The Mrs. Yoy Blog: The Quarantine Coronacles

What is it with Sundays and sushi?  Every Sunday my kids want sushi and our regular joint is closed. Tonight we went to the Maki Fresh in the Peachtree Battle shopping center.  This is certainly not the first (or even second or even third ) story that centers around this shopping center to make the blog. Big E took a break from dinner to take his usual public poop. We had a birthday party earlier in the day and this kid housed a mountain of junk food.  Even I was impressed and I can put back some serious quantities of non-Weight Watchers friendly food.  So I was not shocked by what happened next. MY STOMACH HURTS! This was the warning shot.  I figured he probably had to use the bathroom again, but he declined.  Instead he rubbed his buddha belly. We decided to walk the length of the shopping center.  It was nice outside and we were enjoying the stroll.  Except we strolled our way straight to the Baskin Robbins.  We ordered the boys kiddie cups. Big E made it about two b

At noon today, Big E participated in his last soccer class. Maybe even his last class of any organized activity ever for the rest of his life. About 25 minutes into the 45 minute class, Big E walked over to me and declared he was tired.  He sat down on the bleachers. I don't deny the possibility that Big E is tired.  We had a late night last night and if wine hangovers were contagious, Big E probably had a touch of it. I asked him to say goodbye and we headed out of class.  We made it halfway towards the building's exit when Big E changed his mind.  Or should I say Sybil changed his mind. WE'RE BACK! My butt reunited with the bleachers and I watched in horror as my son laid out on the dirty Astroturf and committed to the best Weekend at Bernie's impression ever.  He was a corpse.  His coach could not get him to move.  His friends jumped on him and threw stuff at him and still, dead body. At this point, he became a disruption to the class.  His coach asked

I am a woman on edge. I live in a subdivision that has attempted break-ins on a bi-monthly basis. I'm always peeking out the front window to catch a glimpse of whatever shady sh*t is going on. Tonight I was in the throws of laundry hell.  I like to wait until our laundry pile resembles Jabba the Hut in both smell and size and actually talks to me before I can commit. FOR THE LOVE OF PETE JUST WASH ME ALREADY. So I did.  All five loads. The boys were asleep.  I had just finished meticulously folding a hand towel to put into our guest bathroom. As I rounded the laundry room corner, I saw him.  Standing in the dark in his snug fit jammies. I levitated off the ground.  My beautifully folded towel somehow left my hand and hurled itself at Big E's sinister face.  A scream escaped my mouth before I had time to remember my other son WAS still asleep. On the terrified spectrum, I would rate this encounter somewhere between the final scene in The Blair Witch Project (t

This afternoon we had a play date at a local indoor playground/crack house for children. I'm always skeezed out by these places because there are 10,000 little kids running around with yellow slime dripping from their noses and emphysema coughs echoing throughout. AM I EXPOSING THE YOYSERS TO SOMETHING WE'LL BE BATTLING FOR THE NEXT 7-10 DAYS? I try and quiet the nagging voice in my head. I am immediately comforted when I see an employee in the toddler area with a Costco-sized container of Clorox wipes.  She has a garbage bag of plastic balls and is scrubbing each ball before she tosses them at the ball pit at the bottom of the triple slide. This is Little E's favorite area of this place. As he makes his way up the stairs, the employee politely explains that the slide is closed for cleaning. She could have left it at that and I would have forever had the warm fuzzies about this place.  But she didn't. A CHILD HAD A SCAB FALL OFF AS THEY WERE USING THE SL

Because we thrive in stressful situations, the Yoys and the D-Wood Yoys convened at a local breakfast joint for Mother's Day brunch. As the eight of us sat there, shushing our kids, breaking up brawls, cleaning up spills, and pretty much regretting leaving our house we noticed an even larger party being sat. The six adults were seated at a table next to us.  Their teenage offspring were seated at a separate table a few tables over. Aunt Yoy and I immediately allowed ourselves to dream of a time when we can have a meal out in public and not look like we are herding chickens. But we noticed the women at the neighboring table smiling at all of our babies. I'M GETTING WEEPY JUST WATCHING YOUR KIDS.  OURS JUST GRADUATED. I could see the emotion in our table neighbor's eyes.  Hell, I was getting weepy watching my kids, too.  But for other reasons. WE WERE JUST COMMENTING HOW NICE IT WOULD BE TO HAVE A QUIET MEAL. We chatted about our kids briefly and the mom left

As the mother of a 4.5 year old, I'm becoming aware of Big E's strengths and weaknesses. I allow myself to dream of what he will be like as an adult. In my dream, Big E is a successful doctor curing the world of all that ills it.  He's married to a nice, Jewish girl who thinks I'm the bee's knees and pops out a plethora of my beautiful, perfectly behaved grandchildren. But this evening I caught a glimpse of the future Big E that was slightly unsettling. We attended the monthly Tot Shabbat gathering at our synagogue.  All of his school chums were also there, so Big E began the evening by running around for about 20 minutes nonstop. His once pristine outfit, including striped button down and bow tie, was now busted.  My kid is a sweater, so it appeared that he had taken a quick swim in the Holocaust Memorial fountain on one of his many laps around the building. I had given him some water in an attempt to cool him down.  He chugged it and then was just erra

I'm a recovering germaphobe . I've put down the hand sanitizer, taken a deep breath, and prayed my kids' immune systems do their jobs. But every so often, my kids do something so foul which pulls me dangerously close to the sanitizer abyss. Today that event happened in my most unfavorite place on the planet.  A public restroom. But not any public restroom, it was in the little kid stall at Zoo Atlanta. Take a moment to visualize it with me, please. It's miniature.  It's specifically for humans that are still peeing on themselves half the time they go the restroom. Big E was in one stall taking his required public man dump. Little E was running in and out of stalls.  Zoo Atlanta could not hold a candle to this bathroom.  I could hear him giggling as he inventoried all the toilets. Big E yelled for me to help him.  As I was in the stall with Big E, door open of course, Little E walked into the stall next to us. In the five minutes it took me to get

Big E and I were sitting on his bed this evening, clumsily getting him dressed in his jammies. MOM, THIS IS WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS! Many thoughts raced through my brain. 1) HE'S SO TIRED, HE THINKS HIS BEDROOM IS DISNEY WORLD. 2) HE'S ABOUT TO CHANNEL HIS INNER DAVID COPPERFIELD AND PERFORM AN INSANE MAGIC TRICK THAT WILL LEAVE ME SPEECHLESS FOR DAYS. 3) HE'S MORPHING INTO THAT CHEESY, AWKWARD GUY FROM COLLEGE WHO SPEWS OUT CRAPPY PICK-UP LINES. As I suppressed the urge to laugh/vomit, I asked him to explain his grand statement. He then launched into a monologue about his magic powers and did some weird super hero move. I love this kid. And for his next trick...

There's a commercial that's been running which shows a mom interrupting her daughter drawing on the living room wall. Instead of having a human reaction i.e. WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU DOING TO MY FRESHLY PAINTED LIVING ROOM WALLS? The mom laughs it off, grabs a handy empty picture frame, and places it around her daughter's "artwork". WTF. Really. Who does that? I have no idea what the commercial is advertising as my mind goes red with anger and I black out. So imagine my surprise when I noticed the wall just outside my laundry room was decorated by my own spunky, adorable kid.  It's a handmade masterpiece, hand being the key word. I haven't matched up hand prints yet to determine the suspect, but my money is on Little E. Big E is always washing his hands. Little E is always drooling and eating things with his hands like syrup and cottage cheese (not mixed together).  Then he runs his sticky, wet hands over the tires of my minivan to