Tag Archives: wine

Mommy Martydom

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Some friends and I were chatting and the the above meme card came up, which has been posted around Facebook, and we discovered that we were unanimously annoyed with the implied sentiment. Listen up ladies, this isn’t the 1950′s! Your goal in life no longer has to be landing a husband so you can spend the rest of your life finding shoes to compliment your newest apron or dedicate yourself solely to dispensing little humans out of your vagina like Pez. Supposedly, the sky is the limit–okay, well the glass ceiling is the limit (wink, wink). You can go to college, and not just for your M.R.S. degree. You can have a career. You can have an active social life and go out with friends. The world is your oyster! That is, until you have a child. At that point, you are only supposed to concern yourself with all things mommy. You are allowed to go back to work BUT only if you NEED the income. I’m sure there is a meme card somewhere that says, “Sorry I quit my job and can’t afford my mortgage, I was busy being an awesome mom!”  If your combined household income affords you material purchases like designer handbags or new furniture, you’re not putting your child first. Awesome moms don’t care if the garage apartment is furnished with fabric covered crates, as long as she can spend every waking moment staring at the fruits of her womb. What do you mean Jane called and wants to have a girl’s night out? You’re a mommy! Unless Jane is wanting to meet up at mommy and me yoga or the La Leche League luncheon, what is the point? Don’t you know, when good mommies have babies, their selfish desires and personal need for things like social interaction not related to children is expelled with the placenta? Everyone knows that any mother that would be willing to abandon her child for any amount of time for selfish endeavors like work or socializing with friends or, dare I even say it, imbibe in an adult beverage with other adults is negligent, if not completely unfit.
Here is my confession: This may come as a total shock to some of you but being a mom, in and of itself, does not always make me feel completely fulfilled and blissful. I know that the sanctimommy handbook says that I shouldn’t want anything beyond birthing, breastfeeding and wiping shit from a litter of baby asses but, for some reason, I need to get away from time to time. As much as one would think that watching the school themed episode of Blue’s Clues for the 14th time today would never get old. It does. I know it’s hard to imagine that explaining to a toddler for the 20,134th time why poop goes in the potty and not in his pants could ever get annoying but, believe it or not, it does. I know when I tell people that the wake up, make breakfast, nap time battle, house keeping, bath and bed time routine can get monotonous and mundane, they stare at me in utter disbelief. Alas, I don’t find it as riveting as other moms claim. Look, I love my children. I’ve never loved anything more in all my life. I would literally give my life for any one of them without a moment’s hesitation. They make me laugh every single day. At times, though, they make me consider which kitchen gadget would be best suited for rendering myself completely deaf. That thought ultimately always leads me to my electric wine opener, at which point I reconsider because it is a bad ass wine opener and I’d hate to ruin it so, instead, I decide to call a friend or two and put it towards its intended use.

Wake up and smell the mimosa! Achieving awesomeness in the mommy department doesn’t require women to sacrifice friends and a social life. I can be a great mother and a great friend. I can be a good mother and still have a social life. If your cup of tea is spending every  moment of every day holding or hovering over your children and your idea of socializing with friends is instagramming your latest dinner creation, who am I to judge? If you aspire to be the “perfect mom”, good luck with that goal. A little secret, though: There is no such thing.  I’ll settle for being a pretty good mom, well, most of the time. Sometimes, I am just an “okay” mom. Whether I’m tired, irritated or, at times, overwhelmed, I have my bad days. Usually, I find it is quickly cured with nothing more than a couple of phone calls or texts to decide who’s providing the porch and who is bringing the wine. I like to spend time with my friends. These nights allow me to decompress. I get to be around adults. I get to talk about adult things. Our drinks don’t need to be punctured with a tiny straw; they need cork screws and everyone can pour their own. A night with the girls is the best and cheapest therapy available. We open a bottle of wine or four and talk, gossip and laugh. Truth be told, very little of our conversation centers around our children now that I think about it. We may tell a funny story or two about something they said or did but then it is on to the other topics like husbands and the latest gossip.  Stories will be told about husband fights and we’re going to tell each other when we we’re on the right side of the fight and totally wrong and acting like a spoiled ass. We drink, we laugh, we curse, we vent, we bitch. Karaoke is often involved, even if we are just singing along at the top of our lungs to someone’s play list. Usually, when I get home, my cheeks are almost sore from laughing and, somehow or another, my children are sound asleep, oblivious to and unfazed by my adults only play date.

Girls night at my house with some of my favorite bitches

Moms: There is nothing wrong with you if you want to spend time away from your children. Being a great mom doesn’t require you to sacrifice your identity as an individual. I am a mother but that is not the only thing that defines me. I am more than just a mom. These times, with my friends, serve as a reminder of that. We support one another through everything; the trials of parenting, fights with our husbands, losing a member of our wine gang and my best friend, Misty, to ALS.  We can’t always drop what we’re doing and meet on the patio but we have all proven our ability to one another to come through in a pinch. At the end of the day, these girls and the time we spend together centers me.  My marriage and my family are my top priorities but I also make my friends a priority. I am actually a much better mother because I have them in my life. Is there really any such thing as having too much support? I am a good mom.  Having and spending time with friends, doing things that don’t revolve around my children, doesn’t change that. I’ll go so far as to say it makes me a better mom.

One of our last girls’ nights all together with Misty

The Justhadababy Diet Isn’t Working!

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Number Four is six weeks old and I only weigh ten pounds less than I did the last hour of my pregnancy.  What the fuck?  Here is a picture of me naked:I have been so disciplined with my efforts to get back down to my fighting weight too!  I know all the dieting rules and tips.

  1. White food has no calories.  With that in mind, I have been eating a lot of bread and things like pasta with alfredo sauce, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses and things of the like.
  2. The calories in hot foods/liquids are burned up.  If I want a drink, I have stuck with hot chocolate and room temperature Dr. Pepper (it’s winter.  Our heat has been on inside the house.  It counts.) I like cheese but cold cheese would have too many calories so, instead, I have queso or grilled cheese.
  3. I like Oreos.  A lot.  But, I know better than just to cram the cookie in my mouth!  I break open the cookie and lick out the filling, which is white and, therefore, calorie free.  I throw away the cookie part or, if I want to eat it, I heat it up in the microwave.
  4. Wine burns calories.  Just opening a bottle burns 500 calories.  I drink wine several times a week.

Can someone please tell me, now, why the hell I am not already in my pre-pregnancy clothes?  Hell, I should be a fucking waif, given the level of discipline I have demonstrated!  What do I have to do?  Exercise?  That will be a cold day in hell.  Let me tell you something, if you see me running down the street, call the fucking police.  Rest assured, I didn’t take up a healthy hobby, I am in fear for my life.  Treadmills make no sense to me.  First of all, it requires you to run, which is bad enough, but to top it off, you don’t go anywhere.  The same goes for stationary bikes and stair climbers.  What kind of sick, twisted mind made fucking stairs that don’t get you anywhere?  But I digress.

I think I need to increase my wine intake.

So, You’re Building Your Baby Registry

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Isn’t it fun?  They give you that little gun and you walk down aisles and aisles of crap, scanning every other item.  If this is your first, you think everything is a necessity and your registry will probably end up being 12 pages long.  Of the 487 items you have bogged down your registry with, you need about 7 of them but, rest assured, you will have soap, pacifiers, wash cloths and nipples coming out of your ass by the time the baby shower is over.

If you are expecting, I am going to tell  you what you are going to actually need and use as a mother.  Tell your friends that if they stray from the registry there will be hell to pay and the cake better be good.

Look, if you are having a baby, hopefully, you can afford to buy a few bottles of baby soap and some wash cloths.  If your friends and family are willing to shell out the cash to make life with baby a little easier, let’s tell them to put it towards some actual necessities.

  • Tile in the nursery-I am not talking about a tile floor, I am talking about tiling the entire room.  Top to bottom.  Make sure and include a drain in the floor.  You see, babies shit.  A lot.  As they get older, they find new and inventive ways to let you know that they took a shit.  Number three, for instance, likes to let me know by removing his diaper and smearing it across walls.  Fucking adorable.  If his nursery was all tile, I would just have to stand him in the middle and hose him and the walls and floors down all at the same time.  You could upgrade this further with a built-in sprinkler system.
  • Large kennel-Who doesn’t need a little “me” time?  Throw some toys or cheerios into the kennel and go read a book.
  • Electric wine opener-Look, drinking has never been as important as it is once you have children.  Most of the sunrises that my children have lived to see is due, in large part, to the existence of the nectar of the Gods.  When you are in the midst of a crisis or meltdown and you need wine STAT, you do not want to have to fiddle with a manual opener.  Hell, you can’t waste that kind of time! 
  • Noise canceling headphones- Whether it is the a wailing baby or the incessant “mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom” from your older children, these will ensure that you get the quiet time you so desperately need.
  • Vasectomy gift certificate-To make sure that this doesn’t happen again.
  • Air freshener-Again, kids shit.  A lot.  Trust me, you are going to need to stock up.
  • A wig-Face it.  You will be lucky if you find time to shower.  Don’t be overly ambitious and unrealistic and think you are going to have time to wash AND fix your hair.
  • Steam Cleaner-Kids are capable of messes that your mind cannot imagine.  Just this morning, number three got a hold of pancake syrup and poured it all over the living room.  He is so fucking precious.
  • Childcare- Because you are going to need a break.  It doesn’t have to cost a ton of money!

Sure, sure, you need blankets and socks but you don’t need 50 of them and you don’t need 20 identical onesies.  Don’t waste your time on bunk items like a wipies warmer or a vibrating crib.  Get the items necessary for surviving parenthood.  You’re welcome.

Dang, Anything Else?

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I’m hungry!  I’m not hungry!  I’m tired!  I’m not tired!  I’m hot!  I’m cold!  Pick me up!  Put me down!  Fix me some food!  I’m thirsty!  I want ketchup!  I didn’t like it because it had ketchup on it!  I need to potty!  I already pottied!  I peed in my pants!

BREATHE!  1…2…3…4…5…fuck this counting shit.  It only takes me 3.5 seconds to open a bottle of wine.

These three curtain climbers can be the source of my greatest joy and my greatest stress.   I know that there are those sanctimonious martyr mom bitches that say “Children are gifts from heaven.  I like to spend every waking second with my children and any mother that takes two seconds to herself is selfish and she should have thought about that before she had kids.”.  Well, to her, I say: fuck the fuck off.  I love my kids but I don’t have to like my kids 24/7.  Any parent that says they do is either A) Lying or B) Full of shit.  You see, I don’t think admitting that makes me a bad mother.  I would give my life for any of my children and there are days when I feel like my children are trying to kill me themselves, with a plan they have secretly concocted to make my fucking head explode.

My husband works out, pretty much everyday.  Whether he runs or goes to the gym, that is his daily time to blow off some steam.  For some reason, some group of uptight bitches got together and decided that squeezing a kid out of your vagina suddenly rendered women impervious to stress.  These are the same bitches that decided that admitting that being a mother was hard or a mother needing her own personal time out was a sign of failure.  They got the word out and it spread quickly.  Women are so fucking afraid to admit that they aren’t perfect mothers or that they don’t ever feel overwhelmed or that they want to be able to have a little time to themselves.  Well, guess what?  I’m not.  At times, my kids make me want to stand in the middle of the street and scream a steady stream of expletives.  I want to pull my damn hair out!  I think to myself, “I wonder why kennels for kids never caught on?”.  So, I make sure that I get my own “time outs”, at least once or twice a week.  If that means that one or a few of my friends gather on my patio or on one of their patios, as God as our witness, we are going to gather, dammit!  And, there will be wine!  Oh yes!  There will be wine.  It is our therapy.  We bitch and vent and then we end up laughing about all those things that we thought were going to push us over the edge a few hours earlier.  Thankfully, I have surrounded myself with a group of friends that are equally as honest about how imperfect they are as mothers.  There isn’t any judgment, just wine.  You have to have wine! 

I jokingly tell my husband that I am going to the gym when I have plans for a girls’ night in.  Becoming a mother doesn’t make your needs suddenly irrelevant.  It doesn’t mean that you are no longer entitled to or in need of some personal time.  If anything, it makes it even more necessary.  Adults need to interact with adults.  Adults need to have conversations  in which the words Caillou, Sprout, poopy diaper and Toy Story are not brought up.   Adults need to have times when they are not required to break up fights between preschoolers.  Adults need to have friends to drink wine and bitch with because drinking alone is frowned upon.

If you want to hole up in your home and immerse yourself only in your children and their interests and topics of conversation, be my guest.  My money is on your future admission into a mental hospital. Good luck with that.

I love my bitches.

How to be a good parent with good kids:

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  • Use your resources.  The TV, for instance, is better and cheaper than a nanny.  You turn it on, it keeps the kids quiet and occupied and, in most cases, it is even teaching them something.  Then, at the end of the day, you don’t have to hear the television tell you about where you are falling short as a parent. 
  • There is nothing wrong with a little healthy competition.  Make a ranking chart and put on the refrigerator.  You can call it the “Mommy’s Favorite Board” or something to that effect.  At the beginning of every day, gather the children around and rank them from top to bottom on the chart.  Explain that the top spot is mommy’s favorite and go on to explain why/how they made that position (they did this favor, they didn’t talk back, etc).  Let all the children know that this order can change at any moment, without notice.  Make sure to take any reason to go switch the order and appoint a new favorite.  This is even more effective if the favorite gets some sort of privilege.  It really gets the kids in line.  Sure, the experts will rag on and on about damaging their self esteem, long term damage and blah, blah, blah but fuck that noise.  If they maintain the “mommy’s favorite” position, their self esteem will be fine.  It is a long term goal to teach them to strive for along with the short term reward.
  • Drink.  If you haven’t already, after having children is a good time to take up drinking.  Don’t listen to these fuckwit sanctimommies that go on and on about it being irresponsible or that the minute your piss makes the line on the magic plastic stick, you are no longer allowed to be remotely selfish.  I like my “me time” and I like it a lot better when there is a bottle of wine to keep me company.  You thought alcohol was important the day after you turned 21?  It is a requirement of a good parent.  They should hand out bottles of wine and liquor to parents in the hospital. 
  • Force your children to subscribe to gender stereotypes from birth.  Do not let little boys like pink or even touch your purse or a doll, regardless of whether he is 6 months or 6 years old.  If he does any of the above, he will most likely grow up and want to fondle and marry other boys.  If he shows interest in a toy kitchen, for instance, slap his hand, tell him that cooking is woman’s work and make him look at a Playboy magazine, while holding a truck in one hand and a hunting rifle in the other.  If your daughter wants to play with her brother’s toy tool set and you let her, you might as well go buy her a wallet chain and a Melissa Etheridge album.
  • Do not talk to children about sex.  That is sick and inappropriate and it should never be discussed.  If your children express any curiosity or ask questions regarding sex, tell them that sex is bad and thinking about sex, talking about sex or having sex before marriage is a one way ticket to hell.  Discussion over.  
  • If your children yell at you or talk back or are disrespectful in general, buy them something and apologize for angering them. If you tell your child to clean his/her room and he/she screams back “NO!  Fuck you, mom!  You clean my fucking room!  I hate you!”.  Obviously, you have done something to upset or offend your precious angel and it must be resolved.  In order to make amends, you should clean his/her room and/or go buy a present for your disgruntled child/teen and beg for forgiveness.  This can also apply to incidents when teacher call to discuss your child’s behavior.  You know that bitch probably has a vendetta against your precious little baby and/or is jealous of you and is taking it out on him/her.  When she tells you that little Junior told her to shove her book up her ass, you make sure and ask her what she has against your child and what she did to provoke his/her response.

This is parenting, people, not rocket science.  Now, go have a drink.