Hi. It’s me. The lady in the grocery store? The one trying to put her toddler in the seat of the buggy while he shrieks like a banshee and hits her in the face? The lady who looks like she hasn’t slept in three years because she hasn’t? The lady with food in her hair and a questionable stain on her shirt?
Yep. I’m that lady. Pleased to meet you.
Hang on. My child has now opened a bag of chips and is spreading them, flower-girl style, down the grocery aisle. Aaand… I just bumped our giant grocery cart into a wine display. Oh, it’s tottering. It’s tottering! Oops. There goes a Sauvignon Blanc. We’re just going to move along . . .
I know that face. The one you’re making at me right now while my child yells an ascending minor scale of NO’s loud enough to be heard in the parking lot. You’re thinking, “Why doesn’t that lady control her child?” Let me give you a dismissive chortle: Puh. Puh-huh-huh. One may as well ask why I’m not controlling the weather. But I hear you, boo-boo. I honestly have no idea what I’m doing. Sometimes I look at my adorable toddler and think, “Who thought it was a good idea to leave me in charge? Can I really parent this child into adulthood?” But lemme tell ya, I had no idea being a parent would be this much fun. What a joy it is to have your child tell you that a cartoon character has a “finger on her butt.”
Boychild is a comedic genius and he’s right: Wendy Wolf’s tail looks like she has a finger on her butt.
I call my son Boychild because, like the song, he’s “a son of a gun.” Wait, does that make me the gun? Or is his dad the gun? No matter. His eyebrow game was strong at 2 days old. He could manage the most intense expressions with his nekkid baby eyebrows, mostly of confusion or annoyance. He was a born thinker; a pensive little dude who really wanted to figure out where the hell he was and why we did this to him. His dad and I are placing bets on what his future profession will be with the loser taking the winner out to dinner at the Outback Steakhouse. My current prediction is philosopher, mostly because of the eyebrows and also because he already has his own code of ethics: I do what I want when I want.
You’ve probably guessed by now, but let me confess that I’m not a Pinterest-perfect mommy or an Instagram-worthy parent. I really wonder how the heck they have time to do any of that stuff. 90% of my day is spent picking crap up off the floor. I haven’t seen the ceiling since, well, since I got pregnant. I mean, I’m all for making adorable animals from food, but when my kid won’t eat anything but hotdogs, I don’t think forming a bunny out of whole wheat pitas is going to advance his culinary adventurousness. I’m a middle-aged mom with box-dyed brassy blonde hair and a kick-ass sense of humor. And I like to write. I hope that reading about my strange life with Boychild (my son) will provide a sense of solace and joy for you. Fellow parents, what we are doing is impossibly hard. Let’s rejoice in the absurdity of it all and bask in the frustration and joy and uncertainty that comes from having kids.
However, if you are a Pinterest-perfect mom, could you please tell me how you do it?