A parenting visionary, Adam Mansbach, has written a book that I will be buying the moment it’s released. I’m giving it as a gift to all the parents I know. Why?
The name of the book is “Go the F**k to Sleep.” Yes, you read that correctly. Continue reading
A few months ago, I had a brief lack of oxygen to the brain and began attending a Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) group. MOPS is a place for moms with really young children to gather and support one another. The children go to a care group while the moms socialize and meet. I started going because I need more mom friends (my childless friends can only tolerate me to a certain point). I was initially reluctant to attend one of these groups because they are held in churches and sometimes churches make me break out in a rash.
Initially, things went pretty well. There is a brunch at every meeting and some darned good coffee. The meeting is about 3 hours so that’s 3 hours of exclusively adult time every other week. I thought this might help me feel less like a hermit.
Reality. It hit my mother like a punch in the gut. Reality. Freedom’s ugly, selfish, ankle biting cousin. She slammed the door on my father and the past but, when she greeted her new found freedom, it let her down. Freedom meant taking care of a 3 year old by herself. It meant working full time, finding a place to live, hiring a lawyer, and paying him. All in a country that was not her own with a language that was hard to master.
Freedom was overwhelming, sometimes miserable, often exhausting. My mother struggled, I know she did. I remember a lot of tears, followed by yelling, followed by sleep. My father just made everything worse by fighting her every step of the way.
Before we get to the juicy, albeit crazy, details, I need to explain something to you about my mother. She spends the majority of her life on a moral high horse. She will argue a point into the ground and would prefer to always come out smelling like a rose. She cannot stand, what she perceives to be, any injustice aimed at anyone she knows, let alone her own judgement.
Enter the private detective. The pit bull lawyer my mother found through a friend suggested she needed “evidence” to strengthen her case. He knew the salacious information regarding the mistress would only be bolstered by photographic evidence and first hand testimony. So, the train wreck that was my parents divorce, began.
I’ll be honest, I don’t remember much. I remember it was cold and snowing and somewhere around Christmas time. I have a vague recollection of the doorbell ringing at an ungodly hour, my mother bundling me up like the Michelin Man and strapping me into my car seat in someone else’s car. The private detective’s car.
We were going for a ride! To Switzerland. Yup, Switzerland. Which, from Germany in the winter of 1973, was no small feat. My father had decided that spending the holidays with his girlfriend and her daughter in the snow sounded downright cozy. And my mother, well, she saw this as the perfect opportunity for evidence gathering.
So, off we went, the three of us in the cold, with cameras in hand and a thirst for revenge in our hearts. It turned out, however, to be much more difficult than first anticipated. We were exposed by a friend and my dad moved his whole party to a different chalet. This, unfortunately, did not come to anyone’s attention until we’d spent an entire night staking out an empty cabin.
In hindsight, I don’t think Magnum PI was really up to the job, but he was all my mom could afford. Finally, on night three, paydirt! From what my mom tells me, things were seen, pictures were taken, words were exchanged and police were called. The three of us beat a hasty retreat and escaped across the border without being caught. I guess the Swiss do not look favorably upon spying through people’s windows and photographing the action. Who knew?
Fast forward several months. We settled into a new apartment, my mom found a job and someone to take care of me. She purchased her first car (a Citroen Deux Chevaux) and made a few friends. But, the divorce was still looming large. There was the matter of alimony and child support as well as custody arrangements. The custody thing turned out to be the easiest to deal with as my father was not really equipped to raise a child, nor did he have any desire to do so.
The money was a different story. My parents fought tooth and nail. To this day, with all the evidence gathered and presented, I am still baffled by the outcome. The judge presented my mom with a whopping $200/month child support and no alimony. She was devastated. You see, my father had made quite a name for himself in the commercial photography business thanks, in no small part, to his mistress/rep. Money was not an issue for him, except that he hated to part with it.
So, after all the craziness and sleepless nights, my mother’s moral high horse was put out to pasture, at least temporarily. Her new reality was survival mode and she dove in head first. You see, no one would ever convince my mom that she’d made a mistake, that she was not capable of doing this on her own and being successful.
She was determined to turn the chaos into calm.
Then, one day, when I was nine, my mother made a decision that would alter our lives forever…..
There was a great article on Crasstalk about pet peeves recently. I suffer from a variety of them which is probably not one of my best personality traits. As I thought about it, I realized that there are some pet peeves that are particular to being a parent. Then I decided to do a post on this because it’s extremely fun to hear other parents’ pet peeves.
What are your parenting pet peeves?
One vastly overlooked career path for mothers looking to re-enter the workforce: rock star/celebrity handlers. Although toddlers may seem so cute and innocent (mostly when asleep) the parallels to the archetypal out-of-control artist are uncanny; and perhaps enough to make even Pete Doherty blush.
Artists of all stripes have had historical struggles with the bottle or the needle and as their handler you’ll be expected to help them score and definitely provide damage control once they’re high. OK, most toddlers are only addicted to bottles of the BPA-free variety. But they are often high on life, and the frightening part of this is you can’t pack them off to rehab for that. As a matter of course toddlers tend to stumble, slur, and drool under the influence of absolutely nothing at all, and find endless amusement in things like spinning in place till they hit their heads on the kitchen floor. Like girls gone wild, they’ll disrobe at a moment’s fancy. Often in public. Nor have they ever seen a fountain or body of water that doesn’t irresistibly beckon. And unfortunately, like the most hardcore drunks, will often wet the bed and slumber on. Not to mention you’re also already familiar with the stealth puke, which happens with alarming frequency, and will come in very handy with budding Mama Casses and bulimic starlets.
Toddlers don’t need the aid of foreign substances to channel Britney and cut off all of their hair with blunt scissors, but there are the times when sugar definitely contributes to the daily mayhem. Anyone who has ever witnessed a group of under-5’s mainlining undiluted juice boxes will have experienced the frisson of terror that one might encounter say, when addicts meet very pure heroin. No one can tell me sugar is not a drug and I’ve seen the ugly things toddlers will do under the influence: the shriveled foil hull of a verboten chocolate Easter egg discarded behind the sofa, the tell-tale blue tongue of the secret jelly-bean huffer, the incessant whine of the Oreo addicted. Even when you’ve forsworn all snacks of the evaporated-cane-juice variety, there will always be a playground groupie who will help junior cop from some unsuspecting mom. The playground fanbase feeds the sugar junkie’s already inflated ego, finding his antics charming and funny. They don’t get to see the ensuing meltdown once your homeboy gets back to his crib. But if you do have to score drugs in your new gig you’ll know how to play it to get maximum advantage. Like a lollipop will get your kid through the supermarket checkout line, a handful of Vicodin will get your client through the interview. Just don’t be caught holding and keep it out of the tabloids.
Like miniature Jackson Pollocks, toddlers are the ultimate free spirits. Gargantuan ids trapped in tiny bodies yearning to break free, expose their innermost souls, jam Legos into the DVD player. Everything is art, if you cannot see the beauty in random piles of salt or juice as medium and the kitchen floor as canvas then you might as well be the Man. It is a fine line to walk, however, as you already know. In your new gig you’ll want to strive to be more the Patti Boyd type of muse, even though you’re Yoko at home. Also, when the work is pure crap (it is little-known and overlooked fact that even Basquiat had a brief, and misunderstood, macaroni period), you already know how to assuage the most sensitive of egos. “I’m sorry you didn’t get the Grammy, but hey, good job! I got you a sticker, I mean, a hooker!”
One of the first battles waged by toddlers in ther epic quest for self–expression revolves around clothing. Once they demand to dress themselves they, like rock stars, are known for their quirky sartorial sense—the intensity of a four-year-old girl’s relationship with sparkle is enough to make Lady Gaga look Amish—and often the end result, replete with the requisite bruises and scrapes that come with a burgeoning sense of balance, is pretty much the way Amy Winehouse looks on any given day. You already know how to roll with the flow here and you won’t even have to make public excuses that your new charge was dressed by Dad that morning.
Like toddlers, rock stars and artistes are often known for their lack of social filters, they’ll say whatever they want and be adored and despised for it. As the handler, you’ll be doing damage control here too. Fortunately you’re also prepared for this. When your new charge gets into the inevitable tiff with Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan, you’ll know what to say to smooth things over. Well, honey, Paris didn’t mean to steal your Greek shipping magnate boyfriend, can you say you’re sorry for running her over in the parking lot? Baby, remember friends share so can you give Lindsay some of your eightball? She shared her Oxycontin with you last week, remember? Let’s use our sharing and our inside-the-VIP-section voices.
You will have no trouble relating to the lads as you are already intimately familiar with Newton’s little-known fourth law of motion: an inverse equation whereby the smaller a person in motion is, the more items they suck into their tiny vortex.
Let’s face it: P-Funk’s real mothership is pretty much any Suburban on the road with baby on board. Diapers, wipes, tissues, snacks, bottles, formula, drinks (in the princess cup), antibacterial gel, Epi pen, hats, mittens, scarves, coats, boots, crayons, books, toys, car seats, DVDs, changes of clothing, portable potty, sling, stroller, rain cover, sunscreen, bug repellant, blankets. Ah, what the hell, throw in a forty-foot inflatable pig, go on. Just don’t be smug because your last trip to Target didn’t disrupt flights out of Heathrow and the roadies will embrace you as one of their own.
A two-year-old in the middle of the terribles can make Courtney Love look like Martha Stewart. Doubters may wonder: how can something so small do so much damage? Think Ebola, my friend. They may be pint-sized but they are preternaturally determined to have their willful way–not to mention freakishly strong. For instance, anything that can fit, and a few things that can’t, will end up in the toilet (and that’s not even with the hotel dicks on your trail). So maybe your fancypants college degree didn’t quite prepare you for picking dried spaghetti off the ceiling, but at least in your new gig you’ll be paid for having to deal with the chaos, and, even better, paying off others to clean up the mess. Just carry a wad of $20s like you carried Wet Ones and use them with the same frequency. Clean up, clean up, everybody, everywhere!
Just remember a mom would never let you expire on the toilet (I’m talking to you, Colonel Parker) and if you did you can be sure we’d at least put in you in clean underwear before the press got wind of it. Don’t be fooled: beneath that snot-swiped sweater beats the heart of a rock ’n’ roll warrior.
I’ve said many, many strange things to my children. This was originally what my blog was about. It was called “Let me smell your butt”. That is something you say almost constantly when you have small children. I never thought those words would come out of my mouth, but they did.
I would love to hear some others. This could be an amusing thread. I can’t even imagine what I’ll be saying when the kids are teenagers. Here are some more of mine (keep in mind that my kids are 2 and 4):
In the early days, Crasstalk was a backwater with few visits but so many great things to share. To help bring some of those early posts to light we present Crasstalk Classic. Our latest classic post goes all the way back to November 2010 when NoDebutante shared how life doesn’t always work out like the movies.
I might have mentioned once or twice that I’m going through a divorce. As of today, I am officially divorced. Given my family’s track record of marriages for life, this is a status I never thought I’d achieve. In fact, as a child, I learned most everything I knew about divorce from the film Irreconcilable Differences. I was only slightly older than Casey, the child played by Drew Barrymore, and didn’t give much thought to the story beyond halfheartedly wishing we had a Mexican housekeeper with whom I could live when I didn’t like my parents anymore. This didn’t come to pass.
I have to say, though, that my divorce didn’t quite pan out the way I thought it would, given all the cinematic depictions of marital strife and divorce I’ve seen through the years. Here, for you, is the difference between how I thought it would go and how it really went down.
I’m a military spouse. A really bad one, if all the “manuals” on this theoretical occupation are to be believed.
Sample quote:
“Some women think they’re cool by driving over the speed limit on base, dressing like prostitutes, and getting drunk at command functions…You are socializing with your husband’s bosses and colleagues, and you need to behave as such. You may be harming your service member’s career prospects- and therefore your income potential- by acting wildly. So grow up already!”
I don’t want to give you all too many good tips about being part of the “silent ranks” (seriously, that is what they call it) at once, so just digest that one for now.
In most ways, Airman Nerd’s job is like an accountant’s, in that it affects and interests me only tangentially. But in other ways, it is definitely a lifestyle we’re not used to. And here’s a little snippet of how things went when we got his first base assignment:
When he found out where we were going to live, our friends asked if we were going to live on base when we were at dinner.
“Oh, hell no!” I shrieked, liberally splashing wine on someone. “Does anyone think I’d get along with those bitches? They’d all be going, ‘Oh, that girl with the unbrushed hair and dirty yoga pants is screaming again. Look at those dogs, biting each others’ necks like vampires and digging their way to another base. This is the sixth time this week the Chinese food delivery guy has been to their house.'”
With that preconceived (and possibly judgmental) notion of military wives in my mind, Airman Nerd wisely decided I could pick where we lived. And, anyway, our very dangerous dogs would not be allowed in base housing. Tell that to the Chihuahua that bit me at work a few months ago.
So we rented a house. Actually, a cute little house, and the bonus of military life is that people assume you’re good for the rent money. We paid no security or pet deposit. This was hopeful on the part of our landlords, as the entire yard will need to be reseeded when we move out and the 25-year-old linoleum doesn’t stand up well to copious amounts of drool and water-bowl spillage. Sorry, Landlord Bruce!
I got the job I was hoping for, as we listed our base preferences in order of where I had the best chance of working in a progressive animal welfare organization. Too bad it was twenty-five miles from where we live, and we have one car.
Once, my husband got a ride home from work with one of his officers (same age, single). “You shouldn’t have to give her the car,” he told my spouse. “How much does she even make, anyway?”
My husband allegedly kept his mouth shut (even if he didn’t, he told me he did, and that’s the important half).
Continuing on, Staff Sargeant Sexist said, “I mean, she doesn’t have to work.” (Ohhh…hell…)
Airman Nerd extricated himself from this discussion and relayed it to me later.
Is rage-laughter a thing? If it is, that’s what I was doing. Rage-laughing. “HE DON’T KNOW ME! STAFF SARGEANT DOUCHEBAG, I SAY! WHAT WOULD I DO ALL DAY?”
I continued ranting at a capital-letter volume until Mr. Nerd pointed out that he wasn’t the one suggesting I stay home and take care of the house and…the dogs, I guess, since I’d rather own thousands of scorpions than even one child.
So we continued on, with his helpful boss suggesting things like, “You should get another car,” and “She should find a job that’s closer,” which we hadn’t thought of before, naturally, because Airman Nerd is an adult with a degree in his field and I’m a lady.
Still, we soldier on (get it?) with one car amongst two people who both have careers. We’re pioneers in that way; two kids just tryin’ to figure out how to have a dual-income-no-kids household.
Profound silence; silence so deep that even their breathings were conspicuous in the hush. Tom shouted. The call went echoing down the empty aisles and died out in the distance in a faint sound that resembled a ripple of mocking laughter.
“Oh, don’t do it again, Tom, it is too horrid,” said Becky.
“It is horrid, but I better, Becky; they might hear us, you know,” and he shouted again.
The “might” was even a chillier horror than the ghostly laughter, it so confessed a perishing hope. The children stood still and listened; but there was no result. Tom turned upon the back track at once, and hurried his steps. It was but a little while before a certain indecision in his manner revealed another fearful fact to Becky— he could not find his way back!
– Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
A comment by SusanBAwesome on an open thread, about visiting Carlsbad Caverns, reminded me of one of my best memories of childhood. See, as a kid my local Boy Scout troop would make an annual “caving” trip. I always looked forward to this trip. It was the highlight of the year.
We didn’t go to a place like Luray Caverns. Where we went, there were no handrails, or electric lights and there sure as shit was no gift shop. There was a hole…. in the side of a hill…. somewhere in central Pennsylvania. It was far from anything else. I remember we camped the night before in a field next to a cow pasture.
To access the cave, we parked our cars on the side of the road and climbed up the side of the hill. My high-tech spelunking equipment consisted of:
When I think back, this sounds ridiculously crazy but at the time it made total sense. The souvenir helmet would protect my head, the big battery would last longer than D-cells. I was set!
So we got to the cave, and we went in. Now, when people think of caves, they think of giant caverns and passageways you can easily walk through. That is horseshit! Most real caves are nothing like that. These caves were tighter than a nun’s birth canal. Even us 12-year-old boys had to suck in our stomachs to fit through some of the spaces. Oh, and there was standing water everywhere. I’ll never forget the time we were crawling through a section on all fours and I looked up and there was a baby bat just hangin’ out six inches from my head. He was surprisingly cool with having a bunch of hellions tearing up his cave.
And tear it up we did. I don’t think you can really cause that much ecological damage to a cave just by crawling through it, but we were allowed to run wild. I still remember walking into a room and seeing one of the kids squatting in the corner. Apparently last night’s dinner wouldn’t wait. (When word got back to the dads about the cave-pooping…. there was hell to pay.)
But for the most part, the dads let us just wander off to explore the passageways. At least it seemed like it at the time. Maybe they were keeping an eye on us… but I doubt it.
Now that I think back to those cave trips, I wonder if they’d still let kids do that today. Would parents let their children wander through caves without adults holding their hands? And this was the early 90s. That’s not even a long time ago! Are we really changing that fast?
As an adult I think back to how my great-grandfather had worked around the mines all his life. He was an Italian immigrant who became a blacksmith for a mining company in West Virginia. His trade spared him from a life spent underground, but the world of mining was all around him (actually, he apparently was an organizer for the UMW). Kids not much older than us little Boy Scouts were actually working the mines back in the bad old days.
And now that I’m older, I think I am at least a slightly better person for having gotten a little taste of what it’s like to spend time under the Earth. I’m glad I never had to work in a mine, but I’m also glad that my parents and the other adults around us as kids didn’t take away our ability to explore the world in the name of keeping us always safe.
I read an article a while back in which pediatricians recommended depression screenings for new moms. After you have a baby, your OBGYN may ask you some questions about post-partum depression. However, in this article, Canadian doctors recommended that pediatricians screen for depression in new moms.
This is a good idea because as you moms know, you are at the pediatrician every 5 minutes, it seems, especially with your first baby. There are all these developmental milestones and issues to worry about and vaccines and lectures and that constant weighing. New babies must constantly be weighed to make sure they are gaining weight, but not too much weight. You probably also visit the pediatrician a lot because as a new mom, you are terrified every time the baby coughs, sneezes, spits up, sleeps through a feeding, poops something weird or does anything new. It’s so stressful because you’re new to the game and convinced that you are doing something wrong. My mom called the pediatrician the first time my brother sneezed. She was in a panic only a new first-time mom can appreciate.
If you don’t have children, you might wonder why a new mom might be depressed. You might be especially confused if the baby was planned. Isn’t this what the mother wanted? Why on earth would the mother of a healthy baby be depressed? Sure, the baby looks more like a hairless rat than a Gerber baby, but she must have known that babies don’t start out very good looking.
Well, for starters, newborns provide feedback vigorously. Sometimes, they scream all the damn time. It’s very easy to anger a newborn. Here are some of the things that anger newborns:
There are some things about being a new mom that no one can really prepare you for. One is the sensation of a healing episiotomy scar. It’s a feeling like no other. Another is a healing c-section scar which has the added bonus of the judgment you may receive for not having a natural birth. Then there’s the fact that it’s next to impossible to get a shower because your baby, who you thought would be a super-cute baby but looks more like crib larvae, will not stop screaming or pooping.
Other reasons for depression include being trapped in the house, not being able to finish a sentence because you are so unbelievably exhausted, sheer tiredness the likes of which you have never known, and the feeling of betrayal you get when you realize you still need to wear maternity clothes. That put together with the hormone cocktail a new mother receives could spiral anyone into a depression. I know that I, personally, spent 45 minutes in the bathroom crying because someone sent my son a windup toy that play “Hush Little Baby” and it was just the saddest song I had ever heard. Hormones can play mind tricks on you.
I think all new moms should be alerted to how real the possibility of this depression can be because it can be difficult. Even moms who don’t struggle with depression aren’t likely caught up in the state of bliss the media leads you to expect. The first six weeks of motherhood can be brutal. You’re sort of removed from real life and it can make it difficult to see things clearly.
I also, selfishly, wanted to post this because I am dying to hear post-partum stories from other Crasstalkers. I know there are some good ones out there. I’ll even help by embarrassing myself some more:
Top image here.