Maverick: Mommy, you have beautiful hair. Daddy, did you marry Mommy because she has beautiful hair?
Robbie: Yes.
Maverick: (after thinking quietly for a few minutes) Let’s cut Pepper’s hair off.
Me: What?! Why?!
Maverick: I don’t want anyone to see her pretty hair and want to marry her. Let’s just cut it off.
Me: NO.
That big brother sure loves his little sister.
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
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This weekend I tried to sell two stacks of old jeans at Plato’s Closet and they said they were too outdated.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Encore which is similar, but geared toward women in their mid-twenties to mid-fifties, and they said my jeans were too outdated.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.
I asked Robbie to screw down this hutch thing down that sits precariously atop of Maverick’s desk because it was a major hazard. My kids don’t have a great track record with furniture, and every time the baby went in there, I had visions of it toppling onto her.
Yesterday he was completing his “list” and crossed that item off. But I didn’t see where it was screwed together, so I asked him about it.
“I super glued it,” he said.
Oh. Okay.
“Damn, girl! Did I do that to you?!”
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.
“Asher’s potty training. He sucks at it. We had to go to Target to buy him more underwear today because he keeps pooping in his pants, and Mommy refuses to wash them out. She just throws ’em away. I don’t blame her.
Anyway, she made this huge deal over the fact that he peed in the Target bathroom — OMG, it was so disgusting, he touched all over the toilet and he took off his shoes, because he’s gross — and Mommy was trying to hold me and help him put his shoes back on but he kept touching us with his potty hands. It was awful, but she said she was proud of him.
Then we got home and he proceeded to pee all over the laundry room. That made her pretty upset, so I crawled all in it for my own entertainment.
It was warm.”
Filed under “Made Me Giggle.”
Yesterday, a terrible thing happened.
Let me preface this by saying that I am struggling to adjust to summer break. Struggling. Like … it’s good? But also horrible? Can something be good and horrible all at once? Because I’m pretty sure that is exactly what parenthood is.
Making the transition from having all three kids in school for 6+ hours per day (and working during those hours), to having them home all the time and trying to get my work done in addition to mothering in a loving fashion, is not going great. As I have already established in multiple blog posts from previous years, summer is effing relentless.
Pepper is obsessed with two things: outlets and babies. Here she is showing her baby doll the outlet in her bedroom. #multitasking
Thankfully, this year is somewhat easier than previous years simply because my children are getting older and more independent. Pepper will be 3 next week, so I think we’re finally on the upswing after a very dark time in the Valley of Motherhood.
Yesterday afternoon, we got home from playing at the park. The boys jumped out of the van, heard some kids next door playing, and asked if they could go over to play. I granted them permission and took Pepper inside. Her clothes were filthy — covered in layers of peanut butter and dirt — so I stripped her down to a diaper.
I ran to the bathroom with her trailing behind me, always my little shadow. And then, my mom called. She’s not feeling well and I can barely hear her on the phone. I was straining to understand what she was saying — did she just say she needed to go to the hospital?! — and naturally, my toddler got really loud at exactly that moment. As her shouting drowned out my mother, my stress level started to rise.
I went to my bedroom and closed the door. My daughter cried from the hall, and when she stopped, I was thankful. When I emerged only a few minutes later, the house was quiet. A panicky feeling started to rise in my chest, and then it felt like my heart stopped.
Just.
Stopped.
Beating.
Our back door was standing wide open.
Screaming her name, I ran outside. She was gone. Or hiding. Or missing.
I heard a woman’s voice — our across the street neighbor — yelling at me that she just saw a little girl cut through the fences in the backyard.
“She went that way, sweetheart! I was standing here watching her!”
I was barefoot and it did not matter. I ran. I ran until I found her. I couldn’t feel my feet. I couldn’t feel my body. All I could hear was my own voice screaming her name, and my heartbeat deafening my ears. That is what blind panic feels like.
My 2-year-old was wandering one street over from ours, wearing nothing but her diaper. She was holding a toy pet carrier with a little stuffed dog inside. I will never forget the way her face looked when she saw the horror on mine.
“NEVER AGAIN,” I said to her.
“Not with my dog?” she said.
“NEVER, EVER. Do not ever leave this house without a grown up,” I said, as I wiped away my tears.
I’m sharing this story to demonstrate how quickly children can disappear. How many times have I heard stories of toddlers wandering the streets and thought to myself, WHERE WAS THE MOTHER?
That mother is me. I was right there. It happened anyway.
I’m a damn good mom. I am capable. I am aware. I am not negligent. But children are fast. And sometimes quiet. And things happen. So today I’m hugging my babies tight, grateful for their safety, knowing that sometimes other mamas aren’t so lucky.
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Modern Mommy Madness 