Laura Ingalls Wilder TOTALLY Lied

I have always loved kids and couldn’t wait to have a family of my own.  As a child, I coveted everyone’s baby.  I watched everyone’s children whenever asked.  I was a camp counselor.  My best friend Beth’s daughter Lara called me “Mumma.”  It was going to be SO EASY because I knew exactly what it was going to be like to have a family. 

We’d sit around the fireplace after dinner, talk about our hopes, dreams and the latest NY Times bestseller, while Husband reads the Wall Street Journal.  Kid #1 reads Harry Potter, Kid #2 plays with the kittens on my spotless floors. I lounge in fluffy slippers and knit my latest beautiful sweater while sitting on the davenport (in size 4 designer jeans).  We will have just cleaned up from our organic dinner (cooked mostly from vegetables grown from our garden). They may even be some singing.  (Not by me of course – I’m dreaming, not insane).  I just KNEW it was going to be like a hybrid of Little House on the Prairie, Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables and Little Women with just the right splash of Ramona.  I’ve read tens of thousands of books, which clearly makes me an expert on parenting.   I just needed to fill in the “Husband” blank and get this party started!

Fast forward a few years.  Husband, check.  Kid #1: 5-year-old Lena, check.  Kid #2: Almost 2-year-old Emmeline, check.  Perhaps if I had read Sybil or The Exorcist I would have been a little more prepared for what I was about to face. 

Here’s a snippet of my life: 

I can NEVER bring the girls to a doctors appointment with me ever, ever again.

"Lena, for the love of God, brush your teeth – the Sea Monkeys have left their tank and taken up residency in your mouth."

"No Emmeline, you cannot feed the goldfish again.  They will explode – again."

Everything I own has been eaten.  Usually not by the dog.   

"It’s SOOOO not fair that you won’t let me have anything I want for breakfast!  I am probably going to starve to death and die and it’s all your fault because you won’t let me eat cheese popcorn or Pez for breakfast." 

“Moooooommmyyyy!  Emmeline won’t share your phone!”  “Super Why!  I ‘eed Super Why!  I a supa weeda. No Eena!”.  (Small scuffle in the living room, tears, running into the kitchen. Emmeline holding out my iPhone).  “Eena, naughty!  Sticker. Phone. No.”  “LENA DID YOU PUT A STICKER ON THE FRONT OF MY PHONE????” “Well, she wouldn’t share it.  So if I can’t watch the phone, no one can.”  “Ok, well, then you may not use the phone until after school because you decided to put a sticker on the screen which you know is wrong.”  “Well, that’s it.  I am NO LONGER YOUR SISTER.  WE ARE DONE. FOREVER.  UNTIL THE END OF TIME.  So don’t even ask to play with me ever again. Because we are no longer sisters.  Ever.  Again.” “Ok, well, now that you have all this free time on your hands, how about you go brush your teeth…”

“Emmeline, where’s the waffle I just toasted for you?” (FLUSH – yelling from the bathroom – “It gawbage”)  “Oh, dear…thank God we rent.”

We are slowly becoming banned from many restaurants in the San Francisco area. 

I spend my glamorous days breaking up fist fights over My Little Ponies and who gets to flush the potty in the dollhouse.  Cleaning the entire box of raisins off the floor because “It’s wainin’ waisins - hooway!!!”  Two seconds later it looks as if the American Girl doll store threw up in my living room. I'm picking up toys, sippy cups, and children that have fallen off some ladder-like object used to climb up to the fish tank to try to "tickew the fishies."   Lena requires rescuing as she has been closed into the couch ottoman by Emmeline (because wolves live in dens, Mommy.  So, clearly that is why am inside the ottoman). By the time dinner rolls around, I’m ready to feed them whatever falls out of the pantry first.  Or crawls out of the vegetable drawer.  I mean, mold is green, right?  I pour a bunch of quinoa in a pot and add something that resembles protein; glad that I managed to pull something together before Husband arrives home.  To which he lovingly replies “Oh, great, whale sperm for dinner.”

Cleaning up as a family?  Bahahahahahahaha!  I laugh until I stop.  Lena pulls out yet another number from the soundtrack of Preschool Musical: “I do not clean.  No, no.  I will not help. No, no.  Because YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!”  (Backup singer Emmeline chimes in “No cwean. No, no. I the boss. Eena not. No. no”).  

I’m so tired that I begin to contemplate curling up in a ball under the couch, resting my head on the dust bunnies and rocking myself to sleep. But they’d find me there. They always find me.  And probably want food and won’t settle for the petrified French fry within arm’s reach. (Oh, look.  There’s the missing baby bottle.) And then a “Super Weader” would jump on the couch because that’s one of her super powers and I would get squished to death by a wayward couch spring.  And my epitaph would probably read “She just lay around all day reading silly books about the life she wished she had.”  

Sigh….someone owes me a refund.   Yeah, I'm looking at you Louisa May Alcott. 

Thanks for the big book of BULLSHIT.  Liars.  The lot of you.