Category: marital blissishness

children, gratitude, happiness, humor, kids, marital blissishness, marriage, mommyhood, motherhood, parenting

Birthday

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Ohio Stadium, home of the Ohio State Buckeyes ...
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Heading into my birthday weekend (yes, I turned 36), I had the weighted guilt of bad-mommy mojo slowing me down.  When I picked up T.Puzzle from school on Friday after only his second day back, I felt huge relief that the incident memo I received from his teacher was a result of an injury.  Thankfully he had not physically lashed out at another student. It’s hard to feel like an awesome Mom when my first thought over such a thing is “Yay!  My kid tripped, bit his tongue and cried.  Oh, thank  god!”

Sorry, T.Puzzle.

What’s a girl to do?  Only thing she can, hire a babysitter and go away for the night with your husband I guess.

Mad Dog has a simple formula for a successful marriage.  Since he is married to an emotionally sensitive woman and her birthday celebration unfortunately seems to always coincide with an Ohio State Buckeye‘s game, his answer is simple:  spa, baby!

Yes, my marvellous man sent me to the spa while he hung out at the hotel’s sports bar.  It was a win-win.  Literally, the Buckeyes won.  After I returned from the spa, we went on to have a spectacular dinner and a lovely time.

Full Speed and T.Puzzle in happier times

When the fun was over and we were driving home I received a text from our sitter that T.Puzzle had bit Full Speed.  Was it bad that my first thought was to ignore the text and as we approached our exit to home, tell Mad Dog to skip it and keep on driving??

Of course I texted her how to handle the fall-out and Mad Dog and I promptly emptied our wallets for our eternal gratitude for our babysitter and any lasting emotional distress she may incur.  Anyone that survives an overnight with Full Speed and T.Puzzle is alright by me.

I’m just thankful T.Puzzle bit his brother instead of her.

Sorry, Full Speed.

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children, life in pictures, marital blissishness, mommyhood

Yin and Yang

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Mad Dog is a quietly persuasive force. He is a man of few words and when he speaks, each word is chosen with careful precision. Before I knew what hit me, Mad Dog had me convinced that Full Speed should be signed up for the ‘leadership series’ in tae kwon do. This means he is eligible for more classes each week and has more chances to spar and use weapons.

Whatever.

Apparently Full Speed is having the time of his life. He thinks he is a major baddie and is completely jacked up to do three classes in a row on the same day.

I just don’t get it.

I’m grateful that Mad Dog is all over this and pushing Full Speed’s limits in something he actually seems to like and excel at. Mad Dog is the sort of parent that symbolically throws the boys in the deep end of the pool without a life jacket and is confident that not only will they swim, but they will be swimmers of Olympic caliber. If I had it my way, they would wear floaties until they are fourteen and only go in a deep end that is heavily supervised by a professional lifeguard.

You can see we are the two extremes of the parenting paradigm.

Thank goodness we cancel each other out.

Thus, the perfect balance of yin and yang parenting is established.

Or something like that.

Full Speed, on the left, gets ready to attack during a sparring match.
gratitude, humor, kids, life in pictures, marital blissishness, mommyhood

Dedication

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Mad Dog has encouraged me to post the following:

Mad Dog left me a note (I’m serious) containing the breakdown of the Lightning Bolt’s statistics. At season’s end the Lightning Bolts were 15-0 with over 120 goals scored (I think Full Speed scored about 5 of those) with only 6 goals allowed (two of these we accidentally scored on ourselves–it can get confusing out there).

Full Speed was the youngest and least experienced of the bunch but hands down brought the most comittment and enthusiasm. His skills improved considerably over the course of the six week season.

Full Speed in action

Mad Dog would also like to take complete ownership of his team’s success. He believes his leadership and superior game tactics led the Lightning Bolts to their storied season. He is already formulating a book tentatively called “The Winner’s Circle: Musings of a Great Man”.

If you want my opinion (please don’t read this Mad Dog because I really want you to dedicate your book to writesforallmommies), I believe we lucked out with players that were older, experienced and happened to possess mad soccer skills. I couldn’t believe how some of these kids could march that ball up and down the field and get in shot after shot. They were certainly a talented bunch.

It’s all subjective, right?

You can check out more of my subjectivity in MY upcoming book, “Always ‘Agree’ with Your Husband and Pray He Doesn’t Read Your Blog”.

I’d dedicate it to Mad Dog, of course!

gratitude, happiness, marital blissishness

‘Ever Thine

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I am a huge fan of Sex and the City. I have waited patiently for almost a year for the release of the second film in the SATC franchise. Of course by no control of my own, the premiere date landed on the night before little T.Puzzle’s eye exam under anesthesia. To remedy this unfortunate coincidence, I arranged for our babysitter to come on the Sunday morning following the eye exam so Mad Dog could take me to see it.

This is why I love my husband. Not only does he accompany me to my crazy ‘chick flicks’, he does it with such an air of relaxed confidence that no one would dare question why he is there. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks. He doesn’t care that the reviews of SATC2 have been less than flattering, that the audience was made up of 90% women or that the movie (in his perspective) was a long, drawn-out spectacle lasting well over two hours.

All he cares about is me.

I’m no Carrie Bradshaw with a fancy Manhattan apartment filled with endless designer clothes and shoes, but I am perhaps one of the luckiest ladies on this planet to be married to someone like Mad Dog.

‘ever thine.
‘ever mine.
‘ever ours*

Love you, Mad Dog!

*(poem excerpt by Beethoven to his immortal beloved also quoted in the SATC movies by Carrie and Big)

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children, life in pictures, marital blissishness

Mohawks!

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Mad Dog and I rarely see eye to eye when it comes to the boys haircuts. I am forever scarred from when he took Full Speed for a haircut and Full Speed returned hairless and sickly looking. Full Speed’s hair used to be more blond than it is now, so if you buzzed his head, he didn’t look so good. Then, Mad Dog did the same thing to little T.Puzzle on a separate occasion. I have never fully healed from these experiences.

Sometimes, I don’t have the energy to fight. So, when we took the boys for a trim and Mad Dog said, ‘mohawks!’, I was too tired to argue.

I’m actually kind of glad I didn’t fight it. They look awesome.