By Mo Larson
Sometimes life cruises along smoothly with nary a roadblock in sight. And then one morning you wake up and your 10-year-old is doing air quotes. And he’s not even doing them correctly. I know where he got it from—I went through a good 6 months to a year where I was quite liberal with the air quotes. He recently came out of his room that he shares with his 8-year-old brother Jake and said,
“Sheesh, Jake is like (begin air quotes) obsessed with (end air quotes) Legos”.
The problem with that statement is that Jake actually IS obsessed with Legos and since his obsession has kept him from joining a gang or becoming a Green Day groupie, we are fine with his obsession.
The only reason I even bring up the issue of air quotes is to illustrate the point that on most days my life is not really anything like I had imagined it would be. Eleven years ago when I became pregnant with our first child, I had some definite views of what I thought we’d be like as parents. As I’ve stated before, one of the reasons that I chose to marry the Alaskan Prince was because of what he brought to the “parenting” table. He’s extremely kind, he keeps me caffeinated, and he’s SO MUCH FUN. On the downside, he can be quite loud, and his voice has unintentionally scared our kids, along with various nieces and nephews. I only mention this very minor negative lest anyone reading this grow envious of just how good I have it.
If you make the choice to become a parent, just know that there will be things in your future that you NEVER in a million years would have imagined would be a part of your life. For instance, you will have to clean up vomit from the carpet of your minivan. Oh, I know what you are thinking. You’re thinking, “No, I’m way too cool to ever drive a minivan.” But you are wrong. You are not in fact too cool for a minivan. You will be enticed by the sliding doors and the space to separate your children so that they can’t pinch, bite, and/or lick each other while you are cruising down the highway on a sheet of black ice. If you plan to have more than two kids, just accept the fact that your trusty steed will be a minivan. And that at one time or another your children will hurl in this minivan.
Another thing you’ll have to do is pick that gross, stringy doll hair from the teeth of your own hairbrush at one time or another. You will also go to take a hot, relaxing bubble bath and find kid toys in your sanctuary of bubbliness.
You will offload all of your children to different locations so that you can have lunch with your significant other only to find that someone has broken out in hives and someone else has peed himself at school. Its what I like to refer to as my entire day turning into a flaming bag of poo.
You may come up behind your child who is playing the Wii to give him an affectionate snuggle and get cold-cocked as he winds up for the perfect pitch. If this happens to you at the teen center of your local YMCA (like it did me) you’ll probably try to act like it wasn’t that big of a deal so that the teenager staring at you will stop saying to his friend, “Duuude! Did you see that old lady get hammered by her kid?” Maybe this won’t happen to you. Maybe you are not as big of an idiot as I am. But I’ll tell you this: it only took one time for me to learn that lesson. So maybe I’m not such an idiot after all.
As you read this, don’t make the mistake of thinking that being a parent isn’t the most remarkable, fulfilling, mind-bending, beautiful thing I’ve ever done in my life. But as I’ve described in the preceding paragraphs, it has also been messy, graceless, boring, exhausting, messy, and crazy. And did I mention messy? Some people have jobs that are death-defying. I call my job sleep-defying. And most days it even defies reason.
Scarlett has picked up a lot from her older brothers. Today she looked up from her coloring and said to me, “Mom, you look (begin air quotes) pretty (end air quotes) today”. I ended up sitting on the kitchen floor laughing until my eyes teared up, and Scarlett joined in even though I’m pretty sure she didn’t know what was so funny. What is the take-home message? Even as I am rinsing puke out of my daughter’s hair at 4 a.m., there is nothing I could do that would make me “happier”.
Mo Larson, a 34 year resident of Missoula, has been blissfully married to the man of her dreams for 13 1/2 years. She is the mother of 3: Ben (10), Jake (7) and Scarlett Jayne (4), and has enjoyed all of the glory of being a stay-at-home mom for the last 7 years. Mo and her husband recently started a business in Missoula called SoccerTots, and she loves the challenge of again working outside of the home. She dreams about uninterrupted showers, a kid-free bed, and half-price coffee.
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This is hysterical- my 3 year old, Margaux, was pulling air quotes (squincing up her two index fingers) last night during bedtime. My husband has used them to describe “Wintery Mix” when explaining why it was raining, sleeting, sunny and snowing in Missoula on Thursday. Margaux managed to squeak out “mix” and giggled…love it.
I look forward to reading Mo Larson’s columns when they appear. She has a touch of Erma Bombeck with her good humor. As with Erma Bombeck the thing that comes through so clearly is that one of God’s greatest gifts is definitely motherhood. Thanks for writing Mo – I hope you continue to do so.
Linda Graves
Someone you know well is just now beginning to discover the reality of being a parent. He was quite proud of himself this weekend to say that he caught his daughter’s vomit in his hands when they were sitting on an expensive couch at a friend’s house! And the minivan; swore he’d never own one, loves the one he owns now. Thanks for a great laugh!!
maybe I really did miss something in not having any rugrats…my family and friends enjoy reading your articles, although I will keep my porsche…let there be many more articles…
My son went through an air quotes phase himself. At five he would ask the other adults in his life (like my mother) for “water”. One couldn’t help but think he was really asking for vodka.
Luckily, I had good friends with children to prepare me somewhat for fatherhood. I changed a lot of diapers before I had a kid of my own. However, I never thought my precious daughter could smile so sweet with poop dripping out of her diaper.
I like the Toy Story movies, super animation.