Let’s be frank and discuss something that all to many find uncomfortable–IBS, or, as we moms call it: “Irritable Boy Syndrome.”

For far too long it has been the girls that shoulder the weight of unpredictable hormones and mood swings even…

There are only three sounds that send a full-grown mother running. They are:

• Screams of terror and pain
• Silence
• Yakking

Screams of terror and pain. These screams stand out among all the other screams and cries children make. A scream of terror or pain…

When it comes to parenting pet peeves, one thing most parents can’t stand is stupidity in children.

I’m not talking about the usual brainless things that happen around the house that you EXPECT with children, things like spilled milk, kids lolling…

I love being a stay at home mom. I can go to the bathroom whenever I want, I can drink water whenever I want and I never have to say ‘excuse me’ unless the children hear.

I haven’t let myself go.…

It used to be true that nothing in life was for free. That is, until freecycle.org was born.

The idea is to exchange items you no longer want and need with others (and vice versa)-for free! You select a group of…

So I left last Wednesday for a four-day trip to the beach with girlfriends. With girlfriends all over the age of 50.  Real dangerous, huh? Actually…well, no, wait. I promised the ladies, “What happens at the beach stays at the…

I followed the trail of clothing down the hall. Somehow, my one-year old son had freed himself from these repressive articles.

There were the pink jammy bottoms (hey, he’s MY son and he’s secure in his masculinity so he can endure…

According to retailers, American Dads don’t do much but play with power tools, do yard work, golf, and wear socks.

If I believe the magazine and newspaper stories I’ve read this past week, dads don’t know how to relate to the…

There are three sounds that drive me nuts. If you guessed A) children B) television and C) video games, you’re right!

I love my kids, but sometimes it seems as if they conspire to drive me crazy and no matter what…

“Mockery”, she accused.  MOCKERY?  After 6-and-a-half years in this humor/satire writing world, I should be used to the misinterpretation by some readers.   Especially since last week’s nastygram was only my 4^th in all these years. And the only one printed in…

A little over a week to go. But who’s counting?  Every child in this country. As I passed a veteran teacher in the hall the other day, she grabbed me by the sleeve, stared at me with cross-eyes and hissed,…

As the ‘mother’ of seven cats, I am surrounded by felines daily. This makes me an expert on cats, but you don’t need seven to understand their language. One cat will be able to train you quite sufficiently.

There is the…

Go ahead.  “Google Mastitis + Nonlactating” and freak out at the possibilities like I did.  Except when you get 942 results for Non-Lactating Mastitis in Bovines. Apparently those poor cows are hurting just like me.

So I walked into Conglomerate Medical’s…

There I was in the middle of the bra aisle with the three-year old and two-year old in tow. I’d played it smart. I had both children strapped into a shopping cart of their own. I had them parked out…

My youngest has been playing school with his older siblings and now he feels ready to start kindergarten.

“Whoa! You need to be five first.”

“But I’m ten.”

“Not quite.”

He recites his ABCs and counts to 100. He spells his first name and…

Mother’s day has been celebrated under various forms and names since the time of Greek Goddesses (i.e. my personal favorite, Crisis, Goddess of Domesticity).  In 1872, Mother’s Day was first suggested in the United States by Julia Ward Howe (who wrote…

It was a hot summer day in the early 1960’s. The Cold War between the USSR & the USA had been going on for a long time. But that summer, tensions had escalated. Many Americans were concerned about the threat…

My oldest son is a large boy and will definitely be tall when he’s older. For now he’s a ten-year old garbage disposal with legs.

I don’t know why I’m talking. I’m a two hundred pound woman that eats like a…

I don’t know why I bother.   I watch those shows on HGTV and read the articles in magazines.   I scour the Sunday ads to see who has the cheapest Rubbermaid totes and cutest stacking drawers.  I empty entire closets, cabinets…

The first thing I do when I stuff a new pillow into a case is rip off the “Do not remove under penalty of law” tag.  Go ahead; threaten me with penalties, sleepless nights or continuous thunderstorms the first three…

I’m thinking of changing my name to Gladys Knight, not because I can sing-poodles can sing better than I can-but because I’m surrounded by pips.

On his own, Pip Number One is perfectly content to focus on one thing (eating or…

My son was fidgeting and pulling at the fly of his pants. He’s four-years old and, although he’s potty trained, I don’t want to take any chances.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

“No, I’m just playing with my pieces.”

“That’s…

The morning I woke up, looked in the mirror, and howled, "The horror!  The horror!"  should have been my first clue.  As I stared into the mirror, the face looking back at me had crows' feet, puffy bags, extra neck tissue, and grey straggles in the hair.

I have become an old woman.  Or at least a middle-aged mother.

When I sat with my friends, before we went in to hear a comedian the most important thing was a pitstop to avoid embarrassment mid-joke in a belly laugh.

Then my teen-aged daughter told me someone had - like - an old hairstyle that dated all the way back to the nineties.   Ten years ago is no longer a long time.  Twenty years cannot be a long time either.

Hear that?  Can you hear my mother laughing hysterically from her Ft. Myers, Florida Over 55 Active Lifestyle Community aquacise class?  I can. Because it's Monday.  And until today, I lived in fragile bliss, forgetting my mother's warning about Maternal Mondays.

I am not alone. After stubbing my pinky toe on a shoe the size of Nebraska, kindly left behind by my son from spring break, I located my laptop under a pile of laundry and checked my email.

"I have a list of 15 things to do today.  I don't know how that happened, because last night I looked at my calendar and it SAID: Track pick up (5:00) and Theater practice pick up (5:30).  Now I have: Take my mom's late gas bill payment to gas company (find the gas company building!); call and cancel two Doctors Appointments scheduled three months ago due to this week's newest sports conflicts; go to BJ's get TP; get track form notarized…(where?); get Kiwi for Timmy to take to school as part of his class project; E-mail second kid's school counselor to set up meeting; call Lebos - pray they got in the dance /jazz shoes third son needs for theater; etc, etc, Brush teeth!!  Smile!!  

It's what makes you, unconsciously, rock back and forth, shifting your weight from one foot to the other, cradling your little baby, while waiting in the one out of 32 grocery store lanes currently open.  

It's what lets you merge your minivan on the highway at the precise speed while refereeing a third row seat argument, holding the bucket for the barfing kid while calling the doctor's office to let them know you're running late for your appointment because Johnny chose this morning to see what would happen if he held a jar of strawberry jam over his head without tightening the lid.

I haven't had a bad hair day in a long time, but one hit me this week five minutes before I was to walk out the door for Mass.

My husband poked his head in our room. "Aren't you going to church?"

"No! I feel like a HORSE!" Fwing! There went another skirt flying across the room.

He's a good man. He may have doubled over laughing when I finally left the house, but until then he kept a most seriously straight face.

"How could I be sick with the flu all week and lose ten pounds and nothing fits?" (Fwing! There went a pair of pants that would not button.) "But last week they all did! Tell me that, huh? How come they fit when I'm fat but not when I lose ten pounds?"

If cats kept a daily log of their daytime activities it would be boring. Entry after entry would simply read "nap" with an occasional "lick" inserted here and there. Nighttime is when all the real action takes place.

8:30PM: Time to let the humans know it's getting late. Swat the back of their heads while they watch television or sit on the TV and hang your tail down the center of the screen. Give them a foretaste of the evening you have planned by reaching high up on the drapes giving them a test swing.

9:00PM: Chase each other up and down the hall, over the sofa and across laps, under the dining room chairs, across the window sill and back across the dining room table.

My close personal friend, "Julia," from Proctor & Gamble, sent me another close and personal e-mail.  Honestly, I'd feel so cut off from the outside world without her. In her latest letter, Julia gave me (and 379,000 of her other friends) tips on "stepping out into spring".

I appreciated her encouragement to get off the couch and get outdoors. I did promise myself once it got warmer I'd walk the dogs more, do yard work and breathe un-recirculated air for longer than it takes me to walk to the bus stop and back.

Ol' Jules said to get the kids off the couch and send them outdoors too.  This woman is smarter than I thought.  She told me to "Take a casual approach to getting your kids to watch less TV - create some outdoor action to sway them away from the screen."

No, not that.  Um, not that either.  I'm not really sure. Look, I have no idea what I did all day long but I know it was productive. 

I consider it a Productive day when I don't set any grilled cheese sandwiches on fire.  Plus,

I finished a cup of coffee before it got cold.

I think I even showered.  Wait; yes.  Yes I did because that's when I found my half finished cup of coffee I lost yesterday.   I brushed my teeth at least once.

The kids brushed their teeth.  I'm pretty sure.

I didn't run out of toilet paper or diapers. No one barfed without a toilet or bucket within close range. I didn't lock myself out of the house. With dinner on the stove.

Stay-at-home moms are under a lot of pressure these days. Being at home is slotted as such a no-brainer that many women are committing themselves to home-schooling, sewing their own clothes and feeding the homeless to make their time at home valuable…which makes the rest of us seem even more lazy.

So stop it!

Have you seen the commercial with the mother whose preschooler can already read at the second grade level? Talk about a guilt trip, especially if you are a stay-at-home mom. Like, what am I doing all day if my kid can't write a thesis paper before he enters kindergarten?

My cookie jar is a Dutch oven, a big heavy red pot that keeps cookies moist and has a built in alarm system. No matter how quietly a child tries to sneak out a cookie, there's always the telltale ‘clink' sound that gives them away no matter how muffled.

"Get out of the cookies!"

"I wasn't in them."

"Yes, you were."

"Well, I was getting a cookie for you."

Right.

I don't know what it is with kids these days, maybe it's only mine, but none of my kids seem to have an aptitude for sneaking into things and getting away with it.

So let me guess:  Dinner? As in, outside of your own kitchen where someone else cooks, serves and cleans the kitchen?  And as a double bonus, no dogs or kids begging under the table or jumping on it to steal…

My husband and I sat motionless staring at the television.  Before I could say, "Rewind that.", he'd already begun and simultaneously called the kids into the family room.  "You have to watch this.  Shh, listen and watch."  They watched, then…

"Hello Ms. Rinehart and thank you for calling Delta Skymiles American Express. I see you've been a valued American Express member since December, 2007. We're so grateful to have you as our loyal customer. My name is Wanda. How are…

I called my husband on my cell phone. Just as it rang his office our landline rang, so I hung up to answer the other phone. It stopped ringing before I got to the end of the hall.

So I went…

My daughters' territory in the bathroom consists of a few shelves and a cabinet, which is adequate for two teenage girls - for now. The boys also have space for their things, but they find the girls' possessions so much…

It's the one and only day of the week I develop the sudden, strong urge to scrub the grout lines on my kitchen floor. With a toothbrush.  And a toddler clamoring on my back yelling, "Giddy up!"

It's the day I…

The kids were all smirking. They'd heard my husband's decree: Woman, if you don't pick up your game around here, YOU'RE going to be grounded!

He's tired of digging through laundry baskets every morning looking for something to wear. Everything is…

To think this incredibly glamorous aspect of life existed so long and I am just now, due to the generosity of my daughter (who needs a driver and legal guardian) privy to it all.  The following are my live, on…

I like ‘oompa' music just as much as the next person. And in my neighborhood that seems to be just about everyone especially the neighbor that's been playing it for five days straight.

I grew up with ‘oompa' music. Some of…

My four-year old son is not buying my stalling tactics any more. It used to be that if he really wanted something at the store I could say, "next time" and that would suffice. If he wanted to play a…

The stomach flu.  I would welcome a weeklong case and embrace it like a long lost puppy.  Look, I'm not buying diet pills or skipping carbs or getting a bargain on someone's slightly used treadmill collecting clothes currently just a…

My husband is a conservative introvert who is set in his ways. This gives the impression that he's no Mr. Fun. But park a jump house on his front lawn and be prepared to meet his inner side.

My sister and…

You've got to be really, really ill to want to stay home in our family. My eldest daughter had a fever one night. Her head felt like it had swelled five times its size and her throat and ears ached.…

Why do I do this?  All I have to do is scroll down to the bottom of the message and click, "Unsubscribe".  Maybe it's because the HGTV How To emails give me something to read other than, "Your phone bill…

You know the one.  It arrives the day after Thanksgiving.  The envelope is double foil lined, the picture of the kids resembles a Gap ad, and the Holiday Letter should come with a warning:  "Caution!  May cause blurred vision, severe…

Many times my husband will come home from work and ask me how my day went and I will tell him, "I know I was busy all day, but I don't have any idea what I did!"

Well, I finally figured…

Last night I, Lisa Barker, did not burn, cut or maim myself when I cooked dinner.

Don't laugh. This is a big feat. If there were chain mail I could wear while cooking dinner my husband would buy it for me.…

Sometimes when a mom chooses to stay at home, she worries that her education will go to waste. Little by little caring for little ones kills off brains cells. We cut everything at the dinner table into tiny pieces. We're…

My husband is a manly man. He takes great pride in being the head of the household and he does a great job as a husband and father. I don't mind deferring to him…but he's about to be dethroned.

There are…