I Didn't Choose the Mom Life...

I didn't choose the Mom Life, the Mom Life chose me.

Well, let me clarify:
I DID choose to be a mom. In fact, I spent a considerable amount of time, money, and energy trying to convince my eggs to get on board with the plan (which they were none too thrilled to be a part of, let me tell you)

What I did not choose was this lifestyle.

Rest assured, I was not one of those people who claimed that they would continue to travel/work towards career goals/exercise/otherwise continue life as normal despite the birth of a child or two. I wasn't naive enough to believe that the before and after picture would be mostly the same, save for some mussed hair and a trendy baby-wearing gadget.

I was naive enough, however, to believe that women who spent their days being their kids' personal assistant had somehow made a deliberate choice to live that way. I truly believed that they had overbooked their kids' lives to compensate for some emotional shortcoming. As if they were throwing themselves and their yoga pants at soccer games and preschool aid duties because they honestly had nothing better to do (besides face their own personal failures or whatever).

Babies: The best way to ignore your failing marriage and crippling debt since...uh...whenever babies and credit cards were invented. Like the 1950s? Yes. Since the 1950s.

So in that sense, I didn't so much choose the mom life as I walked in to it like a a mountaineer blindly walks off a cliff in the middle of a blizzard.

And here I am. Up to my elbows in preschool registration paperwork and physicals and IEP meetings. I have two children in two entirely different schools, each coming with their own class schedules and drop-off times and sign-up sheets and individual days where your children should be dressed in the color yellow because it's "Yellow Day" and IF YOU FORGET TO PUT A YELLOW SHIRT ON YOUR CHILD HE WILL BE ISOLATED AND RIDICULED AND SCARRED FOR LIFE AND HE WILL END UP BEING A SERIAL KILLER (If Dexter has taught us anything. Not that I plan on abandoning my children in a pool of blood but...red paint? Could happen.)

And the birthdays.
My god, the birthdays.

Three kids, three birthdays, three days. Truly, does it not sound like the pitch line of some reality TV show?

Oh, and my mother-in-law's birthday, which is conveniently sandwiched between the twins and the baby, destined to be hastily celebrated in the few moments we can scrape together between the festivities, eating left-over cake on Dora the Explorer plates, gathered under rumpled, sagging streamers, giving the same line year after year: "we didn't buy you a present this year, but what better gift could you receive than grandchildren? ENJOY YOUR STALE CAKE AND BE GRATEFUL FOR THE LITTLE MIRACLES THAT STAND BEFORE YOU."

The poor, poor woman.

So I'm party planning like a Mo Fo. And my inner Martha Stewart is all, "The centerpieces for the kids' party are charmingly home-made. Its obvious that you tried really hard to recreate the minions from Despicable Me" (because she is a passive-aggressive C-word). And suddenly I find myself standing in my living room, surrounded by shreds of ripped-up centerpieces, unable to recall the last 2 hours of my life, wearing rubber gloves and holding a mop and an extra-large jug of bleach.

At which point I realize that I might have overbooked myself, let alone the kids, and maybe attempting to create six intricate centerpieces for a kids party was not the best of ideas.

And then it's Wine O'Clock.
Because PRIORITIES.

Which is proof that this so-called Mom Life will inevitably end in substance abuse and fugue states.
Which I would normally be down for, but someone has to get the kids to and from their individual preschools every day.

In conclusion:
- I might have perhaps misjudged soccer moms a teeny weeny bit. Yet again.
- Having all of my children in the first week of October was not ideal.
- My mother in law is a birthday saint/martyr.
- Centerpieces area bad idea. Always
- Fugue states should  be followed by wine. Always.