A Mother of a Holiday

“That’s it!”

“I have had ENOUGH!”

“I am not going to put up with you ingrates any more!”

“If I have to say it one more time, my head will explode!”

“OK, I’m done.  You have broken me.  Are you happy now?”

So, it’s been fun at our house the past few days.  Please, sense my extreme sarcasm.  I have said all of the above, or comparable paraphrases, at least once in the past 24 hours.  I don’t know if it is a full moon rising or shark week right around the corner, or what, but I am a right angry mother.

Kid D has been home sick all week.  It is not his fault that he is sick, but for-the-love-of-all-things-holy, why do boys have to be so freaking needy when they are sick?  It is a cough and some mild puking.  It’s nothing to get in a kerfluffle about.  I realize that the whining is a genetic male defect, and I know that you’re bored, but please let me sit on the toilet without you knocking on the door so you can tell me that Craig Kimbrel had his 100th save against the Giants last night, and he’s the second youngest pitcher in the MLB to do it, and you’re hungry for something but you just don’t know what.

And Kid E has decided to stop sleeping through the night again.  For no reason.  He says he gets lonely.  I’m too tired to even come up with a response to that.  The broken sleep thing kills me.  There is not enough coffee in the world (especially when Sheepdog and Kid A take the very last K-cups in the house) to fix me right the next day.

And the girls are in full-on battle mode with each other.  Kid C came to me and complained that Kid B is a tyrant.  They share a bathroom, and Kid B has apparently set forth some rules that Kid C does not necessarily agree with.  They fight over time limits in there, closed doors and lights.  This morning Kid C was straightening her hair in the dark so as to not awaken the Kraken.  They fight about who left what in the shower.  And Kid A and Kid B constantly fight over clothes (clothes that NONE of them ever put away after I have lovingly washed, folded and delivered to their rooms each week, even after I have reminded them daily).  I tell them they have to learn to figure it out on their own, otherwise they will get eaten alive in a sorority house or in the workplace with dudes or on the playground with the other mommies when they grow up.  Stand up for yourself, but be kind and thoughtful to the people around you at the same time.  But nobody listens to me.

Until I have had enough.  Then they all had better lend an ear.

It got so bad with Kid A that I gave her a Come to Jesus in the kitchen when she got home yesterday.  She has had a really rough year, but enough is enough.  Enough with the disrespect.  She is dismissive to the other kids and rude to me, unless she wants something.  Her phone, laptop and car are all up on the block for repossession if things don’t improve ASAP.  She is never home and when she is, she is usually disagreeable.  To a degree she is “just being a teenager,” but there are some behaviors that are simply not acceptable.  So the rest of the kids got dressed down last night or this morning as well.

Did I mention that Sheepdog is in California for work and some biking?

Motherhood is hard.  There are no instructions or rules, so you just have to make stuff up as you roll along.  And not only do I second guess some of my decisions, but everybody else around me does as well (don’t worry… I most likely judge you right back).

Also, motherhood never ends.  You have to do it when you are sick, or tired, or sick and tired.  You have to do it on weekdays and holidays (even the federal ones).  Sometimes you have to do it when you husband is on a business trip, or crappier yet – sometimes moms have to do it all alone.

This is getting really negative.  I need to make a U-turn.

There are also a ton of rewarding things about motherhood.  I can’t articulate any of them right now, but deep down I know that there are a lot of great reasons to purposely choose motherhood as your life sentence.  There really are.  I swear.

OK, not such a great effort, so I’m heading back to my rant.

Do you know what I really hate?  I hate Mother’s Day.

There, I said it.

I hate all of the commercialism, the flowers (dead in a few days) and the cards ($5.99 for folded paper, really?) and the candy (did you not see me struggling to work out every day this week?).  I hate the stress of coming up with the perfect gifts to let my mom or mother-in-law know just how much they mean to me.  I hate that dads and kids are forced to create a perfect day for moms on this randomly designated Sunday in May, because it rarely rises to meet the mark – for the dads, the kids or the moms.  I hate that my annual trip out of town over the second Sunday in May (Mother’s Day – Run Away and No, He Didn’t!), got canceled again due to scheduling conflicts.


So, here’s what I propose.  Get rid of Mother’s Day.  It is too much pressure on everybody involved.  Nobody has a relationship with their mother that is simple enough to be tied up with wrapping paper and a bow, and everyone involved knows it.  Just make sure to tell your mom (and any mom, for that matter) how great you think she is, whenever the thought strikes you.  You don’t have to save it for any particular day.  Crappy jewelry turns green or goes out of style; a compliment is forever.

And maybe you could also put away your clothes, stay in your own bed, don’t talk back, and be nice to your sister.  Oh, and get well soon, Kid D.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

Happy Birthday, Kid A!

Seventeen is the atomic number of chlorine.  It is the seventh (lucky) prime number.  When you turn seventeen you can see an R-rated movie or donate blood.  It is the year when Harry and the other wizards came of age.  “Seventeen” is a song by the band Winger.  And it is the total number of syllables in a haiku (5+7+5).

Today is Kid A’s 17th birthday, so this one’s for her…

Born in a blizzard.
Middle name rhymes with “fire.”
You made me a mom.
Parenting Experiment #1

Me with Parenting Experiment #1, January 1996.

Happy 17th Birthday, Kid A!

I love, love, love (most of the time) navigating this crazy, winding path of mother and daughter with you.  My birthday wish is that you will always remember what brings you peace and happiness, and that you make time for whatever it is each and every day.  I love you unconditionally, forever and ever.  xo Mom

How Did I Do Last Night?


Despite the fact that he is now four, we continue to deal with Kid E getting out of bed and wandering into our bedroom in the middle of the night.  He does not do this every night, but probably two or three nights a week he will come into our room when we are in the deepest of R.E.M.s and stand over one of us (usually me) without so much as a word like Snoopy’s vulture character, with only his piercing stares jarring me out of sleep in a fight or flight mode that can only be replicated at point-blank range or by the Blair Witch Project.

Oh, did I wake you?

He will then crawl into bed between us.  And by “between” I mean practically underneath me with his big, fat, hard skull jammed into my lower back.  The position is so awkward that it is actually Cirque du Soleil-worthy.  And it is not exactly conducive to me falling back to sleep, nor is the adrenaline surge caused by being suddenly woken up out of a dead sleep.  But he mumbles in his sweet baby boy voice that he woke up lonely and he wants to cuddle and how can you say no to that?  And then he gently strokes my cheek while simultaneously sucking his thumb and tells that he loves me.  I am such a sucker for the sweet-talking boys, so I let him stay.  When he falls back to sleep I will ever so gently carry him back to his own bed, tuck him in and then start the painstaking toss and turn dance that awaits my stupid forty-year-old body and mind.


But I have had it.  I do not like having my sleep interrupted.  And I have tried everything with this kid.  He says he’s lonely, so I give him stuffed friends to sleep with.  He says he needs something to drink, so I give him a small glass of water.  Inevitably he then says he needs to pee, so I take him to the bathroom.  I threaten, cajole, reason, plead.  I have used positive reinforcement and negative punishment.  I have been unrelenting in carrying him back without a word every single time he comes into my room, even when he does it fifty times in a single night.  I have occasionally let him crawl in without ever waking up.  Sometimes things work and sometimes they don’t.  And the absolute most annoying part is that Kid E claims that he remembers nothing about getting up in the middle of the night.

Maybe there’s something wrong with him.  Maybe he has some sleepwalking zombie disorder.  Maybe he’s just a stubborn little monkey.  I do not know, but he just might be the kid who breaks me.

Every single morning he comes into my room and with sleepy eyes and a gravelly voice, he asks, “How did I do last night?”

Giant yawn.  

I was awake for well over two hours in the middle of the night.

“You are killing me here, kid.  You don’t remember coming into my room at 2:30 in the morning?”

“Um, no.  What did I do?”

At this point, I believe that he has either decided that playing dumb will get him a lesser sentence, or he’s gambling that maybe I am so tired/ old that I’ll forget everything.  Either way, he is like a black-out drunk friend from college who needs a recap of all of the events from the previous evening.  It can get annoying.  He also has taken to defending his actions from the night before, sometimes creatively, but usually with very matter-of-fact explanations.

“Dude, you were awful last night.  You tried to get in bed with me and when I took you straight back to your room you insisted that you needed something to drink.”

He almost laughed in relief.  Then he looked me straight in the eye and said with complete conviction, “Mom, sometimes thirsty happens.”

I almost expected a “duh” to follow, but he is good at reading an audience and left it off this time.  And in my sleep-deprived haze his justification seemed completely legitimate.


Wish me luck for tomorrow…