Best Mom Tip #174: Ask for help

I am not good at asking for help.  I don't like to admit I can't do anything, I don't generally like the way other people do things I want them to do, and I don't want to have to help other people do anything in response to their helping me.  I am obviously kind of a jackass.

Right now, I am a jackass drowning in laundry, sticky floors/door handles, and diapers.  I change a lot of diapers.  In fact, I have spent about 7 years regularly changing diapers with a solid 2 more years to go.  I hate diapers.  But I digress.

Since Jack, my sweet 4-month-old, was born I have been very overwhelmed.  I can't seem to get any tasks accomplished in the amount of time I think it should take.  I am late everywhere.  And the real kicker is that I can never really pinpoint what went wrong or why I am signing my kid into school while hoping that the school resource officer doesn't notice the other 3 kids unattended in my car.  You know, in theory.  I'm not saying I did that, DFCS.  Even right now I can't seem to remember what I was going to say next.

I guess it was about asking for help and why I don't want to do it.  I feel like since I quit my job, surely I should be able to accomplish the menial tasks I have to do every day.  Any idiot with a driver's license and enough literacy to read Go, Dog, Go should be able to do my day.  I suppose I am embarrassed that I'm really bad at being a stay-at-home mom.  I don't understand Pinterest. I have no interest in home schooling.  I don't make creative dinners or clean the toilets all that often.

Shouldn't I be able to both clean the house and get places on time?  And why do I care?  At no point in my life did I hope to be a really great housekeeper.  The fact that I am disappointed in my housekeeping skills angers me.  Gone from my life is the chance to win at something, the sense of intellectual challenge, and the encouragement of colleagues.  It all makes me want to hit something (which is why I take classes called Boot Camp and Kickboxing, but that's a different topic.)

So, help.  It admits failure in areas I didn't really want to succeed in anyway.  It makes my fears and worries vulnerable to others and open to their judgment. I don't like sharing emotion.  I don't usually like sharing my real self.  If it weren't for my burning need to have an audience on a regular basis, I would be a pretty good hermit.

I am good at hugging little people.  I am good at fixing boo-boos and teaching them to read.  They feel loved and valued and are becoming good human beings.  I get that that's the most important part of what I do right now.  But they also have to have on clothes and eat every day and clean up spilled food and I just don't have any idea how to get better at organizing all of it.  Mommyhood is surprisingly difficult when it turns out that your primary gift is snuggling. Snuggling and sarcasm.  I'm also good at sarcasm.  

Best Mom Tip #159: Use A&D Original Ointment

I spend a lot of my time dealing with other people's behinds. I mean a LOT of time. Most moms do so because of the following reasons:

1. Children poop on themselves, at least for the first couple of years.

2. While potty training, they fail to wipe themselves well enough and get itchy behinds.

3. They somehow fall down and land with their butts on their feet while wearing shoes. That does seem like it would hurt, but how do they manage to do that? (And what do you do when they ask you to kiss it to make it better?)

In all of these situations, they look for Mommy. And, really, I don't want a bunch of other people dealing with those parts of my kids, so it's o.k. But it's also gross. I have a veritable encyclopedia of poop colors (and their causes) that I can never remove from my brain. I know how much of which foods to feed each kid to solve a variety of digestive issues. I don't want to know that about anyone else. I don't really want to know that information about myself.

And I have to deal with diaper rashes. I learned during my first round of kid diapering that you need to sooth the hurt and protect the skin with a moisture barrier to get rid of diaper rash. My kids had unfortunate reactions to antibiotics coupled with weak immunity to sinus infections so I got to try just about everything.

Eventually, I came to use A&D Original Ointment. The ointment creates a barrier to moisture and it is medicated to ease itchy/burning feelings. According to the tube, you can also use it on minor cuts and burns. I've never actually used it on anything else because once a tube of something is used on a behind in my house, it is forever used for behinds only. In fact, it now belongs exclusively to the behind that just used it.

Anyway, the A&D really works. Within a day the rash is better and it eases their little behinds while it works. Also, I kind of like the medicinal smell. Which is weird, but I do. I'd apologize for discussing such a gross subject, but really, what else do I have to talk about? I have a kid on an antibiotic right now and this is my life.

Maybe tomorrow I'll try to kill that damn woodpecker outside my bedroom window and I'll have something else to say.

Best Mom Tip #140: Cover everything in Lysol

You know what's disgusting? Children.

You know what's disgusting by association? My entire life.

I just scrubbed pee off of the bathroom wall. How my 2-year-old managed to get it higher than the height of his head is quite impressive and I'm sure that gift will win him bets in his teen years. But I don't ever want to know about that.

I don't want to know when other people are constipated.

I don't want to have bloody slobber wiped all over my shoulder because my baby son busted his lip while crawling too fast on the linoleum.

On some days, I manage to forget how gross my life is--I clean things up quickly and work the nasty (and I don't mean the funny/slutty kind) into the sweet and cuddly and it all seems worth it.

On other days, like today, I am so grossed out by my offspring that I am seriously considering going back to work (as a public high school teacher, mind you) just so I will be around cleaner people. That is sad.

I will never be able to touch that bathroom again until after I've coated the entire thing in Lysol. Thus far, I have scrubbed the toilet, the floor, and the bathtub. I've cleaned the sink and the walls. The walls, for pete's sake. I'm glad I had the foresight to use washable paint in there.

I find it disheartening to realize that the only time I will not have to deal with others' disgusting messes are the few years between when they all move out and before they start having their own children. That is at least 17 years from now, so I won't be holding my breath.

Speaking of holding my breath, what is that smell? Ohhhh, it's one of my children. How surprising. Gotta go change a diaper.