Ketchup Is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves (9 page)

Instead of banging my head against the wall until I lost consciousness, I asked Emma if she wanted to sleep with my shirt.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah... cober me up wit it Momma,” she said. I did and my shirt covered her from head to toe.

“Why you give that to her Momma?” Aubrey asked.

“I don't know, baby. She just likes it,” I told Aubrey as I tucked her blanket around her tighter.

Aubrey began to giggle, “Wellllllllll, I like your pants.”

I didn't even hesitate or stop to think about it. I wanted a shower and I wanted sleep, in that order. ASAP. I ripped my pajama pants off and threw them to her. The girls were shrieking they were laughing so hard. I was now standing in between their two beds in nothing but my bra and panties.

Emma said with a completely straight face, “Well, I wike you underwears Momma...”

I fell on the floor I was laughing so hard. But a good mother knows where to draw the line, and giving your child a pair of dirty underwear to snuggle with definitely falls in the bad mother category.

“I don't know who y'all think you are or what you're playing at, but that is IT! I'm drawing the line! You are NOT getting my underwear OR my booby bra! GOOD NIGHT!” I could still hear them cackling as I closed the door.

The daily sacrifices a mother makes are never-ending. You skip breakfast to make lunches for your kids. You wanted the last slice of pizza but so did one of your kids, so you gave it up. You were planning on having coffee with a friend and instead end up at home because one of your kids isn’t feeling well. Sick kids stop everything in your house. Sick husbands stop the rotation of the planets around the sun. But if Momma is sick? Nobody gives a crap.

When I was seven months pregnant with my third daughter, Aubrey had a “performance” at her school. Of course it wasn’t directly after school, which would mean I would already be there in all of my pregnant glory. Nope, it was at 6:00pm. This is the worst time of day for any mother of young children. Your kids are tired, hungry and whiny. So are you, but again, you are the mother and
nobody
cares how you feel. You still have to cook, feed everyone, clean the kitchen, bathe everyone, brush their teeth, read them stories
and
get them in the bed before you are allowed to think about doing anything for yourself.

Lots of moms refer to this time of day as “the witching hour.” I call it “happy hour”
only
because that’s when I break out the Mommy Juice. Y'all don't worry about me drinking too much, I drink wine like I drink coffee — when my kids let me. I normally get down about half a glass before I end up getting sucked into reading a story or refereeing a fight. On this day in particular no one in my house was happy. Especially me, because I was knocked up and couldn’t even have a glass of wine.

Aubrey's very first school performance was smack dab in the middle of “happy hour” and even though I was seven months pregnant and taking medication to keep from having contractions, which also caused my hands to shake and my heart to race, nobody cared. We had to go to her performance. Happy hour is bad even on a good day. But when you have to get everyone in your house not only dressed, but dressed in church clothes, with clean faces and fed before 5:30, it’s not going to be pretty. And it wasn’t, but somehow we pulled it off.

Aubrey had been practicing her songs all week, and her little face would just beam at me as she would belt out the words to “God is So Good.” We had the camera and the video camera and we were ready to document this recital for posterity.

We got to the school and waddled into the auditorium, (I waddled and everybody else pretty much just walked, but you get the idea.) Zeb looked around and found the most strategic spot for us to sit so that he could get a good camera angle. I made sure the lens cap was off of my camera and the power was on. Then there she was... my sweet Aubrey, marching down the aisle in her Sunday finest, chest puffed out, curls bouncing and grinning from ear to ear. All the stress of getting there just melted away. That was my baby, the cutest, sweetest and probably the smartest child on that whole stage. I wanted to elbow the mom beside me and let her know which one was mine. Thank God, I restrained myself.

The choir director stood in front of them, the music began and all fifty children started singing about the goodness of God. All but one and that would be mine. My child, stood on the stage, picked her nose and
ate
her boogers in front of the entire auditorium, for the duration of the song. She didn’t sing a single note. I have it on video, I can prove it. I was
horrified
. I really thought our booger picking days were over, after Ms. Emily taught Aubrey’s class about germs during the letter ‘G’ week. Apparently the stress of being in front of all those people was more than my child could bear and under the pressure she just crumbled and regressed.

After the performance, my husband and I went to get Aubrey from her classroom.

“Momma! Daddy! Did you see me?”

“Oh, yes. We saw you! You did such a great job! Mommy and Daddy are SOOOO proud of you,” I gushed.

While I was thinking, ‘I cannot
believe
that I put on a bra, makeup and REAL clothes just to come and watch you eat boogers for five minutes!’ She was totally oblivious to what she had done. A good mother not only knows when to sacrifice for her children, but also knows when and where to lie to them.

Some sacrifices are only temporary.
My kids inherited their horrendous morning-time disposition from me. So I understand when they wake up grouchy or cry because someone is looking at them. I get it. I feel that way, too.

One afternoon, Aubrey woke up from her nap, screaming, crying, wallowing in the floor, and just generally acting a fool. “Ah-ha,” I thought, “she needs food.” She screamed something about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the midst of her writhing fit. I was
on
it. Even though I had a headache, was dying of thirst, not wearing any pants (I was jerked out of the bed by my two-year-old and not allowed to dress) and I realized the only thing I'd eaten all day long was half a chicken salad sandwich — on the heel, gross. But my baby was hungry and she wanted a sandwich, and all that other stuff could wait. My headache, plus the need for water, ibuprofen and pants — they would all have to be dealt with after I made a quick PB & J. I am a mother, a martyr; I would sacrifice for my children.

I made the sandwich, generous with the jelly and cut into squares. Just the way my baby likes it. And even though I knew she'd only eat half, I made her a whole sandwich because to do otherwise would be to insinuate that she is a “baby.” Done.

“Here baby, here's your sandwich.”

“Thanks, Momma.”

“Can I have one bite?”

Aubrey rolled her eyes, totally aggravated and annoyed with me, “Make your OWN sandwich.”

As if
she had just worked so hard to make that sandwich herself. The
nerve
of that child. But a good mother can recognize when a sacrifice is only temporary. I knew there was no way she’d eat the whole sandwich. In a matter of minutes, she would drop half on the floor and be on to something else. “Whatever,” I muttered to myself. “I’ll eat the other half once it ends up on the floor.” At least I swept yesterday that would cut down on miscellaneous debris that will get stuck to it when she drops it on the floor. I am after all, a mother, a martyr... I can sacrifice for my children.

I
f you thought feeding your child was a chore when all you had to do was stick a bottle or a boob in his mouth, you are in for a
fine
surprise. Once you start feeding that child baby food, he’s going to develop an opinion. Once he is old enough to really make some noise? He’s going to let you
and
all your neighbors hear about it when you try to feed him spinach and sardines, or whichever flavor he has decided he hates that day. Unless you are feeding him a jar full of pureed candy corn, he's
not
going to like everything you put in his sweet little mouth.

Don’t be getting all smug when your baby eats vegetables at first. You will pay. Do you hear me? It will bite you right in the butt. My oldest child went from eating anything I stuck in her mouth to refusing just about everything I fed her. For
years
. She got real particular, real fast. I tried talking to other moms about it, but I made a huge miscalculation and ended up talking to the Alpha Mom in Aubrey’s preschool class. (You know the one, she struggles just like you do, but she’ll
never
give you the satisfaction of knowing it.)

We were having a Christmas party for their two-year-old class and one of the moms had brought a vegetable tray. Because, you know, nothing screams “party time” to a room full of toddlers like raw broccoli and cherry tomatoes. I say if we’re going to call this a party, give ‘em pizza and cupcakes. Let's really turn this mutha out, but nobody asked me.

Alpha Mom’s little boy was chowing down on the veggie tray. This kid was eating broccoli, carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes.
Raw
. This was unprecedented toddler behavior. I was in awe.

I sidled up to his mom and whispered, “HOW do you get him to eat vegetables like that?”

I knew I had asked the wrong woman as soon as the words were out of my mouth. She all but had a sign on her forehead declaring, “I KNEW I WAS A BETTER MOTHER THAN YOU!” But it was too late, I had released my words into the universe and now I had to listen to what this idiot had to say.

“Well,” she began, with a smirk I wanted to knock off of her face. “I tell him that the cucumber slices are wagon wheels and the broccoli is little trees. He even eats green beans! I tell him they are green French fries and he dips them in ketchup!” She smiled broadly. She was proud, of herself and her child.

“I wish my kid was that stupid, but unfortunately my child is smart enough to tell the difference between a green bean and a French fry,” I thought to myself and at my house, ketchup
is
a vegetable.

Alpha Mom wasn’t near as smug at her child’s birthday party a few weeks later. He was wearing a cast on his left leg and limping.

“What in the world happened to him?” I asked, truly concerned.

Alpha Mom flushed redder than a cherry tomato. Before she could speak, her mother-in-law quipped, “She run him over in the driveway.” Oh. My. Lanta. I hope I never know that level of Mommy guilt.

Rather than eat healthy, vitamin-enriched McNuggets, my own kids developed a love for non-food items, such as sand, charcoal, ashes and dirt. When Aubrey was eighteen-months-old, she ate ashes out of our fireplace and charcoal out of the grill on the same day (while her
father
was in charge of her, I might add). That’s when I got online to do some research. She had to have some sort of PICA disorder, a vitamin deficiency most common in pregnant women who crave and eat things like laundry detergent and dirt. But my search was in vain and I couldn’t find any information on an actual disorder.

My husband stood over my shoulder while I asked Dr. Google saying, “Don’t worry, it’s good for her. It’s like a vaccine.”

I’m trying to avoid my child getting a tapeworm or some disgusting disease and he thinks she’s being
vaccinated
. Please.

I resorted to desperate measures to keep her from eating things that were not meant to be digested. I bought her an ice cream cone at the beach as an alternative to eating sand. When the child actually spit out ice cream to put more sand in her mouth I realized I was defeated. There was just no helping a kid who would actually spit out cold and creamy ice cream on a hot day at the beach in order to eat
sand
. I could discourage her, but unless I wanted to spend the next year freaking out every time she put something in her mouth, I was going to have to relax. We lived ten minutes from the Atlantic Ocean, either I had to adjust or we had to stay in the house.

On our next day at the beach, I didn’t really fight it. I would rinse her mouth out occasionally and say half-heartedly, “Hey, cut that out.” But I knew in my heart she loved to eat sand and if I didn’t want her to do it, I had no business bringing her to the beach. I was about eight months pregnant with Emma at the time, propped up in a lounge chair sipping on a bottle of water. Aubrey was digging happily in the sand and licking her fingers as my husband and I talked and enjoyed the day together.

“Excuse me, ma’am…” a young guy in his early twenties stopped walking on the beach to address me.

“Yes?” I replied trying to ignore the “ma’am.”

“Um, your kid is eating sand…” he looked at me like I was letting her play with razor blades.