Back to the Crazy!!

So, I have been out of the game for a while-

Imagine that-having 2 small kids, moving to a new place for 6 months, and hosting a foreign exchange student kept me busy, but now I'm back and here to share with you my various mommy-ing adventures, triumphs, failures, and just plain crazy moments.  Maybe together we can all laugh, learn about ourselves and somehow make it through this crazy journey that is Motherhood!!

OK, now that I'm back, I should catch you up! We are currently living in a temporary apt in Tampa, Florida b/c the military has my husband working down here for a while, but not long enough for us to actually move for real-that means we left our house, friends, and dogs in Maryland, but only for a short time (about 6 months). 

Now, enough "business" here is a funny story from my summer.  A little background: My family hosted a 13 year old girl from Spain for 8 weeks this summer. She lived with us and we took her to do all kinds of cool stuff in our area. 

We got up and got ourselves ready to go swimming at a friend's house.  Laura (our foreign exchange student) had her swim bag and since she's 13, I figured, she's got this, I mean her parents did send her here all summer, surely she is capable of packing her own swim bag, right?! Well, that is partially true...We got there and I changed my little ones (2 and 4) into their suits, and got myself ready to have a cool dip. 

We get poolside and I look over at my friend's 11 year old son who looks like he's just seen a ghost-he's mortified, curious, elated, and ashamed all in the same look-those of you with teen/pre-teen boys know the look I'm talking about! I turn around to see what he's looking at behind me-it's Laura in the smallest string bikini I've ever seen in my life.

I'm no prude, but at that moment I'm tempted to get a band-aid from my purse b/c I seriously believe it would cover more than what she's wearing.  Given she's been at our house for all of 3 days, I'm not really sure what to do about this-afterall, my largest parenting dilemma to date is my four-year-old hitting her little sister-I haven't gotten to the "My Teenager is dressing like a stripper in public" chapter of my mommy-ing (and now I know I am going to absolutely HATE that stage!)

Anyway, I pull her aside and ask if her parents know she has this swimsuit.  She looks at me like I'm an alien, which is fine b/c that's about how I'm looking at her now too! She answers, "Yea, my dad made me buy a top for this suit since in the United States you don't go topless like I usually do in Spain"........I was speechless before, but SERIOUSLY?! What do you say to that?!

I know that the days when my own daughters will want THAT swimsuit will come all to soon, and Laura is a sweet girl from a different culture with no idea what she was doing to our innocent little American preteen boys!

After that compelling response, I just told her to get in the pool-admitting defeat, but as time went on we were able to talk about modesty, why it's important, and how us American's are just not open about sex, etc.  I learned a lot from Laura, not just about cultural differences, but about how I feel about modesty too.  Let's just say, I am hoping my girls will be the ones at the pool who agree to wear the turtleneck, but I'm guessing I won't be that lucky!

It's enough to make this momma crazy!