Motherhood brings with it countless “WTH” moments. You’ll notice I did not type “WTF”, because this is a family-friendly blog post, and I find that the Letter F is profoundly offensive
Most of these forehead-slapping moments come from our own offspring, who’ve elected to make some decision based on information the’ve gained during their (understandably) limited experience.
Things like:
Every pillow in the house will make a sufficient landing pad, should one choose to jump off the top bunk.
Used bath water is appropriate hydration (even when we all know someone has secretly peed in it).
It is perfectly acceptable to drench the bathroom floors/walls/counters, so long as one closes the door afterwards.
For better or worse, these are all things we moms expect to happen. Messes will be made, urine will be consumed – it’s par for the course. But then there are some things that happen around us that are outside of our control. Acts committed by external forces, originally designed to make our lives easier, but in reality – they just totally missed the mark.
Things like:
Indoor Play Places that Don’t Open Until 10am
I know all of you indoor play places are attempting to do us moms a service, but if we’ve made it to 10am in our house, I’m feeling like we’ve pretty much already conquered the day. You really want to help a mama out? I’m going to need you to go ahead and open up at 7am. Or better yet, go ahead and do a soft open at 6:15, so we can get a good spot on one of the benches that has a good view of the indoor cargo net. And if you could also open from like, I don’t know, 1:45am to 3:45am, that would be killer. I know plenty of moms who could really use a place for their kids to burn off some energy in the middle of the night.
And also, please get rid of that cargo net. It’s a death trap.
Regularly Scheduled Programming on PBS
Dear Public Broadcasting System (Wait, is that right? I always thought it was Public Broadcasting Corporation… But what’s the “s” for?),
I’d like to discuss a matter of the utmost importance with you. It has come to my attention that your children’s programming ends at 5pm. This is a problem, you see, because that is exactly when I am trying to cook dinner. Now, I know you feel that your news broadcast that comes on at this time is valuable, but I am here to tell you that it is not. What would be valuable is 60 more minutes of Martha Speaksor Word Girl or ANYTHING animated.
Yes, yes. I know you have an “app”, but listen – apps cause arguments. I like being able to leave the choosing of the shows up to the TV gods and avoid knock-down, drag-out fights over choosing between Wild Kratts and Bob the Builder. Because mediating fights is hard and this mommy is tired. Does Daniel Tiger have a song for that?
So please PBS, I implore you. Save your grownup TV shows for… I don’t know, never?
Sincerely,
A mom trying to cook dinner
Impossible to Hang Car Rider Line Placards
Whatever happened to just getting out of our car to retrieve our children? I know that there are “safety issues” with kids running across a busy parking lot, but can we all agree that making mothers sit in hot cars with babies and toddlers for upwards of 30-minutes could potentially be just as dangerous? Okay, maybe not just as dangerous, but still kind of awful? Not to mention anxiety provoking when it’s finally our turn to drive down the “retrieval aisle” and we have all of 10-seconds to hang the placard with our kid’s name on it while a woman with a walkie-talkie stares directly into our soul waiting for us to hurry the heck up. You know the placard I’m talking about, it’s the one you can’t just leave on your rearview mirror because it creates a massive blind spot in the middle of your windshield?
The one that has a opening that’s just a tiiiiiny bit to small to easily glide into place?
Yeah. That one.
1-Week Ahead Appointment Reminders
It’s really cute that when you catch me in the midst of chasing down a muddy-shoed preschooler who is currently doing backflips on my living room couch to talk to me about our appointment time next week, you think that I’ll remember to show up at our agreed upon time. Do you think I have a pen or something? If I’m lucky, maybe I can rustle up 1/3 of a busted white crayon and a paper plate to write this information down on. Listen, what I’m going to need you to do, is hang up and call me back about 53 minutes before my appointment. At that time, you can play a large, air-raid siren into the phone’s mouthpiece, alerting me that it is TIME TO GO!
And I’ll see you in 52 minutes.