Category — SAHM-hood

Look at this pile of stuff.

Does any of it look familiar? Like school supplies, perhaps?

That’s because, starting next Tuesday, the twins are off to the great big world of school.

It’s not like a for-reals school. We’re too broke for that at this point. It’s just a Parents’ Morning Out program at a local church, so it’s only three hours a day, two days a week for now.

Still, this is a big step for us. If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you know that, aside from a short, part-time stint back at work in early 2009, I haven’t been away from my kids in nearly three whole years. The program they’re going to has a real cirriculum, rules to follow, goals to achieve. There’s a freaking parent’s manual for me to read.

Oh god. I have to cooperate with other adults who are going to be in charge of my kids, critiquing and disciplining and expecting things of them — all out of my control. I’m not going to last a week with these people, am I.

Still, I’m really, really excited — for them and for me.

I think it’s the perfect time to give them more room to explore their budding personalities and talents. For instance, Elise can identify every letter in the alphabet in any context, including many lower-case letters. And Althea can make drawings that like actual things.

Althea brought this drawing to me and said, "Cat!" She is two-and-a-half years old. A budding artist, I'm telling you.

They want to imitate everything — theme songs to shows they watch, words to books we read. They want to “help” me in the kitchen, which generally consists of emptying everything out of the pantry and arranging it on the counter. You know, so I can easily access every single ingredient I could possibly need for any recipe ever invented.

My little kitchen helpers. Thanks, girls. Thanks a lot. No, really.

So, it’s probably better that they start learning to imitate good things, like saying “yes ma’am” and “no, thank you,” rather than how to correctly use the terms “Jesus Christ” and “son of a bitch.” Because that’s apparently all they’ve learned from us so far.

As for me, I could really use a little space. As fiercely attached to the twins as I am, I also realize that it’s only a matter of time before they’ll be off to VPK (that’s voluntary pre-kindergarten, which is state-sponsored in Florida. I will never turn down free.). I need time to be able to run errands during the week, an impossible task with three kids of these ages in tow. I would also like time to foster new relationships with moms and babies of Amaia’s age group.

I’m also the only idiot mom in my group of friends who doesn’t have their twins in some sort of day program.

I feel emotionally ready for this. I know I’ll bawl my eyes out when the first day actually comes, but I still feel like this is a good thing to try and a good time to try it.

After all, it’s not really that much of a break. I still have them the other 162 hours a week. Oh, and an eight-month-old baby to tote around.

My house is messy.

My house is messy and it drives me absolutely batshit. Trust me, I’m no neat freak. However, I believe that one’s surroundings reflect and affect one’s inner state of being. When I lived alone, I was meticulous about keeping my apartment clean. I used to IRON MY SHEETS. No joke. When Chris and I moved in together, I relaxed some but still cleaned on a fairly regular basis.

But with three kids, it’s an impossible task to keep the house picked up. Oh sure, I scrub the bathrooms now and then, but as far actual tidiness goes, there is none in this house to speak of. There’s just too much shit. The countertops, the floors, the couches, the tables . . . No vertical surface is safe.

I took this video one afternoon when I looked around for the first time that day and realized that there was barely room to walk.

I used to be smart.

No, really. I think I used to be smart. That’s what my professors used to tell me, anyhow. And my grades. I used to get A’s and say thoughtful things and read complicated books. I graduated with honors and got into a Smart Person Honor Society (not even the kind that publishes that fake book that you pay to get into) and got a full ride to grad school and everything.

Now, as a full-time stay-at-home mom, I struggle to access even a fraction of that knowledge. My brain just doesn’t work the same. I’m reading a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel right now. Pulitzer Prize winning! The very alliteration of it makes you sit up straight. Every few pages, I engage in some critical thinking: “This passage appears to be about the male psyche’s struggle to disassociate – nay, circumcise itself from the specter of the father at the same time that it cannot possibly extricate itself from same.”

But then, I completely lose track of the words, my brain engulfed by a ceaseless soundtrack of preschool show theme songs (“There’s a party in my tummy! SO YUMMY, SO YUMMY!!!”).

When I left my job two years ago to stay at home with my kids, I vowed I wouldn’t lose my sense of curiosity and individuality. I would nurture my brain. I would remain true to myself. In my supercilious, pre-SAHM mind, I swore I would not, under any circumstances, become one of “those” moms.

Mm-hmm. You mean this mom? Because she, I have become.

I have a case of Mommy Brain in a most pointed sense. It’s not simply that I’ve become scatterbrained or chronically tardy; it’s that I feel I have lost my very sense of intelligence. There’s no way in hell I could keep up with my old college cronies because I genuinely do not even understand what they’re saying anymore. The depth of the problem hit a serious low when I Googled myself recently and discovered that my master’s thesis was no longer on page one of the results; now, it’s some idiotic comment I made on the Facebook page for Duke’s Mayonnaise.

YES. MAYONNAISE. (Note to self: Become more concerned with one’s digital identity.)

It bothers me. I feel stupid and unworthy and irrelevant and uninteresting.

I suppose, then, that it means I was never really smart to begin with. I just practiced a certain language a lot, got decent at it, and lost my fluency when I was no longer immersed and I stopped using it. It wasn’t innate intelligence – it was an impermanent skill, like tap dancing or getting really good at Tetris.

And that bothers me even more, feeling that, not only am I no longer smart – I’m now just a mom. My life is one long playdate, a series of diaper changes, a daily battle with juice stains and toddler tantrums and lactating breasts and OH MY GOD MY TWO-AND-A-HALF-YEAR-OLDS AREN’T POTTY TRAINED I’M A FAILURE AS A MOTHER. My career will forever be in the shitter. I’ll end up in some job interview five years from now and won’t get hired when I instinctively tell them to stop asking Mommy so many questions.

But then I think about it more and I get defensive. What’s so demeaning about being a stay-at-home mom? How is my work now less valuable than any paid position I’ve ever held? My value as a human, as a woman, as a mother at work, is not quantifiable. It is not defined by me bringing in a paycheck. I’m raising the next generation of contributing members of society. This is important work. Like, for reals.

Oooh, the valve-less sippy cups I ordered just got here!

Sorry, I got distracted.

So. Mommies? Daddies? How do you deal with these feelings? Am I alone here? Does anyone even know what the hell I’m talking about? Answer me or I’ll put you in a time out!

At Grateful Dead concerts, there used to be this place called the Hurl Hut. It was a tent where people who had taken too many drugs would go to get medical attention. Folks who had dropped one-too-many hits of acid, OD’d on PCP, or who just plain got too high and didn’t feel well would cry, spit, shit and puke on medical personnel.

My house has been a lot like a Hurl Hut for the past seven days, only with a lot less tokin’ and trippin’ and a whole lot more puking and shitting.

Last Tuesday morning at 3 a.m., Althea woke up crying hysterically. She had upchucked the contents of her stomach all over her bed and the floor. (Unfortunately for our white carpet, the contents of her stomach included a bunch of tomatoes and pizza with red sauce.)

We’d had a similarly random puking incident in the middle of the night with her before. She had thrown up in her sleep and screamed for help. I was picking through half-digested chicken nuggets and bile and trying to remember when I’d fed her white beans when I realized what had happened: She’d eaten dirty, dried beans out of a toy bucket at a playgroup. Yuck. So this time, I figured she had again eaten some undigestible bit of something-or-other and would be fine by morning.

And she was fine. For a while. Until she had a bit of orange juice for breakfast.

I was home alone with all the kids and excused myself to go to the bathroom. The door was open, of course, as there is no such thing as visiting the restroom alone when you have toddlers. Althea wandered in and proclaimed that her stomach was full.

Hm. That seemed odd. “Your belly is full? But you haven’t eaten yet.”

“Full. Stomach.”

“Okay, well hold on, let me . . .”

And, as I sat there trying to finish going to the bathroom, Althea hurled foamy, orange juice-y, toxic-smelling vomit all over my bare feet.

There are moments when, as a parent, you realize you are truly in it. Taking a dump while a toddler pukes on your feet is definitely one of them.

For the next five days, she laid on the couch in a state of semi-delusional consciousness, her mania exacerbated by mild dehydration and a complete lack of nutrition. She puked on the couch. She shit on the couch. She puked and shit on me. She was evacuating out of both ends at an alarming rate.

During this time, I felt truly grateful for television. We explored the depths of streaming Netflix and discovered a fantastic stop-motion series called “Shaun the Sheep.” All 13 streaming episodes of it, over and over and over again, in the maniacally repetitive manner that only two-and-a-half year old kids can tolerate.

Just as Althea started to get better, Elise began running a fever. And on Monday, her stomach succumbed to whatever evil had invaded her sister’s intestines. Yesterday alone, she puked on me three times. The washing machine has been churning non-stop.

Now, Althea’s favorite game is “Vomit.” The game is simple: Make your toys vomit into various plastic containers. Fun for the whole family, really.

For Mother’s Day, most mothers do something cute and fun with their kids and families.

I, on the other hand, requested to be left the hell alone.

Does that make me a bad mom? I don’t think it does. I’m freaking exhausted, people.

My darling husband let me lock myself in our bedroom yesterday, interrupted only to nurse the baby. Know what I did? I watched episode after episode of “Kitchen Nightmares” until my eyes burned. That’s it. I didn’t respond to emails. I didn’t look at Facebook. I didn’t cook, clean, bathe, or put on makeup. Honestly, I didn’t even think. It was the most mindless, purposeless, vacuous day I think I’ve ever had.

It was AWESOME.

I also got some wrinkle cream, a couple of beautiful cards, and a gift card. To top it all off, I hit my pre-Amaia weight this morning.

Not a bad Mother’s Day. Fuckin’ A.

How was your Mother’s Day? Hope it was a happy one.

I did it.

It took me 12 weeks to get the balls to do it, but I did it. I did it! And it worked.

I went out with all three girls all by myself.

We didn’t meet up with any friends. I didn’t have anyone to help. I was totally defenseless. It was just me and three children under the age of 2 1/2 at a local park.

And you know what? It was actually fun.

We’ve been stuck in the house for four days (something to do with the apparently ongoing saga of my terrible tooth – more on that later) and I was about to shoot myself the girls really wanted to go to the park. So I checked my drawers and, sure enough, there was a pair of balls in there. I made our lunches, packed up the kids, and took us all to go play.

The girls must have known that I needed a break because everyone was a perfect angel. Amaia peacefully slept while Elise, Althea, and I swung on the swings, slid down the slides, played chase, dug in mulch, and threw rocks into dirty rain water. Even the sun cooperated, baking the twins to a healthy flamingo pink to the point that they didn’t protest when I suggested we head home.

The best part about it was that I felt like I got a chance to reconnect with Elise and Althea. Though I had to tend to Amaia a couple of times, it almost felt like old times — just me and the twins, playing at the park. I could just tell that E & A were happy to be with their Ama again, too.

Maybe I’m overly enthused at today’s success, but my entire spirit feels renewed. You see, when I stop and realize that I have three kids, the very thought overwhelms me. I never (ever, ever, ever) pictured my life like this: married, with children, a stay-at-home mother. So when little things go right, it sure makes it easier to face another day.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, mommy has earned a hearty glass of wine.

I’ll admit it — I’m an instruction-manual reader. I love me some instruction manuals. I read instructions for shit that is completely obvious, just in case there are some special tips or interesting bits of new information to learn.

And it’s not just instruction manuals. I read the backs of shampoo bottles, the warning labels on bath mats and the ingredients lists on cans of soda. I even watched the DVD that came with my last washing machine.

What can I say? I like feeling informed and I love to read.

When it comes to parenting, then, it’s odd that my shelves aren’t piled high with parenting manuals.

Sure, I have a few books. One is a gigantic guide to the first five years, which I got free as part of my enrollment in a grocery store’s baby club. (Hey, good coupons, yo.) It’s in a magazine holder in my bathroom so I can flip through it on the can — after I’m done reading Allure, Newsweek, Fitness and Entertainment Weekly, of course. I also bought a book for the first year, which I stopped reading about 12 weeks into it. More recently, I picked up a used copy of “What to Expect During the Toddler Years” at the Friends of the Library used bookstore, which I have opened approximately twice. It’s now in an unlabeled box in the garage.

I think I got disillusioned with parenting-type manuals after reading two sleep training books early on. When the babies weren’t following the directions outlined in the books, I don’t know. It kind of turned me off. The experience made me realize that I’m dealing with human beings, not ceiling fans or curtain rods. So, rather than flip through books for general insight as I normally would, I have banned parenting books altogether.

The problem now is, I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. Seriously, zero. None. Winging it 100%. This is making things more difficult because the girls are CRAZY.

OH. MY. GOD. How does anyone survive this??? Why do people continue to have children after experiencing the toddler years? Had I known things were going to be like this, I would seriously have considered having my uterus soldered to the Brooklyn Bridge or some other high-traffic thoroughfare.

Yeah, it’s the terrible twos, blah blah blah. Which is stupid to say because the behavior is completely normal for a two year old. It’s just holy-shit MADDENING for an adult.

Plus, there’s TWO of them.

And I’m PREGNANT.

This SUCKS.

I try so hard. Every day, I wake up and pull out my best Jack Donaghy: “Just do it. Is it in you? I’m lovin’ it. Chin up, positive attitude, let’s get ‘em you magnificent son of a bitch! LET’S DO THIS THING!”

Some days are good. Those are rare — whole days that are good. Sometimes we have a good morning. Sometimes a good evening. Okay, I lie. We never have a good evening. Sometimes it’s just an hour here or there that is good. The rest is just…hard.

I feel like everyone subscribes to some sort of parenting “camp.” Which one do I belong in? Attachment parenting? Play-based learning? Reason with them? Zero-tolerance policy? Open-door policy? Don’t ask don’t tell?

See? I don’t even know the terminology.

So, my incredibly smart and savvy reader(s). Whatcha got for me? Will I make it? Should I RTFM finally? What do you or did you do to get through this stage?

Wait. This is just a stage, right?!?

Sunday morning reading time with Daddy. This makes me happy.

You know what makes me sad, though? Thinking about losing this.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m getting excited for the new baby and am feeling much better about her and the pregnancy overall. But during those moments of utter contentment with my husband and two girls, I get intensely sad at the loss of our little family of four.

I like our family. We understand each other. It’s comfortable. It’s familiar. It’s fun. I like how we’re figuring out how to communicate with each other. I like the age the girls are at, I love their little voices, their silly words. I love the time we spend together.

I also like sleeping through the night, daily routines, children who know how to walk, three-hour naps and not being outnumbered.

Some of my friends with a toddler and an infant used to ask how the hell I survive having twins. I would tell them honestly that the thought of trying to handle a toddler and a newborn sounded MUCH more difficult than having twins.

The thought of trying to handle TWIN toddlers and a newborn, however, is a level of difficulty I can’t even conjure in my worst nightmares.

It’s almost laughable.

Today, I’m 28 weeks pregnant and so marks the official start of my third trimester. I’m starting to get worried about how we’ll handle having three kids. Specifically, how am I going to handle having three kids, since it’s mostly just me with them?

What do I do when Althea goes tearing down the street by herself while I’m trying to unload groceries from the van?

What happens when, three minutes into story time at the library, Elise decides she’s over it and she starts yanking on my hand, shouting “NO! NO! NO!”

I’m also afraid I’ll forget someone at home. Or in a shopping cart. Or that I’ll accidentally drop the baby out of her sling while chasing after one of the girls.

The logistics of everyday life is going to get complicated.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my job as a stay-at-home mom.

I purposely don’t put quotes around the word “job,” even though every feminist instinct in me wants to. Because hey, this gig doesn’t pay jack shit, and doesn’t a “real” “job” bring in a paycheck? Isn’t my worth as a contributing member of this family tied to my annual salary, my gainful employment — or lack thereof?

As the girls get older, my job gets harder. If I were still who I was five years ago, I’d look at my current job description of SAHM and laugh at myself. Stay at home? Mom? Uh, EASY. No obligatory bathing (myself), no dressing up for work, no bureaucratic red tape, no makeup, no high heels, no non-ergonomic chairs, no middle management, no client calls, no 12-hour days behind a desk.

Stay-at-home moms just play all day, zone out on soaps, burn food, sleep in and give up on any attempt at cleanliness or self-esteem.

In the words of the Rolling Stones, a permanent vacation.

But becoming a SAHM has been extremely difficult, emotionally and financially. I expected the finances to be tough. I was a little surprised at all the emotions that arose. But what I didn’t expect was the actual fact that staying at home and raising kids is freaking HARD.

Here’s my analogy:

I used to be the editor of a major tourism website. This meant I worked with designers and developers (and project managers and clients and salespeople and analysts and. . . ). If a web page wasn’t browser compliant, I would inform the developer and he/she would fix it. If I didn’t agree with the layout or design of a page, the designer and I would talk it out. If sales wasn’t happy with click-through or ad positions, we would meet to talk about ad placement and cross-promo opportunities.

In other words, if I told someone to do something, they either did it or talked it out with me to make something happen. If someone told me to do something, I either complied or argued for a rational compromise.

Not so with motherhood.

I spend a decent portion of my day talking to people who don’t speak my language. A simple “Are you hungry?” is met with “Baahelgih goaishhglc lsdlfkajsgiieeeeee!”

I tell someone to do something, and they take off running in the opposite direction, laughing and farting with glee.

I try to explain the simplest of tasks (“Do NOT put the fork IN YOUR EYE.”), point out the most logical of conditions (“When you throw your blankie on the floor, you no longer have your blankie in your hand; you want the blankie in your hand. You WANT the blankie in your….OH GODDAMMIT.”), elaborate on the most evident consequences of one’s actions (“If you don’t put on your diaper, you will shit all over the floor.”).

Nothing.

You’d think these kids were being raised in a barn.

So, to anyone out there who thinks a stay-at-home mother just gets to “stay at home” . . .

Yeah. Suck it.

We’re back from our week-long trip to California.

I know! I didn’t even tell you guys. I was just nervous about someone breaking in and stealing all of our . . . books?

Anyhow, we visited my mom in Southern California. The O.C., to be specific. If you’ve seen “Desperate Housewives of Orange County” or “Laguna Hills” or “The O.C.” — yeah, it’s pretty much like that for reals.

I grew up in one of the most white-bread places on earth. Even Daniel Tosh, one of the finest comedians in recent memory, remarked in a stand-up routine that the O.C. is well known for its diversity.

<cue hysterical laughter>

Every California trip prior to this one has been overcast by my sarcasm and disgust for all things Orange County. I was a creative and rebellious teenager in a sterile, cookie-cutter city with one of the lowest crime rates in the nation. No wonder I smoked, boozed and hallucinated my way through high school. I mean, what other way is there to deal with all that . . . pleasantness?

I’ve now lived in Florida for more than seven years. Sure, Florida has its fair share of generic-ness. But the Florida I’ve experienced is different from So Cal. Nowadays, I think neighborhoods with sidewalks are “fancy.” I know what it’s like to be hit by a hurricane. I live within an hour’s drive of the world’s largest Confederate flag.

Oh, and I don’t pay state income tax. Score.

The point of this is to say that things are different for me now. I now have a husband and kids.

So on this trip, all of those stupid Orange County greenbelts and stupid Orange County generic houses and stupid Orange County engineered streetscapes all started looking kind of nice. There were parks everywhere. We took the girls to one park that I used to go to when I was a tweener and it was suddenly way better than I remembered it. There were infant swings and rubber floors and toddler-sized slides and fake sand with no cigarette butts in it.

When workers showed up to blow fallen leaves and dirt off the playgrounds, I was like damn. So that’s where property taxes go.

Later in the week, we went to a regional park that had a freaking choo-choo train and six playgrounds. Six!! ARGH.

Awesome? Of course. It’s a modern mother’s wet dream. Would I move back? Hells to the N-O.

I guess I’ve spent enough time away from So Cal to just see it as it is: Not something awful — just something that didn’t fit me.

As much as I’ve missed seat protectors in every public toilet, liquor sold in grocery stores and legally required smog checks for cars, I couldn’t go back to 18-lane freeways, double-D boob jobs and all that dry air.

I mean, have you seen the O.C. housewives? They age like old beef jerky.