By Annie

Dear Ms. Hayes,

Your latest post for POPSUGAR caught my eye. Not because it hit on some hot button parenting issue that's close to my heart, but because the topic just seemed so absurd. Surely, I thought, there must be more to this than meets the eye. So, I clicked. I read. And I marveled that  A. someone published this and B. you really do seem this bent out of shape over the fact that moms are referring to their kids as… kids. 

Der… huh?

Yep. Apparently this quick informal noun isolates my child, positions him as nuisance or a brat (um, have you met my kids?), and detracts from the hundreds of hours I invested in selecting just the right name (which, incidentally, I never expected to be compensated for by a set number of times the chosen name was spoken).

My kid is a special flower, damn it, and his intricately researched name shall be used! 

OK, OK, let’s just take a giant step back and reenter the MOTY world for a hot second. We use “kid” a lot in our space (e.g. “My kid is being an asshole today” or “My kid peed on his sister’s face this morning.”) And it’s not just, as you flippantly suggest, because those three li’l letters are easy to type. “Kid” is actually a nuanced usage common to the discourse community of relaxed, non-helicopter, free-range-leaning parents. It’s part of our lexicon, and it bears a certain welcome edginess that, when tossed around by a leggings-wearing, disposable-coffee-toting mama, cues me into the fact that, hey, this lady is perhaps just a little bit brash and whole lot awesome. 

“Kid” says, sure, maybe this mama tries her darnedest to feed her kids organic kale smoothies peed out by Gaia herself every day while they all craft alliterative haikus around the breakfast table… but she’s not above Dunkin' Donuts and cartoons. 

By Annie

Let me start by saying that I love the Reading Fair. In fact, I adore it and everything it stands for. This former English major turned MFA student turned failing memoirist/adjunct composition instructor and now copy director at a small ad agency is just thrilled by the way it inspires kids to read. To read! To eschew YouTube tutorials and Musical.ly drivel and crawl inside the dogeared pages of actual chapter books? Yeah... pure wizardry. And the Reading Fair doesn’t just inspire kids to read but also to think critically about story structures and to create utterly unique visualizations of their budding analyses out of the very materials that elementary school magic is made of – trifold poster boards, construction paper and rubber cement. 

​You see, Fifth Grade Reading Fair Powers That Be, it is my deep affection for the Reading Fair and all its didactic glory that made me feel so betrayed when the assignment guidelines for your fine event came home in my daughter’s backpack, and I read your closing line on the instruction sheet:

By Annie

The last week of school for 2017 is approaching and, in addition to panicking about what to do with all this extra kid energy for the next two weeks, many MOTYs are also scrambling to pick up last-minute Christmas gifts for our kids’ teachers. What a lovely gesture, right? Giving a small token of appreciation to the adults who nurture and educate our children during the many hours they are in school. Right?? 

Wrong. 

Apparently, as a quick Google search will show you, there are all sorts of dos and don’ts when it comes to teacher gifts. All those ideas you thought were super cute (… or at least feebly passable)? Well, they are total shit. Here’s why:

Mugs – Teachers love coffee. Point taken. They don't love 37 mugs per year, nor do they have the shelf space in their homes or teacher lounges to store them.
​
Ornaments – Can you possibly, with your non-teacher brain, fathom just how many ornaments an elementary school teacher accumulates over the span of his or her career? Take 25 students (minimum) and multiply that by 35 years (minimum) and then you can begin to calculate a rough estimate of the gross proportions of offensively superfluous ornaments any one teacher may receive in his or her lifetime. 
​
Christmas decor – How about a nice little holiday decor for the home? Sound good? Um, who the actual fuck do you think you are, assuming you understand this relative stranger’s personal aesthetic within the sacred cove of his or her own home? Nice try, asshole.

By Annie

By Annie

By Annie

​I started running again after my third child was born. It was those damn last 15 pounds that did it. After my first two kids, the weight just fell off. I didn’t exercise. I didn't diet. Yep, I was that annoying chick who just nursed my babies and lived my blissful size 0 life. But after stretching and collapsing a third time, my torso and thighs, defiant and defeated, simply gave up. I spent a few months cursing my way through bitter elliptical workouts in the basement before I finally decided I hated my body enough to run.
 
More specifically, what sparked my return to running was my best friend from graduate school. After facing similar post-partum body issues (along with a startling dash of PPD), she talked me into signing up for a 5K with her. We were several years out of grad school by then, each plodding along in the plastic-coated business world that felt foreign to us, two women who’d spent some of our most inspiring years settling into the pea-green couch in our university’s English department, discussing Shakespeare and logical fallacies. We were submerged in work and baby fog, busy, surrounded by new faces and complex obligations. Living a half an hour from each other, we seemed to find less and less time and reason to see one another. Until running. Suddenly we had everything to talk about again – techniques, training tips, protein goals – and all the other stuff that we love so much in each other just folded right back in. I run because it’s too easy to let good friends slip away. 

By Annie

Someday, my kitchen will not be filled with five bodies at 7:27 a.m., approximately seven minutes post intended departure time as I try to weave my way through chaos and humans, frantically packing my lunch and searching for the lid to my travel mug. Someday, there will be no tiny bodies sprawled out on the floor in front of the heating vents. Someday, there will be no ranting almost-tween sugaring her morning tea, no dog anticipating scraps of bread and lunch meat. Someday there will be no couch cushion cover air-drying on the chair after a toddler pissed on it in her sleep, no crusty booster seat on the table, no clutter, no screeching, no obstacle course to get from one side of the room to the other. I will be disproportionately wistful and will pause to look at the empty spaces...

But this morning, can everyone just get out of my face already? I'm late. I want my coffee. And I want to sit in the silence of my messy car as it carries me an hour away from home.

By Annie

​OK, listen, we gave this whole communal snack-sharing thing a fair shot, right? Can we call it quits already? I’m not talking about birthday treats or class holiday parties or any kind of special occasion. That’s fine, mamas, I get it. I’ll wait until the last minute and forget anyway and pull up to the school or field a hot mess and dump shopping bags of food and sheepishly walk away the intricate failure that I am. But I’ll happily comply. No, I’m talking about the classrooms that rotate feeding responsibilities with a monthly calendar, and the sports teams with the schedules where each game lists the “snack parent” right next to the start time, and the scout meetings where we all have to take a freaking turn feeding each other’s kids. Enough! Feed your own precious kid, and I’ll feed mine.
 
Normally I’m all about sharing. And teamwork. And the sisterhood of motherhood and the village mentality and all that jazz. I’m basically a communist (the good kind!). But we have to stop the snack insanity! Why? Because my kids only eat about six things ever, and four of them are yellow and processed and either square- or fish-shaped. So if you’re bringing chick pea salads or fresh broccoli, that’s endlessly thoughtful, and we’re all really impressed that your kid considers that a snack, but my kid ends up feeling hungry. And if you’re swinging in the other direction and bringing king-sized Hershey bars? Your generosity is admirable and your cool points are sky-rocketing, and we’re all really jealous that your child doesn’t react to 41 grams of sugar like a frat boy on bath salts, but my kid ends up either pissed AF at me for not being allowed to devour a king-sized Hershey bar an hour before bedtime (weeknight soccer games are the worst!) or sobbing in time out. And don’t get me started on how impossible it is to explain to younger siblings why Sissy alone gets wicked snacks thrown at her as we climb into the car and she wedges between their two car seats twice a week on the way home from games.
 
Stop the snack insanity because it’s 6:15 on a Monday night, and here I am in the grocery store, panic-buying tomorrow’s soccer snack, and I don’t know jack squat about what I need. How many kids are on the team? Do I need food and drink? Can I get away with just these squeezy applesauces, or do I need to add something more solid? What did they eat last game? Was it better than my snack? Twenty-eight bucks sure feels like more than I want to spend on snacks. Do any of the kids have allergies? Is my babysitter going to drop the kids off before I get home? I wasn’t supposed to stop anywhere, but after a full day of work and an hour commute, I simply couldn’t face this shopping trip with three kids in tow. And did you know Hillary Clinton was campaigning in the city I work in this afternoon, so my commute was even longer than usual? DID YOU EVEN CONSIDER CLINTON CAMPAIGNING WHEN YOU SCHEDULED ME TO BE SNACK PARENT?
 
Does this raise larger questions about my parenting in general? About my involvement in my children’s lives? About my civic responsibility to understand peanut allergies? Of course it does. But I don’t need some last-minute, rescheduled weeknight soccer game to elicit that.
 
Here’s the thing: I am legally and morally responsible for feeding my own child already. And you are for yours. And for the most part, that’s been working our just swell. How about we use this sisterhood deal to say, “Hey, mama, let’s make this easier on ourselves.” 

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 Annie

Think it's time to celebrate when precious little Tommy wakes up dry two nights in a row? Think you should break out the champagne when sweet Susie Clean-Butt tells you she needs to tinkle? Think again, mamas. Potty training is a long, dark, twisted road that will break you in ways you never dreamed possible.
 
Case in point: Last night, after working a full day, commuting two hours, buying a last-minute birthday doughnut (yes, doughnut, not cake, whatever) and having a makeshift "party" for my oldest child, I stood at the sink, just trying to wash the last couple dishes before bath and bed and half-marathon training. My ass-naked 4-year-old, who has been "potty-trained" for well over a year now, comes streaking into the kitchen.
 
Boy, exuberant: Wipe my butt!
 
Me, still trying to get the dishes done: Did you poop?
 
Boy: Yes! Wipe my butt!
 
Me, frantically scrubbing dishes: WHY DID YOU LEAVE THE BATHROOM WITHOUT WIPING YOUR BUTT?
 
Boy: Wipe my butt! Wipe my butt! Wipe my butt! Wipe my butt!
 
Me: Just give me a second, will you?
 
Sister, from upstairs: MO-OOOM! Henry needs you!
 
Boy: Wipe my butt! Wipe my butt! Wipe my butt! Wipe my butt!
 
Me, turning off water: ONE SECOND!

Boy: [Bends over, hands on kitchen tiles, and starts shimmying his ass crack up and down my jeans, twerking his way to a wiped butt]
 
Horrifying, right? Wrong. This is normal. So normal, in fact, that I am wearing the very same jeans to work today without having washed them. In my defense, I'd already put a load of whites in. Ain't no MOTY got time for two loads of laundry.