Archive | May, 2012

Hollywood’s portrayal of childbirth

30 May

Mommy has witnessed thousands of film and TV births in her lifetime, but they’ve achieved new comic status now that she’s got the inside scoop on how labour really goes down. Mommy finds it ironic that in Hollywood no pregnant character ever gets an epidural, while the actress playing the role of “brave mommy-to-be writhing in pain in the delivery room” pops eight percocet pills every time she breaks an acrylic nail. The Hollywood newborn, plucked from an Anne Geddes calendar, is always born approximately eight minutes after the mother’s water breaks, looking six months old, with nary a conehead or snaggletooth in sight. The scene where the sobbing and sleep-deprived new mom attempts to latch her screaming baby to her throbbing boobs while perched on a bag of frozen peas always ends up on the cutting room floor, and her husband never seems to forget to install the car seat before leaving for the hospital…

DRINK:  The Box Office Smash.  Sneak a flask into the theatre and spike your 32-oz Coke just before the scene where the protagonist slips back into her size 0 wardrobe the day after she gives birth.

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Working from home

23 May

Sometimes the basement floods or the nanny gets deported and suddenly Mommy has to work from home. This coincides with the worst possible day ever to not be at the office. You’re happily playing on the floor so she orchestrates a conference call.

MOMMY:  Thanks everyone for dialing in. As you can see on page four—

YOU:  DUCKA DUCKA DUCKAAAAAAAAAA!

CLIENT: Is there a fire alarm at your end?

JUNIOR ACCOUNT GUY: I think I hear a cat dying.

Mommy quickly turns on Sesame Street’s YouTube channel, even though it might give you epilepsy, and goes off the cuff because she can’t see her Excel file.

MOMMY: —as you’ll see on page six—

CLIENT: What happened to page four?

Sippy cup spills organic goat milk all over laptop. Sad Mac face appears. 

MACBOOK AIR: BLEEEEEERRRRRRR!

YOU:  BLEEEEEERRRRRRR!

JUNIOR ACCOUNT GUY:  Seriously is that cat okay?

Mommy tries to hit mute but instead hangs up on the call. Now she can’t find the passcode. When she finally dials back in, she has no idea what anyone is talking about. It’s probably about her.

CLIENT:  …clear out the dead weight, we’ll be in a great place. What do you think on your end?

MOMMY: Well… (fuuuuck!)… let’s circle back EOD with some below the line ideas to maximize share of dollar (that sounds like Mommy has this under control, right?).

Total silence.

YOU:  PPPFFFFTTTTTTTTTTTTTWRRRAAAAAAAAAPPPFFFTTTTTTTT!

Mercifully, someone has a hard stop so the call ends. Your diaper has leaked all over the sofa. Mommy lies down on it anyway. You pick up her company-owned Blackberry and toss it in the toilet, which is a good metaphor for where Mommy’s career is headed.

DRINK:  Career Suicide. 1 oz Jack Daniels. 1 oz Tequila. Top with 7up, OJ and a splash of grenadine. Enjoy while updating your Linked In profile.

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Saturday shopping trips

16 May

Mommy used to love wandering in and out of the boutiques lining her favourite shopping strip on the west side of town.  There she’d buy pretty little breakable things like a pair of owl-shaped votive candle holders, or wardrobe essentials like her 93rd black dress.  Now Mommy loathes shopping.  But you’ve run out of diapers or the fridge is empty or yet another thing in the house is leaking/broken/old/ugly, so she and Daddy have no choice but to load you in the car and make it to and fro the closest box store between your morning and afternoon naps. Gone are the days of carefully reviewing ingredient lists and doing price/oz. comparisons on the six offerings of salsa in the Mexican food aisle. It’s a race against the clock a la Supermarket Sweep to load the shopping cart with wares before you have a meltdown. Mommy is shocked and appalled that she’s about to buy a $19 dress that’s displayed next to a pyramid of Charmin, but the three outfits she’s had on rotation since returning to work two months ago are practically threadbare. What she really needs is an afternoon devoted to updating her outdated and ill-fitting wardrobe in time for summer, but given she can barely find time to shampoo her hair daily, it’s a safe bet there will be snow on the ground before she makes it to a mall.  And Mommy can forget about hitting the changerooms to testdrive this frock because if you fall asleep in the car seat before she and Daddy make it home, they’ll be forced to drive up and down the highway for two hours while the ice cream they just bought melts all over the trunk.

DRINK:  Amazon Lemonade. Fill tall glass with ice, add 1 oz. vodka and top up with fresh lemonade. Garnish with a lemon wedge. It’s time to embrace online shopping!

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The weather

8 May

Like her Mother-In-Law, Mother Nature can be irritating. However, Mommy is going stir-crazy and needs to get you out of the house before you Jackson Pollock another wall.  The horoscope from The Weather Network is as random as her iTunes shuffle so here’s what could play out: Baby it’s cold outside. Mommy has to wrestle you in to multiple layers, including an embarrassing reindeer sweater and a bunting bag worthy of a trek to base camp. You no longer fit in the car seat. We go outside but you won’t wear mittens and you continually throw off your hat. An old lady gives Mommy the stink eye and judges her parenting in another language. Blame it on the rain. This means we can’t walk anywhere unless Mommy MacGuyvers a tent over the stroller. She can’t carry an umbrella and push your SUV so Mommy is soaked. Your hat falls into your eyes rendering you temporarily blind but Mommy can’t adjust it because of The Fortress Of Waterproof Solitude surrounding you. Feelin’ hot, hot, hot. You’re too little to wear sunscreen so you have to wear a UV-blocking HazMat suit, leaving you sweaty and pissed off. You refuse to wear your Junior Ray Bans and keep ripping off your ironic straw fedora. The hat goes MIA. Even though we were almost home we have to retrace our steps to Rainbow Songs to find it. Mommy sees your hat in the middle of the road. The hat gets run over by a Range Rover. You laugh and laugh. Mommy should be frustrated that yet another $22 has been flushed down the proverbial Diaper Genie, but instead she silently applauds your socio-political stance on hipsters and makes a mental note that your style is more Hugo Boss than Unemployed Musician.

DRINK: A Hurrycane. As in “Hurry, get Mommy a drink!” 1 oz dark rum, 2 oz lemon juice, 2 oz passion fruit syrup. Shake with ice and strain into a hurricane glass (it’s tulip shaped, but really, any glass will do). Garnish with orange slices and a cherry.

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The hotel stay

4 May

Nothing says baby-friendly like a 200-square-foot room furnished in glass and teeming with germs.  Yet somehow tagging along on Daddy’s business trip seemed less overwhelming than coping with single-parent duty back home.  So for the next 72 hours, you and Mommy are livin’ it up, Dylan McKay styles.  Despite her best intentions and a club-sized pack of anti-bacterial wipes, Mommy’s germ-busting mission goes belly up when you beat her to the (*shudder*) remote control.  At least she manages to successfully cram your perishable food supply into the refrigerated section of the mini-bar, which, if the limp Snickers bar is any indication, is probably set somewhere between room temperature and Calcutta. Mommy can forget about ordering room service and watching HBO while Daddy hits the town with his colleagues.  It’s lights out at 7 pm thanks to the two inches separating your crib from the TV. Once you’re finally asleep, Mommy’s options for in-room entertainment are limited to holing up in the bathroom with the hotel magazine or creeping Facebook under her duvet.  At least she won’t be lying when she updates her status with “Having an amaZZZing time in NYC.”

DRINK: The Mini Bar Raid. Bypass the petite vodka bottles and go straight for the Veuve Clicquot and the $15 cashews. This one’s on daddy’s expense account.

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Board books

1 May

At least the name is accurate. After reading The Big Red Barn for the 1,098th time, Mommy is officially bored. She used to pour over Jonathan Franzen novels and biographies about Steve Jobs, but now she finds herself overly invested in the search and rescue mission unfolding in Where’s Spot? This is not helping her rapid descent into permanent Mommy Brain. Some board books don’t even have plots. Or words! They’re just pictures of babies next to pictures of baby animals. How did this author get a book deal? Did she go into Random House and say “I’ll shoot you straight. I spent my advance on a cocaine-fueled gambling binge but check out these royalty-free stock shots I found on Google images.” To spice things up, Mommy has started going off script and hoping you don’t notice. In last night’s rendition of Goodnight Moon, The Quiet Old Lady was having a torrid affair with The Cow and The Two Little Kittens were about to expose the scandal on E! Bowl Full Of Mush Network. Speaking of Goodnight Moon, the page where we say goodnight to nobody? That’s messed up. Time passes all too quickly and soon you’ll grow out of Mommy reading to you. Then she’ll miss Sandra Boynton’s complexities of the post-modern anti-hero in The Snuggle Puppy. One day you’ll read Charlotte’s Web all on your own.  Spoiler Alert: the central character DIES. This is why you should stick to math.

DRINK: Boardbook Empire. 1 oz Canadian Club whisky, 1 oz peach schnapps, 3 oz cola and a squeeze of fresh lime. Serve on a board book, which makes a great coaster.

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