Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Amy L. Peterson' s blog tour. She is the author of From Zero to Four Kids in Thirty Seconds. Welcome Amy. :) Before we get to her guest post and chapter excerpt from her book, here is the book summary that tells us a bit about her book. For a chance to win a paperback (International) please leave a comment + email address on the comment box. Giveaway open until 28th April,2012
Amy is a 30-year-old woman who spent many years polishing an unapproachable outer shell and maintaining a long list of reasons why not to have children. She keeps a canoe on her front porch, a mountain bike in her kitchen and a balance in her checking account.
Mark is an older, divorced man with four kids. He sleeps on an Army cot and eats out of pots and pans given to him by his therapist. He has a Ph.D. in stream ecology, a VW Rabbit with 285,000 miles on it and enough fishing tackle to sink a small boat.
Amy falls for Mark hook, line and hundreds of dollars in sinkers
A Guest Post and Excerpt by Amy L. Peterson.
First,
thank you CeCe for giving me this opportunity and for being a host for my April
8-28th book tour. I hear I
hit you up for this during a time you are promoting your own book, and I’m
really glad you figured out which book was more important to promote today
(hah!). Seriously, thank you.
From Zero to
Four Kids in Thirty Seconds is my humorous story about falling
hook, line and sinker for a guy with four kids.
They were three, five, 13 and 15 when I met them; the man in question was
older and divorced; and I was 30 and clueless. I didn’t know that a Water Baby
needs to have water inside it to come alive, that teenagers are seldom happy in
the company of adults, and that men can
sometimes act like teenagers.
As
a result of learning these and other important things, my book is filled with
tips for stepmoms and future stepmoms.
Consider “Tip #17: Not everyone
will be happy with your choice of men.”
That, of course, was my mother, who had foolishly envisioned my future
husband as having a car with fewer than 295,000 miles on it, pots and pans that
were shiny and new instead of from his therapist, and a bed other than an Army
cot. Mom was also good for “Tip
#36: Anyone who says you have no idea
what you’re getting into, is right.”
My
goal in writing my book was to provide a few good laughs and a whole bunch of
sound, light-hearted advice for other stepmoms and future stepmoms. Because, with the right guy, being a stepmom
is worth the misadventure. And I know I
have the right guy because he didn’t care that on my book cover, the bride’s
fishing pole is connected to a larger fish than the groom’s.
I
was also blessed with four great stepkids, and I must say, that helped a
lot. Only one called from jail in the
wee hours of the morning, only one jumped on top of the roof of their car and
used a toilet plunger to suck it back out, and only one called in “sick” to
work so they could play video games with their friends. All four kids are 21 and older now, and seldom
miss out on birthday parties and holidays.
That’s my best evidence that at least some of my tips might prove useful.
The excerpt below is from Chapter
9, “Can’t We Just Duct Tape Them Together and Send Them Outside?” This chapter describes what it was like to
have all for kids move into a two-bedroom apartment with Mark and me for the
entire month of July. This chapter includes
“Tip #39:
There is no time to unwind when children await you at home.”
After work,
I stood outside my apartment and took a deep breath.
“What’s the
matter?” Mark asked.
“I just
realized that my days of unwinding after work are gone.”
“Welcome to
instant parenthood.” He grinned as he
opened the door for me.
The first
thing I heard was the shrill voice of Alfalfa so-called singing in a “Little
Rascals” movie.
From what I
assumed was the kid’s bedroom, came a Beatles song, interspersed with the
bleeps and dings from the Sonic the
Hedgehog video game.
I put my purse on the dining room table next to the
Creepy Crawler cooker. On the kitchen
stove, several rubbery red and black rubbery scorpions, butterflies and the
like were cooling. In the living-room-family-room-storage-area,
there were two glasses of pop on the TV.
“You’ll get
used to it, Honey,” Mark said.
“That’s not
comforting, but thanks for trying.”
I followed
him into the living-room-dining-room-storage-area where Conrad was watching TV
and Elizabeth was making “presents” out of pieces of construction paper and
tape. “Off the TV,” Mark said. “Get your butt outside.”
“See my
presents?” Elizabeth asked.
Mark bent
down and complimented her on her presents.
“Now, clean up this mess and get yourself outside.”
He then
addressed the reverberating walls of music with, “Simone, shut that radio off,
now!” Once it was silenced, he said, “If
you can’t play it quietly, I’ll take it away from you. Go blast it outside somewhere if you need to
be cool or whatever.”
“Whatever,
Dad,” Simone said.
“Hey,
Samantha,” Mark said. “Why don’t you
wrap it up with ‘Sonic’ and head outside, too.
It’s nice out there.”
By the time
Mark and I changed our clothes, all four kids had wandered outside, looking sad
and forlorn. Mark and I immediately
started making dinner and had five minutes of relative solitude before
Elizabeth popped back inside and said that Samantha and Conrad were being mean
to her.
Mark told
her to come in, and when she did, Conrad tried to follow. Mark kicked Conrad back outside with, “And
stay out until I call you for dinner.”
“Can I help
make dinner?” Elizabeth asked.
At four, she
wasn't particularly helpful with the tasks she thought she wanted to do -- like
chopping onions -- and carrying out the tasks she could do -- like setting the
table -- took step-by-step instructions on what to place where and how many of
each item was needed and let’s practice counting now, okay? So exhausting was this play-by-play that by
the time she was done with one task, I suggested that she go outside to see
what her brother and sisters were doing, giving me five minutes to sing, twirl
around, swear and have one single, private thought.
And then
they came in for dinner.
It was like
a mini-stampede, complete with one monkey, one elephant, one gorilla and a
puppy dog, all trying to beat each other into the bathroom so they could
dewater themselves and wash their hands.
The pecking order was by size, so as expected, Elizabeth was the last
one to get to the table.
Once
everyone was seated, all four kids started talking at the same time. Mark let this go for a few seconds, then
raised his hands and said, “One at a time.”
As we
listened and tried to respond to the days’ events, we also had to direct the
movement of food around the table, as it seemed taking some of something and
passing it wasn’t the norm yet. We had
no napkins and Mark and I didn’t have the energy to get napkins or tell one of
the kids to get some. Besides, no one
knew where the napkins were.
After
dinner, Mark and I cleaned up and encouraged the kids to go swimming, feed the
ducks, catch frogs, or go skating.
Later, a video was thrown into the machine and I escaped to my room to
write.
Only at 11
o'clock -- after three kids were tucked away in the kids' bedroom, and with
Simone on my futon in the living-room-family-room-storage-area -- did the
movement stop and the noises blend into the gentle hum of the air conditioner.
Exhausted, I
collapsed into Mark's arms and mumbled, "Is the entire apartment moving,
or is it just me?”
***
To
read more about how I coped with four kids, you just might have to buy my book
at Amazon.com. It is available as an e-book and a
paperback. Review comments are
summarized on my web site.
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