April 9th, 2009:

I was trying to squeeze in a shower before That Daddy Guy left this morning because I’m pretty sure that I was smelling of sour milk and spit up. These days I’m lucky if I can get a shower in every two days so I was quite relieved to turn on some hot water and simply let it beat down on my back for a few moments – quiet alone time moments. I was just about to take a deep breath in and get totally into my relaxation mode when I heard a rustling of the shower curtain followed by the following:

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DADDYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!”

What followed afterward might very well be a scene taken directly from a “Mommy Horror” movie as I pulled back the shower curtain to find That Daddy Guy holding up a very naked nearly 3 year old covered in POOP. Mike hesitated to make eye contact with me as the dreaded words “can he come in the shower with you” spilled from his lips…and I think its because he knew that if he locked eyes with mine, he’d see the desperation, the “please no”, the “I just need five minutes look”. It only took a second before Jacob was thrust into the shower with me and I was leaning over him cleaning the crap from his butt, legs and feet as he loudly protested. I wanted to say “listen kid, it might be cool with you to hang out covered in poop all day but I’ve got to smell you and while it might seem cool now…when you get to school next year it’s not going to be so fashionable anymore” but instead I just reassured him that the shower (which he hates) would be over soon and he could get on to more fascinating things like Wonder Pets and Train tables…all the while reminding him that Mommy would really love if he’d learn to poop on the potty – pretty please?!

When I was completely confident that all the crap had been hosed off, I hollered for Mike and stuck my outstretched arms out of the shower with a sopping wet toddler hanging from them. After Mike came to collect him, I took that deep breath and attempted to relax again but realized that it now required too much effort – my mommy day had begun and my Melissa time was gone so I quickly finished showering, climbed out of the tub, threw on some clothes and started going down the stairs….

Only to find out that the brilliant idea about teaching your son to go down the carpeted stairs on his bum for safety purposes…..

Really backfires when he has crap leaking out of both sides of his pull up.

It’s going to be a really good day, I can feel it.

I’ve always hoped that if my children got anything from me, it would be my passion around standing up for the things that are dear and important to you.  Since I firmly believe in leading by example our family spent the evening doing our part to save the park across the street from our house.  At 5:30 pm we bundled up and went out into the windy cold evening to participate in a peaceful protest – please try not to get all aroused and up in arms about us taking our children to a protest….it was a far cry from an angry anti-war riot!  The truth is that we love this darn park and the municipal government is about to tear it down, dig into the ground, take away the green space and replace it with a nice shiny new slab of concrete that will be made into a….

SKATE BOARD PARK.

Kill me.

Let me be clear in saying that I am absolutely not against the idea of a skate board park, in fact I am quite in favor of the teenagers having a super awesome place to slam their boards into the ground day and night but I am opposed to it being across the street from a residential neighborhood.  The part that makes me absolutely furious about it is the way that the community around the proposed skate board park is not being consulted, heard, or even acknowledged.  We are being told that the noise level will not increase and I find such a message ignorant because when there is just five or six teenagers in that park we can hear them quite clearly….this skate board park is projected to draw in hundreds of “boarders” and seriously Mark Grimes, when was the last time You heard someone skateboard?  I’m sorry but it is not a quiet activity any way that you look at it.   Mr. Grimes wants us to believe that the teenagers are just going to “go home” at 11pm when the skateboard park “closes” but this is not to be a supervised skate park so I’m wondering who is going to be around at 11pm to make sure all the obediant little teeny boppers find their ways safely back to their parents….certainly not Mr. Grimes.  I guarantee that we will hear the whizz, whirl, and slam of the skate board well into the late hours of the morning!  The neighborhood people have not been adequately consulted and I’m angry.

I’m furious.

This is not a joke, or something to be taken lightly…this is the park that the children in this community play in.  I’m so frustrated by our municipal government right now and I’ve taken the time to write letters to both Mr. Grimes and our Mayor David Miller about this situation.  I won’t even get started about how the skate board park is going to cost over FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS but apparently we have no money for swimming pools so those need to be closed down.  No, this is not a joke at all and when Mama Melissa gets angry about something it only motivates her to keep fighting.

So, yes we took our children to a peaceful protest in a little park…because it matters to all of us, them included.  I of course did not get Jacob involved in the politics of it all (because I also believe that children shouldn’t take on adult type problems) but I did let him be there, playing in the park that he enjoys so much and check him out….

Apparently he wanted to be on the front lines of the action….next thing you know he’ll be chaining himself to a tree.  Heh.

As I was walking to the store last night at about 10:45 p.m., I stepped out of my house and immediately could hear the whirl and thump of skate boards and as I walked I looked around trying to find where the noise was coming from. It was not until I was practically at the store that I saw two teenagers, using the lighted parking lot as a skate board park of their own and as I watched them I laughed….

No noise increase? Why is it that I could hear these two skate boarders from my house when the distance between my house and the store is TWICE the distance between my house and the proposed new skate board park. I think its hilarious that Mr. Mark Grimes would suggest that the noise level won’t increase….we are not uneducated, easily pacified individuals Mr. Grimes…

Put the darn skate board park next to your house because we don’ want it next to ours.