Ah, here it is again: That time of year that sneaks up on you. You might miss it when looking at your calendar. Maybe you saw it at a glance and thought, “oh yes, I need to remember to switch those clocks Sunday.”
Then it hits…Daylight Savings. The worst.
I tried all the tricks. I wore the kids out hoping they wouldn’t realize we were putting them to bed an hour earlier. I woke up with promises of a yummy breakfast and a happy school day. Nope, none of it works. I had a car load of little angry humans who thought I was playing some cruel joke on them on the way to school. I wasn’t in a much better mood. Tuesday felt like it should be Friday. By the end of the week we were all walking around like angry zombies from the Walking Dead.
Daylight Savings is the enemy.
While I was in the thick of it and promising myself I would not forget next year and underestimate the destruction and sadness it brings, I came up with a list of other things that make me want to jab a pen in my eye:
1. Bottles and Sippy Cups
I hate them. All of them. You find one that one baby likes and you buy twenty of them because somehow in a day they go through at least half. Why do they all have so many parts? You wash them and they fly all over the dishwasher, then you spend twenty minutes reassembling them every time you do dishes. Then, the oldest child graduates to sippy cups, phew right? WRONG. Now you’re left with twenty Dr. Whoever the Latest Expert Is bottles that you have invested half your life savings in and you don’t want to get rid of them because you’re having another baby and you don’t want to waste them. Don’t be silly though; your next child will drink out of those bottles and spit the milk out like they’re drinking molten hot lava, and you’ll run to Target and buy twenty of the Tommy Turvy Tipsers or whatever the new bottle is like it’s going to be the magic solution. As if bottle technology has changed so quickly in 17 shorts months.
Then, the older kids move on to the sippy cups. I’m a dentist and sippy cups are already kind of my enemy, but I can’t exactly send my three children running around all over the house like little drunk people holding their pint glasses full of milk or water, so they’re kind of a necessary evil. So you think, ok, they are at least better than the bottles right? Wait until you end up with the ones that roll under the couch or the seat in the car and sit for a few days. There is nothing worse than that smell. All the moms know it. You have to go to the kitchen and get the tongs to pick it up because human fingers can’t touch it for fear the smell would permeate the skin never to be removed, run down the hall while simultaneously gagging and trying not to puke, toss it in the trash and put five knots in the bag and immediately take it outside and burn it. There is no other way to handle this situation. And don’t even get me started on the YouTube videos with the mold. Ok, ok; I didn’t know that one piece came out and you had to wash it separately, got it.
2. Party Favors
I love party favors. I love getting them for my kids’ birthdays and packing the themed favor bags. The kids love going to other birthday parties and getting them. I love the creative things people put in the bags, until I get home from the party with three kids with the three bags filled with all the happiness. Somehow the party favors multiply and make their way to every area of your house that you cannot clean. Party favors go to the back corner underneath the bed and they are too big for the vacuum cleaner to pick up and I am too big to retrieve them. I don’t want to send my kids to crawl under the bed to get them because they will remember that said party favor was their prized possession and pull it out, which will send child #2 into a tearful frenzy on a search for their purple version of the red plastic spinny top which is “the best toy ever.” Child #2 doesn’t know that the purple version is under about a mile of trash in a landfill somewhere because my foot found it weeks ago when I stepped on it in the middle of the night and threw it in the trash. Child #3 starts crying because they weren’t at that party and didn’t get a top. I can’t handle it. Until the next birthday comes; then I will smile and pack the kids’ favor bags with all the plastic tops and Ring Pops and other joyful things because I can’t stop, won’t stop.
3. Bows
I love bows. I’m not a girly girl, but man I see a cute bow and I have to buy it for my girls. My oldest isn’t in to them, so I have given up on her sharing the bow love, but thankfully my youngest wants a bow on every day, or maybe two or three. They are so pretty and cute. And EVERYWHERE. I don’t know if they get together with the party favors and share their secrets on how to multiply and hide places, but there are bows in every corner of my house. I pile them up and take them upstairs and return them to the bow home, and the next morning come downstairs and there are more bows. In the car. In the den by the television. On the floor in the laundry room. In the driveway. Bows. Everywhere.
4. Amazon Boxes
Oh, how we couldn’t live without Amazon these days. I’m running out of diapers — click, they’re on my doorstep in two days. That scrub brush that I’ve gone to Target fifteen times to get and walked out with five new swimsuits, home decor, and a few items from the “used to be a dollar but is now $3 section”…and forgot the scrub brush — click, Amazon saves the day and has it at my house in forty eight hours. Amazing. Perfect. The answer to all my mom brain problems. Then there are the boxes. First of all, I don’t know why they sometimes package a 3×5 flat plastic package and a scrub brush in a box that could fit five pairs of boots. Second, after a late night Amazon clicking buying frenzy that I don’t quite appreciate the shopping I am capable of until two days later, I realize that they have sent each thing in a separate ridiculously oversized box.
Now, we have the boxes everywhere. The kids are all over the place so I do what any lazy mom would do and empty out my loot and pile the boxes neatly by the back door in a sort of cardboard leaning Tower of Pisa arrangement hoping that my husband will come in the door and see my lovely pile, say a few choice words and take the boxes out to the recycling bin. I quietly ignore the fact that this involves breaking down the boxes and folding them all up only to open up the recycling and realize it’s full already. So we have now resorted to piling them up outside, letting them get rained on until they are a mushy cardboard pulpy mess and squishing them, dripping, into the recycling bin when space becomes available. The next day, the boxes JUST KEEP COMING. I have no solution for this, but we are convinced that dealing with Amazon boxes is the next big invention and have spent more than a few nights brainstorming how we might do this better.
5. Weird YouTube Videos
If you let your kids watch videos on the iPad, you know what I’m talking about. My daughter will start out watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and ten minutes later she’s gone down some toddler YouTube rabbit hole filled with strange videos that aren’t inappropriate, but are just creepy and weird. I don’t even know how she gets there. First, there are the “Daddy Finger, Mommy Finger” videos. Google them.
It is an annoying song with a hundred variations of finger puppets singing this strange song, and somehow my daughter makes it to these videos and watches them over and over. The song haunts me in my sleep. Then, there are the surprise egg videos. These are the WORSE. Some adult female talking in a weird baby voice opens up surprise eggs or toys wrapped in Playdoh and has a YouTube commentary on what each item is, and it is the strangest most bazaar-O world stuff that my daughter is obsessed with. I’m having trouble adequately describing these things, but just google them. With each click the videos get stranger and stranger and before you know it she’s watching some guy dressed as Elsa swinging from a tree while Elmo runs around punching Spiderman. Seriously.
6. Boogers, Snot, and Booty Wiping
This one really doesn’t require much explanation, but it needs to go on the list. I’m a mom. As soon as that first baby came out, I inevitably became an expert wiper of all the things. I wipe with wipes. I wipe with toilet paper. I wipe with paper towels. I sometimes wipe with a random empty envelope or stray sock. Oh how I wipe. I don’t think I’ll ever stop wiping.
7. The Space Behind the Carseat
Every mom knows exactly what I’m talking about. That space behind the carseat where party favors and bows and goldfish go to die. The kids somehow have all of these things in their hand in the carseat, drop them, and they migrate to the place where vacuums don’t reach. All the crumbs and party favors and lollipop sticks and bows make their pilgrimage to the space behind the carseat where they get together and melt/mold/rot into one big stuck together masterpiece of all things two years old. Somehow you can’t reach it with the vacuum, so you have no idea it’s there until one day you have to switch out the carseat and the pile falls out, and a moldy spoiled milk sippy cup rolls out and drips on top of it. The car rental guy stares at you in horror as you move your carseat to the rental car, leaving a trail of moldy milk destruction in the parking lot, and you just keep walking. Just me?
Well, I think that sums up my list of the things that make me want to jab a pen in my eye. It’s not that long, really! In the midst of the week of Daylight Savings, I guess I was having a particularly frazzled night trying to get my two year old to fall asleep. After finally getting her asleep, I walked into my five year old son’s room to kiss him good night, and he said in his sweet voice, “Is it hard to be a mom?” It was so innocent and insightful and sweet, and I explained that some days there were hard things, but every second was worth it to get to have my awesome kids.
I wouldn’t change a thing. Except maybe the butt wiping. I told him that too.
