphone would provide a virtual social media lifeline to his friends that his Tracfone flip phone couldn't replicate. Fast forward four years and we had a cell phone junkie with a Pavlovian response when his Iphone lit up.  Averaging 200+ pickups a day, it pained me to see my son reach into his pocket for his Iphone, at the risk of boredom, walking from the car to the b...

I let him hit the curb. Hard. I braced myself for impact and it felt good. I'm not sure I've read 'allow your kid to crash the car' in any parenting books, but I'm here to say I finally got his attention. He was driving me crazy! If I had a dollar for every time my 15-year-old expert with the driver's permit said, "I know how to drive MOM," I'd be able to pay for a full tank of inflation-priced fuel for my minivan. Regardless of his expertise, I insist on silence in the car so he can focus, and I can breathe. Unfortunately, that night, there was no greater distraction than two brothers in the backseat begging to turn on the rap music. We had gone out to dinner in a Friday night attempt to steal some family conversation that didn't consist of bathroom banter while my husband was out of town. I was at my wits end from the testosterone overload of parenting three teen boys. Bruh.  Rap music took center stage after devouring the bread and first rou...

Gone are the days of kitchen closings for dinner table behavior that belongs in the bathroom! We have now achieved Festivus, for the rest of us parenting teens. The ‘Seinfeld’ holiday includes the ‘airing of grievances’ during the Festivus meal where each person tells everyone else all the ways they have disappointed them over the past year. Among our three sons, this airing of grievances has surpassed the airing of gas to make your brother laugh.  I don't recall many sit-down meals in my family of four growing up, either because we ate meals on t.v. trays or the ridicule usurped positive memories. The responsibility of parenting dinner time discussion has proven equally challenging when ridicule is forbidden and plates are emptied faster than dog dishes. Over the past decade we've tried sharing highs and lows, emotions on the 'feelings wheel', compliments, and vocabulary games like 'Wild Words'.  Lately the sharing of highs and lows has turned into who can shar...

I thought I'd done everything to protect my kids during the pandemic, from quarantine, to vaccinations and face masks, until Santa came to town. Apparently he wanted to offer vaccinated children who were dating an additional barrier against infection this year!  It was 7 am on the nose Christmas morning and the kids were throwing Schnoodles on us in bed. Like the rousing cup of coffee every parent needs, it was pitch black outside and I could hardly believe it was morning. Grabbing our robes, we hustled downstairs before we missed the destruction of stockings and gift wrappings. Regardless of age, our children were equally excited by the Pez dispensers, Lifesavers and foil wrapped Santas in their stockings, and eager to find out which Schnoodle earned a lump of coal for puking on the carpet or stealing someone's dinner off the table. Board games were to be expected, as Santa enjoys 'Forced Family Fun' as much as we do as parents, despite the teens; but it was the last b...