What Kind of Monster is Your Kid?

What Kind of Monster Is Your Kid? (Pictures of vampire, fairy and Bigfoot)

Wrapping up my son in a blue hooded towel with three eyes as I pull him out of the bathtub, I exclaim, “Who’s the cutest little monster?” Looking in the mirror, I want to keep him that adorable size forever. Seven hours later at 3 AM, I hear the shriek of the banshee and shudder. Then he’s a monster of a completely different type.

While our children are often the cute Muppet monsters, on their worst days, they can wander into old-fashioned horror movie territory.

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Guest Post at Rants from Mommyland

I’m super excited today because I have a guest blog over at Rants from Mommyland, one of my absolute favorite blogs of all time. Seriously, I have a total blogger crush on Lydia. I read the blog’s entire archives while I was nursing Sprout and it helped keep me sane in the dark hours in the middle of the night. She has a fantastic series called “Domestic Enemies of The…” highlighting the challenges facing mothers in all sorts of situations. I’m honored to be the latest in that series with Domestic Enemies of the Working Wife of the Stay-at-Home Dad.

Here’s the first paragraph:
I’m proud to be married to a stay-at-home dad. But it definitely comes with its pitfalls. While I’m so glad that I get to go to my job every day while my husband enjoys taking care of the baby and cooking, we’ve faced our share of Domestic Enemies.

Read the rest over at Rants from Mommyland!

Why I Don’t (Really) Mind When You Compare Your Dog to My Kid

A lot of my friends have dogs that they adore and don’t have kids, either because they aren’t at the right point in their lives yet or they don’t want kids. So when I do have the chance to get together with my kid-free friends, my story about my kid is often followed by them with a story about their dog. And I’m totally cool with that. Seriously. (Even if I can snap after too many jokes about the similarities when I’m already stressed – apologies to my sister-in-law.)

Photograph of golden retriever close up.

Here’s why I’m fine with you comparing your dog to my kid:
1) You’re looking for a way to relate.
For people who don’t have kids, it’s hard to know how to respond to someone droning on about changing diapers and sleep issues. What happened to the person who backpacked through South America? But both dogs and kids provide a way to talk about the domestic issues in our lives without being a total dullard.

2) They both take a level of time and emotional investment that people who don’t have pets or kids don’t realize.
As much as I love dogs, I am definitely not interested in getting one. They simply require too much time, emotional energy and attention that I don’t have. Dogs (unlike cats) are very social animals who need a lot of interaction to thrive. While you obviously have a very different relationship with your dog than I do with my kid, I totally respect your level of commitment to them and desire to talk about them.

3) They both rely on us for everything – and get into trouble when they don’t.
Dog stories and toddler stories are remarkably similar. They too often end with something destroyed and / or eaten that really, really shouldn’t have been.

4) We both have to deal with poop entirely too often.
Especially because my husband and I cloth diaper our son. At least we don’t have to pick it up in the yard. But total poop solidarity.

5) They’re smarter than my kid – for now.
Taking problem solving, language and social understanding into account, the average dog is actually smarter as a two year old. My kid is just past one, so he has some catching up to do to your pooch.

6) Dogs really are cute.
If you tolerate my Facebook photos of my kid, I’ll totally tolerate those of your dog.

7) You do understand the difference; you aren’t dumb.
As John at the Ask Your Dad blog points out, anyone who has any social skills at all knows that a dog isn’t the same as a human child. My friends are all smart enough to understand the difference between species.

8) I respect the fact that you don’t have kids.
A lot of my friends don’t want to have kids and I completely respect that. I’m not going to pretend that your dog fulfills a baby-shaped hole in your life because you don’t have a baby-shaped hole. Chastising folks who want to tell a story about their pet after you tell a story about your kid says to them, “Only I have the right to tell a story about my home life because there is something inherently more worthy than my story about my kids than your story about your pet.” But there isn’t – we all have our individual lives and want to share them with each other. The fact that you have different experiences than me makes you interesting. Plus, we parents sometimes like talking about something other than kids – including dogs.

So what are your favorite dog or dog and kid stories?

A Yelp Review from a Newborn

With everyone having an opinion on the internet today, why not newborns? They’re certainly good at letting you know when they’re not happy. When my son was only a few months old, my husband and I would joke about the review he would write about his daily meals.

Name: Sprout
Location: My house
Number of stars: 2

Many people say that the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Well, if so, I must be insane, because I keep returning to this place day after day despite the limited menu and inferior service. At least the food is healthy and the price is right.

The menu is extraordinarily limited – nothing but milk! The same thing, day in and day out. And always breast milk; they never even switch it up with cow or goat. There’s no question that it’s good, but a baby wants something different every once in a while. Fortunately, they do provide a bit of variety in the delivery, alternating between the intimacy of nursing and the efficiency of the bottle.

Speaking of delivery, the service is atrocious! At first, I always request my meal quietly, almost silently. Because they sometimes miss this initial cue, I then have no choice but to raise my voice. Even then, I still have to wait; they never understand the urgency of the situation. The one with the breasts is often ready right away, but I get hardly more than a trickle at first. The tall one takes ages to bring the bottle, but at least it comes out quickly once it’s served.

Then, halfway through and at the end of my meal, the waitstaff insists on manhandling me! They pat me firmly on the back for minutes on end despite my protests otherwise. I don’t know why they put me through such torture – I don’t mind a little (or a lot) of spit-up, so neither should they.

The one major advantage of this establishment is that at least it’s free. It also appears to be quite exclusive, although I can’t blame anyone else for not demanding service. I suppose you get what you pay for, especially when all the proprietors expect is an occasional smile in return.

You Know You’re a Sleep Deprived Parent When…

My son is not what you would call a good sleeper. He’s far from the worst, thank God, but I’ve spent a fair number of hours in his room in the middle of the night. My night vision has gotten substantially better over the last year from practice. I scowl at those lucky bastards who say, “My child slept through the night at six weeks.” At 13 months old, we still consider it a good night when he wakes up once and falls back asleep within 10 minutes. So I know of which I speak when I talk about lacking sleep. In fact, every single one of these has happened to me!

You know you’re a sleep-deprived parent when:

  • You dream about not being able to sleep.
  • You sleep more soundly on the train into work than in your own bed.
  • You consider it a major accomplishment to have only a single caffeinated beverage during the day.
  • You know how to (kind of) sleep sitting up on the couch with a toddler sprawled out on you.
  • You find it hard to sleep without white noise because you’re so used to hearing it over the baby monitor.
  • You can apply oral-gel with your eyes closed – literally.
  • You have a justified fear of falling asleep on your feet and toppling over.
  • Sleeping until 8 am sounds scandalously luxurious.
  • 4 am seems like a perfectly normal time to be awake.
  • You are just So Damn Tired!