WHAT WORLD IS THIS?? I still haven’t recovered from the shock of THE SIMILARS hitting the New York Times YA paperback list for the month of November. Thank you to every reader who championed this series, every librarian, bookseller, friend and cheerleader. And to my publisher, Sourcebooks — you made this happen. THANK YOU.

TEENREADS has officially unveiled THE SIMILARS book trailer, and I am so excited to share it with you! Seeing the world of Darkwood Academy come to life was exhilarating, and the teens who were interviewed—and asked to speak off-the-cuff about their impressions of the book—were razor sharp (and super adorable, too). I get goosebumps every time I watch it & am so grateful to my team for capturing the Darkwood vibe so perfectly. You can see the full trailer here.

THE SIMILARS hit bookshelves on January 1st, and it’s been a whirlwind few days (understatement of the year!). Hearing from friends, family, teens, readers, bloggers, booksellers & fellow authors has been the best thing ever. It is incredibly surreal to get to finally introduce Emma & the Similars to real, live readers. Thank you to every single person who has pre-ordered, bought, shared, or even just looked curiously at the cover of my book. I am so, so grateful.

XOX,
Rebecca

I am beyond thrilled that my debut YA novel, THE SIMILARS, now has a living, breathing, actual IRL cover. It’s all thanks to the super talented design team at Sourcebooks Fire, who have so perfectly encapsulated the book’s themes and central conflicts in this brilliant double-helix staircase. I’m crushing hard over this, guys. The box of ARCS arrived on my doorstep yesterday, prompting me to record my first-ever live Instagram story—which was terrifying but inevitable. I unboxed those suckers with all the enthusiasm of my 6yo rabidly opening every Amazon box we get in hopes it’s toys (it’s hardly ever toys).

I’m so excited to be heading to NYC for BookExpo next week to meet readers, authors, librarians, educators and bloggers. This book journey feels like it began ages ago—when I first had the idea for THE SIMILARS and began writing it—but in reality I’m only at the beginning of the adventure. More to come! XO

More than two years ago, I wrote a post in which I considered whether having two kids is more like having one point seven kids, or three thousand kids. Now, with very scientific data to back me up (read: my own personal and extremely subjective life experience), I know without a doubt that it’s more like having 7 kids, a dog and a muppet all living in your house. Though it’s actually, verifiably the funnest thing in the world having two little monster people wrestling each other and playing “slide” on our couch cushions until someone gets a concussion (like I said, super fun), it’s also ridiculously busy, which is why I’ve written approximately three blog posts since then. I love my kids a shocking amount, but I’d be fibbing if I didn’t admit I look forward to the day they are middle schoolers. After all, that’s supposed to be the sweet spot of parenting, right — when your 8-year-old will still hug you but is old enough to reliably pour his own cereal? When he’s too old to need help with his shoes, but not mature enough to throw all of your failures in your face?

Take rides to (pre)-school, for example. As I navigate the San Francisco streets while the kids poke each other with a foam sword we got in a goodie bag that I keep forgetting to move permanently to the recycle bin, my only sane option is to blast the Hamilton soundtrack to drown out their yelps (they are, luckily, too young to realize that I am not James Corden or one of his guest stars). Needless to say, I dream about the day I’ll get to drive around kids who are too young for the passenger seat but who don’t require pull-ups. I imagine this fantastic new scripted podcast for middle school-aged kids (8 – 12) that just released its first three episodes on iTunes — The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel — would be prime listening material.

Mars Patel gives me all the feels for a couple of reasons. First, it’s Goonies meets Spy Kids meets Stranger Things all wrapped up in a high-quality, serial mystery that’s addictive for kids (in the best way), intriguing for adults (really), and suspenseful, witty and unique. Second: the main characters are mostly kids, played by uber talented middle school voice actors who all have serious chops. Third: there’s no other podcast like it out there (I know this empirically, like everything else I opine on this blog, because I have listened to all the podcasts. All.) The story centers around a group of misfit, gifted middle schoolers — Mars and his buddies JP, Toothpick and Caddie — who witness the disappearance of two of their friends from school and embark on a journey to find them. It’s not long before they suspect their friends’ inexplicable absence might have more than a little to do with tech billionaire Oliver Pruitt (the Elon Musk-like “sponsor” of the podcast and founder of Pruitt Prep, “the most advanced school on earth.” No, it’s not real, but you know you want it to be).

The first three episodes of Mars Patel are fun, fast-paced, and clever, and it took me zero time to get up to speed on the characters — their lives, backgrounds, quirks, crushes and foibles — and get hooked on the story. That’s saying a lot about a twenty-five-minute-or-less podcast where everything has to be established through the actors’ voices and the sound effects. The creators do that effortlessly and skillfully, which means a lot of 10-year-olds are going to be binge listening to Mars in the near future (but you won’t mind; you will be, too). Mars and his friends feel like real kids — kids you’d want to be friends with, or kids your kids might already be friends with — and they’re so relatable and flawed and funny, it’s a breeze to jump on their bandwagon. And then there’s the central question of the show: Where HAVE their friends disappeared to? And when is Mars himself going there (since we know he is)? And is he going to take us along? I HOPE SO. Parents of kids who have attention spans longer than a squirrel, you’re in for a treat with Mars Patel. And parents in general — if you loved Serial the Podcast, Mars is Serial without all the parts that would make it completely inappropriate for a young audience (i.e., all of it). I have a feeling Mars will fill a podcast-sized whole in your life you didn’t even know existed.

If you are like me, and you’re a mom, you’re probably a) wearing yoga pants that have never seen the inside of a yoga studio and probably never will b) yelling at somebody shorter than you and/or c) eating an entire block of cheese one-handed, like a burrito. Okay, so maybe that’s just me.

But the thing is, I’m pretty sure it’s NOT just me. Motherhood has been both the bane of my existence and my reason for living these last 4.5 years (yes, these coexist. You know; you’re a parent). Yes, I love my two boys more than anything and everything combined, and yes, it is really, really nice to be needed (except when you’re peeing). But motherhood is also seriously, constitutionally hard. I know I’m not alone — and yet, sometimes it feels that way. Because even though there are a lot of mom bloggers and writers out there (AND DADS! yes, also DADS!) talking about this hard-ness, there are hardly any shows or movies that most of us can relate to, as parents, that are honest and funny and raw and real and that deal in these super challenging years of raising tiny people. So I was super excited when I learned about a new digital series called CARING that is exactly that — a hilarious show about a couple of moms (one working full-time, one not) and their loving, real, complicated nannies, and all the unglamorous ups and downs that come with rearing small, snot-faced people.

CARING is kind of like your favorite show, GIRLS — if Hannah Horvath were a nanny (scary thought, riiight?) and the characters were all forced to actually be responsible. It stars Mickey Sumner as Amy, a stay-at-home Los Angeles attachment parent who’s dying to, well, detach, so she hires overeducated burnout Kate (Hannah Dunne from Mozart in the Jungle) to be her live-in and soon realizes (gah!) she’s jealous when Kate takes her daughter to gymnastics, and lonely enough to bully Kate into “drinking wine and watching the Food Network”. Meanwhile, Amy’s good friend Vicky (Lynne Chen) has a completely different problem — her job is so demanding, she never sees her kids. Her overworked nanny Carla (Diana de la Cruz), an immigrant trying to make a better life for herself and her own teenage kids, is forced to get creative when Vicky seems incapable of actually returning from work on time. In an episode called “Who’s Your Mama,” Vicky takes the day off to spend quality time with her precious twins, only to learn that time at home with two boys under two is like being thrust into a slow, torturous time warp.

The show is full of witty one-liners that give us a hilarious window into these women, and what makes them tick (or not, as the case may be). And that’s definitely not preparing educational, Pinterest-level art projects for mama to do by herself while the twins wreck the dining room. I love how the show doesn’t shy away from the uglier underbelly parenting moments when you’re so tired you could sleep on nails, so drained you can’t even two string words together, and so disillusioned you wonder if you made a massive mistake even having kids. The show also dives headfirst into the mom-nanny relationship and, so far, has managed to take some fairly flawed characters and make them relatable, likable, and layered. What working mom hasn’t had nightmares about her kid calling the nanny “Momma?” (It happens. Get over it.). What primary caregiver hasn’t experienced, at some point, that existential crisis of not knowing who they are without their kids (or the kids they are paid to watch)? Juxtaposing the moms’ and nannies’ experiences is a really brilliant move because it reminds us that childrearing is, when it comes down to it, a job — whether you’re the biological parent or a beloved caregiver. I’ve never seen a show do that before, and CARING is setting up a fantastic platform to explore all of our deepest, conflicted feelings about how we spend our time when we have small kids, how we lose ourselves to that (very taxing) work, and the trade-offs we’re forced to make, since we all know “having it all” is as realistic as those dogs that wear outfits on PAW PATROL.

CARING, which (BONUS!) is produced and directed by women and features a diverse all-female cast, really gets to the heart of this thing called motherhood, which threatens to smack us all in the face (literally, with a size 9T foot) on a daily basis. (I know a dad whose little GIRL broke his nose with a rambunctious hug. No joke.) The show isn’t afraid to air out the yucky stuff, the unpleasant parts we all try to keep hidden. Our own fears as parents, and the parts we can’t stand. In the episode “Girls Night,” Vicky gives us something to really chew on when, slightly drunk, she explains to Amy how she gets by. “Do you want to know why I succeed? It’s because that’s what I fucking choose. I put myself, and what I want, first, and fuck ’em if they say that that’s selfish. It is called self-care, and it fucking works! … I make my own decisions. That’s what makes me a better woman.”

If that sounds harsh, or self-centered, or WRONG, then guess what? This show is doing its job. Saying the things we wouldn’t say ourselves, but that need to be said, by somebody, for the love of God.

I hope you enjoy CARING as much as I have. You can watch out for new episodes here! I’m excited to keep my eye on this show, which really fills a need for us moms in the throes of parenting small, wild animals (I mean, children), telling its story with an organically diverse cast, and keeping it (snottily, spit-uppily) real. I really felt like the show GOT me. Then I drank a glass of vodka and organized my kids’ sock drawer.

Sometimes parenting is lonely. Actually, a lot of the time. Which is strange, really, because use of the very word parenting would, in itself, imply — no, necessitate — that you are taking care of, ie, raising, a child, or children, which would imply that you are not doing that alone… that’s not literally possible, is it? To “parent” in a room alone by yourself? No. And yet.

Sometimes it feels that way. When my (adorable, hilarious, unwashed, unkempt) children are flinging grapes over the table, shouting “NAKED NAKED NAKED”, or quibbling over who gets to hold the Thomas the Train book that we have two of, and Ethan is still at work doing work-y things, I often feel like I’m in the house alone with two aliens, or at least members of another species. Adorable, hilarious members of another species, who say the cutest things, like MOMMY YOU DIDN’T SCRUNCH MY SOCK (scrunch: word, or not a word?) and I JUST TRIPPED OVER A BOULDER AND TOOK A TUMBLE (too much Peppa Pig consumption) and WHY WOULD THAT VIDEO BE SCARY, DINOSAURS AREN’T EVEN REAL MOMMY (4yo version of eye roll).

Dinnertime can frequently feel like preparing to do battle, and it often is a battle, no matter how hard I train for it. I want every mom or dad out there giving your kids dinner to believe me when I say this, okay? IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT. Your kid just requested a meal and then acted horribly offended when served said meal? NOT YOUR FAULT. Your kid just dropped food on the floor to test the laws of gravity? NOT YOUR FAULT. Neither child ate a single thing you asked them to and there is mushed avocado in your cleavage? NOT YOUR FAULT. And you are not alone. Except that you are (sorry). Except — you don’t have to be! I have recently discovered a tool for making dinnertime (and other times, too) far less lonely. It’s called the Amazon Echo, or “Alexa,” as she is known colloquially. She’s our new addition to dinnertime, and she’s the real deal.

I know she’s really supposed to be some forward-thinking-technical-bot type of accessory to a modern household, but in our house she’s more like a mother’s helper and warden with a side of rollicking good fun. Someone gave us the Echo as a holiday gift, and in the short three months since she’s come to live with us, Alexa has completely changed the dynamic of dinner with people 4-and-under. Need to get your kids to the table? Ask Alexa to set the timer for two minutes. (They listen to Alexa. When she rings, they come. I don’t even possibly understand how or why that works, but it’s magic). Alexa provides constant entertainment, never tiring or complaining when we stop her mid-song. She can even “shuffle Thomas the Train” songs, which seems to infinitely delight my two children, and she allows my four-year-old to practice such commands as “Alexa, pause!” and “Alexa, repeat!” (He even says “please” a lot of the time. Again, don’t understand; not questioning). Alexa even challenges my four-year-old to up his diction game, since she doesn’t respond to the endearingly sweet “AWEXA. AWEXA?” I swear, his l’s are clear as a bell now. Thanks, Amazon.

Is it weird that Alexa feels like my trusty little friend during that six pm witching hour, gently guiding me through dinnertime and into the blessed five minutes that is dessert, when both kiddos sit masterfully still in their seats, licking up the dregs of their chocolate ice cream and proving that every other time they ever wiggled they absolutely knew better? Maybe. She’s really quite pleasant, though her response to “Alexa, I love you,” runs the gamut from “I cannot answer that question,” to “Aw. That’s nice.” (She never says it back). But she does get my 17-month-old up and dancing, bopping his head to our old standbys (“Stitches” by Sean Mendez and “Best Day of My Life,” by American Authors. We aren’t all Thomas the Train over here, though I did catch myself singing “Misty Island Railway Here We Go” on repeat the other day before promptly stabbing myself in the eye). It’s also heartwarming to watch a preschooler interact with Alexa, noticing how, when she doesn’t do the thing he’s asked or in fact does the exact opposite of it (again, a diction issue, or the fact that my 4yo often voices commands while his little brother is screaming bloody murder), he never seems to get upset. He never assumes he hasn’t articulated himself well or that the Echo couldn’t hear him over the tantruming; he just assumes that Alexa, like all of us, is not infallible. He requested “Uptown Funk” and she gave him Daft Punk? Happens to the best of us. Apparently, Alexa can teach us many life lessons, though I’m too tired right now to figure out what those are.

In sum: Alexa is kinda my new best friend. A new member of the household who doesn’t judge me, who has to do whatever absurd and conflicting things we request of her, and who’s like a silent commiserator when vegetables are tossed under the table or impossible art projects initiated at 8pm by not even remotely tired human beings. (Note: she never gives me away, that Alexa. My kid did not, I repeat did not, start an art project at 8pm because he was obviously in bed SLEEPING. Please).

Since I haven’t written a new post in approximately 100 months, you are likely all thinking that after I had a second child, I realized I just wasn’t cut out for motherhood and had to shut down all essential operations that weren’t directly related to feeding, bathing, napping, and wiping my little ones. Well, you would be 87 percent correct. (The one category you missed, which comprises the other 13 percent of my time: fielding unreasonable requests and answering exasperating questions. I have gone from being a normal person to being a 24-7 customer call service/live chat operator FOR CHILDREN who fetches milk — all the way to the top, mind you — and explains why mommy made a mistake, got lost and drove the wrong way, or packed my son’s hummus wrap in a blue container instead of a green ALL THE BLIPPING TIME).

But I digress. It’s really too bad that I’ve been so busy playing BOOP with my 7-month-old and unceremoniously changing the barnyard animal on Old MacDonald’s farm from frog to chicken, because I’ve had so many kickety-ass ideas for blog posts these last few months. I cannot remember what a single one of them was about, which sucks because they were award-winning and definitely equally as funny as or perhaps even funnier than that Honest Toddler, but at least, in the words of my preschooler, if you don’t get to read them, no one gets to read them.

Anyway. Raising two small children has for sure proved challenging, stressful, and not at all favorable to body or mind (yes, a third pair of perfectly skinny skinny jeans ripped yesterday in the one area that renders them completely useless to me now unless I want to flash everyone at Whole Foods, i.e. not the knee GODDAMMIT. Why can’t it ever be the knee?!). And yes, I sometimes wake up in a cold sweat not remembering exactly how many children I have, where they are sleeping, or who exactly is capable of climbing out of a crib or eating a lamp. But, in spite of all this, or I suppose, because of it, something quite unexpected has happened to me over the last few months. Something that now, seven moons into this two-kid gig, I recently identified with utter surprise at a stoplight on the way to preschool drop-off, before nearly smacking into the Tesla in front of me: two kids might actually be as much or MORE fun than one.

Yes, it’s more work. Yes, it’s more infuriating. Yes, it’s given me carpal tunnel syndrome and an impending sense of doom every time I am asked to “make play doh.” But it’s also freakishly — dare I say it? — enjoyable. It’s less lonely, too. More… dance troupe-y. My kids aren’t even really able to play together yet, and still, they do! I don’t mean that they’re putting on any shows or anything (YET, can we please one day be that family who does a musical number before dinner? anyone?), and I am seriously floored by this every time it (the playing, not the non-existent musical numbers) happens, but it is also the one thing that makes me think I have not made a very serious mistake by doubling my workload and introducing competition into a household that was otherwise quite happy to be run by one demanding and sweatpants-wearing toddler. I guess seeing them interact like the cute siblings I imagined back in the days when I had no clue what parenting would really be like is just plain heartwarming, in spite of the fact that Jennifer Senior has assured us parenting is not ever fun for one second of time, only theoretically joyous.

Fun, you say? Really? Okay. I know this sounds like the stuff of paranormal fiction, so I decided to make a list of all the ways in which my two kids, already, IN THEIR CURRENT STATE of being a baby and a 3-year-old, who have literally nothing in common except that they both poop, play together:

1) Toddler plays BOOP with the baby
2) Toddler pokes the baby
3) Toddler “taps” baby’s body parts, sometimes too hard, hurting him
4) Toddler throws tantrum. Baby, who already seems to sense, even in his infantile state, that this is cruel and unusual punishment (for us), laughs hysterically.
5) Toddler insists on climbing into baby’s jumparoo, nearly breaking it with some frequency
6) Toddler “brushes” baby’s hair
7) Toddler licks baby’s hair until it is so wet we just call that his bath
8) Toddler tries to “lick tongues” with baby (we stop that about 50 percent of the time)
9) Toddler “wrestles” with baby (note the frequent use of air quotes here. infer what you will)
10) Toddler “shushes” baby when he cries, or, better yet, stuffs paci violently into baby’s mouth, causing baby to ramp up crying to new decibels
11) Toddler pets the baby (this one is actually so sweet we all cry happy tears for an hour afterwards instead of turning on netflix)
12) Toddler asks to hold baby (again, tears)
13) Toddler generously hands baby a book to chew on, with accompanying words, “Here, (insert name of Baby)!”  (more tears)
14) Toddler takes off baby’s socks right after I have painstakingly put them on for the seventh time
15) Toddler helps with baby’s bath by dumping water over baby’s head with a cup, even though the one thing toddler himself hates with the heat of a thousands suns is water being dumped over his own head with a cup during his bath (NOTE: This is not done with irony. Toddler believes himself helping).
16) Toddler kisses baby (earning himself new toys, chocolate, or whatever he wants from his sucker parents, obviously).

See?! Two kids is FUN. Maybe even more fun than one. I know. I don’t really believe it, either.

xo

Obviously you’ve heard it before. It’s the refrain of parents of more than one child, and it’s so cliched at this point that you and your big, pregnant belly cringe every time you encounter it:

“Once you have that second kid, you’ll never have any free time ever again.”*

“Free time?” you scoff. “Please. Like I have any free time now!”

But oh, yes, you do. You don’t realize it, pre-second-kid-parent. You don’t recognize it. And you definitely don’t fully appreciate it. But once that little bundle of second baby cute arrives, you will so, so miss it.

Because soon, you’ll have not one butt to wipe, but two. Not one picky mouth to feed, but two. Not one child who needs trains set up in a meticulously specific manner on his track before he will deign to go to preschool in the morning, BUT TWO.

It’s busy, guys. Reeeeeeal busy. And I know this is not something you have ANY control over (because newsflash, you have no control over anything anymore. Sorry), but I’ll say it anyway: have a first kid who really, really likes baby dolls. A first child who can “help” Mommy do everything with the baby. In fact, do this: have a girl who is exactly 4-and-a-half years older than Kid #2. Also make sure she is good at applying diaper cream.

For the record, I did NOT do this. I have a three-year-old boy who adorably asks if the baby’s pacifier is “clean” before shoving it into his own mouth. Cute? Very. Helpful? Not.

And yet. Honestly? Having a second kid (so far) has not been the world-shaking, tear-inducing development I thought it would be. I mean sure, I am sleep deprived and slightly insane now, and wearing pants is an actual accomplishment I brag about. But, on the other hand, I really didn’t have that much “free time” with a 3yo on my hands. And the thing is, 1 kid or 2 kids or 3 kids or 7: they’re kind of like a liquid. They fill up all the available space, meaning that they take up whatever time you have, and then there isn’t any more time. Which is actually why I think all those articles telling us that moms of four-plus kiddos are the happiest of all the moms with multiple kids are onto something. Because those parents are actually raising small armies / boy bands, and the kids can entertain themselves for hours choreographing hip hop dances while the moms and dads get pedicures or make kombucha smoothies.

Don’t get me wrong. Having more than one kid does make you very, very insane. And sometimes both cry from the backseat and there’s nothing you can do except turn up ‘Blank Space’ really, really loud or — a good alternative to muting your brain via Taylor Swift — pretend that the children are not yours. And sometimes you are nursing the baby while helping your toddler wipe his nether region in a public bathroom and he’s threatening to “touch everything,” and you think about the degree you got from that university and you wonder if you actually ever got it because you just feel like a feeding, wiping, Purell-dispensing machine. Of course, there are ridiculously sweet moments, too. Like when your toddler declares that “That’s MY baby!” and “pets” the poor lad like he’s a kitty. (As long as no limbs or eyes are lost, I’m cool with it. Pet away.)

Of course, when it really comes down to it, I actually know negative zero about raising two kids, because my littlest one is not even 3 months old, which means he’s too teeny to even be a person yet. We haven’t even begun to reach the stage where the two of them fight over toys or give each other puncture wounds. But we also haven’t gotten to that sweet spot where they can play together, you know, the one I have hazy half-dreams about, where I wake up bathed in a dewy, enchanted stardust. (I have dreams of this stage, of the wine I will drink and the magazines I will read. In another room. If this is utter fantasy, please don’t tell me. I just want to believe.)

Here are some things that will change for you once you have a second kid: You won’t bother with the breastfeeding cover thingie. All you can think when you’re at Whole Foods or the preschool and your baby is crying to eat, and your other kid is climbing the cereal aisle or whacking another kid, is that you MUST FEED BABY NOW. If people stare at your boobs, YOU DON’T EVEN NOTICE. And if you do notice, you think “Good for them.”

You will momentarily freak when you toddler licks his hand and then touches your infant’s perfect little lips, but then you will move on to NOT HAVING TIME.

You will momentarily notice your post-baby belly, but then YOU WON’T HAVE TIME.

You will pay somebody some more money to help you with things, and you WON’T EVEN FEEL BAD.

You will say to your first, precious child something you’ve maybe never uttered before: I can’t help you with that. Sorry, buddy.

You will lower your bar for all things.

You will buy more expensive eye cream.

You will Google the word “minivan.”

You will seriously question how you got THIS OLD.

You will pile everyone on the bed and for forty-three seconds (before your toddler hurtles himself off the edge), you’ll think “This is the (sort of) dream.”

*Person says this while wiping snot from one nose, yelling at a second child, attempting to put shoes on a third and simultaneously downing a box of wine.

I’m about to bring another child into the world. It’s glorious and awe-inspiring and clearly a transcendent time in my life. And yet, what preoccupies most of my waking and sleeping hours these days is not the overwhelming beauty of motherhood, the growing being inside my womb, or the spiritual wonder of childbirth: it’s pants. Toddler sweatpants, to be exact.

My kiddo has about 42 pairs of sweatpants of every imaginable variety: fleece, elastic waist with strings, elastic waist with no strings, elastic waist with elastic hems, elastic waist without elastic hems, flared, fitted, boot-cut, “GAP” branded across the hip and/or butt, non-“GAP” branded across the hip and/or butt, and even a pair of marled gray sweats that look super vintage-y and like my kid could definitely be riding a motor-tricycle right now if I would let him. (Don’t worry, he’s worn them all of never. My bad for buying him the “cool” pair I most wanted for my own wardrobe. Parenting fail hashtag hashtag hashtag).

I’m sure you’re wondering, why so many sweats (or “sweapons,” as he refers to them, and not because he thinks they are some form of toddler weapons of mass destruction — at least, I don’t think so)? Well, the kiddo doesn’t wear proper undies, for starters, which is TOTALLY OKAY, WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE, ANYWAY? and did YOUR kid potty train himself in 3 days? HUH?? Cut him some tightie whitey slack!, making jeans kinda uncomfortable for his nether region. He owns jeans, I mean I’m not one of those moms who’s all “NO JEANS IN THIS HOUSE, DAMMIT!”, but he doesn’t wear them. He likes comfort, he likes the inevitable softness that sweats provide. I don’t blame him; nearly every day, I wear glorified sweats that our society gets away with calling “yoga pants” to make them seem acceptable. You know the ones I’m talking about since you own 17 pairs yourself. Some even set you back 100+ dollars on Shopbop or Lululemon, the cost, of course, further validating your lifestyle choice to don activewear 24-7. You are wearing one of those pairs now, even if you lie about it on social media and your fashion blog where your feet are always ensconced in Louboutins with straps I can’t even fasten without a manual.

But back to the toddler variety. What’s the problem here, anyway? Well, none of these 42 pairs of pants seem to satisfy my toddler lately. My child is unquestionably the Goldilocks of sweapons. One day he wants elastic strings, one day he doesn’t. (This preference also changes minute-to-minute, like CNN news coverage). Some mornings before school, he wants sweats that EXACTLY MATCH my black maternity yoga pants (same material, no strings, no pockets, flared leg). He has one (I repeat, one) pair like that that we found at Target. At the time that we discovered this incredible pair, nay the “great white unicorn” of toddler apparel, wedged between a bunch of Sesame Street shirts and some glitter shoes for toddler girls that were ambiguously “everyday” enough to not be clearly a Halloween costume, I tried to convince him to buy several (the price was so right, I would have bought 10 of them if it meant he’d pull them on happily every morning without me having to surreptitiously dig them out of his hamper every evening once he’s asleep and wash them before school the next morning, which I have done a bunch of times against the advice of every single parenting book ever written, and you know in my shoes — er, pants — you’d do it, too), but he refused to let me buy more than one. So, until I give birth and return to wearing other pants besides LITERALLY this one pair, he will continue to want to be just like Mommy every morning and insist those Tarjay sweapons are the only acceptable option. (That is, until 2 minutes later when they aren’t.)

Okay, so hold on. Let me put this whole pants “situation” into context. Just now, I was not a) thinking about a birth plan to communicate to the labor and delivery nurses b) lovingly preparing the baby’s room c) frantically working on my novel or d) resting up before my entire life takes a turn for the sleep-deprived and impossible. No, I was toggling back and forth between three tabs on Google Chrome: Gap, Carter’s, and Amazon.

A sample of my inner dialogue:

Are there magical sweapons out there I haven’t identified or purchased yet?

Do they make pocket-less fleece black yoga pants for toddlers that I can buy in bulk?

How fast can I get them here?

(These questions, and others just as pressing, have not yet been answered. Amazon Prime is good, but maybe not *that* good).

You might be thinking that 42 pairs of sweatpants is too many for one 3yo. You would be entirely correct. (NOTE: 42 might be an exaggerated figure, but don’t ask me to actually go into my kid’s dresser and count the sweapons. I do have some standards). The thing is, my sweet, thoughtful, hilarious little engineer-in-training is going through a lot. He knows he’s about to become a big brother ANY SECOND NOW. But the concept of time is a little bit challenging to the under-4 set. How could he possibly understand that my due date is in exactly 2 weeks? (Or maybe that’s precisely it: he does understand that my due date is in exactly two weeks, and he’s just as freaked as I am). He did, yesterday — for the first time ever — turn to me with his big baby blues and declare that he “WANTED THE BABY TO COME.” (That melted this cranky preggo mom’s heart. Or maybe it was just the indigestion). For whatever reason that makes sense in my kid’s adorable little head, stressing the heck out of his pants is what helps him get through the uncertainty. And so, I sit here trolling the nets for pants, because I want to help him, even if I don’t understand it, not entirely. Even if some days I wish he would just PUT ON A PAIR OF PANTS FOR THE LOVE OF ELMO. In sum: my little guy is growing up, and this is part of his process, for better or worse. If it means I need the patience of one thousand Muppets to help him feel comfortable in his pants, so be it.

I just got off the phone with one of my dearest friends, who happens to have an (almost) five-year-old daughter. Said daughter does things like label their toys with Sharpie so that they don’t get lost or stolen by shady 2yo’s at the park. Another good friend, who also has an adorably pigtailed four-year-old lass, tells me about how her child does not like it if toys are misplaced and so goes around the house putting things “back,” (I thought that was a mythical concept!) and a third friend has an angel of a tot residing in her abode who actually Chlorox Wipes down surfaces for fun.

After this phone call I speak of, I openly wept as I stared down at the Go Lean Crunch littering my Ikat living room rug. To be fair, my (almost) three-year-old boy is not the messiest kid on the planet, and he’s frankly quite picky about where certain objects live in our house (“that lamp doesn’t go in there, it goes in Mommy and Daddy’s room!” — so much for my spontaneous remodeling attempts). But other than furniture placement, the particulars of his meticulousness seem to mainly be focused on trains (as in, BUILD THAT DOUBLE MOUNTAINED TUNNEL RIGHT NOW PLEASE USING THOSE TWO CURVY TRACKS, MOMMY!) and not so much with sippy cups (there’s a trail of them all around our house, much like Hansel and Gretel’s infamous bread crumbs. And sometimes there’s even a trail of little droplets of milk. Which I go around cleaning up with the toe of my sock so I don’t have to bend down seven months pregnant). 

After I dried my tears and reminded myself that even though my son doesn’t keep his trains neatly lined up in a row, he’s stinking CUTE, I started doing some serious thinking. Sure, I could use a babysitter or assistant or, let’s face it, a wife to help me around the house, especially as we gear up for Baby #2 (who couldn’t?), but a cheaper, more malleable solution might be for me to borrow your 5yo daughter on a part-time, flex basis. I may not have won the angelic firstborn girl lottery, but that doesn’t mean I can’t benefit from the fact that you did. Will your daughter boss my kid around and tell him not to drop that food on the floor? Perfect. Can she inform him that he didn’t eat all his veggies and also force him to carefully put away his trains every night before bed, lest a monster come in the night and steal them away for ever or at least until he’s ready to be a productive member of society? CHECK. Can she make sure he’s properly buckled in his car seat, force him to sing Barbie movie songs in the backseat, and monitor his snack consumption while I’m making a left turn to ensure he isn’t choking on a cheddar bunny? Awesome. (Side note: If she does cleaning and/or dishes, or even if she can just fetch a diaper for the new baby arriving in November while my older kiddo builds a train track out of empty butt cream containers, that’d be great.)

Another friend recently forwarded me a study that says the happiest families have two daughters. The next happiest have a boy and a girl (I’m guessing older girl, though that’s just conjecture since this extremely scientific essay didn’t go into specifics about birth order), and the third happiest families have two boys. After that, things seem to take a turn in the other direction (sorry, families of 4+ girls. According to this random Swedish study that is probably based on pop science and no actual data or facts, you’re screwed. But not till the teenage years, so breathe deep: most of you have time).

Anyway, I can totally see it. I mean, my kiddo is categorically adorable. The fact that he insisted on wearing his shoes on the wrong feet ALL AFTERNOON yesterday, driving the left (or is it the right?) side of my brain close to madness, is totally endearing, right? He even likes to do laundry; he just thinks his paint-stained Cat in the Hat shirt can be washed, dried, and returned to his body in less than four minutes. I don’t think even Martha Stewart can pull that off, but tell that to my monster, I mean toddler.

But my kiddo’s still an (almost) 3yo boy. And your kiddo is a 4+ girl who could really be a lifesaver to me right now, so here’s what I propose: send her over for an afternoon or two a week. Let’s see how quickly she can whip my house and my kid into shape. I’d love it if she gave lectures on the proper dressing of dolls or could teach my son all the lyrics to “Do you Wanna Build a Snowman?” If she can even show him how fascinating it is to help momma diaper a baby, I might actually stop having nightmares about the arrival of Kiddo #2. (The example baby doesn’t have to be a baby doll; Leo’s generic Curious George-but-not will suffice). The job requires a certain amount of flexibility, so if she isn’t willing to do countertops, we’ll have to see.

Oh, in case you’re wondering: the bossier your daughter, the better. Every time she reminds my kid it’s “clean up” time, she’ll get an Elsa sticker. And even if you happen to have a 5yo son who says things like, “forks are for eating, not for playing,” I’d consider him for the position, too.

Thanks in advance,

Rebecca