Your Ten Month Old Daughter is a Whore, and No I’m Not Overreacting (and other tales of mommyhood).

Ahh Ireland. Everyone kept telling me we were having abnormally beautiful weather, what with my being able to see the sky and all. Now it seems we have returned to “the new norm” for me, and the plain ol’ regular shite weather for everyone else around here. Interestingly enough, too, there is NOTHING to do in my neighborhood with a toddler on a rainy day. It’s like they’ve never experienced the combination of children + rain. It’s Ireland, y’all…. that’s pretty much the only two things people think when they think of this country! RAIN, AND BREEDING. Well, and Guinness… ok. Three things.

So, that leaves me with a bored toddler.

*Where’s the government funding to end bored toddlers, you guys??*

So naturally, I accosted every mom, mum, nanny, and child-minder I could find until someone begged me to leave them alone came up with an idea. IKEA has several play centers in their Dublin shop, so why not try that?

You know why not? BECAUSE OTHER PARENTS BRING THEIR KIDS, TOO. Parents with little blond girls that come up to my son and kiss him and try to throw him down on the wee little “KRITTER” beds or whatever they are. Listen other parents, yeah, your toddlers are cute, but I’m too young to be a grandmother yet. Handle your women-folk.

 

Also, our downstairs neighbor hates us, because Max gets up at 6:30am and decides it’s time to throw things on the ground as HARD as he can. HA HA HA… YOU MAY NOT HAVE CHILDREN, DOWNSTAIRS NEIGHBOR WHO THOUGHT SHE WOULD BE ABLE TO SLEEP THROUGH THEY NIGHT, BUT YOU GET TO EXPERIENCE MOMMYHOOD, TOO!!

To be fair, I do almost everything I can (short of duct tape, because those abuse charges are a BITCH to get expunged) to keep him quiet in the mornings. I am a fairly respectful person. But she screamed seven different kinds of f* bombs at Max the other day from inside her apartment, so now the living room is filled with all the fucks that I don’t give. FILLED, I SAY!!

Also, for those wondering, the Guinness IS pretty good here. Come visit!

We went to Florida. I’m fairly certain the entire state regrets it.

My dad has very bad asthma, which explains why he and my step-mom have a condo in Boca Raton, Florida, also known as the OTHER Jewish homeland. They invited us to come down for a long weekend, because they had clearly kicked puppies in a previous life, and felt the need to atone for it. Whatever… SUCKAS!!!

The husband and I packed up El Bebe, a few thousand of our most important baby accoutrements, and high-tailed it to the sunny south, where, ironically, it was overcast almost the entire time we were there. Of course, lack of sun was the LEAST of anyone’s concerns, because, and I’m setting the scene here for you: *I* was invited down to an Orthodox Jewish community. An ELDERLY Orthodox Jewish community. It went about as well as you would imagine.

The best flight we could get was a Friday (shabbat), so we fucked the rules and flew out on the sabbath. Max was actually BEAUTIFUL on the flight down; he fell asleep during take off, and woke up just as we started to land, and stared happily out the window as daddy held him to watch the city lights at night. Of course, this was 10PM, a full three hours past his bed time, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

We grab our bags, with Max smiling and flirting at every.single.woman in sight, which is basically fate’s way of saying, “invest in hair dye, bitch, you’re gonna be dodging a LOT of pregnancy scares in about 16 years.” My dad and step-mom can’t drive on shabbat because….. I don’t know. It has something to do with G-D, and not lighting a spark, but then also not wiping your ass with proper toilet paper because Jesus favors bidets. It’s all very confusing when you don’t really care. My parents had told us to keep an eye out for a driver who would meet us and pick us up. A white ford Taurus. Sounds legit! Then, a dude smelling like cigarettes, pungent body, and a thousand other things I don’t even want to GUESS at pulls up. Fine. Your car, I don’t care if you smoke cigarettes when I’m not in it. He helps my husband pack the things in the trunk, and I carefully load Max into his car seat. Then, with all three of them safely in the car…… he pulled away.

Seriously.

That motherfucker LEFT ME STANDING AT THE GATE.

“HEY ASSHOLE!!” I yelled, but I’m fairly certain is was my husband in the care saying, “Uhhh…. so… that’s my WIFE back there…” that actually got the guy to stop. I ran after them, hopped in, and chose to ignore the fact that HOLY SHIT, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?! And that’s when I saw it… the toupe. If you washed a cat’s fur with lye, shaved the cat, then crazy glued that shit to a base, you would get this dude’s toupe. And it just stared at me from where I sat behind him, for the entirety of our ride (approximately 45 minutes). Max, thankfully, fell asleep, and the guy driving seemed partially deaf, so my husband did the heavy lifting of the EXTREMELY awkward conversation.

Him: “I had to go to a special minyan to get permission from the Rabbi to drive on shabbat.”

Husband: “Oh…. ok…. thank you?”

Him: “………….”

Me, in the only actual EFFORT you will witness during this entire trip: “So….errr… are you from Florida?”

Him: “No. I’m a lawyer.”

Me: “Ahh…”

Whatever. We got to my parents’ place, tucked in the wee little Peanut, and got ourselves to bed. Huzzah!

The next day was the ACTUAL sabbath, which meant that we couldn’t turn the tv on or off, couldn’t turn on lights, and just sorta hung out and went on walks. It’s actually LOVELY in the summer, when the days are long and you can hang out and chat and be outside. But then dinner rolled around. My step mom had made a BEAUTIFUL dinner with all the trimmings and had food galore for Max who, in his very first statement to the group on exactly HOW he was related to mommy, proceeded to strip off his pants, stand in his pack-n-play, and sing to the group.

My son: celebrating the holy sabbath the way G-D intended, without pants.

The husband and I laughed, and I’m pretty sure my parents thought it was hilarious, but deep down inside thanked G-D that their friends weren’t there to spot the little kosher shmeckel that had made its debut.

The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful, except that I learned my stepmother has an ENTIRE table that can only ever have meat placed on it. Like, you can’t pour yourself a bowl of cereal and be all, “I’m just gonna have me a bowl of my cheerios right the fuck here…” NO ASSHOLE!! THAT’S MY GADDAMN MEAT TABLE YOU PIECE OF SHIT!!!

I don’t even know how you make a table a “meat table,” but if you have any theories, I saw we hash this out in the comments section. WORK THE PROBLEM, PEOPLE!!

In case you were worried, there was a dairy table too, so we survived just fine.

I’m kidding. My parents were awesome, as one must be when dealing with me, as I am under medicated a delight. Finally our day of departure came, and we said our goodbyes and gave lots of kisses, and packed my son onto the plane…. where he pooped himself as soon as the golfcarts of food came down the aisles, so I was stuck with him until a flight attendant took pity on me and told me to take him to first class.

Interesting story: they let you take a baby to first class, but they wont let him buy mommy a couple of drinks. Frigid jerks.

But, long story short, we’re home now. Which is good, because I couldn’t shlep my computer with me to blog, but I also felt awkward writing words like “motherfucker” on my dad’s computer.

….because that’s technically true…….

Growing Pains

Today, at 5PM EST, I marked the last week of my career as a Stay at Home Mom. And it’s bitter-sweet.

It’s so necessary for me. I’m in awe of women who wake up every day, create a structure for themselves and their children, and take joy out of shuttling the wee folk around to swimming classes and music groups. ESPECIALLY when they’re too young to talk.

And yet…

Max isn’t crawling yet. And what are the odds he’ll do it on a weekend when I can catch it? Someone else will see him crawl. Someone else will come to him when he wakes up from naps, and see his sleepy bed head. They’ll see him smile (because that’s the first thing this child does when he wakes up), and they’ll hear him laugh (the second thing). When he walks for the first time, will I be there? Can I schedule that for two sundays from now?

What will change during the days that I’m gone? What will stay the same? I hope I’m here when he wakes up in the morning, and to put him to bed at night… but I can’t be sure. I know I won’t be able to do that every day. I will miss some bedtimes. I will leave before he’s awake, and I’ll come home to a dark nursery.

It’s an indescribable ache. A longing to be here, and a knowledge that what’s best for him is that I’m happy… and I can’t cut it as a stay at home mother.

 

Sometimes, when I have him in my lap, he reaches an arm around me and likes to tickle my ribs. I sit there, suppressing giggles, trying to quiet him down for a nap… will he remember to tickle me next weekend? I wish I could make him promise that he will, and I’m crying, knowing that even those days are numbered…

And then I screamed “HUZZAH!” and jumped off a cliff.

Babies are wonderful, joyous, tiny little assholes. And if you ever say that in public, people are like, “Oh, you’re a TERRIBLE mother! How can you say that?! Babies are our reason for BEING!” and then they walk away, and you have to take the tiny, screaming, poop-covered jerk to a bathroom where you wrestle with them to strip them naked, clean them, change them, and hope they don’t reward you by peeing on your clothes, or projectile pooping across the room. Cuz guess what? That’s totally a thing.

The nice part is, though, sometimes you get another parent in the room, and you’re like, “OMFG MY BABY IS BEING A TINY DONKEY DICK!” and they’re all, “I KNOW! I’m thinking of selling mine to passing Gypsies. Your thoughts?” And you bond over visions of running away to some warm, tropical island, and letting your child run naked across a beach, because that’s natural. And nature doesn’t wear diapers. Or poop itself.

No, I DON’T care if that’s wrong. Leave me to my beautiful world…

Anyway, that’s what I did this weekend… not poop myself. The Husband’s family was in from New York, and of his three female cousins, one has a baby Max’s age, one is pregnant, and one just got married. It was all very “Circle of Life.”

The One With The Baby, her husband, and I sat around and discussed the fact that I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in 9 months. If you’re not sure what that feels like, try backing up about ten feet, then run repeatedly into a parked car for about 15 minutes while listening to the dulcet tones of cats in heat.

It’s like that.

Oh, and everyone says, “Wow. You look like shit.”

Thank you. I’m raising a tiny human who burst forth from my womb, but I DID forget my mascara today, so you should TOTALLY FEEL FREE TO JUMP UP MY BUTT ABOUT THAT.

Anyway, She Who Has El Bebe and I were discussing sleep.

“We’re going to Ferberize him.” she said.

me: “That’s… kinky?”

Her: “It’s like a progressive Cry it Out thing. How old is Max? Six months? He should be sleeping for twelve hours straight…”

At this point, I lost all control of my brain and may have blacked out. I knew she kept talking, but a part of me went into shock at the thought of twelve hours straight. Of sleep. That I wasn’t getting…

…because every two hours, Max likes to wake me up.

“Are you… don’t… DON’T LIE TO ME!!! TWELVE HOURS?!?!” I may have gotten a little scary at this point, and I may or may not have run across the room, and pinned her to the wall like some kind of scene out Kill Bill.

Here’s the kicker though. At six months, babies learn that they can manipulate you with their cries. Why? I have a theory that at some point, all babies get together and agree that FUCK SLEEP. FUCK EVERY THING ABOUT SLEEP. AND FUCK YOU FOR WANTING SLEEP. So they’re going to fight you. And the only thing you can do is ignore them.

But not too much, because then that’s neglect (so Law & Order tells me). And not too little, because then you’re a “helicopter” parent, which sounds awesome because think of all the time and money you’d save on your commute if you were part helicopter.

*And think of how much time you could spend popping all the bubbles on this kid! I mean, jesus, you could just punch him for FUN! Not that I would… cause that’s… bad?*

So, we’re Crying it Out. Kinda. I’m sitting here typing while I hear Max complain upstairs. If he really starts losing it, I’ll go up and snuggle him, and hate myself for it in the morning. But for now, I need to get on this “sleep” thing I hear so much about.

Because right now, I’m so tired, that I my kidneys feel like I have tiny cats dancing in them, and I need to commit to some kind of plan of action to get a good night’s rest. So, huzzah! Here we go merrily jumping off the cliff of SLEEP TRAINING!

Thou Art G-D.

Twenty points if you know the reference.

I’m feeling beat down and exhausted. Not necessarily in a bad way, just in that, “I could really use a week long vacation” sort of way. Some place warm. With sun. And umbrellas because I’m fucking pasty as hell and burst into flames in direct sunlight. True story.

Anyway, the hubs and I are at something of an impasse. For the past two years,we’ve had these friends who have been sliding down what I consider to be the very slippery slope of religion.

This won’t be a long post because, again, I’m completely done in, but suffice it to say that while I consider myself a relatively “religious” person (I… you know…. no, ok, maybe not), I don’t trust other “religious” people.That’s a terrible thing to say… but I’m ok with it.

These friends have begun putting more and more pressure on us to join them, and their merry cult of faithful. I have zero interest. I don’t mind Friday night dinners, and I don’t mind celebrating holidays, but when you start telling me that G-D has a vested interest in whether or not I wear a skirt, you’ve lost me.

Until now, however, the hubs and I have had a detente of sorts, where I just don’t attend the more religious services, and he goes, but just hangs out with our friends.

Enter: The Peanut.

However, now with our son, I’d like to go to services as a family. That presents a problem, because as our friends continue their descent into the abyss of graceless obedience, I’m left standing on the edge, and feeling like a party pooper.

*SHUT UP, HOUSE! JUST BECAUSE IT’S TRUE, DOESN’T MEAN IT’S NICE TO SAY OUT LOUD!*

Why can’t I be ok with going to a “Women’s Section” of the synagogue, while my husband hangs out with the men? Why can’t I just wear skirts, cover my hair, keep a kosher home, and obsess over not using electrical appliances after sundown on Friday night? I think, in so many ways, my life would be easier if I could stop fighting against the river of Faithful that surrounds me, and float along, buoyed by apathy and compliance.

But then, that isn’t me. I don’t like being sidelined. And as much as my husband thinks he likes these people, let any one of them have a gay child, and we can all sit back and watch just how “welcoming” the community is then. Or a transgendered child. Or even just a kid who’s different.

And I LIKE being different. I like wearing pants, and I like cursing, and I’m going to tell my son that masturbation and sex are ok, and hanging out with non-Jews is not only perfectly ok, but he SHOULD. Because the world isn’t made up entirely of our community, and there’s a richness to different perspectives.

And it’s sad to me that some people neglect to throw themselves into the world and experience it from as many angles as possible, choosing instead to withdraw into a community of exclusively like-minded folk.

At the end of the day, and in all honesty, I believe each person really has a responsibility to themselves to learn, and do, and see as much as possible. You can’t grow every aspect of yourself if you shut down everything that doesn’t fit in with a group. And how sad is that? To not live up to your potential as a human being. To not do everything you can, when the possibility is there?

Wow. I’m pretty fucking tired.

Forget I said all that.

And That’s How My Nipples Stopped the Mayan Apocalypse.

A couple of months ago, I went up to NYC to visit my mom. Naturally, I brought my son, as Child Protective Services seems to look down on placing your children in crates, like some folks do with dogs.

Fucking nanny state!

Anyway, while on a walk around Prospect Park with my mom, my son decided he was hungry, and now was a good time to eat. Whatever. After you’ve perched in a backless gown on the end of a bed as an anesthesiologist shoots a needle into your spine and tells you the latest jokes he heard from his eight-year-old, while your body is wracked with the wondrous joys of burgeoning motherhood, you really don’t give a shit if someone sees your boob.

Let me clarify: I am completely discrete. You don’t need to see my nipples, and I don’t necessarily WANT you to see my nipples. That being said, my mother’s reaction was a little frustrating.

“OH MY G-D!!!” she shouted, and threw her body in front of me like she was blocking a pass during a game of English Premier League soccer.

“HOLY SHIT, WHAT?!?!” I got all pissed. CLEARLY, she was blocking my view of something awesome/terrifying that was happening just out of my line of sight.

“You’re EXPOSING yourself! Oh… I hope we don’t get arrested!”

“Don’t get…. what?!” I looked at her in surprise. This is the woman who chained herself to the White House gate. This is the woman who went down to Alabama to support integration in schools… and this… this was just… my boob.

“But… mom… it’s just a boob. Look. Look at my boob, mom. LOOK AT MY BOOB!”

Ok, admittedly, this is where things took a turn for the weird. When you’ve been out of work as long as I have, and you enjoy making people as uncomfortable as I do, you sorta just gotta make your own entertainment in life…

“GAZE AT MY MAGNIFICENT MAMMARIES, MOTHER!! BEHOLD, AS I FEED MY CHILD FROM THIS VERY NIPPLE!!!”

*Like this, but with more…. no, exactly like this.*

As many people know, not much makes New Yorkers stop and take notice anymore. Most of us are able to glance at a situation, quickly assess what’s going on, and continue with our lives. But when you have a young woman, sitting on a park bench nursing a baby, shouting,

“BEHOLD, THE GLORIOUS AREOLAE!”

I feel like some people are just going to stop and look. And let’s be fair, I sustain a person ENTIRELY off of muh boobs. Respect, yo.

But in all seriousness, is that really the worst thing I could be doing in public? I mean, you can’t SEE anything. I’m subtle, because I recognize that not everyone wants to see my lovely lady lumps, and that’s cool. I respect that, and I would hope that other people respect that I need to feed my baby. We’ll all agree to look the other way, and pretend nothing is happening, and everyone can have a delightful day in the park.

But if you’re going to make a big deal out of the fact that I have just whipped out my fully operational glamor guns, then I’m going to have to publicly humiliate you by launching into a dissertation as to how my nipples are not only fantastic at sustaining small humans, but also have the potential of averting global catastrophes.

*Not if MY boobs have anything to say about it, asshole.*

…in which I fall in love with Wil Wheaton, and my vagina turns into the Sahara.

Two things of note happened to me this week:

1) I discovered Wil Wheaton’s tumblr page. I won’t say he’s “king” of the nerds, but he’s probably a pretty-high-up-there Duke. Or Baron. Which one is higher? He’s THAT.

 

2) In MORE exciting My-Body-Just-Loves-Having-Babies news, I found out that you go into a state of quasi-Menopause when you breast feed. Did you know that? Uh huh, guess how I figured that one out….

Hubs: “Hey honey…. I love you….”

Me: “Babe, I’m ummm… I’m uhhh…. I seem to be having some trouble…”

And then a tumbleweed fell out of my vagina, and we heard the distinct sounds of a camel train. We went to the OB for my appointment on Friday.

“Oh yeah,” my doctor says, like I’ve brought up the fact that your hair continues to grow after you cut it, “Totally normal.”

Uhhh, agree to disagree on that. Things should be HAPPENING when my hubby and I get down to business. Things that are NOT happening, and I would like SOMEONE TO FIX IT! Or at least have had the decency to WARN me about this! How did I not know this would happen?! This is serious bologna right here.

“You can use an estrogen cream, or maybe some KY…” I know he kept talking, but honestly, it was hard to hear him over the nomadic tribes that had set up camp on my labia.

So to summarize: men have sex. Women then swell, bloat, get nauseous, possibly throw up, get exhausted, continue to bloat, get kicked in various internal organs by a tiny human who then BURSTS THE FUCK FREE FROM YOUR BODY LIKE A DELETED SCENE OUT OF ALIEN, THEN you have to feed it from your boobs (assuming that works out for you, and a nod to the ladies out there who have a tough time, or who never get the chance), which-btw-hurts like a mofo, then you recover from childbirth as best you can on 30 minutes of sleep at a time, THEN – the kid starts teething, and there’s THAT whole mess to deal with…

And on top of it all, it becomes near fucking impossible to have an orgasm, because your body thinks you’re 60.

HOW have we continued on as a species? I feel like, two generations in, our ancestors must have thought to themselves, “You know, this is just a whole lotta work. Ugg, you go invent the condom. Lugg, get started on the pill. This shit is bananas.”

And we would have died out.

And no civilization.

And then there never would have been Wil Wheaton.

…nicely played, Universe. Nicely played.

 

Love means never having to say, “Don’t put that in your mouth.”

My mother recently asked me how I’m “finding” motherhood. When people ask me open-ended questions like that, I have a hard time determining what sort of answer they hope to get from me. “It’s…err…. well, there’s poop…” I tried.

*Pictured above: someone pooping.*

“No, I mean, do you think it’s hard?”

“Do I….? Is there someone out there who sails through this?”

I realize there are women out there who just ADORE being moms, and have arts & crafts ready for every age and stage of development… but my mom was more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-and-use-a-lot-of-hyphens kind of gal. I don’t see myself being all that different.

For example, it wasn’t until I went to college that I realized some people have homes where each room has a color or theme. Do you know what my mom’s theme to her house would have been? “LOOK! COLORS!” She has art and antiques and a whole host of things that nobody has any business raising a child around… and yet, I don’t think I ever broke anything as a small child.

This past weekend, the hubs and I brought Max up to my mom’s house. While he was playing in her living room, I saw him reach for something… that would be a furniture staple that could, oh I don’t know, KILL MY CHILD.

I might be exaggerating. I can’t be sure. But legit, nothing good could possibly come from your child swallowing a staple. A super-powered spider, maybe, but even then you really just want to be BITTEN by one, not swallow it. Also, a super spider baby seems like he would be really tough to discipline; he’s just be shooting webs all over the damn house and swinging away from you while you’re trying to feed him boiled peas or something… I don’t know. My train of thought may have derailed and hit a small village there, but you get my point.

So, as I sit here in the chaos that is my living room, with papers strewn across my floor and a lazy cat peering up at me, I have to wonder, am I a bad mom for not keeping a neater house with color schemes, and for turning the tv on during the day, and for drinking hot chocolate while breast feeding? I mean, there are kids in India right now who are playing on giant piles of garbage, but some days you kinda feel like a failure for not ensuring that his onesie and socks are coordinated.

Or maybe I’m just tired. I could just be tired.

Poverty Makes Me Morally Superior to You

Ahh, the holiday season. A time when most people are engaging in the kind of bad decision making that’s generally reserved for late nights at bars, and post beer-pong flirting in frat houses… but now they’re using their credit cards! If I were in the same position I was in last year, I would probably be pouring over all the sales at Target, searching for just the right developmentally appropriate toys for my new son. I’d weigh the use of plastic versus traditional wood toys, and discuss which were more environmentally friendly, and what message *does* bringing home a squeaky stuffed dolphin made in China send to our son? However, it’s not last year, and I’m broke as hell.

Being unemployed doesn’t come with a lot of perks. There’s… ummm….

So, at the very least this year, be prepared for my scorn, oh mighty wheel of consumerism, that we call America! Yeah! Take THAT! Scornage! Comin atcha!

What’s nice about being completely, flat on your ass broke, is that my purchasing options are limited. I saved up some cash, and got my son the Ring Stacker, which will just have to do him until I can save up for something else. Thankfully, with a five month old, you just pretty much look excited every time he reaches for a toy, and he gets excited, too. Parenting: So far, I’m winning.

So now, when someone asks me what my son will be getting for Christmas or Hannukkah, I can smugly say, “Oh, we only bought him ONE toy. We’re not into all that buy-for-the-sake-of-buying crap!” and I can look all smug, or sound all smug, or smugly wipe the ever-present baby vomit off of me.

Because if I’m going to be poor as hell, I might as well get some perks.

Happy holidays… if you’re into that kind of thing.