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.

Oops, I crapped my pants. Seriously.

I ran a half marathon on Sunday. It was my first long distance race since before I got pregnant with The Quiet Contemplator. It was awesome. I am running another one next Sunday. Yes, I am an idiot.

I'm the bee-yotch on the right.

After I was finished the race (I crossed the finish line carrying both of my babies--best and worst decision ever), my friends and I decided to go out and eat a lot of horrible food and drink a lot of shitty beer. It was a wonderful Sunday. I went to bed early and slept like the dead. Until around midnight...

Suddenly I could no longer sleep and my stomach was cramping uncontrollably. This continued until around, well, hopefully it will let up any minute now... Yeah, I got food poisoning from that shitty food.

Needless to say, the last two days have been less-than-pleasant. There are two ends that food poisoning can come out of and mine always seems to head south.

Anyway. The POINT of this story is that parenting on your own (ADD Daddy has to work late the next two days) while you have food poisoning is not for the weak of heart...or stomach. I have spent a good portion of my last two days on the pot (and not the good kind). And, of course, none of that time was spent alone.

My son sees my weakened state as an excellent excuse for an all-you-can-read book fest that includes his own personal Mommy-on-a-throne.

My daughter thinks my current situation is the perfect time to practice her color commentary skills. I get an incredibly descriptive play-by-play of every noise and facial expression, along with a critique of the color and consistency of my poo plays.

So, yeah, I crapped my pants today. How was your day?

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.

Why I want to drug Daniel Day-Lewis

So my girl Ilana over at Mommy Shorts went and got all famous on me. Instead of hanging out in the playground circuit, catching hand foot and mouth or some other lovely childhood malady, she is all up in the celebrity game swapping diaper blowout stories with the likes of Taye Diggs and Rachel Dratch via the Mommy Show.

WHATEVER! I totally have a slutty promiscuous friend from college who made out with G. Love AND the guy from Fastball. So take that, Ilana. Wait, never mind.

ANYWAY. Ilana asked me who I would want to drug, tie down and make watch me drink boxed wine for hours while I drone on about my stretch marks interview if I could interview anyone. Well, Ilana, I pick Daniel Day-Lewis.

Why?

• Because he is amaze balls, first of all. The guy could stand on stage in a hot dog costume while reading the phone book and still get an Oscar for it.
• Second of all, I would throw my husband in front of a bus just to have the chance to make out with him a little bit. Yeah, I know it is kind of weird, but it is true, none-the-less.
• Third? Who doesn't want to watch Bill The Butcher change their kid's shitty diaper. Also, I totally want to see the look on my daughter's face when Daniel Plainview tells her he drank her milkshake.
• Fourth: My Left Foot. Enough said.
• Fifth: He digs writer chicks. Hell, he married Arthur Miller's daughter!
• Sixth: They named their kids Ronan and Cashel. 

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.

Life is hard.

Life is hard. Some days, the tiniest obstacle can seem insurmountable. An everyday task can stop you in your tracks and feel like a hurdle so large you can never overcome it.

But you are strong enough. To take that tiny task, and even the tremendous ones that may follow, and kick it in the balls and tell it who's boss. Because you are the only boss of you.

Because you were put here on this earth to do great things, whether big or small.

So let go of your insecurities. Stop downplaying your successes. Start shouting them from the rooftops.

Let life take you on a wild ride. Feel the wind in your hair. Feel the sun on your face.

Let go.

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.

How to clean your house in three easy steps

 

Step one. 

 Hop your kids up on as much overly processed sugary goodness as humanly possible. Candy, soda, cookies, you name it. Stuff that sugary crap down their gullet faster than those adorable little midgets can say foie gras.

 

Step two. 

Now that your kids are so jacked up on refined sweetness that they make Ty Pennington look like the Dalai Lama, hand them some cleaning supplies. I suggest a cordless vacuum and a wet rag. These provide the least risk and the most profit.

 

Step three. 

Sit back and watch the magic happen. But before you do, be sure to pour yourself a nice glass of mommy juice so you can thoroughly enjoy the fruit of your labor's labor.

 

You're welcome.

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.

How to promote good behavior while losing your marbles.

Lately our kids' problems with sharing, whining when asked to do simple chores, talking back, etc., have caused my husband and I to figuratively lose our marbles. My solution? To literally lose them. We have established a marble jar system to reward good behavior and the results have been amazing.

Here's how you can too:

Things needed:
Two small jars (we got ours from the Dollar Tree)
One small bag of marbles (we used flat glass stones from the Dollar Tree)

How it works:

• Show your child(ren) the two jars and the marbles.
• Explain to your child(ren) that when they do something good from now on, they will get a marble in their "Superstar Jar".
• Let them help you pour the marbles into the starter jar.
• Talk to them about a reward they would like once they move all the marbles to the Superstar Jar (it should be something small, like going out for ice cream or getting a small toy).
• Get started: when your kid does something good, move a marble from the starter jar to the Superstar Jar.
• Once the Superstar Jar is filled, give your child their reward and talk about how proud you are of them.
• Talk with your child about what they would like their next reward to be.
• Have them help you move the marbles back to the starter jar.
• Lather, rinse, repeat.

Side notes:

• Reward good behavior often. Being stingy with the rewards makes your kid get bored of the whole thing with a quickness. Aim to empty the jar within a week or two so they stay excited about it.
• No Indian giving on the marbles. Once they are earned, they can not be taken back for bad behavior.
• Kids are not allowed to ask for marbles if they do something good. They have to be earned without asking.

This is a great way to encourage sharing and relationships between siblings. It also helps older children feel special when they get to do something their younger sibling can't. It has encouraged our daughter to be nicer to her younger brother, share more and help around the house--all without being asked! It can also help with potty training and breaking bad habits.

Two glass jars: $2
One bag of glass stones: $1
Maintaining your will to live all the way through bedtime: Priceless


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.