The fall of America, the rise of “Honey Boo Boo”

Up until a week ago, I’d never heard of the  show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo (on TLC).  I saw a friend’s Facebook status mentioning Honey Boo Boo but not knowing what she’s talking about, I overlooked it.  Coincidently, about an hour later, I saw previews for Honey Boo Boo and decided to watch it.  To say the least, I was shocked.  I didn’t even realize that the toddler girl was Honey Boo Boo.  I thought the show was about her mom: a white trash, redneck, mother of four who got pregnant with her oldest daughter as a teenager.  This woman doesn’t have much tact, and she definitely does not look her age (which is my age actually).  At first I thought the show was a joke, and then I realized the premise is actually based on beauty pageants for kids (spinoff from Toddler’s in Tiara’s).  I have to admit, when that little chubby, funny girl gets all glammed up, she looks really cute.  But that’s besides the point, and not to mention, I’m not a big fan of beauty pageants for young children anyways.

All that being said, I couldn’t take my eyes off the show.  In fact, the following night I tuned in again and realized that there was a marathon of the show running all night.  I’ll admit, I stayed up and watched two of the episodes.  Here’s a few things I kept thinking as the show progressed.

1. Why isn’t Child Services taking these kids away?

2. They must be making enough $ from the show to move somewhere better.  Or at least, away from the train tracks that are IN their backyard.

3. Why someone would want a pig as a pet inside their house is beyond me.  But then again, none of their other decisions really made sense to me.

4. Why would someone in the low-income bracket spend all of their $ on beauty pageants.

5. Is the saying “that’s a hot mess” going to be the newest popular tagline like Paris Hilton’s tagline “That’s hot!”?

6. This show is a mash-up of various reality shows including: Toddler’s in Tiara’s, Extreme couponing, and swamp people.

I think one of my favourite parts was having them talk about “dieting” (the 12-year-old daughter weighs more than me) as they were all sitting on the couch, snacking on what was probably a bag full of heart attacks waiting to happen. Another classic favourite was when they went to their local department shop to search for “deals”.  Their local department store turned out to be the local dump.  This family really took it to the next level, including rolling one of their daughters in an old, scummy, used-up mattress (gross anyone?). I also think it’s pretty funny that they have to write out what they’re saying as part of the show (not close captioning) because of their “accents”.

I wasn’t surprised by some of the twitter feeds going around a few weeks ago including “America is in trouble when more people tuned in to watch Honey Boo Boo than the Republican national convention” and “Obama recently claimed he’s never been more optimistic for the future of America. Clearly, he hasn’t seen ‘Here comes Honey Boo Boo'”

The problem is, I can’t stop watching this show.  What is it about this show? I guess I am a reality TV junkie… Does anyone else out there feel the same way??

I don’t want to be JUST mom enough!

If you’re a parent, you’ve most likely seen the newest cover of TIME Magazine which shows a mother with her 3 year-old son breastfeeding while standing on a chair, with the headline “Are you mom enough?”.  I first took notice of it last Thursday when just about every other post on my Facebook News Feed had the picture of the cover on it with a tag line question such as “What kind of mom do you want to be?”  While most mothers reading this were uneasy with the picture or disagreed with attachment parenting, the majority of mothers were just plain disappointed with TIME putting out such a story, creating what is commonly referred to as “mommy wars”, especially so close to Mother’s day.  Some mothers were so upset that they didn’t want to comment on it one way or another.  While I understand their reason for concern, I think there’s nothing wrong with a healthy debate and conversation on parenting styles.  And so, buying into the hype, I went and purchased my copy the day it hit newsstands.

The Two Million Dollar Family

I’m always writing about some of the challenges that I’ve encountered to-date as a parent to one kid; now imagine four! Last week, my husband, son and I all flew to Edmonton to visit my brother and his family. They had just welcomed home their 4th child two weeks previously.  It also happened to fall on the Jewish holiday of Passover which made the dinners even that much more special. My brother’s kids are 6, 3.5, 1.5 and 0.08 :). However stressful and chaotic their home might be, my brother and his wife don’t skip a beat. It’s as if they’ve done this four children thing their whole life.

The church of the flying spaghetti monster?!?! Is this for real?

I was at a wedding a few weeks ago and a friend of mine mentioned, in passing (as if this isn’t a big deal), how her brother-in-law recently got married under the traditions of the church of flying spaghetti monster. She kept on talking to get to some other point of her story, but I had to stop her right then and there. I mean, was she joking? Did she make it up? Did she really say The Church of the Flying spaghetti monster?

Sure, I’ve heard of the church of scientology. I mean, Tom Cruise is the President or something which obviously made that famous. But I can’t say I’ve heard of the Church of the flying spaghetti monster (FSM)? I have since confirmed it exists! Apparently, the church is 10 million followers strong and is continuing to grow. Followers of this religion refer to themselves as Pastafarian;