Viral Video: OMG. I know little girl, me too!

If you would like to see the cutest, funniest thing on the internet right now - here it is. It's this sweet little girl losing her mind because someday her baby brother will grow up. Oh my goodness, little girl, I'm right there with you. My youngest, the precious little cupcake baked by the devil, is about to go to kindergarten and I can barely manage to keep from bawling about that pretty much all the time.

Here's to a great big sister, a ridiculously cute little brother, and a very sweet family! Hope you guys love this (about to go viral) video, too.

Pool Math

We spend a lot of time at the pool. I'm starting to think there are mathematical rules and theorems that govern our experience there. Here's what I mean:

The Preparation to Pool Time Proportion: The amount of time it takes you to get your family ready to go to the pool (finding suits and towels, changing children, packing snacks, filling water bottles, locating the one lost flip flop) is inversely proportional to how long you will be at the pool before the first child asks if they can go home.

The 80 Minute Sunscreen Phenomenon: The more diligently you apply sunscreen every 80 minutes to your children, the greater the risk that the only part of your own body that will receive similar attention will be the palms of your hands. Or possibly your eyeballs when you forget that your hands are covered in sunscreen and you rub your eyes.

10 Ways You Know You're A Swim Parent

It's POOL WEEK here at Rants from Mommyland, as well as being the last week of swim team. In honor of that, I decided to type up 10 ways I know I'm a swim parent. Ready? Here we go!

1. "Eat my bubbles" is written on the back of my van in window paint. I don't even really know what that means, but let's be honest - it sounds really unsanitary. 

Brutally Honest Paper Plate Awards for this Swim Season

At the end of every sports season, there is usually some sort of party where the coach talks about each of the players and sometimes, gives awards for things like "Most Improved" or "Most Valuable". Swim team is no different, except on our team they give paper plate awards. They're exactly what they sound like.  Fun, light-hearted awards that our truly wonderful coaches make for the swimmers.

As this week marks the end of our swim season, I've started to think about the awards my kids have earned. Because for my kiddos, swim team is as much about the snack bar and the hanging out with friends and the weekly costume contests as it is about actually swimming. I'm totally fine with that, but I enjoy teasing them.

Adult Swim: The Conspiracy Lives

It's POOL WEEK here at Rants from Mommyland, as well as being the last week of swim team. In honor of this, here is a pool-themed guest post from my bad ass friend Jessica McNeill Azar from Herd Management. 

But before you read it, I have to tell you something really important about her. DON'T SKIP THIS PART, YOU GUYS, SERIOUSLY. Or you might die.

You need to get to know this woman because:
(a) She is hilarious.
(b) She is a long time Mommylander and is totally one of us.
(c) She is our insider for all things "Outlander" this summer as she is GOING TO THE RED CARPET PREMIERE THIS WEEK and will be live tweeting/posting pics and then posting her reviews of the series. 
(d) So if you become her very best friend (as I have), that puts you within one Kevin Bacon degree of this:

Marvel Universe Live!

Captain America was cute but shorter than I expected.

Last week, my 9 year old and I got to see the new Marvel Universe Live show. Technically, I think it's actually called Marvel Universe LIVE! (please don't forget to use the exclamation point). Marvel and Feld Entertainment flew me and my 9 year old son to Tampa to see the show and write about what we thought. Just to be clear, they didn't pay me - but they paid for our trip. They also told me to write whatever I wanted.

Now I don't do a whole lot of sponsored posts (or regular posts) because I (a) am super lazy (b) am usually asked to endorse products like Hello Kitty adult-themed products by nice men who write to me in Mandarin. But this was FREAKING MARVEL and as an enormous Marvel nerd, I was more than a little excited to do this. So I said hell yes.

Also, there is whole other blog post that could be written just about how cool it was to tell my son that we were going on this adventure together. It was wonderful. Then, there is a third blog post I could write chronicling the reaction of my two daughters to the news that their brother would get to go to Florida alone with mommy to do something incredibly cool. That blog post would be slightly less wonderful.

Horrifying Conversation with Mini: Click.

Last week, Mini did what she always does. She waits until the worst possible moment in the middle of the night and then she crawls into our bed and wiggles until she's snugly nestled between me and her father. She then waits stealthily until we both fall back to sleep. At that exact moment, she turns into a starfish. This effectively ends my night's sleep. Sometimes it happens at 1am and sometimes it happens at 6am, but no matter when it happens  - it is not my favorite.* 

*When an adult female tells you in a nice voice that something is not her favorite, it means that she hates it. A lot. But she's trying to be nice about it. Now you know.