By Annie

My husband recently came home from the dollar store, a little irked, but certainly not rattled. The kids, he said, were being themselves. By our standards, that’s decent behavior; by most people’s, our three kids probably appeared rambunctious as he strolled up and down the too-narrow aisles with the double stroller at the neighborhood Dollar General. My husband, the primary caretaker, is used to comments about the kids not having the right weight jacket on, not wearing hats, is accustomed to friendly advice about how our 4-year-old is a big boy now and doesn’t need the stroller, and about how the toddler’s teeth will all grow straight into her skull if he doesn’t take her bottle away immediately. He’s used to laughing it off. What he wasn’t expecting was your question: First time out with the kids?
 
Really?

My children are 9, 4 and 2. Now, I understand you may not be able to look at them in the cereal section at the Dollar General and discern their exact ages, but my youngest child walks, talks in full sentences, wears big girl panties and weighs 35 pounds. You could presumably place her over the age of, say, a few weeks old, which is when it might be appropriate to ask your question. Did you really think that during 600-some days of dadding to three kids, that my husband has never once left our home with the children in tow?
 
Really?

I hope not. Viewing fathers as babysitters isn’t just a faux pas; it’s a serious cultural problem. I am genuinely sorry if you had an absent father, or if you are a mother who doesn’t have someone to share the joys and burdens of parenthood with you. But, hey, don’t spill that mess on my kids, ok? Congratulating fathers for staying home isn’t just silly; it’s insulting. I don’t want my daughters to grow up thinking women are obligated to do the childrearing alone, and I certainly don’t want my son to grow up thinking men are heroic if they’re hands-on with their own kids. To you, this all might seem like pleasant chitchat in the chaotic moment when you happen across my family in the dollar store – it might seem innocent. But it’s not. You’re weaving your misconceptions into this weird and dangerous tapestry that hangs over all of us. This whole notion that Mom is the default parent and Dad is the pinch hitter is outdated and stupid. Please stop being a part of this problem. If you need to think these thoughts for your own private reasons, that’s fine. But don’t spread this message to my children in front of their utterly invested, capable father. Please don’t undermine his authority and his skill. And please don’t enable my children, even for a second, to glance at any father in any setting and wonder if he is enough.

By Mandy

Just drinking a cup of scalding hot coffee with my non-dominant hand while holding my 3-week-old baby. Fingers crossed I don't spill it! (But not my fingers...my hands are already pretty full.)

By Annie

My newly christened fourth grader returned to school this morning after a long, lazy summer spent crafting in her room, learning to cook and playing at the park. (Confession: There was a lot of YouTube on her tablet, too). Aside from a marathon six-hour shopping trip this past weekend and the onset of carpal tunnel after labeling enough supplies to stock a post-apocalypse school, this experience has forced me to field the incessant slew of back-to-school questions from well-meaning neighbors and friends. Back-to-school is a big deal. I get it. I know this is just pleasant small talk, and I forgive you all for not analyzing every nuance of my life, but there is one comment in particular that I am just infinitely tired of hearing. Please, please – at least before Kid #2 heads to preschool next week – stop saying, “You must be ready for the kids to go back to school! That’ll be your vacation!”
 
Because you know what? That’s actually a pretty clueless thing to say to a full-time working mama with an hour commute. The kids going back to school will be a break? Hmm. Perhaps for my husband, who is part stay-at-home-dad and part grad student. And surely it will be much needed respite for my parents, who are part free childcare and part angel. But for me? Not so much. I leave for work 45 minutes before the kids leave for school and return home four hours after they get home. Their goneness doesn’t impact me in the slightest. But their back-to-schoolness sure does. It means:

• My solo time in the morning to shower and get ready is now shattered by multiple wake-up calls, grumpy-ass kids, frantically remembered assignments/permission slips/show-and-tells/snack days, and a stubborn pooer
• I lose a half hour a night to lunch packing
• I’m repeatedly awash with guilt for missing classroom parties, morning teas, afternoon performances, etc.
• Instead of getting to enjoy the few hours a night I see my kids – whom I actually really like! – I have to spend that time playing the role of enforcer and arguing over homework
  

 
Oh, and the literal hundreds of dollars spent on glue sticks and Clorox wipes and my kid’s freakish ability to grow three shoe sizes in one summer. I don't consider that a perk either.

By Layah

Never just sit and watch happily as your naked toddler boy puts the stepping stool next to the bath and climbs on the top step while your daughter joyfully sits in the tub wearing her new goggles. Kid in tub WILL get peed directly on. Every time.

By Annie

Every MOTY knows that packing up and heading to the beach with a car full of kids is anything but relaxing. Particularly when "packing up" includes diaper bags, potty-training gear, 43 costume changes, toddler entertainment centers, a black hole of car snacks, and the infinite items needed by children under the age of four. If only there was some way to....consolidate. Oh, hey! Check out this handy little hack. So simple, so brilliant, so...MOTY. I give you the beach multi-tool!

Hear me out. You're probably already packing one of these glorious space savers anyway. And if not, you need only invest somewhere around $2 to get one. So what can you use your multi-tool for besides making sand castles? ANYTHING YOU WANT. Suggestions below!

By Annie

A few weeks ago, you went to an amusement park an hour away from home with your friends. You were gone from sunup to sundown, riding real roller coasters that hurled your tiny frame upside down and dropped you at 60 miles per hour. How alive you must have felt, maybe for the first time ever. You shook me awake on the couch when you got home after midnight and told me all about it. Your voice, hoarse; your cheeks, sun-kissed.
 
“You’re so brave!” I said, hugging you, smelling sunscreen in your hair. “I would have been too scared to ride that roller coaster.”
 
“I think those things are just better with friends, you know?” you said. Then stopped, checking my reaction. My sensitive girl, already aware enough to know those words might cut.
 
“Definitely.” I smiled. You smiled back, relieved that I “got” it.
 
Soon you won’t think that I “get” anything.
 
Soon I will lose you, my girl. I’ll lose you to best friends and boyfriends, to smartphones and school dances, to gossip and body issues and tampons and closed doors. To this inevitable business of becoming a more complex version of yourself. I know this. It’s part of this whole parenting deal, and it’s OK. I want you to taste every divine drop of life, and I don’t ever want you to feel guilty about moving on from this mad intimacy we’ve wrapped ourselves in since you grew in me…the wet-whispered secrets and imagined worlds, the easy-fitting limbs that find each other in sleep, the familiar hugeness of us.
 
It will shift. We can’t stop it.
 
This summer you are nine, and here we are at this heart-stopping halfway mark. Halfway done with the traditional raising of you. Yes, you will always be mine. We will never be done. But what we will be is irrevocably different – and soon. There is so much I want to tell you, but I know, in my rational spaces, that these are all truths you either already know or will need to discover for yourself. So as you stand before me now all long legs and ungendered chest, wild hair and soulful eyes, I know can’t tell you to wait. I can’t tell you to slow down.
 
And it’s not fair to tell you how I fear for you – you specifically – more than your brother or sister. How I fear your fire, your intensity, your raw vulnerability, your thirst. That so I’m anxious for those years when I won’t know the tender folds of your heart as intimately as I do now. How I fret and I fret.
 
You are the child. I am mother. I won’t worry you with my own snapping heartstrings, and I won’t saddle you with the weight of time, which doesn’t yet register in your wide-open world. We will talk, about many giant things. But not this.
 
What I will tell you is: I believe in you, endlessly. And you! You take my breath away.