It’s been a rough couple of weeks at my house. The second half of January saw my husband and I being hit from all sides emotionally, professionally, and physically. I usually muster up the enthusiasm to bounce back up and blaze on, but for the first time in my life, I haven’t had it in me.

While watching my eldest child play basketball after school, my youngest child complained that she wanted a snack.

Her: I’m hungry!

Me: Well, I’m sad.

Her: Why?!?

Me: Because I had a rough day.

She teared up (she has a big heart, that girl of mine) and I wiped her eyes and told her not to worry. I get sad, just as she gets sad, but we’re going to be fine. We always are.

I don’t share the nitty gritty adult stuff that worries my husband and I (work, money, extended-family relations, etc.) but I think my kids need to know that I get sad sometimes too. I also get angry and I say I’m sorry. I get frustrated (and say I’m sorry). If I walked around with a smile on my face all day, every day, how would I teach them that emotions are normal? How would I teach them how to verbalize their feelings? How would I teach them that parents make mistakes, just like they make mistakes, just like everyone else on the planet makes mistakes?

I don’t know how else to teach them, other than by showing them that I am human, too. They’re going to figure it out eventually; I’d rather they heard it from me first.

Do you share how you’re feeling with your kids?

img Give Mom a Hug source

The house looks like someone picked it up and shook it. Deadline after deadline whizzes by my head, each one like a nuclear powered dragonfly armed with missiles. Emails sit unopened, telltale coffee rings adorn the countertop from when I frantically guzzled my almost-completely-cold coffee in one gulp just to get the caffeine in to my system. The single page of paper I’ve been using to frantically scribble notes to myself all day now looks like heiroglyphics, filled with scratchy and completely indecipherable writing. And just now, at 10 pm, I realized I completely forgot to brush my hair today. Or my teeth.

Welcome to “Husband Is Out Of Town, Day Two Of Five.”

I’ve seen a lot of flack around the internet lately from people who object to those of us who are normally partnered making a fuss about being a temporarily single parent. Even using that phrase – “temporarily single parent” – can, and has, gotten the knickers of many in to very significant knots. Apparently using the phrase “single parent” when you have a partner is using the wrong words, because I’m not technically single. Fair enough, but I don’t know what else to call it, and I’m too goddamn tired to think about it too much.

There’s too much angst around it. And I don’t get it. It’s not the Suffering Olympics, people.

It’s obvious that I’m not facing many of the same challenges a fully single parent does: for one, I have a very specific end date to my single-parenting.  But that doesn’t mean that while I’m a single parent, it isn’t a really hard thing to do. Being home solo with a sick and inconsolable and up all night badger and trying to organize everything like doctor visits and prescription pickups and whatever in order to get that sick badger better at the same time as trying to do everything I need to do as an adult and a grownup is hard, y’all. And if I say it’s hard, and if I say that flying solo this week is kicking my ass, it doesn’t mean I’m comparing myself wholesale to an actual single, unpartnered, parents by themselves all the time, never has any cavalry flying home to relieve them parent. You guys kick ass, and you rock, and you are awesome, and I am not pretending to be you. Seriously, people: I’m not comparing myself to anyone at all except to, well, me, me when my husband is home and the shit is not hitting the fan 24 hours a day and I actually feel like things are marginally under control around here. Right now they are not under control, not by a long shot, and part of that is the fact that this week, when the bottom is falling out of things, there’s nobody to clean the shit off the fan except for me. And that is a difficult place to be.

Right now is hard. A lot harder than a normal week.  And, swear to betsy: all I’m asking for when I say that is for you to say, geesh, dude, I bet. Let’s grab a drink when you have some free time!

I mean, you could say that any day, but you know what I mean.

So let’s lay off each other. If someone’s having a hard week, let them have a hard week without making them feel even worse about using the wrong words. And if you’re having a hard week: My sympathies. Let me know when to show up with a bottle of something only procurable in licensed establishments. Cause, I’ve been there.

I once gave an interview to a writerly friend about sex during pregnancy. I totally forgot about it until the wife of my husband’s work colleague came up to me and told me that she knew all about my sex life, she had read about it while at the doctor’s office.

Yowza.

But I think she was a little jealous. Because sex during pregnancy, well it kinda rocks. One of my usually reticent friends told me that her second trimester was the only time she has understood what it feels like to be a man.  I’m sorry if you didn’t feel that way.

thanks to Pregnantchicken.com

Obviously, Amy at PregnantChicken agrees that pregnant women’s sexual side deserves to be recognized because she came up with a series of “Hey, girl…” type posters that she entitled “Porn for Pregnant Women”. Truth is you don’t need to be pregnant to feel a little warm when checking them out. Who knew discussing car safety features or shades of green could be so hot?

thanks to pregnantchicken.com

Go to Pregnantchicken to see all the posters. You don’t have to be pregnant to enjoy (or a chicken).

What about you? Pregnancy: hot or not?

I live in a house with my husband, our five-year-old son, our three-year-old daughter and our four-month old baby and, I must admit, I can’t remember the last time I closed the bathroom door.*

Last week on Jezebel, Tracey Moore wrote about bringing her two-year-old daughter into the bathroom with her and even letting her sit on her lap while she peed. As icky/wrong/shocking as this may seem to some people, I think it’s just the natural outcome of the separation anxiety, post-baby bladder control and maternal nurturing trifecta.

You see, peeing while my daughter sits in my lap is not something I planned, per se, but, like my inadvertent collection of promotional earplugs, it just sort of happened slowly over time. It’s not like anyone explains to you that that you can either raise a baby with a healthy sense of attachment, or you can raise a little attachment pee-er. It’s just understood you’ll all be doing the peeing on your own time. It’s not covered in any of the books or anything, and if you try to search online for “baby insists on sitting on my lap while I pee” you just get a bunch of results about dogs.

I don’t know if I’ve ever peed with a two year old on my lap (although I might have!), but I do know that I pee with a baby all the time. My first time was in a public washroom on one of my first solo baby-wearing outings. I suddenly realized I had nowhere to put him, so I just kept wearing him. And you know what? It was fine. So I did it again and again and again. I know some public washrooms have wall-mounted baby seats, but excuse me while I take a shower in Purel just thinking about that.

Even at home, I’ll stop in for a quick pee, babe in arms, rather than leave her screaming in her crib down the hall. (Yeah, three vaginal births. I pee whenever I can, thank you very much.) (And now I’m Kegeling.) And it’s not just the baby and I in there half the time, either. There’s a better than even chance the three-year-old will also be clamouring to get on the toilet or to get a drink of water or to just be near me.

In fact, I still like to keep the door open when I’m by myself so I can continue to referee. (I really should wear vertical stripes more often — slimming!) Because as soon as I step out of a room all quiet activities will instantly cease and the grabbing/snatching/tackling/wrestling/crying/whining will begin. I need to be both within earshot and in calling out range, at all times.

I’m not even going to get into how many times a day I hear, “Mommy! I went poo!” Or how the three year old will make me escort her to the bathroom, but then make me wait in the hall while she closes the door and goes pee all by herself with pi-vacy. How nice for her.

I hate to break it to the novice parents, but diapers are the easy part. It’s not just me, is it? Come clean, bad moms. How many of you have long-since given up on bathroom boundaries? Open doors, open laps?

*I can’t remember the last time I closed the bathroom door to use the toilet or the shower. OBVIOUSLY I need to close it to eat a treat without sharing.

photo source 80n flickr

"Hey! Can it, douchebag!"

You couldn’t avoid it last week. Even for those of us who couldn’t give two rat’s asses about any Kardashians, what they might or might not be wearing, how long their micromarriages might have lasted or how much they spent in Beverly Hills boutiques, it was inescapable. Huge headlines about how Khloe Kardashian’s father MIGHT NOT BE HER REAL FATHER!! HER MOTHER WAS A REALLY BAD LYING CHEATING BAD MOM!!! SCANDALZOMG!

And the whole thing made me nauseous.

Because despite the Kardashians being famewhores? Their private lives – whatever parts of them are private – are still none of our business.

In our fame-obsessed society, we seem to think that because someone is a public person we have the right to know everything about them, that they have no possible right to object to people digging in to their dirty laundry and airing it for the world to see. They invited the media in to their lives, in to the minutiae of their day to day and their relationships and their vacuity and all of it. And, the reasoning goes, because they have chosen to be public about some of their lives, they have therefore given up their right to privacy in all matters!

Is this really what people believe?

This is the kind of mentality that led to a newspaper in the UK feeling it was perfectly OK to invade the privacy of dozens of people by hacking in to their personal mobile phones to Look For Dirt. They felt they had the right to do so, because their targets were Public People (whether by choice or not).  Imagine having a child go missing and then, during your desperate search to find her, having a newspaper hack in to her voicemail and erase messages, making you believe she was alive. When she wasn’t. But you thought she might be, because someone else felt it was their right to hack in to her phone to look for a Story.

This is the same kind of privacy violation we’re talking about here. The belief that we have a RIGHT to know everything about everyone, no matter what damage is caused by revealing it. Newsflash: We don’t have that right. Even if someone lets us in to their life and shows us more than we feel is appropriate, they still have a right to privacy. They still do draw a line. And wherever that line is, that’s their line, and we have no right to go past it. None. Never.

Her father was the man who raised her, who taught her right from wrong, who kissed her goodnight and read her stories and the man she misses every day. End of story, unless she personally chooses to tell us otherwise. Quit digging for smut, go do something good for humanity, and shut up.

How is your Dare To Draw challenge going? If you haven’t read about Dare To Draw, The Bad Moms Club Dare Team Dares YOU and your child to Draw one picture every day for the next 30 days. Funds raised by your drawings will help support kids, parents and grandparents who are working to turn the tide of AIDS in Africa.

One of my favorite dares from the past week was when my little artist was challenged to draw ‘the place where you sleep‘. Here is her interpretation of her girl cave:

First thing I noticed? How clean her room looks in this drawing. Hmmmmm I wish life imitated art. Anyone else find a ridiculously clean bedroom rendition this past week?

Today’s challenge: WILDCARD! Anything that inspires your artist is on the easel this Tuesday. Wonder what will spring from those creative hands today… remember to share those creative outbursts right here.

“I’m thinking about buying an electric breast pump this time around since I had some trouble breastfeeding my first kid. It’s okay to buy a used one, isn’t it?”

“Omg, no. I totally breastfed all five of my kids for three years each and I never, ever used a pump.”

“Well, you see, I just had trouble getting my milk to come in after my c-section and then I’ll have to return to work eventually, so I just thought …”

“I birthed all five of my kids at home with no drugs and was tandem nursing before the placenta was delivered.”

“Well, I would never have a home birth because I would never risk my baby’s life like that. But that’s just me.”

“If you really want breastfeeding to succeed you need constant skin-to-skin contact for a solid month, nursing on demand, co-sleeping, a family bed and no independent or career-oriented goals. I’m only a better mother than you because LOOK AT ALL MY KIDS.”

“But I have a fulfilling career AND my daughter sleeps through the night in her own bed and pees and poos on a schedule and does the dishes and folds all her laundry. BITCH.”

Sound familiar? Because I think I had this exact conversation, like, three times in the past month. You know, pretty much. Giving parenting advice is hard, people. And when that advice even approaches the topic of breastfeeding it can be downright toxic.

After seriously jeopardizing a good friendship because I was a bratty, know-it-all, idiot last week, I gave some serious thought as to what I could have done different. Here’s what I came up with:

• Is this person even asking for advice? Seriously. Can’t we just complain about our kids without twenty-five million people chiming in with well-meaning advice about what worked for them? Sometimes we just want to commiserate with people who might understand. That’s all.
• What goal is this person trying to accomplish? Just because getting that effing baby out of your bed was priority number one for you, doesn’t make it so for everyone. It’s tempting to lump issues together based on our own experience, but it’s important to understand what specific obstacles the other parent is facing and make sure you’re on the same page.
• Are you judging? No, really, are you? Maybe you don’t think it’s judging per se when you point out that TV is really bad for kids under two and that your kids never, ever watched TV until they were school age, but guess what? It is. Show me one parent who has no idea that TV is not the best babysitter. They turn it on because, for whatever reason, they just need a damn break. Double check your biases.
• Do you even know what you’re talking about? Sometimes we really do know our stuff. Like, if you’re a practicing lactation consultant or a La Leche League leader you probably do have some valuable insight into breastfeeding. But most of us have some experience raising our own one, two, three, or even seven or eight kids. That’s hardly any kids in the grand scheme of things. We’re not experts.

And while I think it would behoove us all to try to be less sensitive, if someone does feel hurt, offended or judged by your “helpful advice,” then ur doing it wrong.

What do you guys think? I’d love to hear more pointers on how to be a bad mom, but a good friend. God knows I need them.

photo source nerissa’s ring flickr

The least shocking news of 2012 broke this week, with deep South, deep-fat fryin’ down-home cooking guru Paula Deen admitting that she has type-2 diabetes, something the rags have been dishing on for years.

With signature recipes including Southern Fried Chicken, Cheese Biscuits, Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding and Paula’s Fried Butter Balls, as well as the admission in USA Today that she used to drink “sweet tea” from “… lunchtime … to bedtime,” I’m not sure how anybody – least of all, Paula, couldn’t have seen this coming.

Criticized heavily for promoting a fat- and sugar-laden diet – a diet which is linked to no shortage of health issues, from heart disease to obesity to diabetes – Deen famously once told Oprah, “I’m your cook, not your doctor,” and refuses even now to change her cooking show habits, insisting that she has always stressed moderation in eating.

Sure, Paula, and I’m sure that tobacco companies stress moderation in smoking. I hope Paula is ok, I really do, but the truth is, moderation would have put Paula out of business long ago. What does moderation constitute? Doing something 10% of the time? 25% of the time? I’m pretty sure that Paula would not stress moderation when it comes to people buying her heart-attack-waiting-to-happen recipe books, or the cooking implements she happily shills, which – the only real shocker here – does not include a signature deep fryer.

Also disturbing is the fact that Paula has kept the diagnosis close to her ample bosom for years, choosing only to come out of the deep fryer with her news as it coincides with her new appointment as spokesperson for Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical company that will be supplying Deen’s diabetes medication and implements. How quaint.

I am all for people taking responsibility for their own choices and for not playing the blame game when it comes to making the bad ones, but the critics have a point –Paula preaches a dangerous message to the throngs of the butter loving faithful.

It’s like Dr. Atkins developing heart disease, Ben Cohen (of Ben and Jerry’s) undergoing a quintuple (!) bypass, or the millionaire owner of Segway dying in a Segway accident – when you make your living dabbling in the unhealthy and stupid, it can eventually catch up with you.

It caught up with Deen, and as for the blame game, well, she has nobody to blame but herself.

Have you heard about Dare to Draw?

The Bad Moms Club Dare Team has taken the challenge and we would love for you to join us raise funds that will help support kids, parents and grandparents who are working to turn the tide of AIDS in Africa.

Each day your child draws a picture, we get closer to our goal and just to make sure that your little artist doesn’t hit a creative wall, inspiration is supplied through prompts.

Today’s drawing prompt is to draw A Grandparent.

Who is the lucky Granny, Grampy, Nona, Poppy, Oma, Gramp, Grampy, Grammy, Gogo, or Pop going to be in your drawing today?

Remember to share with us. Send us a copy of your child’s photo and we would love to feature it here at The Bad Moms Club.

photo source caro wallis flickr

Being a photographer, I often read posts and articles on improving my craft, and one suggestion is to participate in a photo challenge. A lot of people to the 365 (or 366, in 2012) challenge, which is a photo a day for a year, and … no thanks. When I worked from home, I may have been inclined to do so. Now that I work long days in an office, it just won’t work for me. I am a HUGE fan of natural light and at this time of year I leave the house when it’s dark and I get home when it’s dark. I also find that hauling out my “big camera” is a pretty rare occasion in the winter. There are only so many snow/sledding shots you can take, you know?

But I have a better option, for those of you like me! I was in bed on the evening of January 1st, scrolling through Instagram, when I saw a few friends posting self-portraits, using the hashtag #janphotoaday, and sharing the list of prompts.

I thought I was too late to join, but I was encouraged to catch up, so I took a self-portrait the next day.

The best part (for me): I can use my phone for these. Super easy, and gives me no excuse not to play along. I’m kind of loving trying to be creative with the prompts. I will spare you from 19 photos, but here are a few of my favourites (hover over them to read the description):

Day 3: Something I adore

Day 4: Letterbox

Day 6: Makes me smile

Day 7: Favourite

Day 9: Daily routine

Day 12: Close-up

Day 15: Happiness

Day 17: Water

How about you? Do you do photo challenges? Are you doing this one? Do you want to jump in for the last week and a half?