Motherhood Comes Naturally (and Other Vicious Lies) (6 page)

I beat my kids at Super Mario Bros. and proceeded to do a victory dance that made them all cry. Whoops.

—Scary Mommy Confession #254143

T
here is this girl I know who just brings out the worst in me. She makes me act petty and competitive and judgmental. I don't know if it's the look of superiority on her face, the callous and bossy way she treats her friends, or her flagrant disregard for other people's feelings, but I cringe every time I see her.

And she knows it.

I can see that my disdainful stares make her a little uncomfortable. I can tell that she tries to avoid me, often going a roundabout way just so she doesn't have to come face-to-face with me in the hallway. And I suspect she comes home from school every day and complains to her mother and father about “Lily's mother” making mean faces at her.

Yes, I'm talking about a nine-year-old girl. And I just can't help myself.

It started one Saturday several years ago, when Lily called friend after friend to see about a playdate. To her dismay, no one was available and they all had the same excuse: “I'm going to ‘Paige's' birthday party.”
Why wasn't I invited to Paige's birthday party,
Lily cried to me.
Why doesn't she like me?

Now the mature thing to do would have been to explain to Lily that not everyone needs to be friends with everyone else, that that's the way life works, and that it wasn't a big deal. And I did that. I told her all of those things and more. I was so convincing that, to this day two full years later, Lily
still
tries to be this girl's friend, despite coming home at least twice a week complaining about something Paige said to her that hurt her feelings. I'm impressed with how mature Lily is about the situation. Despite the rocky relationship, Lily still seems interested in a genuine friendship with Paige.

Me, on the other hand? I'm ready to take that bitch down.

I
may
have spent the entire two hours as a class helper a few months back shooting daggers at Paige from across the room. There is a
slight
chance I talked Lily out of inviting Paige to her own birthday party last year—the one that every other girl in the class attended. And I can't say with
total
sincerity that I was sorry to hear about a minor injury she sustained on the playground at recess.

I know. I am going straight to hell. I'm supposed to be the grown-up, and here I am bullying a third grader. But the truth is, sometimes we parents behave more childishly than our own kids.

I frequently find myself in this situation with Lily, with whom I sometimes feel like I am on a playdate gone wrong. You know the kind: we start off great, playing nicely and enjoying our time together, and then about fifty minutes in the mood changes, we start to argue about nothing and we end up on opposite sides of the house, pouting about the other's bossiness. I don't know what it is about tween girls that make mothers act like bitchy schoolgirls, but it's a phenomenon that scientists should study.

A few months back, I went to visit my brother and his fiancée in Seattle. As a special treat, I invited eight-year-old Lily to come with me, as I thought we could both use the time together without Jeff and the boys. Big mistake. We spent the six-hour flight out there fighting and the six-hour flight home not speaking to each other. And the three days in between weren't that much better. Needless to say, I was beyond thrilled to get home and see my mama's boys who still think I shit rainbows. Jeff, on the other hand, wasn't as happy to see us.

“Can you two please go back to Seattle,” he hissed at Lily and me as we bickered that first night home about I don't even know what. “It was so peaceful here without you two.” That's saying a lot, considering he was home alone with a four-year-old bruiser who breaks everything he touches, a six-year-old boy who speaks so loudly you would think he swallowed a microphone for breakfast, and a ten-week-old golden retriever puppy who acts like a ten-week-old golden retriever puppy.

It's not just my relationships with Lily and her frenemies that bring out the child in me. There's the movie
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,
which I watch several times a month because God knows I should have been on a teen dance competition in my
youth. Then there's
Victorious,
my favorite show on television, and of course the
Victorious
feature-length special. It's ironic that Lily and I can have so much trouble getting along, since we have the same taste in movies and television.

My husband is no better. If the IRS knew the man who claims “head of household” status on our tax returns, they would laugh their asses off. First of all, he likes
Victorious,
too. And by “likes” it, I mean he watches it on the DVR. Second, he is afraid of the dark. Well, not the dark really, but the man does check closets before bedtime to make sure no one is hiding in them. And then of course there is his fondness for chocolate milk. Have you ever seen the expression on a waitress's face when a grown man orders chocolate milk? I do. Weekly.

I suppose all parents are just big kids playing the role of responsible adult most of the time. Sure, our daily obligations help suppress our inner child, but we all have moments of regression. And I'm thankful for that, because sometimes being a grown-up can really suck.

In the shopping center today, I nearly dropped my six-year-old off at the lost-children sign and pretended he wasn't mine. I know how bad that sounds, but his attitude was THAT BAD. And I am THAT TIRED.

—Scary Mommy Confession #250762

A
sk any mother of a newborn what the hardest part of having a baby is, and I bet she'll tell you it's the sleep deprivation. Sure, it's true that babies do little more than sleep, eat, and poop. The problem, though, is that they do those things in two-hour increments. It's as if they can't tell time or something.

I remember hearing over and over again that I should “sleep while the baby sleeps,” which, frankly, is a lot better in theory than in practice. In fact, it may very well be the least useful piece of advice in the history of useless pieces of advice. If all mothers slept while their babies slept, the world would come to a
screeching halt. Laundry wouldn't get done. Email would go unanswered. People would starve! I learned early on with my first newborn that sleep is simply one of the first in a long list of sacrifices you make for your children.

And I didn't mind, because I was assured that I would get more sleep once my kids got older. Now, I should have known better than to believe this lie, since it was coming from the same people who told me that parenting strengthens a marriage and that I'd be back to my old self in no time. But here I am with three kids, ages five, seven, and nine, and I think I get
less
sleep today than I did when they were babies.

There are many things for which I have little patience where my children are concerned. The fact that I have to bribe them with dessert in order to get them to eat protein and vegetables, for instance. Or the way they carry on as if they were the Linda Blair character in
The Exorcist
when I want them to take medicine that will make them feel a thousand times better. Or that they can build towers with perfect precision, yet are incapable of aiming into the toilet.

But what drives me the most insane is their refusal to sleep. Putting my children to bed is a two-hour ordeal that I start dreading from the moment I awake in the morning. If stalling at bedtime were an Olympic sport, my kids would be on the cover of
Sports Illustrated
. One would think they were forced to sleep on wooden slats in the freezing rain rather than on plush mattresses with high-thread-count sheets in their very own rooms, based on the way they carry on. They whine and bargain and beg for a few more minutes of playtime while I roll my eyes and question their sanity.
Don't they know that I would kill to be tucked
in with a story and a kiss by 8:30 p.m.?
If I were a cold bitch I would tell them that life doesn't get any better than this and that they should get a good night's rest while they can.

Once they finally fall asleep—usually around 9:30 or 10:00 in our house—I have the opportunity to grab about three hours of sleep myself. Most nights, though, I have too much to do, and this is my first bit of me time all day. So more often than not, I head back downstairs and cuddle with my laptop instead of my husband for a few hours.

Like clockwork, just as I am ready to call it a day and head to bed, one of my kids will reappear. If it's Evan, he's probably wet himself. So that means a quick shower, which by the way he forces me to take with him. So it's midnight and I'm washing my hair. Might as well shave my legs while I'm in there, right? By the time we dry off and I get Evan into clean pajamas, Ben stumbles into my room. “I had a bad dream,” he whines, as he climbs into my bed. Somehow, Jeff remains asleep during all of this commotion, happily snoring my sanity away.

Finally, I'm in bed. The good news is I don't have to wash my hair in the morning. The bad news is Evan and Ben think it's
already
morning. They beg to watch a television show. They ask if they can have cereal. Evan begins to ask questions about my belly fat, and Ben, who is lying there with his head on my shoulder, closely inspecting my face, wonders why my nostrils are so big.