1. It’s probably good for his immune system.

This is the lie I tell myself when I catch Brandon eating things off of the floor. Especially after I don’t catch him quickly enough to smack it out of his hand before the mystery meat gets into his mouth.  DUDE, IF IT’S NEON PINK NUCLEAR WASTE  YOU’RE YEARNING FOR, I WILL GLADLY TAKE YOU TO GET A MCRIB, JUST STOP EATING OFF THE FLOOR FOR CHRIST’S SAKE.

I don’t know if it was deliberately to piss me off, but Brandon used to do something disgusting at least daily. Like the time he picked up a mostly empty water bottle in the park and drank the remaining sip of water. I almost dropped my other child while trying to helicopter-kick the bottle out of his hands, but I am no Jean-Claude Van Damme, so don’t expect angelic kung-fu twirl kicks out of me, I am massively uncoordinated.

2. One day, my children will willfully accept vegetables into their diet.

I don’t know how, but apparently it’s possible for children to thrive despite a complete lack of nutrition in their diets. Both of my kids always get a thumbs-up from the pediatrician, so I must be doing SOMETHING right. But it’s only a matter of time until Brandon’s next check up when the doctor comes into the examination room FROWNING while studying some results and says, “according to my calculations, Brandon’s blood type is just straight up cheese.” And then I’ll put my hands up in that “hey, don’t look at me” pose and then I’ll try to pass the blame onto my husband. I haven’t decided yet. He’s going to get me put on a bad parent watch list sooner or later.

3. One of these days, I’m going to cut back on coffee. And alcohol. And sarcasm.

But I think that might be a solid NO on halting the substance abuse.  I haven’t COMPLETELY lost my marbles. Yet. If it were not for this magical elixir called coffee, I would have to check myself into the nearest sanitarium to get the care I so desperately need.  If motherhood has shown me anything, it is the need to let go of being embarrassed by a chemical dependency.  I have degenerated from being the stately lady who sips artisan brewed coffee in her state of the art frappalattemochachocolotta machine, to just mainlining Folger’s freeze dried bullshit they call coffee with the nearest syringe. Oh? Is it already 5:00 am and I’ve ONLY been woken up by my children roughly 100 and 1 times last night? FANTASTIC. Let’s keep this pain-train going with a pot of the black stuff.

Oh, whats that? Is it only 4:35pm? If this was just one more time zone to the left, it would already be happy hour, and that’s all the flimsy excuse I’ll need to get started early!

4. I’m not going on Reddit anymore.

I was looking at the baby bumps subreddit the other day, and this particular new mom posted something that made me question my very SANITY. Allow me to paraphrase the whole thing badly: she was bemoaning the fact that her son needs his “alone time” to do the healthy things that healthy people do, like sleep.

SLEEP, YO.

She was whining about her son going to sleep because, she simply didn’t want him to. She even suggested waking him to play some more (what kind of self flagellating maniac WANTS to be in the company of a sleep deprived toddler?) At first, I was going to write the whole thing off as an exaggeration on her part.
HOWEVER, all these other moms started chiming in with responses like “oh, I know! I just hate putting little Cornelius down for bed because then I have no one to complain about my day with : (”
“Me too! I just LOOOVE chasing little Methuselah around for hours, making sure he doesn’t stick something metal into the nearest outlet! I’m soooo sad when it’s bedtime!!!”
And so on.
And I’m just sitting here stupefied like, ARE YOU BROADS CRAZY? AM I THE ONLY ONE AROUND HERE WHOSE FAVORITE TIME OF DAY IS WHEN MY KIDS GO TO BED FOR THE NIGHT?? After we put the kids in their beds for the night, my husband and I cartwheel into bed like, IT CROWD RERUNS HERE WE COME.