Vaginas at the Dentist's Office.

Today, I am that mom who makes you glad you don't have kids.

Or at the very least, glad you don't have as many (three) kids as I do.

I got a good half dozen, so-hard-they-were-audible eye rolls and an infuriating amount of tongue clicks as we "sat" in the waiting room at the dentist's office. And by "sat", I mean that I stood in the middle of the room, trying to use my feet to direct my somersaulting children back to chairs while my hands were kept busy with paperwork.

Apparently I lost my God damned mind when I booked this dentist appointment for all three kids at the same time. I must have.

To be fair, I did think that because I had made the appointment weeks in advance that by some miracle my husband would come with us to help. Apparently I was insane AND smoking meth.

That obviously didn't happen.

And so I spent my morning/early afternoon frantically hushing my screaming monsters and visually scanning the room for sharp corners that I could use to impale myself if my day didn't start to turn around.

Of course there was plenty of paperwork that had to be filled out as soon as we walked in the door. I hate paperwork. As soon as my kids caught sight of me putting pen to paper, my inattentiveness allowed them to turn into waiting room demons, creeping their sticky-little-kid-fingers up the sides of the chairs of the other patients, cartwheeling into the shins of all of the people, trying so unsuccessfully to ignore their presence.

Ain't working, right? Yeah, it doesn't work for me either.

I scribbled that shit down as fast as I could.

Sorry there's no way this is legible, but it's what you're getting out of me right now.

I handed the forms to the receptionist. And that's when I noticed an unexpected sight from across the room.

Why do I see my four year old's vagina?!?

Face, meet palm. My kid's vagina was out at the dentist's office.

I let her dress herself this morning, in a frantic attempt to shave a whole 68 seconds out of our "running out of the house as fast as we can" routine. So she decided that she wasn't wearing underpants. And the pair of pants she put on had a hole the size of a fist in the crotch.

My child was literally cartwheeling around the waiting room in crotchless pants, flashing her vagina.

Maybe those eye-rolls are warranted.

I nonchalantly jogged back to my seat and covered her up with a magazine, looked down at the floor and let out a good ten second sigh. And prayed to every deity imaginable that no one else had noticed. 

We haven't even made it in to see the dentist yet. Not off to a great start.

REVISED  MISSION: Make it through the appointment without killing self or children AND make sure that crotchless pants go unnoticed.

So I spent the next ten minutes, sitting next to the flasher in the waiting room chair and holding her legs together before they called us in to the exam room.

"Come on back!" said the receptionist, who I'm sure had to be aware of the predicament I was in.

Alright, three kids, one chair. They were gonna have to take turns.

I had my two year old go first and it became painfully obvious that the hygienist, who could not get him to open his mouth, did not have children.

Also obvious, was the fact that the other patients in the room did NOT want my six-year-old to do a loud, running commentary about their dental procedures.

And the vagina flasher decided that no matter where she sat, it was gonna be spread eagle.

Remind me later to sew this chick's legs together.

Ugh. REVISED MISSION: Try not to kill self or children, carry flasher around to make sure crotchless pants go unnoticed, get six-year-old to sit down nicely and stop bugging people AND coach idiot teenager through brushing my son's teeth by making up stories about spiderman killing the sugar germs.

We made it through the rest of the appointment relatively unscathed. Everyone had perfect teeth and no cavities. Thank God. Cause I would have had an apocalyptic scale meltdown anyone needed teeth drilled today.

Lesson learned. Never taking all three kids to a dentist's office at one time by myself.

Oh, and I will be doing a vagina check from now on every time we leave the house.

Five things the Presidential candidates and my children have in common.

Today is election day and regardless of the issues and who you support (or who makes you want to burn effigies), it is your responsibility to get out there and vote. Have your voice be heard.

I mean, sure, the electoral college will totally be the deciding factor, regardless of who wins the popular vote, but it's still super important to stand in line and fill out your ticket.

And sure, the candidates are both pure evil and regardless of who wins, it will still mean the same policies being implemented and the rich will still get richer...

Alright, so maybe I'm a bit cynical, but hey, today marks the end of what we really care about.

NO MORE POLITICAL CRAP ON FACEBOOK!

So anywho... Everyone, enjoy your election day, exercise your freedoms...

And here is my contribution.

Five things the candidates and my children have in common.

1. They look really creepy when they try to force a smile.

She's a write in candidate. Vote Phoenix Terror 2012.

2. Whenever they are in charge of spending, somehow I end up broke.

Yes, we really needed those seventeen jars of peanut butter. And private jets for all our buddies.

3. They always seem to get themselves in a heap of shit.

Totally a brownie btw. Just for visual effect.

4. They are massive flip-floppers.

"Mommy, I want to be something you are gonna have to make because they don't sell it in stores for Halloween."

"Oh, you made my costume already ? I meant that I wanted to be a Disney princess."

"I want vanilla ice cream!"

"Oops, I meant chocolate. NO! Strawberry!."

"Women shouldn't be able to have abortions!"

"Abortions for everyone!"

Make up your goddamn minds already.

5. When they get riled up, they don't listen to a thing you say.

So whichever candidate you decide to vote for:

Whether it's Obama riding a Unicorn:

Or Romney-Jesus:


Just get out there today and vote!
HAPPY ELECTION DAY!

(P.S. I stole all of these images, minus the ones of my kids off of the interwebz and do not claim ownership of them)

(P.S.S. I'm voting for Roseanne)

The Bag of Epic Shit-Puke: If this doesn't make you puke, I don't know what will.

1:00 am PST, my 6 year old daughter, Phoenix stumbles out of her bedroom and into the living room, saying that she needs to "poop". She is in the bathroom for all of two minutes and screams "I have a POOP PROBLEM!". I was feeling kinda nauseated and was thinking that at the worst, we would have a Whitney-Bobby situation and that I could maintain.

What I walked into, I was not at all prepared for. I turned and ran into the kitchen, hugged the garbage can and gurgled a gallon of vomit out of my face. Oh. My. God.

So now, I'm puking in the garbage can in the kitchen. Not just once, but I mean like five straight minutes of actively vomiting in there. So Superhusband, Jude, decides to spring into action. Knowing that what I just saw put me over the edge, he was hesitant to enter the bathroom.

"How bad is it, Phoenix?", he screamed from the hallway.

No answer from Phoenix, so he peeked in and noticed the shitxplosion. She shit somewhere in between pulling her pants down and making it to the toilet. It was EVERYWHERE. Gooey brown liquid, oozing all over the floor and in between all of the obnoxious nooks and crannies in the toilet seat. Superhusband gags, but forges ahead. I walk into the hall to witness his heroism. And then promptly return to the kitchen to projectile vomit.

He cleans the poop off the floor like a champ and even disinfects it with Comet. I, stomach now entirely empty, grab my shit-child and throw her in the tub. I stop up the drain and start the water, then quickly pull the plug and pull the plunger to turn on the shower. Thank goodness I had the foresight not to let her marinate in it.

So I tell her to just stand there and rinse her butt off, while Superhusband finishes cleaning the floor.

Oh shit. My stomach is gurgling. I'm gonna puke again.

Superhusband steps out of the way and throws the shit bags into the kitchen trash bag containing my innards. I vomit again while poor, poop-coated Phoenix stands naked in the shower and lets the water run down her back.

I stand up and I think I can handle it now. Ok, just have to get her out of the shower and dress her.

Then I hear it. And then smell it. She starts gagging and then projectile vomits onto her feet in the shower again and again. Hurl. Hurl. Hurl. Giant chunks of noodles from dinner just sitting there in the bathtub. FUCK. I call for Superhusband to step in. And promptly return to the kitchen to vomit on top of the shit bag. Oh. God.

So, I tell Phoenix to hold the puke for a second, throw a towel onto the bathroom floor and whisk her out of the shower. I tell her to hover over the toilet just in case she's gonna puke again. She pukes.

I grabbed Superhusband some gloves and plastic bags and he scoops out the chunks of puke and bags them up, finishing up by rinsing the tub out with Comet, which is apparently our official sponsor of the night. I get Phoenix some clothes and Superhusband hands me the bag filled with puke. Which I also place in the world's most vile trash bag. And then I puke for another five minutes straight into the toilet.

Phoenix goes out to sit on the couch and I hand her our small bathroom garbage can to puke in. Then Superhusband and I need to remove the bag of Epic Shit-Puke from our house. I carry the whole can out in case the bag had a hole in it, Superhusband following at a safe distance for moral support.

Dear Mr. Garbage Man,
I am so sorry that we left you a bag full of Epic Shit-Puke. It is by far the most vile garbage bag the world has ever seen. As a matter of fact, I'm sure there is someone you aren't fond of in your life. Consider it a gift, light it and put it on their lawn.

Sorry again,
Still puking,
Amy Terror

How life changes after becoming a parent.

I have been a parent now for six years. That's long enough for it to seem like forever, but not so long ago that I have completely forgotten what it was like to be a childless individual. I started thinking about all of the things that have changed in the last few years...

Single people, you will be in denial and say this stuff will never happen to you, but I and the other parents will assure you, it will.

And your adorable little monsters will take over your world and leave you searching for the pod that your new, sock-stuck-to-your-ass-wearing-two-different-shoes, self hatched out of.

First of all, when I was childless and heard a baby cry, it did nothing. I didn't pay attention to it. At most, maybe it was irritating. Now, when I hear a baby cry, I panic. Usually because I have a momentary lapse in judgment and for a split second, get a pang in my stomach and think that this baby is something that I have to attend to. I know it's not, rationally, because I don't have an infant. My kids are toddlers and older. Usually, they will yell about one of them hitting the other, or how they have to pee, but there are no more baby cries in my house.

But you see, having had three kids, I spent the better part of these last less-than-glamorous six years running into rooms the millisecond that my miniature people started screeching at the top of their lungs.

Many of those years meant seemingly unending nights of being jolted out of glorious sleep and having to bend to a baby dictator's every whim. Sleep deprivation is a torture tactic and if I had whatever information those little interrogators wanted, I would have given it up faster than a teenage girl with low self-esteem.

So when one of my neighbors' babies cry, I get war flashbacks. Fortunately, my brain kicks in right after and I have, what has to be the greatest realization in the world:

It's not MY problem.

Sorry to anyone who currently has a newborn. I'm not gonna sugar coat it, it's pure hell. And every time I hear a baby cry, it brings me right back into the foxhole.

Heil Baby.

Second, my standard for what I will wear outside of the house has lowered.
Oh, did I say lowered? I meant disappeared.

That's right, I now have absolutely no standard for what I will wear outside of my house. I have become one of THOSE Walmart people. You know, the hefty lady who wears her pants up to her boobs like it's a shirt, because apparently you don't need a shirt on if your pants are stretchy and you're sexy enough.

Sexy.

Alright, I'm not that bad, but I'm getting there.

And it's not that I don't care, it's just that I no longer have room in my brain for shame.

Slippers to the store?

Yup, I've done it.

Shirt coated in chocolate/coffee/poop?

I'll still wear it.

Pajamas around the house AND at parent teacher conferences?

Yes sir.

As a matter of fact, I have so little awareness about what I typically leave the house in, that I sometimes, forget to even put a bra on before doing school drop off.

I'm pretty sure the entire school has gotten a glimpse of what I'm working with.

No. Shame.

Sorry kids, but right now, I am the target demographic for pajama jeans.

I vaguely remember what it's like to use styling instruments. Now I'm lucky if I have time to brush my hair. At least I remember to cover the important parts.

Also, when I see moms in heels, it makes me chuckle. Cause with three kids running in three different directions, I would make it all of 30 seconds before I would have to kick them off in order to catch whoever was running directly into traffic.

Third, my brain ain't what it used to be. I used to use it for things and stuff. Like college papers and thinking really hard about theoretical crap that totally would have made me rich if I wrote it down (God, you are a GENIUS when you smoke enough pot).

Post kids, I have to wipe a second time because I can't remember if I wiped or not after I just peed.
Or why I came into whatever room I wandered into.

Or which kid I was supposed to ground when we got home later, cause they did something that I kinda remember pissing me off.

And that we are supposed to do something, I think, sometime this weekend, but I cannot remember what day, or what it is that we are supposed to do.

They say you never can really make up for sleep debt. So you can thank your children for killing off all the necessary parts of your brain.

That shirtless Walmart lady probably has lots of kids.

Fourth, I panic about everything. Partly because I'm insane, but mostly because I'm worried about my kids.

I'm worried that they will get hurt, that they will be hungry, wet, tired, thirsty, catch the swine flu... That we will be well enough equipped to handle the Zombie Apocalypse (we gotta get on that plan of stockpiling guns already, Jude).

I am constantly thinking of how to prevent disastrous scenarios.

Because every time your little pile of cuteness stumbles out into the world, a million things could go wrong. They could fall and crack their little baby head open like my Cora did. We had to get her head glued last year when she fell off of the BOTTOM step of a slide and smashed her head on a set of steel steps. Which gives her a leg up experience-wise for getting into the WWE, but gave me a heart attack.

They could have their cute little ball roll out in front of a Mack truck and get hit and die and have to be resurrected in a pet cemetery, only to come back as a creepy, murderous version of their former self. 

Okay, so maybe not the pet cemetery scenario (although I am HORRIFIED to let my kids play ball near the street now. Thanks, Stephen King.) But you get the idea.

Which leads me to my fifth and final contribution (mostly cause I have to go to bed).

I love my kids so god damned much that even seeing fictional children, or kids that I don't know get hurt, killed, etc. makes my brain explode and tears shoot out of my face at 100 mph.

When I see pictures of kidnapped children on Facebook, or read stories about babies who get cancer, I blubber like an uncontrollable moron. This has singlehandedly ruined my enjoyment of Law and Order and any other show where they have an affinity for doing story lines about raping/murdering children.

Not that I should, in theory, enjoy that sort of story cause obviously it's kinda sick.

I'm just saying that it would be nice to be able to enjoy a good baby murder now and then.

But now I get flooded with all this stupid emotion.

Thanks kids. I can't hear a baby cry without bugging the fuck out, I look like hell, I'm brain dead, I have panic attacks over everything, and I can't even watch someone snatch a fictional child without doing a quick headcount and sniffing back a tear.

We haven't even hit the teenage years yet and if this were Tekken, I would be in the red right now.

Face it, we're all screwed. The one thing that keeps me going is the notion that one day they are all gonna be wiping my ass.

Oh, and wine. Ass wipin' and wine. Mommy fuel.

Mom's Beauty Advice

Holden shat himself good. And then invented a new kind of pants.

Yesterday, the girls started their first ballet class.

We didn't have the proper ballet outfits yet, so I dug through all of their clothes and put on the pinkest things I could find.

About to walk out the door and running late, I said to myself, "Fuck it. Holden is 2 1/2 now. A big boy. What are the chances that he's gonna need a change of clothes?"

And so we walked out the door, the girls in their pink and me feeling a new sense of liberation.

Now, I think it goes with out saying that not bringing another set of clothes was a grave miscalculation on my part.

After we were done with all our plies and jetes, we were on our way to Payless to get ballet shoes. We pulled into a strip mall and were walking through a Gamestop when Holden promptly oozed shit out of every pore in his body.

I could tell by the tears, that the dude standing next to us was choking back vomit.

The poop carnage was so bad, that just looking at him I could tell that the outfit he was wearing was going straight in the first store-side garbage receptacle that I could find.

Please don't look me in the eye while I do this, guy coming out of the Radioshack. I really DO need to discard these shitty clothes and this is the only place, short of leaving them for the next unfortunate soul to pull into our old parking space.

Or bringing it in my car, which, let's be honest, just ain't fucking happening.

So we walk off to the car, him waddling like a cowboy in chaps who just rode the "mean" horse, to figure something out.

And when we got there, what I soon discovered was that not only did I not have a change of clothes for him, but in all my hurried-dumb-assedness, I had packed one diaper and exactly zero wipes.

Plus, he was so covered head to toe that I did not even know where to start, or how to lay him down in the car without coating my beautiful leather seats in oozing diarrhea.

Now, how in the fuck do I handle this?

Thinking quickly, I checked the trunk for extra supplies. I didn't find any diapers, wipes or pants, but I did find a hooded sweatshirt and a long sleeve shirt that one the kids had thrown off in the car because they were too hot.

No pants? Two shirts? Ok. We will make this work somehow.

We had just left McDonald's, which was definitely the cause of this situation.

Damn you, McDonald's, for your diarrhea inducing fare.
Thankfully, I had stuffed all of the kids empty happy meal bags and a bunch of napkins into the bag containing the survivors of the great chicken nugget massacre of 2012.

We have napkins and some paper bags. Things are looking up.

Trying to act fast, as not to get CPS called to ask where to send my "Parent of the Year" award, or to have to explain why I shouldn't be in the Sex Offenders database to the nice police officers, I opened my passenger side door and stripped him naked.

Sorry to any fellow strip mall shoppers that my son might have offended. I couldn't exactly expect the 19 year old behind the counter in Gamestop to sympathize and let me use the middle of his floor as a changing table.

I wiped the visible yucky parts and stuck the empty paper bags on the car seat as a protective liner. Then I used the napkins and, "Oh God, Yes! I found Purell!", to clean up what I could and get a new diaper on the kid.

Gagging, I stuffed the dripping diaper and poop shrapnel into one of the McDonald's bags.

Ok, he's no longer vomit inducing, but he's still nude. And we need to shop. And I'm sure I would get more looks with a naked kid than I did with Smelly-Mc-Smellypants as my shopping partner.

So I grabbed the old long sleeve shirt and put it on him.

Alright, the top is covered. But again, we don't have any pants. And much as I'm sure my husband would also appreciate the loosening of store policy, I'm fairly certain you cannot shop pantsless.

Well, fuck. A hooded jacket has two arms, that's kinda like legs for pants.

So I zipped up the jacket and stuffed his legs into the arms.

Ok, legs are covered. But he still looks like a neglected CPS case, who is wearing a jacket for pants.

So I grabbed a hairband from my console (the clip kind, not the 80's cheese metal kind, although we could have used some background music) and told him to stand up on the ground.

In a stroke of panic-inspired genius, I pulled the hood from the jacket up between his legs to the waistband of the upside down jacket and then tied the hood and excess waistband into a little knot.

So now, not only did he technically have pants and no longer smell, but we probably created some new thing people are going to start doing on Pinterest.

Pin away my lovelies.

Just remember, when you wear your super cool "Jacket-Pants" that they are diarrhea inspired.

 

The new designer Diarrhea Pants.

Nap Time.

Always, always make the kids pee before leaving the house.

I decided today that the kids have been in the house too long and that we would walk down to the playground and get some exercise. I always make each of them pee before we leave the house, but since we were right around the corner and no one said they had to go, I decided that I wouldn't press the issue. We all got our shoes and jackets on and I asked one more time, "Before we go, does anyone have to pee?".

They all said no. Of course.

So we walk down to the playground and we are there literally five minutes and Cora walks up and says that she has to pee. I call her over and tell her that there isn't a bathroom there so we would need to go NOW because we had to walk the couple blocks home.

Not wanting to leave the playground, she insisted that she didn't need to pee that badly and that she really, really wanted to stay. Alright. Fine. We will stay like another 15 minutes and then head back.

We play a couple minutes, them asking me to pick them up and carry them across the monkey bars (me putting in 95% of the effort and starting to perspire) and I tell them that they are the ones who need to get out the excess energy because, let's face it, I have none to spare.

So I sit down, trying to listen to my iPod, the only part of the playground that I actually enjoy, and Holden comes up, grabs the headphones and has a full blown, throw himself on the ground, meltdown when I will not let him dictate what we are listening to.

As he bashed his fists on the ground, flailed his limbs and screeched, I see Cora out the corner of my eye.

My God. She doesn't have pants on. What the hell is she doing?!? 

So I left Holden to his temper tantrum, ran across the playground to pull Cora's pants up and she screams "I peed, Mommy!" She had pee all over her hands and her pants. Fuck.

So I had to have a battle of wills with a urine-soaked kid, trying to explain to her "Mommy knows your pants are wet, kid. But if I allow you to stay bottomless in public, I will get arrested and go to jail and you will all end up spending what could be a few traumatic hours with a social worker...."

So I had to run back to Holden, scoop his tantruming-ass off the ground, call Phoenix over to me while holding Cora's pissy hand and tell them all that we had to get the hell outta there.

So we all walked the three blocks back to our house, Cora smelling of fresh homeless person, Holden throwing a fit and Phoenix, having grazed one of Cora's fingers, refusing to hold anyone's hand.

Can't we ever leave the house without some sort of public decency violation?

My Cora is a Scrapper.

Apparently I went into a deep coma last night and got nine hours of sleep (funny, I don't remember eating an apple or getting pricked by a spindle), so I decided to take the kids to the Discovery Museum to celebrate all the energy I figured I should have today.

We started our day with meeting Clifford the Big Red Dog and the kids got to make a complete mess of themselves with paint (and my kids sure love to destroy articles of clothing with things that will likely never wash off).

So we were having a fun time. But then, everyone started to fight over toys and whine, so I knew Cora and Holden were probably getting tired and we should wrap it up soon. And then Phoenix asked me if they could just go into the room with the Clifford exhibit (which was an entire room made to look like "Birdwell Island" and included the homes and businesses of all of the characters on the show). Big mistake.

First of all, there were two BIG BOYS who, after observing them for approximately thirty seconds, immediately enraged me.

They clearly did not belong in such an exhibit for small children and were acting like complete jerk offs. And the dad was a fucktard who was doing nothing about it and letting them come thisclose to kicking little kids in the face. I wanted to smack the shit out of them.

So I told my kids to move, but my kids had just enough exposure to their jackassedness that they were noticeably irritated by it. And when we moved to another little play house, all it took was ten seconds of me looking another direction and one argument over some toys for Cora to get into a fist fight. With TWO other BIG BOYS.

My Cora is a scrapper. She's four and apparently aspires to be a boxer when she grows up. She was trying to put toy food from the Clifford restaurant into a mail box and the two boys closed in on her.

So she fucking cold cocked them both.

In the ten seconds it took for me to run across the room and grab her, she had punched one of them in the face and started dishing out body blows to the other.

I don't know whether to be mad or proud. She beat the shit out of two boys. Boys who were older than her. Bigger than her.

Of course, I told her that it was wrong and that she's not allowed to hit other children and that she has to use her words and blah, blah, blah....

But I don't think I have to worry about Cora getting picked on because she's small when she starts school.

Although now I do have to worry that her kindergarten classroom is gonna resemble the Jersey Shore house if she doesn't cut it out.

Cursing Children are HILARIOUS.

Holden's favorite new phrase to say is "God damn it!". He uses it in the proper context too, so he's killing me.

He drops his sippy cup,"God damn it!", bumps his head, "God damn it!".

I know it's a phase that all kids go through when they are his age and that you aren't supposed to laugh, but come on.... it's a two year old cursing. And cursing children are hilarious.

How do you tell someone that they caused you to grip your stomach and double over in uproarious laughter and that what they have done was wrong?

Our kids are the spawns of funny people, and about 99.99% of the time around here, Jude and I will both go for the laugh, regardless of consequence (Mike and Sarah, I am sooooo sorry about that very uncomfortable game of Loaded Questions that we played that ended with us almost getting divorced, he thought it was really funny).

It also doesn't help that we curse like sailors. We could put out a jar, fill it with coins every time we swore and label it swear jar College Fund. I love my kids. I hope they turn out to be polite, productive parts of society. But they will never take saying "fuck" and "God damn it" (and Jude says when I say "Son of a bitch!", I say it like Adam Sandler. That must be sexy) away from me. When a salty "fuck" slips out of my mouth, well, that's pure me time.

So hopefully Holden gets over this cursing thing soon. And if not, he is gonna have a real entertaining year worth of report cards coming home from his Kindergarten class and some lively conversation at the parent teacher conferences.

And I am gonna make the teacher repeat back what he said. In an Adam Sandler voice.

Candy Temper Tantrums.

Loud and Clear.