Rants

Husbands and housework

Friday, March 7, 2008 By Sherra

Have you heard? Groundbreaking news about the relationship between men and a mop and their universal primary love language:

Physical Touch.

I hope our tax dollars weren’t used to fund this report. They could have just asked PhilBillPaul. He learned the value of mopping the kitchen floor and doing laundry early in our marriage.

1991 was a banner year for us when I made a few suggestions that I felt would really benefit our marriage:

Relax and decompress on your drive home in traffic, by yourself, in a quiet car with no one saying “Hey Daddy Hey Daddy Hey Daddy.”
Walk in the door ready to grab one to three babies and spend quality time with your children.
Be grateful that I am here to provide childcare for you all day while you worked hard outside of the home because I was working hard all day inside the home. (aka the hardest job on the planet.)
If you don’t agree with any of the above suggestions, please leave and go live in your car because I don’t need a grown-up baby to take care of and I’m keeping the house.

He decided to stay.

He’s a great dad.

He cleans. He cooks. He does laundry. He is tired.

But who isn’t? This parenting gig is hard work for all of us.

We parent together. Because that’s our job since we *planned* to have four children.

If you have a husband, this article might interest you.

Click here to read more about housework and a happier marriage.

If you have a husband and need reinforcements; this book was mentioned in the article, could be helpful and even better, it is written by a man.
I haven’t read it but I like the title…

The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework

Forget perfume and roses. Give me a man in an apron with pine-sol and a toilet bowl brush. Woo-hoo!

Let me know what you think and I dare you to comment on how the housework division of labor is going at your house…

Lord, please help my trashy daughter

Monday, March 3, 2008 By Sherra

Wizzy couldn’t wait to tell me this Sunday night when she got home.

Roger Leroy has been eating trash.

She rushed into my bedroom to tell me how gross her twin sissy is.

As I mentioned, Roger Leroy cleans a large church near our home on the weekends. Wizzy is required to help her since she is still on “lockdown” from the principal’s phone call incident.

Here’s Wizzy’s version of what happened–I’ll give Roger Leroy time for an optional rebuttal next week…

Wizzy said “She called me into another room with an excited voice like she found something really cool.” The cool thing she found was a bread tray left in one of the Sunday School rooms.

“Look what they left for the janitors!” Roger Leroy exclaimed.

Wizzy said “Eww.” When her twin popped a slice of raspberry bread in her mouth, Wizzy was so grossed out that she had to leave the room. Roger Leroy called her back and said the lemon bread was much better than the raspberry.

On to the next room. Oh, pay dirt. (no pun intended)

She found fruit in a plastic container on top of the trash can. (Which I pointed out is technically IN the trash, it was just on top because the trash can was FULL.)

Yum, cantaloupe. (I didn’t even know she liked cantaloupe.) She licked the kiwi and didn’t care for it. She grabbed the lone grape and ate it.

Next, she spied a jug of orange juice on the floor next to the trash. Apparently her snack of bread and fruit had made her thirsty. She swigged the last bit of juice down. Wizzy thought she was kidding until she “heard it swishing in her mouth.” (These are Wizzy’s words, not mine.)

All these years of parenting. All these years of teaching. All these years…how did we get to this place?

Maybe I could understand this if she was scouring the trash for vegetables because of the deprivation and serious shortage of greens at our house.

Then again, I still don’t think I would understand…

Noble job: Cleaning the church.

Not so noble: Eating the trash at the church.

Cleaning the church and eating the trash makes for two tired twins.

Indiana basketball and our kids

Monday, February 25, 2008 By Sherra

It was a bad day on Friday for Indiana University basketball fans. Fortunately, for most of my readers, the resignation of head coach Kelvin Sampson didn’t really shake up your day too much.

On the other hand, PhilBillPaul and his mom had to talk at least three times Friday afternoon as they compared notes on what they were reading and hearing. When you are born and raised in Indiana and even after you move to Georgia (and Texas where his mom is), being an IU basketball fan is serious stuff!

We are big basketball fans at our house. Our kids started playing basketball when they were seven which, incidentally, is the age we decided to let them try a sport.

Side note: Unless you count when The Grunter was five and he participated in a one week soccer camp. He had absolutely no idea what to do, where to go or why we made him attend. It was because he was our firstborn experimental child and I had read an article about soccer being the best sport to start your child in–which may be true for many but wasn’t for him.

They all played baseball and softball for several years. Roger Leroy even tried diving her freshman year. The girls run cross country at their high school. Scary Baby just finished her second season of basketball at church. They all know how to play golf, bowl and we’ve had some fierce badminton tournaments in the backyard.

Okay, so you get the idea. They’ve been exposed to a variety of sports and we really are a basketball family.

Basketball has become the primary sport that they all love. I’m sure it has something to do with their dad loving it and coaching them. I was personally delighted because it is an indoor sport which means I don’t have to sit in the rain, sleet, freezing cold or blazing sun.

We are also an oddity among parents in our community. Our kids have always been allowed to pick only one extracurricular activity at a time in addition to their full-time job, which is being a student (for those of you who think we’re endorsing slave labor).

In terms of sheer time management, it was the only way we saw to manage our family, our relationship and our life. One of PhilBillPaul’s favorite lines is “We run the kids, they don’t run us.”

Back to this not being about basketball…

We’ve had some lively discussions over the weekend about the shake-up in Indiana and part of the team not showing up for practice and how and why all these things happened.

Bottom line for us: A coach is a teacher and mentor to the team and the players he works with. He has to be held to a higher standard because of his interaction with our kids. Just like a pastor or politician or any other leader.

When I say “our kids” I mean all of our kids – not just mine. I mean it in the sense of “it takes a village” and we are the village.

If the adults are not setting good examples for our kids then we are left with a society full of kids who think it’s okay to lie, cheat and ignore the rules that we are all suppose to abide by. If the coaches, who are suppose to be helping mold our kids into productive members of society, are breaking rules, then we need to hold their feet to the fire when they screw up.

Yes, everyone makes mistakes. (I don’t have enough time left in my life to write about all the mistakes I’ve made and will continue to make.)

Yes, I also believe in forgiveness.

But I also believe in common sense and like to use it especially when others seem to have lost theirs.

Kelvin Sampson let our kids down. Individually and collectively as a team. During a winning season, he let them down in a big way.

If you want the details of how he let them down and why he has been branded as a cheater, here’s an ESPN column with some strong opinions written by senior writer Pat Forde.

Or here is a Sports Illustrated story with less slant and more facts.

But back to our kids…

It is time now for all the adults involved with these student athletes to step up and support them as they learn this tough life lesson.

Adults they care about and love will let them down. While no one is perfect, the disappointment that comes when someone lets you down is never easy.

We all need to remind them of their own personal responsibility to surround themselves with role models and mentors and friends who walk the walk with honesty and have the courage to do what is right even when it’s not easy.

If Kelvin Sampson was the reason they chose Indiana University, then they need to find a new reason.

Our bigger message to our kids should be that we are here to help them grow into young men and women with character and integrity. And no one can ever take that away from them without their permission.

That message should be loud and clear in the media but unfortunately it usually isn’t the message we read..

Which really means that we all need to to make sure that message is repeated over and over in our own homes…

Meanwhile, it’s nice to meet another Indiana family here in Georgia.

This picture was taken after the girls earned first place in their basketball league championship and finished with an undefeated season. Woo-hoo!

PhilBillPaul, the girls and John, Lisa and Sharté Foy love to display their team colors whenever possible since we live in the land of ~~rabid~~ lovely Bulldog fans who, coincidentally, wear the very same colors.

Life Lesson (LL): It’s never a wrong time to do the right thing. Thanks Uncle Doug. 🙂

Share a Life Lesson (SALL): Have you had an opportunity to teach your kids a lesson about doing the right thing using sports or a coach’s behavior as an example? Because it may not feel like a big deal but it is. When you do this, you are doing it for all of our kids. Do tell so I can publicly thank you!

Answer to one burning question…

Monday, February 4, 2008 By Sherra

Wow, my plan to have lighthearted and funny posts on Monday has already been derailed.

Finding the funny becomes difficult when your children display poor judgment and make bad decisions.

When the assistant principal calls you on Friday afternoon to discuss discipline problems about two of your four children, the Superbowl party weekend takes on a different tone.

I’ll save the details of the school problems for later. Perhaps later will be when they are married with teenagers. I’m not making any promises though. I can only say that I will respect their privacy for now.

Here’s the thing about teenage problems vs. toddler problems. The timeout chair doesn’t work anymore. The consequences are much longer lasting. The impact of their poor judgment can affect more than just your immediate family.

It is also a time when you, as the parent, question all that you have tried to teach and wonder if they’re going to make it in the world.

Then you have to dig deep to find the consequences to match the actions. And follow through.

Because in the end, following through with the discipline with your kids means more than a minor inconvenience for the parents.

Because putting them on restrictions puts the whole family on restrictions.

For those of you who are still in the toddler or tween stage and haven’t made it to the teen years, it’s like staying home to potty train but oh, so much worse. Because they’re not so cute and funny anymore.

But you know that this really is about teaching them life lessons.

And those monotonous days you wanted to change are the days you wish you could bring back.

“Sure, I’ll read Green Eggs & Ham again.”

I bow to those of you who have made it through this stage.

I wish I had some great tips for those of you approaching this stage.

But in the words of my good friend Ann, “I got nothing.”

And this weekend revealed the answer to the burning question on our Happy New Year card:

Why do we take more pictures of
our two wiener dogs than of our kids?

Because right now, they are cuter and they don’t talk back.

Life Lesson (LL): Just when you relax and think things are going well, teenagers will remind you that they were just lulling you into a false sense of security to see if you’re still paying attention. Especially when you thought you were already paying attention!

Share a Life Lesson (SALL): I am open to (and openly begging for) any constructive suggestions on making it through these teen years without becoming a bitter old woman with a substance abuse problem. Give yourself and your kids code names if necessary just share, please share…