I Heart My Little A-Holes (7 page)

8. I’ll bet you always thought it’d be awesome having two kiddos because they’d play with each other. Ennnhhh, wrong. They’ll play with each other, in like
five
years. For the first few years, your oldest will play with your youngest like a crazy ass killer whale plays with a seal in the surf. “Here little baby who stole Mommy and Daddy’s attention from me. You know how mama and dada keep bragging about your neck muscles being so strong, why don’t you come over here so I can pick you up by your head and see if they’re right.”

Anyways, there you go weird lady who asks loaded questions to random strangers in restaurants. I could go on and on about all the ways going from one kid to two is just awesome (insert sarcastic looking emoticon face here), but my #1 has my #2 in a princess dress and a chokehold.

Okay, so last week I had Zoey’s parent-teacher conference.

TEACHER: Blah blah blah, she plays well with others. Blah blah blah, she can be a little too sensitive. Blah blah blah, and here is her self-portrait.

I look down at the page.

WTF???

TEACHER: As you can see there is the head and the arms and the legs.

But WHAT is that between her legs?

TEACHER: And she even drew ears.

ME: No, wait, I have to stop you. What is THAT?!

Because it looks to me like my DAUGHTER drew herself a pair of balls and one of them is hairy.

TEACHER: (laughing) We don’t know.

OTHER TEACHER: (laughing harder) No idea.

Fine, I’ll have to take this matter into my own hands. Later that night at home…

ME: Zoey, I have a question for you.

ZOEY: Yeah?

ME: I love this drawing you did of yourself. But what’s that between your legs?

ZOEY: (duh) Spiders on my tush.

Ahhh yes, I feel like such an idiot for asking.

ME: And what are the concentric circles in your head?

ZOEY: I’m screaming.

ME: (blank stare)

ZOEY: Because there are spiders on my tush.

It all makes sense now. Wait, no it doesn’t. WTF WTF WTF???

PRAISE THE LORD, PRAISE THE LORD, PRAISE THE LORD! My kids are FINALLY old enough that I can let them hang out in the other room without me! I know it may seem like a little thing, but IT IS NOT. This means I can do shit like wash the dishes without worrying that I’m going to turn around to put a bowl away and step on some baby’s head and squirt his brains all over the kitchen floor. This means that while they’re watching TV I can stealthily duck into the kitchen to squirt some Hershey’s syrup into my mouth when I need a chocolate fix. This means I can put in my tampon without two rug rats sitting front row and breaking out the popcorn to watch.

So the other day I was surfing porn in the living room while the kids were in the kitchen having their snack (I just said that to sound cool. Really I was probably shopping on Zappos), and I heard them giggling in there.

A loud bang = get the F in there fast

Silence = get the F in there fast

Giggling = take your time and check out the heels section

So after about ten more minutes on Zappos (translation: $230, but in my defense I will probably return it all because all I wear anymore are ugly flats) I decided I should pretend to be a good mom and see what they were up to. La la la la laaaa, going into the kitchen. Holy mother of God what the fuck happened in here??!!! What sucks is since my kids were there I couldn’t actually say this out loud and could only just scream it in my head. I also had to restrain my middle fingers from twitching away from my tightened fists.

“What did you do?!!”

But neither of them answered me. Not with words at least. Zoey knew she was going to be killed, so she averted her eyes and wouldn’t look at me. But Holden was too young to know he was going to die, so he kept laughing and showed me exactly what they had been doing. Flick. He pulled back the rubbery straw on his sippy cup and then let it go. And again and again and again. Flicking purple smoothie dots from the floor to the cabinets alllll the way across the ceiling. And judging by the way the room looked, I’d say they had done this about, oh I don’t know, 2,000,000 times. Are you F’ing kidding me?

I can’t tell you how much I wish I had taken a picture so I could share it with you, but I was too busy calling the suicide hotline. Eight hours later after I could finally start breathing again, all I could say was thank F’ing God for 409. And tall husbands. And laws against killing your children.

Some people see a weird child who likes to wear her coat backwards.
I see a brilliant genius who’s figured out how to turn her hood into a feed bag.

Here’s the thing. I could give a rat’s ass if my three-year-old gets to bed on time. She can stay up until the crack of dawn for all I care. And yet at 7:29 PM I’m ready to explode like a ticking time bomb as she dilly-dallies before I read her my favorite bedtime book—
Go the Fuck to Sleep
. Congratulations Zoey, you just got into the Guinness Book of World Records for the slowest person to ever put on a pull-up.

So if I don’t really care what time she goes to sleep, then why the hell am I freaking out at 7:29? Because do you know what happens at 7:31? Me time. Uninterrupted, sit on the couch, eat my ice cream and vege (vegge??? vedge??) out in front of the shittiest television I can find time.

So the other night when my daughter came out of her room and screamed, “Mommy!” at 7:42, 7:58, 8:03, 8:15 and 9:10, I was livid. Remember Glenn Close at the end of Fatal Attraction? Multiply that by 1,000 and you have me.

P.S. Please don’t try to figure out my age based on my movie reference. I’m old. When the other mothers bitch to me that they’re turning 30, I punch them in the face. Just inside my head of course.

And then last night happened. “I need water. My leg hurts. My book fell out of bed. I’m missing something. I want the other pillow. My skin hurts.” When she came out for the six or seven-
thousandth
time, I lost my shit. Which blows when you have a one-year-old sleeping in the bedroom next door and you have to whisper and not use curse words and still seem mad as hell.

ME: (like Cujo if he spoke English) If I see your face one more time tonight, young lady, you are going to be in so much trouble I’m going to, ummm ummm, it’s so bad I can’t even say (translation: I have no F’ing clue).

Man, how I wish I were one of those parents who used middle names when I got mad. It’s so much cooler than saying shit like “young lady.” But when you’re this pissed off, you say whatever pours out of your mouth. You just pray it’s not the “c” word.

Anyway, barely two seconds after I shut her door did I hear it open again. No, that’s a lie. It was at least thirty seconds later. Just long enough for me to get my dessert that I would now have to devour quickly so she wouldn’t see it, which sucks because then I’d have to get another one later that I could take some time to appreciate. That was it. No one messes with my chocolate. She pushed me over the edge. And that’s when I did what I swore I’d never do. I stormed upstairs, ripped the doorknob lock off my husband’s office door, and attached it to my daughter’s door. Yes, I put a lock on her door. Something I swore I’d never do.

Needless to say she was not happy. And neither was I. As I listened to her scream and cry and snot and slobber all over the place, all I could think about was what a horrible mother I am. Did I seriously just lock my daughter in her room? I’m like that evil old lady from
Flowers in the Attic
, only worse because my daughter doesn’t have siblings in there to keep her company.

And then all the next day I hated myself for it. Until bedtime, when I removed the lock from her door and calmly threatened to put it back on if she came out of her room. She wasn’t perfect. She came out once to complain that her cells hurt. But just once. After that she stayed in there.

Not only did I start to feel justified for my child-abusive punishment the night before, but I got to watch Masterpiece Theatre completely uninterrupted. No, that’s lie. I saw about a millisecond of it when I was channel-surfing looking for Honey Boo Boo.

Does this shit even need an introduction? I mean who doesn’t know that traveling with kids sucks ass? Remember back when it was awesome, before you gave birth to your poop machines? Packing was always a bit of a chore, like figuring out which summery clothes fit you since you’ve packed on a few (translation: ten) winter pounds, and of course you hated sitting in the airport if your flight was delayed. Wait, you mean I have nothing to do but go to a bar and get drunk while I wait for my plane? I thought THAT was a BAD thing??? WTF? I’d kill for that now.

But now that I have two little rug rats in tow, going to the airport is worse than being waterboarded. And if you think I’m wrong, you’re wrong. I just saw that Zero Dark Thirty movie so I know. Traveling with two kids under the age of four is worse. Way worse.

Anyways, let’s get to the good stuff, or rather the bad shit. So here goes. Ten things that suck ass about flying with kids:

1. So after a morning of hell because I had to wake the kids up two hours early (which should feel awesome because they do that to me every day), I get to the airport only to find out we don’t have seats together. “Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ll do our best.” Do your best? So if you don’t succeed, what, my 3.5-year-old daughter is going to sit in row 27 next to a child molester while I’m in row 12? I’ve got one word for you, American Airlines. Lawsuit. Yup, there’s nothing more American than that.

2. Okay, so you’ve finally made it into the airport, they’ve checked your IDs and you pick an X-ray line. Then some woman steps up in line behind you. ARE YOU INSANE, WOMAN?!!! Who the F chooses to go behind the four-person family with a baby because here’s all the shit I have to deal with:

Putting the stroller on the belt while holding the baby, taking off the kids’ coats, thanking F’ing God I don’t have to remove their shoes anymore, taking our laptop out of the bag, finding our baggie of liquids, oh no wait that’s our baggie of Cheerios, finding the real baggie of liquids, taking off my own goddamn shoes and wondering what disease I’m picking up by walking barefoot on the ground that 9 bazillion people have walked on today, getting the ginormous car seat to fit through the X-ray machine, getting the kids to go through the metal detector and walk towards the scary TSA guy on the other side who can’t crack a smile, and dealing with the TSA lady who wants to “check” our milk which makes me wonder whether the kids should drink it after it’s been swabbed and radiated (or whatever the F they do to it).