Investigative Photo Journalism

Raising children in this day and age it tough.  Back in my day, we didn't have digital cameras, we had the point, click, wind, flash cube cameras.  If you wanted your photos you took them to the store, put your film in the envelope and waited several days to see if you actually took any decent photos, or if your finger was semi covering the lens.  There was a learning curve, and an expensive one a that.  My family had a Polaroid camera and a "snap shot" camera.  The Polaroid was awesome, snap and get a sort of instant...well shake it, wave it around in the air, blow on it and slowly a semi blurry image would appear.  Magic, but a little tempting.  I will admit my best friend and I, in 4th grade took a picture of our butts.  We thought it would be funny to send it to someone, but chickened out when we realized that my Bon Jovi  poster and some of our cabbage patch panties were sort of visible in the photo.  We tore up the picture and burned it in the char coal grill outside.  No harm done, now one silly photo emailed to a friend can be detrimental.  I have had to have the conversation with my girls ages 6 and 4 about pictures.  I stressed no naked photos.  Yesterday, I found the girls Fisher Price digital camera and began clicking through the photos.  There was one of the carpet, one of the dog, one of Middle C's eye, a picture of poop in the potty.  What?  I kept clicking through the photos, different angles of feces, apparently different feces from different days.  I called the girls over to me and asked who was the fecal matter photographer.  Middle C proudly said, "Me!  They were awesome Mommy, right?"  I looked at a her and reminded her of our appropriate photo discussion .  She looked at me and grinned, "My booty was not in any of the pictures, just my poopy."

Thwarted passion

Last weekend I attended a wonderful conference, momcom (momcomaustin.com).  Thanks to the amazing speakers, I felt something that I have not felt in quite a while, a passion for something other than motherhood.  I connected with the part of me that was driven and successful.  I am going to wake up a 5:00am two mornings a week to focus on my writing.  I do love being a stay at home mommy, but I feel that desire to....
Really?  My first focus on me morning and middle C just came down at 5:10 am to inform me she tinkled in her bed.  I stripped her bed, cleaned her up and settled her in front of the TV.  The dog whines to go out.  I let her out, the baby starts screaming in her room.  I get her settled back down just in time to wake up E for school and get her breakfast started.  I let the dog in, she drinks too much water and vomits.  Thank you family for supporting my endeavor.

Anatomy Lesson

  Let me first say that last year, I  heard a speaker stress the importance of always using correct terminology when talking about private parts with children.  Middle C is a very curious and precocious child.  Needless to say, she has become very interested in naming parts.  Every morning we drive past several horses, we are usually in traffic so there is time to observe them.  A few weeks ago C piped up, “that is a boy horse because it has a penis and it is huge!”  I acknowledged her statement without giggling.  The next morning, it dawned on her that all animals must have a penis or vagina, hence leading to several weeks of checking out any animal she sees and informing us as to the sex of the animal.  After hearing penis and vagina being screamed from the back seat in the car a few more times, I told her that observation is fine, but it isn’t necessary to inform everyone about what you see, that is rude.   That was the end to the naming of parts phase. The other day, I had all three girls and I needed to run an errand.  Baby A had a Ziploc baggie with goldfish; the other two girls are behaving nicely.  We walk up to checkout; there is a line about two people deep.  Baby A decides that she is all out of good and starts swinging her open baggie of goldfish around showering the floor with fish.   I bend down to attempt to pick up the renegade fish when I hear Middle C screech,” The only way to tell, is to ask to see his vagina or penis and we can’t do that, it’s rude!”  I popped up, knocking my head on the shopping cart handle just in time to make eye contact with the customer in front of us.  The transvestite glared at me as he grabbed his purchases and sashayed out the door.  You can imagine the discussion in the car on the way home.  Isn't parenting fun?