I don’t get out much, but when I do …
… I enjoy every kid-free minute of it.
Category Archives: Motherhood
The Slacker Mom Table.
The PTA is hosting a “movie night” at the school with pizza, hot dogs, and a bake sale to raise money for a new playground. I got the flier in my son’s paperwork on Friday, which said to send wrapped baked goods with your child on Monday.
Which is today. And I forgot. Of course I did.
So this morning, I got him on the bus and then dressed the little kids and went to the grocery store for some of those bakery cookies with icing on them … you know the ones. I bought three huge containers of them and took them to the school. Two secretaries were sitting in the entryway when I walked in.
I explained that these cookies were for the bake sale, and then I said, “I’m sorry, I know they aren’t individually wrapped — is that a problem? I guess I’m a slacker mom.”
Secretary #1 said “That’s fine,” at the same time that Secretary #2 pointed to a table behind me and said “You can put them over there on the Slacker Mom table.”
I turned around and spotted a sad little table that was filled with sad little boxed bakery goods. There was no flair. No cellophane wrappers with ribbons tied around them. No little happies. Just plain, clinical-looking, clear boxes with plain cookies in them, and here I was about to add my flair-less stack of store-bought goods to the pile like the slacker mom that I was. Everything about it said “Slacker Mom.”
I pictured all the non-slackers who worked furiously the night before making tiny turkeys out of Little Debbie snack cakes, or whatever it is that they do (I wouldn’t know), and then I pictured the other moms like me who just grabbed whatever random cookies were sitting in the front of the grocery store, and I started laughing so hard that no sound came out.
Secretary #2 started to freak because I was just standing silently (shaking with laughter) with my back to her, staring at the table in front of me. She started apologizing profusely, saying “I’m just kidding! You’re not a slacker! We appreciate them so much! Thank you so much!!” I nodded and waved bye, and as the door shut behind me I heard her call out one more time, “WE APPRECIATE IT!”
I know they do. And I’m totally owning this title from now on. I am a Slacker Mom who shows her love simply by showing up, sipping a coffee, and sharing her enthusiasm.
WHAT MORE DO YOU PEOPLE WANT FROM ME?!
The Experiment.
This month I underwent an unplanned experiment wherein I was stuck at home with two sick kids for over 2 weeks straight. To say “it was hard” doesn’t really do the situation justice. I’m not cut out to be home all the time. I seriously thought I was going to LOSE IT.
Normally if I was stuck inside, I would just write a lot, right? And that would make it all okay. But during this time period I was not able to write because every time I started, Asher snotted all over the floor or Pepper pulled a shelf full of pots and pans onto herself. Because you know, small children.
It was one of those stretches of time where I just had to dig deep and force my way through it. I did not enjoy every moment. I enjoyed very few moments. But the good news is, we made it.
The experiment part is that I couldn’t make it to the gym at all, and this proved once again that exercise is a key ingredient to my mental health. I finally went back today, and after huffing and puffing my way through a class I was elated. You can see here that I was clearly much more excited than the kids were. They really are better, I swear … ?
Then we came home and I had to clean my house, my thighs are sore, the baby won’t nap because she’s cutting teeth, and I am no longer elated. I’m tired and annoyed. I have things I need to do and little hands keep grabbing at me. I just want to lie down without someone trying to sit on my stomach.
I have more to say but the baby is crying urgently from her crib, so I’ll have to stop here.
This is motherhood.
Stuffin’.
Joan Rivers died this week, and that makes me sad. I was never sure exactly what I thought of her — she seemed too snarky to be someone I’d enjoy in person, like maybe she was a toxic kind of hilarious — but after watching her on Celebrity Apprentice a few years ago I decided she was awesome. She was 75 years old, smart, energetic, and crazy as hell. In other words, right up my alley.
Laughing saves me, and I know that God gave me funny kids because He knew I’d need the laughs. The past few weeks have been difficult and I don’t know when or if I will write about it here, but I have to at least acknowledge that I’ve been stuck in a bad place. This blog used to be my confessional, where I’d say whatever I wanted to and it didn’t matter because only 27 people read it. But now more people read it, which is awesome and terrifying all at once, and I’m slowly realizing that what I say does matter.
I’m trying to be responsible. Sometimes (read: all the time) that’s a real drag.
This week I cried in an exercise class. It was totally embarrassing, but I just went with it. I used to be a stoic kind of person and now I cry all over town. My friend Donna said she often cries during massages because the “emotions get released.” As a mom, I spend my entire day keeping my emotions in check, so the moment I don’t have to keep them in check for whatever reason, the floodgates open and I can’t shut them back. Basically? Crazy comes to town.
It’s like the time I kept myself in check for several months straight and then my husband made me so mad that I literally threw four loads of laundry all over the house before driving around at 11 p.m. in my p.j.’s sobbing like a lunatic. I kept thinking that I would love to get pulled over just so I could yell at someone else. Then maybe I’d get put in jail, and Robbie Hobbs would have to come pick up his puffy-faced, pajama-clad wife. Bet that would teach him.
I don’t know about you, but women who cry all the time freak me out a little. And hi, it seems I’m one of them now. It’s okay if you need to sneak away. But I’ve come to realize that the reason why a lot of moms are crazy is because they operate under an insane amount of pressure all the time and they can’t ever say or do what they really want to say or do because they have children present. It’s a thing, people.
The point of all this is that after I hit rock bottom of my emotional pit this week and finally started to come back up, I was reminded that life really is short and unpredictable. It is my intent to enjoy each day as much as I can with the people I love the most, because no one knows what tomorrow holds. I will try to love everyone around me right where they are because while I may not be able to change them, I can love the STUFFIN’ OUT OF THEM. Just like how they love the stuffin’ out of me.
The Smell of Paper & Coffee.
All Barnes & Noble stores smell the same. After days of feeling like I couldn’t breathe — both literally and figuratively — I walked through their doors and inhaled deeply the aroma of high-quality paper and coffee. It smelled like … Continue reading
Today’s Dose.
You know what this world is lacking? Authenticity. So I’m going to put out some unapologetic honesty in the hopes that it will counteract all the people who are trying to be something that they aren’t. I’m a big believer in balance. You take a vitamin, you eat a cookie. You drink a beer, you drink some water. You eat cake, you go for a walk.
The Earth is full of women who are not willing to be authentic, and as a result, almost all of us are lonely. The authentic ones have trouble finding other authentic ones, and the ones who are faking it just end up with a bunch of other equally fake friends. Womanhood can be incredibly isolating, which is why the handful of friends I’ve got who really know and understand me are stuck with me forever.
Why is it so hard for people to just speak the truth? It really will set you free. Tell you what, I’ll start: Potty training is hell and I’m so thankful for mommy amnesia because eventually I’ll forget how much it sucked. Today I had Doritos for breakfast and M&M’s for lunch. I want to yell “What the FUCK?!” at least twice per day, but I don’t. It’s going to happen one of these days because I feel like I’m surrounded by crazy people. I already feel terrible about it and it hasn’t even happened yet.
Sometimes I am really annoyed that I don’t get paid for being a stay-at-home mom. My job is hard. All I want is a paycheck so I can buy myself a plane ticket and go somewhere … because I’d like that.
I don’t believe anything they say on the Fox News Channel.
I smear Vaseline on everything. Like my face.
This weekend I tried to sell two stacks of old jeans at Plato’s Closet and they said they were too outdated. I took them to Style Encore which is similar, but geared toward women in their mid-twenties to mid-fifties, and they said my jeans were too outdated.
What the fuck.
This is a picture of my latest issue of Southern Living.
Half-Clothed.
This week I have been working on potty training Asher. I have been peed on more times than I care to recount. I have taken deep breaths, gotten on my hands and knees, and cleaned up puddle after puddle of pee, over and over and over again. I have walked in it, yanked the baby out of it, and hopped over it.
I. hate. pee.
It is now Thursday, day six of this undertaking. As I stood with Maverick at the end of our driveway at 7:30 this morning waiting for the school bus to arrive, I suddenly looked down and realized that I am exactly what I never thought I would be. I was standing out there in broad daylight, wearing straight up pajamas with my bra hanging out, as my middle child ran around in nothing but a t-shirt and his underwear. When I used to have a job and wear high heels, I remember spotting moms standing on corners looking crazy and I totally judged them.
Shame on me.
I just didn’t know.
I spend a lot of my day getting crawled on.
Being a mom is so, so hard. So to all the other mothers who stand at bus stops with half-clothed children, and suddenly look down and realize they are also half-clothed … I want to say hello, my name is Harmony. I’m joining your club.
Waiting For Christmas.
DUDE.
I need school to start, like, yesterday.
The summer was pretty manageable at first, with a music camp and a few Vacation Bible Schools, going to the beach and such. But now we’re in this miserable stretch where I think I’m seriously about to lose. my. mind. This morning I went to the calendar and actually counted the days until school begins. 17 days.
Robbie’s last day in the car business is in 6 days, and at that point my husband will be home approximately 25 more hours per week. I calculated the hours myself, just now. That’s a whole lot of meals, baths, teeth-brushing and play time that he’s been missing out on (and I have been doing alone). Both of those dates seem impossibly far away; like waiting for Christmas does when you’re little. This is my grown-up version of Christmas. There will be Peace on Earth and in the bathroom.
Now that all of the math is out of the way, let me tell you what’s been going on over here.
Pepper is into everything
Allow me to clarify: she dumps out every container she can find with items in it, pulls laundry out of baskets, stuff out of cabinets, locates markers and tries to eat them, pulls stuff on top of herself, gets stuck in between things, tries to climb into bath tubs and toilets, and randomly escapes the house if a door is left slightly ajar.
Maverick has been raising hell.
I don’t know how else to put it, and I don’t love putting it that way because, is that really a nice thing to say about my own kid? No, but it is what it is and I love him anyway. We’ve had a really rough patch that I feel like I can’t even talk about because I just want to forget it, honestly. Because of that patch, though, Robbie and I made some discoveries that have been really helpful. I’ll share them with you in another post dedicated to the emotionally exhausted parents of strong-willed children.
Asher has been a normal two-year-old.
We took the paci away and six days later gave it back hoping he would go back to normal, but no such luck. He still won’t nap. He’s still waking up every night. In one fell swoop, I screwed myself out of having a small amount of peace in the middle of the day, otherwise known as nap time, AND a full night’s sleep. If I lock him in his room, he screams and wakes up napping Pepper. If I let him out, he finds Maverick and they fight, also waking up napping Pepper. Either way you slice it, someone’s going to be crying and sometimes it’s me. I was really angry over the whole situation for a day or two, but that has subsided into tired acceptance. Because really, what can be done? I have small children. It will eventually be okay. Like in about 17 days.
Today, Maverick screamed like the Tazmanian Devil and woke up the baby. I send the boys outside with smoothies and ask them to be careful not to spill them everywhere, it will attract ants. I go to Pepper’s room and find this.
Awwww. I had to take a picture.
Meanwhile, the boys are shampooing their hair with the smoothies on the carport. Yes. Rubbing strawberry-banana-peach goodness into their hair with both hands as it ran down their bodies onto the ground. Pepper screamed from her high chair the entire time I hosed them down and rinsed off the concrete, and the elderly man who lives across the street stood by his mailbox and stared. He stopped from getting his mail, turned around, and watched in silence.
My nerves are shot from constantly dealing with things kids do when they’re little. I probably won’t remember any of it six months from now, which is for the best. But at the beginning of this summer I said I just want to make it to the end without having to make a trip to the E.R. or eating handfuls of crack and miraculously, it looks like we’re going to accomplish those goals.
WINNING.
Effing Hard Work.
This week I hit my rock bottom of parenting. It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does, it’s ugly.
Thank goodness for my village, is all I can say. Sometimes I can’t even put into words how much it helps just to have grandparents close by who can pick the kids up and take them for a few hours, or have Maverick come spend the night.
Sometimes I forget to ask for help because I’m too busy focusing on what is right in front of me: a screaming baby, figuring out what’s for dinner, determining who hit whom first … and before I know it, I’m drowning. Robbie will come home and say, “How can I help?” And I just look at him blankly because the work for the day is already done, and asking that question just means I have to think of a response. I have to say something. I have to answer another question.
Sometimes I can’t answer, and sometimes I can’t ask. Sometimes, it’s all I can do to keep it together amid two toddlers and an extremely challenging 5-year-old. Sometimes I spend my whole day exerting the energy it takes not to yell, to handle things I don’t feel up to handling, to remain calm in the face of defiance. The physical part of my job, I can handle. The emotional part is what takes a toll.
The old me wouldn’t have understood that. The pre-child Harmony was an exceptional communicator who was in tune with her feelings and needs, and would never have believed that one day she would find herself unable to ask or answer. I would have thought, How is that possible? You open your mouth, and you voice your thoughts.
And yet, here I am. I’m so tired. I’m tired of answering questions and I’m tired of talking. I’m tired of thinking and I’m tired of making major life decisions. I’m tired of trouble shooting problems. I’m tired of trying to creatively handle issues. I have nothing left today and maybe even tomorrow, because I. Am. Tired.
This week, I clipped Asher’s paci because we felt like it was time to break him of that habit and all of the books and people around us said so, too. Robbie took him on a special trip to the store today for a new bedtime toy, a Ninja Turtle Dream Lite. He was so excited, and we were optimistic. Perhaps this would be the magical solution, a replacement for the paci that he clearly missed so much.
Asher with his new toy.
But tonight, six hellish bedtimes and super-early morning wakings later, Robbie was home to witness the insanity for the first time. The Dream Lite did not do the trick. Asher screamed and cried almost just like he did when we had to teach him how to sleep in a big boy bed. Nothing is ever easy with this kid. He doesn’t do change well.
“We can’t do this,” said Robbie (I’m paraphrasing). I wanted to yell, “I HAVE BEEN DOING THIS! YOU JUST HAVEN’T BEEN HERE TO SEE IT!” But instead I said, “Well, what do you think we should we do?”
He went to the store for more pacifiers.
While he was gone, I thought about all the people who told me it was time to nix the paci, and how none of those people were the ones who actually had to deal with the reality of it. Even my own husband couldn’t make it more than one night, and so I decided, once again, that mothering is Effing Hard Work.
I think we can all agree that no one can pass judgement on another person when it comes to Effing Hard Work. When I see city workers out there rummaging in man holes, running wires or digging in concrete, I acknowledge that is Effing Hard Work. I wouldn’t want to do it, and I wouldn’t try to tell them how to do it. I just appreciate that they are there, digging and running wires and making sure the traffic lights are working. No judgement. I applaud.
I write this for the mothers who are in difficult situations — and there are many shades of difficult. Being a parent is hard enough, and parenting a challenging or unique kind of child is … well … it’s impossible, really. I don’t know how we do it, we just do, because mothers are amazing creatures who should be exalted. And if you know a mother who is parenting alone for whatever reason, she deserves double exaltation.
And for the people who love those mothers, but don’t know how to help them, know this: it doesn’t matter what you do, just DO SOMETHING. Any word or act of kindness is an incredible gift. My friends and family are a constant source of support, mostly via text or email as I am locked in the purgatory of my kitchen. They help by listening and by encouraging. When I say things like, “I just want to be the mother Maverick needs,” Amy says “YOU ALREADY ARE.” When I tell my mom “This is so hard,” she says, “Don’t give up.”
Mothers need hugs and encouragement. We are all just digging and running wires, really, and if you have a challenging child like Maverick then you basically feel like you’re doing it all with a blindfold on.
I may hug the next mama I see, and thank her for sacrificing her sanity and her uterus, her vanity and her self-respect, in the hopes that one day her child(ren) will make this world better.
That’s a lot.
That’s Effing Hard Work, actually.
I had an eye exam this week. Occupation? B.A.B.
Gravity.
Do you ever feel so emotionally raw from dealing with the people in your house that you feel unable to cope with “real life?” I am so there.
I can’t watch the news. I don’t want to hear about children dying in cars, I don’t want to think about the President or what’s happening at the border. Anything that requires extra thought or emotional energy, I don’t want to know it. And if it’s too late, I want to un-know it.
The other night I was completely shredded mentally and emotionally from dealing with Maverick. He’s a difficult, smart, hilarious, handful of almost-six years. When Maverick is awake, you know it. When Maverick is upset or bored or happy, you know it. He shouts every emotion and thought from the rooftops. EVERYTHING IS LOUD. EVERYTHING IS HARD. This type of child is really, truly exhausting to parent. If you don’t have a kid like this, you might think you understand.
Nope. You don’t.
I could write pages and pages about this topic alone — raising a so-called “spirited” child — but I can’t right now because raising my spirited child is sucking the life out of me. And also, would it be fair to him for me to tell the world about our struggles? No. Not yet, not until later on, when I have gotten out of the thick of things and I can see better. Right now I don’t have perspective, I just know it’s ass-hard, and people who have never met us would unfairly assume that he’s a sociopathic brat and/or I’m a horrible mother.
Anyway, I’d had a rough day. Robbie got home and turned on a movie called “Gravity.” Have you seen it? It’s about astronauts being lost in space and I could not handle it. I want to un-know that debris can hit a space station and kill astronauts, and that a person can just bob away in space, gone forever. I’d never thought about that happening. I’d like to never think of it again, but oops, it’s too late.
I now know something I want to un-know.
Robbie said something like, “You’re so much more sensitive to stuff than you used to be,” as I sobbed because Sandra Bullock was flying through the air, grabbing at things, failing to get a hold of the space shuttle. I just knew she was a goner.
YES, I AM. I am more sensitive. I am more exhausted. I am an emotionally-raw person who shouldn’t be allowed to interact with others or have access to the internet. So many moms in this same season of life talk about how becoming a mom has made them feel lobotomized, like they can no longer carry on normal conversation or even act like a normal human being.
It’s because we’re just way more of everything. Whatever I was before has been amplified, good and bad. I’m way more of a mess, and I pour way more of myself into raising my kids to be good people than I even realized I had to begin with.
So. While I may not have the answers to anything I’ve lamented above, hear this: I’m never, ever going into outer space.
Ever.
Thank you, but no thank you.
Modern Mommy Madness 