lost in suburbia

i had the pleasure of meeting the lovely tracy beckerman at a blogging conference about a year ago. i immediately liked her, not just for her friendly and bouyant personality but much more so for her hilarious sense of humor and sarcasm. she had me laughing...i appreciate that in people more than anything else.

when i heard that tracy had written a book, i had to read it. she kindly sent me her book to read back in may...yes...that many months ago. i had every intention of sitting down and reading it all at one sitting on a quiet sunday afternoon. then i woke up and realized i am the mother of five. my reading times are almost exclusively limited to those brief moments i lock myself in the bathroom and the twenty seconds between my head hitting the pillow at night and an instant exhaustion coma. 

here is where the acolades for tracy's book really begin. every time...and i mean that every time i picked up her book, lost in suburbia, i laughed...outloud. laughed. it was like my own little sarcastic, brutally honest happy pill in the form of a mommy memoir. that is about the greatest compliment i have ever given a book.

tracy sandwiches her entire journey into motherhood between stories about getting pulled over by the police...not once, but twice...and once in a duck print bathrobe. what is there not to love? she calls her nursing breasts udders, calls her butt "buttzilla", fakes the sound of a breast pump, and goes through all the crazies of first time parenting vividly sharing it all as an open book (pun completely intended). 

so, if you have a lazy sunday afternoon...or five minutes locked in the bathroom, pick up tracy's book. you won't be sorry. you will get a great laugh and you will find a girlfriend who isn't afraid to share all the gory details of motherhood while still ultimately painting a picture that includes tremendous love for her husband and children. it is filled with honesty and laughter...and someone you will want as a friend.

here is where your day just improved. we are giving away a copy of Lost In Suburbia to one thethirdboob.com reader. if you would like to win a copy of tracy's book, leave us a message on our facebook page at www.facebook.com/thethirdboob.  good luck and happy reading!

giveaway ends september 24th, 2013 at 11:59 PM EST. open to residents of the US only.  prizes cannot be shipped to PO boxes.  winner will be selected by random.org and be notified by email. winner have 48 hours to respond before a new winner is selected. the book provided for the review was free of charge from the company. the book offered for the giveaway is free of charge, no purchase necessary. my opinions are my own and were not influenced by any form of compensation.  facebook, twitter and google+ are in no way associated with this giveaway. i do not share or sell information and will use any information only for the purpose of contacting the winner.

embrace the hilarious

let's all be honest...motherhood can get a little crazy. in fact, if someone tells you that parenthood is only marvelous and glorious, you can pretty much question everything else that ever comes out of their mouth as being disingenuous. parenting is hard. we'll find ourselves getting caught up in mommy wars. we have days when we sarcastically feel like the "mother of the year." we'll have days that are wonderful and days where we find that our kids have learned how to finger paint with their own poop. it is wonderful as a whole and filled with some of the most difficult moments we will ever face. 

so, i've decided it's time to bring the funny back. it is already clear that i have a pretty simple and juvenile sense of humor. i find a lot of things funny. it's time we share some of those funny moments. we love to post pictures of our kids when they are amazing...winning a race, accomplishing something wonderful, looking especially lovely. what if we were really honest and took pictures of the things that made us laugh...even if they were less than glowing examples of our children or our parenting? wouldn't it take a little pressure off of all of us...to have the perfect children, to only post the perfect days, to have perfect days at all? here are my favorite stories and photos, used by permission from some fabulous moms...who have learned how to laugh in the middle of this adventure called mommyhood.

so, we've all seen pictures of kids who have cut their own hair. here's one of my favorites. i don't love it because of the original child's version of the cut.

i love it because of what his parents did to him as a result of the hair cut. i'm pretty sure he won't cut his own hair again.

then there are the stories of kids and their mispronunciations of words. i have to say that chach holds the award for the best story in this category. both of her boys have had some difficulty pronouncing the word, "truck." this can be extremely detrimental to a parent's pride because little boys love trucks. they love to play with trucks. they love to shout out "truck" whenever they see one. they generally yell their version of "truck" so everyone can hear. you can imagine my lack of bladder control when i would call chach and in the background i would hear her first born yelling "cock! cock! cock!" this phase seemed to last forever and it brought me to tears laughing each and every time i heard it.

then came her second born....and his pronunciation just about slays me. i have listened to this so many times and it makes me laugh over and over again. listen to the way he pronounces "truck" in this audio clip. 

second born "truck" pronunciation

seriously, is there anything more funny than that? it gets me every time.

then there is my friend who posted a picture of her son with the candle he had just made her as a gift. i don't know what i would do if my son brought this home. how can you keep a straight face? the most impressive thing about this photo is that she posted it on facebook...for the enjoyment of all of the rest of us.

last but certainly not least are the pictures my good friend sent this last year...as a part of her christmas card. now that is a mom with an amazing sense of humor. i am just glad that i'm fortunate enough to call her my friend. it was, by far, my favorite christmas card of the season. along with her news of the family, she sent two pictures drawn by her daughter. 

the first picture is a drawing of a "happy bat", drawn for her older brother who loves baseball. that is some bat.

the second picture was one that she drew for their family dog, "titus." let's see how long it takes you to laugh at this one. 

see...so much funny all around us. sometimes we just need to learn to laugh at ourselves...and at our kids. it sure makes things a ton more enjoyable. let's bring the funny back.

what about you? what hilarity have you been waiting to share?