2019 Holiday Guide For Sarcastic Parents

It’s the most wonderful timeeeee of the year… if you’re a kid, that is. If you’re a parent, it’s beginning to look a lot like pine needle debris, bills stacked on the counter, a shameful amount of Amazon deliveries, stress-eating and hypothetical escape plans. By December 20th it’s all a blur of green and red but the clock is ticking and you’re almost out of time.

The twelve days of Christmas is just parents, procrastinating as usual, and trying to cram months worth of shopping/wrapping/ho-ho-holding down the fort into the final week before Santa shows up and scoops all the credit for the shit we killed ourselves to get.

Baby it’s cold outside, but once you’re inside the store you can’t tell if you’ve actually descended into the depths of hell or if that’s just your winter coat causing you to overheat to a point of visual hallucinations. Maybe both? Global warming is alive and well, folks. And currently living directly in the Matell toy aisle of Target.

We might be out shopping every fuggin day in December, but don’t worry we’ll be home for Christmas, because if we weren’t the whole damn house would burn down and literally NO ONE would know what the hell to do. As much as I would like to see this holiday up in literal flames right about now, there really is no place like home for the holidays … although packing a bag with my passport and sneaking off in the middle of the night to Bali doesn’t sound like the WORST idea…

But enough about me… let’s DO THIS!

In an effort to make your holiday just a liiiiitle brighter I bring to you this year’s hottest toys — straight from the toy manufacturers and multi-billion dollar companies selling them — because if anyone knows what your kid’s deepest desires are this year, it’s probably the people directly profiting off of them:

(if you think I didn’t load this sucker with affiliate links, you’d be wrong. Mama needs a new pair of noise cancelling headphones.)

Skyrocket Blume Doll

$9.98 on Amazon — which is a rock solid deal to watch a doll grow the same literal headache as me.

With the Skyrocket Blume Doll, all you need is a few drops of water and you won’t believe your eyes. No, really, you will be BLOWN. AWAY. by how your kid managed to turn 10 droplets of H2O into a goddamn tsunami right in the two seconds you turned your head to grab a towel.

I mean, for under $10, it’s worth the proof for when I tell my kids immabout to grow horns during one of their irrational outbursts, I have this beaut to prove that it IS possible, so don’t even try me, okkayyyyy?

 

WowWee PinkFong Baby Shark Puppets

Just $16.99 for a toy you’ll quickly toss at the dog and hope to God they tear to shreds.*insert Jaws theme song*

If you thought someone gifting your kid a drum set this Christmas was your worst nightmare, think again, folks. Just when I thought we were FINALLY over this it’s baaaaaack … do-do-do-do-do-DAMMIT! And apparently now better than ever because your kid doesn’t need to soak up screen time to get their fix, they can carry this little sucker around with them EVERYWHERE THEY GO! Mommmmmyyyy shark … do-do-do-does not want this mother-fucking-toy in her house do-do-do-don’t even think about it.

 

Moose Toys Treasure X Aliens

The low, low price of $12.93 for a solid butchery lesson.

Speaking of my worst nightmare, our kids will now have the tools they need for a future killing spree. We no longer have to question if our parenting style is conducive to raising future serial killers. Give them 5 minutes with this toy and you’ll know. Nothing says “joy to the world” quite like letting your kid disembowel an alien life form in the comfort of your living room, eh? It won’t send chills up your spine at all to hear their delightfully creepy squeals while they carefully dissect body parts (it’s just plastic, it’s cool) out of goo from a hole in this toy’s abdomen. Could be fostering future NASA researchers, could be raising surgeons… miiiight be nurturing psychopaths. But, hey, that last one will save you a TON on college.

 

Monster Jam Official Mega Grave Digger All-Terrain Remote Control Monster Truck

Monster Jam Official Grave Digger Remoter Control Monster Truck, 1: 15 Scale, 2.4Ghz
Amazon offers this bad boy for $84.99 which is a STEAL as an alternative to bail if you ask me. Disclaimer: IT’S A JOKE

GREAT NEWS! In part two of Breaking Bad Christmas for kids, after you have gifted your little angel the necessary tools to gut extra terrestrials, make sure to follow it up with this completely unrelated yet eerily sequential truck to clean up the evidence and dispose of the body properly. (Plastic tarps, shovel, bleach and empathy sold separately).

WowWee Pixie Belles

Just $9.99 on Amazon and well, I’m terrified.

This thing looks cute and cuddly, right? WRONG. Imagine those menacing eyes gawking at you from the corner of the room in the middle of the night when your kid summons you for a sip of water because their legs stopped working sometime around 2 am. Yeah, nowwww you see it. If this thing’s face wasn’t frightening enough, it’s also interactive. It dances, spins, coos, and you know what that means? You basically got your child a fucking pet that they won’t take care of and you’ll be hearing it going off at random hours of the night. I see your future, and it’s you covered in sweat, frantically searching into the depths of your toy box to swipe the batteries out so you can GO THE FUCK BACK TO SLEEP. Someone find me the Martian massacre toy, murder never looked so good.

 

Owleez Flying Baby Owl

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$38.99 on Amazon but think of all the times you’ll unexpectedly get pelted directly in your cerebellum?

Welp, if interactive toys of the year had a hierarchy, this one would be their queen. Not only does it do everything our horned, bug-eyed, single-footed pixie friend up there does, but this one FLIES. It has 100 different sounds and movements which is, ironically, the same number as the shards glass you’ll be  picking out of your carpet when this things sends that family portrait you finally hung up flying off the wall. When your kid’s eyes light up in excitement to watch it take flight you better hope they are bright enough to illuminate the whole fuggin room because any lamps, light fixtures or screens in what will soon look like a scene from Independence Day are likely going to be useless soon. What’s really great about this toy is it’s just LEARNING to fly. I don’t know how you teach an electronic baby bird to fly, but SUPER excited to baby proof my house all over again and find out (insert huge, sarcastic eye-roll).

 

The Frantic Forest Game

Cardinal Disney Frozen Frantic Forest Board Game
$17.99 at Target only for proof that toy makers HATE parents

WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK IS WITH ALL OF THE FLYING TOYS? The Frantic Forest Game is going to just be me, furiously dashing around the house trying to catch all of the aeronautical plastic characters soaring past my goddamn head.

 

Foam Alive Make N’ Melt Ice Cream Kit

$17.99 for fake ice cream. Ben and Jerry’s wouldn’t do me like this.

Food-like anything that claims to be “alive” is definitely not on my wish list. But apparently it might be on your kid’s this year. The best part of this concoction is that it is “mess-free.” You know, like the kinetic sand that promised to keep your kid’s play session “clean” right before it snuggled into the smallest crevices of your heirloom wood table and dried into a cement-like substance that will NEVER come out. Mess-free basically means, they can’t paint it on the walls, but they WILL find a way. The only thing escaping a mess in my house is the air – and even that somehow manages to get invaded by their stank 99% of the time.

 

#SNAPSTAR Pop Royalty: Echo’s Debut on the Pink Carpet

Snapstar YL30100 Pink Echo Playset
$19.99 – $35.00 from various sellers on Amazon is a nominal fee to teach your kids how to be a Kardashian

I don’t know what Christmas is all about in YOUR house, but in MY house it’s about vanity. If you’re not grooming your kids for a life of fame and entitlement can you even call yourself a PARENT? My kids can pretend to be celebrities all they want, but it’s going to be a harsh reality check when they realize the only red carpet they’ll be walking on in life is the wine stained rug in our living room.

 

American Girl Bowling Alley

$150 from the American Girl Doll store and I’m already on my way.

For $150 this thing better come with the machine apparatus behind the lanes that picks up the pins and places them back upright after they knock them down (believe it or not, it does).  It also has a snack menu, fake snacks, game cards, glow in the dark tees for neon bowling and for fuck sake, this just moved up to the top of MY Christmas list. I can’t even make fun of this toy … except I’m not sure they can truly claim it’s “realistic” if you don’t get a whiff of stale beer and fried food when you open the box. Those shoes better smell like a Febreze covering up a bad case of athlete’s foot or this is false advertising. I bet you have to rent the shoes straight from AG for a nominal fee. Just kidding, it comes with glittery bowling shoes and I’m serious… SOMEONE BUY THIS FOR ME.

 

Poopsie’s Rainbow Slime Kit w/ 35+ Makeup and Slime Surprises

$59.00 on Amazon and Poopsie’s got a brand new bag. Literally.

This year’s addition to everyone’s favorite unicorn that shits rainbow and confetti slime is a whole MOOD. On the left, you have the face your kids will make when they open it up to reveal they have 35+ “surprise” ways to completely wreck your sanity. On the right, you have the parents reaction literal SECONDS into opening this sucker up to realize that it is full of gloss, powders, slime, glitter, and as if glitter isn’t magically fucking adhesive enough all on it’s own, GLUE. This is just fan-fuggin-tastic. My tip? Empty the damn case before you give it to them. It’s cool without all the added bullshit.

 

Pictionary AIR

Mattel Pictionary AIR
$15.99 for this Amazon exclusive and no, that blue line is not real.

Now you can draw the same way you scream after a long day with kids, right into a complete void. Who needs paper and pen when you can have wires and technological difficulties on game night? I can’t wait to get all my friends and family together so they can have a front row seat to my mental breakdown when I go to hook this up after a few spiked eggnog drinks to realize it’s not connecting to the GODDAMN WIFI?!? I give it a week before my kids lose that damn pen… but I won’t notice it’s gone until everyone is packed on my couch with smiles plastered on their faces, ready to play. It wouldn’t be a true game night if it didn’t start, and end, in tears.

 

Capsule Chix

Image result for capsule chix
$44.99 direct from Amazon seems reasonable for a toy that looks like an ancient body exhumed from the crypt.

If we are trying to make Halloween a year long event I just have one thing to say, I. AM. HERE. FOR. IT!!! I’m not even sure what the hell is going on here, but if I had to guess you can put this right up with the alien autopsy doll because it looks to me like you’re opening up dolls who stopped breathing LONG ago.

Go-Glam Nail Stamper

$18.82 on Amazon for 5 patterns and teach your kids a valuable lesson in why painting your own nails is stupid hard.

This one offers stamps, the scent of nail polish and broken dreams. Just like when I sign up for the bake sale to make something “homemade,” we all know this toy won’t deliver what it promises.

 

And there you have it, folks. This year’s TOP TOYS and a million reasons why come January we are all going to be drinking, heavily. Trying to get my shopping done on a steady diet of drive-thru meals and the permanent layer of perspiration I’ve been sporting running from store to store has me starting to look a lot like Santa’s twin. 2020 me is going to be really pissed when she sees what I’ve done to her.

But, hey, it’s always worth the look on their little faces for exactly 3.42 seconds on Christmas morning before they started bitching about someone touching them and someone else getting “more” than they did. Do they know it’s Christmas … AT ALL?

Thank God this day only comes once a year, amirite?

Common Excuses My Kids Use to Avoid Sleep

In my house we have a special kind of song and dance at bed time because I have multiple kids sleeping (in their own beds) in one room. I have mastered how to stagger bedtimes so that they each go to sleep on their own, in chronological order.. but on nights where their bedtime refusal game is strong, it screws with my whole system, and we all hit demon mode in the end. I say a little hymn every night before I start this ritual, but some nights…. we had no fighting chance to begin with. And they have their arsenal of reasons why going to sleep was inevitable from the beginning.

1. Someone saw a shadow, and now there is a monster in their room

They are moving around, sitting up and talking to their siblings and now they have caught a glimpse of their own shadow and have convinced themselves that someone, or (usually) the more chilling version that some THING is in their room. Trying to show kids how a shadow works when you’re running on fumes is something for science, not tired moms.

2. I can’t put on my BLANKETS!!!

The same blankets I expertly placed and smoothed and tucked onto your tiny body before I left the room? THOSE BLANKETS? Someone find

me the nail gun so I can make sure this atrocity doesn’t happen again.

3. Ummmm, MAHMMM, my doll needs blankets too!!!

FFS.

4. The ice in my water melted, so naturally I can’t drink it now

My kids have this weird fetish with ice water, but only at bedtime. Throughout the day, cold water from the tap will do just fine for their sophisticated palates. At bedtime, however, water must be precisely the correct temperature with the exact ice cube count for them to be satisfied. And, God forbid, the ice melts just a SMIDGE and all hell breaks loose.

5. Someone is talking to me in the monitor

yeah – it’s ME. Telling you to lay down and GO TO SLEEP. {eyeroll}

6. I forgot to tell you that next year, on my birthday, I want to have cupcakes instead of cake.

I know birthdays are exciting, but seriously? Yours isn’t for 9 more months, kid. And therefore, not even on my radar. My mind races at night with all things I need to do too. Is this what it looks like inside a child’s brain on it’s way to sleep? Birthday, cake, ice cream, shadows, puppies, Legos, YouTube, ponies, baseball, homework, ABCD…., birthday, blankets, princesses, water, birthday, cake…….

7. It’s really important that this night in April we discuss my future Halloween Costume

See #5. I believe this applies. And, let’s be honest, you’ll change your mind 20 more times before October rolls around. That’s why I don’t have the luxury of getting my Christmas shopping done early. Because if I did, you would turn your nose up at half of your presents because they aren’t “cool” anymore.

8. I need to explain to you in detail the reason why two weeks ago, on Tuesday, I peed in my pants (or got sick, or spit milk out of my nose)

Something “traumatizing” happened and now my poor kid has been trying to figure out why for weeks. I can honestly say, this one is my fault. I over obsess when I do something stupid and embarrassing. Sorry, kid. You inherited this self-reflection and need to replay the moment over and over, from me. I wish I could say it gets better… but it doesn’t. And the embarrassing things you do, only get more awkward and unforgettable (For you. The good news is, everyone else you’re worried about remembering already forgot).

9. There was a tooth fairy sighting, and we are scared

I can’t even make this shit up. This happened. Twice. Next time I see the tooth fairy, we are going to have words.

And the ever-famous….

10. But I’m not tireeedddd….

 

Every mom has a list like this. It’s unique to your children’s choice of excuses on a given night, but you have one. Because all kids look for every excuse in the world to get out of going to bed at night, while we moms are praying to the Gods of Sleep that today is the day they all magically drift off without a production at bedtime. Because WE are exhausted. We are DYING to go to sleep. We’ve been thinking about it all day.

It’s been our oasis through the long, hot, and sometimes lonely,  hike of the day: cleaning up after them, breaking up toddler fist fights, and sitting through episodes on YouTube where grown adults sit and open up plastic eggs with the tiny toys we never want in our house. We’ve licked every wound, washed every dirty hand, wiped every butt, cleaned and re-cleaned every room in the house.

We’ve made it to the top of the greatest mountain known to mom, the one that takes hours and hours of prep and even more time to conquer…. we did the laundry. And now, we just want to slip into the endless abyss of nothingness until around 1 or 2 am when the middle of the night shit show starts because someone woke up with one leg out of their blanket. But we can’t. Because our kids won’t JUST GO TO SLEEP.

 

Until next time… be the mom that gets some sleep. You deserve it.

 

MomTransparenting

Winter Sucks The Big Icicle

Dude. I live in Chicago and EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. I wonder when the hell I am going to get out of this frozen tundra and move somewhere warm. Somewhere that doesn’t cause my fingers to seize up in pain just because they touched AIR. And then the spring comes and like seeing your beautiful baby after childbirth it’s like the pain and agony of the last season completely fades away until the next year when it comes back in full force and you remember all over again why you hate this fucking place.

It’s cold. I’m not talking like chilly. It’s FUCKING COLD. You walk outside and breath through your nose and your nostril hairs freeze up into tiny icicles that stab you from the inside. Your nasal passages become miniature igloos made out of your never ending frozen snot stream cubes because you caught a cold on the first frigid day and it still hasn’t gone away.

 

You skin hurts. Everything hurts. Your body is frozen, literally. You can’t move and when you do it’s like you’re going to shatter. Your skin gets so dry that it cracks and there is nothing you can do about it but apply copious amounts of lubricant to try to keep it moisturized but it’s basically impossible because the winter sucks the moisture right out of you every chance it gets.

It’s gloomy, which means you don’t want to do SHIT. It’s bright as fuck outside because snow is everywhere but it’s dirty snow because it’s been driven on and slushed around and now your beautiful blanket of soft white snow is a eyesore of sludge and salt, but it’s still blinding to look at. You don’t want to do anything but huddle under your blanket with a book but you can’t do that either because you just burned it on the stove in an attempt to warm your hands up for five minutes.

Your kids keep getting called off of school for a goddamn snow day. Every other day it seems is a school “holiday” where they get a long weekend off of school. And as if that isn’t bad enough, now the snow showed up on the night before the hellish five days you’ve just spend cooped up inside and they’ve cancelled school tomorrow. Awesome. At least I won’t have to pay for summer daycare this year because my kids will be making up winter well into July at the rate we are going.

Something necessary to your continued EXISTENCE tends to break down at the WORST possible time, and that “time” is almost always winter. Your kids *were* finally going back to school (hell YES!) BUT wait, no they aren’t. Because your car has been sitting in the frozen abyss that is your driveway for the last five days because you refused to leave in the blizzard and now your damn car is not cooperating.

You go back inside to find your house is especially chilly even with your two layers and 17 infinity scarves on and find your pipes burst because even though your kids are constantly running water somewhere in your house, apparently the weather is THAT cold that it can freeze even the hottest water moving through the pipes.

Your kids have a hard enough time finding socks. Try getting them to find two gloves, a hat, a coat, a scarf, and snow pants because now school won’t let them out for recess unless they are dressed like tiny snowmen. I don’t remember having the accessories my kids have now accompany me to school every day, but my kids need them, apparently. And also, not surprisingly, we can never find them when we need them.

You will fall. Some asshole (usually you) will forget to throw salt on the ice and you’ll run out the door in a hurry only to fall and bust your ass. But not only will you fall, you’ll do it in front of some hipster running a 5K down the block in the dead of winter, you know, someone “better than you” because… winter sucks.

Your dog won’t go out either. So not only is your entire family caged in the house with the flu virus, but the stench of snot and pet urine fills the stale air. Can’t we just open a damn window? No. Because they are shrink wrapped in an attempt to keep whatever heat you can as close to your body as possible.

Your kids will act like caged animals. As if they aren’t already acting like completley rabid dogs, winter exasperates the symptoms 10-fold. They are stifled, homebound, and antsy and they turn on each other (and you) at any chance they can get. It’s a toss up as to who is going to make it out of this season alive. But my money says, it won’t be me.

Winter fucking sucks the big icicle. The only benefit is that when I say I don’t want to go somewhere, I have a million degrees below zero excuses at my disposal to keep me in the house, out of the snow, and in my thickest, coziest loungewear. 

Getting Old Is For The Birds

Last weekend was my birthday, and I spent some time reflecting on all of the reasons why getting old can have its benefits. You can do what you want, you don’t have to answer to anyone (at home, at least), and you finally (hopefully) have your shit together at least enough to feel comfortable in your own skin.
But there are so many parts to getting older that just flat out suck. And those parts aren’t going away anytime soon. Actually, they are probably only going to get worse as time goes on. Ughhhh.

My face looks like I should have used sunscreen a lot sooner. When I was younger, we would lather ourselves up with baby oil and sit by a friend’s pool letting the rays reflect off of our beautiful, cellulite-free bodies while we giggled and planned our nights out with the boys we were fawning over. Little did I know that years later that same face would be littered with sun spots and wrinkles that could have EASILY been avoided if I would have just put the damn tin foil down and thrown on a hat instead. Thank god for botox, right?

My ass is droopy, so are my tits. And my chin, my arm flaps, my belly…. let’s be real. It’s all droopy. Every time I look in the mirror something else has fallen a few inches from where it was the day before. As I’m writing this right now my under eye bags, have migrated down to my cheeks and my jowls are now on my shoulders. YAY!

I hear people get more patient as they age, but for me, that couldn’t BE more of a goddamn lie. I have ZERO patience. I can’t even wait in a short line at Target without running through all of the things I could have done in those precious minutes I was stuck in line. I get irrationally angry when someone cuts me off in the school pickup line or leaves toothpaste in the sink. I have no patience. Maybe in my next decade, that perk will come?

I also don’t sleep anymore. Even though my kids are starting to age out of being up all night (although, they sure DO still wake up many nights, don’t get it twisted), my mind races until the wee hours of the night. And if by chance tonight is the night where my brain can’t take anymore and does me a favor by clocking out early, my bladder doesn’t. It makes a cameo appearance by way of stabbing stomach and vaginal pain around 2, 3:30, and 4 am.

Everything hurts. I can’t even clean the house anymore without searing back pain so laundry is definitely NOT happening on the same day. I don’t choose my chore completion goals based off of time or energy, for me, it is determined by how many discs in my spine I can agitate before I am laid up in bed for the next day. And if I have a good back day, then I get hit with a massive migraine instead because ADULTING IS FUN!

You have come to terms with your mortality, and it scares the shit out of you. You now astutely feel every single nerve jolt, every tight muscle, every taco that manifests in crippling heartburn and you start to convince yourself you might not make it to bedtime.

Which brings me to anxiety. Sweet, sweet anxiety. It’s the only thing that manages to keep you awake through the worst possible time of day, the night. You panic at the smallest things because you now have these tiny beings that rely on you and even though most days you’re convinced you are doing it ALL. WRONG. You still know that you are the best parent for these monsters. No one else could handle their bullshit bedtime tantrums or their horrid homework meltdowns. You can’t leave them yet, they are just starting to sleep through the night finally!

 

Adulting brings LOADS of joy. Peeing when you cough, listening to the soothing sound of your joints pop as you take a leisurely stroll to the kitchen for the fifth time because you can’t remember what the fuck you came in there for and then finally having a revelation at 3 am and feeling compelled to get out of bed and do something about it.

Spending all of your “free time” working on your house while tiny humans troll behind you and destroy every inch of your hard work until you give up and just let the whole house go to shit because you’re a goddamn adult and you can do that now.

I guess there is one good thing, as an adult, you get to be the one to say “fuck it” and grab a glass of wine, binge-watch Netflix, and order takeout because YOLO and all that other garbage. Cheers to growing older, bitches! (Careful though, too much wine and you’ll be working that hangover off for at least a week now that you’re old.)

DIY Self-Care Techniques To Decompress After The Holidays

Nothing says “I’m ready for a New Year” like a string of holiday festivities spent with the people in your life you had zero control in choosing, and even less desire to spend that much time with.

Between the creepy relatives, overindulgence of pie and alcohol, and your kids spending weeks being gushed over like they are part of the royal family, everyone in the house needs a serious sage detox before it’s too late.

If you’ve made it through Christmas you’re probably looking at your tree now barren of gifts and wondering how the fuck you manage to do this year after year without committing yourself.

Your bank account is empty, your stockings are ripped down from their expertly placed hook and now strewn on the floor like the rest of the abandoned socks in your house, and the Christmas tree is dropping pine needles like your kids drop crumbs of food on your freshly vacuumed carpet.

You NEED. A. BREAK.

Since it’s still the season of below freezing temps and frostbite, no one wants to leave the house anyway. Here are some solid ways you can get your energy and self-esteem back right in the comfort of your very own home:

Create an In-Home Spa Sanctuary– The first thing you’ll want to do is really set the scene for healing. Any space can be transformed for optimal soul rejuvenation with the right tools. Establish aromatherapy by collecting your most soothing essential oils (or just your favorite hairspray will do) and spritz the area to create a fragrance of something other than dirty underwear and soggy dog. You can lather yourself in lavender body lotion for added calming effects, but if you don’t have that, Aveeno can have remarkable therapeutic effects.

You probably don’t keep candles in your house anymore, because, kids. So just take your kids’ iPad and drape your most used towel with the worn thread count over it to create an ambiance of mood lighting to help get your mind right. You can really amp up the tranquil atmosphere in your home by adding some plush robes and fancy tea to this relaxation ritual. But since you’re a mom now, you already know you can’t have nice things, instead throw on one of your husband’s over-sized t-shirts and reheat your coffee in the microwave. Let’s get this party started.

Massage – I know, you’re thinking I’ll never have the time. But, alas, you birthed the essential tool to complete this spa staple. I’m sure you’ve heard of cupping and hot stone massages, but have you ever tried tiny feet shoved into the small of your back while you’re trying to relax on the couch? It really loosens the joints and muscles allowing for optimal rejuvenation and removal of those nasty toxins. Your kids will likely not even need to complete a lesson on how to effectively apply desired pressure during this technique, but just in case, maybe you should kick them first so they get a thorough demonstration? It will aid in your overall wellness goal.

Facial Masks – Yogurt masks are a thing. Whether or not they are supposed to come straight out of your refrigerator is another story, but hey… minor details we can overlook. I find GoGurts work well for this because they have a sweet taste and a delightful color. Just take the whole tube and spread that sucker all over your face canvas. It’s cool and refreshing straight out of your refrigerator and if it gets on the furniture, you can assume there was already a spread of some food there before you got there. If you can’t beat em, join em?

Mani/Pedi – This one is tricky, but it’s definitely doable. Get your least favorite towel and the LIGHTEST shade you can find and announce to your toddler it’s time to play “nails”. She will jump all over the chance to reenact her favorite YouTube videos of grown adults playing with toys and talking in baby voices. If you’re really brave, you can let her do your fingers too. It buys you another three minutes to “relax” while she paints your entire hand in an overwhelming scent of shimmery chemicals that will take an entire bottle of acetone to remove. But hey, self-care is important, right?

Take a bath – You have two options here. You can either opt to knowingly allow your kids to destroy your house while you lock yourself in the bathroom with threats of decades-long grounding if they even THINK about bothering you (someone BETTER BE BLEEDING!). Or, you can go the more conservative route and slap your bathing suit onto your still detoxing post-holiday pie body and round up the little monsters for a family bath. The kids will think it’s a blast while you sit and enjoy a lukewarm tub filled with bubblegum flavored bath bombs and your child’s urine. Be extra efficient and apply your GoGurt bath just before you embark on this endeavor. That way you effectively wash it off while your kids splash water all over your bathroom floor with your tears.

Getting through the holidays can be B.R.U.T.A.L. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find time to recharge your mind and body and start the New Year off with a soul rejuvenating BANG. Everyday household items can be easily transformed to spa tranquility staples with just a few simple steps. Make it a “fun for the whole family” kind of event and get the kids involved in this DIY dumpster fire and before you know it your house will be filled with yogurt, bubbles, and nail polish just like any other day of the week. Except for this time, you’ll have lavender scented skin and iPad induced mood lighting to push through. And think of all the money you’ll save by dishing out your very own sanity instead! You’ll be wondering why you don’t do the home spa thang more often! 

And keep in mind, if all else fails, there’s always Benedryl. And wine. 

Nama-stay home, you got this! 

 

If you enjoyed this check out some of my other humor pieces here:

2018’s Hot Toys Guide For (Sarcastic) Parents

So Many Parts Of Parenting I Did NOT See Coming

5 Things I Learned About Dating Apps – A Cautionary Tale

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