The Kids Don’t Stand A Chance
For all my talk of how I’m still ME and all this parenting stuff is sort of falling into place, ahoy!, once in a while an event happens — not necessarily a MAJOR event, but an event nonetheless — to remind me that Jesus, folks, no. Life is not the same. At all.
A couple days ago my friend Tasha asked if I wouldn’t mind lending her my car — and my company — to go pick up a swath of rug for her son Archer’s playroom that she’d found on Craigslist. Granted, it was kind of a haul — about an hour and a half away — but hey, we could make it a road trip! FUN! And I’m all YES! Road trip! FUN! And then there’s the part where we we came to our senses and were all, WE HAVE CHILDREN. ROAD TRIPS ARE NOT FUN WITH CHILDREN.
Oh, except that never happened. We continued, undaunted, with our attitude of “Road trip! FUN!”
There was a time, I swear to God you guys, when a road trip meant Combos and illicit cigarettes and blasting Peter Gabriel or — ooh ooh, maybe some Vampire Weekend! What the COOL KIDS are listening to! — and the windows, they would be down as we tooled through the idyllic Vermont landscape pointing out beautiful clusters of leaves and marveling at how RELAXING life was and GEE, ISN’T THIS LOVELY?
Oh hey, guess what? IT IS NOT LIKE THAT AT ALL WITH CHILDREN.
Taking off, if you will, involved a ridiculous amount of preparation involving tandem car seat installation, and picking up straps in case we had to tie the rug to the roof and the packing of diaper bags to make sure we had snacks! juice! books! toys! among other methods of child and toddler entertainment, and oh my GOD, once we were on the road, it wasn’t all Peter Gabriel and “Here Comes the Flood” and heads out the window to blow out a plume of smoke, NO.
Instead, it was all, “Archer OUT! Archer WALK! Archer OUT! Archer WALK!” followed by Sam screaming, “AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” and also, “GUREGHTEGHTEGHETHELKETH” followed by, “HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAARHGHT” and a nice bout of “Mommy READ? Rosh Hashanah READ? READ?” as I frantically yelled, “Sam! Mama’s here! Mama’s here! Archer LOOK! MOOOOOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOOOO!” and pointed maniacally at what turned out to be a collection of HORSES, not cows, leading me to be stubbornly scolded by a two-year-old that “No MOOOOO, Rosh Hashanah. NEIIIIIGGHHHHHHHH!”
*He calls me Jonna Rosh Hashanah. No one is sure why, except that it rhymes. Although usually it’s just Rosh Hashanah.
We were then treated to about a thousand renditions of the Shiny Penny song, followed by four consecutive readings of The Gruffalo (dear Jesus, thank you for THAT baby gift, TwoBusy, for it SAVED US) and oh my sweet LORD, you guys, if I hear “The Wheels On The Bus Go Round and Round” one more time, I might shave my body with a cheese grater, but more likely I will just SING ALONG.
The whole thing took more than six hours, and we returned at — wait for it — 10:30 p.m., and we realized, hilariously, that by the time we stopped at the grocery store for dinner for the kids and a Chinese restaurant for dinner for the mamas and gas and oh my God, the SINGING, that the whole shebang cost us more to GET THERE than she spent on the rug. And what’s totally and completely messed up and hilarious is that honestly, the whole thing was FUN. Put THAT in your pipe of ridiculous things I never thought I would say and smoke it, but there you have it. IT WAS FUN.
Nothing is the same. Everything is different.
What is also different is that I picked up a pair of cords at TJ Maxx over the weekend, and they were — oh my lord — LIZ CLAIBORNE, and I came home and was ranting and raving about how I finally found a pair of pants that fit me properly, and were kind of cute and they had to be fracking LIZ CLAIBORNE, the original creator, in my mind, of the Mom Jean. I was all, “It’s for LADIES. Ladies who are usually called MISSES. OLDER LADIES. WHO ARE MOMS.” And then Adam, ever the clueless straight-talker, was all, “Yes, but I hate to break this to you: you are a mom. And kind of older and out of the Britney Spears’ low-rise pants demographic.”
And REALLY, HE’S RIGHT. Next thing you know, I’ll be doing all of my spring shopping at Chico’s and waxing poetic about this great mosaic/tapestry jacket I found, like I’m Suze Orman or something.
MAN.
P.S., Did I TELL you guys about Style Lush, Jennie’s brain child, where I’ll mostly be writing about … MOM AND KID PRODUCTS? I’m super-excited — seriously, the shit I don’t buy but drool over is eclipsed only by the shit I drool over and DO buy — and Jennie and the other writers are Teh Awesome. Stop by or follow us on Twittah.
*Vampire Weekend. I DO love them, but I don’t think this makes me hip, cool or at all cutting-edge, considering I was LAAATE to the party and also, can sing the Shiny Penny song by heart.
27 comments October 5th, 2009