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Renditions by Reilly

5 May

Rendition’s by Reilly  A re-post from 10/25/2012
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By now, if you are one of my readers, you know that my oldest son, Reilly, is quite the character. I am sure you have discovered that he loves to sing {and if you haven’t well just continue to read… you’ll soon find out}. He amazes me and he is pure awesome at times. His joyous mouth will sing whatever he can remember hearing on the radio, the TV or any words he decided to make up as he goes along. He will even add his own lyrics to an already popular song. Thus being how I came to realize that it’s probably best that we stop letting him listen to Toby Keith. Nothing good comes from letting your fi ve-year-old listen to songs like “I love this bar”, “Whiskey Girl” and that one about him talking about shoving a boot up someone’s ass. Yeah, probably not the best thing to let a mimic-parrot-type personality, like Reilly, listen to. Well I guess I can’t help it. I
love Country music and I don’t have anything against a little Toby Keith, especially his newest single that is making all the rage “Red Solo Cup”. It’s a classic song for anyone who has ever picked up the wrong cup at a Kegger Party in High School and instantly vomited when what you thought was your beer turned out to be a spit cup for those way too young to be chewing tobacco. A classic song that will always remind me to write my name on my cup and not go picking up strange cups because I “thought it was mine”.

Lesson. learned. Moving on.

My son is way too young to know what a “spit cup” is and so that important life lesson shall come a bit later in his life. So until then, he continues to serenade all who surround him. Especially when we are driving in the car. It’s his place to belt it out and let it all go, as it is for most of us.

“Yeah mom! I love this song! Can you turn it up please!? Mom. Mom. Mom…… MOM!!!!!!”

“What Reilly? I’m right here dude. You don’t have to scream.”

“I just REALLLLLLLLLLLLY love this song, can you turn it up so I can hear it?!”

“Reilly, it’s loud enough, son. Your brother is trying to sleep”

“Buuuuuuut I CAN’T HEAR IT!!!!!!!”

“Well if you stop using your mouth and use your ears then maybe you can hear it. Annnnnnd stop yelling, your brother is trying to sleep dude”

“Ugh!” (he folds his arms together) “fi ne, I’ll be quiet, but I don’t like that….(pause, silence for a split moment)…..MOM!!!! My song is over! My perfect-est song is OVER! oh man!!!! Now I’ll never be able to hear it ever again”

I give him “The Look” from my rear view mirror…. “Well if you weren’t wasting all that time talking and yelling then maybe you would have been able to listen to it….”

“Yeahhh…… “
The next song comes on….

“Oh MOM! mom. mom. mom!!!! I love this song!!! Can you turn it up!!!!!!!…………”

Ugh!

This is how our car rides go, everyday.

It’s a never-ending battle. I have tried to upload the newest songs that he likes on his iPod, but they are “never the right ones”. When he does get his way in the car and I turn it up and we all jam out together he refuses to let that song be over. He will carry on and on and on AND ON with that song way past its “I’m sooo over it already” phase.

Take the “Red Solo Cup” song by Toby Keith, one of Reilly’s favorites and the beginning to my “good parenting” demise. He won’t stop singing that song. This, my friends, is where you are welcomed to get a sneak peek into my Reilly’s World. Please turn up your speakers and have a listen to what I deal with on a daily basis…. okay, so I might be a little encouraging, but who doesn’t want their child to be a rock star?

enjoy


You’re Welcome
I’m sure if you are related to Reilly, He made you super proud! I’ll let him know….

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Mother Love

4 Apr

I was going through some of my old {really old} writings that I had posted back in the day when Myspace was just starting on the map. After about an hour of trying to remember my old login information I came across this post.

Nowadays I don’t usually write about stuff that is so “serious” and I tend to not post something unless it can make me laugh. But today, I guess I am feeling a bit emotional. My baby just turned 2 and my oldest son will be 6 soon and it’s had me thinking about all the memories I’ve had and the love that I’ve given that I never thought I had…

thus for this post today…

 

“Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible.”

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“I was once told that I couldn’t understand because I didn’t have children. A friend at work had been granted yet another personal day because her child was sick, and I felt it was unfair. I was offended by what she said, and somewhat resentful at being excluded from a club to which, at the time, I didn’t even want to belong.

I thought about this the other night as I was rocking my son to sleep, trying to hide the tears streaming down my face at the thought of losing him.

I know now that my friend was not inflicting judgement on me. She was merely stating a truth. People who don’t have kids simply can’t understand what it’s like to feel what parents feel. Now that I do understand, I’m still not sure sometimes that I want to belong to the club. Loving someone this much is frightening.

And in retrospect, it’s something I’ve never truly done before.

It’s not that I haven’t always envisioned how it should be — pure, unconditional, eternal — because I have, and I’ve certainly had love in my life. Reality, though, is not always so kind. Relationships don’t always work out, and after enough time and enough disappointment you learn, perhaps even unknowingly, to just give a part of yourself instead of the whole. That way when the ending inevitably comes, you’ve got something left.

Then you make this little human being and bring it into the world, and maybe for a few weeks you can keep your distance because, after all, you’re just getting to know each other. But slowly, slowly you start giving away pieces of your heart that you had forgotten existed, until one day you realize you couldn’t survive if something happened to them. And you understand.

And it’s not even just the thought of losing them. It’s watching them change before your very eyes, knowing somehow that the acknowledgment of how fast they are growing won’t slow down the time. Knowing that pictures from just yesterday can make you weep and long to go back. Knowing that the little sleepers that they are already outgrown will forever represent an idyllic period of their life to which you can never return.

It’s calling the doctor in the middle of the night because they have a fever, terrified of what you did wrong; the guilt of feeling responsible every time they get a sniffle or an earache or cries when you don’t know why. It’s the sleepless nights holding them so tight because comforting them, sometimes, is all you can do. It’s checking on them every five minutes to make sure they are breathing in the their crib.

It’s the need to protect them at all costs, and knowing that you simply can’t; the overwhelming sadness that someday very soon they are going to walk out the door and you won’t be there to save them from life’s cruelties, hurt and grief and pain from which you couldn’t even protect yourself.

It’s trying to memorize every pout, each gentle sigh, how they hold their tiny hands in front of their face in such complete awe, the bashful way they look at you and smile and burrows into your shoulder to sleep, knowing with a kind of bittersweet ache that these moments are as fleeting as snowflakes on their little cheek.

It’s knowing that for the first time in your life you simply don’t care about you, that nothing is more important than their health and happiness. Knowing that you would give your own life, never to see or hold them again, if it could guarantee their own life. It’s knowing, finally, the meaning of true love, and fearing that it will be taken from you.

I once said that having my child was the hardest thing I would ever do, but I now understand that I was worng.

Loving them is.”

 

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Fish Killing Mommy

27 Mar

Fish killing mommy, a re-post from 5/15/2012

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I found myself googling “life span of a Beta fi sh” a few nights back. My son’s fi sh, “Wall-E”, who he got for his 4th Birthday, had been acting weird. He was no longer enjoying his fishy life. He wasn’t swimming or “puffing up” or hardly eating. He wasn’t even trying for that matter! I just thought “Well, we’ve had him for almost a year, and, well isn’t that considered a long time in… fi sh?”

I did not reply.

Frankly I thought I knew about them. My dad always had one in his office at work and I had a few growing up. I guess I never remembered them dying or for how long they actually lived. Apparently, I do not know everything there is to know about a Beta fi sh. Which is correctly spelled Betta, who knew?!
So there I was researching the “life span of a Betta fi sh” when I came upon a gruesome discovery…
“…these fi sh can normally live up to 2-3 years…. minimum.” I said shockingly out loud. Mine hasn’t even made it 10 months yet, I MUST be doing something wrong!
So, fi rst lesson learned (that I didn’t already know… the little bastards can live 2-3 years minimum. Check )
I continue to read on… “To get the FULL potential of the life of your Betta fish is to have optimum living conditions…”
An instant …..”shit…” comes to mind.
As I continue to read I start to plan his funeral care about Wall-E’s well-being and I don’t want his life to be cut short! The look on my son’s sad face would kill me if all he knew was that I killed Wall-E and it was all because I didn’t let Reilly get him that Castle-on-the-Sand tank decor! Okay, second lesson learned (and maybe I should have researched this little fella when we got him/her?)
I continue to investigate what seems to be the survival guide to:
“IF YOU’VE FUCKED UP YOUR BETTA FISH AND WANT TO SAVE HIM…”
I found many useful tips on a web-site called BetterBettas, written just for fi sh killing mommy’s like me.

 

side note: I even found a video titled ‘bettafi sh kills my cat’. Really? I had no idea these fi sh could help me conquer the feral cats in my neighborhood. Lesson #{blank} learned
“What have I been doing wrong?????!!” I pleaded with myself. I mean, when you tell me that “…questions like that (what have I been doing wrong) show you are not alone
and that others too are seeking answers to insure their Betta’s live a good, long… time.” I say wow… THIS IS THE WEBPAGE FOR ME. It was like a sign or something. I must continue on If I want to have any ideas on how to save my son’s poor fi sh. It is my last and only hope. I shall share with you the things I learned that you can do to let your fish swim aimlessly around for up-to FIVE years:
1. Size matters, tank size that is…
Yes, its true. Betta’s, or any other fish, weren’t meant to live in a little glass baby jar (but those baby shower gifts were so nifty!).Pssshhhh, even I knew that. How sad to let your fish survive in a jar that I can’t even open! Our fi sh is kept in a gallon tank, plenty of room for a small Betta, or so I thought. One gallon tanks are not for Betta lovers who want their whole FIVE years with their fish. “No, the ideal tank size for any respectable Betta is a FIVE gallon tank (what is up with all the five’s?) and the minimum you can get by’ with is a 2.5 gallon tank“. I called Petco right away after I read this. They awkwardly agreed but they “can’t guarantee a longer Betta life span if you choose to break the rules”. Wait, rules? I’m in deeper shit than I thought…
2. H2o quality is critical. Well duh!
Shouldn’t this be every ones motto?! Don’t we all know that if you drink live in water that is filled with soggy leftovers and your own feces that you might get sick and die? no? (cough cough cough) I’m starting to feel quite queezy…
I thought that changing Wall-E’s tank once a month was enough. It was never “cloudy” or nasty by my eyes. I was wrong, yes, again. They recommend that you change the tank’s water at least once a week and in between water changes they recommend that you pour half of the water out and fi ll half with new water. I can understand, why waste away in old water?!
3. Don’t over feed, don’t under feed.
Well great, because I am sooooo good at finding that right medium in everything in life. The poor, poor fish. We feed the thing at least twice a day and some days maybe more (because I can’t remember if I fed him, when I fed him or who fed him…). Betta fish (like cows or my late grandmother) will, apparently, eat and eat and eat. They have no sense of when they should stop eating thus eating themselves to death. And, I’m sure it doesn’t help that we never know if we fed him or not. When that happens I feel bad so I give him a ton of food.”Never feed him a lot. Never more than a spot! Or something may happen. You never know what.” Reilly says quoting one of his favorite books A Fish Out of Water by Helen Palmer Geisel. You’d think that since I’ve read that book enough times that it would teach me a thing or two…
4. Some climates may need a warming light at night.
Okay! Something I didn’t have to do since we live in a warm climate, it’s Hawaii for Christ’s sake! I debated with myself (something I do often) I continued…
“Betta fi sh are tropical, Hawaii is tropical and always a lovely 78 degrees, right? So, we mustn’t need a warming light for heat”. It’s usually warm here and I sure as hell don’t want to waste anymore electricity on this sucker, I already had the fresh air bubble machine plugged in (I did something right). I hate “wasting” electricity and that was my fi nal closing argument. I had won my argument, for the time being. Come to find out, all my convincing I did to myself was WAY wrong. Do I even need to say it…. again. If I needed my down comforter and an extra blanket on me at night (yes it does get that cold in the mountains of Hawaii) then shouldn’t I have known the fi sh would literally freeze to death thus needed a warming light?! doh!
All of these things can extend the life of your Betta, and, shit, if I had known maybe we wouldn’t be standing over the toilet with our heads bowed and having a moment of silence for the short life that Wall-E lived.

 

“Mommy, why is Wall-E…. died…?” My four-year-old asks me in a sad, confused but curious voice. Ugh, should I confess and tell him of all the things I did wrong that ultimately lead to his fishy demise?

-THIS MOMMA WAS GUILTY-

fish pic
A last few words and a moment of silence…

You know how sometimes it’s okay to tell a white lie? This is one of those moments…
” He was just old baby…..” I stuttered quickly.
The good thing about a fi sh is that they are easily replaceable…
“…but you know what!?” I said exciting. “We can go to the store and buy a new one!”
Flash, Bam! Boom! Instant smile. Instant hug. Instant, I forgot that I am the one who killed his
fi sh….moment.
You best believe that Topper, our new fi sh will have the life that Wall-E never had, due to me being a complete dumbass. I shall rid myself of the title Fish Killing Mommy and reclaim what is rightfully mine!? And when I fi nd out what that is, I’ll let you know, and GOD! Heaven forbid that we ever have a dog die!… i’ll deal with that tomorrow…

 

Meet Topper, our new fi sh

topper

UPDATE: Since I have written this, Topper has been alive and well! He is still swimming aimlessly around and that makes me HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY!)
side note: here is a cute idea for you mom’s to put to use those baby food jars …. no, please don’t put real fi sh in them! doh! CLICK HERE!

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