10 Things I never thought I'd say in life-Revised

10. No you may not have candy for breakfast
9. Stop feeding the neighbor dog a banana
8. My name is "mommy" not "Jenn"
7. You may not brush your friend's hair with a broom
6. You may not have cake for breakfast either
5. Really, you see Jesus flying outside the car window?
4. Eat your pizza first and you can have a pear
3. Once something is in the garbage, we don't pull it out to taste it.
2.We do not eat banana chips we found in the parking lot.
1. Stop yelling the word "boobies" in the doctor's office

Popsicles and inexorable truths

At some point in motherhood every woman is smacked right in the cheek with that inescapable truth that we all hate.
They grow up...
fast.
It's something old ladies in the grocery store have warned us about for years, something our mothers have always told us, but it doesn't become such a reality until sometime after you have them in your home.
And it hurts.
Surely some of this sentimentality can be attributed to my advanced state of pregnancy, but I would wager that even the most unemotional mama has at some point shed tears over the fact that her baby is no longer that. And now I know why my mom cried so much. Surely, it was just a brief moment ago that I was waking at 2am (and totally miserable might I add) with this tiny, bald little bundle of squirm that is now so busy that all the pictures we take of him manage to look more like a blur than a child. And it is at moments like this that the inexorable reality comes into perfect focus,
they were not made to be held on to.
It's constantly before me that my children are not made to be close to me, reliant on me, they were not made to be constantly needy of me. From the moment they are born, they are in a perpetual state of moving farther from me (in my belly, to being held always, to walking, to running, to being embarassed by my hugs.)
Thankfully, I think back to my own life (and mom, you can stop crying now) because I realize that there is surely some portion of me that will always need my own mother. Advice, comfort, knowing that when I'm sad, discouraged or confused she has some God-given power to know me well enough to deliver exactly what I need to hear (even if it's "get over yourself" and it often is). And while I don't think you ever get over the fact that your baby is not a baby...(or a toddler, or a kindergartner, or even a high schooler.....well, scratch the last one), we can at least find comfort in knowing we are always pointing them to the one thing that all of us can (and should) hold on to at all phases of life and with such intensity that we refuse to let go... and that is God.
The One who knows better than all else how hard it is to let go of a child.

Just kill your internet.

Here's the typical scenario:
Kid gets fever, fever spikes at 104, mom and dad freak out. Mom gets on internet visiting websites such as webmd, and other paranoid parent chat rooms at a not only unreasonable and irrational but what some would describe as unholy hour of the night. Mom goes to bed an hour later with no useful information on fevers but having gained an unfounded prognosis that her child has meningitis and needs a spinal tap and a brand new fear of illegal border hopping pimps.
How many times has this happened to you?
Okay, maybe none, but I can honestly say it's something my poor husband is all-too familiar with. The internet (like war) needs a song asking the very pertinent question "what is it good for?".
Obviously it has it's acceptable purposes, such as watching episodes of LOST that we missed from last week and seeing just how chubby and drunk all my friends from high school have gotten (I know, I have also achieved a new level of poundage, but with no debauchery of strong drink to attribute it to). But the majority of my pursuits on the internet either result in me idling away my very valuable time recklessly just to carefully pick out which "flair" to post on my facebook page, spending way too much (or wishing I could spend way too much) money on things I didn't need an hour ago or (as is referenced in said above scenario) getting inaccurate and terrifying information from websites I for some reason deem reliable such as "wikipedia" (which is in no way shape or form to be qualified as credible).
Luckily for me, God has given me a husband that can rationally and calmly make the statement, "honey, I think this is one of those rare illnesses we're not supposed to try and diagnose" to bring me back down to planet earth. In the future, will someone please remind me at 2:00 in the morning, not to "google" something as vague as "fever" and "possible illnesses" until the next morning?