A Pie in the Face For Ben's Buddies

Last year around this time, I wrote a post telling you all about my nephew Ben being diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.  In the past year, my sister has gone through the heartbreak and the grief of learning what was in store for her son and her family.  She went through a bit of depression about it, because it wouldn't have been normal for her not to have gone through it.  She's better now and she and her husband have accepted their reality and faced this thing head on.  They attended a conference for Muscular Dystrophy this summer in Chicago, helped to raise money through Run for Our Sons and have taken Ben to the best doctor in the country for his disease.  My friends and family are constantly asking me about Ben and how he is doing.  The answer for that right now is, he is fine.  He is delayed, sure, but right now he is a normal kid.  He can't keep up with other kids his age, but he does his best and most people wouldn't realize there is something wrong. Not yet. The disease won't really start to effect him for another 4 years or so.  Hopefully with the steroids he's on now, even longer.  My sister is hoping that there will be new treatments soon, and if there are, Ben is a good candidate since he is still so young, and the disease hasn't had a chance to completely get to him yet.

Of course in order to find new treatments there has to be research and testing.  In order to have research and testing there has to be money.  It always comes back to the damn money.  If only everyone had Bill Gates money in the bank.  Unfortunately, 99.9% of us don't.  So in order to get money for things like this we fund raise.  This Sunday night is the MDA telethon on ABC.  Looks like it might be quite entertaining this year, so check it out and  pick up the phone and donate a few bucks.  OR....

I know by this point all of you have seen the ice bucket challenge.  I mean you have to be living under a rock to NOT see it.  I know others have come up with different challenges now for different charities.  My sister, Beth, came up with this one for MDA.  Personally I think it's better than the ice bucket challenge because you're not wasting water(especially if you live in drought land SoCal like me) and it's way funnier. Plus it's not dangerous.  Have you seen some of the ice bucket challenges gone wrong?  Anyway- it's called the Pie in the Face challenge.  Fairly easy and the same concept as the ice bucket.  Get a disposable pie plate, fill it with cool whip and have someone smash it in your face.  Make sure to nominate other people to take the challenge for MDA, post on Facebook and go donate to Ben's Buddies for Muscular Dystrophy.  I'm posting the three my girls did last week.  You can hear from all our giggles how much fun we had.  And oh poor Georgia!

See?  Funny!  So I encourage all of my readers out there to share this post on your FB page and then go do the challenge yourself.  I officially challenge anyone who reads this post to do the Pie in the Face challenge for Ben's Buddies and MDA.  Let's make this thing bigger than cold water being splashed on people and raise just at much money as that cold water did for ALS.

Those Damn Four Letter Words!

Now that we are back to school, we are doing our best to get into the routine in the morning.  Usually the girls are good the first week and then they backslide in the subsequent weeks, but it has been a rush every morning since Monday.  I'm thinking we may need to start at 5AM soon.

Yesterday morning, the girls were getting ready to brush their teeth when Georgia brought me her toothbrush and said,

"I need a new toothbrush."

"Ok," I said, " I will get you new one the next time I'm at Target."  Apparently she meant she wanted a new tooth brush right THEN.

"Look at this one!" She yelled.  "It's all messed up." She help it for me to examine.

"Yeah, that's because you always chew on it," I explained.

"But it's all pushed down!" She protested.

"Georgia, I see that," I told her.  "Stop chewing on it and they won't get like that anymore."

"But I need a new one, Mommy!!"

"Listen," I said, summoning the very little patience I had at that point.  "You have to leave for school in 10 minutes.  Can I get you a new toothbrush and have you brush your teeth in that time?"

"No," she admitted.

"Then I will get you a new one today at Target and you will have it for tomorrow, OK?"

"Ooookkaayyy..." she finally agreed.

She huffed her way back to the bathroom, aggravated with me.   Lana was already in there brushing her teeth and Georgia wanted to let Lana know,

"I am so PISSED OFF right now!!!"

As a parent, when you hear your kid say a bad word a few things happen.  First you think-did I just hear her say that?  Then when you realize that is exactly what you heard you think-just where in the HELL did she hear that FUCKING word?  Then you realize you just answered your own question.  Lastly, you fight the urge to just start laughing, because really, it is pretty damn funny when you hear a six your old say a bad word, especially in such a perfect context.  However, I try to be a good parent and although I apparently let bad words fly out of my mouth for them to hear from time to time, I don't want them saying those words themselves.  I know, I know-do as I say blah blah.  But sometimes I like to swear and I forget that they might be listening to me.  I'm working on it, OK!  

From the living room I yelled, "Georgia!  What did you just say??!"

"Ummmm....." was all I heard from her.  She knew she was busted and wasn't sure how to back out of it.  I walked in to the bathroom and asked her again.  

"Nothing..." she tried.  

"Oh no!" I told her.  "You said a bad word.  Where did you hear that?"

"From you," she replied without missing a beat.  She couldn't have even thought about it for a minute?  Give the illusion she may have heard it from another source?  I know it's something I say, but never TO the girls.   I guess they overhear more of what I say than I thought. OK!  I KNOW!  STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!  Anyway....

It was at this point Andy heard us and wanted to know what she said. I marched her into our bathroom where he was shaving and made her repeat it.  It was not something she did immediately, because she knew she was in trouble and once Daddy knew, she was afraid it would be more.  She repeated it for Andy, in a more quiet less pissed off kind of way.  Andy feigned shock with a, 

"Georgia!  We don't say those words!"

"I know!" She told him and then ran back to the bathroom to finish getting ready. 

Fortunately for her we let it go this time with a warning.  She was worried enough from me catching her to most likely not do it again, so I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt.  I did let tell her that if she said a bad word again there would be a punishment, and it would be severe.  Like sucking on a bar of soap.  Okay not really, but I did say that. Does anyone even do that anymore?  Seems kind of archaic.  I'm sure I will just take dessert away, which for her might as well mean I've taken away food for a week.  That will probably just piss her off even more.  

Bug Invasion

A few weeks ago Andy and I were sitting on the couch after everyone had gone to bed chatting when he looked up at the wall behind me and said,

"What the hell is THAT?"

I turned around to find the biggest, weirdest, green bug crawling slowly toward the ceiling.  It wasn't moving fast and it didn't look like a flying variety of bug.  Andy and I stood there in our living room staring at it and assessing how we were going to get rid of it, and trying to figure out what the hell it was.  I thought it looked like a praying mantis, but Andy pointed out it didn't have the front legs for a praying mantis.  He thought maybe a grasshopper, but if it was, it was the biggest one I'd ever seen.  Plus he was crawling and not hopping.  Either way, we couldn't leave it there, so what to do?

Squish it?  No way.  It was too big and it would have made a gross mess.  Suck it up in the dust buster?  Andy thought it was to big for that too.  Plus I didn't really want to kill it, because I got the feeling he was kinda harmless.   Then it was starting to become out of our reach as it made it to the ceiling, so we opted for trapping it.  I found a tall plastic cut to put over top of it to trap it and try to get it inside.  I handed it to my very brave husband who looked at me and said,

"I'M doing this??"

Um YEAH! Okay, I love my husband very much.  He is a great provider, wonderful father and he make me laugh all the time.  But here's the thing about my husband and bugs,  he is a bit of a...how do I put this delicately?  Well, he's a pussy when it comes to bugs.  Always has been.  He hates how they squish when you kill them.  He will kill a fly, no problem, but crawling bugs and spiders.  Forget it.  I don't need him for the flys though, because we have a cat who doesn't let a fly live more than five minutes in our house.  For the most part I don't kill spiders, but pick them up in  tissue and let them free outside.  Unless they're really big, then they might be goners.  Other crawling bugs I usually squish, but yeah, it's the mommy show when it comes to bug wrangling/killing in this house.  However this was one bug I was not touching.  I carried and birthed three kids.  He could trap one weird giant green bug.  I felt that was fair.

"Yes,  you're doing this," I told him.

"But my back...if I step on the couch wrong or something what if my back  goes out?" He was trying to make excuses and I wasn't buying.

"You'll be fine! Now man up and get the damn bug!" I encouraged.

So he reluctantly stood on the couch and put the cup over the strange insect.  It immediately did what we wanted and crawled inside the cup.  Andy took a magazine and placed it on top so he couldn't escape, or fly if he could.  Then we looked at it for a few minutes trying to figure out what kind of bug it was.  Neither of us knew.  It was some weird hybrid praying mantis, grasshopper looking thing.  Andy took it outside and let him free in the front yard to go live again and invade a neighbors house perhaps.  

The next morning I was getting the girls ready for swim lessons.  My in-laws were here and I was telling them our creepy bug story from the night before.  The girls were listening while I was describing the bug and Georgia all of a sudden piped up with,

"Oh!  That's a leaf bug!"

Uh-huh.  Okay cute little girl.  Suuuureee it was green leaf bug.  I thought for sure this was something she made up, especially because she is really good at making things up. 

"Oh, I'm not sure what it was Georgia," I told her.

"It WAS Mommy!  It was a leaf bug!" She insisted.

Then Lana asked, "What did it look like again?"

"Kind of like a praying mantis, but it had long antenna..."

"Oh yeah," Lana said very sure of herself.  "That was a leaf bug."

"What?  Are you guys making up a name for bugs now?" I asked.

"No!  Dat's what it is!  I've seen it at school," said Georgia.

"Yeah, there was one on our wagon one time too," Lana informed me.  

If only there were some device to look up things like "leaf bug" and see if they were indeed correct...Good thing my father in law was there, because a few taps on his phone and he found the exact bug that invaded our house.  Behold!  The leaf bug!  That is the actual name.  

This looks like  the one we found, but if you google leaf bug, there are a whole slew of weird looking ones out there.  You can see why I wasn't going anywhere near that thing.  

So I learned two things that day.  One-I learned about a new insect I had no idea existed, and two-Age 6.  Age 6 is the age when your kids start to become smarter than you are.  Fan-freaking-tastic.