Motherhood Uncensored

Play with your kids like they're someone else's

One of the great pleasures of visiting New York, other that sushi delivery, is that I get to see two of my most favorite people in the whole world: Liz's girls. 

"You have six kids now!" they giggled, after we had finished a rousing game of apartment ball toss (which involves bouncing a small ball and catching it with your feet while you're sitting in a chair, if you're wondering). 

You would think that with four kids at home, I'd want to hide myself away in a quiet corner somewhere so I could hear my own thoughts. 

But that's not actually the case. There's something comforting about plopping down next to my dear friend (and business partner) and her couch and working like we would if we had an office. 

And I really do like spending time with her kids, playing with them, eating my beloved sushi while they nibble on white rice and soy sauce, and then taking way too many goofy photos on my computer. 

I'd like to think I'd play with my own kids the same way if we weren't actually in our house, the same way beloved aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas, even that favorite babysitter do. 

Because with having kids comes a messy house and piles of laundry and 4000 other things on your list that seem so pressing that actually playing with them and enjoying their company seems like another thing on the list. 

But when you're a guest, when there's someone else to do all that, and you can be the fun one, who pretends her legs are a tightrope for little girls to walk up. 

I've often joked that I'm a really good parent outside of my house, not just to other peoples' kids, but to my own, when the trappings of home ownership and the responsibilities of adulthood are temporarily put on hold. The phone turned off and tucked away in my purse, and the bills and  the taxes that are due and GOD WHAT DO I MAKE FOR DINNER are paused, if only for a few hours. 

And suddenly I'm no longer a spectator in my own kids' lives. 

Soon the requests for me to play tea and princess and chase will stop because they'll learn that "in a minute" actually means "never." And the things that I think are so pressing, the ridiculous minute inconsequential things (in the long scheme, of course) are more important. 

Somehow I've led myself to believe that I should be able to juggle just as well when I'm home alone as when I've got my husband home to help me, which really makes no logical sense whatsoever, as if the messy floor and unfolded laundry are some indication of failure. 

Instead of a to-do list, I'm starting a "DO RIGHT NOW" and a "WHAT CAN WAIT" list. The clothes might be more wrinkled. The floors will be less clean. 

And I'll probably still be exhausted. But from too much tea and dress-up and playing apartment ball toss with my own kids. 

Get busy living

Last month, after feeling like I was spending all my idle time being a voyeur in other peoples' lives, I made the decision to delete the Facebook app off my iPhone and ditch Instagram.

Part of it comes from having a bit of social media overload since it's what I do for a living. 

But another part was this notion that the lives of everyone else just weren't as important as my own. 

At face value I suppose that sounds selfish. But when you really think about it, you're sifting through the constant cascade of mostly meaningless information and weird photos of people's lunches from "friends" you hardly know when you could be doing other things that could really use your attention more. 

Sure, it's sweet avoidance and a sexy time killer. It's a feeder of the beast that is procrastination. 

 And it's saved me many a time.

But then what?

This is a criticism we "mommy bloggers" have gotten for many years now, that we spend so much of our time and sink our heart and soul into telling our story and our kids' stories that we don't actually get to experience it with them. 

This is also a criticism we've called bullshit on for many years now. We live it and then write it. That's what memoirists do. What personal bloggers (or whatever we're calling them now) do.

But now there's Instagram and the Vine app (which allows you to share 6 second video silent video clips), and hell still Facebook and Twitter at times, and it's almost like we're so busy showing people what we did or what we are doing that we become even more removed from our own actual experience of it.

We are telling it as it is happening, which means by all accounts there's a lot we're going to miss out on.

I'm hardly pointing a finger at anyone because I know how much of a double-edged sword this is, especially when I'm co-hosting an event where tweets and photos and a visible tally is important to show success. Liz always said that the sign of a really good party is when no one is tweeting while they're at it. 

But I get that having a great time without telling anyone isn't great for ROI.

So here's the question: What's the ROI on your life? 

I'm not saying we can't be actors in and directors of our own movies. We all want so desperately to take the memories that we are making with our children and freeze them in time. So we snap and click and press record in an attempt to hold on to what we know we're going to lose.

Time is a parent's nemesis. 

But if we spend so much time recording those images and videos, will we remember to make sure we're actually in them? 

The memories might be fleeting, but I'm beginning to think that enjoying the actual moments will always be better than trying to relive them by looking and watching later.

Never say never

I'd like to think that after parenting for almost nine years now, I've grown a pretty thick skin, but then it happens and I just want to go over to the stupid TSA lady and her mean glare to tell her why my 2-year old is still drinking out of a bottle.

As if she really gives a shit. Or if I really give a shit.

At least it wasn't a bottle of Jack. 

I'm the first to admit that I've dished out my own fair share of judgments, in weird glances and snooty blog posts, because I'm human and I hate spanking and kid leashes and babies drinking Coke out of their bottles and WHY JUST WHY? 

But I also know that parents have reasons for doing most of what they do, at least I try to tell myself that anyway, and that the kid with the leash might have a disability and the baby drinking Coke might... yeah, sorry, I can't think of a good reason for that one. 

Doesn't get enough sugar and sleeps too much? 

Hey, I tried. 

So I hope that other parents will offer the same courtesy to me when my 2-year old walks through the airport with a bottle of almond milk becauase that is how she takes a nap and goes to sleep at night and I like sleep and I had three non-sleepers who wouldn't take a bottle and ... you get the picture. 

If it makes a difference to you, she only drinks milk from it. Not Coke. 

See the whole thing about parenting is that it's a collection of moments made up of things we thought we'd never do. Ever. 

We pick up their chewed food and we wash poop off their butt with our bare-ass hands and it's all crazy.

So are we really in the position to look at a mom of a toddler with a bottle and be all "WTF HOW COULD YOU LET HER DRINK FROM THE BOTTLE AFTER THE AGE OF 1!" or whatever the age is.

I haven't checked my baby manual lately. 

I'd say that if we took the time to stop and ask the parent giving their kid the gigantic bag of jelly beans at 8am and got the full story, the one where the kid wouldn't put his pants or shoes on and the mom (or dad) had to get out of the house for an appointment and she was like "OH JUST TAKE THE JELLY BEANS FOR GOD SAKES!" 

Then we'd totally get it and laugh and maybe even be BFFs. 

That is until she pulled out the bottle full of coke. 

My point: Just because you *think* you'd never do it doesn't mean you'll never do it. If there's anything I've learned about being a parent, never ever say never. 

Trust me.

Every single person with a mother should be angry

I still remember when I attended a girls in science day at the local community college as a teen and they handed me a button that said $.68. 

I'd like to think that the pure absurdity of such a fact was the reason why it never fully hit me until much later in my life, when I pulled the shield of internalized misogyny off and allowed myself to be penetrated with what it's like to be a woman today, in what is heralded as a forward-thinking society. 

We carry and bear the children who become the game changers, the law makers, the great thinkers who should be defending us, who should be rising up and shaking their fists right along with us and yet we are still treated like second class citizens. 

Every single person with a mother should be angry. 

I tell my kids about our history and to them it sounds like a fairy tale. "Can you believe that in our lifetime, women weren't able to vote?" 

"Isn't it silly that women doing the same job as men don't make as much money?"

It sounds as ridiculous to them as a flying unicorn. 

And that's exactly how I want it to stay in their minds. For my girls and my boy. 

Ridiculous.

If birthing four children did anything to me, it tore off my rose-colored glasses. It made me a truthteller. A caller of bullshit. 

I tell my children the truth about why I didn't change my name to match their father's.

"Because women were property. We were like things that people could own." 

Fuck tradition. Fuck the status quo. Where exactly has that gotten us?

Even though I want to yell, I want to scream and beat certain people with their own Bibles, I do my best to point out the inequalities and injustices with hope for the future. 

Because without hope it's just anger. 

If we all would just question it, if we would bravely ask our kids, our girls AND our boys, "Isn't it silly?," "Isn't it awful?," or "Isn't it wrong?," I believe there is power in those "yeses." 

Your sons should be just as angry as your daughters. 

If there is anything I can do my children, if there's anything you can do for yours, it's arming them with the power to ask questions, to ask "why?" 

And then give them the courage to do something about it. 

Sex education thanks to Eric Carle

I was all excited when the kids chose Eric Carle's "Draw me a Star" for their bedtime story until I got to the part where the man and woman were drawn, naked of course, at which point all hell broke loose. 

"I can see her vagina!" Margot giggled. 

"That it so yucky!" my son said, pointing the the shape of the man's penis which really looked like a small, sharp triangle dangling between his legs.

Dangerous, perhaps. But not yucky. 

So, I took a deep breath, gave the warning look to my husband which generally says "pop the ear plugs in because I might say the word 'testicles' around the children" and began my longwinded discussion about body parts and how they're not yucky, just private and personal, which is why we might feel uncomfortable or embarrassed seeing them in a book. 

"YUCKY!" my son screamed.

All the kids giggled, except Quinlan, who reminded everyone from high atop her bunkbed that artists paint people naked all the time and it's not disgusting or weird. 

At least ONE child listens to me while I'm standing up on my soapbox. 

For as much as sexuality and nakedness freaked out my parents and therefore freaked me out, I'm trying to do the complete opposite with my own kids, not so that they'll become flashers or sex maniacs which does not happen when you talk openly and honestly with kids about sex HEAR THAT RIGHT WING CONSERVATIVES, but that they'll feel comfortable in their own skin.

From what I can tell, sex and nudity are not the root of all evil, or really any evil for that matter, and the more informed my kids can be the better prepared they will be to survive and function in a society that has some pretty fucked up views about sex. 

If only they held the same views about violence. 

The way I see it, I can leave their sex education up to society and its fucked up views or I can do it myself. Or at least, pawn the hard stuff off to my husband, who unsuccessfully tried to escape with some excuse about making school lunches. 

"What's that dwarf's name, mom?" Drew asked, after we had moved onto Snow White.

"Bashful" I said. "Which means embarrassed, like how you felt when you saw the naked people in the other book."

He smiled, then asked "Why did the mother send that man to kill her daughter?"  

I sighed. 

"So, anything else you want to ask me about those naked people..."