Listen people, I understand that there’s nothing more fun than, say, mocking a celeb mom who unthinkingly posts a gag-worthy episode of her post-child life for public, er, consumption. And I genuinely get why Alicia Silverstone and “mouth-feeding” episode is gross. I do. But honestly, the way people are talking about this makes me crazy. Truth? There are a thousand million things we all do as parents every day that are just as strange/ damaging/ unfortunate as her miso mangling. So now, for your viewing pleasure–nine of them.

QUICK! SOMEONE DRAW ME A BATH OF VIRGIN BLOOD!

True story: Like many of the lower species, the kid has figured out how to take pictures with my iPhone. This has resulted in a bizarre array of very unflattering shots of my midsection and rear, the insides of his own nose, and what’s under the couch. But the worst, the absolute worst was the one Z got a few weeks ago, when I first woke up.

You know that thing where you go about your day pretending you are really the lead singer of Metric and actually look fine for your age and if that creep who was a creep in high school could see you now, he’d roil in his own inadequacy? Yeah, well, fantasy over. I haven’t slept well in 3 years, which means that my face upon waking looks the result of a hot night between a tennis shoe and a durian.

So I did what any other rational person would do–I asked other moms to send me pictures of what they look like when they wake up. You know, to make myself feel better at their expense. And then the funniest thing happened, because I did feel better, and not because any of these ladies look nearly as scary as I do but because, well, I’m not alone in this.  There’s a whole army of sleepless mamas out here, and while that sounds like the bad beginning of a zombie movie, it’s actually just what life looks like these days for a lot of us. So here it is, for all you parents catching strange glimpses of yourself in mirrors and feeling the lonesome shame of your tired face: You’re not alone! You’re just getting it done. And we’re all getting it done with you.

Dreaming of longer sleeps

"This is me, sleep deprived after only about 2 hours of sleep. I can't blame it on my children because they are now at the age where they sleep through the night (thank goodness). Sleep and I don't get along right now — insomnia — a symptom of post-traumatic stress syndrome I am battling due to my perinatal losses. I'm fighting through it as best I can."
— Submitted by Devan McGuinness

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MORE ON BABBLE:

9 signs you’ve gone to the parenting dark side
12 reasons I want to be a toddler again
11 totally shameless mom habits
13 weird things we love about our kids
9 hilarious mom fantasies we’ve ALL had

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THIS CAN'T LAST FOREVER?

First off, I’d like to be clear about the fact that I am horrible at falling in love. And not in some adorkable/ Zooey Deschanel-ish way, I mean genuinely bad at it. I clam up just when I should be getting comfortable, jump on planes and trains in a bid to escape my freaked-out heart, and generally make a mess out of what should be a time-lapse video montage set to early Pixies songs.

So I was really lucky to stumble into J. when I did. Man’s got an ego like a Quarter Pounder—no amount of mishandling could make it less attractive.

And I remember being thrilled on our wedding day—not just because I was marrying the one person in the world who can tolerate me, but because I didn’t have to do it again. Love—DONE!—ta-da!

So when I realized I was falling in love with my son, all hell broke loose. And yes, of course I’d heard people saying that you “fall in love” with your kids, but I didn’t believe them. Weren’t these the same people who talked about babies “flirting?” The ones who co-slept until puberty and practiced elimination communication and logged poops like they were dispatches from the frontline? These are not my people.

For the record: My people are Indian. Furthermore, we are arranged-marriage-Indian, which means that we’ve used the past several centuries to breed out any romantic genes we might be carrying. Love just isn’t our jam. Spicy foods? On it. Good hair? Covered. Teeth? Better than most of the world. But love is awkward at best among my kind. My parents have never once told me they loved me (not counting that one time that my mother said I was “precious” to her, which happened for reasons I’ve never been able to figure out, let alone replicate).

Which is all to say: I wasn’t prepared to fall in love with Z. I didn’t even know it was coming.

Here’s the thing that no one ever tells you about falling in love with your kid: It’s the real deal. The full spectrum. The highs, the lows, the conviction that you might never get enough compounded by intense, get-me-outta-here claustrophobia. The incredible nervousness about whether or not the feelings are mutual, the looking for confirmation in crazy things, like eye contact and horoscopes. There is a sweetness to it, yes, the curl of an arm around your neck or the smell of the top of a head that makes you doe-eyed and useless, but there’s the undercurrent of panic, the unnerving notion that you are really at the mercy of someone who could wipe the floor with your heart. What if it doesn’t last? (It won’t.) Where will you be then? (Alone, chewing through what’s left of my dignity with my really good teeth.)

I mean, that’s the kicker, right? At the end of this love affair, if all goes well, the kid leaves. Goes out into the world. Finds a soul mate, settles down, maybe breeds his own little heartbreak. Moves on, except in times of financial distress or dirty laundry. Moves on.

And here’s the terrible thing I know about myself, that I imagine all parents know about themselves: I will never move on. I mean, yes, when Z. leaves me, I’ll still get up every day. I’ll go do the things I like to do with my friends, I’ll try not to wait by the phone on weekends. I might even see other kids from time to time. But I will never get over it.

So there it is, kid. The terrible truth about your mother, the thing that is going to make you want to rip off your own skin in your teen years when some punk friends find this piece and tease you mercilessly. And two things to know when that happens: 1) Your friends right now are jerks. Not all of them, but some for sure, and definitely the dude who is giving you the hardest time about this.  2) Give him twenty years or so. Chances are, his heart will be humiliating his kid by then, too.

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More on Masala Mama:

The Kid Has A Licker Problem
Random Things I Found in My Purse (and Yours)
Everyone’s Got Junk (Funny Things Kids Say About Their Genitals)

Mira "At Least I Know Whose These Are" Jacob

You know that thing where you reach into your purse for lip-gloss and pull out a pair of little boy’s underwear? Okay, fine, maybe you don’t, but this is a thing that happens to the rest of us. Or some of the rest of us. Or like, me. And then I spend an afternoon at the crossroads of pervy and well-prepared, and then I tell my husband I might need to go back to therapy, and then I write a bunch of other parents to see if this kind of things happens to them. And then I make that information public. Today, for your viewing pleasure: Random Sh*t Parents Found in Their Purses/ Man Bags/ Pockets. Because sometimes, therapy is best done in a group.

Sunny “Pharmergency” Chanel

“Rocks my daughter collected and Ativan which I haven't taken but lug around, just in case."
Read more Sunny on Babble

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Listen, I understand the need for compassion when it comes to raising toddlers. I get that I need to be conscious of my son’s perspective and remember that he’s just going through all the normal developmental stuff. But honestly, when the kid decides to travel through Dante’s nine circles of hell and bring anyone within earshot with him, it’s hard for me to find my inner Gandhi. Here’s what really goes through my mind:

Looks like a baby to me!

I know, I know, it’s always the important stuff with me. But the birth of Blue Ivy combined with the outrageous amount of “theories” out there that Our Lady of the Curiously Hot Robotic Hand was not actually pregnant has induced my vomitron.

Seriously, people? After everything we know about how pregnancy plays out differently in women’s bodies, how parents act differently when confronted with birth, and how, well, rich people do things the rich people way, we’re still going to pretend that having a kid is some kind of one-belly-fits-all equalizer?

Truth: Sometimes, the most logical answer is the right one. And while it doesn’t exactly take a genius to dissect this one, I’m going to go ahead and Occam’s Razor the hell out of this for the conspiracy hounds with my Top 8 reasons It’s Freaking Obvious That Beyoncé Was Really Pregnant (using the  “evidence” against her):

CAN SOMEONE WAKE ME WHEN IT'S 2025? THANKS.

Like many of the parents you might see wandering through their days completely bewildered, I live with a toddler. It’s no small thing, surviving these little people. With a lack of control over bodily functions, language, emotional stability and survival instincts, toddlers walk through the world blissfully unaware of the havoc they wreak on us parents. I’ve consoled myself with what every other parent out there tells me, that this too shall pass, but then suddenly last night, listening to Z perform “Help!” for the 15 millionth time, it hit me: it’s not that I resent my son going through these stages. It’s just that I’m jealous. Here’s why I want to be a toddler again:

(Clockwise from top left): J, me, our car, and Z

In our defense, the plan seemed foolproof. Like most people with developed eardrums, J and I hate kids’ music. We hate the repetition, the candied voices, the hokey guitar designed to turn brains into GoGurt. So introducing Z to the Beatles seemed like a genius move. Kids love the Beatles. J and I love the Beatles. What could go wrong?

“I’m Paul McCartney,” Z announced a few months ago, as I was cleaning up his room.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay, Paul.”

“Okay…Paul.”

“Paul McCartney.”

“Gotcha,” I smiled thinly, then quickly added, “Gotcha-Paul-McCartney!” as he started to correct me. “Now, can you put your socks in the dirty clothes bin?”

“No,” he sighed. “I only work with John Lennon.”

I’ve been John Lennon since June.  J is Ringo Starr. Our car, a crappy light blue Camry on its last legs, is George Harrison. And this alone might not be that weird, if it weren’t for sentences that float through our house daily, like, “Paul McCartney, where is your underwear?” and  “WIPE ME, JOHN LENNON!” and, “Can everyone just get in George Harrison and shut up?”

Then Z discovered the power of lyrics.

"I AM TOTALLY READY TO HAVE THIS CONVERSATION."

Last week I wrote a piece about my kid and how he likes wonder aloud about licking things. For example, his penis. And I thought I was alone in this kind of incident, stranded out at sea with a shipmate who has plenty of unintentionally raunchy things to say and no shame whatsoever.

But it turns out (thank you, Lord)  that quite a few of you other parents are in this boat with me. And honestly, it has restored my faith in humanity. Or, well, humanity’s interest in their junk. Below is a little slideshow of some of the best — er — worst things our kids have said to us.

(Note: None of the children in the slideshow are the actual children who said any of these things, although I’m pretty sure they’ve said SOMETHING that’s made their parents want to die a little.)

But we didn’t get any more specific than that

My daughter asked if I had a “giant vagina”. Naturally I answered, “yes”. — Allana

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IF NOT YOU, THEN WHO?

At almost three years old, my son Z has become a licker. This means that he wanders the world with his mouth open, attaching it to things (shop windows, subway poles, my knees) with a kind of glazed what if? look — the kind most often seen at last call in the bars of my twenties. So I shouldn’t have been surprised with his announcement at the breakfast table the other morning.

“I’m going to lick my penis,” he said.

“No you’re not,” I shot back from some reptilian-brained mother-place, the same that asks things like, “Did you wipe?” when I’d be so much better off not knowing.

Z blinked at me. Blinked at his father, who was making eggs in the kitchen. Frowned.

“You’re going to lick it?” A question this time.

I shook my head emphatically. “No. Nope. Nuh-uh.”

“Then who will lick it for me?”

I looked at my husband, wide-eyed. J flipped an omelet onto a plate.

“And so it begins,” he said.