On the sunny side of the street

I've been blogging with three fabulous women for a year and a half now and have been enjoying all the fun topics we come up with week after week. If you want to see what we've discussed in the past, check out our posts here.

This week, I picked the topic: Share your favorite memories of Sesame Street or talk about the role it has played in your life.

Before reading ahead, first see what everyone else had to say on this topic:
Froggie
Mom of Many
Moma Rock

My kids don't believe me when I tell them there was life on Sesame Street before Elmo became the big star and Snuffleupagus used to be invisible to everyone except Big Bird. I remember bits and pieces of the show before I was old enough to outgrow it. After that, I would catch episodes when I babysat and then eventually when my kids were big enough to understand it (of course, it was all about Elmo by then, and they got caught up in the Elmo's World craze).

I remember coming home from preschool and hanging out with two friends at one of their houses to watch Sesame Street and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood after that. I can't really tell you much of what happened on the show back in the day, as a lot of it was a blur. I'll share what I do remember though:

*The Beetles singing "Letter B" as a parody of "Let it Be."

*The magician who said "A la peanut butter and jelly sandwich"

*Ernie playing this game with Burt where he'd start with "I ONE the sandbox" and they'd work their way up to EIGHT, which obviously sounds like ATE. Ernie would give Burt a hard time about it. I found it hilarious and have since taught it to my kids.

*The pinball machine that does a song about numbers.

*Always finding the Count to be scary because I had a fear of vampires as a kid. Sorry, Count!

*Not liking Maria much, as I thought she was condescending to Big Bird. I picked up on that as a kid, for some reason. I liked Susan and Gordon though.

*"Sing. Sing a song..."

*Learning that AGUA means water in Spanish, but I always thought they said AQUA.

*Super Grover!

*"C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me!"

*Kermit occasionally making an appearance.

*When the theme song/intro had kids playing in a park.

When I was in Sunday school, we did a unit on death and they let us watch the episode where Mr. Hooper dies. I had to go someplace with my family and thus left early, so I didn't see all that happened. Maybe I would have been better at dealing with some people's deaths in my teen years if I had. Sesame Street knows just the right way to explain these issues to kids and handle them sensitively. I still have trouble talking about death and tend to handle it the Claire Dunphy way (from Modern Family) sometimes.

As I became a teenager, one of my friends and I would have weird inside jokes about Sesame Street. Don't even ask. We'd access our memories to find all these things to laugh about.  During creative writing class my senior year of high school, some other friends and I wrote a parody and called it "Sesame's Bad Seeds." It really only made sense to us and we were laughing so hard while writing it. Mad TV had some great parodies, as well (the one about the Internet is hilarious), but don't show them to your kids!

When I was in college, Tickle Me Elmo first became a huge fad. I remember seeing it at the toy store and joking about buying it. I probably should have and then sold it because it was in such high demand. I could have covered a year's tuition! (Well, I don't think it would have sold for that much, but people were so obsessed with getting it for their kids. I'm sure most are buried in the backs of closets now or were donated to thrift stores a long time ago.)

Watching Sesame Street as an adult gives a whole new perspective. I have seen it evolve from the 1970's style to have a more modern feel. The monsters have cell phones and use the Internet. The coolest celebrities   hang out with them on the street. They do song parodies with some modern stuff. (I saw one with Elmo and Katy Perry singing about hot and cold in terms of weather, as a parody of her hit song.) There are new characters developed for a new audience of viewers.

A few years ago, I got an old school Sesame Street DVD at the library for my older son. (He was about two years old at the time.) It was weird to watch, as it was from even before my time. Big Bird didn't have feathers on the top of his head and looked freaky that way. Like his head had shrunk. Oscar was orange! It didn't really bring back memories for me anyway.

Aside from the sandbox joke, a long time ago, I heard a clever little Sesame Street joke. It goes:

"Want some ice cream, Ernie?"
"Sure, Bert!" 

Think about it.... :)
I told the joke to some little girls who are family friends with "Will." This was back when they were about my kids' age in the late 90s. They loved it and kept saying it all night long. Nowadays, my boys love this joke and tell it all the time, adding Ernie's laugh at the end for a special effect.

Last summer, we went to Sesame Place for the first time. It was a lot of fun and the kids had a blast. I loved how the carousel horses looked like characters from the show instead of regular horses. They also had a studio where you could watch Elmo's World live. The kids have been asking to go back there, so hopefully we will at some point.

Last fall, we went to a special program at the Maryland Science Center that was all about Shalom Sesame, the Israeli version of Sesame Street. Even that show has evolved a lot, with new actors and characters. They have some classics, but compared to the Shalom Sesame from my youth, it's definitely way more modern! It's still cute and the kids get a kick out of it. I like their version of Abby Cadaby, appropriately named Avigayil. She's the cutest little monster ever! (Sorry, Elmo!)

I have a feeling that Sesame Street will continue to evolve with our ever-changing times. I just hope they continue to maintain their innocence and also keep up with relevant issues. I don't watch it enough to know what goes on now, but it would be a good place to start addressing issues such as bullying, discrimination, etc. I'd even love for there to be a muppet with cochlear implants. Even though my older son is outgrowing the show, I'm sure my daughter would appreciate it! I just hope it will be around for when I someday have grandchildren. Then I can tell them what it was like back in my day.

Fluffy Camden

I've been blogging with three fabulous women for a year and a half now and have been enjoying all the fun topics we come up with week after week. If you want to see what we've discussed in the past, check out our posts here.

This week, Moma Rock picked the topic: We've all heard of creating your own "stripper name" based on this equation: Your first pet= first name. Street you grew up on= last name. What is your stripper name? And, tell us about that first pet and the street you grew up on that inspired your name.

Before reading ahead, first see what everyone else had to say on this topic:
Froggie
Mom of Many
Moma Rock

My stripper name is Fluffy Camden, as stated in my subject line.

Fluffy:

When my parents were in the early stages of their relationship (can’t remember if they had just gotten married or were newly engaged), my paternal grandfather, Papa Morrie, gave them a dog. He actually rescued the dog from being hit by a car. She looked like she was mistreated. Eventually, the dog’s owner came after him and they fought over the dog in court. I think the owner just gave up after a while, so my parents got to keep her. She was a West Highland Terrier and they named her Fluffy. I came along a couple of years later, after she was already established in the family. We bonded right away, as she was a sweet dog and not jealous at all. Really, she was always very easygoing, from what I remember.

When I was seven years old, Fluffy was already 13 and her age was showing. She was starting to deteriorate. As kids, we liked to celebrate Christmas because our non-Jewish cousins did. So our parents would leave us presents to find on Christmas morning. This particular Christmas morning, in 1983, I had come downstairs to find my gift and was all excited to show it to Fluffy. However, I found her laying very still on the carpet followed by a trail of excrement. I thought she was sleeping, so I screamed at her to wake up. My sister eventually joined me in the screaming ritual until our parents got up and figured out what had happened. I still didn’t really understand death at the time, even though my maternal grandfather had passed away that previous spring. To me, Fluffy was just sleeping and didn’t wake up. I’m sure my sister, at age four, was even more confused. Since Fluffy’s passing, we’ve had many other dogs, as well as some cats. However, she’s known for probably being the least insane of all the dogs (and some of the cats). Whenever I see a Westie, I always think of her.

With Fluffy when I was a baby

Camden:

The first home I truly remember was at the corner of a cul-de-sac on Camden Court, in the subdivision of The Crossings, in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. We moved there when I was about two years old and had the home established by the time my sister arrived a year later.

What I remember most about living on Camden Court were the friends on my street. There was a group of us, at one point, that all hung out together. In the summer, we’d play on the swing set in my backyard or run around at night playing Ghosts in the Graveyard. On Halloween, we’d all go trick-or-treating together. We'd go to each other's birthday parties. Every summer, our street would have a block party, and when the kids got older, we’d put on talent shows.

On one side of our house, there were three girls, somewhat close in age to us, one in particular is S.G.. Two doors down on the other side was where one of my book blog partners, M.P. eventually lived for a while. Next to her house was another family with two girls around our age, B.A. and K.A. And next to them was a family with a girl a year younger than me, whom I was close with for a while, J.W. Two doors down from us in the other direction (next to S.G.'s house), there was a family with a guy around my age (J.S.) and his older sister, who dressed like Strawberry Shortcake for one of my birthday parties. After they moved, a family with kids my sisters' age and younger moved in. I would babysit the youngest of the three sometimes, after I was the right age for the job. There were a couple of other families with kids around our age, as well. Some eventually moved out of the neighborhood though.

J.W. and I used to hang out all the time and I always thought she was really nice. I think we even had the same middle name, which was just so cool to me at the time! Then she moved a couple of streets away. We didn't get to see each other as often after that. We’d eventually have classes together in high school and college and then run into each other at The Cubby Bear, finding out that we worked nearby each other. We reconnected on Facebook, as well. There was another family further down the street, whose house my sister and I would go to after school when we were still too young to be home alone. The mom was really nice and the daughter had the same first name as my sister (they were also close in age). We’d hang out in their family room watching Heathcliff cartoons and eating freshly baked cookies. I think they had step-brothers who would come to visit in the summer. They were both pretty cute and fun to hang out with, as well.

S.G.’s family, as well as B.A./K.A.’s family eventually moved out west. The year after they moved, M.P., her sister (A.S.) and I coordinated a block party talent show. We even made programs for it. It was a fun summer bonding with them over this endeavor. My sister even helped from time to time. The first half of the talent show involved cheerleading routines that A.S. taught us. Then we all did our talent acts. The finale was the lift from "Dirty Dancing" with A.S. playing "Johnny" and my sister playing "Baby."

The following year, a new family moved into B.A. and K.A.’s old house. They were considered “white trash” and some families wanted nothing to do with them. Then I went and befriended the girl who was closest to my age. She was nice though. Her brothers were nice too, when they weren’t getting into shouting matches that would send the police to their house. Still, our block wasn’t the same after that. We didn’t have block parties anymore and some of the younger kids put together this gossipy newsletter eventually.

Around the time I reconnected with M.P., I also found some other neighbors through her Facebook page. The first was S.G.. She was very friendly and remembered me right away. I asked her if she still was in touch with B.A. and K.A. and that’s when she delivered the blow….B.A. had been killed in a car accident a few years prior (as of now, it’s been 7 years). I hadn’t seen her since I was 12, so I had no frame of reference for her being an adult. To me, it was like losing a childhood friend all over again (the first time was when she moved and we didn’t stay in touch). I got insight to her life from M.P., but haven’t seen any pictures of her. She was 29 when she died; at the same time, I was still getting to know my newborn son. I still think of her a lot and wonder what she would be doing today, had she lived. Would we have reconnected and become friends again? I know her sister is on Facebook, but I haven’t tried to contact her. I don’t know what I’d even say to her. All I know from M.P. is that she named one of her kids after our street.

All in all, it was a cool street to live on. I spent my childhood, pre-teen and teen years there, before we moved out after I graduated from high school. (Some friends of ours live on a nearby street now, so it was strange to be back in the neighborhood, even just to visit them. At one point, we were a few feet away from my old house.) Since then, thanks to various moves, the street I live on here is the first street I truly feel at home on and it reminds me of my street growing up.

Courtesy of Google Maps ("A" is my old house)

Hail to the chief!

Remember the blog project I did in 2010 with three other women? Well, Froggie decided to resurrect it with me and we each got to invite another friend to join us. She invited a mutual friend (someone I met through her) and I invited a friend whose blog I really enjoy reading. So now it's Froggie, Mom of Many, Moma Rock and Merrylandgirl. Hope you enjoy the topics that we'll be exploring!

This week, Froggie picked the topic: If you could have a conversation with any President of the United States, who would you want to talk to and what would you talk to them about?

Before reading ahead, first see what everyone else had to say on this topic:
Froggie
Mom of Many
Moma Rock

I will admit this topic is my fault. I invited Froggie to visit me and she got to tour DC while she was here. I'm glad she had fun and was inspired!

I know this is a no-brainer, but I would totally have a chat with our current President, Barack Obama. I am not a political person in the slightest. (Surprising that I live by the Capitol, right?) However, I just like what he stands for. After a trend of all caucasian Presidents, he is the first African American president. That's huge! It shows that our country is starting to embrace diversity. Given that he was born in an era of racism and segregation, it shows that our country has come a far way. It gives me hope that voters will continue to embrace diversity in the coming years and that maybe there will be a female president.

I've enjoyed his presidency. It has been a breath of fresh air. Maybe moving to the DC area shortly after his inauguration contributed to this, but it's not like I got to meet him or anything. I have been inside the White House (GREAT way to start off in my new job), but not in his living area. Anyway, he never pushed a religious agenda onto his platform. I still think church and state should be separate and I have never once heard of him using his religious beliefs as fodder for a new law. I also like watching him interact with Michelle and his kids. I can tell they have a strong and loving family and that he wouldn't have an extramarital affair on America's clock.

If we ever did get to chat, I think I'd start off by talking about living in the Chicago area. Definitely common grounds. It's funny how we both lived there and now live in DC (or the surrounding area). I would ask him some questions about his kids and dog or just about life in general. When you have to talk about politics and do debates and State of the Union speeches all the time, I'm sure a bit of normalcy is a nice treat! I'd tell him how I was still planning to vote for him, regardless of who he was up against. I think he's had a major mess to clean up and, while I'm sure there are right wing political folk who would disagree with me, I think he's doing a nice job. Before he took office, the economy was losing 800,000 jobs a MONTH. Now, there has been 30 consecutive months of job growth and 5.1 million new private sector jobs. He also supports equal pay and health care rights of women. And he responsibly ended the war that his predecessor got us into.

Could the country use more work? Yes. But four more years in office could potentially do the trick, as I think he's on the right path. I will be extremely disappointed if he does not get re-elected.

(Side note, if anyone connected with Obama reads this post and wants to set up a lunch meeting, I'm all for it!)

My laundry list

Remember the blog project I did in 2010 with three other women? Well, Froggie decided to resurrect it with me and we each got to invite another friend to join us. She invited a mutual friend (someone I met through her) and I invited a friend whose blog I really enjoy reading. So now it's Froggie, Mom of Many, Moma Rock and Merrylandgirl. Hope you enjoy the topics that we'll be exploring!

This week, Mom of Many picked the topic: What are your goals for next month?


Before reading ahead, first see what everyone else had to say on this topic:
Froggie
Mom of Many
Moma Rock

With the holidays going on, things have been rather hectic. However, it's nice to put goals into perspective sometimes. I really can't concentrate on much until the holidays are done for good, but I've put together a list of some things I'd like to get accomplished over the next month.

1. Read and review books I've promised scheduled reviews for at my book blog. Also read the book for the book club meeting at the end of the month.

2. Clean and organize in the house. I may not get to all the rooms, but I'd like to get to at least two. I need to go through clutter and my closet could use a major overhaul!

3. Start my entry for this magazine contest that ends in early December.

4. Get ahead of the game on book blog posts so I'm not rushing last minute all the time.

5. Catch up more on The Big Bang Theory.

6. Actually put away laundry. (Makes sense that this goal would be on a laundry list.)

7. Go costume shopping at the thrift store. They have cute Halloween costumes at really low prices and the kids use them for dress-up.

8. Work more with the pie crust recipe so it's perfected in time for Thanksgiving (my BFF needs to send it to me though).

9. Get on top of miscellaneous work items that have taken a back seat due to all the other stuff going on.

10. Enjoy autumn. Now that the weather is getting nicer and the leaves are going to change, I don't want to be stuck indoors all the time.

I'm sure there are plenty of more items for this list, but I just don't have time to think of them!

I cook by the book

Remember the blog project I did in 2010 with three other women? Well, Froggie decided to resurrect it with me and we each got to invite another friend to join us. She invited a mutual friend (someone I met through her) and I invited a friend whose blog I really enjoy reading. So now it's Froggie, Mom of Many, Moma Rock and Merrylandgirl. Hope you enjoy the topics that we'll be exploring!

This week, I picked the topic: Cooking

Before reading ahead, first see what everyone else had to say on this topic:
Froggie
Mom of Many
Moma Rock

It all started in the summer of 1988. I took a summer school class at my junior high to learn how to cook. It was a nice introduction to when I'd take cooking in home ec during the school year. People were encouraged to bring in recipes and we'd try those out in class, along with some our teacher gave us. I absolutely loved it (the cooking aspect, not so much the social part, as I hated junior high for that reason already). I would come home every day just itching to cook something. A lot of the focus was on baking, so I was making muffins, cookies, cinnamon rolls, etc. Someone brought in a nacho dip recipe. It wasn't my thing, but it was easy and I made it for our annual block party. It was completely devoured and is still a favorite of my mom's.

As a kid, my mom would let me help with baking, but it usually meant cutting shapes into dough (and then eating the raw dough leftover scraps) and sprinkling colored sugar crystals on top. After taking this cooking class, I was in the kitchen all the time, making all sorts of dessert items. There even was a point where my mom would let me use the stove to make mac and cheese.

When I was in high school, I would bake dessert items for our speech team tournaments. I learned a recipe for how to turn Funfetti cake mix into cookies. One of my friends on the speech team loved them so much that I baked a huge Funfetti cookie for his birthday. Most of my non-mac-and-cheese cooking involved baked goods. I did eventually make a chicken and potatoes dinner for my family. I was so nervous over how it would turn out, but my mom told me not to obsess. Thankfully, it was as good as when she made it.

Fast forward to college...since I lived in the dorms, I didn't get an opportunity to cook much. However, that changed during second semester of freshman year, when I got a job in the dining center...making eggs for hungry college students. At first, I was taught to make omelets, but that didn't go over so well, so I was assigned to fry up eggs in whichever style they wanted. I also had to fry bacon. I didn't eat eggs or bacon, so at least the process didn't make me hungry. The following year, I would help make pizzas in the kitchen, which became a mindless task. Aside from those experiences, I just served food, so I didn't cook again in college until I started working for a woman with disabilities. I had to make dinner for her on the nights I was working, so I learned how to cook chicken and other items in a skillet. It was pretty basic. The following year, I got an apartment off campus, but reverted back to the mac and cheese or spaghetti, when I wasn't eating in the dining centers (because it was a pain to go off campus for lunch). Occasionally, I'd make french toast for breakfast on a weekend and once even made matzo ball soup (from a box though). I also did plenty of baking, which got me started on a tradition of making chocolate chip cookies for Oscars night.

When I moved out of my parents' house in March of 2000, I realized I couldn't live off carbs forever. I started learning how to make meat dishes. I had a Foreman grill and would make hamburgers on it. (At the time, I wasn't keeping Kosher and added cheese on top.) I also made a chicken dish the first time I hosted my parents for a dinner there. I feel like my time there was a blur and don't even know what else I cooked up to the point of meeting my husband. And after that time, he did most of the cooking when we were together. The first time I made a meal for him, I managed to shatter a salad bowl (after we finished the salad, thankfully). I'm glad he liked my cooking and I didn't scare him off, but I usually leave the meat cooking to him. I do the side dishes and desserts.....and matzo balls, of course!

Nowadays, I'm still mainly into baking. I like making food items that require sticking to a recipe. My husband experiments and a lot of good items have come from this method. I just know that if I strayed from a recipe book and tried to experiment with baking, it would be a giant disaster. Baking requires specific measurements and making sure all the items requested go into the dish. If you leave out an item, it can be a major fail. I always tell myself that I'll stop using mixes and bake more from scratch. I made a blueberry cake from scratch this summer and that came out good. My challah is always made from scratch and lots of elbow grease, now that I knead it by hand. The ultimate challenge is coming up though...my best friend is going to teach me to bake a pie from scratch. I usually use frozen pie shells that are already made, but she has encouraged me to go out and buy a pastry cutter so the dough will be nice and flaky. We're also going to use real fruit instead of the canned stuff. Wish me luck!

P.S. I now make mac and cheese from scratch (as in with real cheese) every so often. So good!

Cheesecakes I made from scratch for Shavuot 2012

Kneading challah dough with my older son, 2010

The finished product

Hitting close to home

Remember the blog project I did in 2010 with three other women? Well, Froggie decided to resurrect it with me and we each got to invite another friend to join us. She invited a mutual friend (someone I met through her) and I invited a friend whose blog I really enjoy reading. So now it's Froggie, Mom of Many, Moma Rock and Merrylandgirl. Hope you enjoy the topics that we'll be exploring!

This week, Moma Rock picked the topic: What are your thoughts on this article?

Before reading ahead, first see what everyone else had to say on this topic:
Froggie
Mom of Many
Moma Rock

If you haven't read the article in the topic section, it's basically about Canada's top medical journal calling for a nationwide ban on spanking, citing it is bad for childrens' mental health.

While I understand where they're coming from, I want to know how such a ban is implemented and the measures they will take to make sure it is enforced. Will there be video monitors in every room of every home containing a child? Or will all children have sensors implanted in their bottoms so that they go off when smacked? Relying on word-of-mouth isn't always effective. Some children might feel too embarrassed, ashamed or scared to say anything at all, worrying about the overall effects it could have on their family if they told. Other kids might be mad because their parents didn't let them go out partying and lie about being spanked to get revenge. I just can't really hold much faith in a law that tries to prevent what goes on in one's private residence. It's not like driving drunk, where you have a chance of getting caught.

Then there's the factor of what brought on the spanking. Did the child deliberately do something bad enough to potentially warrant it, such as starting a mini-house fire, running out in traffic, severely injuring a sibling, etc? Or was the parent having a bad day and one innocent request from the child set them off? And if it's a non-witnessed event and becomes "he said, she said," who's to know the truth of what brought it on?

While I understand the implications for a child's mental health, maybe authorities should be focusing more on actual child abuse situations vs. discipline. There are parents that just hit their kids for the sake of hitting them, or do even worse, such as not feeding their children or stubbing cigarettes on their skin. Then there are loving parents who become so upset over a child doing something dangerous that their immediate reaction is to spank, even though they feel horrible about having done so.

I think this ban (or law, as I like to call it) has a lot of gray area that needs to be explored and tight parameters that need to be set before it can really have the effect it wants to. At the end of the article, it talks about extending the ban to the United States. If that were the case, Canada would really need to prove it was working before trying to send it our way. I don't think many people would buy into it otherwise, no matter how much previous research was behind it.

Taking a pregnant pause

Remember the blog project I did in 2010 with three other women? Well, Froggie decided to resurrect it with me and we each got to invite another friend to join us. She invited a mutual friend (someone I met through her) and I invited a friend whose blog I really enjoy reading. So now it's Froggie, Mom of Many, Moma Rock and Merrylandgirl. Hope you enjoy the topics that we'll be exploring!

This week, Froggie picked the topic: Louisiana charter school changing pregnancy policy.

Before reading ahead, first see what everyone else had to say on this topic:
Froggie
Mom of Many
Moma Rock

I don't have much to say on the policy itself, other than that it's incredibly obnoxious to expect female students to take a pregnancy test in order to go to school. Everyone has a right to an education. If they were consistently disruptive to other students or posed a threat to anyone at the school (or even the entire building), I could see that being another story. I'm not saying that I support teens getting pregnant, but it shouldn't keep them from getting an education so they can at least get a job and be able to provide a good life for their child, should they choose to raise them on their own. And even if a student was found to be pregnant, they don't ask guys to take a DNA test to see if they're the one who impregnated the girls in question (after the baby is born).

However, I think there should be a boot camp that all teenagers are mandated to go to before starting high school. It would involve them raising a toddler or young child for a month. They would not be given ANY instructions and would be lectured whenever they did something another person felt was wrong (kind of like how other parents lecture each other based on their own opinions). They would have to complete the following tasks:

1. Taking the child grocery shopping where there was temptation for the child in every aisle of the store. They'd have to say "no" to everything and effectively diffuse tantrums while the threat of DCFS being called hung over their head.

2. Taking the child to a restaurant where the service is incredibly slow. They'd have to handle the child not liking anything and throwing it all on the floor and potentially breaking glasses and plates in the process.

3. Participating in a bedtime routine that doesn't account for the child getting up several times after they were tucked in, excuses being they want a drink, need to go to the bathroom, are scared of the dark, etc. They will also be woken up multiple times during the middle of the night. Losing sleep isn't only for parents of newborns.

4. Putting the child in a room with several other children and only one toy for all of them to share and having to break up several fights.

5. Taking a minimum two hour airplane or train trip while the child is screaming, kicking the seats in front of them, wanting to get up and walk all the time, asking for a snack every few minutes, asking "are we there yet," etc. Oh, and there will be a long wait before the trip even begins and you'll all be stuck on the mode of transportation during that time instead of being free to roam around the airport or train station.

6. The final activity when the month is over will be to watch an extremely gross and detailed birthing video, including the insertion of an epidural and removal of the placenta.

There are many more activities, but if this keeps teenagers from getting pregnant in the first place, it will be all worth it. I personally love being a mother, but there's a lot more to it than just the hugs, giggles, and hearing them say cute things. Being a teen mom (or dad) is not as glamorous as MTV makes it out to be. Sorry to break it to all you teenagers!

This is what a toddler having a tantrum looks like....