The thing about parenthood is you never know exactly how you're going to react to it or what kind of parent you'll be until parenthood stops being hypothetical and starts getting real (pardon my blatant "Real World" intro knock off). Once you're responsible for the livelihood of another human being (or two or three or four...), it's natural to want to do the best job you can, to be the perfect mom. You can hope to be the mom who bakes organic muffins, packs healthy mulit-cultural school lunches, never raises her voice, always has a clean house and impeccable kids, but the fact is that you might never be that mom. In fact, that mom might not even exist. Perfection just might be a colossal mirage.
In my opinion, the idea of perfection is perpetuated by two things: The media and women who give the impression that everything comes easily to them, whether it actually does or not.
The media's kind of a given. Watch any cartoon from Dora the Explorer to Sesame Street (because if you have kids I can already safely assume that you watch very little adult TV) and you'll notice that the kids never have messy rooms, the moms are never covered in spit up or finger paint, and no one ever seems to lose their tempers, or even get annoyed with their children (and really, there's absolutely no freaking way that Dora The Explorer's parents don't want to lose it every time she asks them a rhetorical question and waits a solid seven minutes to answer it). I realize that we, as intelligent adults, have long understood that we can't believe everything you see on TV, but tell us that on a day when two kids have vomited grape Pedialyte into your hair and you have to hide in the bathroom and scream into a pillow to stop yourself from screaming at them, and all you want is to live in a lively, mess-free house like Dora's parents get to. And don't act like that never happens to you. Let's be honest. Some sort of variation of that situation happens to absolutely everyone at least once.
Which brings me to my second point, effortless Mommyhood. I'm fortunate enough to have some really great friends with whom I can be completely honest and vice versa. I don't think anything saves your sanity more as a mom than a like-minded mommy-friend. Granted, I know that the wonderful guy who generously donated half of his DNA to produce our children and has subsequently done an amazing job helping to raise them, understands what I'm going through too. Just not in the same way. He leaves the house for work everyday and gets to miss a full eight hours of tantrums, messes, chicken nuggets and begging to watch TV a thousand times after I've already said no (I might actually resent him for this if he didn't also miss eight hours of hugs, giggling, and trips to the library and park). Fellow moms don't miss a beat and it's nice to have someone who can tell you that you're not crazy because your kids are driving you nuts, and that you can go over to their house for margaritas and to just let all of the kids run around and be nuts together. A good mommy-friend is even better, and infinitely more fun and less expensive, than seeing a shrink.
Unfortunately, motherhood doesn't always appear to be so psychosis-inducing to everyone. There are the 'perfect mommies' and they are the soul-sucking worst. You know the type. They always look perfect, have endless patience, sweet voices and talk enthusiastically about crafts. They're the kind of women who lost baby weight with ease and who never answer "How are you?" with anything other than "Fantastic!". No matter what they're doing, they always appear to be doing it effortlessly.
If you just read that and thought "You mean, good moms?", stop reading. Right now. Stop reading this and never come back here. Seriously.
Because truthfully, unless these women are really good at faking enthusiasm or on some serious drugs, I'm not completely certain they are real. At least, not every day. I'm smart enough to realize this, but not smart enough to remember it when I'm on my eighth-consecutive bad day and I see another mom just breeze through life like motherhood is the most natural thing in the world to her. And she's almost always dressed better than I am. If that makes me sound jealous or bitter, it's only because I am.
I try to be a perfect mom, I really do, I just can't seem to pull it off as convincingly as other people. Do I love my children more than anything? Without a doubt. Do I play with them and talk to them and try to encourage their mental and physical growth in every way I can? Absolutely. Do I occasionally lose my temper or wish for more sleep or to just go to the bathroom by myself? You betcha.
Allow me to bear a bit of my soul for a minute: I think Mandarin Chinese classes for a three-year-old are absolutely insane. I find expensive "learning toys" asinine, especially since my kids will inevitably only be interested in coloring on the box it came in (and will eventually wind up breaking the toy). While a big fan of schedules, I think it's ridiculous to micro-manage my two-year-old's day. Which is why I feel like a horrible mother when the perfect moms try to talk to me enthusiastically about all of these things. I'm a good mom but I'm far from perfect. And if I'm being perfectly honest, then I admit that I hate how I sometimes allow that lack of perfection to irritate me so much.
The conclusion I've reached is this: The media is too far gone for us to even contemplate changing anything about it, so let's all just agree to remind ourselves that neither Dora nor her perpetually perfect parents or gigantic football-shaped head are real. Better yet, just turn off the TV altogether.
As for the perfect moms...let's all try to remember that they might be an urban myth. You never know what goes on behind closed doors and that face of perfection might be a fraud. Those moms just might be as tired and frustrated as the rest of us, if not more so, and just have a better game face. If that's the case, then I wish they would stop pretending to be perfect because it can't possibly feel very good for them and it actually makes the rest of us feel really bad too. Instead, slumming it with the imperfect moms might be just what the doctor ordered! So come on down to our level! You might be appalled by the fact that since Ben is such a deep sleeper and it's so hard to wake him up that I let Layla bang her toy drum in his face, but I do. And that's okay. The moms I'm privileged to call my friends are honest and non-judgmental and above all, have fantastic senses of humor, which you have to have if you ever have a kid that poops on you. And if you're anything like me, you might take solace in the fact that none of us really have a clue what we're doing, but we're doing the best we can anyway and getting through it all together.
And if you are actually a perfect mom...well...good for you. Keep up the good work. And if you see one of us lowly imperfect moms looking particularly disheveled and frustrated and you can find it in your heart to take your own perfection down a notch, that would be great.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Don't You Ever Grow Up
No one ever tells you that registering your kid for kindergarten involves a boat load of paperwork, all of which asks the same general questions over and over until you begin to feel your eyes involuntarily cross. Needless to say, this tedious experience can give you a lot of time to think.
And as I spent what felt like a solid six hours filing out said paperwork, all I could think about was how I have absolutely no idea how I went from the shock of finding out I was pregnant with our first child to suddenly having a child old enough to be a kindergartener.
Layla was an extremely good baby, to make the understatement of the century. She's always had a happy, mellow disposition. In fact, the day she was born, she didn't even cry, which actually really freaked me out at the time. I had always sort of figured it was a requirement for babies to cry and if they didn't, it meant they weren't breathing. Layla was breathing just fine, but instead of crying she was just sort of looking around and moaning softly while she was being examined and wrapped up. Once the nurse put her in my arms, she looked at me like she knew exactly who I was, stopped moaning immediately and fell into a deep sleep.
Her disposition is so sunny, in fact, that she didn't even cry when the nurses gave her her first bath to remove all that lovely post-birth gunk. Not only did she not cry or appear upset about it in any way, she actually looked like she enjoyed it (in direct contrast with her brother, who screamed so loudly and for so long that I started to wonder if he was being bathed with nails). It wasn't until years later, when she became the kid who hated to be sticky or have dirty hands that it all made sense to me. She looked like she was enjoying it because the crazy kid actually was enjoying it.
Not much changed after that first day.
Layla started sleeping through the night when she was three weeks old. She ate everything that was put before her (and still does). If you told her to stop doing something, she stopped. She's patient. She listens. She cooperates. Last week at her preschool, a child brought a type of juice that we don't allow her to have at home (way too much sugar). She knew it was against the rules to have it at home and assumed that rule extended to school too. So she didn't drink it. Most kids would jump at the opportunity to do something that their parents don't allow them to, but that's not how Layla rolls.
Layla is funny, sweet and kind. She's a morning person (just like her dad) and always thinks about others. She has grown from a fantastic baby to an amazing little girl.
The only thing Layla has ever done (be it completely inadvertently) was put the idea into our heads that we are the most amazing parents ever and that parenting is easy. Because of Layla, I had no idea why anyone ever said being a parent was a difficult job. Sure, it was a lot of work and could feel tedious at times, but she has had so few bad days or bad stages that it all felt like a cake walk. Which, of course, is why we had Ben, who has seemingly done everything in his power to take the idea that parenting is easy right out of our heads (but more about little dude later, this is Layla's blog).
I can only assume that my luck will eventually run out and that my perfect, angelic daughter will turn into a psychopath once she hits about thirteen and decides that out of all the people she hates, she hates her mom the most. I hope that's not the case, but because I'm not taking any chances, I'm going to enjoy every peaceful moment until that ugly beast called puberty strikes.
Anyway, back to registration. I can only assume that the purpose of all that horrendous paperwork is to keep all of us who can't believe our child is old enough to be in elementary school from bursting into tears and clinging to our children. While it is a solid attempt on the part of public schools, I'm sorry to say it didn't really work. It didn't distract me from reminiscing or wondering how we got to this point in Layla's life so fast. If anything, it gave me time to think about it more. And it definitely didn't distract me from crying my eyes out.
My baby is growing up and she's growing up way too fast. And I know that no matter how much I drag my feet or wish for her to slow down, I can't stop the inevitable. And no amount of paperwork will distract me from just how much that breaks my heart.
And as I spent what felt like a solid six hours filing out said paperwork, all I could think about was how I have absolutely no idea how I went from the shock of finding out I was pregnant with our first child to suddenly having a child old enough to be a kindergartener.
Layla was an extremely good baby, to make the understatement of the century. She's always had a happy, mellow disposition. In fact, the day she was born, she didn't even cry, which actually really freaked me out at the time. I had always sort of figured it was a requirement for babies to cry and if they didn't, it meant they weren't breathing. Layla was breathing just fine, but instead of crying she was just sort of looking around and moaning softly while she was being examined and wrapped up. Once the nurse put her in my arms, she looked at me like she knew exactly who I was, stopped moaning immediately and fell into a deep sleep.
Layla started sleeping through the night when she was three weeks old. She ate everything that was put before her (and still does). If you told her to stop doing something, she stopped. She's patient. She listens. She cooperates. Last week at her preschool, a child brought a type of juice that we don't allow her to have at home (way too much sugar). She knew it was against the rules to have it at home and assumed that rule extended to school too. So she didn't drink it. Most kids would jump at the opportunity to do something that their parents don't allow them to, but that's not how Layla rolls.
The only thing Layla has ever done (be it completely inadvertently) was put the idea into our heads that we are the most amazing parents ever and that parenting is easy. Because of Layla, I had no idea why anyone ever said being a parent was a difficult job. Sure, it was a lot of work and could feel tedious at times, but she has had so few bad days or bad stages that it all felt like a cake walk. Which, of course, is why we had Ben, who has seemingly done everything in his power to take the idea that parenting is easy right out of our heads (but more about little dude later, this is Layla's blog).
I can only assume that my luck will eventually run out and that my perfect, angelic daughter will turn into a psychopath once she hits about thirteen and decides that out of all the people she hates, she hates her mom the most. I hope that's not the case, but because I'm not taking any chances, I'm going to enjoy every peaceful moment until that ugly beast called puberty strikes.
Anyway, back to registration. I can only assume that the purpose of all that horrendous paperwork is to keep all of us who can't believe our child is old enough to be in elementary school from bursting into tears and clinging to our children. While it is a solid attempt on the part of public schools, I'm sorry to say it didn't really work. It didn't distract me from reminiscing or wondering how we got to this point in Layla's life so fast. If anything, it gave me time to think about it more. And it definitely didn't distract me from crying my eyes out.
My baby is growing up and she's growing up way too fast. And I know that no matter how much I drag my feet or wish for her to slow down, I can't stop the inevitable. And no amount of paperwork will distract me from just how much that breaks my heart.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Will Write For Your Entertainment
Of all the things in the world I could have decided to be, I had to decide I wanted to be a writer.
Deciding to become a professional writer is a lot like deciding you want to become a professional baseball player. It's mind-bogglingly competitive, there are millions of people more talented (or more motivated) than you trying to do the same thing, and people tend to feign enthusiasm for your career choice, while secretly tallying up the odds of you ever making a career out of writing, baseball, underwater basket-weaving, or whatever highly unattainable career goal you're trying to reach. And unfortunately, being as this is real life and not The Hunger Games, the odds may not be ever in your favor.
I guess I must secretly be a half-glass-empty kind of person, because I constantly worry about those nagging odds and how much or little they might be in my favor when it comes to becoming a professional writer. Because I'm smart enough to know that talent does play into these odds, I spend a lot of my very limited free time trolling the blog world for both inspiration and to check out the competition. Since I'm still not completely sure what it is that I'm doing here exactly, I have no choice but to turn to the internet. Which, unless you're watching ridiculous sketches on Funny Or Die, is almost always a mistake.
The first thing that occurred to me through my extensive research is that if it's a "Mommy Blog" I'm trying to write here, then I'm going about it the wrong way. Step one, according to the internet, is to marry someone famous, have their children, and gain instant fame as a baby guru, with thousands following your blog. Well, okay...clearly I messed up step one. I could try to convince Josh to let me engage in some kind of reverse polygamy in which I have several (famous) husbands in addition to him, but let's face it: If I had more than one husband, they'd just form their own fantasy baseball league and I'd be stuck with even more laundry. Aside from the obvious fact that I love my husband and my husband alone, I just don't have the energy or time management skills for more than one. So clearly that option is out.
There's always the 'creep everyone out' route, as recently made famous by Alicia Silverstone, who recorded herself pre-chewing her baby's food and spitting it in the baby's mouth and successfully managed to gross out the entire world. While Ben and Layla are too old and my stomach is too weak for this option to ever come to fruition, I haven't ruled out trying it to see their reactions (but not filming it because if Alicia Silverstone has taught us anything, it's that we DO NOT want to see that).
Finally, I've noticed is that most of these "Mommy Blogs" chronicle their child's every move. I'm not talking about milestones or frustrations or any of the normal, run-of-the-mill baby things. I'm talking about the kind of over-sharing that involves telling your readers how many times a day your baby poops (There is actually a real blog where the writer does just this. Who would want to read that, you ask? Apparently the eighty-two people who subscribe to it do. I know. I don't get it either). These blogs not only scare the bejesus out of me, but serve as a reminder that while your children should be your top priority, I truly believe (for the sake of your own sanity as a human being) they shouldn't be the only thing you can think to talk about. I have a few friends who write delightful blogs about varying subjects and those blogs are a joy to read (mostly because they're not about poop. I have to deal with it enough, why read about it too?!) and yet, none of us are 'making it' as writers. But why?
My ongoing struggle with being a blogger (aside from the fact that I don't particularly enjoy referring to myself as a blogger) is that I want to build an audience and to try to get my best material out there, but I really have no idea how to go about this. I have a sneaking suspicion it's because I'm not 'hungry' enough. While I can easily pick out the internet crazies I can just as easily pick out the internet geniuses who are doing this so much better than I am. I consider throwing in the towel on a writing career daily, but then what? They say 'Those who cannot do teach' but what about those who cannot do and don't have patience to teach? What then? All I can picture is standing outside all of the major TV networks with a cardboard sign that reads 'Will write for your entertainment' with my resume/screenplay/novel/excerpts from my blog in my back pocket. It's not a pretty picture.
Unfortunately, my worries don't stop there. Currently my book club is reading 'The Psychopath Test' by Jon Ronson (which I would highly recommend) and according to the book, one of the classic characteristics of a psychopath is a lack of unrealistic long-term goals. Is wanting to be the next Tina Fey an unrealistic long-term goal? Because who wouldn't want to be this lady??
So let's review: I am trying to break into one of the world's most impossible professions, I married for love and not celebrity (which is only a mistake if you want to be a famous writer without having to do anything or have any real talent), and thanks to Jon Ronson, I now have a deep-rooted paranoia that I'm a psychopath (the blog stalking that I participate in on a daily basis does very little to dispute my psychopath theory, just in case anyone is wondering). Fantastic.
For now, if anyone needs me, I'll be scanning the internet for mommy blogs, writing lengthy, irrational-sounding emails to Jon Ronson about the state of my sanity, and checking out the mechanics of underwater basket-weaving as a back-up career. Wish me luck.
Deciding to become a professional writer is a lot like deciding you want to become a professional baseball player. It's mind-bogglingly competitive, there are millions of people more talented (or more motivated) than you trying to do the same thing, and people tend to feign enthusiasm for your career choice, while secretly tallying up the odds of you ever making a career out of writing, baseball, underwater basket-weaving, or whatever highly unattainable career goal you're trying to reach. And unfortunately, being as this is real life and not The Hunger Games, the odds may not be ever in your favor.
I guess I must secretly be a half-glass-empty kind of person, because I constantly worry about those nagging odds and how much or little they might be in my favor when it comes to becoming a professional writer. Because I'm smart enough to know that talent does play into these odds, I spend a lot of my very limited free time trolling the blog world for both inspiration and to check out the competition. Since I'm still not completely sure what it is that I'm doing here exactly, I have no choice but to turn to the internet. Which, unless you're watching ridiculous sketches on Funny Or Die, is almost always a mistake.
The first thing that occurred to me through my extensive research is that if it's a "Mommy Blog" I'm trying to write here, then I'm going about it the wrong way. Step one, according to the internet, is to marry someone famous, have their children, and gain instant fame as a baby guru, with thousands following your blog. Well, okay...clearly I messed up step one. I could try to convince Josh to let me engage in some kind of reverse polygamy in which I have several (famous) husbands in addition to him, but let's face it: If I had more than one husband, they'd just form their own fantasy baseball league and I'd be stuck with even more laundry. Aside from the obvious fact that I love my husband and my husband alone, I just don't have the energy or time management skills for more than one. So clearly that option is out.
There's always the 'creep everyone out' route, as recently made famous by Alicia Silverstone, who recorded herself pre-chewing her baby's food and spitting it in the baby's mouth and successfully managed to gross out the entire world. While Ben and Layla are too old and my stomach is too weak for this option to ever come to fruition, I haven't ruled out trying it to see their reactions (but not filming it because if Alicia Silverstone has taught us anything, it's that we DO NOT want to see that).
Finally, I've noticed is that most of these "Mommy Blogs" chronicle their child's every move. I'm not talking about milestones or frustrations or any of the normal, run-of-the-mill baby things. I'm talking about the kind of over-sharing that involves telling your readers how many times a day your baby poops (There is actually a real blog where the writer does just this. Who would want to read that, you ask? Apparently the eighty-two people who subscribe to it do. I know. I don't get it either). These blogs not only scare the bejesus out of me, but serve as a reminder that while your children should be your top priority, I truly believe (for the sake of your own sanity as a human being) they shouldn't be the only thing you can think to talk about. I have a few friends who write delightful blogs about varying subjects and those blogs are a joy to read (mostly because they're not about poop. I have to deal with it enough, why read about it too?!) and yet, none of us are 'making it' as writers. But why?
My ongoing struggle with being a blogger (aside from the fact that I don't particularly enjoy referring to myself as a blogger) is that I want to build an audience and to try to get my best material out there, but I really have no idea how to go about this. I have a sneaking suspicion it's because I'm not 'hungry' enough. While I can easily pick out the internet crazies I can just as easily pick out the internet geniuses who are doing this so much better than I am. I consider throwing in the towel on a writing career daily, but then what? They say 'Those who cannot do teach' but what about those who cannot do and don't have patience to teach? What then? All I can picture is standing outside all of the major TV networks with a cardboard sign that reads 'Will write for your entertainment' with my resume/screenplay/novel/excerpts from my blog in my back pocket. It's not a pretty picture.
Unfortunately, my worries don't stop there. Currently my book club is reading 'The Psychopath Test' by Jon Ronson (which I would highly recommend) and according to the book, one of the classic characteristics of a psychopath is a lack of unrealistic long-term goals. Is wanting to be the next Tina Fey an unrealistic long-term goal? Because who wouldn't want to be this lady??
For now, if anyone needs me, I'll be scanning the internet for mommy blogs, writing lengthy, irrational-sounding emails to Jon Ronson about the state of my sanity, and checking out the mechanics of underwater basket-weaving as a back-up career. Wish me luck.
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