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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Getting Your Kids To School On Time In 1923 Easy Steps
Moms everywhere are always complaining that the morning shit show of trying to wake, dress, feed and get their kids off to school on time is overwhelming, to say the least. And frankly, I just don’t get it. I have my kids up and out the door with minutes to spare every single day and I do it all in just under 2000 simple steps.
Follow me on my morning journey and get yourself some much needed guidance on this disaster you claim is such a “hard job” and you’ll be spinning your wheels up to the doors of the school right as the bell rings just like I am every day!
- Make sure your kids clothes are set out for them before they wake up. If this means setting your alarm clock to get your ass out of bed at 2 AM so that you don’t have to be bothered with nuisances like your completely dependent children in the morning, then do that. Just make sure the clothes are out. Never mind that they won’t want to wear THAT outfit once they wake up.
- Pack lunches the night before. Between cooking a six-course meal, struggling your way through endless sight words and spelling tests, and hosing down your little angels in the bath while they scream in agony over the pain that tear-free soap brings to their eyes, you can find a spare couple of hours to cut free-range, hormone-free, NON-GMO, and antibiotic and cruelty-free meats into faces of their favorite Disney characters. It’s not that hard, mom. Slap some gluten-free crackers and homemade fruit leather in there too.
- Early risers should be celebrated! When your kids wake up at 4AM, take this as an opportunity to get a jumpstart on the day. Don’t ask them to return to their beds in the pitch-black night. Make sure to seize this good fortune as a chance to get a few extra hours of screen time in while you dream about the millions of chores you should be completing as you doze off on the couch to the sounds of YouTubers and Jojo Siwa streaming from the iPads waiting for the sun to rise.
- Set an alarm, for God sake. Don’t assume your kids will wake you up before you need to get up. We all know Murphy’s Law of parenting doesn’t work that way. Why would you leave something like timeliness to chance? Get up hours before your kids that way you can enjoy a hot cup of coffee while you cry into your kids cereal because you stayed up far too late last night scrolling on Instagram when you should have went to bed early.
- Wake your kids with the sound of a soft bell and ocean waves. Set the mood for the morning waking up your slumbering babes with soothing nature sounds. This will surely keep them from screaming into your face because they aren’t READY TO GET UP YET! They will wake up naturally calm and serene ready to take the day by storm. Shit storm.
- Have your kids dress before breakfast. This really saves time, because when they spill their cereal and milk all over their fresh clothes, they can scream in a traumatic fit of rage because they didn’t like that outfit and suddenly, now that they can’t wear it, it’s their FAVORITE!
- Get your shoes and coat on before your kids. Modeling the behavior you want your kids to perform shows them your expectations. If I have my shoes and coat on before I even wake them up in the morning they are fully prepared for my requests for THEM to get theirs on two hours later. And, it makes it so much easier to get their lunches into their bags, help them tie their shoes, zip their coats and wrangle them out of the house when you’re bundled up for below freezing temps like a snowman.
- Give your kids a warning and count-down every five minutes starting an hour before you have to leave. Experts say that instead of telling your kids it’s time to go NOW, by giving them a 5-10 minute warning it mentally prepares them for the task at hand. I say, why stop at 10? Start the night before when you put them to bed and repeat every five minutes screaming, “I’m serious you guys, we are going to be LATE if you don’t HURRY UP!” This way, they have no excuse for their tardiness and you can throw in their faces that you’ve been telling them for A DAY they needed to be ready to go. As if we don’t complete this same ritual every. damn. day. and they shouldn’t already know that leaving is part of the routine.
- Set an actual fire (kind of). Ten minutes past the time you are supposed to have walked out the door, start a fire alarm in the house. I find that LOUD NOISES really get my kids to jump to attention. If they haven’t been phased by your incessant countdown from the previous 12 hours, it’s time to bust out the big guns. Tell them this is the sound of the school bell they are hearing and it’s TIME. They are already LATE.
- Do a thorough check as each child walks out the door that they have everything they need. You should have done this the night before, but you were too busy “liking” strangers status updates so now you’re behind. Line them up like little soldiers and make sure to double and triple check they have every item they need to get through the day. Let’s be honest. Even if you complete this step you’ll realize some field trip form you left sitting on the counter the minute you get a block or two away from the house.
- When you can’t get them in line, don’t start panicking… yet. This is not how this was supposed to go. You are PRE-PLANNING. There is a method to this and the process is tried and true! You did it ALL RIGHT! It’s not time to give up yet. You’re not a quitter and this isn’t your day to lie down and roll over. Today you fight. So when all else fails, scream until a vein pops out of your neck. You mean business.
- -1923. Give up. It’s already past the bell. You still don’t have one of their shoes on. One is in their room changing for the third time and one of them hasn’t finished their breakfast they started an hour ago. Now you panic. Start threatening to leave without them if they are not IN THE CAR in TWO MINUTES! Now you start contemplating the list of excuses you’ve already given the school this year for your impeccable ability to roll-up sometime between the starting bell and lunch. Have you blamed the dog running away yet? Let’s go with that one.
Getting your kids to school on time might take some extra planning on your end, but isn’t that your job as a mom? If you aren’t prepared for every anticipated meltdown, sock seam, missing shoe and cereal fiasco, what are you even doing with your kids every morning? Kids are predictable and reasonable, especially first thing in the morning. What could possibly go wrong?
If you haven’t managed to master how to gather up a bunch of sleepy, grumpy and irrational beings by now… try again tomorrow. It’s bound to work eventually, right?
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.)
