If you don’t have expendable income pouring from every orifice, do not take your children to the summer festival. With four adults, four children and one baby between our two families, we spent close to $200 in ONE hour. That’s $80 on wristbands, $20 on letting each kid play ONE game, $20 on elephant ears and ice cream, and half a year’s salary on “dinner” that we mamas inhaled in four minutes because the kids were trying to Houdini their way to the rides and almost-certain stranger danger, while our husbands took an exorbitant amount of time buying Philly cheese steak sandwiches. That they complained about. Between the five offspring, approximately 18 noodles and the cheese off of one slice of pizza were consumed… yet we all somehow got diarrhea the next day.
By Mandy and Annie Malt vinegar, fry grease, fireworks and clanging rides – no doubt, the sensory extravaganza of your hometown's summer festival fills you with nostalgia. Maybe you had your first kiss behind the ferris wheel. Maybe your dad won you a favorite stuffed bear you still keep in your closet. Maybe your long-gone grandmother used to let you sit on her lap at the Bingo tables. Whatever it is that's tugging at your heartstrings, you just rein it right in, mamas. The festival of your childhood is a dramatically difference place than the festival you will take your kids to. And no, we aren't talking about a sepia-tinted, child-of-the-80s simplicity. We're talking about the same shit your parents went through and their parents before them. Festival-going as a parent isn't a fun family outing. It's a test of endurance. Are you ready? Not without running through this handy-dandy MOTY checklist:
If you don’t have expendable income pouring from every orifice, do not take your children to the summer festival. With four adults, four children and one baby between our two families, we spent close to $200 in ONE hour. That’s $80 on wristbands, $20 on letting each kid play ONE game, $20 on elephant ears and ice cream, and half a year’s salary on “dinner” that we mamas inhaled in four minutes because the kids were trying to Houdini their way to the rides and almost-certain stranger danger, while our husbands took an exorbitant amount of time buying Philly cheese steak sandwiches. That they complained about. Between the five offspring, approximately 18 noodles and the cheese off of one slice of pizza were consumed… yet we all somehow got diarrhea the next day.
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By Scarlett I am sitting on the cold tile of my living room floor. I lean my head against the side of my couch and sigh deeply. I am acutely aware of little things: one of my dark hairs curled around the leg of a dining room chair, a dust bunny in the corner where the stairs meet the floor, two leaves that blew in when my two boys rushed in the house from playing outside. I notice these because if I let my eyes take everything in – the 55 magna tiles strewn all over the floor, the dishes still on the table from lunch, the pencil shavings rubbed into my cotton tablecloth – then the panic rises.
I can feel it like a vise, slowly making its way up my chest and into my throat. My heart pounding in my ears, my field of vision slowly narrowing. I sigh again and force myself to get up. One thing at a time. I pick up the square Magna Tile pieces. One thing at a time. I straighten out the chairs in the living room. One thing at a time. I carry the dishes to the sink. One thing at a time. One thing at a time. And then, I start to feel better. Order and cleanliness help me; they are things that I can control. There have been many times in my life that I didn’t have an ounce of control over, which has left me with a lingering fear and inability to cope with unknown and chaotic situations. I get around this is by wiping, scrubbing, and cleaning my house until I reach a state of meditative calm. It’s not until I can see my clean floors and my clean kitchen and my clean dining room table that I can finally relax enough to focus, to fully enjoy spending time with my boys. By Annie Last night the five of us – my husband, our three kids and me – went to IHOP for dinner, a spontaneous adventure on a bland weeknight in June. That sentence on its own is a perfect microcosm for the kind of realization I’m talking about here. Let’s break it down:
The five of us went somewhere. It was spontaneous. The experience was pleasant enough that I am fondly referring to it as an “adventure” and not as a soul-crushing challenge to my ability to mother my children without violence and/or public shame. And the outing wasn’t just pleasant. It was… easy. For starters, we just went. As in, “Kids! Time to go!” and then we five independently walked out of the house and got into the car. No diaper bags, no extra outfits in case of a blowout, no bottles or nursing covers or binkies. No toddler snacks to hold them off until our dinner arrived. No toys. Just five people walking out the door. The car ride was a little hairy – the 5-year-old decided he didn’t want to go – but once we got to IHOP, it was smooth sailing. We ordered, we ate, we didn’t spill, and we mostly stayed put in our seats without epically disrupting the entire restaurant’s atmosphere and operations. On the way home, my husband and I even dared to share a cocky “Check us the hell out” glance. But over the course of the night, it started to dawn on me. This sort of thing was happening more and more. On Memorial Day, we went to the zoo and no one cried. Last month, we visited friends and were able to have uninterrupted adult conversation while the kids played upstairs. Is this… is this what our life is like now? Annie What's a MOTY if not an unabashedly unique problem solver? Why, just this past weekend, I found myself 15 minutes into an hour car journey with my husband and three children crammed into my 5-seater Scion with all three children screaming, and the 3-year-old trying to unclick her carseat straps whilst flipping the eff out because her sippy cup of milk was chilled and not the preferred 30 seconds in the mic. As for the other two lunatics? I just yelled. You simply can't help everyone.
Mother's Day is this Sunday, mamas! Before we get swept up in the insufferable brunches and buried in potted plants and handprint art (yes, yes, we like these things just fine... but where is that hotel room all to myself I ask for each year already?), we just wanted to say: man, motherhood is a tough gig, amirite? So much harder than we ever imagined. Like, so hard that if we won the mega-millions, we'd spend every penny trying to build the world's first time machine expressly so that we could travel back, oh, 20 to 30 years, shower our mothers with kisses and beg sweet, sweet forgiveness for not seeing them as the luminous and benevolent goddesses they were. In fact, if you're reading this, our dear mothers, we'd like to formally commend you for not body-slamming us into brick walls every time we rolled our eyes. You have our highest praises for your infinite patience and self control. Actually, we have quite a few things we need to say: Mom, you were right when you decided to take my 17-year-old brother to Woodstock II and not me when I was 13 years old. I'm sorry for ignoring you for the ENTIRE week before you left and not saying goodbye to you. I'm so happy that you went and enjoyed yourself. Also, you rocked that tie-dyed marijuana t-shirt!
I'm sorry I didn't listen when you said I was too young to start shaving. It makes me physically ill to think of the years of my life I could have saved had I not insisted you knew nothing about female bodies. By Annie
I love my kids, and their safety is everything... right up there with doing whatever is humanly possible to ensure that they aren't all using outside voices at the same time in a small, enclosed space. But I'm gonna be completely honest. There's a lot I'm not going to do. I mean, I'm teaching stranger danger and how to cross the street, and I'll probably remember sunscreen. But washing brand new clothes before my kids wear them? Yep. That's one of those things that ain't happening in my house. I know about about the germs, the possibility of lice, the rash-causing anti-mildew agents, and even the carcinogens like formaldehyde (it's level 3, pipe down). I know all about it so we can stop talking about it already. Here's the deal:
By Mandy Six years and two kids ago when I moved home from L.A., I only ever wore slinky thongs or nothing at all. So scandalous, so sexy. Now, this is the type of purchase that exhilarates me: Mom panties. They're a real thing. And discounted Marylyn Monroe shaping panties are the closest I'm coming to Hollywood starlet these days. And you know what? That's sexy as hell. #Momlife #Winning
By Annie Someday there won’t always be a dinosaur on the floor.
A logical statement, if the syntax is a bit strange. It certainly seems unlikely that anyone would ever have a life circumstance in which there is always, categorically, a dinosaur on the floor. At some point, whether you know it or not as it’s happening, surely you will scoop your last dinosaur off the floor and slip it into a plastic tub to be forgotten. But…what if you didn’t? Let’s back up for a minute. As a mother of three, currently aged 9, 5 and 2, Someday there won't always be a dinosaur on the floor has become a mantra of sorts. Because there is always, without fail, a foot-stabbing, mother-loving hard plastic dinosaur on the floor. No matter how carefully I have cleaned or how aggressively I have threatened others to do so, there is always at least one dinosaur just chilling on the floor somewhere. Sometimes it’s tucked away under a couch or bookshelf, sometimes it’s underneath a discarded jacket. Other days, a cheeky dinosaur tumbles out of a shoe or falls from a packed kitchen cupboard when the door is opened. It might be a mid-sized, scaly stegosaurus, or it could be a smooth, extra-cheap T Rex. It doesn’t matter. This motherhood deal, it never stops, does it? One way or another, there is always a dinosaur on the floor. So I tell myself, someday there won’t be. By Annie Kids are lazy. I get it, they are still driven by their ids, and who just has a primal instinct to tidy up? But this? Come ON. Rather than just hanging her coat in the closet – which is approximately 15 feet from this bench – my daughter took the time to:
1. Get a piece of paper and a marker 2. Tear said paper into an arrow shape 3. Write this infuriating note: "Mom, sorry about this. –Iris" 4. Position the note to point to the coat Why? Just...why?? By Annie
Aah...kids are the best, right? They are adorable, affectionate, wonder-filled dreamsicles that light our lives with purpose, hope and joy. Seriously, every day I reflect on how lucky I am to live with three of them. But, boy howdy, do they have a way of pushing intelligent, rational people to the utter brink. And seldom in the big, obvious ways we expect. Thrashing tantrums? Meh. I can zen out. The stark regime of a 3-year-old dictator? Just a phase. My back-talking tween? I'm young enough to remember the hormonal rage. No, I'm talking about those strange, infuriating things they do that creep up on you, the seemingly benign behaviors that are so subtle yet have the power destroy something important inside of your soul. Don't know what I mean? Read on. I dare you not to die a little. |
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September 2017
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