It's here!!!!!!

I am now, officially, a published author! OK, I got paid in Care Bear and children's yoga DVD's (no, I'm not kidding), but still they'er my words and they're in print! To see it in full go to:
www.parentpaper.com and scroll to page 82. And, yes, it was like aligning the planets getting a picture of the family together where I am actually in it and don't look like something I pulled out of the sink drain. And, yes, #2 looks like she's plotting to take over the world (as described by KK) and Little Man looks semi-retarded with his fingers in his mouth, but my hair looks decent so too bad. And Tony and I are also quoted in the feature article on page 20, always horning in on my fame, that one.

SQUEE!

(And spekaing of exclamation points, they tacked one on at the end of the article where one, previosly, did not exist. I HATE EXCLAMATION POINTS IN HUMOR!!!!)

No, it's not the Easter Bunny

I am so tired I want to shoot myself in the face, but instead, I decided to write. I am almost done painting the living room for the second time in ten months. After no longer being able to live with the boring taupe I slapped on the walls to cover up the grimy, off-white from the previous owners, I finally decided on a color scheme for our as-of-yet furniture-less front room, and painted it Labrador Blue. It's actually the color of the Dunphy's entryway on Modern Family (shut up*). It's not the painting that 's killing me, since you all know I take care of all the wall treatments in the this family. It was pretty funny today when the neighbor's five year-old son saw me in my painting togs, asked me what I was doing and upon being told said, "I thought guys do the painting." Not in the this family, boy-o. Anyway, what is killing me is this first time I've had to return to my paint-during-nap phase of home improvement, now with two kids waiting to be picked up from elementary school, afternoon playdates, and homework to be done. The last time I did this, I was able to park #1 and #2 in front of Sesame Street and put my feet up for the rest of the afternoon while admiring my handiwork.

As the subtitle of my blog states, "No on told me it would be like this", and trying to squeeze what most people spend a whole Saturday doing into one three hour nap is another thing left out of the stay-at-home mom job description. Lest you think this will all be about painting, I have another story that exemplifies this "seriously?" aspect of parenting.

A few weeks back, the kids were all out in the backyard playing peacefully, alone, as Little Man's physical dexterity has increased to the point where an errant twig will not send him toppling, head-first, to the ground, requiring my constant supervision. I was in the kitchen prepping dinner, uninhibited by requests for Goldfish and The Backyardigans, which alone made the $1500 we shelled out for a playset, instead of living room furniture, seem like a really wise decision. I was just about to relax and begin to enjoy the silence when #1 comes running into the kitchen. Expecting a report of her brother's bleeding head wound as punishment for my tempting the parenting fates by letting my guard down, I was relieved, then immediately again alarmed, when she told me with a squeamish look on her face, "I think Reilly found an animal in the bushes and he's shaking it with his mouth and it's squealing." Oh. Shit.

I run outside already screaming the dog's name, yelling, "DROP IT!!!" He darts out of the garden guiltily, and there I see his prey in the underbrush. A baby rabbit. A baby, friggin', rabbit. Couldn't it have been a squirrel (since we all know our family feud with that species), or a chipmunk, some animal that doesn't appear with such adorable, fuzzy-eared, frequency in a kid's world, as a rabbit? Now I have to keep everyone calm and explain how Reilly isn't really a savage, killing machine and that he was only doing what he is genetically pre-disposed to do when he encounters a small animal, which is grab it by the neck, shake it to ensure it's dead and bring it back to his master ...me.**

I now see how the rest of my afternoon is going to go and wonder where I put those empty shoe boxes and where the beach shovels are. Until #1 and I take a closer look. "Look, Mom! It's still alive! We can save it!" Indeed, we can see little Thumper's heart beating as he lies pitifully on his side drenched in dog saliva. Thanks a million, Reilly. You couldn't do me a favor and finish the job? As I kneel there, wondering how I explain paralysis to a seven and five year-old, the rabbit starts frantically bicycling its legs. Maybe he's OK! So with Little Man chanting, "Rabbitrabbitrabbitrabbit", I do the only thing I can and suppressing my gag reflex, turn the little guy over and hope he runs away.

No dice. Thumper plops back over on his side, still working his legs like a Rockette, and now I know his back is broken, but not broken enough to kill him. Sweet. Now I begin the explanation I was dreading concerning spinal cords and what happens when one is severed, and of course, #2 requires visual aides, requiring my firing up the laptop in the backyard while we all stare at Thumper and wonder what to do. I immediately put the kibosh on any plan to take this rabbit to the vet as I am not about to defer any further the purchase of living room furniture to save an obviously doomed forest creature. In the end, I lined a shoe box (which thankfully was in the garage) with a towel and placed Thumper gently in it, then put it on a shelf in the garage so no animals would get to him while I awaited H's return from work. The text I sent him - "There is a paralyzed, baby rabbit dying in a box in the garage thanks to your dog." He was then informed he was going to have to drown the rabbit when he got home, since I really didn't want the poor little guy to suffer, and all I needed was a Bunny Death Watch where I would wind up feeding Thumper with a baby bottle as he lingered for weeks. Thankfully, God intervened and Thumper passed away sometime between the chicken nuggets and bath time. Followed by a long discussion of heaven and who gets admitted.

This, my friends, is a perfect example of parenting on the fly. I didn't lose my shit on the dog, despite wanting to desperately, and I managed to keep the kids from losing their minds. We all think parenting is going to be so straight forward, full of days at the park and books at bedtime with easy lessons about right and wrong sprinkled on top. We don't stop to think about what happens in between - dead rabbits in the backyard, near drownings, trips to the urgent care and all the disgusting crap you'll wind up touching. But these are the stories that make life interesting, that make you not want to rip out your hair with boredom. This kind of stuff keeps you on your toes. Doesn't make handling a rabbit dripping with dog spit any less gross though.

*Now I have something else in common with Claire Dunphy, other than being a high-strung, controlling, mother of three who is married to a man who acts, occasionally, like a functional retard.
**H will dispute this claim, but really, who is the dog afraid of when he's gotten into the garbage?

Nothing in moderation...

I have officially had enough of the snot, sore throats and wracking coughs afflicting the adults of the Mean Mommy household. Shouldn't I be granted some kind of special immunity, being the sole provider of care for three small children? That's a design flaw I'd say, God. I also can't wait for this little gem to filter it's way down to the offspring and then I can spend one of the last few precious weeks of school with at least one of them home and in my company constantly.

Fortunately, I only experienced the cough and a poorly-timed pulled neck muscle (Little Man's new favortie game is flinging his arms around my neck while I dress him, lifting up his legs and squealing, "I HANG ON YOU!"), making rest and some extended couch time the only remedy I needed. Since the children have remained healthy thus far, I was able to do this during Little Man's naptime and lie round watching all the Wendy Williams I had in the DVR hopper and sleep like the dead. I was also able to eat my way through half the pantry - Chips Ahoy, peanut butter (put in a bowl, I was sick after all), Entemann's donuts, bags of Pirate's Booty (thank you Robert's American for making it possible for me to eat a whole bag of what are, essentially, Cheetos with no guilt since they're organic), pretzels dipped in cream cheese (a college favorite, please refer to the picture I posted previously and you now understand why I was fat). Feed a cold, indeed.

Days like these bring to light the fact that I have absolutely no ability to live my life in moderation. I go at everything full tilt. I am either working myself into an early grave existing on six hours of sleep and too much caffeine, or lying prostrate, full of empty carbohydrates, with my thumb changing the channel on the remote as the only sign of life. I have only two modes, "On" and "Off". In "On" mode, I am up at the crack of dawn to run, I clean my house maniacally, steam vegetables for the kids' dinner while I supervise the children playing Play-doh at the kitchen table. In "Off" mode, I sleep until seven, do not work out, barely manage to empty the dishwasher, and feed the kids a dinner of Gorton's fishsticks that have been in the freezer since we moved into the house, that they will consume in the family room while watching a Pixar movie, as I sit in the arm chair reading a book. Occasionally there is wine involved, but not until Daddy gets home.

I have been this way all of my adult life, toggling between these two modes of being, and academic life, as well as a career as a teacher, were both well suited for this particular mindset. Pushing and pushing and pushing yourself until the next vacation or long weekend were par for the course. My work life is pretty constant now and even though the scenario involving the fish sticks described above is considered a day "Off" for me, I have to be "On" almost all the time. There's no two week vacation. But there is ample opportunity for me to switch gears. My house can be as clean as an operating room or as dirty as a pig sty. The kids can be painting, crafting and playing board games, or they can all three be on the computer, watching TV and playing the Wii simultaneously. Most days are a blend of both gears, and I applaud the one area in which I have found some moderation in my life. But if H gets a text about there being no dinner, it's because I have hit the power switch on the day.

And while raising them has brought some balance to my otherwise high-low life, the way I dress post-kids is a new area where the gap between "On Mary" and "Off Mary" can be seen. Pre-kids, my weekday wardrobe was all slacks, tops from Banana Republic, and stacked loafers and the hair was blown out daily (pre-coloring years, obviously, as my colorist would have had a stroke). Weekends were a variation on that theme, with a skirt of dress thrown in for an night out. Post-kids, as you all know, "weekday Mary" dons yoga or cargo pants daily, and scrapes her hair into a bun, and on the bad days, her Yankee hat. The weekends though, my hair is blown out and my more delicate clothes get to see the light of day as I actually have more then three minutes to shower and I am not in charge of shitty diapers Saturday and Sunday. And while I tromp around town in flip-flops and sneakers weekdays, on the weekends I cripple myself in heels and impractically high boots. Daddy can chase you all around, thank you very much. People I only know from "work", i.e. moms from school I don't hang out with socially, have actually had trouble recognizing me in my weekend state. One in particular, calls it my "Wonder Woman" persona. I wish spinning around with my arms akimbo was all I needed to dry this mass of hair.

Another change associated with the weekend - booze. I indulge more often and in greater quantities of wine, and though I joke about my frequent consumption, I am not really much of a weeknight drinker. Know why? Because if I'm going to drink, I will want to have more then one glass and that makes getting up so damn early more of a hell than it already is. So Monday through Friday (OK, Thursday), I'm pretty much a teetotaler. Even in college, you would not see me in the bars, except for Saturday night, throwing back kamikaze shots dancing to "Let's Talk About Sex". And while this might be the signal of a drinking problem, I do know my limits and really don't like to be too drunk. I am rarely the drunkest one at the party, but am usually the loudest and the first one to start dancing, sometimes when it's questionably appropriate. Although my friends and I have come up with a term we call Alcohol Regret Syndrome, where you were not really that drunk, but you were definitely too honest with someone and you spend the whole next day wanting to die of shame after telling your friend she really needs to stop wearing those low-rise pants.

And then there's food. You are all way too familiar with my love of food and the mass quantities I would eat on a daily basis if fitting into my jeans were not an issue. Watching my eldest eat is proof that it was a case of nature rather than nurture that created this voracious appetite. My daughter CAN EAT. She's picky about what foods, but when surrounded by unlimited quantities of her favorite things she can pack it away. Thank God she's still growing and hopefully she will be blessed with a high metabolism, but I see shades of myself as she asks me for a fourth piece of pizza or a third cookie, as I myself as child would eat myself sick and still can to this day. As and adult, I have to plan around it. I eat the in the Spartan manner I do Monday through Friday (seriously this time about Friday though) just so I can eat whatever the hell I want all weekend such as H's amazing cooking, lunches at Friendly's, and lots of wine and desserts. I don't know if this is good nutritional planning or a sign of an eating disorder. All I know is when I am eating something really, really good, I don't want to be bothered thinking with thoughts like, "I should really stop, this has a lot of calories." I wish I could be one of those people who has dessert every single night in small, savoring portions. Or one of those people who take fifteen minutes to eat a cookie (I'm looking at you, Sasha), but it ain't gonna happen. Eating that way seems like a trial of patience and self-control, and when the entirety of my life is based on subduing my own impulses and desires for the good of others, control is the last thing I want when dealing with baked goods. I think you can really categorize people by whether, when given a handful of M&Ms, they eat them one at a time or shove them all in their mouth.

So while I may lament, at times, I can not live my life at a constant speed, I think my nature has served me well. They say parenting is a marathon, not a sprint. I disagree. I spend my entire day sprinting between schools and activities, followed by quiet periods reading to Little Man or taking walks with #2 . And children, by nature drive you to the extremes, requiring snail-like slowness when teaching potty training at home, and cheetah-like speed when test-driving it in public. Within the space of two minutes, a kid can be smothering you with hugs, then driving you to the brink of insanity with requests for cookies before eight in the morning. I wish I could say I was one of those sweet, June Cleaver moms, who responds to everything in the same pleasant tone of voice, but you all know that's not true. Frankly, I think my kids would find it scary if I responded to one of them smacking the other with anything other than a swift, loud reprimand. And I think they like it when I declare it a day off in without so many words and we have pizza unexpectedly in the middle of the week or they get an extra half an hour of TV. Maybe they'll be writing a book about their Sybil of a mother someday though.

It's a crap shoot.

Little House of Inappropriateness

So I spent Mother's Day, sitting in a blissfully quiet house while H had the kids at his parents, preparing our Mother's day feast and I luxuriated in having all the time I wanted to write. Which meant I will wrote one post, then spent the rest of the afternoon flipping between Lifetime Movie Network and Jerseylicious before heading to my in-laws to drink copious amounts of wine and stuff myself sick.

Speaking of emotionally saccharine television (meaning Mother May I Sleep with Danger, not Jerseylicious), an old friend has reentered my life, Little House on the Prairie. My oldest has started reading the series in school, and I was inspired to curb her rabid Deal or No Deal viewing during her solo TV time after the other two are in bed, by introducing her to Melissa Gilbert and Michael Landon. Having loved this show so much as a child and watched it obsessively with my sister (she always claimed we were the modern day Laura and Mary), I was excited to see if my own child would be as enraptured.

Let's just say the apple does not fall far from the tree. Our first viewing was all I dreamed it would be. We sat snuggled on the couch, watching one of the early episodes when the Ingalls have just moved to Walnut Grove and Laura befriends a little girl born with one leg shorter than the other, crying like babies at the end when Pa cobbles a corrective shoe for the once-lame Olga who runs around the Ingalls' yard shouting, "Watch me run Papa!" to her stern, but now brought to manly tears, German father. This of course, started a whole conversation about birth defects, prosthetic legs and and corrective footwear. The next night was an episode when Laura and her family are trapped by a blizzard, on the verge of starving to death, when a Native American stumbles across their cabin and helps them survive. This got me thinking - Jesus Christ, this show really is not for children! It's rated "G" according to the TV guide, but how could I let #1, never mind #2, with her incessant questioning, ever watch this show alone? And these weren't even the bad episodes!

So in the spirit of Top Five's of years past, I was inspired to write about my five all-time inappropriate Little House episodes and detail how un-kid-friendly they are.

5. Our third night of viewing featured the episode where Laura and her dog, Jack, get bitten by her pet raccoon and the entire family spends a gut-wrenching week watching jack to see if he develops any symptoms as that will be the harbinger of Laura's untimely death. #1 and I were both hysterical as Laura asks Pa, "You're not telling me that I might get sick and die too, but that's why we're watching Jack, isn't it?" Hit-pause conversations included What Is Rabies?, Is There a Cure Now and, If So, What Is It? and What is a Blood Test? Nothing like this episode to make sure my kids run from the squirrels that frequent our part of the country. Can you imagine of one got in the van now???

4. Another episode early on, involves Ma. It was one of those strange episodes where only one character was featured. Ma scrapes her leg on a poke-y wire getting out of the wagon and a few days later, when Pa has taken the girls off somewhere overnight, her leg is so infected she can not walk to town to get help, and she contemplates performing a self-amputation in a creepy, hallucinatory, Bible-inspired effort at self-preservation. Fortunately, Pa arrives home in time to sop her from cutting her leg off with a dull hatchet.

3. Setting the DVR to record this series, I have to read every single episode description, lest we be surprised with a gem like we almost were on Thursday. That night's episode was the first of a two-parter. In the first, Ma finally gives birth, to a son, and the degree of Pa's happiness makes tom-boy-son-replacement, Laura, jealous to the point she wishes that Charles Junior had never been born. Then the baby dies. I still remember this scene as a child and I get chills just thinking about Ma in her nightgown and braid, pulling back the blanket in the cradle, thinking her baby is just sleeping late, and the horror and disbelief on her face as she realizes he is dead. Then she begins screaming for her husband, "Charles? CHARLES????" Can you just imagine the hit-pause conversations for this one? "Cancel recording of this episode?", blinks the DVR. I think so.
Oh, and the second of the two parts involved Laura running away to a mountain top to beg God to bring her brother back. On her journey, meets a David Koresh type who teaches her all about God and whittles her a crucifix. Guess the writers thought a one-two punch of SIDS and child molestation was too much, and Laura returned home unharmed.

2. Even as child, the crying face of Melissa Sue Anderson, who played Mary, annoyed the shit out of me. Still does. Here ice-blue eyes also creeped me out. So the episode where Mary goes blind is a real winner for me since she cries a lot and we spend a hell of a lot of time looking at her peepers. I have no clear memory of and could not find a definitive answer as to why she went blind, but I do remember her waking up, screaming like a banshee, "Pa, PAAAA? I CAN'T SEE! I CAN'T SEE!" (He really must grow tired of his name being constantly screamed) That would do wonders for #1 who recently started wearing glasses, as this is how Mary started down this road. Other Mary related tragedy? Her baby dies in an accidental fire at the blind school she and her blind husband* start. Those writers really have a grudge against babies.

1. And the single most disturbing episode of Little House on the Prairie, in my opinion, centers around adoptive brother Albert's morphine addiction. This seemed to go on for about ten episodes, and perhaps it was more than one, but from Albert's drug use, to his stealing from Doc Baker, to Pa's homespun rehab, tying Albert to the bed, it was, all of it, excruciating and disturbing to watch as a child and, I think, way more effective than the skeletal Nancy Reagan, telling me to "Just Say No".

There are many, many more episodes that could have made this list - Mary teaching in some hillbilly town where the Children of the Corn sexually harass her, Laura's baby dying (Jesus, enough with the dead babies already!), and the episode where a morbidly obese town resident fakes his own death so his daughter need no longer be ridiculed and embarrassed by his existence (they couldn't make him mentally retarded too and really kill me?), but there are so many other, wonderful episodes, I can't NOT watch with my girls. #1 and I have had so many great conversations about what good sisters Mary and Laura are to each other, and how hard they all work and appreciate what little they have, even if it's only every third episode I can record and show her. Although, I'm sure she is tired of my exclaiming, "See how much fun they're having with a stick?"

So we will continue our new nightly tradition, and watch Little House faithfully. Fortunately, they are showing the earlier episodes now. Because I think we can all admit the show really takes a downward turn when the kids all grow up, Laura marries "Manly", Nellie marries that nebbish, and the Ingalls adopt those two annoying child-actor-y little kids (played by Jason Bateman!). And one thing the show has helped along quite nicely? My pie addiction. Seriously. The woman has butter to churn, chickens to care for and clothes to sew. How is she making a pie every damn episode, forcing me to send H to the A&P?

*How unfair is it that Mary's husband regains his sight? I once heard a comedian say, "He can see again and his wife turns out to be hot! How lucky is he?"

Guest Writer, Mother's Day Edition - H

Hello dear readers, it's the insufferable H. This year for Mother's Day, the Mean Mommy simply asked me to do a guest post. The topic--imagine a day in life if I was the one staying home with kids. Sounds simple enough, right? Well she asked me about this over a month ago and now it's 10:30 the Friday before Mother's Day and we're busy all day tomorrow. So I guess we've stumbled upon one key difference between H and the Mean Mommy already - H doesn't plan in advance. Seriously, I'm the worst. I'm not disorganized--quite the opposite. If you need a last minute trip to Vegas planned and executed within 36 hours, I'm all over it. If you need something temporarily fixed with none of the proper tools a normal person would use to do the job, I'm your guy. But something happening 3 weeks from now? Might as well be next year.

I started by jotting all the things she needs to get done from sunup to sundown. It's a handful. I already knew this but it's even more daunting when you see it in writing. I have plenty of days with back to back meetings at work but at least I have Brickbreaker (or the ever convenient "Yeah sorry about missing your meeting. I had a 'client' issue to deal with").

So let's take a look at a typical day if I was in charge of this part of the corporation. For one, the missus gets up at 5am to run 5 1/2 miles on the treadmill before the kids get up--6 days a week. She's got me running now but I'm lucky to get up 3 days a week and 3 miles is all I can take. If I had the kids, I guarantee that workout would be blown off daily. I'd be pushing 205 chowing down on taylor ham, egg, and cheese sandwiches after I got the kids to school. The missus is 36 with 3 kids and manages to be in better shape than she was at 25 with no kids. I have to make an effort and not be a slob so we don't look like one of those fat guy/skinny wife sitcoms they keep cranking out and canceling.

I often do breakfast on the weekends and I must say it's the second worst part of child rearing . They can't prepare anything themselves, require about 17 plastic bowls and plates to feed 3 small kids, and generally drag-ass on eating the meal without constant berating. Changing crap is not exactly fun but I'd rather change a thousand diapers than have to deal with dealing up 3 meals and countless second breakfasts, pre-dinner pacifiers, and here-eat-this-and-shut-up-I-need-to-get-something-done snacks. Any attempt by me on Saturday to complain about the maintenance of the all day child buffet is met with the thousand-yard stare of a woman who does this the other 84 times a week.

Getting something on the table is hard enough but actually getting something healthy in their stomachs is a whole another effort. The missus makes homemade whole wheat pancakes with cinnamon and bananas on Sundays and freezes them for the week. Homemade pancakes. Weekly. I call this either "crazy" or "dedicated" - it's a fine line. I don't think I'd remember to keep the freezer stocked with Eggos. The fridge is full of strawberries, cantaloupe, steamed broccoli (done in between school drop-offs), cut-up pepper strips, and cucumbers. And the kids eat it. Every day. Sure, they have their weekly treat of a Happy Meal but the missus keeps it in check. If I were in charge, there would undoubtedly be more McNuggets in their future. It's just too easy - hit the drive-through on your way home. All this healthy produce stuff needs to be purchased, prepped, steamed and doled out to 3 little people who are going to put up some kind of fight regardless. It's one of the hardest parts of the job and I commend the missus wholeheartedly.

My son still takes naps in the middle of the day (occasionally). The missus uses this time to clean, get ahead on cooking dinner, and generally straighten up all the toys and crap the kids disperse throughout the house. I have no idea how she doesn't use that hour for random Internet surfing, watching the tube, or naps on the couch. With the girls in school and LM down for the count, I guarantee I would be sitting on my fat ass watching some Rommel biography on the History Channel for the umpteenth time.

School times are scattered for all three kids. Second grader #1 needs to be in by 8:15. Little Man has pre-school at 9:00. Number two is in PM kindergarten. This makes the normally harried shuttling of kids all over town triple the fun. Just getting them ready to head out for one trip is an exercise in futility. Put your shoes on. Put your shoes on. PUT YOUR SHOES ON. Maybe after the fourth time and burst blood vessel in your forehead do they spring into action. So having to drop-off and pick-up multiple times a day before 3pm puts a little crimp in your style. Dry cleaning? The bank? Food shopping? Good luck with that. Again, from my weekend experience, I can't do any of this stuff with all three in tow. I can perhaps manage two--sometimes. So with me in charge, we would inevitably have no clean clothes, money in the bank, or food on the table. I would still be trying to get someone's shoes on before it was time to make dinner.

After school isn't exactly a vacation. Dance, gymnastics, CCD, playdates--you name it. We live in the age of the over-scheduled child. "Go outside and play with a stick" just doesn't cut it anymore. But the missus manages to strike a balance - she gets them involved and having fun but doesn't stack up the activities so much they can't just play. Including going in the back and playing with sticks.

There is also the other extreme. As I mentioned, after the difficulty with the shoes, I would probably be late for gymnastics repeatedly. Given my lack of advance planning I would probably fail to schedule many playdates. I can power up the Wii though.

As the sun starts its decline, the witching hour begins - the dinner through bedtime. The missus usually starts prepping dinner during Little Man's nap. So assuming I was watching "Rommel" instead of par-cooking turkey sausage and chopping onions at 1pm, I would be scrambling to get both the kids meals done and something good for the two of us to enjoy. At this time the missus relents and gets Little Man out of her hair by letting him watch Thomas the Tank Engine or the Disney rip-off "Chuggington". That would be 30 of his allotted 60 minutes of television for the day. I don't think I really need to get into details on what the total TV viewing time would be under my regime.

Fed and happy, 6:30 rolls around and the end is within sight. At this time, a text from me usually comes in "Uh, running a bit late, ETA 8:00". Not that it makes that much difference because I'm rarely home before 7 anyway, but the extra hour is a special kick in the ass to end the day. Most days the kids need baths, and that my friends, is the absolute worst part of child rearing. It's fun when they're very small, watching their little chubby arms splash around in one of those little tubs. But the novelty soon wears off and becomes a backbreaking chore at the very end of the day. Now the older ones are too big to do the two for one, so you have to run three separate baths. Hunched over the tub on wet floor at the end of the day washing long hair and trying to keep LM from hurtling over the side is about the last thing you need after a full day in the coal mine. Needless to say, man rules would apply under my rule and a "sniff test" on the children would be liberally employed.

There you have it, a pretty accurate sampling of what the missus goes through everyday and some key differences between how she runs thing and how H would fare under the same circumstances. Surely I exaggerate just a bit, but I'm not that far off. Even if I could learn how to pre-pack lunch and schedule playdates ahead of time, I don't think I could keep from losing my mind. It's a damn hard job, folks, and I for one could not handle it as well as she can.

So Happy Mother's Day to my wonderful wife, who not only runs a tight ship for three kids under 8 but has to keep me from doing stupid things as well ("Do you really need a taylor ham egg and cheese right now?"). And while raising a brood can be a slog at times, there are many times when we sit at the dinner table with the little ones quietly munching away and smile, knowing we are very, very lucky.

Disgusting things I have touched in the last 12 hours....

Urine soaked pajamas
Urine soaked sheets
A dog-attacked bag of garbage
Poo
Raw chicken (while making dinner)
A rotten, liquified cucumber (not a part of dinner, fortunately)
Toilet water (while retrieving a piece of lego)
Dog vomit (containing pieces of garbage)
Boogers (picked off my pant leg after LM used them for Kleenex)
A bag of moldy red pepper strips (found in the van)

Where is my hazmat suit?

Don't judge me!

This weekend was full of the usual nonsense that, despite promises made during the week of really spending some time together, forces H and me, more often than not, into separate cars with different combinations of children, taking them to various activities and leaves us looking at each other, bleary-eyed, Sunday night asking, "What exactly did we do this weekend?"

Saturday morning found me at the grocery store with #2 and Little Man, and H on his way to lacrosse with #1. Since we keep farmer's hours, even on the weekends - with the exception of Saturday night when we stay up too late, drinking way too much wine, and then are still woken up at the ass-crack of day by one of the offspring Sunday morning - H decided to stop for some coffee on his way to the field. #1 had not been in the best mood and was already claiming to be tired, so when a Miley Cyrus song came on as he pulled into the parking lot of the local Starbucks, he relented and allowed her to stay in the car while he ran in to get coffee. He was lucky enough to get the spot right in front of the window and as he was not burdened with my 15 adjective order, he'd be right out.

So as H is ordering his coffee, some guy walks in, and apparently having seen him leave #1, knows H is her father, and tells him in front of the whole store, "Dude*, you just left your kid in the car with the engine running? Anything could happen. That's fucked up." I am so, so proud of H. He got right in this idiot's face with a pointed finger and told him, "Mind your own damn business and get the hell out of here!" Which the guy did, quickly, without his coffee.

Oh. My. God. Dear readers, can you imagine, if that had been me instead of my mild-mannered H? I can just see the police blotter now, "Mother of three arrested in coffee shop assault..." This is the perfect example of something that drives me into a blind rage - people offering their opinions in parenting situations of which they know nothing. Why, why, why do people feel free to comment when children are involved? I can not even count the number of times I have been in the grocery store and had someone, the cashier, the deli guy, or a random person, tell me as Little Man sits crying in the cart, "Somebody needs a nap!" No, somebody needs to shut the fuck up, and that somebody is you because I am about to lose my damn mind after arguing with a toddler as to why he can not have a chocolate chip cookie at nine in the morning and the last thing I need is you telling me what my kids needs! Or another random person telling me I shouldn't let LM play with matchbox cars, while waiting in line at the post office becasue the wheels are a choking hazard. Really? Know what else is a hazard? Criticizing my choice of distracting toy, since I know you'd have something to say if my kids was whining his ass off while I'm in line with you. Maybe it was the only toy he would accept, or maybe it was the onyl one in my bag. The point is, you have no idea so keep your comments to yourself.

I fully realize why this particular interaction got both H and I so riled up. It hit a nerve. We know we aren't supposed to leave our kids alone in a car, but sometimes, as parents, you are so exhausted, you play the odds. What were the odds of #1 being abducted, right in front of the window of a crowded Starbucks, in a white, upper-middle class town, in a twelve year old Jetta? Not a car-jacker's dream vehicle I'd say. Sure, he was also taking a chance #1 wouldn't get curious about the gear shift, as in a story famous in family lore, when one of my brothers in-law pulled the car out of park while my mother in-law was in the pharmacy.

I conducted an informal survey, and 99% of my fellow parents have done something similar, whether it was leaving their kid in a car, or in their crib, sleeping, to run down the block to grab their other kid at school. Parenting these days has an added weight as we are not supposed to let our children out of sight for a split second, lest the worst happen. Doing some online research, kidnapping statistics have not gone down significantly in the past thirty years, yet we act as if our children could be snatched from our grasps any second. Modern parents are tired, tired of having to lug three kids in and out of the car to grab the dry cleaning when you are parked right out front, tired of having to wake the baby from his nap in the stroller to drag him into the school to pick up your other kids. So once in a while we cave, we do the wrong thing even though we would kill ourselves if something bad happened. We are parents, but we are human.

Yes, this is a case of protesting too much, but I know in my bones that guy who accosted H either has no children or has never been left to care for them for any extended period of time requiring booster seats and numerous errands and has no idea how much of a break it is to run into a coffee shop alone for thirty seconds without having to worry about someone knocking over the travel mug display. The moral of the story is, he should have kept his damn latte hole shut. Or better yet, if he was so concerned, offered to stay by the car while H got his coffee, but that would have been too inconvenient. It's easier to open your mouth than to try to help - or understand.

*Using this honorific past the age of eighteen immediate qualifies you as an idiot in my book.