I don't like to cut people...

Last night Ira asked to help me pack his lunch.

Ira: "Can I cut this cucumber?"

Me: "Sure, but wait for me and let's be really careful." [I do let him cut veggies or fruit from time to time, under strict supervision of course.]

Ira: "Don't worry mom, I'm careful. And I don't like to cut people."

Me: Leaning in close to him at eye-level I say lowly: "I don't like to cut people either, BUT I WILL IF I HAVE TO."

Ira: Takes a beat or two to understand what I said and smiled at me slyly.


Speaking of cutting, I was surprised to find that this kid very quietly cut all four permanent molars as we found out at his last dental appointment. What a tough guy. My baby is practically all grown up.

And more about tough guys - here's a picture of me and my cousin, who is now an MMA fighter. I'm really excited about his upcoming fight at Thunder Valley! As you can see I taught him everything he knows about choke holds.

Slice of life

Small happenings from my phone.

From the trenches

I'm guilty of waxing over my parenting challenges here and on my various social media accounts. This isn't because I want you all (hi, you five or eight readers!) to think I've got it all figured out and mothering my rascally boy is all laughs and sunshine. It's because I really don't want to bum you out with every negative thing that goes down in life. That there is the preamble.

This is the official statement: This stuff is hard, dude! My kid is a firecracker, but that's why I love him. He's energetic, funny, wildly creative and honestly, he's never given us a dull moment. All of that comes with a little bit of stubbornness, willfulness and a strong sense of self (he's never going to have an identity crisis). We sometimes butt heads over things and neither of us likes to give in (even though I am always right...come on, he's only six - give me this for a few more years). Yesterday we had a dust up over something trivial that escalated quickly (it was stupid and I'm waxing over it anyway). At any rate, Ira was angry, I was angry. We both went to sleep apologetic, but still knowing we disappointed one another. Don't worry, there's a happy ending. This morning it was all but forgotten and by the time he was off to school, I got about 20 silly kisses.

While I say it's all better now, I always have a hard time shaking that feeling that I've failed to control my child's behavior. It could take a few days where I'm not thinking back on this and post-gaming it from start to finish. That's a nice way of saying that I remain so anxious about my parenting problems that it takes me days of replaying them in my head until I work through that anxiety or find something else to worry about. The act of working myself into a froth over non-issues is one of my specialties and not only is it great at making me feel totally isolated ("I'm the only parent in history with a child that sometimes misbehaves and I don't always handle it correctly!") it's completely exhausting. Plus, it's not even a good party trick. I need to figure out a better way to do this.


It's a good thing this kid's got such an adorable face.

Kittens Looking Good

The band I'm in has been working hard on adding to our set list and mixing down a split single. Once we have enough done, there may be a music video in the works which seems so I don't know...wild? Exciting? Kind of unreal? I mean, we haven't even played a show yet.

Anyway, faced with the prospect of being on video for all eternity has some of us sweating (send wine). What will it be like? What song will we do? What will we wear?! At her request, I took some notes from our singer and came up with two fun looks for her. I'm no fashion expert, but I love doing these personal style boards! It sort of feels like playing paper dolls with my friends. I have a lot of fun finding pieces and putting together these collages, imagining that who I'm making them for might be inspired by what they see. M, I hope you found this helpful!