My Nonconformist Son.

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I’m writing this post for my handful of long-time followers, as well as my close friends and family who have been riding this ridiculous train with me since 2010.

HI! I can’t believe you’re still here, but I want to thank you for staying. Can I offer you a drink?

Let’s talk about Maverick, my oldest child, aptly named. Remember all the times I honest-to-God thought something was wrong with my son? All the posts I have written (and they are countless, just type in “Maverick” or “ONE” on the sidebar and you can spend the next two hours reading about him if you’d like, which I’m guessing you wouldn’t) about what he said or destroyed, the weird things he did and the exasperation I felt at not knowing what to do … figuring out this child has eaten up a considerable amount of my time and energy.

I have called him high-spirited. I have said he was challenging. I have talked about his persistence, his rebelliousness, his penchant for questioning authority, his shocking hilarity, and my frustration at figuring out how to best parent him.

I have read books. I have read blogs. I have e-mailed people who specialize in challenging behavior to get their feedback and ideas. I made a counseling appointment and I cancelled it. When his preschool teacher voiced her concerns, I talked to his pediatrician who assured me he is normal. I experimented with his diet. I made him run around a lot to see if his problem was simply hyperactivity. I cut out TV. I encouraged him to explore outside.

I turned the TV back on again.

When close friends and family members voiced concerns, it weighed on me because I knew their concerns had merit. Robbie and I have worked tirelessly to parent Maverick to the best of our ability, but we still always seem to fall short. We knew he was special, and we believed we could channel it, unless we lost our shit first … in which case he would totally take over the household and start calling us by our first names.

Thankfully, we are more determined than he is. Thankfully, good parents don’t give up.

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We are truly his biggest fans and advocates, tempered with high expectations. We have conversations like, “No, you may not call me Harmony. Yes, I know that is my name, but YOU call me Mom or Mommy. It’s a sign of respect. THAT’S JUST WHAT WE DO, NOW DO IT. No, I will not call you Mr. Hobbs. I also will not refer to you as Your Majesty.”

Maverick challenges me in every way imaginable, testing to see how far he can push me before I don’t love him anymore. Trying to see if I will give up on him.

I won’t.

Ever.

I sometimes feel guilt over the way I handled certain situations in the past, but I didn’t know what to do. And even if I took the information I have now and went back for a do-over, I’m not sure I could hold it together any differently than I did before. Motherhood is a cold-hearted bitch like that — some parts are just hard, any way you slice it. I’m not ashamed to admit that I struggled. The good news is I’ve learned to give myself grace, and we all have become experts at saying “I’m sorry.”

Six months ago, Robbie and I finagled our way into a great neighborhood so that Maverick could attend a really good school. I’m a product of a private school education and Robbie always went to public. He assured me our son would not come home the first day asking what a blowjob is, and I took a deep breath and really hoped he was right. People told us he was too young, especially for a boy, to start school. He was 5 when the school year began, barely meeting the requirements which state a child has to be six years old by September 30. But we forged ahead. Every child is different, and if nothing else I know that my kids don’t seem to fit molds very well.

We sent him to school and it’s been amazing. We’ve learned that Maverick is really … something. He’s very smart. I can’t say enough how validating it has been to have teachers review test scores with us, and I don’t mean that in a braggy way, I mean it a no wonder he gave me so much hell, he was totally bored kind of way. Yesterday we met with a teacher who he will be spending time with every day in his “Gifted Resource” class and it was such an incredible feeling to look around and see an environment that is truly made for a kid just like Maverick. I want to hug every single one of them and thank them for teaching my son, because I’m maxed out just covering the bases over here.

Here’s the best part. Nothing is wrong with my kid.

I am not a deficient mother.

He’s just too smart for his own good, and the rest of us have trouble keeping up. Wow. WHAT A RELIEF. If you happen to run into him, feel free to commend him on being such a hard worker and imaginative thinker. You can point out his confidence and his humor … but please, please, do not tell Maverick he is smart.

He’s five steps ahead of you, and he already knows.

 

Our Life Now.

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DUDE.

My life is in major overdrive. Suddenly I have plans and goals, which is really disorienting because I can’t remember the last time I had plans or goals that reached past getting through the day at present.

I am accustomed to being in constant survival mode, because almost the entire time I’ve been a stay-at-home mom Robbie was working at a car dealership. Car dealerships can suck it. I hate them all. He pretty much lived at work while I was keeping our kids alive, all the time, and this went on for almost three full years. I don’t know how we’re still married, and I REALLY don’t know how I managed to function. I seem to have already blocked it from memory.

Now that he has a different job (working for my family — ahem) and very normal business hours, a whole new world has opened up to us. Our budget may be tighter, but we don’t miss an LSU game. We can have a social life again … well, first we have to find some friends … but once we do, we can totally hang out with them all weekend.

He took Maverick on a camping trip. They build Lego creations together and got up at 5 a.m. in the middle of the week to see the blood moon. We go on family walks and bike rides. We eat dinner together every night. I could go on and on listing the ways that our family life has improved, and it’s not all rainbows and roses over here, but it’s just really, really … nice.

It’s about damn time.

It took over a month for us to realize that we can slow down and enjoy our simple life at whatever pace we want to FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER. Of course we wish we had more money to slow down and enjoy it with, but when we do things like make a campfire in our backyard and show the older kids the constellations it reminds me of why I quit my job in the first place.

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At the end of the day, when we’re all together looking up at the sky and I am screaming “STAY AWAY FROM THE FIRE!!!” at my 3-year-old and “LEAVE THAT FROG ALONE!” at my 6-year-old, none of it matters. I just want to be with these people as much as I can until I’m sick of them and need to escape to Target for a few hours.

But don’t worry, I always come back.

Not Bringing Sexy Back.

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Being a stay-at-home mom is slowly but surely turning me into a socially awkward person. Oh, you don’t know what I mean? Let me show you.
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Robbie and I went tailgating at an LSU game a few weeks ago. Yes, that is a stripper pole. Don’t you love how I’m gripping it for dear life? I could never, EVER be any kind of exotic dancer and the reasons are too numerous to list here … but I think you can see why.

Today I was talking about how I can’t seem to move my body in the snakelike motion that some women in my Zumba class do. I can’t do a body roll. I can’t shake my upper body. I can’t … shimmy. I’m basically an uptight white girl, but I keep going to Zumba because it’s fun. My friend Shannon shrugged and said, “It’s all about what high school you went to. That’s where you learn.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. My high school didn’t allow dancing — like, at all. Also on the list of forbidden things: unnatural-looking nail polish, caffeinated beverages, hand-holding with the opposite sex, and good music.

I am so screwed.

9 Years.

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Here is what a 9-year wedding anniversary for a couple with three children under the age of 6 looks like:

We won’t get each other gifts because our gift is going to see a movie in an actual movie theater tonight after we eat dinner with our kids and put most of them to bed.

We can’t recall the last movie we saw outside of our living room.

I bought him a card today, the day of our anniversary. I had two small kids with me. One was destroying the card aisle while the other one screeched from the cart. I grabbed the first thing that didn’t look lame and jetted out of there.

The envelope and card are both rumpled.

I asked Robbie last night, “Did you set your alarm?” Thinking to myself that I could make a special breakfast for us to eat. “Yeah, I set it,” he said. WRONG. We overslept by an hour and he barely had time to throw on clothes and brush his teeth before grabbing me in a bear hug and wishing me a happy anniversary. So romantic.

Our children are unimpressed by the fact that our love is the same age as a third-grader.

None of this matters, because I have had 9 years with this man experiencing his selfless love. Oh, he’s an ass. But he loves me so much that he always puts my happiness first, which makes me wants to put his happiness first, and on and on it goes in a sickeningly sweet circle that just keeps growing like a rubber band ball.

Happy anniversary, Robbie Hobbs. I knew when I married you that my life would never be boring.

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All About That Bass.

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I am so over the self-hate. SO OVER IT.

My body is not perfect. It will never be perfect. I’ve had three children, and I wasn’t exactly bikini-ready before I starting having them. Honestly it’s surprising to me that I can fit into some of the outdated fashions of my pre-pregnancy years, but the clothes don’t look the same. I have to stuff my muffin top down and hoist the girls up and some things don’t zip. Which is fine, because if I wore that thing from 2005 I would look like a mom who just managed to squeeze herself back into her favorite pair of wide-legged jeans, and is that really a good look? I submit no.

I’m active. I can chase kids down. I can pick them up. I can load and unload children, laundry, and groceries. In ways I’m fairly certain that I’m stronger now than I have ever been.

I exercise because it makes me feel better — because when I don’t do it, I start feeling like I need to be medicated. I can drop my kids off for two hours at the gym nursery and be alone with my thoughts in a brightly-lit gym with clanking weights and sweaty strangers, and for now, that’s enough.

Recently I stripped down and informed Robbie to take a good long look, because short of spending a large portion of my day consumed with diet and exercise (unwilling) or getting plastic surgery (unable), it’s not going to get any better than THIS RIGHT HERE. 

I was half-drunk when I made this proclamation and also half-kidding, but it was so empowering that I’ve been telling all my girlfriends they should do it. Like, today. Not when they lose 5 more pounds. Not when their period is over and they aren’t so bloated.

TODAY.

To my surprise (Which kind of makes me sad, because why is it so surprising?) my husband is more than happy with THIS. And then I had this thought: Maybe if I strip down every single day from now until we’re 65, he won’t notice the subtle changes. Maybe he will think I look exactly the same as I did in my early twenties.

Maybe I, along with every musician who ever sang about big butts, am an effing genius.

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source: amazon.com

That Girl’s Got An Attitude.

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I occasionally post hilarious pictures on my Facebook page (are you on Facebook? Don’t forget to find Modern Mommy Madness and “like” the page so you don’t miss out!) and I don’t want to be boring and post them here, too, but today I realized if I don’t compile them somewhere, they’ll get lost in the black hole of social media.

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So … I’ve added a new page here devoted just to Pepper. Because if we can’t give the girl Perrier instead of plain tap water, she at least deserves her own sub-blog.

Gym Ettiquette.

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It’s been awhile since I’ve had a “discuss amongst yourselves” story to share. Boy … I’ve got one for you today.

Yesterday I met my friend at the gym for Zumba class. We were about 15 minutes in, and I was totally minding my own business, taking a break between songs to drink some water and wipe the sweat off my face. A woman I don’t know sort of sidled up next to me and stood there until I looked at her. And this is what happened next:

Stranger: Do you have a towel?

Me: Yeah.

Stranger: Can I see it?

Me: (without thinking) Okay.

The strange lady plucked my towel out of my hand, walked over to her spot and mopped the floor with it.

I’m going to let that sink in for a moment.

When she returned, I think she could see the horrified look on my face and she said, Someone spilled water on the floor.” Oh … okay. Well then, by all means, use the towel I’m supposed to dry my face with to dry up your area of the floor so you don’t fall. I silently dropped my towel onto the floor as my friend stared in shock and then mouthed “WHAT THE F*CK?!” at me.

Because I’m a generally nice person and overall sleep deprived and always sort of out of it, I didn’t ask her what the hell do you want with MY TOWEL? Next time, I’ll know better.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

The Psycho Threes.

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Asher is in a difficult phase I like to call the “psycho threes.” Based on prior experience, I expect it to last until he’s about 5 years old.

I’m pretty much over it and it only began in earnest a few weeks ago, the epic meltdowns and unintelligible screaming over things like his sister sneezing on him or touching him or touching his blanket or staring at him.

Sometimes it’s over things like the fact that I broke his banana off the bunch because HE WANTED TO DO IT, or because there is sand on his hands after he got in the sandbox or there is a rock in his shoe after he walked through gravel.

I’ve gotten better this time around (because Maverick’s third year of life was literally the hardest year of mine, and this experience by comparison isn’t that bad) at maneuvering the whole living-with-a-tiny-psycho thing … but it wears on me. A lot. It begins first thing in the morning when he can’t get his blanket to hang just right on the back of his chair at the breakfast table, and it ends approximately 12 hours later when someone pulls the plug on his bath because HE WANTED TO DO IT.

Some days I handle it better than others. There have been many days lately where I just sat down and cried with him because I didn’t know what was wrong or how to fix it and frankly, I needed a good cry. Being a mother is so, so hard when you’re not at your best emotionally and physically, when you are tired and feel like you need a break and yet … they are still there, asking for things. Needing things.

But tonight, at the end of a long stretch of hard weeks, after a bath and dinner and a book and a bedtime struggle, came the arduous task of picking out just the right pair of pajamas and the right pair of socks and trying and failing to put them on himself. And then it was finally time to put that sweet, psychotic, three-year-old boy to bed.

I was so OVER it, but I was holding it together, masking my exhaustion by sitting calmly on his bed like I had all the time in the world. I said — because now I must ask first, instead of just picking him up and plopping him on my lap — “Asher, do you want to sit in my lap?”

And after a long pause, he broke into that dimply grin and said very seriously, “IT IS MY FAVORITE THING.”

Then he climbed up, leaned in, smelled my shoulder like someone would smell a bouquet of flowers, and put his head on my chest.

It’s my favorite thing too, you know. So at least we have that in common.