This is the start of a momsicle. That, for the uninitiated, is a listicle for moms. And yes, I may have just made up that word. We tend to gravitate toward lists, us moms. There’s no deep, nuanced plot to keep track of. There are no characters to identify with or strongly disagree with. Lists work when there’s a baby on one hip and a toddler yanking on your yoga pants. Moms do lists. Here’s one more.
Most of my gleanings are from my almost decade-long tenure as a parent. Maybe there are some things you’ll nod along to between sips of coffee that you reheated three times already. Let me get on with it.
- You thought Judge Judy had it hard. Then you became a parent of two.
- If you had a penny for every time you said, “Good job!” you would be on an all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii by now.
- Baking with kids is like taking a recipe and then ripping it to shreds.
- Kissing your little people’s feet is not an option after they are 12.5 months old. Do it while you can.
- A large part of parenting is responding to “Mommy, look at this!” instructions. On Repeat.
- The other part is responding to “Why?” and “Are we there yet?” questions. Also on loop.
- Never, ever run out of coffee.
- If you don’t write it down somewhere, you will forget
- Parenting’s Inverse Law of Sleep: The more you crave it, the less you get to do it.
- You detest stickers. If you’ve ever had had to scrape a Trader Joe’s sticker off a car widow, you know exactly what I mean.
- Social Media starts as a distraction but almost always makes you feel crappier about your life.
- You make more trips to Goodwill than you ever imagined.
- It’s everywhere.
- Most of your meals will involve standing over the sink, stuffing leftover peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in your face.
- Some days you feel like an Uber driver. Without the pay.
- Other days you feel like an event planner. Still without the pay.
- Most days you won’t have time to feel.
- Cutting crusts off sandwiches sucks up about 15.8 hours of a mom’s life.
- You do all the things that you silently judged other moms for.
- You live for the kids’ bedtime. Which is pretty much the same time you fall asleep.
- You have nursery rhymes playing on loop in your mom-mobile for thirty minutes before you realize there are actually no little people in said vehicle.
- Stock up on band-aids. They make everything better. Especially imaginary owies.
- Face the truth: Your laundry hamper will never again be empty and your minivan will never again be clean.
- You’re not meant to wear white pants in the summer. You’re meant to wear them in a different season: after your kids leave for college.
- You’ve had to do the unthinkable. You’ve had to scoop poop out of a bathtub. (Also, scoop and poop should never be in the same sentence)
- Amazon will become your closest ally.
- You don’t know what a workout is till you’ve pushed a Costco cart for a couple hours with multiple kids in it. Don’t get me started on loading and unloading 56 rolls of toilet paper, 33 giant muffins and 18 other items you just paid $400 for. But, the samples. That’s the one thing that saw you through the workout.
- You hear, “You have your hands full!” more than once. But there are worse things that could be said. Like, “Oh, you’re expecting!” when all you were expecting was to get a cheeseburger on the way home.
- Happy Meal toys that your little peeps begged and bargained for at dinner will be forgotten in less than 3 hours.
- Of all the deepest, darkest secrets of mommyhood, the fact that your child has lice is classified, blacklisted information that no one will ever find out about.
Did you make it all the way down the list without interruption? Congratulations. That’ll happen every eight months or so. If you didn’t, no worries. You can always check back in when the baby is asleep, when the toddler is enjoying quiet time and when the moon turns into cheese.
Meanwhile, try to gulp down that coffee while it’s still somewhat warm.