Rules to Follow While in Public with Your Children

Dear Woman Who Brought ALL of Your 4 Kids to the Doctor’s Office:

I understand that finding someone to watch your kids can be hard. Heck, I only have one and it was hard back in the day to find someone to watch her. But I do have some tips for you on how to handle your children should you have to take them in public.

1. Never under any circumstances should you leave the 2 year old girl in charge of her two older brothers. Do you really think she holds any type of authority over them? Let’s just say they were throwing books all over the waiting room (which they were) and let’s say that the little tiny two year old told them to stop (which she did), they will not listen (which they didn’t).

2. Should you need to have your children come sit down next to you, you might want to get up and go get them. Yelling for them across the entire waiting room isn’t really what you want to do. And a word to the wise, making eye contact with other parents and feigning complete shock that the angels are not listening is wasted feigning. Save that for when you get called to the school for a parent/teacher conference.

3. I admire the fact that your brought your sister with you to stay with the kids in the waiting room while you took the baby back to see the doctor. You might want to tell her that it is kind of rude to be talking on her cell phone with her baby’s daddy ON SPEAKER PHONE to find out “exactly what he is so pissed off about” and just how long he plans on staying “pissed”. This was the pediatrician’s office and some parents look down on the language that was used around their children. (On a side note, you might want to tell your sister, that if she washed her child’s hair more than once a month, that the food that was caked in it would come out and help the child smell better.)

4. When you feed your baby and your 2 year old gold fish crackers and they drop them on the floor, I would suggest you pick them up. But if you are not going to pick them up, please do not let your children and your sister’s child grind them in to the carpet. That’s just rude.

I hope you find these tips helpful. They don’t apply only to doctor’s offices. No, they will apply to anywhere that you might find yourself.

Very Truly Yours,

Melissa

Courtney

I have told you all Courtney stories before.

Like the time she came home from school and wanted to join the Girl Scouts, and then wanted to know if you still got to live at home when you were a Girl Scout.

Or the time she was in Kindergarten and got in trouble on a Friday. I was driving home with her in the back seat telling her how much trouble she was in when we got home and she told me that she knew she wasn't in trouble at home, because the Principal told her that she had all weekend to get her act together and it was only Friday.

Last week we had a meeting at Courtney's school to start preparing for High School. We have to start now if we want the transition to be successful. This was the first meeting that she was allowed to sit in on and have a say in. Her teachers had asked her some questions before the meeting and we were going over the results.

Special Education Coordinator - "Courtney does plan on going to college. She would like to be a kindergarten teacher or work with animals."

Scott - "Good. She can live at home as long as she is going to school."

*teachers and everyone laugh*

Courtney - "I don't know what you guys think is so funny..he is serious."

And with that the whole room busted out laughing. She was so concerned that they were laughing at something that clearly wasn't a joke.

We tried to explain why people were laughing, but it was lost on her.

At least we found out that she does want to go to College.

And now she knows how long she can live here.

I Want A Pop

As you know by now, growing up my parents always took us on some sort of vacation. As you are also aware, my participation was not always looked upon as gracious.

But I wasn’t always bad.

A couple of times, my parents rented a little, little beach house down in Newport Beach.

Little. But cute! It had two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bathroom. It was on the side with the waves.

On that side there was a big long boardwalk. All along the boardwalk, were shops and restaurants. My mom would let me walk up and down it. Sometimes, my dad would take me to the pizza place. I thought it was cool because 1.) you could go in there barefooted and in your bathing suit and 2.) because everything was up high and my dad had to lift me to get on the chairs. You could order pizza by the slice and dad would get me a slice and orange soda and him two slices and a beer.

Back then my mom would drink Shasta…you remember the commercial for that…I wannna POP, I wanna SHASTA. I wanna taste PIZZAZ. All the great taste a SHASTA has. This vacation she stocked the fridge with them. They had ever flavor under the sun. And at night, she would let Jeff and I split one with dinner.

I don’t know who I was driving crazy this day. It could have been Jeff, but it was probably her. Jeff seemed to make friends easily and for me it was harder. I expected mom to play me and more than once was told “I was not put on this earth to entertain you.” So she gave me some money and told me I could walk ALL BY MYSELF to the liquor store and get myself some candy. Did I mention this was all by myself? Jeff wasn’t with me at all. Nope. I was flying solo.

And off I went, money in hand.

I got there and looked at everything I could buy and decided on a grape Whistle Pop. Clearly, I had got the best of both worlds. Not only was it a delicious candy, it was a loud ass whistle too! Proud of my purchase, I began my journey back to the beach house. There I was happily walking down the boardwalk sucking and blowing, blowing and sucking on my ever so wonderful CANDY WHISTLE!

I got back and walked through the door announcing my arrival with a long and loud blow on that whistle and was promptly told to either eat it or throw it away, but sure as hell, don’t blow that whistle anymore.

And I was so happy because I got to go all by myself without Jeff and get some candy! This was the best vacation ever!