mom

The Internet has told us that instead of selling our wild summer children to a band of traveling performers, we should go swimming with them instead. At a beach or at the pool, your choice. The Internet also told us that us moms should get over our silly body issues and just play! Have fun!

Getting rid of all of your stuff is all well and good if you are childfree, but if you have the fortune (or misfortune) to have children, they literally will not let you.

[CN: Toxic parents] I am a big fan of inappropriate humor (especially when said humor is tinged with sarcasm), and I’m an even bigger fan of using comedy to deal with life’s ugliness. But when the humor is at the expense of someone unknowing and innocent, like a child, I no longer consider it funny.

We are still sharing our days in all the ways we usually share days — talking about kids, bills, dinner, stress. And now we are sharing the times we are most vulnerable, the times we need to hear something good about ourselves.

I wouldn’t say I’m the black sheep of the family, but I’m pretty sure my mom isn't surprised that some of the choices I’ve made in raising my son have been a little different from the way she did things. My mom gave us all she could. She stayed home to raise my sister and me for most of our childhood; she only returned to work to help put us through college.

Dear Husband, You are putting up with an awful lot in being with me right now, and rightfully so — I’m growing a tiny human inside me. Our tiny human. You have been very patient and kind with me, but so far we are only 15 weeks along and I fear that we have an even longer road ahead of us.

Parenting a toddler is invigorating, exhausting, dirty, and intense. But since I want my daughter to have cousins (or at least pseudo-cousins) one day, I can’t always share the truth about my tiny tyrant on social media, for fear that my friends and siblings would never reproduce. And because, sometimes, you just want to project the image that you're calm, cool, and collected.

Firmly middle-aged due to my 47 years, I’m fat and everything about me pretty much screams “Mom.” This means I no longer get sexually harassed. The closest I’ve gotten to being hit on in the last 10 or so years was that time a homeless man tried to touch my hair after I left the salon.

When it comes to the male gaze, I am now officially invisible.