Just over a week ago, I posted a contest and asked for your funny stories about stressful parenting. The contest is sponsored by LTDchix, who print “Living the Dream” T-shirts so you can smile (or at least your shirt will) when you don’t feel like smiling. Thanks big bunches to LTDchix, who have shirts for the winning entrants! Check out their Living the Dream merchandise at their site. Congratulations to Not Over It and to Three Collie for surviving (and writing) the winning entries! Thanks to everyone for a wonderful response! I had considered publishing all the stories, but I received about three times as many as could be put into one post, so these are only the funniest of a funny bunch.

Parents and Kids Having Fun

TENTACLES

by not_over_it
Stress? I left my husband when my son was 3-years-old, and worked two, sometimes three part-time waitressing jobs while going to college full time. Lucky for me, my mom was there to watch him quite often, and I'd sometimes stop there between jobs or school, drink some coffee with mom on the porch, and watch Joe play in the garden.

One day, while he was digging for worms, he started screaming and crying because he was being attacked by tiny red ants.

Other than a few little red marks, he was fine, so I went to work (again), picked him up, had some quality time with him, gave him a bath and put him to bed, then studied for a test the next day until 3:00 a.m..

The next morning I woke up to "Mom. Mom. Mommy!"

Huh? I peeked one eye at my alarm clock, and it was 5:45 a.m., a full hour before we had to be up.

OK, I'll bite, "What's wrong, hon?"

"My tentacles are big."

Uh....

I had been dealing with him discovering how he could make his penis big in a *boing-boing-boing, isn't this fun?* kind of way, not to mention him waking up that way, so I corrected him by saying "I think you mean 'penis', not testicles, and I told you that it's perfectly natural for a boy to wake up with his penis bigger.

I still hadn't opened my eyes yet, and he said "No, Mommy, it's my tensticles, and I don't think this is natural. See?" and pulled down his jammies.

You don't know what it took to keep calm and not say "Oh dear LORD! WTF??? They're the size of freakin' SOFTBALLS!"

Instead I said, "You know, you're right. I think I should call the doctor. Does it hurt?"

The doctor got him in and out before my test, gave him a cream for the allergic reaction to the ant bites, and had one of the best laughs of his life outside the door about Joe's swollen tentacles.

THE MINIVAN

by threecollie of North View Diary
We were off an a hurried shopping trip, hunting for the essentials for the wildly foolish enterprise of hauling a string of show cows to a county fair and spending a week playing valet to them. You know the kind of junk I mean, picture frames, baby oil, fake flowers, baby powder, laundry detergent, shoe polish, and all the other assorted supplies you wouldn't think you would need for a cow but somehow you do.

(Incidentally it seems to cost about as much to take two cows for each of three kids to the fair as it does to feed a third, (heck even second), world nation for a year. All this and you generally win little pieces of colored ribbon...blue is a big favorite...which the kids stuff in the show box under the water hose and pair of dirty sneakers and forget. Now that they are older they take as many as a dozen...but they buy their own goodies.)

Anyhow, we are farmers, rugged country folks. Cell phone! Hah, not us, we communicate in yup/nope New England style.
None of this modern constant contact for us. And even though I had enough quarters to call Alaska from the pay phone and talk for an hour, there was nobody home to answer anyhow.So of course, when my youngest child, a doesn't-know-his-own-strength pre-teen decided to shove the sliding door of the minivan open with his feet, it fell off, right there in the Walmart parking lot.

A minivan door is surprisingly large.

It also has surprisingly little holding it in place. Typically of the city, not a soul even looked at us, let alone offered to help.

Not to be daunted by a mere hole in the car, the kids picked up the door, stuck it back in the great, big, gaping opening in the side of the car, locked it and we hurried into Wally World to acquire the Tide, Clorox, colorful fabric, staples and staple gun etc. etc. etc. that they needed. Dozens of dollars later we stood beside the car again, faced with the prospect of driving home with a door that was just sort of leaning on the side of the car, held in place only by the lock. Of course it wouldn't fit inside. (Especially not with three kids and all the cow show stuff.) I really didn't want to leave it lying there like a really large piece of litter and drive home with the whole side of the car open.

What to do, what to do...of course, the van was a typical mother-car filled with all the stuff that kids leave behind, McDonald's wrappers, smelly sneakers, books, you name it. It was also a farmer-car, so there were tools, tractor parts, baling twine and many mysterious objects of unknown origin or use inside it too. There were also several ropes that we used to tie the dogs at camp. After all, show season comes right after camp season and who has time to clean the car? The Border Collies and like to herd water so we never let them into the lake without long ropes attached. Otherwise they would just swim away.

We wrapped the dog ropes around the whole car and through the windows of the door. The end result was that we had to climb in through the back, as we had to tie the front doors shut to hold the sliding door in place. We also locked it and proceeded home, successfully managing to negotiate the ten mile trip without a single casualty. (I think that was the year Lizzie won grand champion with her old cow, Dixie, so I guess it was probably even worth it. It was also the year we locked both sets of keys and all the show halters in the car on show day, but that is another story.)

Sadly, we never found a mechanic that could fix the darned door, so we drove it with the door fastened closed and unopenable for a number of years, before (finally) this spring we bought a car with doors that all work. The kids are having a hard time getting used to not having to crawl over the front seat to get in though.

THE BRA

by Omegamom
...in the early days after the dotter came home, I remember juggling her and my clothes in the bathroom (she was at a stage where I had to have her in my arms or on my lap all the time), I managed, rather than putting my bra on, to dip it in the toilet...the memory is very hazy, all I remember is that when I emailed the story to my gals at work, they all laughed and said, "You're a mommy now!"

CURRY

by Lorena from Live from Sublurbia
The things they don't put in baby books could ... fill a book.

Sometimes I wonder about baby books.

Why don't they tell you not to rub the baby down with a little curry powder?

So, as some of you may have heard, I had a fun morning. 11am I get a call from daycare that Wolfie has a red rash all over his tummy and backside and diaper area that came seemingly out of nowhere. I call the hub to consult, as he changed the diaper this morning. Wolfie had some rash in the diaper area, but not all over, this morning.

I head over there, and yeah, he's got a major rash in an odd pattern ... his tummy and backside and diaper area ... but not his upper chest. A couple of spots on his legs and arms. That's it.

I rushed him to the ped (after managing to lock him in the car and get him out with the help of fire rescue and a handy tile guy) after some snacking and snoozing and she helped me track it down.

He had oatmeal at 7pm last night, and we had curry and cauliflower for dinner. The only thing 'new'.

The culprit? The curry. Both the and I had cooked up the curried beef and been exposed to curry particles ... though we'd washed our hands ... we hadn't changed our shirts. No wonder cooks wear aprons.

So, I got him naked and the hub bathed him ... and he got all kinds of curry powder on his poor little skin. Some Benadryl and he should be fine in a few days.

Note to self: if I ever write a baby book, note in big letters:
Do not rub the baby down with curry powder

ART APPRECIATION

by lizinsac
My husband and I consider ourselves pretty hip and have always tried to expose our son, Spencer, to music, art, etc. We took him to San Francisco when he was about 4 and one of our stops was SFMOMA, where they had a Magritte exhibit. 

Spencer took quite an interest in the surrealistic images and I was busy congratulating myself on having such a precocious kid. What I didn't realize was that he was leaning closer and closer to study one of these priceless paintings when he lost his balance. His head thunked solidly into the middle of the painting and there were gasps of horror from the other people in the room. I had one of those out-of-body moments of sheer horror as I jerked him away, imagining a nice head-shaped hole in the canvas. There didn't seem to be any damage, though, so I fled as fast as I could, dragging a clueless Spencer behind me.

CLEAN UNDERWEAR

by Chicomathmom
As I was folding the weekly laundry, I noticed that I had only folded 2 pairs of underwear for my son. I gave him a short talk about hygiene and told him that I expected to see more underwear next week.

Next week, there were 12 pairs in the laundry, most of them unworn...

Moral: Be careful what you ask for!

CLOWNING AROUND

by Liz Branch
My youngest son, Colin, was four years old and in preschool.  His younger brother, Quentin was two, and while Colin was a quiet, introspective child, Quentin was a tempest -- always on the go and curious about everything.  At the end of the preschool year, Colin's teacher planned a picnic outing for the class at a nearby park.  She casually asked me one day if I knew of anyone who might be interested in dressing up like a clown for the entertainment.  Being the enthusiastic mom that I was, and usually up for just about anything where my kids were concerned, I gamely volunteered.

I had an old Halloween costume in a closet somewhere, complete with red ball nose and enormous clown shoes.  The morning of the picnic, I spent an hour working on my makeup, which was a masterpiece!  White face paint, black outlined eyes, red exaggerated mouth.  And the finishing touch: a huge kinky rainbow-colored wig!  I was a dynamite clown!  I loaded up the car with our picnic basket, and stowed the kids in their car seats.  Off we went.

It was a beautiful day; the park was on the banks of a lake, and the sun was dancing on the water.  A soft breeze wafted around the picnic area.  In spite of being in the heart of Deep South Mississippi, it was a surprisingly pleasant day.  As I walked towards the already assembled group, some of the kids spotted me and ran towards me.  I was in character, laughing and telling jokes and talking to the children as they clambored around me.  Some were asking who I "really" was, but I said, "I am really Clara the Clown!"

Colin & Quentin ran off to check out the swings.  I was concentrating on my clown duties, when suddenly a child ran up to me with an anxious look on his face.  "Quentin fell off the swing!"  Oh dear, I thought, turning in that direction.  "...and he's bleeding a LOT!"  Adrenalin kicked in and I rushed over to my screaming child.  He had fallen backwards off the swing and landed on a strategically placed sharp rock.  I swooped him up and took him to one of the picnic tables, where another mom, who happened to be a nurse, examined him.  There was a huge gash in the back of Quentin's head, with gaping edges. 

Every mom on the planet knows what gaping edges means.  She said, "He'll need stitches." 

My heart fell down to somewhere around my knees.  "Stitches?  Are you SURE?  No, really?"  and she nodded, trying to stifle a giggle.  I suddenly remembered my appearance, and the prospect of taking Quentin to a hospital for sitches in my current state of dress became a reality.

Game mom that I was, I thought, oh well, the doctors will get a kick out of this one!  And into the car we went.  A quick phone call to my husband, to meet us at the doctor's office, and off we went.  I thought, "I can do this.  This is funny!  What a great story ..." trying to convince myself, while Quentin wailed from the back seat.  However as we got closer I got a sick feeling in my gut that wouldn't go away.  I was embarassed and sweating.  We arrived at the office, where I took a deep breath and opened the door.  Every face in the waiting room turned in unison to watch our grand entrance.  I could hear a few snickers and several kids yelled, "Mommy look!  A clown!" a little  louder than they really needed to.  All of the nurses were giggling at me, and what could I do?  I just shrugged and wished that the floor would open up and swallow me.

Walking into the exam room, the doctor raised an eyebrow.  "Well, we'll just have to put you to work here!" he said, then proceeded to stitch up poor Quentin's head.  All was well that ended well, but I swore up and down that my volunteering days were way over.

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

by AprilMay
"I need to talk to you two," I said nervously, wringing my hands. My boys exchanged looks. They could tell I was serious about something. They sat down. I had been putting off this conversation for three months, but it was time to tell them.

I paced in front of them. "Look," I began. "There's, um, I mean, you should know that..." I took a deep breath. "I'mgoingtohaveababy."

They stared at me. I reached blindly for a bottle of beer, but my hand came back with a bottle of water, because I am not allowed to have beer. I took a swig anyway. I cleared my throat.

"So, um, did you hear me?" I asked. Trenton looked away. Tristan stood up.

"MOM!" he said. "Why are you and Dad still doing THAT?!"

I choked on my water. I turned red. He stood with his hands on his hips, waiting for an answer.

"Um." I said. "Well. You see, when two people are married, they do THAT. Because THAT is, well..." I paused and wished for a beer again. "THAT is something fun that married people do. Sometimes."

Trenton looked up. "When, exactly, did you DO that?" he asked. "I mean, which day?"

I wished I was far away. I wished an earthquake would swallow up our house.

"See, honey" I stammered. "I don't know which day exactly."

"You mean you did THAT more than once?" Tristan asked, horrified.

I hung my head. "Yes" I muttered.

"They do it when we are ASLEEP, dummy" said Trenton. Tristan poked him. Trenton poked him back. They shoved each other, and began to wrestle on the floor.

I stood there, looking at them. I realized that, come September, I will have a 15 year old, a 12 year old, and a newborn. I started to get a headache.

Trenton shoved his brother off him and stood up. He looked me in the eye. "Mom," he said seriously. "You really should have used birth control."

I gaped at him. I wanted to tell him we WERE using birth control. I wanted to tell him that I was not even supposed to be able to get pregnant. I wanted to go back to pretending like my boys knew nothing about us having actual sex. But we were past that point now. There was only one thing left to do.

"C'mon," I said. "Get your baseball stuff. It's time to go to practice."

Pretend like the conversation never happened. It was the only way to preserve my sanity.

(Miss C’s note: the doctor says AprilMay will have another boy! Follow her story on her blog.)

Funny in Any Language

Thought for today: You know you've lost control when you're the one who goes to your room. -Baba Bell Hajdusiewicz

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