“Theres A Crayon In My Coffee!”…and other shit I never thought I’d say

This morning, while getting ready to use my four-year-old son’s new crayon maker that, despite being purchased at Goodwill ,actually has all its working parts, he flung a crayon directly into my coffee. Not on purpose of course (or was it?), but a funny, unintentional accident. I was still upset. I screamed out “there’s a crayon in my coffee” when I really wanted to say “theres a god damned mother fucking crayon in my coffee!” You see, this morning was a bit rough. He woke me up around 7 am to yell that he had wet pants and underwear. So I got up, changed his piss soaked clothes, took off his sheets, and grieved the last unsoiled mattress in our home. (We’ll hold a funeral later) But, I stopped myself from cussing like a sailor (which was my natural pre-child proclivity) and simply stated the facts, laughed, and picked the crayon out of my golden elixir of life. I honestly wouldn't have made it this far in mommy hood without my precious coffee.

So, to keep things humorous so as not to lose my shit, I will list the top 10 things (that my low functioning brain actually remembers) that I never thought I would say that I have said as a mother.

#1: “I feel like my organs are going to fall out of my vagina.”

Yes, this is real. This is the raw, unspoken truth. The first couple of weeks after giving birth, I felt like my vagina did not in fact exist but was instead replaced with a big, gaping void. I felt like, every time I stood up my internal organs might just plop onto the floor. “Oops, there goes my kidney”. You are never warned about this and you feel like this will always be the case. Like you will have to carry around a large ziplock bag to carry any organs you might lose along the way. Luckily, this only lasted a couple weeks (I think).

#2: “I feel like a factory farm cow.”

Everyone speaks of breastfeeding as this beautiful, natural, other-wordly experience. This was so far from the case for me. I felt like I was a cattle being used and grabbed in all the wrong places. The first time I used a medical grade pumping machine it was horrible…the worst. I have always been compassionate to animals, but I finally really felt like one of the cows in the barnyard. As this machine sucked the milk (and dare I say soul) out of my body, I cried. I felt used and degraded. Needless to say I never used that torture device again. But breast feeding never became the pinnacle of life that I thought it would be. It’s not even in my top 2000 experiences in life. There, I said it.

#3: “I got 4 hours of sleep in a row! (said in a super excited and non-sarcastic tone)

Sleep deprivation is a real struggle to say the least, especially for this gal who likes to get her solid 10 hours a night. I realized that babies wake up in the night, I just didn’t realize how often and for how long. For my son it was about every 2 hours for a feeding. He napped more during the day and I, being unable to nap and a compulsive cleaner, got very, very little sleep during those first few months. He didn’t fully sleep through the night for about 7 months but during the first few I was lucky to get 3 hours at broken up intervals. So the first time I slept 4 hours straight, after checking to make sure the child was still breathing (another nightmare that kept me awake), it was like arriving at Disney World for the first time. I felt like I could take on the world….or at least another breast feeding session.

#4: “Stop slapping my butt!”

I like a good ass-slapping as much as the next girl, but, in this case, it’s my son and its just plain wrong. For some reason he absolutely loves to slap my rear. Ok, it could be that he is mimicking behavior that he saw and it also could e because I occasionally do the same to him and laugh hysterically. But now he is 4 and getting ready for pre school and it needs to stop! I am trying to teach him it is not ok to go up and hit people’s asses randomly for a laugh. The struggle is real.

#5: “I just want to poop in peace!”

I am directly quoting my own mother here too, and I’m sure countless generations of women before her. The simple and unappreciated act of your pre-parent life has now been ripped away from you forever, in one fell swoop. You don’t even realize its coming. When they are babies you try to fit it in while they are napping or you bring them in the bathroom with you in their bouncy chair. They stare at you creepily and it causes a great deal of performance anxiety. You try to imagine they are dolls but then they laugh and scare the poo right back inside of you. Then they learn how to walk…fuck! You are no longer safe to do anything alone (lets not even mention masturbation). They are everywhere at all times. Kind of like gods. So you eventually give up and no longer even close the door. it’s over. Give in to the not-so-sweet defeat.

#6: “My boobs are mine!” (said in a lion-like roar)

They are! For 14 months they belonged to the tiny dictator. I might as well have detached them from my body and let him put them on display in a glass case, to use at his whim. But now, and for the rest of my life, they belong to me! Stop touching them, poking them, laughing at them, and trying to get back to those precious months. They are over….deal with it.

#7: “Is your penis still there?”

Once my son was potty trained (fucking finally), he became obsessed with the new found feeling of his member (or cock if you prefer). He pretty much had his hand down his pants 24/7. I knew this was normal and didn’t make a big deal out of it at first. Then months went by and he was still doing it, and in public. Others were starting to notice and make comments. I was constantly asking if he had to pee. It became a bit much. So finally I just started asking him if his penis was still there. If he said yes than I said “then please stop checking. It’s not going to fall off.” Is this the best parenting I’ve ever done? Probably not, but it needed to stop. The last thing I want is my kid being sent home from school for being a perv at 5 years old! In fact, I never thought I would be saying so many penis related comments and instructions in my life. This is where being a single mom gets a bit weird. I’m really looking forward to the puberty talk.

#8: “Eat 2 more bites of your pizza and you can have dessert.”

Say wwwhhhaaaa? I’m telling my child to eat more of his horrible, greasy, cancer mush in order to be rewarded with more awful, sugar-filled meth food. Wow. I never thought this would be me. But after months of sleep deprivation and indentured servitude mixed in with your body not being yours and your mind becoming less and less sharp by the hour…you just don't give a fuck sometimes. Some days you cook the organic meals from scratch and feel proud (and then homicidal because they refuse to eat it) and other days you just give them the fucking hot dog or pizza because you don't have the god damn energy to cook, argue, or breathe. So yes, this has actually been said by me, more than once.

#9: Don’t leave with that other family!”

Is this only me? I hope not. My son is an over-the-top social butterfly which is in direct opposition to my introverted anxious wishing-for-an-invisibility-cloak ways. He loves other kids. He loves big families. He loves to try and sit with other families if we go out to eat and yes, I have caught him trying to leave with other families more than once. Is this scary? Yes. Do I sometimes feel like saying “go ahead, I’ll pick you up on Tuesday”? Also yes. But, in the end, he is my monkey and I love him so I stop him from leaving with strangers. This has ceased in the last year (thank god), but I am still always watching out for it. I’m scared of the day a man offers him a lolli to get in his fun van!!

#10: “That is not your daddy.”

Ok, this one is kind of sad. It used to happen every single time we were at a playground. I would catch him following some man around who was with his kid on the playground and start asking for help on the monkey bars and then it would happen…he’d call him dad. Talk about awkward. Usually I’d laugh nervously and pull him away as fast as I could to explain that was not his dad, but the other kid’s dad. I know this is a tough one and unique to our situation so I tried to be sensitive. But what I really wanted to do was un screaming like my hair was on fire!! The dudes probably thought I was some spinster trying to find a man by training my son to call them daddy! Eeek. Luckily this habit has passed as well.



In conclusion, I hope this does not make me sound like a horrible mom. I’m just spitting the truth as always. I love my kid more than anyone ever and would take a bullet for him any day of the week. Or for that matter, I’d live it all again if it meant I got to spend my time being his mom. That being said, this shit is hard and, sometimes, you need to laugh at it all in order to keep going. Right now, my child is pacing and asking a million questions and drumming on a box. He is angry at me for ignoring him and its taken me a couple of hours just to type this in between his demands so I must say adieu. Back to the grind.