You Know You're A Mom When...

Today I had one of those moments where you know you've become a wholly different person:

I'm standing in the kitchen (while Sweet Baby Girl watches Clifford upstairs) reading the paper and hear loud chicken noises outside. I finish reading Doonesbury, start to fold up the paper and then think, hm, that's not right, so I walk out the back door and what do I see?

A hawk is perched on the fence railing, right next to the chicken coop. Hawks are big freakin' birds, plus they have that crazy-eyes raptor face with the hooked beak and all. So, what did I do?

I put my fists on my hips and said "Oh, I don't THINK so. Get outta there!" So it flew away.

And then I see that Stanley, the rooster, is as far away from the hawk as possible while still in the coop, while the hens are clustered in the middle looking dumb. And Stanley's doing his job, namely alerting me to danger by squawking his head off. Good job, Stanley.

Then I thought, hm, "I don't THINK so?" I scared a hawk away from my chickens by using the Mom Voice?

Cool.

A Late Thanksgiving Post

I just wanted to mention some of my favorite moments from the Thanksgiving holiday; keep in mind that we had 10 guests from three assorted families.

1. At dinnertime, I got to call everyone to the table with the Cry of the Texas Hostess: "Turn off the football, y'all, it's TIME TO EAT!"

2. It was a lovely day so we got to eat dinner on the screen porch. Midway through the meal, Sweet Baby Girl (who, by the way, had an adorable holiday dress but opted instead to entertain, Hugh Hefner-like, in her PJs) got up from the table, announced that she had to potty, walked over to the little training potty there on the porch and peed.

Then, and this is where it becomes sublime, she offered to show us all the contents of the potty.

We declined.

3. When my father-in-law returned to the table with a yooooge plate of pie and ice cream (with whipped cream, too, I suspect) my mother and I gave each other identical glances of horror and amusement. (And, for the record, it's not that we're just bitchy, we're also aware that he's had a quadruple bypass, plus one of those Cheney stents.)

I am becoming more like my mother every day, which should scare me but for some reason doesn't. By the way, she also washed all of the china by herself, by hand. And did I mention that we had ten for dinner? That was a lot of dishes.