Obsess Much?

My son has had several different obsessions in his short five years. His obsessions go something like this. He recognizes the toy, judges its irritability factor and then evaluates our ability to provide ample amounts of it. If it is difficult to find, it scores bonus points.

Then he talks about his “precious” ALL THE TIME. He dreams about it. He talks about how he is going to invite the characters over for a party. He takes the toy to sit with him while he eats breakfast; it waits while he takes a bath and even gets prime real estate on his pillow every night. He reads books about them so he can emulate their mannerisms to the highest degree of accuracy possible. This also serves him well when he is lecturing me about not following the correct protocol for whatever he supposed to be doing, including such seemingly simple tasks like WALKING and TALKING.

His first “love” was Rescue Heroes. If you aren’t familiar with the Rescue Heroes, let me tell you a bit about them. They are action heroes who run all over the globe helping people in need. There are no bad guys which is refreshing. They also have abnormally large feet, which tells me that the design team had a sense of humor, because we all know what they say about having large feet.

This particular obsession lasted over 2 years, which felt like 18 years to us considering how sick of them we were.

Right before his fifth birthday, he thankfully switched to Transformers. My husband loved this phase because it gave him an excuse to play with our son’s toys, since he just had to help him transform MegaOptiPrime-oid. If I had a dollar for every time my son came running up to me because Daddy wouldn’t give his toy back, I could fund a shopping spree.

Unfortunately for my husband, this phase has been cut short since our son has now started a new relationship with Star Wars. It started with the Star Wars Lego Game Cube game he received for Christmas and has continued with daily displays of various homemade Lego creations and flashlight light saber duels with his sister.

I have handled this obsession quite well since I harbored the same one when I was little. Now I know what it was like for my mom to endlessly listen to me drone on and on about light sabers, phasers and star destroyers. It is the classic “just-wait-till-you-have-kids-of-your-own” curse rearing its ugly head once again. Luckily he hasn’t resorted to making me call him by a different name. Yet. Until he gets to that point (I figure I have about 4-5 days still) I will continue arguing with him about who gets to be the Jedi and who gets to be the bad guy when we play. I’m older, so I should get first dibs anyway, right?



Alana Morales, who has a degree in Psychology and is a certified teacher, taught high school English for six years before staying home with her two children and becoming a freelance writer. Her fist book, Domestically Challenged, is due out in May. You can read more of Alana’s work and get information about her book at http://www.AlanaMorales.com.

Obsess Much?

My son has had several different obsessions in his short five years. His obsessions go something like this. He recognizes the toy, judges its irritability factor and then evaluates our ability to provide ample amounts of it. If it is difficult to find, it scores bonus points.

Then he talks about his “precious” ALL THE TIME. He dreams about it. He talks about how he is going to invite the characters over for a party. He takes the toy to sit with him while he eats breakfast; it waits while he takes a bath and even gets prime real estate on his pillow every night. He reads books about them so he can emulate their mannerisms to the highest degree of accuracy possible. This also serves him well when he is lecturing me about not following the correct protocol for whatever he supposed to be doing, including such seemingly simple tasks like WALKING and TALKING.

His first “love” was Rescue Heroes. If you aren’t familiar with the Rescue Heroes, let me tell you a bit about them. They are action heroes who run all over the globe helping people in need. There are no bad guys which is refreshing. They also have abnormally large feet, which tells me that the design team had a sense of humor, because we all know what they say about having large feet.

This particular obsession lasted over 2 years, which felt like 18 years to us considering how sick of them we were.

Right before his fifth birthday, he thankfully switched to Transformers. My husband loved this phase because it gave him an excuse to play with our son’s toys, since he just had to help him transform MegaOptiPrime-oid. If I had a dollar for every time my son came running up to me because Daddy wouldn’t give his toy back, I could fund a shopping spree.

Unfortunately for my husband, this phase has been cut short since our son has now started a new relationship with Star Wars. It started with the Star Wars Lego Game Cube game he received for Christmas and has continued with daily displays of various homemade Lego creations and flashlight light saber duels with his sister.

I have handled this obsession quite well since I harbored the same one when I was little. Now I know what it was like for my mom to endlessly listen to me drone on and on about light sabers, phasers and star destroyers. It is the classic “just-wait-till-you-have-kids-of-your-own” curse rearing its ugly head once again. Luckily he hasn’t resorted to making me call him by a different name. Yet. Until he gets to that point (I figure I have about 4-5 days still) I will continue arguing with him about who gets to be the Jedi and who gets to be the bad guy when we play. I’m older, so I should get first dibs anyway, right?

Post Vacation Stress Syndrome

This past Monday my family and I returned home after our first real family vacation. It was wonderful – the kids acted great, the weather was good and overall it was an unforgettable experience.

So, what’s the problem you might ask?

Well, nobody told me what I would be dealing with after the vacation. You see, I was so worried about how the kids would react to being in a hotel room and being at a theme park, I never gave any thought to what it would be like after we returned home.

And of course, nobody warned me.

All week I have been dealing with the most bizarre behaviors, mostly from my daughter. For example, yesterday I actually had to tell her to stop spitting in her hands and wiping it in her hair while we were driving my son to school. I mean, who ever has to say such a thing to their kids (besides me, obviously)?

Next is the fighting. My kids barely fought at all during our trip, even after staying up until midnight, being in the same tiny hotel room and even sharing a bed. Apparently this was to preemptively make up for the fighting they have done this week. I feel like a referee at a boxing match – all I need now is a whistle, since both kids already have corners that they have become reacquainted with over the week.

What I really want to know is why this isn’t addressed anywhere. I read so much about preparing kids for a road trip, keeping them safe in large spaces and even how to make them sleep easier away from home. Why didn’t these same people also write about the fact that the recovery the week after the vacation would be worse than the post-Christmas let down?

I think I have sprouted 20 new gray hairs this week and 18 of the 20 have my daughters name on them. Maybe this is her way of acting out. She had a wonderful time in Disneyland, she was very well behaved and never got in trouble once. She didn’t cry when we left and she did a great job in the car for the 6 hour ride home. I think she was plotting her revenge.

I now know why families only go on vacation once a year. It’s because vacations take 3 months of preparation, 2 months to recover from and another 7 months to forget about how bad the recovery period was. So, based on this I have about 7 more weeks until this passes. Wish me luck.



Alana Morales taught high school English for six years before staying home with her two children and becoming a freelance writer. She is a co-host on the new online radio show Mom Writer’s Talk Radio (www.MomWritersTalkRadio.com). Her first book, Domestically Challenged, is due out in 2006. You can read more of Alana’s work and get information about her book at www.AlanaMorales.com.

The True Spirit of Christmas

Originally when I sat down to write my annual Christmas column, I had several potential hot topics to choose from. Let’s see, do I talk about my writers version of the 12 Days of Christmas, complete with requests for ear plugs and editor contracts or the difficulty husbands have when buying gifts for their wives (to which I can add a jewelry cleaner from my beloved). Or maybe I could write about the chaos of Christmas day with a large family. Surely, there are many moms out there that can relate to chaos.

I settled on writing about the spirit of Christmas. There are actually two spirits of Christmas – there’s the traditional one that makes us all feel warm and fuzzy inside and then there’s the one that makes people yell, swear and gesture wildly while trying to find gifts for all the people on their list, whether they really like them or not.

I was planning to address how bad this time of year has gotten, especially when you look at the amount of yelling and screaming that occurs between complete strangers at this time of year. I even had a story about a cute little 70 something year old grandmother who flipped off my husband and I. it seems she misunderstood our gestures – we were trying to let her know that she could have the spot we were going to pull into, and well, she gave us another gesture entirely.

I was planning to write about all of this, but that changed when I witnessed a small, but powerful, example of the true spirit of Christmas this past weekend.

My family and I were waiting to have our pictures taken at our local Target and due to some snafu or another, they were running late. Really late. Like, an hour and a half late.

While the various sets of parents were trying to keep their kids entertained without messing up their clothes, I noticed two little boys playing with in the bubble bath aisle. When it was time for one of the kids to leave, he told the other little boy that he was his new friend and that he was going to go buy him a present.

About 20 minutes later, the first kid returned to the picture area. There brief conversation went like this:

Kid #1: “Hey kid, hey friend!”
Kid #2: “Oh, hi!”
Kid #1: “Hi. I’m sorry, I know that your favorite is Spider Man and Batman, but I couldn’t find you that, so I got you this.”

He then presented Kid #2 with a brand new Toy Story book. He then ran back to his parents who were waiting at the end of the aisle and they left to go finish off their day, while Kid#2 lay down in the middle of the aisle to read his new book.

Did Kid #2 need the new book? I’m sure his mom could have bought it for him. But, you know what? Kid #1 said he was going to buy something for his new friend and did. The parents knew that they were practicing a random act of kindness, which is becoming a rarity in our world of rushing around and excesses, and they set an example that it is good to give to others, even if you don’t really know them all that well.

Leave it to a couple of three year olds to remind the adults what Christmas is all about.

Check out www.alanamorales.com...

That WAHM Buzz

I get a buzz from working from home. Not from the adrenaline of being able to juggle 47 things at a time. Not from the sense of accomplishment at the end of a long, hard day. Nope. My buzz of choice is from caffeine.

I am a card carrying member of the Two Pepsi A Day club. The only problem is that it isn’t working for me anymore. I am staying up later and getting up at the same time, which is creating a sort of comatose evil twin side of me that I haven’t seen since my kids’ newborn days. I have had several friends tell me that I need to switch to coffee because the effects are stronger.

Other than the fact that we sounded like a bunch of drug addicts, I thought this was a good idea. I have always secretly been a little jealous of the people who can walk into a Starbucks and get warm frothy loving’ in the form of a Styrofoam cup.

I thought about heading to my local coffee palace to have them suggest which drink I should start my addiction with, but I was worried that I would incite a riot. I’m not sure who would have started it though – the people who work at Starbucks clawing to get me hooked on their most expensive product or the people behind me in line waiting for their cup o’ joe while a newbie was broken in.

Because I am a closet nerd, I went to the Starbucks website for some education. On their site, they offer 29 different varieties of coffee. 29?!?! Are they kidding? Then I saw that they offered a coffee education section. Perfect.

Here I tried their Coffee Taste Matcher. This is a device that should, in theory, match you with your perfect cup of coffee. I thought I had found the help I so desperately needed. Then I started reading the questions. One of them asked if I liked my coffee “complex enough to make me think.” Huh? Don’t I do enough thinking all day without needing my coffee to add to it? And what would it make me think about?

Another question wanted to know if coffee was a “culinary experience” that would “challenge me to find new flavors.” How many different flavors can one have in one cup of coffee? And a culinary experience? Please. A culinary experience for me is cooking something that doesn’t come out of a box and is edible.

Well it turns out that if I want to be adventurous, I could get some of their Colombia Nariño Supremo. It is described as a nutty blend (perfect for me) and went on to say that coffees from this particular region “are celebrated for their great balance, medium body and clean finish.” I had to double check the page I was on, because I thought I had stumbled onto a beer website. How can coffee have a clear finish?

This coffee stuff is complicated. Maybe I will just kick up my caffeine a notch by switching to Red Bull. At least for that I won’t have to do research.

A Homemade Halloween – Help!

One week before Halloween, my husband and I are wondering what on Earth we were thinking.

When we had kids, I decided that I would like to make their costumes each year. Even though store bought costumes can be cute, I get tired of seeing the same 10 costumes on every kid out there. I want my kids to be unique and that includes their Halloween costume.

We’ve had it pretty easy the past few years. My son has been a football player, a pirate and a Rescue Hero – all relatively easy costumes to make, even for someone as craft illiterate as me. Last year our daughter was Blue from Blues Clues and her costume was so cute I wish I could have made her the same one this year.

Our kids, going with their general trend of being difficult and demanding, want to go as Sharkboy and Lavagirl this year. While very cute for a brother sister pair, these are difficult costumes to make from scratch. Now, I have no idea what Disney was thinking, but they did not make costumes for this movie. Disney, who would make coordinated character toilet paper for a movie if they thought it would sell, did not make any costumes for this movie.

After trolling on EBay one night, my husband and I thought we were saved when we found a Sharkboy vest that someone had made. The way I see it, buying it wouldn’t really break my pact for a homemade costume because it was made in someone’s home, just not mine.
Unfortunately, this costume didn’t pass our son’s inspection which means we still have to figure out how to make our son look like Sharkboy in the next 6 days or so.

Since EBay was a bust, I spent part of the afternoon attempting to draw the beginnings of a Lavagirl costume. I think I can get away doing this costume. Since my daughter is only two she won’t know if the lava trails on her costume are directly proportionate with the actual character.

I wish I could say the same for my son. He got my husband’s eye for art, which means that my best attempt at anything artistic will fall miserably short of his expectations. I only hope that we can get him to overlook the fact that his fins are not the same shade of gray as Sharkboy’s by reminding him of the mass amounts of candy he’s going to get.

All this angst for what? Oh, that’s right - ten dollars worth of candy and a costume that my kids will wear one time. At least now I have a whole year to convince them that their costumes for next year should be ghosts.

When Multi-Tasking Goes Bad

Now that I have been a work at home mom for well over a year now I have become the Queen of multi-tasking.

How can this be a bad thing? Well, I now completely lack the ability to do less than three things at a time. When I sit down to watch a movie or TV show, I am still working or thinking about working or feeling guilty about not working.

I decided to make a chart of my daily activities and how they get completed.

When I eat breakfast, I am also emptying the dishwasher, feeding and cleaning up the kids from their breakfast and cleaning my kitchen from the night before.

When I am folding clothes, I am also getting snacks, getting my son’s backpack ready for the next day or refereeing a karate match between my kids.

When I am driving, I am going through spelling words with my son, thinking about the work I need to do that day, or trying to remember what I need from the store.

When I am going to the bathroom – wait a minute. I don’t get to go to the bathroom for more than 27 seconds anyway, so that doesn’t really leave time for much else. Except yelling down the hall at my daughter who now knows how to open up the drawers in the kitchen.
My husband is starting to get frustrated with me because when I do get to spend a little time with him in the evening, my mind is always elsewhere. Which I think is ironic, considering that it is usually the woman who is mad at the husband for being distracted all the time.

Torture for me would be to sit me on the couch with absolutely nothing – no paper, no pens to write on my hand with, no articles to read. Then make sure the kitchen was messy and my kid’s clothes needed to be washed. Then just force me to sit there and do nothing.

After about 19 seconds I would begin to tremble. After a minute I would look like I was going through detox. After about 5 minutes, you would have to strap me to the couch, because that would be the only way I would be able to not do anything.

What if it is like a drug addiction and I have to add more and more tasks to my plate? Where would I be able to draw the line? Is there a limit to how many tasks a woman can tackle at a time?

Just think, if I could be a guy for a day, I wouldn’t have any problem with this. After being married for almost ten years, I am convinced that the only multi-tasking men can do is read while going to the bathroom. Just think about how much less productive women would be if we were like this?