FRIDAY FUNNY: Guest Blogger Tara Leopold!

Never Challenge the Mommy Figure! We will ALWAYS find a way to educate you!

As a parent of 4 children (11 ,9, 7, 5), I don’t know why I chose to try and sneak away during the most chaotic part of the day to try and get something accomplished. You know the crazy time; right after school when the kids are starving and need to quickly finish their homework before we have to make a mad dash for all their various evening activities in exactly 22 minutes. (Oh, yeah…now I know why I chose to blog for the first time at this moment….it’s never any less chaotic.)

As I sat at the intimidating computer trying to figure out what to say as a guest blogger, I thought, “I’m such a ‘blogglehead’.  I can’t even post something, let alone write something. What am I going to do? I only have 19 minutes left to come up with something spectacular to write about and then post it.”  After numerous “I’m starving” pleas, I quickly dished out  gummy worms as a snack for the kiddos. Then I quickly retreated to the study to write.  As I became more agitated (Okay, stressed), I thought to myself, “This isn’t FAIR!  My husband’s out of town (again), and know I have to manage the household, become the computer expert, and post something in 14 minutes, and I don’t even have a clue what I’m going to write about.”

Meanwhile, the kids bickering began to escalate so I finally went in to investigate. Our 5 year old passionately stated that, “There has been a great injustice and that it wasn’t FAIR” that his siblings got more gummies than he did.  Clearly, the 5 year had more gummies than anyone else, so I took this moment to teach him about fairness, sharing and math. (Hey, being an effective mom is all about multi-tasking and real-life examples are the best way to learn addition and division…they’re called word problems.)

I explained to him that life is not fair, and from looking at his overflowing bowl it looked like he had more than anyone else who only had a few in their bowls. He was adamant that I count. I then reiterated that if he had more gummy worms he would have to give them away to his siblings because otherwise that wouldn’t be fair. He insisted we count, and sure enough he had 14, while the others had 11, 10, 9. We then added them up and divided the number evenly so that everybody ended up with 10. We then made sure each dish had the same number, and he had to give 4 of his gummies away. Needless to say, I don’t think he’ll be asking for a recount in the future. I quickly gave him a kiss on the head and said, “Thanks for giving me something to write about.”

Through this simple story there are lots of lessons to be learned: fairness doesn’t always end up like we thought, math really is applicable to everyday life, even a blogglehead like me can post something with seconds to spare.

Best Wishes,

Tara Leopold AKA Blogglehead