I suck at pretend. There’s almost nothing that terrifies me more than my daughter asking, “Can you play with me?”
I know it means we will have to “play school.” We take all of her stuffed animals to Huck’s room (school) and they sleep (lie in his bed for 10 seconds) and then we take them all back home. (her room) Then, she will say, “It’s time to wake up and go back to school.” We have to do it… ALL… OVER… AGAIN.
I am going to be a great roller coaster buddy at theme parks.
I would watch The Incredibles several times in a week without being bored. The Goonies? A gazillion.
I think Easter isn’t complete without dyeing eggs the old-fashioned way.
The only downside of a baby pool is that I can’t fit all the way inside.
Blowing bubbles is awesome, crafts are cool, bike rides are the best. Pretend is a bunchabullshit.
I don’t even know what my problem is. I can do an incredible Deep South accent while reading a Corduroy book, switching to the Spanish laundromat owner like an Oscar-winner. But, ask me to find something for two fairies to do inside a doll house and I draw a blank.
I’m like, “Do they sleep? Cause that’s what I wanna do.” “Do they dance? There’s no music… so that’s ridiculous.” “Do they have a tea party?” “Ok… we poured the tea. We took a sip. Now what the hell do we do? Tea party… over.”
I understand that imaginary play is uber important in my child’s development. I nearly cry tears of joy when I see her cuddle “her baby” bunny and wrap her in a blanket to sleep. It’s so sweet! But, I guess at some point the part of my brain tasked with imagination shriveled up like a raisin and died.
MY IMAGINATION
I run into the same problem with my niece. We’ll be playing in the pool and she’ll be pretending to run a restaurant. (Because the chick is an entrepreneur. She was charging us for pages out of a coloring book at 6. She has since graduated to selling bracelets for a profit.) She’ll ask to take my order and I ask for mashed potatoes, lobster and perhaps dessert. I pretend to pay her, pretend to consume it, end up with a mouthful of chlorine water. Next time she asks what I want to order, I’m like, “Nothing. I just want to get a tan!” (I don’t actually yell at her, but I do eventually start turning her down, which makes me feel AWFUL)
As for myself, I think I am a pretty fun parent.
When playing pretend, I’m like a creepy, bald uncle who’s never held a baby.
The saying goes, “It takes a village to raise a child.” But, we live in a day and age where parents get divorced, siblings spread out across the country and the only people willing to watch your child want to discuss their “fee.”
If the Tsetse fly gets me, there’s no passing my kid off to another gal in the tribe.
A couple days ago, I came down with a stomach virus. I called it the sick cruise without the “cruise.”
As I made my every five-minute dash from the bed to the bathroom, I could hear my husband’s groans of irritation with the kids growing louder as the night wore on. If dramatic sighs were a sport, he’d be an Olympian.
NOT my husband.
I tried to take over at one point, lying on the couch while the kids watched television, but within minutes had to say, “Mommy has to go potty.”
There is nothing worse in a family than a “man down.” (or woman down)
My mother-in-law broke her arm this past week when she fell while cleaning the top of the fridge. My father-in-law posted about it on Facebook, but it was in Spanish. For several minutes I was trying to figure out why she jumped from the fridge, hurt her arm and they turned into Tarzan and Jane. There was a Tarzan reference, but clearly my Spanish isn’t that great.
All it takes is one member of the family down, even the extended one, to derail all plans. She was supposed to watch the kids so we could celebrate my husband’s birthday this weekend with a rare overnight alone. Now, we’re trying to figure out how we can survive a couple hours at the race track with two kids. (Can you even take kids there? It seems illegal. Those places always reek of cigar smoke and seem to be teeming with aged sex offenders)
When I finally felt good enough to at least pick up the kids from daycare, I told my daughter I was taking them to Boston Market because “Mommy is too sick to cook.” She said, “Then I won’t talk to you.” I said, “What?” She said, “When you’re sick, I won’t talk to you.” So, at some point I must’ve scared the bejeesus out of her when I was ill. I can totally picture it: Me lying on the floor, writhing in agony and her bothering me about where her bunny’s blanket is and me shouting, “DON’T TALK TO ME. I’M SICK!!!”
Instead of being able to ask my mom for a hand, I’m text messaging her that I’m slowly dying of digestive failure.
Instead of being able to ask my mother-in-law for a hand, well… I’m just glad she still has a hand after the whole swinging from a fridge incident.
It takes a village, but we’re all in the “isolation hut” now. Not just reserved for menstruating ladies anymore. When there’s a man down, you suddenly wish you were better neighbors.
It takes a village. It also takes a team.
Last night my daughter started to cry in her bedroom. My husband found her hiccuping and burping.
Being astute, he rushed her to the bathroom where she promptly blew chunks across the tile floor.
We’re like an elite hazmat crew, working at high speeds, silently triaging the scene. My husband’s running the tub and whipping off her pajamas. I’m grabbing a plastic bag and every cleaning product created.
Within 15 minutes, we’ve got her sleeping in bed with minty fresh breath. I’m like a crime scene cleanup tech. You could sell that bathroom without anyone being the wiser to the gore it’s seen.
Props to any single parents out there. If I was one, I would just crawl under a vomit-stained bath mat and cry until DCF showed up.
You probably had people warn you in advance that having children was going to dramatically change your life.
You probably thought, yeah I know, I know… no more partying until 3 a.m. No more sleeping in until 10 a.m.
Maybe you even considered that it would be more difficult to take a quick run to the corner store, considering you’ll be schlepping a car seat or a kid that falls asleep every single time the car moves for more than a block.
But, they don’t tell you it’s the little things you can’t do anymore that cut like a knife.
I just want to shave my legs. Wearing jeans every day of my life isn’t a fashion statement, it’s a necessity.
I just want to paint my nails. I spend the better half of every week with chipped nails that make me look like a hooker who also works with heavy machinery.
I just want to workout. We try to swap workout days, but whenever I’m on the elliptical, in the garage, even with earphones I can hear them screaming inside the house. It’s tough to do serious crunches when you are considering the very real possibility someone has broken into your home and is slashing your family to bits. At least that’s what the screams sound like to me.
I don’t want to sleep in until 10 anymore. I want to sleep for 8 consecutive hours before I die. I want to sleep in until 8 in the morning. I want the sound of birds chirping to signal the start to the day, not a kid shrieking.
Why do they do that anyway? Wake up crying for absolutely no reason. I mean, I want to cry when I get up but that’s because I don’t have a choice. They do. They can sleep in, but they don’t. Instead, they wake up crying like a creature is nibbling the tips of their toes off and they desperately need you to rush to the rescue and slay the beast.
I just want to watch a movie. One with cursing and sex and gore and everything my kids are not allowed to witness and I don’t want it to be interrupted 5 times by a crying kid who can’t seem to sleep without smacking their head against the edge of the bed. Or a kid that falls out of their bed. We actually had to put those pool noodles inside the sheets to try and keep our daughter from falling out of her bed. Guess what, she still does. It’s like she sleep climbs over them and throws herself head first into the floor, just to spite us.
I just want to use the restroom without one or the other child kicking the door 20 times in a row or asking, “what are you doing in there?” Even if they do leave me alone, I can usually hear them within seconds asking my husband, “Where’s mommy?”
But, what I want more than anything is to spend some time alone with my husband. Every time we hang out for more than a half an hour somewhere without the children, it’s like going on a first date. I’m like, “Hey, I kinda like this guy. He’s funny and smart.” If we hang out for more than an hour I’m like, “Hey, he’s pretty hot.”
Before you have kids you’re like, we’ll get a babysitter or have the in-laws watch the kids. After you have kids you realize that getting someone to watch your kids just means you have a chance to rush home and clean the house that’s been collecting dog hair and filth for weeks. I could seriously create a life-sized version of our dogs with the amount of hair they shed in a week. It’s like a chihuahua a day.
So, yeah… they say everything is going to change when you have children. What they really mean is EVERY THING. If you don’t have kids now, don’t waste time partying. Shave your legs and paint your nails!
1. I did at least 3 tons of laundry. I can now fold faster than a Gap employee.
2. I bought all my groceries. I can now be sure to avoid that guilt-inspiring $10 lunch during the work week.
3. I had 3 beers alone at home. So much better than drinking with friends. I wear what I want, pee when I want and nobody cares if I get a little sloppy.
4. I ended up at a fancy restaurant where my daughter demanded to sit on my lap and wiggle the entire time. I can now add competitive eating to me resume. I Kobayashi’d that meal.
5. Another meal in public was ruined by my daughter throwing massive temper tantrums. That means I got to eat leftovers in the privacy of my own home. Who wants to eat ribs in front of other people anyway? So, they tasted like crap. That just means I got eat Apple Jacks at 9pm instead. When’s the last time you did that?
6. I promised my daughter a bike ride after taking her to the after hours pediatric clinic, but we were running out of time before dark. It was a bike ride to Walgreens to pick up her prescription in jeans. Exercise!
7. Being at the clinic means I don’t have to miss work during the week in order to take her to the Doctor. Booyah!
8. I got to skip watching the Super Bowl and watch a movie with two graphic rape scenes that made me nauseous.
9. I downloaded 5 new apps to my daughter’s Leap Pad. No Barbie Shorts on Netflix for me. For at least A WEEK.
10. I look forward to working on a Monday. How many of you can say that? Really?
My husband and I played a game to entertain ourselves in public places long before we had children. You look for drunk toddlers.
Try it out the next time you’re stuck at the airport. Within minutes you’ll spot some 2-year-old so wasted he’s drooling. Then you’ll see a 1-year-old stumbling around and still sucking down the drink. They cry, scream and make complete asses of themselves.
It’s a great game.
I’ll use my son as an example. Look at this lush, trying to sit on a tiny chair and chugging! Clearly, he’s blitzed. Next thing you know, he’ll be passed out, pissing himself.
I call this my pile ‘o kid crap I don’t wanna step on when one or both kids cry needlessly overnight. Anyone who’s set off anything musical while investigating a whimper has to feel me. 
My daughter has undiagnosed OCD. Or maybe all toddlers are just batshit crazy.
You know the little loop on the back of toddler shoes? My daughter has a massive meltdown if it’s not tucked in. She won’t let me cut them off, they must be tucked in. And if they don’t stay tucked in, it becomes a temper tantrum every few minutes.
She has to have 3 of everything. 3 headbands, 3 stuffed animals to sleep with and 3 “rinse and spits” after she brushes her teeth.
She recently forced me to take a fancy church dress and lay it over her feet in bed and then cover it with the bedspread. I have no idea why.
She refuses to wear any shirt or sweater with a raised flower on it.
Lights on, door open, blanket on to sleep. If these strict requirements aren’t met, there will be hell to pay. Do not test her or she will punish you with new demands of computer time, a Christmas movie in January or heaven forbid, a tea party.
As I mentioned in previous posts, she needs to be carried like a baby from the bathtub and refuses to walk down the stairs because it makes her “feet hurt.”
Spaghetti can only have butter on it, no red sauce whatsoever. Nothing should be tainted with parmesan cheese. Banana bread shall have no nuts. Egg McMuffins are great if you remove the ham so she can eat the egg white and scrape the cheese off the muffins, which are promptly tossed to the dogs. Olives are sinful. Eating green beans means separating them and only consuming the tiny bean portions inside. Frosting is fantastic, but the rest of the cupcake is bullshit.
When she’s sleepy, she needs complete quiet. When she wakes up, she is the devil.
Here are the advantages of having a moderately neurotic toddler:
She’s never going to run into traffic. She’s too busy telling ME to be careful and watch out for cars.
We will never forget to buckle her in the car, because she screams if you wait too long.
We will never forget her IN the car, because if we get our son out first she will completely lose her shit. “You forgot me!!!”
She’s going to love flossing her teeth. She tries to all the time already.
She will never be filthy, because a single hair stuck on her hand is a crisis.
But, whatever makes her this way has to be the same thing that inspires her to randomly say “I love you” or hug me for no apparent reason. Whatever makes her this way also makes her hysterically funny, sweet to her brother and exceptionally smart. This morning when she was looking out the bathroom window in the dark, I asked her if she could see anything. She said, “My ferlection!” (reflection.. close enough for me to consider her brilliant) I love my eccentric little girl.
I am a horrible mother. I missed a phone call from daycare and didn’t even get the message for an hour that my daughter was sick. They said she’s complaining that her belly hurts. Which can only mean that she has a urinary tract infection which has caused kidney failure and/or a tumor and/or her organs are all shutting down and that hour I wasn’t aware may have made the difference between life and death.
Or it could be a belly ache.
But, it still stands that I am a horrible mother. If I didn’t work, I would be able to ask her to explain how it hurts, figure out if she needed to go to a doctor, make an appointment if needed, give her Saltines and Ginger Ale and watch 30 back-to-back episodes of Super Why cuddled under a blanket with her.
If I didn’t work, I would be a fantastic mom. If I didn’t have kids, I would be a phenomenal Producer. Because I am a working mom, I kinda sorta suck hard at both.
Today, my husband needs to pick up a rental car for work, so he has to leave the kids with his parents. If I stayed at home, I could pick them up from school. Tomorrow, he has to head out of town at 5:30 a.m. That means I have to try and shower, get ready, get the kids ready and get them to school when it opens at 7 a.m., encounter rush hour traffic and get to work late.
I will be sweating, even if it’s 45 degrees outside.
My ears will be ringing from all of the screaming.
If I stayed at home, Alma could wake up leisurely and we could bicker about what she’s going to wear for an interminable amount of time. Instead of sweating, maybe I would actually end up SMILING.
My husband just called the daycare and they say Alma was just “tired.” What the hell? Yeah, when I’m exhausted I always confuse it for a stomach ache. So, it could still be the swine flu or appendicitis. But, I won’t know until it’s too late, because I’M WORKING!
When this didn’t work out my daughter tried to suck down a single linguini.
My husband had to drag it out of her mouth like a tape worm. I may never eat Italian again.
Living The American Scream 