Today you are four.

The Beginning

DearJ,

My sweet little princess, today you are four years old. Oh how the time has flown since you came into the world and changed who your daddy and I are forever.

You are one of the most sweet. giving and emotionally caring children I have ever met. Your heart is so pure it hurts me.

One Year

You are truly a good soul. And an old soul. You are far wiser than your four tiny years provide for. Even Fatty knows it. She has taken to trying to sneak into your room at night so she can sleep with you but you will have none of it. Fatty is a damn good judge of character so if she trusts you enough to sleep in your bed, especially at only four years old, that is really saying something.

Two Years

You love Cinderella and Snow White and anything with princesses. You also like Caillou but mommy had to cut that shit off at the knees because Caillou's voice makes Mommy want to punch a kitten. Sorry.

Three Years

We call you Bean, Beanie Weenie and Baby Girl.

You are growing into such a big girl. You are smart, responsible and a good friend to those in your class. I am so proud of you and so thankful to have such an amazing person in our family.

Four years

I love you, Baby Girl. So much.

Mommy


If you share this post, I will buy you a pony. I suck at Twitter. I am OK at Facebook. Pinterest is my bitch. I am also on Bloglovin' and Instagram.

Advice Under the Influence: Throwing a Kid's Party

Welcome to another annoying episode of Advice Under the Influence. This week we will get our party on and learn how to throw a kid's party without losing our minds. Enjoy. 

Advice Under the Influence: Behind the Douche Canoe

Meet Charla

First things first, that lovely lady with me at around :22 seconds is my amazing fried Charla. I asked her to help with this episode and she was a freaking natural at playing an annoying parent. We should make a gag reel of just the crap that came out of her mouth when asked to ad-lib what an annoying parent might say. Man, I love her. Plus, her daughter Cam is so cute I want to steal her.

Cake, anyone?

Next, see me being a douche canoe around :48 seconds? Yeah, about that. About two seconds after I did this I dropped that damn cake on the floor. Yeah. Balls.

Oh hell-to-the-no.

About that cake. See around 2 minutes when that adorable little girl attacks said cake with a bat? Yeah. That happened. This was all filmed at the beginning of August and I am STILL finding icing EVERYWHERE. Seriously. Plus, the cake incident trashed my rug and that rug really tied the room together, man.

Anyway. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Advice Under the Influence. If you want to ensure that I keep embarrassing myself on the internet, SHARE IT. With everyone you know. Everywhere. Facebook, Twitter, your uncle's gay porn site, your grandma's bingo newsletter. You get the idea. The more people who watch them, the more likely that the lovely people at ulive will order up another batch of my douche canoery. Thanks so much. I will send imaginary fountains full of wine, unicorns and chocolate to all who share.

Smooches,

The Beer Bitch

If you share this post, I will buy you a pony. I suck at Twitter. I am OK at Facebook. Pinterest is my bitch. I am also on Bloglovin' and Instagram.

Toddler Parent Problems

Woeful Ones, Terrible Twos, Trying Threes, you name it. Toddlerdom is hard.

And the littlest thing can set your toddler's delicate psyche off. Like their milk being too cold. Or too hot. Or too cold and then too hot. Or too hot and then too cold. Or not of the chocolate variety. Or that the milk is in the pink cup and not the purple one. Or that they wanted to pour the milk from the 5-pound jug into the tiny cup by themselves. Or that it is milk and not water. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

There are myriad enemies of the parent of the toddler. These are just a few.

Basic Human Hygiene
Toothbrush, shampoo, Q-tips, these methods of toddler torture are Domestic Enemy #1. Trying to keep a toddler from smelling ripe and looking like they just crawled out of a gutter is hard work. They fight you at every turn with the ferocity of a honey badger. Brush their hair? NEVER! They would rather you waterboard them while making them watch footage of Caillou kicking a puppy. And don't even thing about cutting their nails. That is the lowest form of torture and completely unnecessary. Who doesn't want to have claws like Wolverine? Duh.

Wardrobe Malfunctions
Getting a toddler dressed is like trying to stuff a water snake through a key-hole. Pointless, infuriating, and in the end, impossible. And that is just the actual physical side of getting a toddler dressed. The fashion side is an even deeper issue. God forbid you try to put your toddler in a Hello Kitty t-shirt when they want to wear their Batman pajamas. Such a blatant misdoing will most certainly result in a tantrum the likes of which this planet can surely not survive. In the long run, it really doesn't matter what you picked out for them to wear. It could be a vest fashioned from live puppy dogs that bark your child's name and it will still be wrong. Man, I want to wear that…

Sustenance
Even if your baby was an adventurous eater who would shove everything from caviar to canned dog food down their gullet, chances are, once they hit toddlerdom, a new sheriff will take over Dinner Town. Dinner time at our house generally makes me want to stab myself in the thigh with a rusty fork. One day, my daughter loves fish sticks. The next, she acts like I filleted our cat and served it up to her on a plate made of bat wings when I offer her fish sticks. What gives? Is it just me or are toddlers bi-polar when it comes to eating? The most infuriating? If your toddler wolfs down everything from quinoa to roasted beets at school and won't so much as touch a single grain of rice at home. Every night at our house is kind of like a terrifying game of culinary roulette. Will I win, or will the grapes I offered up as homage to the toddler god result in me losing a finger?

Public Places
Toddlers have a sixth sense when it comes to when their tantrums can be the most epic. At home, you can just leave them to whine and wail in the living room while you go freshen up your chardonnay in the kitchen. But when you are at the Drs office, or the grocery store, or Grandma's, you have to heed to their demands. One more cookie? Sure thing. Coming right up. Just please don't freak out while we are at the DMV. Now honey, please don't stand on that chair. You know we don't do that. Honey, that is not nice. Please don't poke that man in the face with your toy truck. Oh, screw it. Just do whatever you want so I can get these damned plates renewed.

The Sandman
So you finally got your baby into a pattern where they sleep for more than 15 minutes at a time in their own bed? Awesome, right? Wrong. Chances are, toddlerdom will change that. Toddlers are wiley. They are master manipulators. Your baby couldn't make requests for a glass of water, one more story, more cuddles or a potty break. But your toddler can. And they will. Over and over again. And now that they are in a big kid bed and not a cage, I mean crib, they have free access to Mommy and Daddy all night long. Because they needed to tell you that they went pee pee in the potty at 11:38 and 2:00 and 3:15 and 5:07 and… Wait, why did we let them out of the crib again?

Potty Time
Potty training sucks. BIG TIME. I have found it is a lot like prison. Why? Because no matter how hard you try to get out of it, you are going to have to do your time. Your can't beg, plead or cry your way out of your sentence. You are about to be locked in a cell the size of, well, your bathroom for the next month…or more. You are stuck for the majority of your day with a cellmate that can be super annoying. And, even after your release for good behavior, chances are, you will be sent back to prison for violating parole. A new baby, daycare, illness, brand of milk, etc., can all send your cellmate into a tizzy that will result in you getting sent back to the slammer diaper duty.

Self-Fulfillment
Do you want to know what the last words I might hear before I have my final rage stroke are? "No! I can do it by myself!" Toddlers are an independent lot. And after a year of raising a baby who has nothing but needs, that can be kind of awesome. However, toddlers want to do EVERYTHING by themselves. Put on their coats, tie their shoes, pour their cereal, do their taxes, cure world hunger. Which is great, except A: they are still unable to do most of these things by themselves in less than six hours B: them doing these things by themselves usually ends in a huge mess and C: just let me tie your damn shoes so we can go already! What? Oh, sorry. I think I blacked out there for a minute.

The Spanish Inquisition
Toddlers are curious. Very curious. They often ask deep, insightful questions, such as, "Why is black?" that tend to boggle the parental mind. And there is always, "Why". The Why phase is a Domestic Enemy all of its own. It is one of the most exhausting phases of toddlerdom. Why are you taking a shower? Why do I have to brush my teeth? Why is the sun hot? Why are you scratching your leg? Why did you get a mosquito bite? Why does it itch. Why? Why? Why? The questions are non-stop from sun-up to sun-down in our house. And all lines of questioning end the same way: with 362 repetitions of, "Why?" The word "Why" has caused me to have a permeant eye twitch that even wine can't remedy. I feel like Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction. Say "why" again. Say "why" again. I dare you. I double-dare you, motherf*cker. Say "why" one more goddamn time.

If you share this post, I will buy you a pony. I suck at Twitter. I am OK at Facebook. Pinterest is my bitch. I am also on Bloglovin' and Instagram.

Advice Under the Influence: Potty Training

The thought that I am about to enter the potty training ring for a second bout makes me want to curl up in a corner with a bottle of tequila and not come out until my son is in college and has hopefully figured the whole thing out for himself. But alas, I will throw myself in front of the punches the potty has to hand out one more time so my son doesn't end up at his wedding in a poopy Pamper. After my first round in the potty training ring, I learned a trick or two. Like to hear 'em? Here it goes.

 Advice Under the Influence: Behind the Douche Canoe

First off, nothing like a good poop gag to start everything off, right? The pudding was smeared on my face for a few takes but I think that read too…um…poopy for public consumption. I was lucky to get any pudding at all with two chocolate sharks swimming about at knee level.

Around 1:18, Fatty could handle being out of the limelight no longer and decided to make her big debut…in the crapper. She is such an attention whore.

The Cool Cucumber's adorable face at 2:07 might be one of my favorite things about this whole series. Man, that kid kills me. I also love him at 2:29 when you can see him trying to "poop" like me. Ha!

Anyway. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Advice Under the Influence. If you want to ensure that I keep embarrassing myself on the internet, SHARE IT. With everyone you know. Everywhere. Facebook, Twitter, your uncle's gay porn site, your grandma's bingo newsletter. You get the idea. The more people who watch them, the more likely that the lovely people at ulive will order up another batch of my douche canoery. Thanks so much. I will send imaginary fountains full of wine, unicorns and chocolate to all who share.

Smooches,

The Beer Bitch

If you share this post, I will buy you a pony. I suck at Twitter. I am OK at Facebook. Pinterest is my bitch. I am also on Bloglovin' and Instagram.

Parental peace of mind

In general, as a result of my brother's murder and the resulting Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that is has caused, I am pretty anxious. Especially when I am alone. And especially when I am alone in public. So when I first heard about React Mobile, it instantly clicked: this could help me feel safer, and therefore help with my anxiety and PTSD.

Check out this video for a little background on the app:



Now do you have to suffer from PTSD for this app to be useful? Hells to the no. I also use it to keep my husband in the loop when I go for a run through its "Follow Me" feature. That way he always knows where I am and that I make it home safely if he is not there.

But there are tons of other uses. Here are just a few:

Going on a blind date and need to send a bat signal to get you the heck out of dodge when your suitor starts using their fork to floss with? React Mobile can help. Just send and "SOS" and a select group of friends can know that you need "rescuing".

Have a teenager that would rather die than let you know they got somewhere safely? With React Mobile, they can just push a button on their phone and you can know they arrived alive and they are spared the embarrassment of having to acknowledge that they have parents who care. Win-win.

There are endless uses for React Mobile, but basically it just provides you with a mental and virtual safety net if needed. It sure as hell helps me feel more at ease all-around. You can download it for free here.

React Mobile App: $0
Cost of raising a child to adulthood: $250,000
Parental peace of mind: Priceless

This post was sponsored by React Mobile but I wrote about it because I felt a personal connection with the service the app provides. I will never write a sponsored post about a product I do not personally believe in. I love you guys to much to do that garbage.

You might be a parent if...

• You consider macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets a food group.
• The "Five second" rule has turned into "Meh, it doesn't have any hair stuck to it" rule.
• Having an audience every time you use the bathroom no longer phases you.
• The floor of your car could double as a Cheerio/toy skill crane machine.
• You purchase wine by the box because a bottle just isn't enough anymore.
• You haven't had an uninterrupted conversation with an adult in over a year.
• Mopping up all the water after bath time now counts as cleaning the bathroom.
• You constantly have the theme song from an annoying kids show in your head (Die, Caillou. Die.).
• You now count the seconds until another human being's nap and bed time.
• Being covered in another person's pee, poop or puke no longer elicits a reaction from you.
• If you have anything baby-shaped in your arms, you instinctively rock it..
• You now consider a decent night's sleep anything over five hours.
• An appropriate outfit is now anything that hasn't recently been spit up on.
• Cool car features went from having heated leather seats to having a built in DVD player in the back.
• You find yourself watching kids shows even when there are no children.
• You get excited when someone other than yourself poops in the potty.
• You know why the word "why" is so annoying.
• You understand why sometimes animals in the wild eat their young.

If you share this post, I will buy you a pony. I suck at Twitter. I am OK at Facebook. Pinterest is my bitch. I am also on Bloglovin' and Instagram.

Advice under the Influence: Getting Your Toddler to Sleep

Welcome to the second episode of Advice Under the Influence: Getting Your Toddler to Sleep

 

Advice Under the Influence: Behind the Douche Canoe

So here's the scoop on this episode: I am a total Hollywood sellout. You know how people only get to the top in the film industry by jumping into bed with Hollywood big wigs? Well, I am sorry to break it to you, my friends, but I am no exception.

Why, you ask? Well…that man in bed with me around 20 seconds…is not ADD Daddy. It's actually my director/producer, Robbie. I know, I know. What a slutbag. Well, kind of...

You see, my house during filming was an absolute and total shitshow. Wires, lighting rigs, cameras, boom mics, production crew, etc. Oh, and two drunken midgets running around during it all.

Needless to say, someone had to corral those midgets while mama was making the magic happen and that someone was ADD Daddy. So while he was herding cats toddlers, me and Robbie hopped into the sack for a little alone time. On film. Surrounded by a room full of people. Yeah, it was like college all over again. Wait, never mind.

This all leads me to 1:14, where you again find Robbie in one of our familial beds. What the heck is up with this dude? He has a total Goldilocks complex.

Anyway. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Advice Under the Influence. If you want to ensure that I keep embarrassing myself on the internet, SHARE IT. With everyone you know. Everywhere. Facebook, Twitter, your uncle's gay porn site, your grandma's bingo newsletter. You get the idea. The more people who watch them, the more likely that the lovely people at ulive will order up another batch of my douche canoery. Thanks so much. I will send imaginary fountains full of wine, unicorns and chocolate to all who share.

Smooches,

The Beer Bitch

If you share this post, I will buy you a pony. I suck at Twitter. I am OK at Facebook. Pinterest is my bitch. I am also on Bloglovin' and Instagram.  

I am winning at Christmas Already

It's that time of year again. No, not just time to get out the holiday decorations and start drinking heavily so I can tolerate all of the "holiday cheer" going around. No, it is time for me to navigate four holidays all in the span of a month, and I ain't even counting New Years.

You see, we don't just have the regular holidays to deal with in our family, because for some reason I am only fertile during times that will end with my children being born during the shitstorms that are Thanksgiving and Christmas. So, yeah, I have THREE gift-giving holidays coming up. JOY!

The mere thought of organizing all of the gifts needed for birthdays and Christmas, then relaying said requests to the interested parties, makes my eye twitch. But I have found a way to get it all done in a way that doesn't end with me wanting to punch a kitten: Giftster.

Giftster let me make a list for everyone in my family and then add crap to the lists from all over the internets. Then I just email the link to my list to my friends and family who ask what everyone wants. Here are my lists for Me, ADD Daddy, The Cool Cucumber and The Quiet Contemplator.

So far I have added stuff from Target, Blik, Amazon and even a site for a race series that I want to enter. I would rather have someone pay for me to be able to run off the holiday stress than buy me an ugly sweater with a reindeer on it. Plus, this gives ADD Daddy a list of stuff I want in a way that can help him remember it for longer than three seconds, complete with the link to where to buy it.

Oh yeah, and the whole service is free and takes about five seconds to sign up for. You can also add a button to your browser that lets you pin gifts just like you pin stuff on Pinterest. BONUS!

So, basically, I am winning at the whole birthday/Christmas thing this year thanks to Giftster. And you can suck it, Santa.

This post was sponsored by Giftster but you Boozehounds know I would NEVAH EVAH subject you to anything I didn't think was amazeballs on my own. For realzies. 

If you share this post, I will buy you a pony. I suck at Twitter. I am OK at Facebook. Pinterest is my bitch. I am also on Bloglovin' and Instagram.

Advice Under the Influence: Getting Your Toddler to Eat

Welcome to the world premier of Advice Under the Influence. I have waited a long, long time to share this with you all and am so excited that the day is finally here.

Today's episode of Advice Under the Influence is Getting Your Toddler to Eat. If you currently have toddlers (may God bless your exhausted and incredibly annoyed soul) you know how hard it is to get them to eat anything more nutritious than a Goldfish cracker they found between the couch cushions. Well I have been to the toddler trenches so I have a few knowledge bombs to drop on you.

Once you are done laughing at what a complete idiot with no sense of shame I am, and possibly peeing yourself a little, read on for your first taste of Advice Under the Influence: Behind the Douche Canoe.

Enjoy.

Advice Under the Influence: Behind the Douche 

Well, I hope you liked it. Here are a few inside looks at what it takes to make the magic happen:

Stick 'em up, toddlers!

At around :32 was when we discovered that The Quiet Contemplator may just give Daniel Day-Lewis a run for his Oscar-worthy money some day. Seriously, that kid has acting chops in spades.

They are not smelling what I'm cooking...

The Cool Cucumber? Not so much. We tried a few takes of the dinner scene at :56 and every time we would put the fish sticks down he would start shoving them down his gullet like a ravenous beast. But after a few tries, he started picking up what his sister was putting down and got on board with the whole "saying no to food for once in his life" idea. Watching him pick up on his sister's cues and start pushing his plate away and covering his head like she was one of the cutest things ever. (You can see an example of his shoveling around the 1:13 mark. Priceless.)

Bastard!

The down side of this whole episode? Teaching my son to flush Cheerios down the toilet like his sister constantly did as a toddler. That little f'er did that for WEEKS after the shoot. Every time I turned around he was trying to pour a box of cereal down the crapper. Excellent.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the first of the Advice Under the Influence series. Don't worry, there will be more videos of me making a complete ass out of myself to come. But if you want to ensure that I keep embarrassing myself on the internet, SHARE THESE. With everyone you know. Everywhere. Facebook, Twitter, your uncle's gay porn site, your grandma's bingo newsletter. You get the idea. The more people who watch them, the more likely that the lovely people at ulive will order up another batch of my douche canoery. Thanks so much. I will send imaginary fountains full of wine, unicorns and chocolate to all who share.

Smooches,

The Beer Bitch

If you share this post, I will buy you a pony. I suck at Twitter. I am OK at Facebook. Pinterest is my bitch. I am also on Bloglovin' and Instagram.

I've been hiding something from you...

So I have been keeping a BIG, BIG secret from you all. I have been working on the most amazeballs with a capital BALLS secret project for the last six months. No it's not a book (because who doesn't have one of those out nowadays anyway, oh yeah, that's right: me). It is way more awesomer than a book. It is a video series based on my Advice Under the Influence columns. On ulive.com. From the people at SCRIPPS! Dude, I know. What were they thinking?

Anyway. Here's how it all played out: on my way to the hospital with The Cool Cucumber for his tube surgery, I got an email from a deliciously wonderful girl named Lauren. The email said that the people at Scripps had found my blog on Scary Mommy and loved it. They wanted to talk to me about possibly working together on something they were developing. I about died. Seriously, I was shaking and sweating like a whore in confession.

Long story short, they wanted to develop a series with me where I could be my whole idiot self in front of the entire internets. Phrases like, "Your pilot has been green-lighted" made me feel like a complete douche canoe, but I was beyond excited to try something new and to give you guys a real taste of what a complete idiot I really am.

There will be more where this came from...

And guess what? It comes out TOMORROW! When it does, PLEASE share the CRAP out of it. Seriously, send it to everyone you know, including your grandma's cat. I will let you all know when each video is ready, complete with a behind-the-lens look of how it all went down. I am so excited to share it with you, Boozehounds!

Cheers,

Julie

If you share this post, I will buy you a pony. I suck at Twitter. I am OK at Facebook. Pinterest is my bitch. I am also on Bloglovin' and Instagram.