The Mom Files

By Jennifer Gulbrandsen

A cast of characters that includes one harried mother, an angst ridden tween embarrassed by her family's antics, a middle child who may be an evil genius in training, and an almost feral boychild provide endless material for this collection of essays about the hilarious moments you have when raising children. You'll laugh til you cry reading about the family cat's collection of mouse skeletons, how to survive your middle child yelling, "Lesbian!" in front of your church pastor, and the medicinal qualities of a magic meatloaf. Jenn definitely has her hands full with this bunch, and most days wants to lock herself in the closet with a box of Franzia, but at the end of the day she wouldn't trade her kids' hijinks for anything else in the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jennifer Gulbrandsen
• Release date: Nov 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311174376

Jennifer Gulbrandsen

I need to think of a clever bio beyond telling the world I love to write, I have three kids, and I drink a lot of wine.

Book preview

The Mom Files

Essays on the triumphs, madness and hilarity of motherhood

Jennifer Gulbrandsen

Copyright 2014 Jennifer Gulbrandsen

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 Jennifer Gulbrandsen All rights reserved.

ISBN:1503181421

ISBN-13: 978-1503181427

This book is dedicated to those three crazy kiddos: Small Fry, Tater Tot, and Hushpuppy. I am nothing without you.

Hi! My name is Jenn, and this is a collection of essays based on blog posts I wrote between 2012-2014 about the hilarious joys and face palming moments of motherhood we all experience. Hopefully you’ll have a chuckle along the way with the mishaps and adventures that come with getting three children through life with as little trauma and eventual therapy as possible.

The cast of characters includes my oldest daughter, Small Fry, everyone’s favorite obtuse middle child, Tater Tot, and the youngest, my son Hushpuppy. Rounding out the cast is their father Fabio, and our dog Kina and cat Lily, aka ‘Dame Fishbreath McFatass’.

And this collection is of course dedicated to those three kids that give me way more joy than aggravation and a lifetime of stories to tell. I love them more than life, and I hope that sentiment comes off when you read these stories. These essays are in no particular order, and aren’t anything more than a light hearted look on motherhood from my perspective. Yes, I swear and use a lot of hyperbole. It’s more entertaining that way, I promise.

I would also just like to thank everyone who encouraged me along the way. Not a day goes by that I don’t thank each and every one of you in my heart.

Enjoy the show!

Jenn

Cover Art Credit: © 2013 Jessica Weible/JW Illustrations

Magical Meatloaf

If you have children, you know what I mean when I tell you that I spend 77.4% of my life in the grocery store, usually dressed as a hobo because I opened the fridge at 6am to make lunches only to find that somehow between the hours of 9pm-6am my children have ingested entire loaves of bread and cases of juice. They're at that age where they just Hoover food like they're growing children or something.

So after Small Fry's basketball game last Saturday, I asked the kids the question I should learn by now not to ask...

What do you want for dinner?

Now this isn't necessarily a scary question for most mothers to ask, but my three little weirdos have made this a terrifying question for me. Mostly because they don't answer with normal kid answers like, Hot dogs! Mac n Cheese! Chicken Nuggets! They answer with things like, Schnitzel! Meatloaf! Greek Chicken! Crown Roast! Leg of Lamb!

That afternoon the response was overwhelming, Meatloaf! Mashed potatoes! Snow peas!

Great. Off to the store I go. I have some beef in the house. That's it.

I leave the kids in the care of their father, the lovely Dr. Fabio von Fizzletits, lounging on the bed watching football after a long day of sleeping in til noon, and putting on his pants. Life is hard, yo.

Before I go on, I want to clear up the fact that I'm any kind of great cook and look down on people who don't cook from scratch. I cook from scratch because I am too lazy to follow the directions on a box. Making boxed food literally stresses me out. Cooking from scratch allows me to just throw what I want into the pot and not have to stress over measurements.

So I get my ingredients and go back home, pull in my driveway and see a little girl in Tater's window that is not Tater jumping on her bed in a princess dress. It's dark out now, by the way.

Great. Five bucks says Fabio fell asleep and I'm about to walk into Animal House.

Sure did. Wall to wall neighbor kids, silly string all over the kids' bathroom, crackers spilled on the floor...my kids are nothing if not opportunistic.

IF YOU LIVE ON THIS STREET GET IN THE CAR BECAUSE I'M TAKING YOU HOME! NOW! I scream into the living room as children scatter. "IF YOU DO NOT LIVE ON THIS STREET CALL YOUR PARENTS AND TELL THEM TO COME GET YOU. IF YOU WANT TO STAY FOR DINNER YOU CAN BUT YOU