The 17 Year Old Girl.

Our middle child is seventeen today. She's finishing high school this year and has her college applications in.

The girl asked for Doc Martens as a birthday present.

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The perfect boots for walking into the future...



Happy Birthday, our talented, funny, smart and powerful ginger. And remember that even as the snowmen bow down before you, you will always be my baby.

Love, Mum.

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Party FOOD.

The 15 year old girl will soon be 16.

In case you were wondering what kind of party food would be appropriate to serve at a Sweet 16 party, one of my daughter's friends made some suggestions on FaceBook.

I hafta say, the celery kinda surprised me.  Celery is a ninja.

On Friday night this place will be crawling with starving teenagers. Any advice?

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Parenting TEENAGERS.

Parenting teenagers is hard. But I was lucky; just before our eldest hit puberty, my friend Shelagh gave me some advice. "They can be horrible," she said, "but don't take any of it personally". This has helped me weather what I thought were some pretty difficult times with our first daughter.

However our second daughter didn't just hit puberty - she beat the living crap out of it, knocked it unconscious, and dragged it into her teen-cave. She owned it. Last week was especially, er... eventful, and The Huz and I were close to cracking. Another friend, Sarah, recommended this book: "Get Out Of My Life, but first could you drive me and Cheryl to the mall?", by Anthony E. Wolf, Ph. D.

 I began to read...

Somewhere in the deep, dark, and dangerous recesses of her teen-cave, the 15 year old girl knows that we love and care for her enough to cry ourselves to sleep. And even buy a book.

And to her baby self, this is AWESOME.

I think that we're gonna make it. It's not easy; we must let our teens go and simultaneously set boundaries for them. However unpleasant, it is probably normal for them to behave badly, call us names and refuse to listen. We stay strong and do our best to follow Shelagh's advice. For as much as our teens complain about the boundaries, they do kind of appreciate them. Even if it only indicates that we love and care.

Oh and the book is great.

Parenting teens nightmares? Please share!

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No means NO.

Last week, we got the dreaded phone call from the high school. Our fifteen year old daughter had been in an accident.

Seems she was just on her way to class, when a friend approached her in the hall.

He went to pick her up. She said "No".

But he continued.......and lost his balance.

She landed on her head, twisting her neck. He then fell backwards onto her.

Our daughter said she remembered saying "no" and then finding herself on the floor, unable to stand. She couldn't remember how she got there. We took her straight to hospital. Luckily, she "only" had a mild concussion and a wrenched neck. But she had to miss school and man, was she pissed about that!

It could have been so much worse...

My intention here is not to demonize the friend; he's genuinely sorry. But I'd like to use this story to open up a discussion about boundaries, respect for personal space, and the meaning of the word "no". When a person says "no" why doesn't it matter? No means NO.

Have you had an experience where your personal space was not respected?

I drew this one on the go, in Paper, on my iPad.

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Kids say the DARNDEST things.

I originally posted this on Aiming Low.

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Little kids say the darndest things. Here's some cute quips from my (now 15 year old) daughter.

What darndest things do your kids say…?

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I love you MORE than beer.

...continued from here.

"I love you more than Twitter!!"

No sooner had the words left my mouth, than The Huz appears at the boy's bedroom door. He looks at me surrounded by all three kids on the boy's bed and says, "did I hear correctly? You love us 'more than Twitter'?"

I nod solemnly. "I knew it! I knew it" yells the 11 year old boy bouncing up and down. "Dad! Dad! Tell us how much you love us?!" His teenaged sisters toss their hair and look annoyed.

The Huz thinks carefully. He strokes his chin and answers, "I love you more than coffee, more than tea, more than wine, more than bacon, more than chocolate, and definitely MORE than Twitter."

I roll my eyes, "yeah, yeah, but how much is that?"

And he says:

And here's the mug to prove it!

Get it NOW, for the one you love, cuz Valentine's Day is coming.

Love someone more than beer? I gots more love mugs in my Zazzle Shop. 

This story is part of a short series that starts here. 

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I love you MORE than Twitter.

It's bedtime. Both the 11 year old boy and his 14 year old sister stare at me in shock.

"You love us more than chocolate?!?" Hearing the word chocolate, the 17 year old daughter appears at the door. "Did someone say "chocolate"?" she asks.

The 14 year old pipes up, "yeah, apparently she love us more than coffee, more than tea, more than wine, more than bacon, and more than chocolate. Still don't know how much that is though."

The boy is squirming around on his bed as his sisters make themselves comfortable. He's getting all excited so he shouts "MOM how much do you love us?!?"

And I shout back:

And here's the mug to prove it.

Get it NOW, for the one you love, cuz Valentine's Day is coming.

Love someone more than bacon? I gots more love mugs in my Zazzle Shop. Oh and there's 25% off sale. Yay!

This story is part of a short series that starts here. Stay tooned to find out what happens next...

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Pickle Weasel January.

That loveable rascal Pickle Weasel is hi-jacking my blog posts again. This is from The Last Snowman.

You can wait to see them month by month or support your local bloggy-animator (me) and buy the calendar.

YEAH!

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I love you MORE than chocolate.

The 11 year old boy sits up in his bed, his eyes wide. His 14 year old sister comes into the room saying, "Did I hear you right? You love him more than coffee, more than tea, more than wine, and even more than bacon?!? And what about me?" I smile, but I'm thinking hard.

The boy looks earnest. "Yeah mom... how much do you love me, I mean 'us'...?"

And I say:

And here's the mug to prove it.

Get it NOW, for the one you love, cuz Valentine's Day is coming!

Love someone more than bacon? I gots more love mugs in my Zazzle Shop. Oh and there's 15% off sale. Yay!

Do you play "how much do you love me?" games with your kids? This story is part of a short series that starts here. Stay tooned to find out what happens next...

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Laughing Out Loud... OUT LOUD.

I was doing the dishes, by hand, and the 14 year old was helping me by drying. I like this cuz the kids talk about their day when we do dishes. She was laughing about something that happened at school and she said something like: "Bla bla bla - hahahaha! Hilarious LOL!"

She literally said lol, like "laaaaaawwwwwl".

She tried to deny it but I'm an animator and I swear her mouth did this:

And there you have it folks. A new form of LOL-tastic laughter for acronyms is born. More fun than Laughing Out Loud - it's LOL-ing Out Loud! 

Or "LOLOL" for short. She totally said I could post this btw.

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A Wrecked TILE Dysfunction.

I must say, I rocked at laying vinyl tiles on the mudroom floor. Until the part where I sat down in the glue... yeah, things kinda went downhill from there. And just before starting on the front entrance floor, I discovered that one must not glue expensive ceramic tiles onto a particle board subfloor as it is too unstable. If it gets wet, which it will (snow, hello), the board will swell causing the tiles to lift and crack. Those who frequent this blog even got to see my stabby face.

And here's what I hope will be the conclusion of my foray into DIY floor tiling.

I gave up on the tiling. And like any self-respecting wife who's husband is off in England for SIX WEEKS, I'd decided to take a night off and drink heavily before putting away all the DIY gear. I left the big bag of floor tile cement powder, along with the two big bags of black grout (also powder) on the little rug in the middle of the freshly tiled (with vinyl tiles) mudroom floor.

It was extremely hot so all the doors were open into the garden, in an effort to tempt the breeze into the house. Suddenly, it began to rain. The rain was crashing down!

It was pouring off the edge of the roof, overwhelming the guttering and literally streaming into every open door! I ran to the garden room (the floor of which was also tiled by moi 6 years ago) and discovered it flooded in an inch of water. I shut the door and mopped it up as quickly as I could; I can't even remember what that sub floor was. And just like that, it stopped raining. Yeesh!

I headed to the mudroom and discovered that it was also wet...

...but there was no puddle of water.

Because it had soaked into the little rug in the middle of the room.

And the paper bags of cement and black grout.

I wish I could tell you it ended there.

But it didn't.

My fourteen year old daughter helped me get the soaking wet bag of cement into a black garbage bag and together we managed to carry it into the garage. But the bag of BLACK grout powder split on the teenager and covered her in fine black dust. It didn't help that she was wearing a nice white shirt that she'd recently bought with her own money. So then I got to see her stabby face.

Fun times, right?

Well any ways the next day I went into the mudroom and I see that the tiles I so lovingly glued down on a particle board subfloor had lifted and cracked in what I can only describe as a flash flood.

And the wet cement? Solid.

I literally could not make this stuff up. I never want to see another tile as long as I live.
Can I have a margarita now...?

A note of thanks to my friend Adam for sparking this title with me.

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EXTREME Home Decorating.

While the Huz is away, the wife will bravely attempt DIY. So begins the tale of the Floor Tiling Extravaganza. Specifically, the floor of the mudroom leading from the kitchen into the garage and garden. I have some beautiful candy coloured vinyl tiles I ordered specially.

First the fourteen year old daughter and I removed the old carpet and brought it to the garbage dump. We removed the boots and coats and crap and cleaned and vacuumed and stuff. Let me just say here that my daughter is awesome and helpful and wonderful. She also has a great sense of humor.

We laid all the tiles out in a zany random pattern (in blatant defiance of all that Martha Stewart holds dear), and I trimmed them and fitted them nice and snug. I actually managed to not cut my fingers off. I did some very difficult cutting including around the water heater and the trap door into the crawlspace. You would be truly impressed.

Then came the gluing. This glue is supposed to be applied and allowed to dry and then you stick the tiles down. It started well but ended badly. I mean I have to do it in sections to avoid stepping on glue, right? But I ended up stepping in the glue anyways, and trekking glue footprints around the house. A few clever people on Twitter suggested putting sparkles on top of the footpirnt which I admit I actually considered. I blame the fumes.

And then I actually sat down on the upturned lid of the glue tub. FML.

That was two days ago. Now I'm in PAIN.
I ask my self WHY? Why am I tiling this floor? I should be paying someone else to do it for me. I should be lying around at a spa relaxing and enjoying life.
Wait, what? ....oh yeah. I do enjoy extreme home-deco. Dang.

The floor will look awesome. The trouble with an awesome looking floor is that the rest of the room now looks like crap. Should I spruce up the rest of the room? No, because that will make the rest of the HOUSE look like crap. Solution? Retrieve the old carpeting from the garbage dump and cover the dang floor with it!

What's your nightmare DIY story?

Share the sticky story.

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