Motherhood Comes Naturally (and Other Vicious Lies) (7 page)

After about forty-five minutes, the questions stop and the boys fall back asleep. And just as I doze off to fantasies of Ryan Gosling's abs, Lily comes barreling down from her room in a mad dash for the bathroom. She flips on all the lights, slams
the toilet seat down, and, if I'm lucky, finds her way into our bedroom as well. Of course, she needs to nudge and kick her brothers on her way into the bed, setting off a forty-five-minute session of extreme whining.

“Lily has more room than me.”

“Ben won't stop kicking me!”

“Evan, did you just wet yourself . . . again?”

It's two in the morning before I finally fall asleep for good, usually in some kind of awkward position that will require the services of a chiropractor. And then just as Ryan Gosling is getting ready to lift me in the air
Dirty Dancing
–style, Jeff's alarm goes off and our day begins.

So, no, in my experience neither children nor mothers sleep better as kids age. I would argue it gets worse. I'm hoping that I'll finally get some rest when my kids leave for college. Although I hear that when menopause hits it wreaks havoc on your sleeping all over again.

Of course it does.

Today, as I was pressed for time, I heated a frozen Stouffer's lasagna for dinner. When my children were served, they yelled, “This is the best dinner you've ever made!” I cook healthy, balanced meals every day.

—Scary Mommy Confession #258590

A
s a wife, I fully subscribe to the theory that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Though I may suck at many other wifely duties, at the very least, my man never goes hungry. Eggplant parmesan, lasagna, roasted chicken and potatoes, pulled barbeque pork . . . I know what my husband likes to dine on, and it makes me happy to cook those things for him. Just call me Donna Reed and slap an apron on me!

Unfortunately, the same does not hold true for my children. Happiness is the last thing I feel when feeding them these days. Frustration? Check. Annoyance? Check. Impatience? Check.
Rage? Yes, sometimes, check. But, it's been a while since I got much satisfaction from nourishing those growing bellies.

Once upon a time, when the three of them were tiny babies, I did get pleasure from the act of feeding them. Just the two of us, curled up in a rocking chair, oblivious to the rest of the world. There's simply no other feeling in the world like being solely responsible for the nourishment of a helpless little newborn. But then they have to go and start solid foods and mess the whole thing up.

You know the face that babies make when they taste their first morsel of real food, whether it be peas, squash, or sweet potatoes? It's a combination of disgust at the unfamiliar flavor and shock and awe that the person they love most in the world would expose them to such horror. Well, that's pretty much the face my children make each and every night when I answer the dreaded question, “Mommy, what's for dinner?”

There are a mere four things I could say that would illicit a response of “Yum!” or “When will it be ready?!” from all of my kids: pizza (delivery only, never homemade), breakfast for dinner, chicken fingers, or macaroni and cheese. And that's it. I mean, that's not
all
my kids ever eat, but that's all they eat happily.

When I cook anything other than those things or, God forbid, something new that they've never before had, the response from the peanut gallery is one of dry heaving, wailing, or flat-out refusal to eat. I find myself bribing them with dessert if they even eat junk for dinner. “Eat three more bites of this meatball and you can have some ice cream,” I beg. “Pleaaaaase . . . just a little more sesame chicken and rice and
then you can have your cookies?” I wish they could understand how ridiculous it is.

Lunches aren't much better. Every morning, I hastily slap cream cheese on some bagels or smear some peanut butter and jelly on some slices of bread, throw an applesauce and bag of pretzels into their lunch boxes, and call it a day. Last year, Jeff had the audacity to offer his commentary on my process. “You're not making those sandwiches with much love,” he snidely remarked, as I plopped the jelly down, assembly-line-style, on six slices of bread.

And then I killed him. Butter knife straight to the heart.

Gee, Jeff, I'm not sure where my enthusiasm for making our children their crappy lunches went. Perhaps I lost it the six millionth time I smeared that cream cheese. Regardless, love has nothing to do with it. I choose to show my love for my children a billion other ways. Their lunches is not one of them.

Love wasn't the secret ingredient in Jeff's dinner that night, either, unless Papa John's uses a dash of love along with their special sauce, as I retaliated for his unwanted opinion by providing cold pizza for dinner. But at least the kids ate that night, and I got a night off from cooking, which makes me even happier than presenting my man with a delicious, home cooked meal of his liking.

Even Donna Reed needs a night off.