No one really tells you how hard parenting will be. We all complain about it. It’s this universal rite of passage to gripe about everything from colic to teenage rebellion. I think we all want to secretly sit in the corner via the fetal position, and argue over who has the worst go of it and therefore wins the proverbial last brownie on the table.
But no one tells you the real hard, cold, slap-in-the-face truth of parenting.
For example: When I was prego, I totally kept the really bad parts to myself. Why? because, well, misery loves company. I wanted all my friends to join me so we could have some sad saggy lady parts kind of a party. We have those. We just complain about how expensive implants are, and our super human ability to sling them over our shoulders. I need a saggy booby hero cape to go with my newfound talents.
And now that the chitlins are older, I’m thinking back to myself, to all those people who told me “It will get easier” because I’m kind of wondering when the “easier” part will get here. It’s just a trade off. One level of struggle for another. When they’re babies, even if they have colic, they’re not going anywhere. They don’t climb to the top of the kitchen cabinets and literally hang from your kitchen chandelier. They don’t leave puddles of pee on the carpet like puppies after they smear chocolate and crayon on your walls. They sleep. No one told me that bathtimes, naptimes, bedtimes, playtimes, and everything in between could be a knock down drag out kind of a challenge.
Sometimes I feel like I’m on Gladiators.
No one told me that Aiden would run around naked in the bathroom, while I yell at him, running a bathtub full of water. Emerson would laugh hysterically while I try to remove her shirt, so that she flails about enough until I can’t corral her anymore…escaping my grasp to prance about bottomless, with her shirt wrapped around her like a straight jacket. She wins. (Triumphant laugh.) All the while Malone, who has ever so curiously been watching the bath water that I was running, somehow, magically climbs and slips and falls into the garden tub. After I save him from drowning, I find that his diaper was completely full of a nasty poo, and now the tub is as well.
Calgon. Take. Me. Away. (Just not in that tub.)
No one told me that Emerson would wander into the kitchen this morning with a bottle full of my fave sparkly fingernail polish. And drop the bottle. So that shards of sparkly glass went everywhere and our grout is now filled with irremoveable, ill-fated glitter. Now my kitchen belongs to rainbow brite. That is, until we re-grout. {yep. because re grouting is at the top of my to do list.}
No one told me that reinforcing the idea of manners in my children requires the patience and tact of a flipping ninja warrior trained by martha stewart herself.
And for the love of all things holy, no one told me about the stomach viruses. That I would find Malone playing in Aiden’s latest mishap that I hadn’t had a chance to clean up, because I was caring for Aiden, even though I wisely had enough forethought to close the younger two in the bedroom so that I could clean. But Emerson now knows how to work door locks. WOOT.
All I ever hear about are heroic moms with their selfless stomachs of steel. What about the ones with their own bad gag reflexes, who have to hide their faces in their shirts to save themselves from the smell while they dutifully clean up aforementioned carnage? AFTER twelve hours of sleep in 36 hours? Mental. Meltdown.
No one warned me about any of it.
One of my friends told me recently she wants to have another baby.
This is what I said to her:
And then I remembered that there’s something I kind of like about my crayoned walls, pee stained carpet and glittery kitchen grout. A no holds barred full on love of life with my three incredible blessings in it. Its rough, but we all know its more than completely worth it. (With a few girls nights dabbled in between)
So I recanted my original statement, and told her it was a breeze.
That she should have ten. The more the crazier merrier, right?
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