Well, that’s usually true.
Unless you’re leaping into a pool of candy-colored balls. Then you should just close your eyes and jump.
Because it really doesn’t matter where you land, or how you land, or who sees you fall flat on your ass.
Deep down inside, they’ll be wishing they took the plunge too.
Siblings are one of those things in life that you have no control over. Like your parents just arbitrarily decided that you’re supposed to share all that attention and love and TOYS (ALL THE TOYS THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN ALL YOURS) with some other kid(s) and there’s nothing you can do about it.
It’s the whole issue of proximity, really. For the first 20 or so years of your life, you spend every single day with your siblings. Having to share stuff, having to wait your turn for the bathroom in the morning, having them irritate the living daylights out of you, having to live up to overachieving siblings who feel the need to be valedictorian, head prefect, captain of the swim team and every teacher’s pet.
Also, that idea of having a perfect sibling? It’s like a golden unicorn. Doesn’t exist. You think that cool kid at the playground would make a great sibling but then their siblings would probably tell you how crabby and irritating they can be at home.
So the only way of minimizing conflict between siblings is to minimize contact. If you have siblings who hardly say a word to each other, there would be no chance to fight so problem solved. Except that it’s like getting married and sleeping on separate beds. Ok, that didn’t sound like it did in my head because EWW, getting married is NOT like having siblings at all but you get the point.
But if you ask me, I’m in the camp that says having siblings is so much better than not having any. You have another kid to play with all the time, you have someone to form an alliance with against the evil parents and when you become awkward, angsty teenagers, you can talk about stuff that you would never be comfortable talking about with adults, ie boys/girls (whichever is the opposite of you). Sure, you fight tooth and nail over everything all the time but when if comes to the crunch, you know they got your back.
Which brings me to my point. The kids were out playing with a bunch of other kids and there was this 4-year-old girl who really liked Kirsten so she was fussing over baby girl and sharing her toy with her. Then Tru came along to play with them and she was all like “I don’t like you, I won’t share my toys with you, go away.” I was about to intervene when next thing I knew, Kirsten got up, walked over to Tru and gave him a hug like “it’s ok, I’ll ditch the nasty kid to play with you.” In short, 1. baby girl pwned some brattish kid today and 2. this totally makes the insanity of having both kids back to back so worth it.
At the risk of sounding like a pretentious smartass, I’ll say that parenthood has been an exercise in understanding the human condition. Because you know babies are as unadulterated as they come – just a little bundle of human instincts. They don’t give a rat’s ass what you think and they want what they want right now.
They’re motivated by one thing alone, and that is incentives.
At first, I wanted to teach the kids about *wanting* to be good just because it’s the right thing to do. To look past instant gratification and not be motivated by these trifle pleasures. I wanted to teach them stuff like selflessness and charity. I thought I could persuade them with the brilliant logic of my argument so that they would do my bidding without question. Ha, who am I kidding? I never quite bought all that myself anyway. At least not until I turned 26 and became a mom, and even then, I’m hardly the poster girl for altruism.
Take for example the time I had to teach Tru about sharing. I asked him to share and he said no. So I tried explaining the benefits of sharing – so that we could all be happy. From his look of disdain, I could tell that he obviously didn’t agree. He was all like “this is ridiculous mom, I’m not at all happy to share so don’t try to tell me that sharing makes us all happy”. Then I told him that sharing is being nice to others and it’s important to be nice because we get a sense of satisfaction when we give stuff to others. And he was like “yeah, good try mom, now watch me shriek like a banshee when you so much as look at my snack.” Eventually, I had to settle with offering him more snacks if he shared (incentive) and threatening to take away his snack if he didn’t share (also an incentive if you think about it).
It was the same with eating his food. When it was stuff he hated, (vegetables are the exception because I think he would rather lose a kidney than eat spinach) I had to resort to the two-pronged strategy of dangling gummies and threatening the naughty corner. He would take a minute to consider his options and finally open his mouth while making faces of the vomit variety.
I used to think that parents who had to resort to bribery and threats were doing it all wrong. Didn’t they know they were raising brats who would only do something for someone else if there was something in it for them? Besides, isn’t it like training a seal? “Good boy, here’s a fish for you. Now jump through this ring of fire.”
But you see, at least that’s a start – that they’re even doing it at all. I’m hoping that if I offer a gummy to inculcate good behavior, at some point, they’ll do it even when we’re all out of gummies. Hopefully they’re so used to doing the right thing even when they didn’t understand or agree, so it wouldn’t seem like such a big deal to share their last cookie or give up a seat or tell the truth.
Although there’s a pretty good chance that they will turn out to be obese or toothless before that happens so I’m on the hunt for sugar-free gummies which I will cut into very tiny pieces so each gummy is effectively 1/10 of a whole gummy and even if they eat 10 gummies a day, it’ll be like eating just 1 gummy. I can’t wait for the day he’ll bargain for more gummies and I’ll have to do up a chart like 3 gummies for sharing and 5 gummies for eating 1 spinach.
Bollocks, that whole paragraph looks like some ridiculous Primary 1 math question. If John has 3 gummies and he gets 5 more but gives 4 to his sister and drops 2 along the way, then gets 7 apples and 2 bananas, how many teeth does he have left?
You know what’s the one thing that I’m terrified of the most? Besides my extensive list of completely rational fears like being attacked by lizards, buried alive (because there is no way in a million years that I can punch my way out like Uma Thurman) and having my kids abducted by a kidnapping syndicate in Mumbai.
I’m talking about top of the list here, numero uno. It’s being redundant.
In the days of my youthful idealism, I was exactly like you. I wanted to change the world. I was planning to end world hunger or become obscenely rich selling a ton of useless stuff to people who probably wouldn’t need them just because I was that brilliant. Either one would have worked for me – I wasn’t picky about the details.
The truth is, being a mom doesn’t make it into the list of glamorous professions. I don’t care what they say on those overly-priced Hallmark cards on Mothers’ Day, nobody’s dream job is to be a poop-cleaning, booger-digging, frazzled, batshitcrazy chick up to her elbows in human excretions. Make no mistake, motherhood is noble and to sacrifice your own dreams for the kids is all great but it kind of sucks that 30 years down the road, all you get is “Congrats, none of your 3 kids turned out to be Hitler. Good for you!”
And really, that terrifies me.
Knowing that I spent my best years cooking vegetables (that nobody wants to touch with a ten-foot pole), washing tiny onesies and cleaning up spilt cereal for the fifth time in a day. Alright, the kids will have a decent shot at a happy childhood and they may grow up to be Nobel prize-winning physicists, rockstars and Supreme Court judges, but then again, they may just as well end up as a struggling artist or a troubled delinquent.
So I’ll come out and say it. I don’t just want gratitude, it’s overrated. I want the kids to grow up knowing that their mom was brilliant, and not at folding laundry. I want them to be proud of me, to go to school and brag about how their mom wrote the new vampire series that outsold Stephenie Meyer. Something like that. I want them to know that there is no excuse for not going after their dreams, no matter how tough life gets.
I’m starting to think that being a mom doesn’t have to make you redundant. Its easy to get swamped by the responsibilities of having to care for tiny human beings and lose yourself in the process but come on, there’s got to be more than getting a pat on the back and a fugly Mothers’ Day card. (except yours, kids, they’re lovely)
Maybe we can still change the world. And even if I don’t, I will sure as hell try.
Having been a stay-home mom for almost 2 years, I sometimes forget why I wanted to do it so badly in the first place. I mean, you do something long enough and the grass starts to look greener on the other side. I start to think of how nice it would be to dress up and have power lunches (do people still call it that or am I that outdated) with other non-babies. To not have to start work at 10 at night, after a whole day of manual labor.
I know it is a privilege to be able to work from home and take care of the babies at the same time and I’m not complaining.
Well, maybe just a little bit.
Ok, maybe a lot.
But the point is, at times like these, we all just need a little reminder of why we are doing it in the first place.
Everyone, meet my reminder.
So a couple of days ago, I had one of my nights off to attend an event organized by Pat Law from Goodstuph (more on that later), who as I found out, is a former colleague from my short-lived advertising days at Publicis. 6 years later, she’s now a bad-ass social media guru (I think that means she invented the Internet or something, I’m not very sure), and me, I’ve got two babies. Also, I can make a killer aglio olio, which is like the parenting equivalent of inventing the Internet, obviously.
Anyway, I was getting ready to go out when Tru starts to smell a rat because momma never puts on makeup at 630 in the evening, and that means only one thing – a night out without him. My preemptive strike involved explaining that mommy has to go to work. (which at that time sounded far more credible than mommy had to go chill out over mini sandwiches)
Next thing I knew, he flung his body onto my calfs and proceeded to attach himself surgically to my legs while shrieking “NOOOOOOOO, mommy don’t go work! Don’t like mommy to go work, mommy stay home” about 20,000 times. At which point I switched strategy and tried to explain that mommy had to go for an event, because I figured I might as well confuse him with words he doesn’t know, hoping that it would distract him from the issue at hand.
Except that my kid apparently knows what an event is, and he was all like “Not work, mommy go e-ben.” He ponders for a moment, then goes “NOOOOOOOO, mommy don’t go e-ben! Don’t like mommy to go e-ben, mommy stay home.”
When he realizes that it’s not working, he suddenly remembers that he is more likely to get his way when he asks nicely. “Mommy, can stay home please, please, please?” Now that always gets me, because 3 pleases is a big deal.
I was close to ditching the event because my little boy needed me to tuck him into bed but the husband told me that I needed a breather and he had everything under control, so I went. I was glad to be out for a while but that night, it all came back to me – the reason why I left my job in the first place. Because if I had to hear that many pleases every morning while I left them with a bunch of strangers and went on my merry way, I would be crying all the way to work every day. And honestly, I wouldn’t have lasted a week.
On retrospect, manual labor and a couple of late nights don’t seem so bad after all.
Here’s a thought. Are parents allowed to have favorites? The politically correct answer is probably no because every kid is special and favoritism is BAD. But really, do parents have a secret preference that nobody else knows about?
I used to look at parents with multiple kids and one of them is often way cuter, funnier and smarter than the rest. He knows exactly how to make your heart melt into a gooey mush and then twirls it around his little fingers. When he grows up, he’s the classic overachiever – valedictorian, captain of the swim team, and the most popular kid everywhere he goes.
Then there’s the other kid. All whiny and screamy as a kid, then angsty and sullen later on and you’re like “OMG can this get any worse?” I mean, it’s normal to have more positive feelings towards someone who doesn’t scream at you all the time or makes you so crazy you want to eat your own spleen.
So, politically correctness aside, can parents have favorites?
After all, kids have their favorites. “I love daddy more because he lets me play computer games all day.” Or “I like mommy, she makes the best snacks.” We don’t expect kids to be unbiased and objective because it’s human nature to have preferences. When it comes to parents though, we are expected to love them EXACTLY the same. Is that even possible?
With two kids of my own, I constantly remind myself to be fair, even though I’m not sure what that really means. I try to divide my time equally between both kids and give them enough quality time with momma. I measure out equal scoops of ice-cream and give them equal portions of my affection, just to make sure neither one feels left out.
I try to love them with the same amount of love but I’ve come to realize that they’re as different as carrots and peas. Along the way, I find myself loving them differently. Not in quantity but in method. Tru is like an all-action boy. His hugs are intense but short. He grabs my face and kisses me but JUST ONCE IS ENOUGH, MOMMA. Truth be told, I really enjoy doing crazy stuff with him. Truett-time is like hanging out with the badass kid in class who makes everyone laugh all the time. And you know how much I like the badass kid. I married one.
Baby girl is the complete opposite. She’s the sweet girly girl who has tea parties with dolls. She loves snuggling and gazing into my eyes and leaning her head on my chest. Her hugs are generous and they often turn into long kissy sessions. Being with her takes less effort. I don’t have to worry that she’ll stab her eye with a fork “to see if jelly comes out“. She’s low maintenance and the epitome of chill, which I also really love.
Maybe when they’re a little older, and I have 5 kids to choose from, I may find myself closer to one of the kids. If I ever end up with that pickle, we’ve agreed that the kids must never know about it. We’ll have to be more careful in treating them just the same, even the angsty, sullen one. That being said, I really hope I don’t get an angsty one that drives me crazy. I’d like to keep my spleen, thankyouverymuch.
blue steel
Anybody got the contact for GQ magazine? I think one of their hottest new commodities is sitting in my living room.
Be still, my beating heart.
