Confessions of a Scary Mommy: An Honest and Irreverent Look at Motherhood: The Good, the Bad, and the Scary (12 page)

So, I find Lily. And she’s my favorite again. For a bit.

It’s the cycle of multichildren motherhood and I really don’t feel guilty about preferring one to another in the least. I love them all and they’re each the golden child at
one
time or another, so it all evens out. Besides, who
wouldn’t
prefer a child who is behaving like himself rather than acting like a raging lunatic? It’s only natural.

Plus, it makes it easier for me to understand when they pronounce Daddy their favorite parent and tell me that I’m the worst mother in the world. Deep down, I know that
I’m
their favorite.

Just like they all are mine.

I
don’t like kids.

There, I said it. I’m a mother of three children and mine are the only grubby little snots on the planet whom I can remotely tolerate. Sometimes, I can’t even tolerate them. But I digress.

I
want
to like other children. I
want
to kneel down on the ground and ask them questions, the response to which I really care about. I
want
to enjoy having a house full of kids not belonging to me and not glance at my watch every five minutes during playdates. I
want
to, but I just don’t. I just can’t.

As a teen, I babysat here and there, but I was hardly worth the five bucks an hour they paid me. Sure, I was responsible enough, but I never went above and beyond. I was far more interested in what was on TV once the kids passed out than participating in tea parties or getting them to eat their broccoli and carrots. Babysitting was simply a way to make some extra money, nothing more. The kids may have been cute, but I didn’t really feel connected to them the way other people seemed to. They were impossible to understand, they smelled funny, and they were demanding. I did the job I was paid to do, but that was it. It simply wasn’t my thing: There were kid people and non-kid people. I was the latter.

I always assumed that something would click inside of me once
I had offspring of my very own. Mothers always seem to have that earth mother–y something or other that allows them to lovingly kiss mystery cuts and scrapes or change poopy diapers belonging to children who share none of their DNA—without dry heaving. It’s pretty universal, it seems: Once a child travels through the birth canal or adoption papers are passed, women suddenly become maternal. Like magic. That’s the way it works, right?

Well, not for me.

I remember venturing out to the pediatrician’s office for that first well-check with each of my new children. There, in droves, were my worst nightmares come to life. I instantly understood what all this “stranger danger” talk was about—these strangers were completely hazardous! Suddenly, instead of being simple annoyances that interrupted my quiet lunch or came to my door selling unwanted cookies, the children were threats, plain and simple. Threats to
my
baby.

The children immediately breathed their foreign breath way too close to my healthy bundle of new joy. I visualized the germs flying over to our infant seat in slow motion, traveling across time and space to where my well baby was innocently sitting, her healthy days now clearly numbered. Did the pediatrician’s office really think a single wall was enough to separate the sick kids from the well babies? Had they not heard of airborne diseases? What kind of doctor was this, anyway?

The strange children played with the decade-old waiting room toys and mouthed grungy hardback books and talked gibberish way too loudly. They had dirt under their fingernails and snot dripping down their faces and dried, crusty food circling their mouths. It was like these little scumbags had made it their sole mission in life to sicken my poor child.

But what could I do, build a bubble for my sweet baby? Never venture out into a world filled with creatures whose mission was to destroy her? Live an existence void of stomach bugs, eye infections, and mysterious rashes?
Yes,
that’s exactly what I could do! I would build a bubble. A bubble with cozy bedding and sweet-smelling candles and the best pizza delivery. It would be perfect. Did Lily really
need
to interact with other children? Early socializing was
so
overrated—we did have a dog, after all. It’d be like a social survival experiment!

Alas, a bubble we could not live in, especially once I discovered the joys of preschool. I quickly became pregnant with another baby and my need for help with Lily trumped my desire to keep her away from those mutts. The fact that I could ditch my kid for a few hours and shower in peace?
Alone?
Pluck my eyebrows without an audience? I could take a nap and eat lunch while flipping through a magazine, surrounded by nothing but peace and quiet? I was in. And my poor child suffered the injustices of being surrounded for three hours a day by other children.

There was the punk who gave Lily pinkeye the day before her much-awaited first ballet recital. There was the little shit who passed on rotavirus as we prepared for a move from Washington, DC, to Chattanooga, Tennessee. We proceeded to leave soiled onesies at every rest stop for the ten-hour-long ride. And then there was the “friend” who unloaded the little bugs living in her long, blond hair, resulting in a weeklong effort to rid our heads and house of lice.

Unfortunately, the list doesn’t end with an itchy head and explosive diarrhea. Last year, a neighborhood kid who was having dinner at our house proclaimed red sauce to be “gross.” “It
looks like blood,” he whined as all three of my children’s eyes widened. The obnoxious observation resulted in my children not eating Italian food for months. Italian food, a staple in our diet and one of the few ways I was able to sneak in things like spinach and cauliflower. I swear, every time I saw the kid walking up and down the block, I wanted to dump a jar of Ragu on his head. I’ll show you gross, kid. Open wide.

And then there’s the “stuff.” The older the kids get, the more stuff they need. And where do they learn about this stuff? The other kids, of course. The other kids are the ones who taught my daughter that princesses were dumb and Hannah Montana was where it’s at. She heard about
High School Musical
while she was still content watching
Arthur,
and overnight, the Kidz Bop CDs were declared babyish. Taylor Swift replaced the Broadway classics and hundred-dollar UGG boots topped her must-have list for the first day of school.

See? Other people’s kids are just useless, bad influences who play no necessary role in our lives.

My
children, on the other hand, are
never
the ones to teach the bad habits or pass on germs or do anything the least bit offensive. They are as perfect as they could possibly be.

Well, close to it.

There
may
have been that one time a few years ago, when Lily learned the phrase “Fuck it!” She picked it up from yours truly as a bowl of freshly made fruit salad shattered on the floor. For a few weeks, it was all that came out of her mouth. Honestly, I don’t know why those other parents were so worked up when she started using it at preschool. I can see no better reason for the phrase than a spilled paint tray or flyaway paper. She used it in the
perfect
context and the age of three is as good a time as
any to be introduced to the word. It’s a great word! Personally, I find it bizarre that the kids had never heard it before. Do they live under rocks? I mean, really.

And then there was that time Evan took off his diaper and ran around a furniture store peeing on the floor as other children gawked and giggled. Surely, they learned nothing from the experience. I can’t imagine any of them pulled similar stunts later that afternoon.

My kids
might
have started a trend of mooning one another and it
may
have spread across school, but what’s a little good, naked fun? It’s cute, right? A classic!

And when Evan passed on the stomach bug, he’d clearly picked it up from somebody else’s kid. And really, with all the crap those punks eat, a cleanse may have been just what the doctor ordered. I bet the class came out of the whole experience feeling lighter, refreshed, and having gained great mental clarity!

Or not.

So, maybe my kids aren’t that perfect after all. I can
kind of
see how some other parents might find them the slightest bit offensive. They do yell a tad bit too loudly and they really aren’t all that great at listening. They have been known to spit on a child or two, and Evan
did
once mistake a child for a sandwich. They
may
have even passed on a bad trait or two. But they’re mine. And I believe that they are as close to perfect as three kids can possibly get.

I guess all that really matters is that we love our own children and are able to tolerate the rest, for their sakes.

Knowing deep down that ours are far superior, of course.