Guess what! I got some of that much-coveted alone time this weekend! Hours and hours of time without any of my children. It turns out all I needed to do was get on a train and go to New York for a day and a half! Because you know, that happens so very often.

After a long, busy, very-much-NOT-alone day (the highlight of which was hanging with Catherine and Mira and a bowl of cheesy polenta with poached eggs of DELICIOUSNESS), I planned on curling up in my hotel with some room service, followed by a bath in a tub without squeaky rubber frogs and bottles of dog shampoo lining the edge, only to discover that there was no room service and the bathroom only had a standing shower. So I ended up trudging around Williamsburg by myself, in search of food.

I sat in a corner booth, surrounded by 20-something hipsters wearing t-shirts for bands I listened to in high school, eating some really good duck confit (FOOD AND TAXI STIPEND YAY) and wondering if the restaurant had high chairs and if my kids would like the sweet potato fries. I read terrifying Instapaper articles about All The Ways You Children Can Get Really Screwed Up, Like Meth and Prescription Pills And Suicide and More Meth and Booze and Seriously, WHY DO I HAVE SO MANY ARTICLES BOOKMARKED ABOUT METH?

So I was actually really, really grateful when my husband called and put the kids on speakerphone. So I could tell them goodnight and that I loved them and DON’T DO DRUGS EVER OKAY? Then I ordered dessert and regretted it, because man, I was tired and wasting valuable uninterrupted sleep time at the hotel.

The rest of the evening went something like this:

Get in bed. Dick around on Internet. Watch Portlandia on Netflix. Test out every pillow on bed in search of proper firmness. Attempt to will self to sleep. Doze. Jerk awake. Forgot to pump milk! Pump. Stash milk in minibar next to Pabst Blue Ribbon because Hipster Hotel Is Hipstery. Will self back to sleep. Jerk awake at thought of forgetting breast milk in minibar tomorrow. Type reminder in phone. Will self back to sleep. Jerk awake because somewhere there is an imaginary baby crying at a frequency only I can hear. Bury head in pillow in futile attempt to block out the sound of not-real crying that isn’t actually happening. Doze. Jerk awake because boobs are also now ready to feed said imaginary baby who doesn’t exist zzzzzzzzWHATzzzzzBABYzzzzzWHERE AM IzzzzzzWHY IS IT SO HOT IN HEREzzzzzzzzzWHERE’S THE BABYzzzzzzz.

By the time I checked out and got on the train home, I was completely exhausted and ready to be back at home, in my own bed, even if it meant sharing the space with Jason and Ike and the cat, while Ezra to poked at my eyeballs to see if I was awake and Noah excitedly shouted the plot of the latest episode of Kung Fu Panda: Legend of Awesomeness at me and the dog skittered around in a SOMEONE BETTER LET ME OUTSIDE RIGHT THIS SECOND OR YOU WILL ALL BE SORRY AND ALSO PUDDLY.

I got all that and more when I got home. It was really, really nice. I do love these nutballs, after all.

It was super-interesting (and reassuring) to read your responses to my last post about Not Leaving The House Ever (and being sort-of lamely okay with that). I was happy to see that I am among many other homebodies who just can’t be bothered — especially in the winter, and especially in the winter with a packload of small children with a tendency to spread out in a dozen different directions at once. I was happy to see that I’m not the only one who not-so-secretly DREADS the five whole minutes of human interaction and small talk I endure at preschool pick-up and at the neighborhood bus stop with a couple other cheery, chatty adults. I don’t want to talk about the weather! Can’t I just check the Internet on my phone in peace?

THE INTERNET GETS ME.

After several date-night-free weeks, I was lucky enough to book a babysitter for tonight. (I’m sorry babies, I love you all to death but I WAS BARFED ON THIS WEEK. REPEATEDLY. MOMMY NEEDS A LITTLE BREAK FROM YOUR HEADS.) My husband asked what I felt like doing during our wee hours of freedom, and I basically went blank and started mouth-breathing at the wall. Doing? Like, things? Outside things? Bwuh?

That’s when I realized that I have not left the house in a very long time. The last time I ventured further than Noah’s bus stop (one block away) or Ezra’s preschool (six blocks) was last Saturday. And even that outing consisted of 1) buying Ezra sneakers, 2) getting the boys haircuts. Then we stopped on the way home for a quick dinner out, which was really nice except for the fact that it took place at 4:30 pm, in order to minimize the number of diners we’d likely bother.

Even the senior citizens didn’t start rolling in until at least 4:45.

And that’s it. The rest of the week was a weird confluence of school district professional days, weather closings, illness, work deadlines and just…well, having no life. No playgrounds, no walks, no coffee runs or drinks with a girlfriend. I didn’t even drive to any afterschool activities — Jason did, since whenever he works from home he’s basically chomping at the bit to go ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE, JUST GIVE HIM AN ERRAND AND HE’LL DO IT, AS LONG AS IT INVOLVES LEAVING THE COUCH.

Ezra only went to school two days all week — both days when the babysitter picks him up so I did not even get two minutes of small talk with his teachers. I canceled Noah’s OT appointment since Ezra was so sick — there went my 40 minutes in a crowded waiting room chatting with other special-needs moms.

I don’t think this is actually unusual for me…and it’s probably not even close to my personal not-leaving-the-house-at-all record, but I feel like it should…bother me? A little? Don’t I feel isolated or stifled? Shouldn’t I be making more of an effort to get up and out more often? Why are the only all-by-myself outings I can remember in recent months just the couple times I went and got my hair cut, and nothing else? (Not to mention my bangs are currently hanging down past my nose, too.) The baby isn’t a newborn and it’s not like I’m threatening the older boys with leashes on a regular basis (ANYMORE) when I’m out in public with them. I have a long list of wonderful friends I could email and finally, FINALLY make concrete plans with after months of procrastination (all on my part). What’s with this slide into antisocial mom-hermititude? Or am I just…you know…too tired to give much of a crap right now?

Sorry to write an entire post comprised of 75% rhetorical questions to myself, but I guess I am curious: How often do you leave the house, on a weekly basis? Especially for reasons that are NOT directly kid-related (even if they’re with you)? Or, if you do work outside of the home, how often do you do other, non-kid/non-work things? Do you have a regular standing coffee date with a girlfriend or pedicure appointment to force you up and out, or does your sanity depend on getting out your front door at least once every day?

Or should I stop worrying about this and focus on congratulating myself for at least getting out of BED most days?

While we’re on the subject of siblings and whether they are 1) terribly pointless, or 2) the most important gift you can EVER give your child (because those are the only two options, you know), let’s talk about the wonderful, magical moment when you introduce existing children to their new sibling. And how wonderful and magical it is.

Wait. No. I meant the opposite of that.

This is the photo I used — after cropping and tweaking and edge-blurring and etc. — to commemorate the moment when my three boys came together for the first time:

Gorgeous, right? The perfect mix of curiosity, suspicion and tenderness. Also, the baby appears to be in no danger of getting dropped or sat on and is not crying.

In other words, what a load of crap.

A few seconds later, after Noah’s hand actually made contact with Ike’s head and startled the bejezus out of him, Ike let out a howl. Noah fled to the opposite side of the room and refused to go near the baby again. And Ezra was like, “Yeah, I’m out too. YOU deal with this.”

I just can’t even right now, you guys.

They spent the next 45 minutes or so jumping off the hospital room’s furniture and windowsills, screeching and squawking like Angry Birds while I stayed in bed, grinning stupidly and basking in the chaos of my new-and-improved life.

By the time I saw them again, my post-c-section IV had been removed so I was no longer under the influence of the kickass painkillers.

This is what happened next. (And…a lot of times after that. Up to and including THIS MORNING, ACTUALLY.)

HI FISHY FISHY FISHY

First, the boys circled him like a fish in a waiting room aquarium. We removed the baby before they started pounding on the plexiglass.

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Presented for your headdesky consideration, The War On Only Children:

It’s especially galling to hear the contempt for onlies – that vaguely snide attitude that the real selfishness is on the part of the parents – coming as it does within a culture in which the subjects of infertility, pregnancy loss, deferred child rearing, and divorce are the stuff of idle playground chatter. If a child you know has no siblings, chances are you know the reasons why. It’s rarely because the parents are such big jerks. But whether it’s by the hand of fate or conscious decision, who’s to knock another’s choices, anyway? Why be a self-appointed Goldilocks of family size, bloviating that one is pathetic, five is pushing it, but two or three is juuuuust right?

On the surface, I have no dog in this fight. I am the youngest of seven children…but technically the other six are half-siblings, and the majority of them were teenagers by the time I was born. (My closest-in-age sibling is nine years older, and the gap goes up from there: There’s 20 years between my oldest brother and I.) So I had a semi-in-between sort of childhood: I had a heapload of siblings, but once they all moved out I spent the majority of my childhood as pretty much an only child. In fact, it really wasn’t until I was an adult that I really got to know my siblings as, you know, my brothers and sisters. They’d always been more like grown-up authority figures to me, rather than people I was expected to share my Barbies with.

Those years as an only child were awesome, except when they weren’t. Having siblings is awesome, except when it isn’t. How’s that for the wishiest of washiest perspectives?

My favorite joke-y answer to the “So what do you DO?” question is that I am a Professional Oversharer. Even though that’s probably too true to actually be considered a joke. I never once sat down and figured out What My Blog Will Be About, or drew up a preemptive list of topics I wouldn’t discuss or anything like that, mostly because I just didn’t know any better.

A few of the online writers I really admired back in 2003 (when I started my blog) all used their full names and the ones who used pseudonyms seemed to have specific work-related reasons for doing so. I didn’t. In fact, I saw having my name on the blog as a plus — since this was back before Facebook, I figured the blog would be a good way for old friends to track me down and get back in touch. And also for ex-boyfriends to see how awesome my life was, so there, NYAH.

Good things and not-so-good things come of this slapdash, make-up-the-rules-as-you-go-along approach, of course. On the one hand, my lack of anonymity kept me honest, at least when it came to writing about other people. I couldn’t write nasty-funny stories about co-workers or bosses or my in-laws. I never had to deal with being “outed” at work or receiving an angry email from a friend/family member whose feelings were hurt when she stumbled on my blog and read all the mean things I said about her…or about someone else who she thought was her so the damage was done. (One of those scenarios seemed to happen on a weekly basis in the blogosphere back then. MAJOR DRAMAZ, I TELL YOU.)  Everyone knew I had a blog, they could choose to read it or ignore it, but they knew they wouldn’t find themselves there in an unflattering light.

(CUT TO: My Christmas vacation with my family, and the multiple commands of “DON’T YOU DARE BLOG ABOUT THIS, AMY.”)

AND WINE SOCK MONKEY & FRIENDS WILL KNOW IF YOU.

The downside — beyond the whole “but what will your CHILDREN think about their names and photos and stories blah blah blah” topic, which is just too heavy and involved for a Friday — is that I developed no real filter for stories about myself. Since I was Blog Fodder Target #1, I was usually entirely too eager to share anything and everything vaguely interesting or funny that happened to me. Personal? Private? Embarrassing? I…simply do not understand those words. Are they Latin?

Make no mistake, there are entries in my archives that make me cringe. Things I cannot believe I told the Internet about. Neuroses laid bare, bodily functions written about in excruciating detail, going on and on about my feeeeeeeeeelings in long-winded, overwrought prose that in my head sounded deep and writerly and now is like, OMG, shut up, get over it, white girl problems, STEP AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER AND FIND A HOBBY THAT DOES NOT INVOLVE WRITING EXTENSIVELY FROM THE INSIDE OF YOUR OWN SKULL.

So now, eight years later, I’ve got a digital trail of thousands and thousands of entries — not just on my own blog, but on other people’s blogs and group blogs and corporate blogs and just…all over the damn Internet. I sometimes think about tracking a few specific entries down and quietly deleting them, but then I can’t remember enough about them to find them in my massive, disorganized and crumbly-around-the-edges blog dashboard or I think about the Wayback Machine so what’s the point and then I get distracted by a baby vomiting down my cleavage and think: Eh. Whatever. People know I’m a mess. Does it really matter if they know that I used to be even more of a mess? Or just a different kind of mess? You own your words about other people, so just own the words about yourself. Even the ones that you maybe regret a little bit, a few years later.

Anyway. Point is: I wrote this entire post while pumping my boobs via one of those super-attractive hands-free pumping bras.  Just. You know. Felt like sharing that little tidbit. It’s who I am. It’s what I do.

Since I last posted here, my mother has informed me that I am, in fact, a total liar. “You never threw a tantrum on Santa’s lap,” she insisted, “NEVER.”

Well! We’ll just have to see about that, I thought, and started digging through my mountain of completely unsorted, unorganized photographic evidence.

This week’s Babble Voices Salon is a discussion of the Santa thing. You know, do you lie to your children about an invisible, all-knowing man who lives somewhere north of here, and who arbitrarily rewards and/or punishes them based on his own, mysterious standards of “good” and “bad?”

YOU BET YOUR SWEET ASS I DO.

But that’s not actually the main thing I want to discuss today. I really want to address the topic of Creepy Mall Santas Making Small Children Cry, something several of the salon panelists (salonists?) brought up.

While my own childhood experience with Santa was a typical, pleasant one — I believed sincerely when I was very young, then slowly sensed that it was something more like a game to play along with my parents, then had a late-stage NO NO I REALLY REALLY BELIEVE I SWEAR! phase where I tried to cling to one last shred of magic and deny that I totally knew better — there are several photos of my sitting on Santa’s lap and looking none too pleased about it. I’m pouting in one, looking deer-in-the-headlights in another, and I think there’s even one of my sheepish-looking mom holding me while I scream furiously mid-tantrum.

Santa, of course, looks drunk.

We never intended to make the Mall Santa photo a set-in-stone tradition: It just kinda happened. We were out shopping in 2005 with our newish little lump of a baby and thought it would be funny to see what happened if we stuck him on Santa’s lap.

Not much, it turns out. Noah looks bored and Santa, of course, looks drunk.

The next year we were at the same mall and realized the same drunk dude was playing Santa again.

Oh, jeez. That’s…actually pretty cute. AND THIS IS HOW THEY GET YOU. We’ve been slaves to the Mall Santa Photo-Op ever since.

I trust you can see the problem here, though. Despite dragging my children to the mall year after year, despite terrible lines and crowds and wait times that stretched straight on through nap time, and despite TEMPTING THE GODS BY DRESSING THEM IN MATCHING SWEATERS, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE…I do not yet own a single photo with a single crying or otherwise hilariously terrified child.

COME ON. There are THREE of you. I can’t ever remember a time when at least one of you WASN’T screaming over something. But then: Here, we’re going to stand in line for 40 minutes and then plop you on a stranger’s lap and order you to all face forward and smile on cue.

Somebody needs to lose their mind over the ridiculousness of this request, right? Somebody has to make me feel like I have, at last, fulfilled my duty as a parent to scar at least one of my children for life via a Mall Santa.

Well, I guess I could always try the Easter bunny.

I have a weird question for you, Internet. It’s not pressing or important or anything, so don’t feel like you need to put down your bagel/cookie/wine glass for it, but since this blog seems to serve as a repository for half-formed topics I thought of in the shower and don’t feel like condensing down to 140 characters for Twitter, here goes:

Is there a way to politely mention that Ike is actually my third baby (and not my first) without sounding like a “don’t you try to tell me anything, I’m a BABY EXPERT“-type jerk about it?

Because I am apparently TERRIBLE at small talk, I keep having these horribly awkward conversations with people when I don’t mean to have horribly awkward conversations. But it’s always like this:

PERSON: Oh! Baby! How cute!

ME: Thank you!

PERSON: Insert some variation on enjoy it while you can, they grow up so fast, he’ll be walking/talking/driving before you know it, etc.

ME: (smiles knowingly) Oh, yes. Believe me, I know.

PERSON: (chuckles condescendingly) You have no idea. Have you babyproofed yet? Have you covered your wall outlets? YOU HAVE TO COVER THE WALL OUTLETS, YOU KNOW BECAUSE TODDLERS BE CRAZY.

ME: This is my third baby. I am well aware of the thing about the wall outlets.

PERSON: Oh. Wow. Okay.

ME: PWNED! RESPECKT MY SKILLZ DAWG.

PERSON: Good luck with life, breeder.

Okay, that exact conversation didn’t happen, but you get the idea. The well-meaning but unasked-for advice in the baby store about what product I simply MUST buy, even though I know for a fact it sucks. The other mother in the check-out line wrestling with two kids jokingly telling me I’ve “got it easy” because she sees Ike in the Ergo carrier and not the other two I left in the car with their father because holy crap, no way.

The best one was the mother who noticed me changing Ike’s (cloth) diaper in a public restroom and commented that he “must be my first” because she “used to be idealistic like that” before she had her second child.

ME: Actually, this is my third.

HER: …

ME: BURRRRRRRN!

Okay, maybe that time I didn’t really care too much about coming across like a jerk, since it crossed over “harmless small-talk assvice” and into “passive-aggressive judgy judgement.”

But then this weekend another mom struck up a conversation with me. She cooed over Ike and then launched into the “Time goes so fast I can’t believe it” conversation and then pointed to her two-year-old. “You’ll blink and suddenly have THAT, it’s so crazy.”

She was so nice and sweet and chatty, though, that I didn’t quite know how to pull off the “And then you’ll blink again and have THAT, A GIANT KINDERGARTNER” thing without sounding like I was trying to one-up her, or make her feel silly for telling me something that yeeeeeah, I kinda already know, thanks.

So I pretended I didn’t have any other children. They were elsewhere in the store with their dad, so I figured why bother? I can sit here and nurse and pretend that I’m interested in her baby gate recommendations for a few minutes. I can bite my tongue and resist the urge to make sure she knows my specific motherhood rank and qualifications and advanced placement degrees, right? Who cares?

Yeah. We bumped into each other again, later, at the mall playground, where there was no denying that the three children climbing all over me were all mine.

I was like, “Oh. Did I forget to mention the other ones? Right. Whoops. Ha..ha?” She clearly thought I was completely insane, and quietly moved to the other side of the seating area.

OBVIOUSLY, the best solution is for mothers to adopt some kind of military-like uniform that designates our rank as mothers of one, three, four, multiples, Duggar, etc. That way I won’t find myself whining about my singletons to a mom of twins, and we’d all know to send that mom of six over at the bar a drink and an order of mozzarella sticks that she doesn’t have to share with anyone, because respect. Duuuude.

Although a more workable solution would be for me to simply stop leaving the house and interacting with people, since it seems like turning harmless idle chit-chat into face-meltingly awkward encounters appears to be my personal superpower.

(“Drinking With Baby” merit badge by Brooklyn Badges on Etsy)

Here’s the thing about the Internet. It’s big. It’s noisy. It’s full of many, many opinions, often conflicting. Breastfeeding! Bottlefeeding! Attachment parenting! Ferberizing! This! That! Democrat! Republican! Don’t Mind Me, I’m Canadian, Just Up Here Enjoying My Free Socialized Healthcare And 12 Months Of Maternity Leave! Exclamation points are awesome! Exclamation points are annoying and unnecessary! I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I?

And of course, there are the pro- and anti-banana factions.

But sometimes a really wonderful thing can happen. We develop a sense of humor about ourselves and maybe just shut up for a minute before rushing in to comment in all caps. We can recognize the distinction between being passionate about a topic and being a jerkwad about it on someone else’s turf.  We can stop making differences in opinions into dealbreakers and learn to enjoy each other’s viewpoints and virtual company. We “meet” people whom we’d likely never meet in real life, and discover that they are really, really awesome and cool.

And I can think of no better example of this kind of cross-the-aisle kumbayaship than the Thanksgiving present the banana-loving Allana Harkin sent for my impossible monkey children:

I showed my boys this photo, once again trying to impart some awareness into their little brains that LOOK MOMMY HAS A JOB AND THAT JOB BRINGS YOU AWESOME THINGS LIKE THIS, but it was useless: Their brains were already puddling up around their shoes as they attempted to comprehend what they were seeing. Ezra, being born in a post-iPhone world, assumed Dino Dan was on the webcam and immediately began bringing Various Interesting Things (socks! apple! Plants vs. Zombies figurines!) over to the computer to show him.

Noah was momentarily starstruck, completely gobsmacked that there was such a thing as a Dino Dan, and spent the rest of the day asking me when “his friend Dan” was coming over to his house for a playdate. Sorry, kid, but this mommyblogging thing can only get you so much. At least a personalized photo from your favorite TV show character is more exciting than coupons for yogurt, amirite?

(NOT THAT THERE’S ANYTHING WRONG WITH BLOGGING FOR YOGURT COUPONS. I AM PRO-PROBIOTICS AND ALSO CAPITALISM. I AM YOU ALL EVERYBODY.)

And now I will concede that I enjoy the occasional banana-related baked good and had completely forgotten about bananas with peanut butter. (But only if someone else makes it for me, because I always squish the banana when spreading the peanut butter because I’m too impatient to let it get to room temperature and ARGH TEXTURE RAGE.) So see?  Sometimes it is good to tackle the tough topics and reassess our own opinions. Bananas do not have to be an all-or-nothing, for-or-against thing after all.

PS. Now I promise to drop this already-shaky metaphor in-joke thing I’ve got going on and start talking about Actual Topics in my next post. Like how everyone who tells you nursing infants only bite you the one time and then learn their lesson are lying liars who lie. Or how yes, I cloth diaper, make my own baby food and if this somehow DOESN’T make me an entirely superior mother to you then what’s the freaking point, man? What do you mean I still don’t win all of the motherhood things? I was told there would be medals, you know.

PPS. Thanks to real-kid Jason (aka Dino Dan) for also taking a moment to indulge my children. So. Awesome. Youguys.