Quote of the Day: Fancy Pants

The scene: It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m hanging out with my big sis. In a very rare move for me, I’m wearing something other than total crap purchased a half decade ago at Target or Forever 21. This is quite surprising; to say I am typically not fashion-savvy is an understatement. As evidence, this was the best thing I could scrounge together for Christmas:

I just don’t care about fashion. It’s too much effort, I don’t know what I’m doing, it costs money, you have to try things on…no thank you.

But a couple weeks ago, I passed by the Gap while at the mall for some delicious Fatburger (when you have a toddler, these are the kind of thrilling outings you concoct for yourselves since they can’t be trusted to behave in normal society) and I saw some printed skinny jeans in the window. Again, I really don’t care about clothes, but for some reason I was drawn to these stupid pants. They just seemed…cool. I had nothing to wear them with and really no idea whether they looked good or not, but I wanted them. Behold:

This is not my hot body nor are those my cute shoes. Regrettably.

My defenses were down because I was in a burger-induced coma, and they were 30% off, so I purchased them.

Anyway, back to the scene at hand.

Shannon takes note of my decidedly “not me” outfit and asks where I got my pants. I explain about the Fatburger coma and then say, “they’re a little too cool for me; if only I were one of the twins, I could totally pull them off!”

To which she replies with some sage older sister wisdom: “Well, no one knows who you are when you’re out in public…for all they know, you ARE cool and you DO pull them off!”

So if you see a tattooed chick with gray roots (and yes, that’s roots as in “hair that hasn’t been dyed,” not boots as in “cool shoes I do not own”) and AWESOME pants…I am pulling them off.

Wake Me Up When March F*cking Ends

March has been a rough month, and I couldn’t be happier that it’s finally over. This month has caused me so much distress that I felt compelled to write a song about it. Wanna here it? Here it goes:

(to the tune of Greenday’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends”)

March has been a total pain
And while I’ve tried not to complain…
Wake me up when March f*cking ends

Everyday it’s something new
And so I’m saying, “March, screw you!”
Wake me up when March f*cking ends

Bubba’s ears blew up again
And daycare said “stay out!”
Used vacation time again
I want to cry and pout

Then Mama got sick too
And I tried to power through…
Wake me up when March f*cking ends

Working, running, all while sick
Things got worse pretty quick
Wake me up when March f*cking ends

But sickness ain’t the only thing
That’s making me long for spring…
Wake me up when March f*cking ends

Daycare closed for spring break
Childcare’s a rough road
I thought I was gonna break
When my babysitter no-showed!

Now the Yankees are giving me spells
WHY WOULD YOU SIGN VERNON WELLS!?!
Wake me up when March f*cking ends

This weekend there’ll be no rest
Easter is work if you hadn’t guessed
Wake me up when March f*cking ends

March has been a total pain
And while I’ve tried not to complain…
Wake me up when March f*cking ends
Wake me up when March f*cking ends
Wake me up when March f*cking ends!!!

Bubba, at least, is unfazed by the March Madness.

The Crazy Files, Volume VI: The Search History of a Paranoid Nutjob

Someone got to my blog this week by googling a very peculiar query: “newborn gives me dirty looks.”

Like any sane person, my initial reaction was a mixture of amusement and curiosity. I imagined a wild-eyed, sleep-deprived new mom — covered in spitup and leaked breastmilk, obviously — desperately trying to interpret her baby’s facial expressions and growing more paranoid with each passing sleepless hour. “What a lunatic,” I chuckled. “Why would someone worry about such nonsense?!”

And then the part of my brain that is self-aware caught up, and I remembered that I myself am a lunatic and have turned to Google with a myriad of my own cringe-worthy concerns over the past couple of years. Here’s a sampling of my humiliatingly deranged search history from my pregnancy and the first fifteen months of Bubba’s life (and sadly, NONE of these are fabricated or even exaggerated; I am, regrettably, truly this crazy):

• Odds of miscarriage at ___ weeks pregnant. I was very, very terrified of miscarrying, right up to the third trimester, at which point I transitioned my fears over to stillbirth.
• Does being startled affect a fetus? I got startled by a loud noise (it was my shampoo falling down in the shower…don’t judge me) when I was about six months pregnant, and my heart was a-poundin’ for a solid ten minutes. I started to worry that that the baby’s blood pressure would be impacted and that the poor little lad would suffer some sort of problem thanks to my weak nerves.
• What does the death rattle sound like? Bubba was three weeks old and making a really weird snorting sound in his sleep…I was concerned. And tired.
• I hate breastfeeding. Poor Bubba. I tried!
• Infant Motrin accidental overdose. I got confused between Tylenol’s and Motrin’s respective dosing regimens and dosed Bubba about an hour earlier than I should have. Panic ensued. (He’s fine.)
• Long-term impact of daycare on mother-child bonding. Legitimate concern.
• Toddler refuses to say “mama”. I suspect it’s personal and deliberate at this point. Perhaps because I sent him to daycare!

Thinking your newborn is showing some sass by shooting you dirty looks doesn’t sound so crazy anymore, does it?

Dirty look? Sweet smile? You be the judge.

Wordless Wednesday: Sharkboy!

There are many advantages to having a boy, but there’s no denying that they get the short end of the stick when it comes to clothes — there’s just no equivalent to glitter, tutus, and flowery headbands in the boys’ clothing section!

Except the shark hoodie.

Sickness Is For The Weak!

I often say “I never get sick,” because it’s basically true: I am very, very rarely down for the count. But “I never get sick” is more than just my nature — it’s an essential facet of my life philosophy. A mantra, if you will.

Being sick is for weak people, and I ain’t no bitch!

This attitude is deep-seated and has served me well for years. Growing up, whenever one of my sisters or I would ask to stay home “sick” from school, my mom would bust out her classic line: “get up and eat a bowl of cereal and see how you feel.” She wasn’t cruel or insensitive; she just had no patience for minor maladies and was not one to coddle a minor cold. Rub some dirt in it! It’s the Irish way! She was right, of course: nine times out of ten, by the time you got out of bed and ate the damn cereal, you had perked up well enough to get your ass out the door and off to school.

Eventually, I adopted this m.o. myself and became a serious believer in mind over matter. Who’s got time for lazing about or calling in sick? If my child or husband is sick, I don’t worry about catching it — I proclaim that I will not get sick and I soldier forth. If I start feeling a little tickle in my throat, I don’t moan about it and create a self-fulfilling prophecy, I chow down on some delicious Ricolas and suck it up.

And I’m telling you, folks, this mentality works!

After a week of taking care of my poor sick baby, I started feeling a little off on Saturday morning. My throat felt really raw, and I may have even coughed once or twice (the worst!). But I brushed these symptoms off and moved forward with my plans for the day, including a 10 mile run.

Well, I made it through the run, but within three hours of returning home, I was shivering in bed with a 102 degree fever, lamenting to my husband that my scalp hurt (it really did! What is that about?!). Nevertheless, I weakly assured him that I would be perfectly fine by the morning and that I just needed a little rest. “Don’t worry,” I croaked. “I never get sick…I’m not wasting my Sunday…you’ll see…I bet I’ll even feel well enough to run again tomorrow!”

AND GUESS WHAT, YOU SORRY SONS OF BITCHES?! I DID INDEED FEEL BETTER IN THE MORNING AND I WENT ON A THREE MILE RUN!

And then I wanted to die.

And now I’m seriously sick.

And I’ve probably said “I’m gonna feel better aaaaaaany time now” about six hundred times, and it still hasn’t worked.

And TFW keeps mocking me for all the times I said I never get sick.

HELP!!!!!!

At least Bubba is well again:

Sex Ed

Despite growing up in the middle of a gaggle of children (I have three older sisters and two — the infamous twins — younger), I never felt starved for attention. My mom was very involved in our lives and activities and was never too busy for any of us, even when the twins were babies and cried nonstop for about two straight years (I’m still traumatized).

That said, I recently realized that she did drop the ball with me in one major area: we never had “the sex talk” or anything remotely resembling one!

And lest you think my mom is some sort of a prude who just didn’t want to discuss it, the other day my little sister wrote a blog post in which she casually mentioned having known how babies were made since she was four.

From whom do you think she gleaned that juicy information?!

Furthermore, I have since verified with other sisters that they DID learn about sex from our dear mother and that she was in fact quite open and willing to discuss it!

To be fair, I never asked her for much information on the subject. I can recall asking my mom precisely two sex-related questions:

1. When she was pregnant with the twins (I was in kindergarten), I asked her how the babies were going to get out of that giant belly when the time came. She nonchalantly replied (and I remember this exact quote with crystal-clear clarity!), “oh, from my vagina,” and carried on with whatever she’d been doing as if I’d inquired about our dinner plans or something. Perhaps because of the (hilariously) calm way in which she responded, I was satisfied and asked no follow-ups.

2. Seven years later, when I was 12 and really should have known better, a relative was expecting a baby and I realized I was still unclear on the whole pregnancy process. At this point we had learned the mechanics of sex at school (horrors!), but apparently I hadn’t put everything together yet. “How does a woman even know to go to the doctor or take a test to check and see if she’s pregnant?” I asked. I had always sort of imagined all of a sudden feeling a baby kick inside you and rushing to the doctor to learn that you were four months along, but this relative had learned she was pregnant after just a couple of weeks, and I was fairly certain she couldn’t possibly have felt the baby move yet. My mom looked at me like I was crazy (because, come on now, I WAS TWELVE) and said, “well, she knows when she misses her period.” Duh.

That was it! Where the hell was I during the lengthy and informative conversations she apparently had with everyone else?! (Probably reading a Babysitters Club book and tuning out the incessant noise.)

Since my mom was obviously not adverse to discussing such topics, I can only assume that I simply got lost in the shuffle and she never realized that her poor middle child was going through life not even understanding how periods related to pregnancy. It’s a good thing I was so unpopular with the fellas as a young teen or I could have been one of those pathetic middle-schoolers who gets pregnant because they don’t know how sex works.

TFW and I often joke about who will have to answer Bubba’s cringe-worthy questions as he gets older and more curious, and I used to think I’d be happy to let Daddy handle all of that (it sounds so terribly awkward!). The more I think about it, though, I’m coming around on my stance. I would hate for my son to be misinformed because he didn’t ask and I never brought it up with him, and I certainly don’t want him learning things from his idiot friends or (worse) the internet.

So I’ve decided I’ll be proactive with my son’s education. If he asks questions, I’ll take a page from my mom’s book and be open, honest, and calm. And if he doesn’t ask questions, I vow not to lose track of which of my children have gotten the scoop and I will sit him down and fill him in!

And if I need any help, I’m sure I can ask the twins, who probably already knew more about sex than I did when this photo was taken:

Sick Baby Math Class: Pop Quiz!

I understand that most of you probably weren’t vice president of your high school’s math club (a volunteer position that required zero qualifications and came with but one duty: show up) like I was, but hopefully your skills with word problems haven’t diminished too much over the years, because it’s time for a pop quiz!

Sharpen your #2 pencils and remember to show your work!

1) In the past four months, Bubba has endured three ear infections, and each infection is accompanied by three days of crying. Assuming each teardrop has a volume of 0.05mL, what is the circumference of the hypothetical swimming pool Maureen could have filled with her son’s tears?

2) A doctor faxes two prescriptions to a pharmacy at 4:10pm. It takes Maureen twenty-five minutes to reach the pharmacy, at which time the pharmacy claims to have received just one of the prescriptions. If the situation is not rectified until 7:15pm, how many times has Maureen had to say, “no, I know you already filled that one, I’m calling about the other prescription” to an employee at Target Pharmacy?

3) TFW gets three times as many vacation days annually as Maureen does, but is twice as important at his job. When Bubba is too sick to go to daycare, how long should the argument over who has to take the day off to tend to him last? Express your answer in graph form.

4) Use the distributive property to solve the following: if 4 ear drops must be administered thrice daily for seven days and 5.5mL of amoxicillin must be given twice daily for ten days, how many times will Maureen panic over whether she may have forgotten a dose?

Extra credit: 12 other children attend Bubba’s daycare. Assuming each child is a carrier of six billion potential viruses and knowing that Bubba’s ears have been proven to burst at so much as a thought of sneeze or a cough, calculate the probability of Bubba suffering another ear infection before the end of cold and flu season.

Please submit your completed assignments, along with tissues for Bubba and wine for Mama, by day’s end.

Top Ten Tuesday: Enjoy It While You Can!

On Saturday night, TFW and I took a little mini road trip down to San Diego for a concert. Nothing fancy — a couple hours in the car, $30 tickets, no big deal. Easy peasy!

Wrong.

When you have a young child, things like this are not as easy as they once were. We had to figure out who was going to watch the baby, and where they would watch him (our house or theirs?). Would we leave him overnight or pick him up at 2am? Did we pack all his stuff? Does my mom know the schedule and routines? Should we leave early so we have more time to ourselves, or should we wait and minimize the amount of time we’re gone? What’s the contingency plan if he gets sick or something?

I was exhausted by the time the band started playing!

Life doesn’t end when you have a kid, but it definitely gets a lot more complicated. If you don’t have any kids yet, you may want to take note…

The top ten things that suddenly get a lot more difficult (if not impossible) when you add a baby to the mix (so enjoy them while you can!):

10) Trying stuff on at the mall. Either the stroller won’t fit in the claustrophobia-inducing little fitting room, or it will fit and your child will want no part of sitting quietly in there while you try on sixty pairs of jeans in an attempt to figure out each store’s baffling sizing scheme. You will grow accustomed to holding stuff up and eyeballing it in a weak attempt to determine if it might be flattering, buying it, and then returning it two days later after you put it on at home and discover you were off by about four sizes and/or they look like mom jeans.

9) Evening excursions. No matter how wonderfully behaved your baby is, there is a point in the evening after which you simply cannot leave the house. The exact time will vary depending on the schedule you’ve set up, but every parent of a baby/toddler is aware of this limitation. A late-afternoon activity is a race against the clock, too — when the Super Bowl got delayed due to Beyonce’s booty shaking or whatever the hell happened (I was distracted by a delicious cheese platter), I almost had a heart attack when I realized that we might not be able to leave the party in time to avoid the 7pm meltdown. (We escaped in the nick of time, if you’re curious.)

8) Delicate clothes and dangly jewelry. Babies will pull on EVERYTHING. And they don’t stop when they become toddlers — they just get stronger.

7) Small purses. Forget about leaving the house with a cute little clutch (or, even more comically, just your wallet and keys in your pocket). You need something the approximate size of a duffel bag to fit all of your kid’s accoutrements: diapers, wipes, snacks, extra clothes, a couple toys, maybe a book or two, sippy cup, perhaps a pop-up tent in case you get tired during your travels…

6) Restaurants with a wait. Even if the restaurant is kid-friendly, sitting out a wait for a table is a horrifying prospect when you have a small child with you. Who knows how long his patience will last?! I get antsy waiting around at restaurants, and I’m a grown woman. Expecting my child to wait 30 minutes just to sit down and then sit calmly in his high chair for another 45 minutes while we order and eat is just laughable.

5) Going to Las Vegas. There are plenty of places you can take a kid on vacation. Vegas is not one of them. It’s blazing hot outside, the air indoors is palpably thick with smoke, you can’t walk two feet without bumping into someone, and those casino-owning jerkfaces won’t even let you set up a high chair in the sportsbook. LAME.

4) Having nice stuff in your house. It will get broken, or, at the very least, covered in a thick film of cheerio-dust and snot. On the bright side, it makes it far less upsetting when you spill something on the couch — it was already ruined anyway!

3) Vacations requiring lengthy drives and/or plane rides. I’m not saying you can’t go on vacation with a small child — you most certainly can. But whereas a five-hour plane ride to get to New York was totally worth it pre-baby, an easier option like a weekend at the (local) beach starts sounding far more appealing when you have a baby in tow.

2) Last-minute outings. There is no such thing as “running out to the store real quick” or “meeting up for dinner at the last minute” when you have to bring a baby with you. Every excursion requires planning (will this interfere with naptime? Does he need to eat first? When was the last time he had a bottle?) and supplies (see #7).

1) Alone time. Unless you’re rich and employ a team of nannies, there’s little room for alone time when you’re taking care of a baby. They always need something! And if you are lucky enough to break away for a little bit, you’ll likely find yourself thinking about and missing your child while you’re supposed to be relaxing. Getting your hair done is far less enjoyable when you have to coordinate childcare, watch your child cry when you leave, and then spend the whole time thinking about what he’s up to back at home. This is why I’m championing a new hair trend: 4″ of gray roots with the rest a sad-looking dull red.

The good news is, unless you hate your child for some reason (please get that checked out post haste), it’s all worth it. My hair hasn’t been dyed since early December (sadly, that is not a joke) and I accidentally handed the Target cashier a diaper when I tried to pull my wallet out of my purse the other day, but I have a kid who does stuff like this:

and this:

And that’s way cooler.

Diagnosis: Baby Fever

Folks, I’m afraid I have bad news:

My brain is malfunctioning.

Something has gone awry, and my poor little brain has lost its ability to think rationally. Memories from just one year ago have become fuzzy. Emotions are running wild.

I have baby fever. A bad, bad case.

Why, brain, WHY? Why on earth would you think having another baby would be a good idea?!

I have a beautiful, brilliant, fun, fulfilling fifteen-month-old child who sleeps through the night. We’re done buying formula, and it’s finally getting easier to take the kid out and about and get things done like normal humans. Sometimes he even sits down and watches TV for five minutes! We’re moving further and further away from the myriad horrors of baby-ville (sleepless nights, nursing and endless bottle mixing, spitup EVERYWHERE), and I should be celebrating the end of the hard times and excitedly anticipating how much easier our lives will be as Bubba gets older…

But nope: my brain is convinced it wants another baby. Oh, how the jealousy courses through me when I see a pregnant lady! The very sight of a newborn all curled up in its carrier makes my heart ache. Babies are just so precious and snuggly — they’re literally tiny bundles of pure joy! Plus, I looked spectacular when I was pregnant (those curves, people!) — what’s not to love?!

Of course, the miniscule portion of my brain that maintains a weak grasp on logic recognizes that having another baby would, in reality, be a very bad idea. If I were pregnant right now, I’d probably have a stress-induced nervous breakdown — who would watch this child while I worked, and how would we pay for it? When would I sleep!? And what about my sweet Bubba — how would this affect my ability to smother him with attention at all possible opportunities?

Plus, I’d have to do it all as a single mother since a pregnancy would surely give my poor husband a heart attack.

So I’m desperately seeking a cure for this debilitating case of Baby Fever. Maybe Bubba will revert to waking up every three hours and remind me of how much I value my sleep and how quickly I would be driven to insanity if I had to go through that again? Cross your fingers!

There’s not enough room in my lap for another little critter, anyway.

How To Train Your Toddler To Clean Your House: Lesson 1

If you’re anything like me, you pretty much gave up on keeping your house clean as soon as your child(ren) came into the picture. What other choice do we have, honestly? You certainly can’t get anything done with a baby underfoot, so what are we supposed to do — clean up at night after the kid is asleep? WHEN IT’S DARK OUT?! Dishes can be done at night, sure, and maybe I can get behind wiping down some countertops or folding some laundry whilst watching The Biggest Loser. But who scrubs a bathtub or mops a floor after dusk?!

Crazy people, that’s who.

Or good mothers who don’t want their families living in filth, I suppose.

(I am neither.)

Unfortunately for me, I really appreciate a clean and tidy home. Not quite enough to motivate me to actually do anything towards that goal at the end of a long day (American Idol is on THREE TIMES this week, you guys), but the messiness and grime really does get on my nerves. On the rare ocassions when I do put forth the effort to really de-nastify my house, I take great joy in the results. There’s nothing like plopping down on the couch for one of the approximately 16 hours of Idol broadcast nightly on Fox and seeing nary a single crumb nor dustbunny in the periphery, the satisfying bouquet of Comet and 409 filling the air. If only it didn’t require so much effort!

Well, I may be a terrible housekeeper (and, by extension, a borderline negligent wife and mother), but I’m also a dedicated and creative problem-solver. I’ve found a solution that, if successfully implemented, will allow me to continue my own dilatory approach towards housekeeping and keep the house in order: I’m training Bubba to clean FOR me!

I’ve only recently begun the process, but the early returns look good, folks! So good, in fact, that I feel it is my duty to bestow my method upon you sooner rather than later so that you, too, can watch endless hours of reality singing competitions in a clutter-free living room. Behold:

Maureen Wachter’s Shameless Guide To Tricking Babies Into Doing Things For Their Lazy-Ass Sorry Excuse For Parents (Patent Pending):

Step 1: Lavish praise upon the child whenever he or she brings anything to you. THANK YOU for handing me this half-chewed chunk of banana — it’s just what I needed! Oh my, you are such a good boy, systematically yanking every single one of the baby wipes out of the container and delivering each one to me! Oooh, Mommy loves dirt — please do bring me a handful!

No matter how disgusting or objectionable the “gift,” do not waiver: you must reinforce the idea that bringing things to Mama is a fabulous and in no way tedious activity.

Step 2: Ask him to bring you specific toys and books. Start easy — if your child has the equivalent of a Bearski, instruct him to go fetch it:

Make sure to practice this skill often, and increase the difficulty by requesting lesser-loved toys.

Step 3: Make a game out of putting toys into the toybox. Toss them from a distance, dive in the box with the toys, whatever it takes. And praise! So much praise! If you don’t lose your voice hollering with excitement every time he tosses something in there, you’re not doing it right.

Step 4: Um…tell him to go clean up the kitchen or something? We haven’t gotten quite this far yet.

But the groundwork has been laid! Stay tuned…