The 3 Irrefutable Laws of Motherhood are:
1. It is harder and better than you think.
2. People only stop by unannounced when your house is STRAIGHT NASTY and you are bra-less at 3:00 in the afternoon.
3. The entire universe conspires to keep you out of church on Sunday mornings. Sunday mornings are, ironically, the sixth circle of hell.
However much hitting, punching, glass-shattering, appliance-breaking, things exploding, tantrum-throwing, food-spilling, and violent diarrhea you think is inherent in parenthood, triple it. And on Sunday mornings, triple it again.
My children are overachievers. They adopt their Sunday morning alter-egos on Saturday night, like overly ambitious Black Friday shoppers. They want to make sure they have time to fit in ALL THEIR CRAZY.
A few weeks ago, Henry went to church with a large Band-aid straight across his forehead, connecting his eyebrows. It was covering up the fresh gash that maybe could have used a stitch, but we judgment called it and figured he’d be fine (third kid).
Tonight, we were blowing bubbles when things got violent. If you don’t understand how bubbles can turn violent you have less than or equal to one child.
So my kids are inching closer and closer - in order to be the first in line cluster to pop all the bubbles before his/her siblings - until they are all standing there with their fingers shoved INSIDE the bubble wand, and soapy syrup is running down their arms and all over my legs, and they are giggling like scary little Christopher Nolan versions of The Joker.
So I said, “EVERY ONE BACK. UP.”
And they did.
Until I blew the next wand-ful of bubbles and they stampeded towards me, shrieking and waving their hands in the air like they just didn’t care. And Henry, Henry is one year old by the skin of his teeth. I saw it happen in slow motion, like watching Mufasa get sucked under the hooves of crazed wildebeests. They knocked him over forwards, then straight trampled him as they leapt around in their unbreakable bubble-trance, COMPLETELY UNAWARE that a LITTLE PERSON was underfoot.
That was the end of bubbles, and now Henry has a cut on his eyelid. His left eye is all puffed up and pink, and he’s going to church AGAIN looking like Rocky Balboa.
You should also know that Madeline had to give herself a schizophrenic pep-talk to pipe down during story time tonight. I am not making this up. After the fifth interjection on the FIRST PAGE, I snapped, “MADELINE. STOP TALKING.”
And she said,
“Okay, I can do this.
No, I can’t.
Yes, yes I can. I can do hard things.
No, I can’t do this.
Yes, I can be quiet.”
I stared at her, unable to make sense of what was happening in front of me. She has to have a conversation WITH HERSELF to mentally prepare herself to stop saying every single thing that pops into her brain. You don’t even know.
The moral of this story is that I need something warm and chocolatey in the most serious way. And that moms with herds of offspring should get preferential parking at church. Because we have done mighty battle. We have exorcised the Sunday morning demons. We SHOWED UP.
And also, the childcare workers should just turn a blind eye (PUN INTENDED) to my little boxer tomorrow. He's fine. He just had a nice Saturday evening blowing bubbles.
Are Sunday mornings your craziest mornings too? Why do you think that is? What keeps you showing up?