If you have kids, you may read this and think, "that Adrian, she's right on the money" OR "Adrian's kids are crazy chimpanzees that should be locked up immediately, and we are never asking her to babysit"! If you don't have children, you may read this and wonder why on earth anyone ever decides to have children in the first place, and how they are all even still alive. You will however, finally understand why animals in the wild sometimes eat their young.
10) Your kids only get stranger as they get older.
When The Noise was little, she was so cute and cuddly. I thought she was the sweetest baby around. As she started to grow up though, I started to notice her doing the strangest things. She sticks her finger in her nose when she gets nervous, she sings at the dinner table in an awful high pitched squeal, she refuses to match her pajama pants with her tops in the most ridiculous way, she plays with her toes while she eats, and the other day I caught her blowing her nose...with no tissue. Some days I look at her and I wonder if she really is my child. I have no idea how she got to be so strange. I tell her she better quit it or no boy will ever want to marry her, and I sure won't support her old, single behind in my house past 25 at the oldest! She better get that butt to etiquette class on the double!
9) "Why" turns into "why not" in the blink of an eye.
When they are small, kids ask "why" about everything. Why is the sky blue, the grass green, the air clear? Why do grown ups have to work? Why can't you just go get money from the bank when you say you don't have anymore (because Johnny, that's called robbery)? Why are puppies furry and fish aren't? You know...about everything, they want to know "why"? Once they start to get a little older though, it turns into "why not"? Now it's a challenge. An annoying challenge. Me: "Go clean your room". The Noise: "When I'm done can I eat some ice cream"? (it's 5:30pm on the clock at this exact moment) Me: "No". The Noise: "Why not"?!!! Me: "It's almost time for dinner". The Noise: *long sigh............."FINE". Little brat.
8) One day you wake up and they smell.
Some people like the smell of babies. Little smells ok. If he gets a bath. He doesn't smell as bad as The Noise though. She used to smell pretty good too when she was little. Probably up until she was about seven. Then one day, I woke up and casually smelled her as she walked by, and she reeked!! I mean, I really did throw up a little in my mouth! It was awful! I guess body odor is kinda like a rite of passage. Once they get it, you know they're not a little kid anymore. Then you should invest in a gas mask. And some Teen Spirit.
7) Those things your parents said to you sucked until you just said them to your kids.
The day "because I said so!" comes out of your mouth, you hang your head in shame, look at yourself in the mirror, kiss your identity goodbye, and say hello to your own mother. I finally gave up and now embrace all the wacko things my mom used to say, like "I'm going to record myself telling you to pick up your room and play it for you every day so I don't have to keep wasting my breath" (yeah, cause I'm really gonna follow through on that one), or "if you do that one more time I'm going to come over there and beat you" (just as soon as I'm finished with this load of laundry, the paper I'm working on, my status update on Facebook, the dinner that's on the stove, and getting your brother to stop crying). My all time favorite though is the simple, but all inclusive "because I'm the adult and you're the child" clause. It's really all encompassing, and works for everything. I use that one quite frequently.
6) You were infinitely cooler up until the moment you gave birth.
A funny thing happened after you had kids. All of the sudden you went from being the really cool friend, who everyone invited over on the weekends, or who's house everyone hung out at, to being the one who had to be in bed by 8:30 because your sciatica was flaring up again and you knew you'd be up in a few hours with someone who had to barf for sure. My kids don't think I'm cool either. Any ounce of coolness I thought I had was left in the delivery room 10 years ago. The Noise doesn't like the clothes I pick out for her or the TV I think we should watch. When I try to tell a joke, that is clearly funny, she rolls her eyes and reminds me how not funny I am. This has all just started too, so I know it's only going to get worse, to the point of me wanting to lock her in her room until she is old enough to be uncool herself. I have to admit though, when I look at myself sometimes, walking through Target with my mismatched leggings and t-shirt combo, uncombed ponytail, glasses, and giant over-stuffed diaper bag/purse full of random things, I tend to agree that I have lost a few cool points in recent years.
5) Kid's movies are funny the first time, maybe the fifth time, but not the 4,927 time.
I once took a drive to Connecticut. It took me 26 hours straight, one way. Guess what I listened to the entire way there playing in the portable DVD player? Finding Nemo. Guess what I listened to the entire way home? Shrek. Those two movies are etched in my brain in a way that I can never remove. Kid's movies are made to be appealing to adults so that we'll want to spend our hard earned $50 taking our kids to go see them in the theater. There is humor in them that we find mildly funny. They're witty and easy to watch...the first time. Then they start to grate on your nerves, and after you get to time number twenty on that Saturday afternoon when it's raining outside, you can barely keep yourself from breaking not only the movie, but the movie player and the matching action figures while you're at it. Why must my child ask me to watch Barbie and the Magic of the Rainbow for the umpteenth time today? Doesn't she know mommy has a headache and may just go postal on every Barbie in the whole house, and she'll then find every one of her Barbie's headless when she wakes in the morning?
4) Why does your hearing not work child? Do you wake up every morning and forget everything you knew yesterday? What the hell is wrong with you?
I swear that every day in my house is like a repeat of the day before it. Just now, as I was typing this very line, I was yelling at The Noise to turn her light off in her room. I have to tell her to turn her light off in her room every day, and yet when I just told her, it was as if that was the very first time I had ever asked her and she was appalled that I had just asked her to do such a mundane and useless task. If I say something, like "can you please unload the dishwasher", there's no response until I yell it three more times, which is then followed by "I didn't hear you". Rest assured though, if I say, "do you want to go to the mall?" in the very same (if not quieter) tone, she not only hears me, but is up, dressed and at the door before I can finish the question. Sometimes I just wonder where her brain goes at night. I've given her a printed list of the things I need her to do in the morning, yet somehow, she still manages to forget, thereby causing me to have a coronary by 7:25am every Monday through Friday before it's time to walk out the door for school because she's still shoe-less and smelly! How hard is it? Eat breakfast, get dressed, pack your lunch, brush your teeth, put on your shoes, do your dishes, put on your DEODORANT!!! Where's that tape recorder?
3) The whole world is a stage, and everyone is always watching.
When you're a parent, all of the sudden, everyone is interested in what you're doing when you're wherever you are with your kids. And strangely enough, your kids just love to be at their most heathenish when you're in public. Maybe they have it hardwired in their brains to know that you're slightly less likely to beat them in public than you are at home. The Noise was always notorious for public displays of ungodly behavior when she was little. I fear my son may be headed down that path as well, but he's in for a rude awakening, cause mommy's already played that game once! Now she is into just being a genuine ass in public. She just likes to argue a point to death, with no point other than to argue it in front of everyone with me, hoping I'll go nuts, so she can prove to everyone how nuts I am. Or at least that's what I think her motive is. Her other center stage obsession is to just be obnoxious to the point of making me literally want to murder her to spare myself the embarrassment of her behavior. I get to the point where I have told her to stop so many times that all that is left is "the look", and once I give that, if she doesn't cut it out, it's on. Gloves are off, begin the beat down.
2) The answer to "will it ever get better?" is "NO, it only gets different".
I had someone who has a daughter younger than mine, with a very similar personality to mine, ask me that the other day. "Will it ever get better"? I hate to break the news, but I just have to be honest. It's like holding out hope for crazy Uncle Larry to quit talking to that wall like it's gonna talk back. It's just not in the cards. Crazy kids don't get uncrazy, they just get different crazy. My daughter has always been over the top. She drives me batty. Most days she makes me want to hide in the corner and sing to myself. But I have come to accept the fact that she will always be some different and evolving breed of weird, and I love her through it. I bought a spray bottle and I fill it with ice water, so that now when she just gets to be too much, I spray her with it to bring her back to reality. It's seemed to really be working out well for us.
1) I need God's 1-800 number because there appears to be something wrong with my product, it's OFF button is broken.
Dear God, I'd like a full refund, plus the cost of shipping, due to the fact that I have owned this product for almost 10 years now and its OFF button has never properly worked. I've tried all home remedies, including: spraying it with cold water, shaking it vigorously, bouncing it on the sidewalk, flushing it down the toilet, and rolling it down a hill, but to no avail. It never shuts up. Believe me when I tell you that my daughter never stops talking, singing, humming, clicking, snorting, smacking, popping, chomping, or mumbling...but mostly talking...EVER. Even in her sleep. She is a constant ball of noise (this is why her name is The Noise). I am exhausted every day, just from being her mom. When people ask me what I do all day with her, and I don't have much "real stuff" to say in reply, they wonder how I can be so tired. I think sometimes my brain falls out of my ears and I have to scoop it back up and smoosh it back in, maybe that's why I'm so tired.
So for all you moms out there with kids you think you would have eaten had you been a wild animal, kudos to you for not! Yay!! And for all you non parents out there that don't think I'm a total nut job for not writing an entire blog about how absolutely in love with my darling saintly children I am, kudos to you for that too! Yay!! Don't get me wrong, I do adore my kids. As a mom, it's my inherent duty to love them more than anything else, protect them with my life, and sacrifice anything and everything for their complete and total well being, but that doesn't mean I can't think they're complete bird brains along the way.
Good God woman, you've done it again....you have proven to me that y'all are indeed our long lost twin family down south. :) I have you beat on the smelly....my daughter started wearing deoderant by age 5, in kindergarten...and she would KILL me if she knew I just posted that, lol.
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