I Heart My Little A-Holes (8 page)

Oh, and then I have to put all our shit back together on the other side like a one-billion-piece jigsaw puzzle. Just typing this makes me have a panic attack. Worst. Experience. EVER.

3. Holy crap, did you know that when you travel with a baby, the airlines lets you bring an extra “diaper” bag on the plane? They LET you. Yippeeee, as if carrying two kids plus alllll the shit you already have to deal with isn’t enough, the airlines is like, you’re so damn special we’re going to give you the privilege of carrying one more F’ing thing. Oh, plus that stupid humungous (wow, I spelled that right!) stuffed animal your daughter swore to death she’d carry but now refuses to, and you soooo want to leave it behind to teach her a lesson, but it’s just not worth the repercussions tonight at bedtime when she doesn’t have Brownie or Whitey or Horny or whatever his name is.

4. There are three kinds of people I never want to sit next to on a plane. A. That guy who hasn’t showered in like four weeks and whose hair literally leaves a mark on his seat when he sits forward. B. That lady who’s chomping at the bit to have a conversation from wheels up to wheels down and doesn’t even stop talking when you close your eyes and pretend to sleep even though you’re just dreaming up ways to kill yourself. And C. A family.

So as I’m walking on the plane with my kids, I’m trying to apologize to people with my eyes while their eyes are telling me, I hate your F’ing guts and for the love of God don’t sit in my row. And then when you pass them you can literally feel them breathe out a sigh of relief until you sit in the row behind them, which is actually worse because sound doesn’t travel sideways. It travels forward. Plus, kids are like professional experts at kicking the seat in front of them. So yes, I’m that asshole, the #1 most hated person on the plane. Totally misplaced anger because really they should hate my baby but you’re not allowed to hate babies so I’m the patsy.

(Look at me, Mom, I’m going limp!)

5. You know what’s awesome about traveling with a 16-month-old? That you don’t have to pay for their ticket. You know what’s not awesome? EVERY OTHER FUCKING THING. Your ticket says infant on lap, but that’s a goddamn lie. Infants sit on your lap. Toddlers arch their back and pop their shoulders out of their sockets and kick you over and over again in the crotch because they don’t want to be contained. You know how they won’t let parents with kiddos sit in the exit row? It has nothing to do with safety. They’re worried you might open the emergency door and throw your kid out.

6. The tray table. Can some airlines pleeeeeeeease invent a detachable tray table for parents traveling with kids? Because this is what kids do with a tray table. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. The whole F’ing flight. And same goes for the stupid window shade.

7. Question: What’s the first thing your baby does the moment you sit down in your seat? Answer: He puts the metal part from the seatbelt in his mouth. Ohhh Mommy this feels so nice and cold on my gums. Well, kid, I hope it’s worth it because you just got Ebola, avian bird flu and Typhoid all in one fell swoop. Yup, for the last two weeks I’ve kept you in a bubble away from every germ-infested place so you’d be healthy on our vacation, but you just canceled all that out in about two seconds. Now open your mouth so I can pour a gallon of hand sanitizer on your tongue.

8. “Agggghhhhh, my ears, my ears! Someone’s stabbing my eardrums out with a screwdriver!” Yup, as the plane goes up or down, this is what my kids are screaming as the pressure pops their ears. Coincidentally it’s the same thing the people in front of us are yelling because my kids won’t shut up. What’s that you say? Give them gum? Oh that’s a GREAT idea, three years from now when they’re older and I know they won’t spit it out in my hair and then purposely rub it all around.

9. Can the airplane lavatory get any smaller? Or stinkier? The answer is yes and yes. If you don’t have kids, maybe you haven’t noticed that there is a changing table in the airplane bathroom. Yes, in that two-foot space. Or rather a flat plastic shelf that pulls down over the scary ass toilet. You know how hard it is using the lavatory when there’s turbulence? Now try doing that with a screaming, wriggly toddler on a plastic shelf.

The only good news is the lavatory is so small even if you hit a big bump there’s no room for either of you to go anywhere. The bad news is the bathroom was just contaminated by an old lady who spent 14 minutes in there (so long you almost told the flight attendant in case she died. Alas, she didn’t die but it smells like something did), and your kid’s poopie diaper manages to make it smell even worse. I know some people choose to forgo the lav and change the baby’s diaper in the seat itself, but you know what happens then? I mean besides everyone who already hates you stabbing you with their eye daggers even more. The baby pees mid diaper change and 27D is suddenly 27PP and you have to sit in urine for the rest of the flight because every other seat is booked.

10. Dear people who sat in our row after us, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the goldfish all shoved in between the seats where the airplane cleaners couldn’t get them. I’m sorry for the funky smell of my kid’s vomit that will probably linger for weeks. I’m sorry for the lollipop you may have found on page 46 of the Sky Mall magazine. And most of all I’m sorry you reached into your seat pocket and accidentally grabbed the rest of a mushy, slobbery, spit-covered banana that my kid put in there because he wouldn’t eat the brown spot. I meant to hand it to the flight attendant but I have like 9 million things I’m trying to remember when I get off the plane.

Well, that’s ten and I’m too lazy to write any more since this is practically a novel already, but God help you if your kid decides to flush the airplane toilet while she’s sitting on it. And God help you if your flight is delayed especially while you’re on the tarmac and they turn off the AC to conserve energy. And God help you if they lose your luggage and Binky the F’ing cuddle bear is packed in that suitcase. And God help you if your kid drinks the whole can of apple juice and it gives her the runs on the airplane seat. So basically just hope to God that God helps you because flying with rug rats is pretty much hell on earth. Or rather hell 10,000 feet above earth.

You know the feeling. You’re standing in the middle of Gymboree walking around a parachute singing the Farmer in the Dell and wondering three things:

WTF is a dell?

Is this seriously what my life has come to?

Why does my kid have that weird look on his face?

Oh shit. Literally. You can read the signs from a mile away. The watery eyes, the vein popping out of his forehead, the look of determination. Yup, he’s pooping. OMG, kid, didn’t I just change your dipe dipe like thirty seconds ago? How many times can you poop in a day? And then about ten minutes later when Chippy McChipper is singing Gymbo the clown waves bye bye bye, your kid is finally done. Wait, nope, a little more. And now he’s done. Hopefully.

So it’s off to the public restroom you go with your adorable Petunia Picklebottom diaper bag only there’s really nothing adorable about this scenario. Because let’s face it, changing poopie diapers sucks ass.

From the moment they’re born to the moment they finally drop their first log in the potty (Mommmmm, wiiiiipe meeeee!), you’ll change over 3,000 poopie diapers. No, I didn’t say diapers. I said POOPIE diapers. And yes, I did the math. Unless you have one of those weird kids who only poops like once every four days, in which case I hate you and please stop reading this now because I refuse to entertain people like you.

So here goes. Ten poopie diaper scenarios that make me wish my kids were born without tushes. Awww shit, you know some jackass reading this is all pissed off now because some kids
are
born without tushes, and I’m an a-hole for making fun of them. Well, I apologize in advance to anyone whose kid doesn’t have a tush. Wait, no I don’t. I’ll trade ya.

1. Remember when your kid was a newborn and they pooped like a million times a day and you thought it was disgusting only it wasn’t really because they weren’t even eating solids yet and you had no idea what was coming in a few months? But then once in a while something truly disgusting
would
happen. You’d have them on the changing table and you’d undo their diaper and suddenly they’d start pooping right then and there. And:

A. Either it’s projectile poop and travels whatever the distance is to the nearest wall. Yes, even if you’re outside and the nearest wall is 200 feet away.

Or B. It’s regular poop and you have to stand there watching it ooze out of them like one of those frigging Play-Doh machines that you push down the lever and make the Play-Doh come out of a hole (a hole not a-hole). And you kind of have to keep watching because you need to know when he’s finished only it feels really wrong to watch poop come out of your kid’s tush. Like really really wrong.

2. Ho-hummm, I wonder what I can do to make my mommy’s job harder. Oh, I know! I’m gonna dip my feet into the pupu platter and watch her freak out and say, “Nooooo,” and then wipe them down with a wipe like a thousand times. And then just as soon as she’s done I’m gonna stick my feet in my mouth and really freak her out.

3. Okay, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Grey’s Anatomy it’s that all doctors are hot and like to have sex in the on-call room. And if there are two things I’ve learned it’s how to scrub each finger individually with lots of soap. So why the hell when I change a poopie diaper and I scrub like that do my fingers still smell like poop for the rest of the day? Because if they still smell, I have to assume it’s because they have poo particles on them, which is just awesome when you’re eating French fries later and your friends are like, “That’s weird, why do you eat fries with a fork?” “Umm, because my fingers are speckled with poo particles.”

4. Okay, where is the cameraman? Surely someone is going to pop out at any moment and shout, “You’ve been punk’d” or, “You’re on Candid Camera” or some shit like that because there is no way this ginormous crap the size of Rhode Island came out of this tiny little baby. Surely they did a Folgers coffee switch and had a man poop in a diaper and put it on my little one when I wasn’t looking.

5. What smells? Well, I know it’s not my kid because I just changed his diaper like three minutes ago. And so begins the poop-smelling domino effect around Gymboree. One mom after another yanks her kid towards her by the waistband and fearlessly buries her nose in his tush. After a few minutes, I finally do the same. Whew-eeee! Did you seriously do that again?! Only when I take a peek inside there’s nothing. Ahhhh, the residual poop smell on the pants. Rogue poop particles again. Is it wrong to spray your kid’s butt with Febreze?