Bad Mom

Posted on August 24, 2014 | 10 comments

I feel this should go without saying, but judging by the amount of hate mail I’ve gotten recently, apparently it does, in fact, need to be said.

I love my son.

More than anything.

More than my own life.

More than coffee.

COFFEE, people.

I’m not just willing to die for him, I’m willing to kill for him if it comes down to it. Granted, the only weapons in my house are a 32-pound dog and a frying pan, but I will throw both at your face if you even feign that you mean to harm my kid.

So, yes, I love my baby. And I love being a mom. I could talk (or write) for days non-stop about his every adorable facial tic and all the amazing ways he’s developing into a person. Seriously. Just ask my husband, who gets an extremely detailed run-down of what Riker did that day the second he gets home from work.

Me: “Guess what your son did today!? He pulled the dog’s tail and then shoved all the dog hair in his mouth! It was so cute. Well, up until he coughed out that hair ball. But still. I wish I would have recorded it.”

Him: “That’s great, sweetie. Now would you mind getting out of the way so I can get out of the car?”

Me (not moving): “And then he had peas for lunch and it got all over his face and it was so cute that I took 27 almost identical photos of it with my phone, here look at them, and then…”

Him: “…(sigh)…”

Needless to say, my life is ten thousand times better with Riker in it and if I die tomorrow, with my last breath I can honestly say that I am dying a happy woman.

Except, it’s not needless to say. Because more than once I’ve been accused of being a Bad Mom.

See, we all have our ways of dealing with the stress of parenting. Some people eat the stress away. Some lock the bathroom door and just sit there on the floor, staring vacantly at the wall for an hour. Some hire a babysitter and head out for a night on the town. I’ve even heard urban legends of strange creatures that do an odd ritual called exercising, where they force themselves to move in a vigorous manner to alleviate stress and maintain good health.*

*Science has yet to actually study these mythological creatures up close since one has never been caught out in the wild. Mainly because most scientists refuse to jog to catch up with them.

As for me? I write about it. For over a decade now I’ve been writing this humor column. It started out when I was that lowliest of low creatures, an intern for a small town paper, and has continued in different newspapers and media outlets across the country as well as here on my own website. And for all those years the main subject has been the same: Finding the humor in everyday life, mostly using my own life as fodder.

And my own life now is all about raising my child. So, I take those frustrating days when he won’t stop crying because he’s teething and those surreal moments where you find yourself saying things like “if you’d just stop poking yourself in the eye, you’d probably feel better,” and turn them into amusing (or at least I hope amusing) 800-word anecdotes each week.

And as the words amass on the page, I can feel myself relaxing, feeling better. I pour it all out. And in the end, it makes me a better mom, refreshed and ready to tackle another diaper blowout (where he grabs his poopy naked butt and smears it on his face before I can stop him) with a smile.

However, writing honestly about parenthood, while it will gain you some fans, also garners enormous amounts of criticism. Because in our society, raising children is Very Serious Business. And making fun of a baby or modern parenting or daring to say that the entire process is anything less than an amazing blessing we should be thankful for each day really, REALLY pisses some people off.

And so I get called a bad mom, an ungrateful mom. And my poor, poor son, who people feel so bad for because he has someone like me for a mom. He deserves better.

I know I shouldn’t let it get to me. But the first thing I learned when I became a mom is that guilt, a lot of guilt, comes with the job. So, I feel guilty for all the regular mom stuff (am I doing this right?) and then doubly guilty when someone doesn’t think it’s funny that I compared my baby to a dog in my column (am I ruining his life just to make some cheap jokes?).

There is nothing worse than being called a Bad Mom. Even if it’s by a stranger. Even if you know it isn’t true.

Because being a parent is hard and secretly we are all a little worried that we might be bad at it.

But that’s exactly why I think it’s so important that we be able to laugh at ourselves from time to time. We’ll go insane if we don’t. Or at least I will. I’d much rather view raising my baby as a comedy of errors rather than a tragedy of sleepness nights. Or worse, as a boring corporate lecture where I have to follow a PowerPoint of parenting rules.

Only time will tell if this particular strategy really did make me a Bad Mom. But until then, I know my son will grow up in a house filled with laughter. A house also filled with a lot of crying, barking and exclamations of “No! No! We don’t eat Mommy’s mascara!”

But mostly, hopefully, laughter.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go teach my son to roll over and maybe, if there’s time, to go fetch me the newspaper.

 

 

10 Comments

Posted in Family, Humor, Parenting

Tagged , , , , , ,

Mommy Brain: The struggle is real

Posted on August 17, 2014 | Leave a comment

I had to use a calculator the other day. To figure out what 12 plus 9 was. I was paying bills (during the 10 minutes my baby, Riker, usually agrees to sleep in the crib before he wakes up crying like he’s being murdered by a serial killer named Icepick Ivan) and trying to figure out how much money we’d have left over for frivolous things such as food and industrial strength “wall poop remover.” And then suddenly, this basic arithmetic problem stopped me in my tracks.

Ridiculous? Sure. But what’s even more ridiculous is how long I tried to figure it out in my head before I finally gave up and made technology do my brain’s dirty work (7.5 minutes but you didn’t hear it from me).

mommy brain 1

Now, it would be easy to chalk this episode up to our collective intellectual decline or even the new Common Core math. But considering I grew up doing math the old fashion way instead of this fancy “12 plus 9 equals a series of half circles colored blue” method, I can’t even blame my teachers.

I can only do the mature thing and blame my baby.

According to science, the average human only uses about 10 percent of their brain. I don’t know if science has ever examined a mom’s brain after they’ve been taking care of an infant for 14 hours straight, but if they did, I can almost guarantee that percentage goes down to more like 3 percent. And if they’d look really close, they’d see the brain staring vacantly at a Spongebob Squarepants cartoon as it stuffed its face with cold pizza rolls and cried.

I wouldn’t have believed it if I wasn’t currently living it, but taking care of a baby is by far the most mentally draining thing I’ve ever done. So much so, in fact, that if my husband gets home late from work, I am unable to even string sentences together by the time I see him.

Him: “How was your day?”

Me: “Cry. Many times. Poop. Ceiling has. Dog bad. Licked naked baby butt. I pee now?”

And let me clarify, it’s not mentally draining because my formerly bright mind is now atrophying from lack of use. In fact, it’s the opposite of that. I’m using parts of my brain I didn’t even know existed (such as the part that can calculate the speed and airborne path a binkie is most likely to take judging from the angle of the baby’s head so you can catch it mid-air before it hits your disgusting floor you haven’t cleaned in two weeks).

I mean, granted, changing diapers and playing “Bouncy Knee Silly Time” 104 times in a row isn’t exactly intellectually stimulating. I’ll give you that. But it is an entirely different kind of intelligence being flexed when you’re spending all your time trying to stop a 16-pound unexploded grenade who is determined to seriously injure himself from either exploding into a tantrum or hurling himself off the couch headfirst in a misguided attempt to reach the dog.

mommy brain 2

Seriously, just think of the brain power you have to use to try to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak your language, can’t point or use hand gestures and only has three emotions (happy, NOT HAPPY and pooping). Or how many parts of your brain must work together at high speeds to plan for every eventuality that might happen if you leave the house with your baby so you can successfully pack a diaper bag and not be that idiot parent on the subway with a screaming kid everyone hates because you forgot his stuffed animal with the goofy sunglasses, Mr. Hiphop A. Potamus. Or even the mental marathon powers you must possess to be able to sing “Close To You” by The Carpenters over and over again until he falls asleep without your head exploding.

So, becoming a parent doesn’t mean your brain is on an extended vacation despite how much it looks like that from the outside. It just means your brain is becoming an expert in exactly one topic.

Your baby.

And sure, this expertise won’t win you the Nobel Prize or get you tenure at Harvard. Hell, it won’t even gain you respect, not even from your baby. But it’s a worthy, and happily temporary, sacrifice.

So, to the moms and dads out there, don’t feel bad when you forget things like basic math or that you put your keys in the leftover lasagna from last night or that you can’t remember the last time you had a conversation that didn’t include the word “poop.” You’re not dumb. Your brain power is just going to a higher cause. A cause that will pay off when junior is grown up and happy and healthy and rich and buys Momma that beach house she’s always wanted.

*Cough…Riker…cough*

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Family, Humor, Parenting

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Image

Say it isn’t so, Robin Williams

robin

Leave a comment

Posted on August 12, 2014 in Pop Culture

Tagged , , , , ,

The Battle of Crib Hill

Posted on August 3, 2014 | 2 comments

Today is the day. The battle lines have been drawn. The weapons sharpened and at the ready. And once the smoke clears, a clear victor shall emerge from the carnage.

For over five months now, I’ve been a prisoner in this war. Day after day, praying and hoping and scheming to win back my freedom. Only to be disappointed yet again as the sun disappears beyond the horizon.

Hungry. Sleep-deprived. Covered in filth. No one should have to live this way. Some might argue that I brought this on myself. But my fellow soldiers in this war, my brothers-and-sisters-in-arms, know that when we took on this mission (code name: Operation Reproduction), it was only with the best of intentions.

But no more. Not today. No. Today is the day. The day I end this standoff. The day I ignite a revolution. The day I mix my military metaphors and arbitrarily abuse alliteration.

The air is tense as I put my plan into motion. Feasting on his mid-morning meal, my captor has no idea what is coming. I let him dine in peace, for all too soon the screaming will start. Let him have these last few serene moments.

He falls asleep. With one last look at his vulnerable face, I put the plan (code name: Operation This Kid Will Finally Nap In His Stupid Crib So Help Me) into action.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, I get up from the rocking chair. He begins to stir, letting out a small whine. I freeze. Everything hangs in the balance.

crib2

But luck is on my side. He quickly slumbers again.

I carry the tiny dictator in my arms with the gentle yet tense gait of a bomb squad member carrying an undetonated grenade. I carefully lower him into the cage. Against all odds, he continues the deep sleep of the blissfully ignorant. I straighten my body, hardly daring to breath. Things are going well.

Too well.

Freedom is within my grasp. I’m so close I can taste it. Sweat drips down into my eyes as I creep on my tiptoes to the nursery door. Thoughts swirl around in my brain as I allow myself to imagine what I’ll do once I’m free. Eat? Pee? Nap? Finally tweeze my neglected caveman eyebrows?

All four at once?

But then, out of nowhere, BOOM! A shot rings out from the most unlikeliest of places. And I freeze as the dog’s bark hangs in the air, eyes wide, not breathing, not moving. Stuck in what seems like a never-ending moment where the possibility that the shot missed its target is still alive.

The baby starts crying.

Done in by friendly fire.

I stand there, defeated, waiting the obligatory minute or two to see if he will fall back asleep. But deep in my heart, I know he won’t. The chains have been slapped back on.

The cries grow louder.

I pick the enemy combatant up, soothing him. Meanwhile, violent images where I whack the dog repeatedly with a giant cartoon mallet plays out inside my brain. The dog stares me, almost like he knows what I’m imagining. I throw him my best “you’re dead to me” crazed-eye look.

He at least has the decency to hang his head and look guilty.

crib1

Long hours pass. Long hours in which the enemy is cranky and repeatedly spits out his semi-automatic binkie, aiming for that spot under the rocking chair that I can never quite reach. He refuses to go back to sleep now that he knows of my betrayal.

The punishment fits the crime, I suppose.

Later in the day, I make a half-hearted attempt to resurrect my escape plan. Feed him. Lull him to sleep. Lower him once again down into baby jail.

But my spirit is broken. It inevitably fails. As his head hits the crib mattress, his eyes fly open and I’ve barely dropped to the floor and army-crawled passed the changing table before the indignant screaming at being betrayed again start.

crib3

By the time dusk arrives, Stockholm Syndrome has set in. It’s my fault he won’t nap in his crib. I’m a horrible mom. There are moms who have their newborns trained to sleep in their cribs during the day before the babies are even fully emerged from the birthing canal. I should have read a parenting book written by someone other than Dave Barry.

But just when all appears to be lost, reinforcements arrive. Commander Daddy bursts onto the scene like the hero that he is and surveys the battlefield. The broken and mutilated toys lying on the ground. The vultures and flies circling a never eaten sandwich; a sandwich made back when hope was still alive.

The commander immediately cuts off my chains, taking the tiny tyrant in his bare arms.

Free.

I’m finally free.

Granted, it is only temporary. But it will have to do for now.

I go into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of wine. A tiny consolation after yet another day of defeat.

By the time I make it back to the main battlefield in the living room, I see the commander sitting in the rocking chair, arms empty.

“Where is he?!” I demand.

“Sleeping in the crib. He was exhausted. Went right down.”

I turn back around and grab a bigger wine glass.

2 Comments

Posted in Family, Humor, Parenting

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

With great power comes great therapy bills

Posted on July 27, 2014 | 1 comment

I had no idea, you guys. No idea. I was ready for the sleepless nights, the dirty diapers and even the ass-numbingly dull act of reading the same stupid children’s book over and over again. But nothing, NOTHING, could have prepared me for the power that comes with parenting.

The sheer POWER, people!

And I’m not just talking about the immense physical power you have over a baby. Although I think we can all agree it would take very little effort on your part as an adult to kick a baby’s ass. I mean, sure, their little hands are always balled up in tiny fists, but most babies can’t throw a decent punch. So right there you already have a pretty big advantage. Plus it’s pretty difficult to execute a decent roundhouse kick when you can’t even hold your head up properly.

And I’m not even talking about the almost god-like power that comes with you being the only thing standing between your baby and certain death. They count on you entirely for food and shelter and clothing and hitting that button on their toy that starts the music. (They’re not like cats. You can’t just put them in a crib with a bunch of bottles and a litterbox and leave for three days. They’re much more like dogs in that they will alert you every five minutes with their status update. Hungry now. Want attention now. This ball appears to be stationary and I’d really like it not to be now). In fact, a baby’s survival rate without your direct interference is pretty low.

But even so, the greatest power you hold as a parent is that you are your child’s first and most important teacher. Seriously, these kids come out of the womb knowing nothing. They haven’t even heard of the Kardashians yet. You have to teach them EVERYTHING. (Well, everything except how to suck on a nipple and how to poop in the tub, both of which they do automatically by instinct).

As a new parent, this is a pretty intimidating thought. One, because with that much power, it’s very hard not to become corrupt. History has taught us that. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and whatnot. I mean, just think how easy it would be to teach them that the sky is called a nurple and that they should call your mother Dave instead of Grandma. If you think about it, there’s really nothing stopping you from doing this besides basic human decency and the priceless look on Grandma’s face when junior yells “Hi, Dave!” across the restaurant pretty much trumps that.

And two, that much power leaves a lot of room for mistakes. Take, for example, how my husband and I have accidentally set back our son’s language skills by years, if not decades.

It all started innocently enough. About three months ago, when Riker was at that stage where he was smiling but not quite laughing yet, we were doing everything short of standing on our heads to get him to giggle. Goofy dancing. Silly songs. Some Louis C.K. jokes while standing in front of a brick wall.

Nothing.

And then we did stand on our heads. And then we stood on each other’s head.

Again. Nothing.

Nada.

Zilch.

Just the vacant stare of a baby who is wondering just how crappy of a person he was in his previous life to end up with these two yahoos as parents this time around.

But just when we were about to give up and face the reality that we gave birth to a tiny Ben Stein, we finally discovered his particular brand of humor: The Horsey Noise.

Yes, for this kid, that sound when you vibrate your two lips together like a horse’s neigh was the height of comedic genius. He just laughed and laughed. And so we kept doing it. Because once you hear your baby laugh, you never want that sound to end. We did it 50 times in a row. And then another 100. He would just laugh and laugh and then poop and then laugh some more.

We did it so much, in fact, that he started imitating us. Spittle and drool flying all over the place as he Horsey Noised and then we Horsey Noised and then we all Horsey Noised together. We just couldn’t stop. It was so adorable. Not to mention so monumental considering it was his first major attempt to communicate with us that wasn’t in the form of screaming.

So there we are, the three of us, just doing the Horsey Noise back and forth for weeks. When one day we noticed he started doing it the moment he saw us. He’d greet us with Horsey Noise and say good-bye with Horsey Noise. And then he started doing it every time we talked to him.

“Are you hungry?”

“…(horsey noise)…”

“Can you say ‘Momma’?”

“…(horsey noise)…”

With growing uneasiness, we also noticed that whereas he used to babble and coo and make different sounds, they’d all been replaced by Horsey Noise. My name? Horsey Noise. Daddy is also Horsey Noise. The dog? You guessed it. Horsey Noise.

It’s gotten to the point that I know we should stop but I worry that if we do, it may cause some severe psychological damage. The Horsey Noise is the first time we’ve been able to verbally relate to each other. So suddenly no longer doing it back to him would be like your parents having spoken to you in French your entire life and then suddenly addressing you in Chinese with no explanation.

And he’s just so proud he finally mastered Horsey Noise. I can’t take that away from him.

So, obviously there’s only one solution. Everyone is just going to have to make Horsey Noise their primary language. Even Dave.

1 Comment

Posted in Family, Humor, Parenting

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Time flies when you’re elbow deep in poo

Posted on July 20, 2014 | 1 comment

It is currently 9:04 p.m. as I write this. If you were to put a gun to my head right now and demand that I recount how I just spent my entire day, I’d be dead. Like super dead.

(Super dead, of course, being more dead than just regular dead and a lot more dead than mostly dead).

That’s because I have no bloody idea what I did today. Or yesterday. Or for the past five months.

It wasn’t always this way. I used to be able to flawlessly recall my daily activities, from what Netflix show I was currently binge watching to what specific type of pizza roll I was mindlessly eating while binge watching said Netflix show.

And then I became a parent.

See, as it turns out, parenthood is a constant state of being where you never have any free time and yet nothing ever seems to get done. And even though my to-do list has now been whittled down to just one main objective every day (“keep kid alive”), at the end of the day, I can’t tell you how I got there.

free time 3

I mean, sure, in general terms, I can say, yes, I fed him and changed his diapers and played “I’m Gonna Eat Your Tootsies” roughly 316 times. But the math just doesn’t add up. Because doing those things technically only takes up a relatively small portion of my day.

free time2

So, how is it then that when I crawl into bed at night, I have no idea where the other 70 percent of my day went?

Well, being the scientifically minded person that I am, I came up with some theories.

Possible Theories On Where The Time Actually Goes:

  1. Babies are like vampires. You look into their adorable eyes and are unknowingly glamoured. But since they can only babble instead of talking in full sentences, your brain isn’t filled with false memories but rather with a jumble of random sounds and images.
  2. Just like road hypnosis, where you are suddenly sitting in the parking lot of work but don’t remember driving there, there is such a thing as diaper hypnosis, where you change diapers so often you no longer remember doing it.
  3. Patrick Stewart invented some kind of machine that steals minutes from the lives of anyone who watches reruns of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and that’s why he hasn’t aged in 30 years.
  4. Maybe time really does fly when you’re having fun. And it shoots off like goddamn rocket when you have a baby screaming directly into your face.
  5. Technically bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly because their bodies are too heavy for their wings and other science stuff. And yet, they still fly. I don’t really know how this relates to me never having any time but you gotta admit, that’s pretty shady. They’re up to something.

free time 1

Or it could just be that you can no longer remember what you’ve done all day because as a parent, you’re doing 12 things all at once, all of them one-handed and at least three-fourths of them half-assed.

For instance, I still watch Netflix but now I’m also trying to shovel a spoonful of glop (the technical term for rice cereal mixed with breast milk) into a tiny and constantly moving target at the same time. And then I’m cleaning up the glop from the floors and the walls and the target’s hair and feet while trying unsuccessfully at the same time to keep the dog from eating the leftover glop that is smeared all over the kid’s face. All while also talking to my mom on the phone because this was the only “free time” I had to talk. And then I empty only half of the dishwasher because I just remembered I need to take the clothes out of the washer, the same load that’s been in there for 11 days because I keep forgetting about it, just rewashing it over and over again because by the time I remember it’s in there, all the clothes are dank and musty. But on my way there, the kid throws up and so I go to change his clothes, putting him in my old Nirvana T-shirt because all his clothes have been in the washer for 11 days. And then he’s crying so we go for a walk in the park (first packing a diaper bag with 98 percent of my son’s belongings inside it) while I try to pay bills online via my smartphone, steering drunkenly one-handed and running over squirrels and small dogs. And then we’re home and I take him out of the stroller only to discover he left behind the entire contents of his lower intestines. So then I’m elbow deep in poo and bleach and my husband calls to see what we want to do for dinner and all this continues for 16 more hours until I go to bed wondering what the hell just happened.

It could be that’s where all the time goes.

But personally, I think it’s the bumblebees.

1 Comment

Posted in Family, Humor, Parenting

Tagged , , , , , , ,

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Baby Toy Assembling

Posted on July 13, 2014 | 1 comment

I was told a lot of things about being a parent before I had my son. For example, some of my favorite gems include:

“You’ll never not be doing laundry.”

“You’ll never not be covered in fluids that aren’t yours.”

“You’ll spend the first part of their life trying to teach them to talk and the rest of their life telling them to shut up.”

But the one thing I wasn’t told? That I would need a degree in engineering.

Yes, I was, and still am, highly ill-equipped to deal with the barrage of “some assembly required” items that have entered my home since junior arrived. Toys, activity play sets, swinging chairs, various contraptions that basically serve as baby jails. All of them needing a toolbox and a set of skills that are more advanced than my current level of construction knowledge, which begins and ends with the phrase “rightie tightie, leftie loosie.”

And silly me, wasting all that time getting a journalism degree (which now should just be called a “Hey, want to write for my website for free? It’ll give you good exposure” degree) when I should have been building a replica of the Death Star or whatever it is they do in engineering school.

Take my most recent baby item building adventure. Last week, I discovered a still-in-the-box bouncy chair, which was revealed after the Great Stuffed Animal Mountain Avalanche of 2014 (a mountain hastily constructed by me a few months ago while “cleaning” the nursery closet, which should already give you some idea of my engineering capabilities).

I immediately decided I had to put it together because as I’ve learned (and here’s a little parenting gem I can pass on to you), you can never have too many places to set your child down. So, I opened up the instruction manual and spent the next three hours doing the following:

Step 1: Hold down the two sides of the dobbler and insert the dobbler into the doohickey. But only if you happen to have the natural strength of Hercules because the dobbler is actually manufactured to be just slightly larger than the doohickey because we here at Generic Toy Company have a cruel sense of humor. In a last ditch effort, use a hammer (not included) to just bang the crap out of both parts until they fit.

Step 2: Take the oddly shaped bright red thingy and screw it into the oddly shaped bright yellow thingy.

Step 3: Insert the dancing cow beside the singing duckies until you hear it click into place.

Step 4: Hook the canvas piece onto the tiny plastic hook and then attempt to stretch it all the way across to the other tiny plastic hook. Which is, of course, impossible because we manufactured it to only go three-fourths of the way across. But that won’t stop you from pulling and stretching and pulling and cussing and getting all red-faced and sweaty until you finally get so fed up you throw it across the room while your dog cowers in the corner.

Step 5: Spend a frustrating 20 minutes looking for that stupid blue piece, which was JUST HERE A MINUTE AGO, DAMMIT!

Step 6: Locate the battery panel. Which you probably won’t be able to do because we hid it. Extremely well. And even if by some miracle you do happen to find it, we screwed it tightly shut because of all the criminals out there who sneak into homes and steal all the batteries from children’s toys. Even though technically that’s a counterintuitive measure considering there are no batteries in there yet. Spend 45 frustrating minutes trying to unscrew the battery panel screws, which are specifically designed to not fit well with any standard screwdriver. Insert 28 double AA batteries.

Step 7: Debate internally for at least an hour on whether or not this death trap is safe enough for your child.

Step 8: Decide “screw it” and plunk him down in the bouncy chair because you’ve been up since 5 a.m. and haven’t peed since 5:01 a.m. and it’s now 8 p.m. and your arms are numb from carrying him around and he hates the crib and the swing this week and you haven’t eaten since Tuesday and hey, kids in the 60’s survived licking lead paint walls and cars with no seat belts.

Step 9: Enjoy 12 blissful minutes of peace as he plays in the bouncy chair, which seems, at least marginally, structurally sound.

Step 10: At 13 minutes, take him out of bouncy chair because he is now crying hysterically.

Step 11: Add bouncy chair to the Corner of Useless Baby Crap, which is now no longer really a corner but more three-fourths of your living room.

1 Comment

Posted in Family, Humor, Parenting

Tagged , , , , , , ,

How to simplify your life in one easy step

Posted on July 5, 2014 | 3 comments

When you become a parent, you quickly find yourself looking for anything that will make your life easier. This is exactly why I own no less than five Fisher-Price devices that are all just glorified chairs, each of which moves the kid in a slightly different way. Oh, you’re tired of vibrating? How about swinging? No? Bouncing chair it is then.

Seriously, most of my day is spent just moving the kid from chair to chair so I can do fun parent stuff, like washing the covers of whatever chair he is not currently in because he doesn’t consider it a successful day unless he’s pooped through his diaper at least three times.

And suffice it to say, my kid is an overachiever.

But this quest to make my life just a little bit easier has led me to my greatest idea of all time. I am currently writing this using a speech-to-text app. Yes, no more trying to write with a squirming kid climbing all over my face. I just talk and it types. I know. I know. I am brilliant exclamation point.

Oh crap. Well, I’ll just go back and fix that later.

Where was I? Oh yeah, simplifying my life. Oops. I forgot it writes down everything I say. Don’t forget to erase this part.

Thankfully, we modern parents have fabulous technology available with just a click of button to help us out. I mean, I can’t imagine how hard it was even a few decades ago for a mom to try and work from home without all the conveniences that we have BUFFY, STOP LICKING THE BABY’S FACE. I mean it. I will spank your little puppy butt if you don’t knock it off.

New paragraph. Oh, son of a beach. Come on.

Well, at least the auto correct works on this thing. Thank Bob.

OK. So, modern conveniences. Just imagine, for example, how much time is saved with disposable diapers and the freedom that is gained with a breast pump. The fact that I can pump and leave my husband with a bottle so I can leave the house is pretty much the only reason that my sanity is still intact. I would have gone crazy long ago if Riker, get that out of your mouth. How did you even manage to pull that much hair off the dog? No, icky. Give it to mommy. Bob, I can’t wait until summer is over and the dog stops shedding.

Technology. Technology. Maybe insert some joke about Angry Birds raising my kid. No, that’s dumb. No one plays Angry Birds anymore. Words With Babies? Is that anything? This is going to be my worst column ever BUFFY, I SAID DUCKING KNOCK IT OFF.

Oh, sweetie no, don’t cry. Mommy was yelling at the dog, not you. Come here, little butt. Man, I really need to think of a better nickname for you. You’re going to kill me someday when you’re older and it gets out that I called you little butt when you were a baby. Speaking of which, do you need a diaper change? Oh, I think you do.

Whoa. Buddy, that’s a lot of shot. What have you been eating? Or, I guess, what have I been eating? With little butts come big packages, eh? Oh my Bob, I have poop on my shirt. When the he’ll did that happen?

OK, we a happy boy again? Who’s a happy boy? Who’s my happy boy? Wanna go in your chair so momma can finish dictating her column? Alright, let’s try Mr. Swing. I’ll even turn on the Bob awful music feature, where all the songs sound like they were composed on an eighties keyboard. No? You don’t like the swing today? OK, how about the highchair that feels like it’s made from Nickelodeon slime? You good there? Yes? Yay! That’s my good BUFFY! I will punch you in the face if you don’t quit it. That’s not your ducking toy and you know it. Drop it. I SAID DROP IT. Good boy.

Oh Bob. It wrote all that down? Shot, this was a horrible idea. I’m so ducking tired. And I should probably do the dishes before that leaning tower of plates collapses.

Hmm. I guess I could just come back later and fix all this. I’m sure I won’t forget. I mean, ha! Even I’m not that sleep-deprived.

Yeah, screw it. I’m gonna go stuff my face with chips.

3 Comments

Posted in Family, Humor, Parenting

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

33 Things I’ve learned in 33 years*

Posted on June 22, 2014 | Leave a comment

*(New Parent Edition)

1. A baby’s cry has the magical ability to make time stop. For instance, 45 seconds of crying feels like three hours. And three hours of crying feels like you can’t remember life before the crying started and will probably die before it ends.

2. There are a lot of perks to having a baby. Using them as an excuse to stop cleaning your house is the best one.

3. How much a baby wants to vomit is directly proportional to how much you like the outfit you are currently wearing.

4. Never get mad when someone gets the gender of your baby wrong. Only get mad when they get your gender wrong.

33 things 1

33 things 233 things 3

5. Watching your kid get a shot at the doctor really does hurt you more than it hurts them. But then you remember how much the first six weeks of breastfeeding hurt and suddenly you don’t feel nearly as bad for them anymore.

6. Babies are born with two very strong instincts: To suckle and to headbutt you right on the nose. They will want to do both of these things often.

7. Ironically, babies themselves are the best form of birth control.

8. You will love your baby more than anything else in the world. Except for sleep.

9. Always assume a pregnant woman is hungry. Because she is.

10. You cannot fathom how much you will talk about poop once you have a baby. How much, how often, consistency, color, smell, whether or not it exploded out of their cute, little tushie like an erupting volcano. It will sneak into every conversation you have.

33 things 4

33 things 5

11. Apparently, there is such a thing as a stupid question. Or at least that’s what my son’s pediatrician told me when I called him at 3 a.m. last night.

12. Dogs love babies. And they show this love by licking them directly in the mouth every chance they get.

13. Hearing your baby laugh is the best sound in the world. I don’t have a follow-up joke for this. It just really is.

14. You will often find yourself oversharing incredibly personal information to your other mom friends, such as how your C-section scar is healing and why you need to use a nipple shield while breastfeeding. And you will do this loudly. While in public places.

15. Never tell a pregnant woman that cheeseburgers are not an acceptable breakfast food. She will stab you.

16. Babies use sleep deprivation as a mind control device. You will quite literally be willing to do anything for them if it means you can just take a five minute nap.

17. No matter how clearly you explain it to them, babies will never understand the correlation between them shoving their finger in their eye and why they are currently in pain and crying.

18. Never ask a pregnant woman if you think she should be eating that. She will stab you.

19. You will completely forget how much you hated people who constantly posted photos of their kids all over Facebook and Instagram while you’re busy uploading 56 photos to your album “Baby’s First Tuesday!”

20. Never eat off a pregnant woman’s plate. She will stab you.

21. If there was an Olympic sport called “Who can pee the farthest?”, a baby would win.

22. If there was an Olympic sport called “Who can spit the binkie out the farthest?”, a baby would win.

23. If there was an Olympic sport called “How many times can I make this idiot pick up the binkie off the floor?”, a baby would win.

24. I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure maternity ward nurses are angels. Angels handing out magical painkillers made of rainbows and unicorns and the happy tears of a teacup pig.

25. The second you brag about how well your baby sleeps through the night is the second he decides to wake up every 15 minutes every single night for the next six months.

26. Never ask a pregnant woman if she ate that entire cake. She did. And she will stab you.

27. Grandparents are the only people on this earth who will not immediately hand back to you your screaming child.

28. Screw sliced bread. Disinfectant wipes are the best invention since forever.

29. Once you have a baby, eating a meal becomes a luxury. One you can no longer afford.

30. For some reason, babies hate any entertainment that isn’t jiggling keys. Hence, you will never watch a full TV episode or a movie in its entirety ever again.

31. Never tell a pregnant woman you think she’s gained too much weight. She will cry. And then she will stab you.

32. There are a lot of things wrong with the world. But it’s hard to think of any of them when you have a sleeping baby on your chest.

33. It’s likely at some point in your life you will be stabbed by a pregnant woman.

Leave a comment

Posted in Family, Humor, Parenting

Tagged , , , , , ,

Don’t take time to be a dad today

Posted on June 14, 2014 | 2 comments

Remember those public service announcements a few years back that showed a dad playing with his kid and then encouraged other dads to “take time to be a dad today”?

Cute as they were, I always hated those commercials. Even though I understood the reasoning behind it (addressing the high numbers of absent and deadbeat dads in the U.S.), I still hated the message, for two reasons:

  1. There were no equivalent “take time to be a mom today” ad campaigns because it’s just assumed that mom will take care of the kid the rest of the time once dad is done “being a dad today.” And…
  2. The message set the bar pretty low, in my opinion, and did a great disservice to all the fathers out there who are dads every hour of every day of every year.

Perhaps it’s because I grew up without a father myself but nothing irritates me more than watching society pat crappy fathers on the back because they did the bare minimum in terms of fatherhood. This is especially true now that I have a child myself and have watched my husband not only step up to the plate in terms of fatherhood, but knock it out of the park.

Ryan was the first one to change Riker’s diaper. He was the first one to give him a bath and file down his Freddy Krueger-like talons. When I needed a break from breastfeeding because of the pain, he fed him with his finger and a tiny tube attached to a syringe to encourage correct suckling.

He’s the one that puts Riker to bed every night. He’s the undisputed king of sucking that kid’s gigantic boogers out with the booger sucker thingy. He faces diaper blow outs with the bravery of a knight in King Arthur’s court. He’s walked miles around our house trying to calm an unappreciative and very loud Riker during the witching hour.

And perhaps most importantly of all, when he gets home from a long day of work, he immediately takes our son from my arms to give me a break so I can write or clean or finally shower or, if need be, just stare vacantly at the wall for awhile because my brain is oatmeal after getting up at 4 a.m. and taking care of a 3-month-old (who views napping in the crib as a special kind of torture) all day.

In fact, he’s so good about this last part that I actually feel slightly guilty that the poor guy gets no down time during the week. His response when I told him?

“Taking care of him is my job too. I helped make him.”

IMG_20140219_211945

Yeah. Feel free to hate my guts, ladies.

Now you could easily dismiss this as simply Ryan being an anomaly. But over the years, I’ve watched several of my male friends and relatives turn into amazing dads. Dads that don’t just show up for the fun parts of parenthood but are there for the dirty, haz-mat suit should be required, parts too. Not to mention, all the men I’ve met over the years with older kids who were already amazing dads. Married, divorced, single, stay-at-home dads. It didn’t matter. Because what all these men had in common was that they didn’t need to take time to be a dad. Because they never took time off from being a dad.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a big problem in this country with men not being good fathers. Or even bothering to be fathers. There is.

But perhaps because of this problem, we tend to overlook the dads that need recognition the most. The guys who don’t just show up to the birthday party, but helped plan it. The guy who doesn’t just spend an hour on Saturday playing with Legos with his son, but spends all weekend building a giant Lego replica of the Death Star. The guy who volunteers to be chaperon for their daughter’s weeklong field trip to some awful campsite in the middle of nowhere.

Regardless of custody agreements, geographic location, work schedules, relationship with the mother or any other obstacle, these dads find a way to always be there for their children. And more importantly, let their children know, not just with words, but with deeds, that they will always be there for them.

So, fellas (especially you, Ryan), just know that someone, lowly and non-famous writer that she is, sees what you do and thinks you’re amazing for making the ordinary dad things you do extraordinary by simply thinking they are just ordinary.

2 Comments

Posted in Family, Parenting

Tagged , , , , , , ,