Ketchup Is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves (13 page)

We cracked eggs, measured oil, sifted flour and just made a grand old mess. My kitchen looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy had vomited all over it. I repeatedly told them to keep their hands out of the bowl, that they would be able to lick some batter when we finished mixing everything up. I’m not one of those moms who flips out because her kids want to eat a little raw cookie dough or cake batter. Lord knows I’ve eaten my share (and probably your share, too) and I’ve never had even a
hint
of salmonella. I washed their hands before we got started, but when you are baking with preschoolers (especially mine) there is a lot of nose picking and wedgie-digging going on. This cake wasn’t going anywhere but my own table, but for the love of everything that is good and holy, I did not want to eat anything that those nasty little hands had touched.

Thus began a lengthy monologue that went something like this: “Emma, stop picking your nose. Wipe your nose on the tissue. THE TISSUE. Emma, not your sister’s shirt! Aubrey, stop touching her. Stop pushing! Aubrey, get your hand out of your panties. Do not put your hand in the bowl! Did you hear me? HELLO, can you hear me? STOP! GET YOUR HAND OUT OF THE BOWL. STOP IT! Use the hand sanitizer. DON’T PUT THE HAND SANITIZER IN THE BOWL! Put it on your hands, Emma! For the love!!” I finally broke under the pressure and screamed, “DON’T PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE FREAKING BOWL!”

“Oooo, Momma! That’s not nice,” Aubrey chided me. “Don’t say freakin’ Momma, just say, DON’T PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE BOWL!” She shrieked to demonstrate the proper way to scream at your children. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or choke them, I was
not
in the mood to be reprimanded by a four-year-old, but what could I say?

My husband often points out my “faux cuss” words and asks me if I want to hear my kids say these words. Honestly? It’s better than what I really want to say. But I want to raise my kiddos right, so I’ve made a concerted effort to clean up my mouth and say “Sugar,” when everyone in this house knows I want to say something else. My husband is definitely the calm, collected and unflappable one out of the two of us. Of course, he’s also the one who leaves the house for ten to twelve hours a day to work…with grownups… endless pots of coffee… and lunch breaks… AND gets paid in dollars for it all.

I barely have time to wipe after I pee, much less have quiet “Mommy Time.” My only escape is leaning over the kitchen sink that serves as my prayer closet and releasing my most sincere heartfelt prayer as I take a break from daily dish duty. “Jesus HELP me!” I scream, when I’ve reached my breaking point and can’t take one more second of home life hijinks.

Apparently this behavior is rubbing off on my children. The entire family was in the car one day and Emma could not leave her older sister alone. She pestered, aggravated and assaulted Aubrey until Aubrey had had her fill.

“JESUS HELP ME!” Aubrey screamed, sounding a whole lot like somebody I might know.

My husband raised his eyebrows at me and said, “How’d you like hearing your kid say that?”

“It’s fine with me. I’m not taking His Name in vain when I say that, I’m BEGGING for divine intervention.”

Because of his blatant disapproval of my language, I was
ever
so surprised when Aubrey shared with me a word she learned from her Daddy. Zeb had to work one Saturday, but because he is the most awesome husband alive (or possibly because he feared for his safety and the safety of his children), he stayed home until 8:30am so I could sleep late. (Yes, people without children: 8:30am is late.)

I got up, fixed my coffee, checked my email and updated my Facebook status... you know, all of the really important things you do first thing in the morning. Aubrey came over and asked me if I would make her pancakes. I told her I would be glad to as soon as I finished up on the computer.

She said, “But Momma, there's only one effin’ egg...”

I still wasn’t really awake. (I prefer not to speak
or
be spoken to until noonish but at the time, my three kids were all under the age of four, so I rarely got my way.) I wasn't sure I heard her correctly.

“WHAT did you say?” I asked her.

“THERE is only ONE EFFIN’ EGG!” She was definitely screaming at me now.

This could not be.
Where
would she have heard such language?

“Aubrey, what did you say?”

She shook both of her fists in the air, and screamed at the top of her lungs, “DADDY WAS GOING TO MAKE PANCAKES THIS MORNING, BUT THERE WAS ONLY ONE EFFIN’ EGG!”

Nice. I called Zeb and asked “Was there only one effin’ egg?”

He paused. “There
was
only one effin’ egg.” Lovely.

I can already tell my middle child is a woman after my own heart. Her favorite phrase is “poo-poo head,” it’s the worst phrase she knows and she’s not afraid to use it. (Responsible party— you
know
who you are.) Whenever Emma feels she’s not getting the attention she so justly deserves she will scream at the top of her lungs, “POO-POO HEAD!” She’s even managed to work it into her favorite songs, instead of bring home a baby bumblebee, Emma’s bringing home a baby poo-poo head and it wasn’t the itsy-bitsy spider that the rain washed out but, you guessed it... another “poo-poo head.”

It’s a real show-stopper with the neighborhood kids and always leads to a chorus of whiny, nagging voices singing in unison, “Emma said poo-poo head!” (In that infamous, tattle-tale-tone-of-voice... you know the one.) We have tried time out, sending her to her room, ignoring her and ostracizing her when she talks “ugly,” all to no avail.

Finally, at lunchtime one day, Emma said “poo-poo head” one too many times. She wasn't even calling anybody a name, she just said it for the shock factor. In a fit of desperation, I swept her off of her seat and on to the kitchen counter and did something I’d only heard about before... I grabbed a bottle of Crystal hot sauce. Aubrey elbowed her best friend, Tristan, at the table and said, “Oooo, this ISN'T going to be cute!” I dabbed some hot sauce on my finger, pried Emma’s mouth open and put it on her tongue. Emma’s crying was short lived but she was traumatized enough to tell me about 100 times, “I not say poo-poo head anymore, Momma!” (I’m thinking if she’s repentant it doesn’t count. Right?)

Aubrey finally managed to stop saying “freakin’” just in time to learn a new and better word.

Once Aubrey started kindergarten she was obsessed with learning how to read. Every afternoon she came home from school knowing more sight words and sounding out even more words. She had “homework” on occasion that required her to read short little books and to be honest, a lot of it was memorization. She was learning but not necessarily reading yet.

Shuggie was in town for a visit and one afternoon she and Aubrey decided to read “Green Eggs and Ham.” Aubrey immediately began recognizing words on the pages.

“Shuggie! That says, ‘I... AM... Sam!’” Aubrey shrieked with excitement.

She was so surprised and excited to be really reading for the first time. Shuggie coached her through several pages and helped her to sound out words.

Aubrey flipped to the next page and even though the page was covered with text, she forged ahead, sounding out words and barely stumbling over larger words like “somewhere” and “anywhere.” Shuggie watched in amazement as Aubrey read an entire page all by herself.

“I do not like... them... here or... there... I do not like... th-em. Sam, I... am.”

Aubrey looked up at Shuggie in awe and said, “Damn. I can read.”

The bottom line is this: if you don’t want to hear your toddler say it, you’d best keep your lip
and
your attitude to yourself. Because you can just rest assured the one time you let a real stinker slip out of your lips, your child is going to hear it and save it for a special occasion, (probably Vacation Bible School or a PTA meeting) and all the parents are going to know she heard it from you when she uses the “f-bomb” in context and with the right inflection.

I
realize I’m about to step on a lot of toes, but I don’t have a problem with that. Boy Mommas,
please
stop acting like your life is so much harder than us Girl Mommas. I have to say not
all
Boy Mommas have the condescending attitude I’m talking about, but it is far from rare. I cannot count the number of times I’ve run into a Boy Momma around town and upon seeing my three blond-haired, blue-eyed “angels,” she exclaims, “OH, you are so lucky you have all girls! I have all boys and they are always dirty and making a mess and getting into trouble!”

Sigh.

I wish my life was nothing but princess dresses, EZ-Bake Ovens, makeup and Barbies (maybe not the skanky Barbies, but anything is better than those BRATZ hoes) but that is simply
not
the case. Apparently when corporate was sending out memos about proper little girl behavior, they forgot to CC: my kids. My girls are as rough and as mean as any boy I’ve ever met in my life. Yes, they enjoy a good mani/pedi as well, but just because I have girls doesn’t mean it’s all quiet play at my house.

I have a friend who shall remain nameless (because I would like for her to remain my friend) who has one little boy. She is
forever
complaining about how her little devil is
always
getting into everything. She likes to commiserate with me about our mischievous children, as I have one in particular that makes Dennis the Menace look like an altar boy. I was totally understanding and empathetic to all her woes — until I went to her house. Nothing in her entire house was childproofed.
Nothing
. She had a three-year-old boy in her home and there wasn’t a childproofed cabinet, drawer, door or outlet cover in sight. I am totally, 100% serious. I was actually too dumbfounded to address her obvious oversight.

My children get into everything, and I don’t have a drawer or cabinet in my house that isn’t childproofed. Emma already has a bright future with Cirque du Soleil or as a cat burglar. The child is uncanny in her ability to seek, destroy and then cover her tracks. It took me two weeks to realize I wasn’t having hot flashes — she was turning the heat on, in the middle of the summer, by pulling a chair up to the thermostat and then replacing it so I never suspected a thing. My husband and I gave each other the cold shoulder for the entire two weeks because we each assumed the other was messing with the thermostat.

Then there was the time I was sitting on the couch reading library books with Aubrey and Emma and saw black clouds of smoke billowing out of my kitchen. I ran to the kitchen and found my toaster oven had been turned on to 500 degrees. There were no signs of breaking and entering, just the burnt out toaster oven as evidence of Emma’s first felony: arson in the first degree.

I thought Aubrey was a mischievous toddler by continually getting into my Tupperware drawer or occasionally unrolling the toilet paper in the bathroom. Turns out that is just typical toddler behavior and I had
no
idea what was coming when my second child was born.

I should have realized Emma was going to be a troublemaker when she had to be put in a cage before she was even eighteen-months-old. (Alright, it was a crib tent, but it served the same purpose.)

We discovered her catlike agility one night after giving her an albuterol breathing treatment, also known as “Baby Meth.” If your child ever has to take albuterol, be prepared for them to take you on a thirty-six-hour bender. She could get back out of the bed and land on her feet before I could even get out of her room — and she did, for two hours — at which point, I cried, put my husband in charge and promptly went to bed.

Emma considers herself to be quite the chef and loves to “help” me by refilling her own cereal bowl when I have the audacity to take a full four minutes in the morning to make myself a little less offensive for the general public by putting on concealer. I have cleaned enough Cheerios out of my kitchen floor to feed Brangelina’s kids for a year. Aubrey was so proud of Emma’s handiwork.

“Mommy, her did it ALL by herself.”

“You don't say,” I thought as I crunched my way across the kitchen floor. I think I'm going to start buying Cheerios and put them directly in the trash can. That's where they all end up anyway.

Emma has exquisite taste in makeup and jewelry. Anytime she is able to bypass the childproofed doorknob, pick the three deadbolts, and cut through the chain and padlock to my bedroom door, she heads straight for my vanity. The child knows the difference between a diamond and a cubic zirconium and will totally skip over the Wal-Mart makeup and go straight for the good stuff which she promptly uses to scrawl a picture on the bathroom floor.