Selena Gasbarro

Yes, I went there - my kids can be a real asshats sometimes. So lets talk about my 6 year old who has mastered the ability to push my buttons. So is sarcastic, knows how to bate people and finds joy in it. Shit - she is me and I totally deserve it. This weekend we were sitting on my parents patio and when this 6 year old wasn't getting exactly what she wanted she used her power. She decided to tell me that I didn't like her, care about her or love her. Oh boy did that push my buttons and she literally sat there and waited for my expression. I didn't let her ruffle my feathers too much, but that's only because she was saved by YaYa. All of this comes on the heels of another great P moment. Earlier in the week I had asked the girls on multiple occasions to clean up their dirty clothes. On the third night I had enough so I made P get out of her bed and do what I had asked. She did it, but made sure to add in that I made her do everything. Stop - wait a minute - now y...

Today I went to work, the girls had soccer practice and I took a walk with a friend, so why do I feel so guilty... The world had been anticipating and watching Hurricane Irma as she approached land. When I say the world I don't feel like I'm exaggerating because I was in Canada and it was on every tv. A little difficult to relax with friends when all you can think about is your family at home bracing for the storm. I tried to get home before the storm, but that didn't happen. So there I sat glued to a tv watching my beloved city get torn apart. There wasn't anything I could do to help what was happening, but in hindsight there wasn't anything that anyone could do, Mother Nature was on her own mission. I kept in touch when family was able to make outbound calls and text, but the brunt of the storm came through the night. No one was able to sleep through the howls of the wind and tree limbs hitting the house. I couldn't sleep many states away because I didn...

After I posted about our decision to retain Adelaide in 3rd grade we received an overwhelming response. You all made us feel supported in ways I can't express. So today is your update... School started and I only wanted to punch one big mouthed mom - yay me. First day of school was around the corner and I was holding my breathe on how A would handle it. All summer long when someone asked what grade she was going to she always responded, "I'm going back to 3rd." In which she always got a pity smile and then I got the same thing. At first I told her that she didn't have to tell people that she was going back, she could just say I'm going to 3rd. I don't know why I told her that, I think mostly to save her and I the embarrassment. Even typing that out I am shaking my head at myself because I know I have nothing to be embarrassed about. My little girl tried her hardest, the family tried their hardest. We did exactly what we tell the girls all of the time...

We are in those few weeks where our Facebook feeds are filled with smiling little kid faces, new backpacks and the excitement over getting a routine back. SURPRISE...not all of us are excited about the kids going back to school. 1. Not all of us need to rebound from crazy schedules over the summer. Some of us worked all summer long and may have managed to get one week off to spend with the kids. Our schedule still consisted of getting up with an alarm clock 5 days a week and rushing to make dinner at night. 2. Some of us are terrified over the thought of adding extra curricular activities and homework back into the evening mix. Remind me how we get all of this done again and got to bed at a decent time, seriously, someone please. 3. We don't all have the ability to fill our days being school volunteers and when you open up your child's folder and the first paper is the Volunteer Form you immediately ball it up and throw it in the trash because I'll be damned if I am g...

Did anyone else read the article about how to look younger in your photos? Apparently the key to keeping years off of your face is not to smile in photos. It was so disappointing to read the article. I think that you would be hard pressed to find a photo of me when I'm not smiling. My theory is, what's the point in taking a photo if it's not a memory you want to keep. Personally, I don't want to keep any memories that aren't smile worthy. As a kid I remember these creepy family portraits hanging up at my dad's house. They were my great-great-grandparents or something close to it. Looking back on it I should have thought it was cool to have a piece of history, but reality is they scared the living hell out of me. They looked like something you would see in a haunted house where the eyes followed you around the room and they had very stern stares. I'm going to go out on a limb and say these pictures are probably the only ones that still exist of my family ...

We all carry some kind of guilt, right? I do. I carry guilt over things small and large. Some of it is easy to shake and other guilt seems like it will never go away. There are somethings we can talk about and others that we keep private. What is amazing is the guilt that we put on ourselves. What we choose to carry around on our shoulders as if we don't already have the weight of the world already sitting there. We feel guilty about the way we treated someone 2o years ago, the shortcut we took at work yesterday and everything in between. Has it always been this way or has culture shifted so much that now it's heavier? There are days that I find myself guilty of the dumbest things, but in the moment they seem huge. For example, yesterday was my daughters birthday. I fell asleep on Thursday night much sooner than I intended to. I don't sleep a lot right now, so the fact that this happened was huge. All of a sudden I was wide awake at midnight because of one reason - I ...

Do you remember the Friends episode where Ross tells Rachel his fantasy is Princess Leia and he discovers that women tell their friends everything? Well let me tell you about my conversation with my friend tonight and you'll see that I am one of those women who really does tell everything. I love my friends, I love that when I am mad about work, family, my waistline, MY HUSBAND, or anything else I can call them to vent. They let me spew it all out, ask me any important questions and then laugh ridiculously at me until I can eventually laugh myself. So this happened tonight. I was steaming mad at Grant last night and I'm sure he'll be really glad to read about it on here, but that's his fault for encouraging my public mental health check. Anyway, I'm on the phone during my post work tangent and my friend, who will not be named because she is just as bad as I am, asks me if this is a short or long term problem. The only answer is to laugh and say, I still love him...