Mom Confessions

It’s confession time. I’m not asking for repentance or even an “Oh but you’re a great mom…Really” however, if you want to buy me a cup of coffee or a margarita and lament with me on the challenges of motherhood, I am all in.

3 boys.

On paper, it doesn’t seem like much. And there are plenty of days when it doesn’t feel like much.

And yet, as I type my 9 year old is FREAKING THE HELL OUT at the T.V. because he cannot pass a level on some video game, my 5 year old is upstairs indignantly cleaning his disaster of a room that was spotless not two days ago and the 3 year old is asleep at almost 5:00 in the afternoon.

 Now that last part SEEMS great, calm, lovely, and it is…right now. But when he inevitably wakes up a little later in the evening and is in a mood that rivals an angry frat boy being kicked out of a bar it will not be so lovely. And later tonight, I know I will be kicking myself for not trying harder to keep him awake when it is the kid’s bedtime. Heaven forbid husband and I will want to watch a show with cussing and sex or, not watch t.v. and act like married people, or even better, sleep… but there will be #3 popping downstairs saying that he’s “Just not tiiii-yaaard”  (which of course he’s not because he got all the sleep he needed this afternoon).

As I said, there are days when 3 kids isn’t the worst fate to be handed. Then, there are other days when I look at the amazingly beautiful faces of my angry screaming children and I wonder what on Earth I ever did to deserve the hellish torcher that has been wrought upon me.

…

Like last night when my writing was brought to an unceremonious stop by the furious 9 year old. The reason? After giving him a 15, then 10, the 5 min. warning that it was almost time to turn off the wii, all of which he acknowledged he was beside himself with the injustice of me not giving him a heads up. Not to mention the beyond indignant 5 year old who finished his room just in time for the video games to be turned off for the night. They needed to know why I hated them. Why I couldn’t understand what is important in life. Why I want to ruin everything that matters to them. I pointed out that just an hour before I had been the best mom ever because we drove through Sonic for Happy Hour on the way home from car line but, clearly that had been long forgotten and that one “cool mom” move was now completely null and void.

In the end, they ran a few laps around the block because I just couldn’t take their shit anymore.

This is always the point in a rant in which as a mom I feel I need to pull back a little, say things like, I love my kids, really, I do. And I do, that is not to be questioned of any mom that needs to vent about her kids. And the truth is, my kids are actually pretty good kids. In general they are well behaved, polite and make eye contact when people talk to them. I don’t even take credit for that, it’s just who they are. But kids are human, like me, like my husband, like you. And sometimes, every once in a while, or in the case of some, every hour or so, humans can be ass holes.

I have read various articles, or blogs that have gone viral about how kids are small people with big emotions and that they can’t always control their feelings or what they say. O.K. sure, I’ll give you that to an extent. Kids are tiny and they are learning and growing and “becoming” every day, I don’t deny this or have any interest in shaming them for it.  But being human myself, I can’t help but get frustrated by this behavior and have an inner dialog that is just one long string of cusswords blurred together. I do my very best not to say these words or thoughts out loud, though, I’m not gonna lie, one may slip from time to time.

Like, for example, when the 5 year old throws a fit at Sonic because you said no to a milkshake but yes to a slush. And then throws an even bigger fit because you decided that due to the first fit, said child now gets nothing.

Or when you work your ass off to cook a meal and then the 9 year old says something like “Mommy, I think that next time you may need to pull back on the salt a little”.

Or perhaps when the 3 year old insists on wearing a tank top and then gets pissed beyond reason because he has no sleeves.

These of course are small things and really just minor symptoms of a much bigger problem…They. Are. Human.

And I am human, and as such sometimes I need to pull out my trusty old laptop and bitch to the interwebs about how my tiny humans are driving me up a damn wall today…..But I love them…

Our "Angry faces" to go with the blog post.

Just Another Saturday Night

Husband (The Pastor) and I were cooking dinner together one Saturday night, which does not happen often and was only successful because he had the recipe in his brain and all I had to do was follow his directions. Had it been the other way around…well, we would not have been such a pastoral couple in those moments before I threw his ass out of the kitchen, but I digress.

While we were cooking the kids were supposed to be bathing, so naturally they were running around the house in various stages of being undressed. When we heard:

Minion #1 scream at the top of his lungs “OOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWch!” while hobbling into the kitchen holding his head as though he had just been wounded in battle. His little brother #2 ran in after him with a mixed expression of guilt and determination in his giant brown eyes. #3, naturally, was not far behind, because, well, he goes where the action is. (Unless of course he was the cause of the action, in which case he will be mysteriously preoccupied elsewhere.) All three boys stopped one behind the other causing a cartoon like collision.

They stared.

We waited.

“OOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWch” wailed #1 just in case we hadn’t heard him before, and also as a nice icebreaker.

Husband spoke using his best “pastor voice” “What can we do for you?”

It began. Incoherent but insistent voices telling us why they were victim, or not at fault, while the little one simply shouted nonsense at the top of his lungs. All three of them finally looked at us, their parents, the ones in charge, and realized that this was getting them nowhere.

The middle one took the lead. “It’s just,” sigh “It’s nothing” he shrugged his shoulders and threw his hands in the air to suggest that this was all just a big waste of everyone’s time. Meanwhile #1 began to writhe around on the floor as if in unthinkable pain.

 It was my turn to speak while trying to hide my amusement, “I see. Well then, why is your brother screaming like his hair in on fire?”

#2 glanced down at his brother who had temporarily stopped moaning so as to hear the exchange, shrugged his shoulders again and said with a tone as though commenting on the weather “Oh that. Well, we were just playing a game which is called Slap Game…In which you slap each other”

“AND HE HIT ME” #1 wailed.

You can see why in this moment husband and I needed to take a beat.

We then shooed them out of the kitchen saying things like “Well what did you expect when you played Slap Game, tickles and kisses?” And “I don’t have words for you right now. No. Seriously. No words.” And most importantly “No more slap game.”

Some time passed there was a stillness, almost a peace in the air, which we tried not to question. Gradually the noise level climbed to a higher and more respectable level. It took us some time to realize there was more banging and slamming than we were comfortable with, it was then that…

“OOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWch” (#1 again)

We glanced at each other, we knew that we were outnumbered, we also knew that our lovely, wonderful second child truly believed that he had us outwitted, I took the lead “Now what?”

Minion #2 was again ready with his defense “We were not playing Slap Game.”

“That wasn’t my question”

“I see.” Well, it’s just…we were playing another game.” He turned and started to walk out of the kitchen as if expecting me to say Oh, ok, cool. No worries then, carry on. I didn’t say that.

“What was the game?”

He turned on his heels, a winning smile in place “A game which is called Take Turns”.

“Take Turns doing what?”

“Ummmm, well, we were just taking turns chasing each udder into the bathroom and then slamming the door in each udders face and then the udder guy slams into the door with his face.”

The thing about that night was… It Was Awesome. Husband and I loved every minute of it. I don’t know that we had laughed that hard since we saw the movie Sisters. There are moments of parenting that absolutely suck, and honestly, on a different day or with a different mood for just one of us, that night could have been one of our “Dear God, why did you send us these children?” moments. But it just so happened that we allowed it to be what it was, just another Saturday night at the Silva-Noah house.  

The Mom that went up a Hill and tumbled down a Mountain.

This one isn’t going to be about the kids. This one is about me and my adventures as a “less than healthy” mom. I have mentioned my weight in previous blogs and anyone who knows me or looks me up on facebook knows that I am not a small person.  I don’t talk about this much on social media because there is always that one person who will say “If you don’t like the way you look do something about it.” Well F-off dude! If it was that easy we would all look like super models.  I have seen other blogs and various social media posts about “owning the mom body” or feeling sexy in the skin that you are in. And I am totally down with that.  I read that stuff and get all empowered and I’m like “Hell Yeah!” I will take my kids to the public pool and screw anyone that doesn’t like it!  Which is easy to say in the moment until I remember that I am new in town and the one mom friend that I have here still looks like the athlete she says she was in high school.

 But for the moment it is still winter and in the winter I get to wear hoodies and jackets which, let’s be honest, doesn’t really hide anything but it sure makes me feel better. And being winter it is easier to make decisions to do things that my kids want me to do, other people’s opinions be damned! (Because I don’t have to wear a swim suit). With this in mind I took my kids to the park after school the other day. My intention was to read while they frolicked and played, but they had other ideas.

Minion #1  wanted to show me the woods behind the park.  So I obliged and we trampled through the very muddy woods. Which resulted in me slipping and landing in a mud puddle becoming far muddier than my children could dream of getting.

Minion #2 wanted to have a scooter race with me, I agreed only because there was no one else around to witness my inevitably humiliating defeat.

I set the first course and damn near face planted but made it unscathed in second place at the finish line. I made the mistake of allowing him to set course number two…I swear, the hill did not look steep or treacherous when I walked up it. Oh well, live in learn. So there I was, a 37 year old generously proportioned woman with mud from foot to ass riding my 9 year olds scooter down a hill.

It went a little something like this…

Start, fine, though the kid cheated (like he really needed an advantage). As I approached the hill things started to come into focus that had not occurred to me before such as “Holy hell what in the crap are you doing? What made you think this was a good idea?!?” As that was going on in my head many, many things were going on with the rest of me. I knew that there was no way that this was going to end well, it felt as though I was going 70 mph down the now growing hill and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this scooter would be the death of me. My head and shoulders were going one way while my ass was going another and my stomach yet another. My boobs were going hither and yon and just when things could not get any worse a bug flew up my nose. That was when I decided to bail, somehow, due to what I can only describe as my super human strength I managed to jump off of the confounded contraption without meeting my demise. But, do you know what happens when you are speeding down a hill on wheels going 100 mph and then remove the wheels from the equation? Well, you have to keep moving, due to some unforeseen miracle my feet did just that. I ran down what had now become a mountain with a scooter swinging from my outstretched arm and if I thought my body parts where moving freely when I was on the scooter, well, that was nothing compared to the show that they were putting on now. In my head I could only process the thought “When will it stop?” Somehow in the midst of the madness it occurred to me to throw the scooter into the grass, but that was only after it bruised my calf. Somehow, by what I assume was divine intervention I landed at the bottom of the hill in front of my 5 year old that said “Ah, Mommy, you forgot the scooter.”

Hewanted to race again but to his great disappointment I had to decline. I explained that I am not in as good of shape as I need to be to race scooters down hills. And I promised him that I was going to work on that. I am going to improve my health, not because I want to look better (though I would be ok with that) or because society tells me that I should, but because I want to have a scooter race with my son and when I win, I want to race him again.  

The Hill. Notice how the children manipulate it with ease.