Smiling Mom

Today at the park my son was on fire. He sho­wed me all his new tricks he’d been per­fec­ting at parks across our city. Today’s 3 1/2 year old trick was to jump up on the metal bar, bend him­self in half and flip over.

BC: Look Mommy!! I just did a Bow Movement.

Smi­ling Mom: Did you just say you did a “Bowel Movement??!!”

BC: Yes!! A Bow Movement.

SM: Seriously, BC, you’ve gotta come up with another name. A Bowel Move­ment is when someone goes poo-poo.

BC: Nu-Uh. It’s a flip.

SM: NU-UH!! It’s a poo-poo.

BC: No, see Mommy, when you bend in half, you bow. Then you move your­self over the bar.… a BOW Move­ment.

SM: (Hys­te­ri­cal now) Oh my gosh, BC, I think that’s the fun­niest thing I’ve heard all day!!

Kids say the dar­ne­dest things!

** edi­ted to spell bowel (not bowl) correctly.  Honestly, I amaze myself sometimes!!

“Hush Little Baby don’t say a word, Momma’s going to buy you a Moc­king Bird. And if that Moc­king Bird won’t sing, Momma’s going to buy you some new Bling Bling.”

Some new bling bling? Seriously!? I wasn’t expec­ting this when I sig­ned up with Team Mom to review new kid’s pro­ducts out on the mar­ket. After hea­ring this song, I was dying to hear how Beyonce’s sis­ter and dad had modi­fied other popu­lar nur­sery rhy­mes. My per­so­nal favo­rite on the CD is, “The Wheels on the Bus”. Ya, it’s pretty funny.

So this new upbeat hip-hop ins­pi­red CD collec­tion is not for ever­yone, but if you are a family who loves the hip-hop style of music, you might want to check it out. BTW, do we even call it hip-hop any­more?? Gosh, I’m so old!

Inc­lu­ded with the CD, I was given this Baby Jamz Key Chain. The 7 1/2 month old boy I watch twice a week loves che­wing on all the keys and pushing its but­tons. It’s a hit!

The last thing I got in my box of goo­dies was a Baby Jamz Music Crew.

Can I be honest here?

I thought it was the dum­best thing I’d ever seen. Unless it were to be inc­lu­ded in a McDonald’s Happy Meal, I would never, under any cir­cums­tan­ces, buy this. The little peo­ple are easily lost, dif­fi­cult to place into the foot holds, and frankly boring to my kids. And the little boom box only pla­yed 30 seconds of a Baby Jamz nur­sery rhyme. Don’t waste your time.

So two out of three ain’t bad, huh? I liked the Baby Jamz Nur­sery Rhy­mes Volume One CD. My friend’s 7 1/2 month old son loves the Baby Jamz Key Chain, but I hated the Music Crew.

There you have it, my review.

Team Mom Out!!

When I was a little girl my family went to Chuck E. Cheese. I must have been five or six years old. We had a blast! Chuck E. Cheese was a total treat. Funny how things change, huh? My two brothers and I each got a stack of tokens to use at will. It wasn’t every day that we were allo­wed to run around and play vir­tually any game we wan­ted.
Life was good!

I was down to my last 2 or 3 coins when my little brother, who would have been around three years old at the time, came up and asked for one of my tokens.

I told him no.

Then I got the look from my mom.

She told me to share. Boy was I mad as I han­ded over one of my last cove­ted tokens. I pou­ted, stom­ped my feet, and pro­bably threw a fit. Sha­ring was for the birds!

Any­way, a few minu­tes later, I’d sunk into one of Chuck E. Chee­ses dark under the stage hiding pla­ces where you could go, put a token into the wall and watch a mouse-filled movie.

I was hiding. And pou­ting. And for some rea­son, I hap­pe­ned to check the coin return slot. To my ama­ze­ment, a token was sit­ting there ready for the taking.

A token. To replace the one I had to share with give to my brother. For me!!

And then I felt it.

I knew God had a hand in giving me that coin.

From that moment on in my life, I’ve whole-heartedly belie­ved in God.

Funny, isn’t it? Something as silly as a token left in the return slot could make me believe in God. But it hap­pe­ned and now I look back on that moment from an adult pers­pec­tive and laugh.

That moment was so real for my 5 year old self!

Flash for­ward to last week. As you might remem­ber, I men­tio­ned that we had a few house/car repairs that poten­tially was to cost us lots of money in a very short period of time. Remember?

Ya, that was a stress­ful week. And to top it off, Hubby just found a leak-turned into a crack in a pipe– in the main water pipe of our house. Appa­rently it shouldn’t cost too much to fix, but added onto the other repairs, it’s a lot of money.

So any­way, I’ve been a little stres­sed, which is always evi­dent in my lack of blogging.

So a few days ago, I had another God Moment. My neigh­bor whom we share the repla­ced fence with knew we had a lot of finan­cial hits in a small amount of time. So she encou­ra­ged us to give her sma­ller pay­ments ver­sus one large check for the cost of the fence. (Thank you sooo much!)

The Civic ended up nee­ding a seat-belt sen­sor repla­ced, which was under warranty. Free!! (Thank you very much!!)

And, here’s the kic­ker, we recei­ved a $500 check in the mail for a pre­vious repair that was made for to our Civic, which, funny enough, ended up being free of charge!

That $500 ended up paying for the water hea­ter we had to replace.

Repairs that could have cost us upwards of $2500 ended up cos­ting us just under $500.

Now I’m just cros­sing my fin­gers that the pipe repla­ce­ment will be inex­pen­sive too!

A God Moment.

It hap­pe­ned again!

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So here’s a ques­tion for you! Have you ever had one of these moments in your life, where it became quite clear to you that God had a hand in the event? If so share your expe­rience in my com­ment section.

I am thirty one years old and for as long as I can remem­ber Ame­rica has been gover­ned by President(s) Bush Sr., Jr., and Pre­si­dent Clin­ton. The first time I was able to vote in a pre­si­den­tial elec­tion was in 1996, Pre­si­dent Clinton’s second bid for office.

I’m being com­ple­tely honest when I say that up until a few months ago I knew very little about the voting pro­cess and poli­tics in gene­ral. I voted for upco­ming pre­si­dents some­ti­mes. I voted on local issues less. I couldn’t be bothe­red, really. I’d become pretty tired of the same old-same old that has been going on in the Oval Office for so many years.

I’ve often felt as if I was in the middle of a large lake, in a raft, without any paddles.

But then Barack Obama step­ped into the spot­light and onto the cam­paign trail. And I became inspired.

I remem­ber watching Barack Obama give the 2004 Democ­ra­tic Natio­nal Con­ven­tion Key­note Address. I was stop­ped in my tracks, silent, intently focu­sed on the TV in front of me.

.…That is the true genius of Ame­rica, a faith — a faith in sim­ple dreams, an insis­tence on small mirac­les; that we can tuck in our chil­dren at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hea­ring a sud­den knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own busi­ness without paying a bribe; that we can par­ti­ci­pate in the poli­ti­cal pro­cess without fear of retri­bu­tion, and that our votes will be coun­ted — at least most of the time.…

After lis­te­ning to his key­note address I knew that this was a man whom I wan­ted to see more of. A man who could do big things for our country. For the first time I felt hope.

Hope.

When Obama began his race for the pre­si­dency I was so exci­ted. Due to my ove­rall igno­rance to all things poli­ti­cal, I didn’t rea­lize what a dark horse he was in this race. I belie­ved he could win even when he was trai­ling the other democ­ra­tic hope­fuls by dou­ble digits in the polls.

And win he has. Currently Barack Obama has 1418 pled­ged dele­ga­tes to Clinton’s 1251.

It’s been such a close race bet­ween Obama and rival Clin­ton that the media cove­rage has been unpre­ce­den­ted. Due to the overwhel­ming cove­rage I’ve immer­sed myself in all things poli­ti­cal for the last few months. I just can’t get enough. I know all about super-delegates and pri­mary elec­tions. I’ve watched mul­ti­ple deba­tes and had many con­ver­sa­tions with friends and family about this upco­ming election.

And then today I had the oppor­tu­nity to lis­ten to Barack Obama’s “A More Per­fect Union” speech and I felt it again.

Hope.

In his speech today Barack Obama said in part:

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a poli­tics that breeds divi­sion, and con­flict, and cyni­cism. We can tac­kle race only as spec­tacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tra­gedy, as we did in the after­math of Katrina — or as fod­der for the nightly news. We can play Reve­rend Wright’s ser­mons on every chan­nel, every day and talk about them from now until the elec­tion, and make the only ques­tion in this cam­paign whether or not the Ame­ri­can peo­ple think that I somehow believe or sym­pathize with his most offen­sive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary sup­por­ter as evi­dence that she’s pla­ying the race card, or we can spe­cu­late on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the gene­ral elec­tion regard­less of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next elec­tion, we’ll be tal­king about some other dis­trac­tion. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this elec­tion, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crum­bling schools that are stea­ling the future of black chil­dren and white chil­dren and Asian chil­dren and His­pa­nic chil­dren and Native Ame­ri­can chil­dren. This time we want to reject the cyni­cism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are some­body else’s pro­blem. The chil­dren of Ame­rica are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21^st cen­tury eco­nomy. Not this time.

Bold are the parts that I find most impor­tant in these para­graphs. As a teacher, mom, and Ame­ri­can, Barack Obama speaks to me.

Not this time peo­ple. Not this time!

This time I choose hope and change.

For the first time in all my voting years I feel as if the padd­les are in reach, things are about to change.

Where do I sign up? I am ready.

Ori­gi­nally pos­ted at Sili­con Valley Moms Blog