Overheard

Every once in a while I am reminded of what makes this whole parenting thing really, really worth it. Sometimes it's terribly sweet things like sleeping babies and sticky kisses and breakfast in bed...Or so I have heard, I mean sleeping babies wake up and those kisses are usually more slimy than sticky and who has ever really had a decent breakfast in bed as prepared by a tiny chef without access to any actual appliances?

There are a couple of things that happen in this motherhood business that always deliver instant job satisfaction. Obviously the first of these is when my little brood is safely shuffled off to school at 8:20 every morning.  Less consistent, but more rewarding, are the times I catch a snippet of my kids' conversations, one sibling explaining  to another infinitely less-worldly sibling just how something works or what something means or how to behave.

As in a nearly-twelve-year-old know-it-all explaining to her five-year-old sister that the newest K-Y personal lubricant commercial (the one with the British couple happily, steamily, recalling the previous night's congress over breakfast, discussing nutmeg all-the-while) is for "lipstick." Fantastic!

The original mommyfesto blog featured a series of posts on this topic - recapping for the reader (I mean "the" in the completely singular sense of the article) the very best of the private conversations of our family life. These "Overheard" posts are some of my favorite and I am almost certain they will be making a comeback on moremommyfesto. However, until new material is generated, I thought I'd resurrect a nearly perfect one (you'll note that I'm a player here: that's allowed).

Overheard In the Bathroom (late 2009)

Sunday night, 8 p.m., just outside the bathroom door
Me: Xavier, please get in the bath tub
no response
Me: Xavier, I really want you to get in the bath tub.
no response
Me: Now!
no response
Me: You need to take a bath, what is going on in there?
no response
Me: Please... get... in... the... tub
Polly (the three year old): Xavier just get in the fucking bathtub.
Me: Polly, go to your room.
Xavier: Why? What'd she say? Mom, what did she do?

Facebook

Kids are all over facebook.  I don’t mean the collective youth - the cool kids for whom and by whom facebook was created - I mean actual kids, as in drooling-whining -non-driver’s-licensed-dependents. Their terribly cute mugs are all over facebook. They are in countless status updates doing all sorts of regular kid stuff: smiling; crying; hitting baseballs or scoring goals; they have loose teeth and lost teeth; they’re dressed as ninjas and Jedi’s and Disney Princesses; they’re at the zoo or school or waiting for the bus…  The “look at how cute my kid is” status update is ubiquitous and it’s annoying (and boring too).

I know that sounds really harsh. It is. But if you’re a my-kid-is-my-status- update-offender, tough love is exactly what you need.  Both for your sake and your kid’s (the last thing Baby needs is for the world to be tired of her before she has any say in it).

I get it, I do. Facebook, you’ll say, is your opportunity to share this most important thing in your life with your family and close friends.  But that’s not really, completely true is it? I mean you have your mom’s phone number right? Besides, you’re not just friends with your cousins and your college roommates on facebook are you?  You’re friends with lots of people; you’re probably even friends with people who you’re not actually friends with.  You might be thinking that if it’s just those people who are tired of looking at Junior’s newest outfit/trick/witticism, then who really cares? But it’s not just those people, it’s everyone (ok except for your mom), we’re all tired of feigning interest in your kid, only it’s easier to click the like button and move on than it is to tell you to knock it off.

Of course your kids are a part of your life and to wholly ignore them in your status updates would be both difficult and disingenuous.  I am by no means suggesting you do that; an occasional well-planned, well-executed child-centered/chip-off-the-old-block status update is absolutely welcome.  Use the following guidelines to determine what exactly warrants an update and what’s better left in a text to grandma and grandpa.

 1. Is your less than four weeks old? If yes, than update away. This is the honeymoon period, your chance to prove to everyone you know that it really did happen, that you really did procreate and that you really are as bewildered/sleep deprived as the rest of the parenting world is in those first few weeks. Also, posts now are essential in establishing excuses for future ditziness/missed work/grumpiness/frustration/the general disrepair into which your life is going to fall for the next two to three years. Remember though, that nothing you’re saying about your newest development is particularly original or interesting to anyone with kids of their own, but you’re still allowed to say it for up to four weeks. 

2. Is you child doing something colossally, fantastically inappropriate? Is he willingly flipping someone off? Will the post be a verbatim account of her latest conjugation of assorted sordid terminology (accidental or on-purpose)? Did your kid maybe mix-up some letters here and there and say something particularly off-color? Then post it, we all need to know that your child is as impeccably unmannered as our own.

3. Is your child doing something adult? Not adult in a Jon-Benet creepy kind of a way, adult in a hilarious hijinks sort of a way, like blackmailing a sibling, or gambling or ordering a whisky sour. 

4. Is your child involved in Irish Dancing? Please, if your child is sporting ridiculous River Dance ringlets and lace, then by all means, post a picture (or even a video). That outfit, when pint-sized, is so off-the-wall weird it is borderline awesome.

5. Do you have more than four kids and are they all in the same picture? On their own, your kids are nothing special, but together they are an amazing feat. Lasso the kiddos, dress them all in matching outfits and update all day long; we all appreciate our personal Duggars. 

6. Does the update involve a picture of your child and the family pet?

Don’t do it, your pet is infinitely less interesting than your kid. Together they are almost mind-numbing. Unless, of course, Fido is humping Junior.

 

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6.     

More Mommyfesto

It's been two years since mommyfesto has published a post.  A lot has changed. Actually, it's mostly the same, only the cast of characters has aged (by two years). If you were keeping track, that means toddlerfesto is now a kindergartner (clearly in need of a new alias), that sweet six-year-old is now a full-scale boy, and we are delighted  to have a tweenfesto in the ensemble as well.

That is good news for some of us: no one is wetting their pants (at least in most situations) and some people can cut their own meat (sort of). And it's not-so-good news for others of us: I have gone from the mother of three small children (oh, how overworked she is! oh, how hectic her life is! oh, how sweet and adorable they all are!) to the mother of three school-aged children. The public's unending sympathy for me has expired. Unshowered and stained is no longer socially acceptable. I am completely expected to have my shit together, as in washed-and-ironed, organized-and-well-rested-together.

And I don't. Well not completely anyway. But I have gotten a little bit better at hiding it or at least not openly flaunting it. For example, I now know that if you stay in your workout clothes all day long, no one is quite sure when you actually worked out (thus bypassing that whole well-groomed standard) and all the other mothers in your cohort are under the paranoid impression that you have done something more than they have. It's tricky, but a time-saver.

The original mommyfesto was conceived as an anti-manifesto to motherhood. A full-scale admission that I have no business (outside of  11.5 years of hands-on experience) parading as an expert in anything mommy-related. Moremommyfesto works under the same premise, the only difference is that the topic of concern has changed from the often mind-numbing and mostly frustrating reality of parenting "small" children to the completely mind-boggling and still frustrating work of parenting more medium-size people: people that can't simply be tucked into bed and turned off; people that ask really hard questions (and don't necessarily listen to the answers, which is fine because I really didn't have a worthwhile one anyway);  people who are squarely in the oh-shit-I-could-really-fuck-you-up-for-the-rest-of-your-life-with-one-false-move phase of their lives.

That's a tough spot to be in, although not exactly unexpected. I can promise that while I take it very seriously, I'd prefer to record all the mishaps and challenges and pleasant surprises (they do happen) here rather than burying myself in expert advice on how to manage these years.  Afterall, when my children enter adulthood in the aftermath of that one false move at least they'll have this blog to show the therapist.