There should be a competition for parenting to see who can
do what without permanently damaging their offspring.….. If not an official
competition there should at least be some type of medal ceremony bi-weekly to
all the mothers who semi-successfully accomplish anything during the week. In
the cluster smuck of normal day a child can ask their mother on average 129,652
questions and 129,650 of them are usually demands and unrealistic requests. The
rest fall on deaf ears and are usually met with a reply of, “sure whatever as
long as you clean up after yourself” which of course the child promises to do
and of course the child does not do…
Often times during the week something dip shitty stops me in
my tracks and I’m forced to ask myself, “what the heck is happening here” and I
can’t retrace my mental steps that lead me to insanity island. For instance,
one typical Tuesday night while the kids are playing peacefully in the tub (aka
while the kids are splashing around like rabid dolphins and trying to fit all
their toys in the tub) I decided I would get all proactive on this Mother Gig
and straighten up their sink. GO ME! I
have determined that it is virtually impossible for my children to get
toothpaste on their actual toothbrush on their first try. First try usually
ends up on the counter, second try on the bathroom rug, and third try is ½ on
their brush and the other ½ is plopped in the sink and is almost instantly
transformed to multi colored cement. So I start washing the counters, putting
headbands in the actual headband box, clearing off clutter and what have ya…..
And before I knew it Kylee looks at me and says, “Mom what are you doing?” I
look down and was bathing my son’s toy dinosaur in the sink. With soap. And a
rag. Under normal mentally stable conditions this dinosaur would have been
chunked into the toy box without any regard to its safety let alone sanitary
status…. But on this particular Tuesday my wires were disconnected so I bathed
two kids….and a dinosaur.
Then of course there is the obstacle course of laundry and
dinner. Sometimes I attempt to do both but most of the time only one is done
successfully. On this particular Thursday night I was so exhausted from cooking
dinner. Pause for interpretation and
clarification. The act of cooking dinner isn’t the exhausting part. It’s the act of cooking with children coming
into your kitchen non-stop with snack requests, drink requests, meal requests,
band-aid requests, show requests and any other requests that fall under the
sun. Cooking dinner with two young
children running lose in a spacious apartment is like doing the hokie
pokie at a skating ring. Difficult, pointless and someone always falls down. The
ultimate reward of getting thru this
insanity course is to watch your kids take about 3 bites of your meal only to
say, “I’m not hungry… Can we watch TV and eat later?” Insert blank and defeated
stare here….followed by NO. That night, the laundry I started while
multi tasking dinner went through a full cycle before I realized I was out of
laundry detergent. Fail.
We are routine family. We have a routine no matter what day
of the week it is. Even if the routine itself is to have NO routine, there is
still a routine. So Monday night for some reason we were way ahead of our
normal schedule… Dinner was ready early, therefore bath times came early and an
early bedtime was on the horizon and I just knew I was gonna get to watch some
backed up DVR’ed Real Housewives. The night was going well. Then I hear Kylee (5
years) call for me. I get to her room and her legs are squatted as if riding an
imaginary horse and she says to me, “I seriously just pooped on myself.” Insert
blank bewildered stare here…. After clean up #1 I decided I needed a
clean up too. As I am getting out of the shower Kylee is standing there with a
soaked shirt. Logan dumped tea on her head. Clean up #2 immediately followed by
wine bedtime. I tell Kylee to go get ready for bed which typically
consists of pouting, pathetic begging sleep with me, and the sacrifice of her
first born in exchange for staying up. Also it includes brushing her hair and
teeth and using the bathroom. I go to her bathroom to see what is taking so
long and I find her standing on the toilet, one foot on each side. Insert blank
and confused stare here. After asking the obvious question, she replies
with “Hold on I wanna see if I can make it in.” Clean up #3. Good night.
Sometimes parenting, whether single parenting or dual
parenting is so chaotic you’re considered lucky if you get thru it with enough
sanity to hold a conversation with the check out girl from Target. So to all
the parents out there who are competing in the Special Olympics of parenting
just know you aren’t competing alone. There are more of us out here. If we’re
hard to spot it’s because we’re curled in a corner somewhere in the fetal
position holding on to what’s left of our mental stability.
A picture is worth 1,000 words