Mom Problems

I am back to blogging because my husband so generously went to Best Buy on his short summer vacation (with all 4 kids!) and bought me a lap top! Doing this from the comfort of my bed is huge! While I realize lap tops have been around for about a million years I haven't owned one since grad school and so I would previously blog from my desk top computer either late at night when my kids went to bed or while they slowly destroyed our house. So, I just didn't blog. Being a fresh mom of 4 I am far too tired to do the late night at a desk top computer blogging thing, so I am thankful for this new opportunity to bed blog!

With all the technology offered to moms today, I can't help but wonder what it would be like to be a mom in the 1800s. For reasons I can't explain I typically picture this life out in the open plains, like as in South Dakota or something. Chalk it up to playing too much Oregon Trail as a child or the fact that I had the American Girl Doll Kirstin, but when imagining myself as a mom 120 years ago, I picture covered wagons and prairie dresses.

Anyone that knows me well would probably laugh hysterically at this idea. I am a very typical mom of 2018. I like my iPhone, Instagram especially, online shopping, mapping things and never actually learning how to go anywhere, and adding things to my J. Crew cart while I pretend to work out hard on the spin bike. I like how my husband pre-orders the Starbucks and waltzes in to grab it and I love posting photos of my kids on Instagram in different filters and thinking about how cute they are. I don't love being over heated, dust in my eyes, or long rides in wagons. So although I would have found a way to rock that prairie dress, I promise you, I would not have probably been the best prairie mom and wife.

As for being a mom today, you have to be tough in different ways. Sure, I guess we don't have to worry about the next time we will have to pack the wagon and move along the trail, or dying because we drank bad water or rancid meat, but we have struggles. Mine come mostly in the form of worry. Am I cuddling them enough? Am I feeding them healthy food? They don't seem to be growing? At what point should I get a speech therapist for Luke? Emma Claire needs to learn how to swim and potty train. Milly spent far too long in her car seat today. Have I hugged Brooks in a week? Should he be doing school work during the summer to stay fresh? WOOF. I attribute a lot of these worries to too much information. Anytime my kids have the slightest ailment I like to take a quick 2 hour jaunt down a google rabbit hole and make myself insane. Then I enjoy telling my husband all about the insane diseases we all probably have while he slowly backs away half laughing half scared of me.

The second you have kids, your life and your brain are no longer your own. Those tiny humans have overtaken most of my daily thoughts and will continue to do so the rest of my life. I think anybody that is planning to be a parent realizes that the sacrifices will be enormous, and your life will never be the same. However, I am not sure I knew the magnitude of this until I had my own. Everything you ever do, for the rest of your life, is done with your children in mind. Every decision is reflected in them, every move you make throughout the day, is done around the fact that you are a mom. Everything changes in that moment of becoming a parent.

The following are a few things that I have done as a mom that I never imagined I would do in my pre kid visuals of being a mom. You know, the way we envision ourselves before we actually have the monsters. I was dang hot, got dressed every day, and I certainly didn't have stretch marks and yell things like "please stop licking the baby."

1) FINE, EAT WHATEVER YOU WANT I DON'T CARE
I make my kids a lot of really healthy foods then give in quickly and let them eat crap. I think we have all done it. Spent an hour long bath pinning recipes for quinoa raw hemp muffins only to get out, slave over them and spend $20 on the ingredients, then cave in 4 seconds when your kids writhe on the ground claiming it tastes like a tree. How do you know what a tree tastes like, I ask? Oh come on mom, I have licked more than 1 tree. Jesus take the wheel. Have you ever heard of dinosaur chicken? It's from a brand called Tyson and it's probably slowly killing us. We go through 3 bags a week.

2) WEIRD KOREAN BEAUTY TREATMENTS
I do weird beauty treatments to make myself feel better. They never work. You know what might work? Washing my face every night and applying any dang moisturizer on the planet. Literally my face is cracking off of my body it is so dry and yet I can't peel myself away from watching "Billions" on Netflix with my husband while housing my third bowl of high-calorie granola with whole milk for long enough to slap some cream on my sahara dessert of a face. When you're a mom who has nothing to do all day but take care of her kids and look like a hot mess you begin to look to quick fixes that might make you feel better for a last minute date night to the movies. And I order these things fully expecting them to change my life. One hour tanning creams, face masks from Asia that hurt to peel off, whatever Amazon tells me I need in the advertisements, I buy it and pray for a miracle. Every couple weeks I get fooled into thinking I need to be tan so I apply these tanning wipes to my body only to be reminded quickly that they make me turn orange and make my husband cringe. I just want to look like I came back from a weekend in Palm Springs resting and instead you can see all the veins in my thighs so clearly it's like a paint by numbers art project. I am so pale you can actually see blood running through my body. Given the flabbiness of my current body it is not a good combination. Someone please come out with a tanning cream that doesn't make me look orange and can be applied by a 3 year old. Include tiny gloves. Thank you.

3) BLACKOUT ONLINE SHOPPING
I order things online I don't need to give myself something to look forward to. Then I return them.
This one has been going on for years, and each year the guilt multiplies. It is definitely at it's peak worst when I was nursing, ordering baby items, bounce houses and odd beauty treatments all hopped on on nursing hormones. I remember one particular order, 24 dinosaur rings for my son, some nipple cream, a couple of offensive coozies for when I drink blue moon in the driveway with my children, and these house slippers that had mopping type stuff on the bottom that doubled as floor mopping when you walked around the house. I usually don't even remember ordering the items that I did mindlessly at 3 a.m. while somebody is suckling on my boob and I'm trying not to fall asleep on top of them, so when the items arrive it's like a weird version of Christmas with lots and lots of nipple cream. Moral of this story: Amazon return policy is kind of amazing. Also I know our delivery man Kevin way too well.

4) I DO SO MANY UNSANITARY THINGS
Sanitary flew out the window the first time I pulled on those enormous mesh panties after having my first child. It really left the building when I had visitor after visitor in the hospital and couldn't get out of bed so I just sat there in the hospital bed in a pool of my own afterbirth smiling like an idiot. From that point on I've been wiping butts and noses and carrying on with my life. I left the hand sanitizer in the dust. I am past the point of a squirt of hand sanitizer. I should probably be bathing in a huge tub of bleach every night for what I go through on a typical daily basis with four kids. If I washed my hands after every booger I'd have raw skin and the world would have no water. I don't carry hand sanitizer anymore and I've seen my younger son touch about 210 of those womanly receptacles at Target. They don't even alarm me now, I just get upset when he drops a toy in one. They may or may not call them treasure boxes. Cue dry heaving. Speaking of unsanitary I have taken not showering to a whole new level. I do a lot of baths and cheetah baths, which means taking a very hot wash cloth and washing just the important parts so your husband can make out with you without throwing up if you both actually stay up past 9. I have trained my hair to go a week without washing. It doesn't even get greasy anymore, it knows it won't be getting a washing for 7 more days and I know it's time to wash when it has an Ace Ventura standing straight up look without me actually touching it.

5) I'M NOT CRYING YOU'RE CRYING
Weird things make me emotional. It might be my oldest losing another tooth and having adult chompers come in that look FAR too large for his mouth. It comes on without warning and I find myself incredibly emotional all of a sudden. I think the scariest part is I know he's old enough now to be in the stage where he will actually remember things and these memories could haunt him for life, so out the window goes all the naked around the house and the stakes have been lifted on making memories that won't send him to lots of therapy in his 30s, ya know what I mean? He will likely actually have these memories when he's a real adult. I used to make fun of the people who said that they were sad for milestones because I didn't understand it but I do now. There will never be another lost first tooth for Brooks, and that is just a stepping stone of his life that we have moved past.

6) THE WEIRDEST THINGS MAKE ME HAPPY
When you're a mom the saddest and tinniest things are the threads on which you are surviving and the things that make you happy. Buying a candle at TJ maxx might make my week. This is sad. This is the truth. I like to put those weird good smelling pebbles in the wash so that when I am doing 10 loads on a Tuesday it at least smells good. they are probably giving us cancer. Being alone in a car for 10 minutes and having a good cry is like a weeklong vacation. I have gotten a babysitter to sit in my own room and watch Fixer Upper before. You know what I do now? Get a babysitter to go to my room TO TAKE A NAP. If I am alone I want to sleep. Literally. That's it. Recently when I had a babysitter I fell asleep in the parking lot of a Home Goods while it was raining and it was one of the best days I've had in a long time.

*Disclaimer: even though I say things like my life is sad I am mostly kidding and trying to make a joke. I keep reproducing and I haven't left for Cuba yet, so I must be crazy about these monsters.

If you'll excuse me I have to get back to the typical duties of my day which include but are not limited to: wiping so many bottoms, cleaning broken fruit loops out of our leather couch that looks like it's been through a war, trying to do things to my face to make it not look like I have been run over by a freight train and returning things I bought on Amazon when I was sad. Hope your summer day is full of self motivated and unbored children and fun summer drinks.

PS now that I have my bed lap top I am hoping to do a lot more blogging so if there is a topic you would like to hear a lot more about like hospital mesh panties be sure to comment and let me know!
xo Big Mama