This One Will Make My Mom Cry

Growing up, I was not The Hot Sister. I wasn't The Fun One, or even The Popular One. At different stages in adolescence I was probably The Smart One, The Tall One, and then I think around senior year I was The Probably Gay One. But I have a hot sister who also happened to be fun and smart, triple-threat bitch that she is, and let me tell you how that went well into my — well, my right now, as it turns out.

Because we're 5 years apart, Shannon and I were never in the same schools at the same time. I went through middle and high school mostly unnoticed, did my average work ("Smart, but lazy.") cut my hair in weird, unflattering ways, had my small group of friends. In high school I had unrequited crushes on a string of gay friends, spent weekends trying to get rides to the diner where we'd sit and spend sixty-five cents on coffees and stink the place up with clove cigarettes while our waitress glared at us knowing her tip wouldn't come close to paying rent on the space we were taking up. I wasn't adventurous then and I'm not today. I had no idea that people in high school actually did drugs and had sex, despite their daily dry-humping sessions against hallway lockers.

It seemed to me that Shannon would blink in the direction of any number of crushes and fifteen minutes later they'd be sitting on our couch cuddling over Taco Supremes that you know she didn't pay for.

In my memory, my sisters were never home. Steph, who's a year or so older than Shannon, got a car and I don't think I've seen her since. Together they had an entourage — a huge collection of BMX guys who'd congregate wherever bikes could go and do all the things I didn't think people did until college. They both have the kinds of stories that parents never, ever, ever want to hear from their kids and I kind of envy that.

When I moved to Boston I brought a photo of the three of us and kept it on desks at all of my short-lived jobs. Inevitably, any twenty-something male that worked with me would look it over, point Shannon out, and in a way that says, "Things with my girlfriend are totally casual..." ask, "Who's that?" After three straight years of this I considered telling them that she came with the frame.

All three of us are in our thirties now, we all have kids, one or two husbands apiece, saggier boobs and live states apart. Shannon is still fun, Steph still never gets out of her car, and I'm still not especially spontaneous (though I've definitely improved my hairstyle and my husband isn't gay). When we get together our faces ache from laughing and someone might pee a little.

I still notice how men react to Shannon — that my nearly six foot frame becomes practically invisible in the presence of her five-foot-two vortex of adorable — but now that we've all grown into ourselves, it just makes me proud to be her sister.

Photo above is hella old, but I bet you can figure out who's who.

Sh*t Preschoolers Say

I'd like to tell you that this was my directorial debut, but somewhere in my parents' basement there are stacks of videos taken on a two-piece, eighty-pound VHS camera featuring movies I both choreographed and directed.

No child labor laws* were broken during the making of this film, though I'm totally cleaned out of Reese's Pieces and fear I have created a three-year-old diva. Enjoy Shit Preschoolers Say, inspired by Shit Girls Say and its hundreds of spin-offs.



*That I know of.

The Science of Toddlers

If you've raised or are currently raising a toddler, it might seem they exist entirely in an alternate universe with no concept of things like time or gravity. This list might help you make sense of the small life form cohabiting with you.

1. An object in motion stays in motion, right up until it gets lodged, still beeping, just out of reach under the fridge.

2. An object at rest will almost immediately be covered in yogurt.

3. Nothing exists in a vacuum, except Cheerios, half your penny jar, and old raisins.

4. What goes up must come down, unless it’s edible, in which case it will stick to the ceiling indefinitely.

5. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction that most often results in a time out.

6. Diamond is the hardest substance found in nature, excluding whatever’s stuck in your kid’s hair.

7. Light travels faster than sound, except where toddlers wake before sunrise.

8. The oldest known fossil dates back 2.4 billion years. The second oldest is somewhere in your couch.

9. Glaciers move at approximately 4 miles per year, or twice the speed of a 3-year-old when you’re running late.

10. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be reduced to billion tiny shards pretty quickly, especially if it's sentimental.

I Found Jesus, He Was in the Play Kitchen

During the months leading up to Christmas, Anna's class was busy practicing for their school's December pageant. Their song was Mariah Carey's version of Jesus, Oh What a Wonderful Child, and though Anna's actual part in the performance was a backup angel, at home she rehearsed the role of Mother Mary several times each day before school and repeatedly in the evening before bed. The pageant was over a week ago and she's still at it.

Yesterday as we packed away Christmas, she hid the manger and its cast of characters in her toy refrigerator and had a tantrum when I discovered and boxed them up.

Today as I browsed the interwebs for a kid-friendly manger and its inhabitants, it dawned on me that this whole religion thing is outside the realm of Parenting Topics in Which I'm Competent. I'm not even sure what my own beliefs are based on, and that class I took on The Old Testament with a charismatic, hippie professor hardly counts as religious education.

Ironically (or not), I'm more in favor of Anna having some kind of official religious education than Steve, who went through CCD and achieved all the rites my sisters and I missed — we're the ones still seated during Communion, and chances are we're only in church because someone decided to have a full-mass Catholic wedding, and it's probably not air conditioned and most likely it's August.

While it is nice to hear Anna using Jesus' name in contexts other than the expletive, I'm unsettled as to how we move forward. Not only do Steve and I need to get in sync, but I have to work out my own thoughts on the matter. It all feels pretty heavy. I have my ideas of God and Jesus, but what if I can't align them with official doctrine? And where do we start? And maybe Steve wants us to be Buddhists.

I'd love to hear how you all navigated this part of raising humans into good people, whether or not religion played a part of the plan, how you incorporated it, and if your own beliefs changed once a child was involved.

Or maybe there's a loophole where we pawn this all off on the godparents. 

The New Year and What We're Made Of

It hasn't been the easiest year for us, it's been one of those years where you're forced to be an adult, to learn things about yourself, to look at your life in all its complicated pieces, to take inventory, to pay attention, to work hard, and to keep going.

It was a year of growing up and taking responsibility, a year with love and hurt. And because life is the way it is, even in the midst of all the serious business that needed our focused attention, there were still bills to be paid, dogs to be fed, car repairs, preschool projects, work trips, family trips, grocery trips.

We lost a beloved dog, friends lost parents, we lost friends.

But there were also new babies, and now we get to watch — from three and a half years in — our friends working parenthood into their lives. There were celebrations, parties, an actual, bona fide vacation, and the best Fourth of July I can remember having.

This was the year when Steve landed a job that he deserved and I started getting paid to write. We met good people in our neighborhood and I made actual, in-the-flesh friends through this crazy little blog.

Anna grew so much this year, sometimes it's hard to believe she's only three. She learned to write her name, she recognizes her letters and most of her numbers, she sings the days of the week in English and Spanish, she memorizes song lyrics and sings to herself in the mirror, she cracks jokes and strikes poses. And oh, does she have opinions.

As the new year approaches, we tend to want to hold the sweet memories and milestones and somehow leave the harder ones behind us. But it all comes with us, what was good and what hurt, and eventually we figure out what to make with it, and what it makes of us.

Happy new year to you and your loved ones.

If You Take a Three-Year-Old to the Movies

Over the weekend, Steve and I experienced what must have been a Christmas-spirit-induced mutual delusion and decided it would be fun to take Anna to see The Muppets. Because I optimistically bought the tickets in advance, there was no turning back from the 3:30 matinee even after the child was overheard muttering, "Stupid Mommy" during a time out.

In the spirit of one of our favorite bedtime books, here's the recap.

If you take a three-year old to the movies, she'll be sure to skip her nap, eliminating her tolerance for just about anything except giant boxes of candy.

When she spots those giant boxes of candy — priced one dollar less than a week's worth of groceries — she will defiantly stomp hard enough to topple another patron's bag of popcorn.

When the popcorn has fallen to the floor, she'll try to eat it, and while she's down there she'll spot some old, hairy gum. You'll retrieve her in the nick of time.

Mid-tantrum, she'll remember that you often carry gum in your purse and insist on a piece, though today you have left it out in the car. She sentences you to death with a disgruntled furrow.

When you threaten to promptly remove her angry little self to the car, she will reluctantly march into the theater.

In the theater, you will be forced to contain your child through a six-hour series of previews that are as loud as an airshow and offer no distraction from the fact that every other kid in the audience has a bag of popcorn.

Defeated, you just go buy the freaking popcorn.

On your way to the popcorn, your three-year-old spots the restrooms. Suddenly, she feels a life-or-death need to pee.

While waiting outside the stalls, you hear small fingers touching every surface in their vicinity. You open the door to find her elbow-deep into the tampon disposal like it's a goddamned Christmas stocking.

The thought of Christmas reminds you that this is the perfect opportunity to use Santa as a threat. Once you've scrubbed her fingers-to-neck in the bathroom sink, you return to the popcorn counter, where you are now too late to buy any popcorn.

And so, caught between spending her college fund on a giant box of candy and suffering through the last half of the movie with a miserable child, you decide to cut your losses and head home for a nap.

It's a Miracle Anyone Eats Around Here

Remember when someone else controlled most of your food intake, so you didn't have to think about things like calories, saturated fat, unhealthy ingredients, environmental impact, sad chickens, BPA content, or how it is exactly that meat can sit indefinitely at room temperature in cans? Oh, the halcyon days of Chef Boyardee and Kraft Deluxe.

When I realized for the first time that being out on my own meant I could put anything I wanted into my cart, in went Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Yoo Hoo, Cool Ranch Doritos, and some spinach to ward off a shame spiral.

Now I have two other people to consider: a healthy, growing three-and-a-half year-old who'd live on Pirate's Booty and Laffy Taffy if I'd let her, and Steve, whose daily caloric requirements will eventually force us to start ranching our own cattle. And I know too much to go back to Hamburger Helper, with its delicious sodium and seductive hydrolyzed oils.

Used to be I'd check labels' nutritional info and the length of the ingredients list. Now I only glance at those things, scanning instead for high-fructose corn syrup, aspartame, unpronounceable ingredients that start with 'x' and basically, that eliminates the entire convenience food aisle. I buy organic when I can (pay weeks), and avoid produce that's not in season (excepting bananas). I stalk packaged meat slowly, like a lion on live prey, looking for what's all natural, vegetarian-fed, and humanely raised. I have beef guilt and rarely cook it at home. Ditto pork — except you, bacon, I can't quit you. 

And now the reports on sketchy apple juice and BPA in cans. Can a mom get a motherbleeping break around here?

Grocery shopping remains my favorite chore. I'm grateful that I'm in a position to be choosy about what I bring home to my family knowing there are people without that luxury. You'll still find cans of tomato soup in my basket and the occasional box of Funny Bones, but mostly you'll find me walking the aisles, squinting at the back of some box wondering what the hell pyridoxine hydrochloride is.