Category Archives: Motherhood

All I Need To Know Today

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I just want to breathe.

Right this very moment, my toddler is screaming from her crib and my middle child is playing with a roll of duct tape behind me, making that “riiiiiiip” sound over and over.

It’s nap time, obviously.

I need to breathe.

I have spent months struggling to find my breath. I have felt the actual sensation of my spirit sinking as I slogged through the hard parts of mothering, digging deep for just one more day of a little more patience and a little more strength. Just enough to get me through the day, because I’m not greedy … and also because I can’t allow myself to think too far beyond whatever is happening right in front of me.

I am weary, turned inside-out, and emotionally rubbed raw. I have found myself asking aloud, when does it end? Because surely, somewhere down the road, I will have a chance to regroup before the teenage years hit. Right? Surely it doesn’t stay this exact brand of demanding forever.

And then, clarity hit. That’s what always happens — months of painful slogging, followed by an epiphany. If my life were to have a working title, it would be “I Had Another Epiphany And Everyone Eyerolled.”

I was cleaning up my daughter after another accident when it struck me that the opportunity to care for others is a sacred thing. Cleaning them, feeding them, looking after them.

Raising them.

The quieting of their cries at the sound of your voice. The endless smiles. The begging for you to sing at bedtime, when you are exhausted and want nothing more than to dump them in their beds and lock yourself in a room alone to stare in silence. But watching those little bodies relax as you acquiesce and sing “Silent Night” for the thousandth time, only walk to the next bedroom and do it all over again with the next one … THAT is a sacred experience.

That is what keeps me going.

Being a parent is hard. It’s so much work, but it is holy work, regardless of what your beliefs may be. Guiding children to adulthood is by far the biggest and most serious responsibility I have taken on in my life. I’ve had people say I must be a sad person if being a mom was the greatest thing I’ve ever done.

Fuck them.

It is by far the greatest thing I have ever done, and if I can somehow manage to shepherd these kids into adulthood as functioning, mannerly, positive contributors to society … then it will be the greatest thing I WILL EVER DO.

My exhaustion is worth something. Yours is, too.

That’s all I need to know today.

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Making Bitterness My Bitch.

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Today I took my 3-year-old and my 1-year-old into a public bathroom, not because I wanted to, but because I weighed the options and public bathroom won out over let’s roll the dice and see if we can make it home.

Ironically, because I was so valiant in my effort to keep them from touching every surface within reach, my little girl tripped over my foot and belly-flopped onto the floor of the bathroom stall. Her face may have actually made contact with the tile … it’s unclear because I have already stricken the details from memory.

While I worked to lift her upright and mentally checked into my safe place, my son busied himself with touching every single part of the toilet. Apparently he saw the opportunity to send me over the edge and ran with it.

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After almost four years of being a full-time stay-at-home-mom, I’m tired. My nerves are raw. I feel frayed, just like the green blanket that my child has rubbed and loved on until there is nothing left but a mangled, nubby wad of material. A friend told me when I first quit working that there would be a honeymoon period, followed by an adjustment period and settling in. And then, I would either love it or I would hate it.

I feel like maybe I’m in a transitional time where I’m not sure how I feel about it. I do know that I need to do a better job of being grateful for the privilege of being home. At the beginning of all this, I told Robbie on a daily basis how grateful I was to him for working so hard and allowing me to focus solely on raising our children. Somehow, over time, that has shifted to bitterness. Four years of cooking, shopping, and cleaning — all things that I used to enjoy — changed me.

What happened?

I have allowed myself to get bogged down in responsibilities, and I have lost sight of the reasons why I wanted to do this job in the first place. And remembering WHY I AM DOING THIS is where I find my peace and my joy.

So, you know what? Screw bitterness. I’m going to make bitterness my bitch.

I am grateful that I am the one who gets to wrangle my children in bathrooms outside of our home … because no one else could scrub their little hands as thoroughly, and with as much love.

I am grateful that I am the one who wipes their noses a million times a day, because someone else might not notice, or worse — let it run freely (shudder).

I am grateful that I oversee everything that happens in this house, because while that may be an exhausting endeavor, I know things are done well here. No one will get Salmonella on my watch.

I am grateful. I am grateful. I am grateful.

When I take the time to think those words, roll them over in my mind, and write them, I realize they are true. I really am grateful. I just don’t take the time to say it enough.

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Joy.

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Daddies, daughters, and pigtails. These are a few of my favorite things.

10615468_10155562442005508_85748497890528073_nNot pictured, but also my favorite:

1. When my 3-year-old quietly listens to me read “Llama Llama Mad At Mama” and then says Mommy, I’m happy at you. It makes me happy when you read to me.

2. When my oldest and I go for a long walk and we have time just to chat about whatever, without interruption.

3. When my children are sleeping.

4. Boxed wine.

I’ve struggled lately to find the joy in my life. I’ve found that happens when I get super busy and overwhelmed with things that do not pertain directly to motherhood, and then my kids are all, “WTF, Mother — pay attention to us,” and so they go lick a bunch of toys at the gym nursery and get sick so I will have no choice but to focus on them.

Yeah.

I don’t have a specific answer to the question of “how can mothers find their joy?” But I know that after a good night’s sleep, a strong cup of coffee — okay, maybe two cups — and a close to this hellish week of sick children, seeing their dimpled faces smiling sure did help.

A lot.

It also helped to feed them 4 meals in a row that required zero effort or preparation on my part, the last of which was a trip to our local Burger King, where we allowed them to mash their faces on every possible surface as I prayed for deliverance from whatever germs resided there.

And wine. Always wine.

Where Are My Earplugs?

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Yesterday, I made the grave mistake of looking at the school calendar. The realization of how quickly the school year will end and Summer Break will begin threatened to choke off my air supply.

I wish I could be one of those moms who gleefully await summertime. Those are likely the same moms who do fun activities with their (calm, obedient) children while I frantically try to keep my (energetic, experimental) kids from setting the house on fire. I wish I could be more optimistic and just have fun, but the truth is that I am always on pins and needles waiting for one of them to get seriously injured.

I love my children, but they exhaust me. Does that mean that I’m not cut out for motherhood? I chose to be a stay-at-home-mom. WTF IS WRONG WITH ME?! Am I too uptight? Am I doing it all wrong?

I’m admitting out loud, right now, that motherhood is ass hard. That does not mean it’s as hard as my ass, which isn’t hard at all. This is not a literal statement. I mean to say that IT IS SO HARD THAT THERE ISN’T AN ADEQUATE WORD, SO I ADDED “ASS” IN FRONT OF IT. If you can’t get on board with that, then I don’t know what to do with you.

I make this proclamation after a long stretch of parenting issues that individually aren’t that bad, but added all together at once are just a lot. I’m exhausted. I feel like I have nothing else to give, and yet — there it is, another snot bubble on the horizon. There’s another person who can’t figure out how to get his underwear right side in and needs help because he cannot possibly put his underwear on if they are inside out.

At night, when all of the children are tucked in bed asleep, after the middle child has been taken to the bathroom to pee so he doesn’t have an accident in his bed, and I have spent an adequate amount of time with that strange man who lives in the house with me, I insert my ear plugs and pray that whatever rest I get will be enough to get me through the next day.

Today, when I sunk to a low point and looked at the clock for the umpteenth time to see that it was still not 5 p.m., something snapped me out of it. I got a moment of beauty.

Our baby, the same one who tries to stick her head in the oven on an almost-daily basis, learned how to stack blocks.

And I was there to see it.

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So yes, I would be lying if all I did was talk about the beauty of motherhood. It’s not mostly beautiful. It’s mostly painful and frustrating and uncomfortable and scary and tiring, with moments of beauty sprinkled in — just enough to make it worth it, but not so much that it’s easy.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

The best part about being a mom is that those sprinkles are all you really need to push you to the next level. My little block-stacker spends most of her time undoing everything I’ve done: she puts important mail in the trash, pulls clothes out of baskets and contents out of cabinets, and tries to systemically empty every box and bin in the house. But damnit, SHE CAN STACK.

I’m a proud, exhausted mama. Now … where are my earplugs?

Diagnosis: Mother.

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Today I realized that my 3-year-old isn’t as attached to his special blanket anymore. I realized that I have never rocked my 21-month-old to sleep, because she is the third child and in this house, the third child gets a bedtime kiss and dumped into her crib without ceremony.

Now that my oldest eschews rocking and my middle only lets me do it sometimes, I WANT TO ROCK SOMEONE BEFORE BED, DAMN IT.

Motherhood makes me feel like a crazy person. In fact, I am a crazy person.

To prove my point, I have created a visual aid using a family picture of us from October 2012, two months after The Great Negotiation.

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Because everything about this picture screams “WE NEED MORE CHILDREN!”

What’s The Great Negotiation? That was the time I spent months trying to convince my poor husband that I wasn’t done having children and we needed more, despite the fact that we were struggling on one income and had two very challenging boys — one of whom was not quite a year old. I felt like we totally needed to throw one more baby into the mix. That made sense to me.

This is how I know that mothers have something deeply, psychologically wrong with them.

The Great Negotiation took place during date night at Outback Steakhouse. My husband eventually wore down and said “FINE. But I have to get a vasectomy before the baby is born.” And I said, “FINE. I’m ordering a beer.”

Less than a year later, our daughter was born.

Less than a year after that, I regretted allowing the vasectomy. Because I have a mental illness.

It’s called Mother.

Cram Crackers.

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If you are able to go to the bathroom today without it being a circus event, don’t take it for granted.

I’m in a place in my life right now where everything is a problem, particularly trips to the bathroom. Children toddle after me, play in my makeup drawer, and stretch my prescription glasses to oblivion when I am indisposed. So if you’re reading this post while sitting on the toilet in peace … BE GRATEFUL, IS ALL I’M SAYIN’.

In this particular season, which seems infinitesimal, it’s hard to find time to write or maintain and build friendships. It’s hard to keep food in the house. It’s hard to strike a balance every day and not ignore my children.

Sometimes I wish everyone would just go away so I could do yoga in our living room, because surely a few sun salutations would make everything seem more manageable, right?! Yogis are such relaxed people.

Other relaxed people:

1. Marijuana farmers and consumers.

2. Hypnotists.

3. That guy “Chubs” on Pawn Star.

4. Robbie Hobbs.

My husband, the aforementioned Robbie Hobbs, is extremely supportive of my writing. He is truly my biggest cheerleader, and I can’t say enough how vital he is to any success I’ve had or will see in the future. I definitely need him by my side, and he’s there … until he runs out of his favorite boxers. Then he’s all, “Where are all my boxers?! What do you do all day?!” (Note: asking this question never ends well.)

I’LL TELL YOU WHAT I DO ALL DAY, MOTHERF*CKER.

I drag three kids to an allergist appointment and, due to an unfortunate series of events, never wish to call the allergist, think of the allergist, or show my face at the allergist’s office again.

I feel like a terrible mother multiple times per day, because apparently women are wired to self-loathe and self-question and over-think everything to the point of exhaustion. My kid knows the words to that song?! I’m a terrible mother. My kid tried to fight a nurse?! I’m a terrible mother. Eggo waffles are processed in a factory?! I’m a terrible mother. I have varicose veins there? I’m a terrible mother.

I didn’t say it had to make sense. Just shut up.

I patch up thumbs when they get smashed in doors. I untangle cords. I help build block towers and break up fights when the tower is inevitably knocked down.

I remind that we do not bite.

And finally, I give our little boys graham crackers to eat for their afternoon snack and I send them outside. I pat myself on the back for having the foresight to serve crumbly crackers outside and not inside, thus avoiding the extra work of sweeping the kitchen.

I then hear an inordinate amount of noises that I can’t quite identify. I allow it to continue for longer than I should, because I am unable to muster the will to stand.

Eventually, the noise level increases and I get up to investigate. I hear myself yelling something that I never imagined saying to anyone, ever: “OH MY GOD, DID YOU SHOVE GRAHAM CRACKERS UP YOUR BUTT?!”

The answer is yes, he definitely did.

My middle child, underwear filled with pulverized crackers, was gleefully throwing crumbs at his older brother and yelling “BOOTY CRUMBS!” as they laughed hysterically.

“They’re crammed really far up there,” my oldest offered helpfully.

Indeed, they were.

Next time anyone anywhere in any situation asks me, “What do you do all day?” I’m going to look them in the eye and say *cram crackers.

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