July 31, 2008 | Parenting, Perfect Post, Potty Training, The Blue One

Dear Everyone Who Encouraged Me to Potty Train My Children,

My kids are four years old now and they are finally potty trained.

(Yeah, it took me two entire years to accomplish potty training. I consider it a long term goal.)

Yes, it is wonderful that I am saving buttloads of money on pull-ups and diapers. Yes, I appreciate the freedom of not having to change 8 - 20 diapers a day. (Twins, people.) Yes, I am glad they are no longer the only children in their class who aren’t toilet trained and that this is probably a huge step towards getting them out of the house and marrying them off.

I had been warned about boys peeing all over the toilet seat.

It wasn’t so much that I didn’t believe you. It is just that Gabe is really good about aiming (as far as I can tell) and apparently so were my Dad and brother. I don’t ever remember it being a big problem.

Even now, it isn’t so much the pee on the seat. When it is your baby boy’s pee it isn’t a big deal to be wiping it off the seat. I mean - I changed his diaper for FOUR YEARS I am familiar with his urine. The problem is the smell.

My kids entire bathroom smells like pee.

A lot.

It isn’t even that Ian is so bad at aiming. It is that he is really bad at focusing on the task at hand.

The other day he came out of the bathroom and informed me that he had a little accident. No, he didn’t pee in his pants. He peed all over the shower curtain.

How does one accidentally pee all over the shower curtain?

In short, while I am thrilled that my children are now housebroken I would like to warn all other mothers of boys who are not yet potty trained.

Be careful what you wish for.

Or just buy a lot of bleach.

Love,

Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah

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Don’t forget to check out the Perfect Post Awards. This month I awarded my buddy Stimey for her post How to Save Up for Your Vacation. It made me laugh. A lot.

February 1, 2007 | Other Bloggers, Perfect Post

I hate to give a perfect post award to someone I know, especially someone I actually hang out with. It seems kind of nepotist. There are two reasons that I am going to do it anyway. 1) I was a fan of her blog long before I met her in person and B)* I read a lot of posts and this one struck me as particularly beautiful.

I love this post that Beth wrote. Led Zeppelin is so overplayed that sometimes I forget what was so great about them. It made me remember that. It also made me remember some people that I don’t think about very often.

Every once in a while somebody will say something to me that really sticks. In Beth’s case, one friend told her that “he was looking for a woman who was ‘a queen without a king, who plays the guitar and cries and sings’,” and another referred to her as an “angel draped in mortar”.

Sometimes these things are silly. I have a very distinct memory of a guy names Rich telling me “All young girls should listen to Agnosic Front”. I also remember some guy at Mardi Gras telling me I had sexy armpits. Other times they are statements that make you learn something about yourself. In college, I was at a friend’s apartment and I was looking though one of those books that had lyrics and tablature and the piano accompanyment that went along with Pearl Jam’s album “Ten”. I asked him what a certain song sounded like and here is what he said - “You can read music.”

And he was right. But I didn’t realize it. He was trying to be a dick, but instead he  changed my life.

Anyway, thanks for making me think, Beth. You can read all of Beth’s other posts at So the Fish Said…. and all of her writing isn’t this heavy. Today she has a big zit.

All of the other Perfect Post Awards for January can be found on Suburban Turmoil and Petroville.

(* Yes, I meant to number them 1 and B… it’s an homage.)

October 2, 2006 | Other Bloggers, Perfect Post

Every month over at Suburban Turmoil and Petroville they have The Perfect Post Awards.

I usually try to participate, but I couldn’t seem to get my act together enough this month to get everything turned in on time. Plus, if I don’t bookmark the post I want to nominate I often forget which one I had in mind when the end of the month rolls around.

Anyway, my point is that this month somebody nominated ME!

Vincenzo from Will Daddy Come Too nominated the guest post I wrote for The Blogfathers - It’s Cool to Be a Dad. Thank you, Vincenzo. It is a real honor.

I’m guessing that a lot of you have already read it, but if not here is It’s Cool to Be a Dad.

As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a Goomah.

Maybe I should clarify that. When Alan (aka BIYF) first told me about “The Blogfathers” I wanted to be a Goomah. Early on somebody (I can’t remember if it was Alan or Matthew) told me that I was on the list of women they were going to ask to participate. I was very excited. I had a whole post all figured out in my mind about my favorite Goomah of all time - Janice Rossi.Then Busy Mom and MIM wrote their Goomah posts, and they were all sweet and about their fathers and grandfather. These ladies wrote lovely, touching tributes to fathers in their lives and suddenly I felt that writing an essay on my favorite kept woman in a Scorsese film would be crass. Plus, Alan said this was supposed to have something to do with dads or husbands.

Fine.

p>You would think this would be easy. Several of my closest friends are fathers and husbands, most of my favorite bloggers are fathers and husbands (I have more, but I ran out of words to link*), my Dad is a father and a husband, my husband is a father and a husband. It seems like I would have a ton of material to work with, but I decided to write about why I think it is cool to be a Dad.

1) It is cool to be a Dad because your children think you can fix anything. Even though it isn’t always true, I imagine it feels really good to have someone think you are Superman.

2) It is cool to be a Dad because people expect you to watch football and drink beer. As a Mom, if I say I can’t go shopping because there is a game on the other ladies look at me like I have ten heads.

3) It is okay if Dad’s fart, or talk about farting, or laugh about farts.

4) You get to have children without ever actually having to be pregnant. I know that some men wish they could experience pregnancy, but trust me when I say it is overrated. You also never have to give birth. Now, technically, I didn’t have to push anyone out through my private parts either, my babies were born by cesarean, but that sucked too.

This is the part where I have to give props to my husband. Although he never gave birth, he was present for the delivery, and since we have twins he got to go over to watch one set of doctors check on Ian (Yes, one set of doctors, it was a zoo in my operating room. We had two of everything in there. Two nurses, two surgeons, two NICU doctors, two respritory specialists, etc.) after he was born. He turned around as they were taking Claudia out and he accidentally saw my insides. He says he saw my ribs. That is way grosser than anything I saw when they were born. I feel bad he has to live with that.

5) When you get your wife pregnant everybody acts like you did a good job sticking it to her. Seriously. When we found out we were having twins other guys would pat Gabe on the back and say “Hey, good job.” *wink wink*. Nobody ever, ever insinuates that the pregnant woman did a good job having sex - unless you aren’t married, and then they just act like you are a slut.

6) Daddy’s Little Girl. You guys know exactly what I am talking about. Now I know that mothers and daughters (and mothers and sons and fathers and sons) can have very special relationships, but there seems to be a very special father/daughter thing. Even if your daughter is 16 and calls you “Dad” or “Father” and rolls her eyes at you thirty times a day, in her mind you are still Daddy.

In all seriousness, as much as I love being a Mommy, I think that being a Daddy is great, and cool, and I hope you all realize how much we appreciate you and how much you do for us. Thank you.

* If I left you out, I’m sorry. Linking gets really boring after a while.

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If you want to check out the original post it also has an introduction from Matthew.

August 1, 2006 | Perfect Post

My Perfect Post award for July goes to Dad Gone Mad* for his post “The High Cost of Being a Wussboy“. It’s been a while since I have laughed this hard at a post. It contains the phrase “the pain of 40,000 vasectomies”. I really think that Danny is one of the best writers on the internet. If you don’t know who he is (Where the hell have you been?) you should go check him out.

You can go to Suburban Turmoil and Petroville to see the rest of the nominees for July.

(*Even though I am going to soundly kick his ass in Fantasy Football)

July 4, 2006 | Perfect Post

I realize I’m posting my “Perfect Post Award” for June about 5 days late, but I’ve been without an internet connection since Thursday morning. Better late than never.

Usually the posts I like the most are the ones that really make me laugh. This month I chose one that made me sad.

Her Bad Mother wrote a post called How to Lose a Friend in 10 Months. This post is about how she lost a friend because of blogging. It is extremely well written and well thought out. It made me think about how the changes in our own lives affect our friendships. She gets my Perfect Post Award for June.

Go to Suburban Turmoil and Petroville and see who everyone else chose this month.

I’m pretty new to Her Bad Mother’s site but I’m a big fan already. Last month I chose a blog that I was unfamiliar with and it tunred out I knew the writer in real life. (Well, at least I knew her brother.) I can’t wait to see what HBM and I have in common.