I Scream, You Scream

If you know you're a mom when you can ignore a little spit-up on your shirt, then you know you're an exhausted mom when you can ignore the fact that your kid just pissed on your jeans and continue to wear them for the next 3 days.

We're on week 2 of solo daytime parenting duty and I'll tell you - it's something else.
It's equal parts magical and suicide-inducing.
Like spotting a unicorn at a Barbra Streisand concert.

When they're both sleeping, it's awesome.
When one is awake and fussing, it's manageable. Almost cute, actually. I get to cram them into my Moby wrap and use it as an excuse for not cleaning the bathroom.
But when they're both awake and fussing, it's game over. I never, ever want to hear someone complain about how hard it is raising their single infant, because I swear to all that is holy, I will roundhouse kick them in the teeth Chuck Norris style. Because I'm pretty sure it was two children screaming simultaneously that caused the Heaven's Gate cult members to drink the Kool-Aid.


Today is one of those tandem fussy days.
Fantastic.
"And how," you might ask, "are you managing to blog if they're both incensed about the condition of their tummies?"

Easy.

I'm ignoring them.

Okay, I'm not so much ignoring them as acknowledging the fact that nothing I can do will help them feel better. So I can either choose to stare at them while they fuss and squirm and chant supportive phrases like "it's okay" and "I'm sorry you don't feel well" and direct them to the inspirational poster of the kitten dangling from the branch with the words Hang In There printed at the bottom...

...or

...I can wish them well, get a second cup of coffee, and let the interwebs take me away from this horrible, horrible place.

Don't worry - I'm checking on them. When they stop screaming, I hold a mirror under their noses to make sure they're still breathing. And I'm providing binkey retrieval services for a small fee, which I'm taking out of their college funds.

(Psych...AS IF we had college funds set up for the babies. It would totally cut into our beer fund.)

But I'm learning that with babies, a lot of the time, there's just nothing you can do.
They cry.
You cry.
Everybody cries.
And at the end of the day, everybody is still alive and relatively in one piece. Which is the ultimate goal of parenting, isn't it? To get through the day without death or dismemberment?

Some might call me a bad parent.
Negligent, if you will.

But I prefer to think of it as fatalistic parenting.
If there's nothing you can do about it, then there's no point in getting all worked up about it.
Plus, anyone who wants to judge is more than welcome to spend a day in my vomit and poop-covered shoes. If you're not this close to gouging your eyes out with a spoon after 2 hours of surround-sound screaming, I'll eat my words.

...and then offer you my kids, because you're obviously better at this than I am.