Before becoming a mom, I had never asked the question, “Is it okay for this child to use my sock as toilet paper?” Or, after my two-year-old sprinkled her great grandparents ashes in her hair, I asked, “How much soap does it take to get human remains out of someone’s hair?” The answer: A lot. But I have asked these questions, now, and I can never go back.

Here are 25 other questions that I never knew I would be asking once I became a mother:

1. Is that chocolate… or poop?

2. Oh crap, will anyone notice that I’m wearing two different shoes?

3. Can a baby actually suck your life force out through your boobs?

4. Ketchup totally counts as a vegetable, right?

5. How is it that I have a college education and I can not solve this second grade math problem?

6. Wrestling this person into her clothes counts as cardio, right?

7. Did my mom hide in the bathroom, too?

8. How long can a kid survive on just toast?

9. Is it possible for my ears to explode from the sheer amount of words that have been stuffed into them?

10. Is she really being nice, or does she want something from me?

11. How long until someone actually dies from lack of sleep?

12. I don’t have to put new makeup on if I didn’t wash off the stuff from last night, right?

13. What, exactly, is the octave of scream that will shatter glass?

14. Does my husband really sleep that soundly, or is he full of shit?

15. Yikes! How long has it been since I actually looked at my eyebrows?

16. If I don’t make a sound, will they find me?

17. How much do I really care about enforcing this rule at this moment?

18. Did I put a bra on?

19. Do I have enough reserve patience to let her help me put these ingredients into the bowl?

20. Oh God, didn’t my mother used to say that exact same thing?

21. How did I not know that I am a complete control freak until he decided he has to pick out his own clothes?

22. Was Google placed on Earth just to scare the shit out of me?

23. Was I this annoying?

24. Am I irreversibly screwing up this kid?

25. Who the hell am I?

This post originally appeared on Scary Mommy.

I started dating my husband when we were 19-year-old college students. During our first fight he purposefully flung himself into a snow bank and I started laughing and decided that I loved him.

We have now been together for 20 years. That is a very long time. We have weathered moments of hating each other’s guts, and door-slamming, mirror-breaking fights. We have weathered moments of laughing so hard that we are falling out of our chairs and wiping tears and snot off of our faces.

We have weathered days of just floating by each other, living our own lives and communicating in pre-coffee grunts. We have weathered moments of helplessness—one time as we watched our littlest one puke again and again after she had hit her head on a rock. We have weathered many first-thing-in-the-morning-tired looks, like, do we have to get up and do it all again?

Through all of these moments, I know that he is my person. My imperfect, sorta bossy, totally genius, loudly burping person.

But there are some things that I didn’t know would be true when I first saw that goofy guy in a red baseball cap standing outside my dorm room with a super soaker and an evil grin:

1. That one day, we would be able to communicate just looking at each other.

Did that little punk-ass just say that?

He sure freaking did!

Should I take the iPad?

Totally do it!

I’m sorta scared.

Me too.

2. That we would say and do hundreds of hurtful things to each other over the years, and that marriage is basically learning the art of not holding a grudge.

3. That the human body is basically gross and even after never being able to un-see the things we have seen, we would still want to get naked together.

4. That there would be moments of small perfections that sometimes come in the form of sitting in silence for 5 minutes together. Or in that moment when I step out of the shower, 2 kids later, and I’m not feeling my sexiest, he says, “Damn, girl.”

5. That there would be one day, at the end of a kid-filled summer, when we would drive down the driveway watching our kids wave with the babysitter, and we would feel so free that we would want to keep driving and maybe never come back. But we did.

6. That we would purposefully say stupid, mean things to each other because we’d know precisely what will make each other lose our minds.

7. That we would be the carrier of many secrets for each other. At our age, playing “Have You Ever” while drinking, would not be wise.

8. That there would be one morning that the sound of him brushing his teeth would make me want to stab him with his toothbrush. But I didn’t.

9. That Saturday mornings would be a delicate thing. They can be wonderful and lazy but they can also be the time when we can miscommunicate about bacon and life insurance and maybe even about miscommunication.

10. That we would find out that it is perfectly fine to not want to be with each other on those days.

11. That we would lose each other every once in a while. Especially while elbow-deep in kids.

12. That for the most part, life would get so much better. Or maybe little things like him bossing me around in the kitchen have just stopped bothering me so much.

A 20-year relationship weathers thousands of storms. I think the magic comes when, after each storm, the next morning we can look at each other as we slowly blink our eyes awake. And then one of us farts so loud that it rumbles the bed and wakes our 3-year-old sleeping in the next room. And she giggles.

That is marriage.

This post originally appeared on Scary Mommy.

Now that summer is finally, hopefully, for the love of all things hot and sunscreeny, here, we have been making the rounds at some popular pools in Boulder. Sometimes I find it fascinating to watch other people interact with their kids. This may mean that I don’t get out a whole lot.

Here are some variations of moms that I have seen at the pool:

1. The Regulars: The swimming pool that you are at is their swimming pool, you just haven’t realized it yet. They come in small groups and set up shop at the prime sunny/shady spot with their matching fold-out chairs and their coordinated snacks and brightly colored towels and eye you a little suspiciously if they don’t recognize you. They are together. You are clearly not in their togetherness with your raggedy bath towels and your chocolatey-faced children.

2. The Nannies (Or “Au Pairs” if fanciness is required): They often look as weary as any mother. One told me the other day, after she rehearsed an oddly mechanical phrase to the child she was watching, that she has a set “script” that she was supposed to say to get the children to stop doing something. I could tell that her heart wasn’t really in it though, and I think the little girl could too, because she kept right on pushing those other kids off the ladder to the slide like it was The Lord of the Flies.

3. The Fun Mom: This mom makes us all look bad and I don’t like her very much. She tickles her kid going down the slide EVERY TIME and she lets the kid ride around on her back even though they are clearly choking her and she encourages games of tag where she actually tries to catch them and everything. And she brings swim noodles for chrissakes. Swim noodles. Her kids look pretty smug too, as if they know they had done something pretty great in a previous life to earn Fun Mom.

4. The Phone Moms: We all need to talk at some point, but there are some moms that literally spend the whole time on the phone at the side of the pool. It’s impressive. Their child is eating other people’s snacks, using my kid as a floaty and clogging up the slide situation by trying to go up backwards and Phone Mom is completely clueless.

5. The Toddler plus New Infant Desperation Mom: She has a new baby snoozing at the side of the pool. She has a toddler wreaking havoc like a boss. She is lucky if her swimsuit is on in the right direction. She looks a little freaked out around the eyes. We’ve all been there. You may see her nodding off a bit as she sits down in the shallow end and then get startled awake when her toddler pokes her face with an errant swim noodle.

6. The Perfect Mom: Ugh. Almost as annoying as the Fun Mom. I look at Perfect Mom and mentally berate myself for not caring more about how I present myself to the world. I mean doing 1000 sit-ups a day to have abs like that couldn’t be that hard! And I could probably attempt to wear some sort of flowy beach cover-up and wedge sandals and bring actual beach towels. I could buy actual beach towels! Perfect Mom’s children even look like they have bathed in an actual tub in the last week. Not having to take a bath is half the reason we even come to the pool.

7. The Mom Looking For a Friend, Any Friend: I have been there, so I know how she feels. It’s almost like dating; she notices your children are about the same age with the same interest in being human water tornadoes with no regard for other people. She catches your eye and strikes up a conversation, always starting out with “So…how old is she? What a good little swimmer! What’s her name?” The similarities and differences between children are compared and contrasted. “Your child loves to jump off super tall things and scare the shit out of you? So does mine!” “Your child enjoys getting into the car very slowly and crying at dinner? So does mine!” You exchange phone numbers between bouts of telling your respective children that fingers don’t go in other people’s eyes and to spit out whatever that was floating in the pool.

8. The Hippie Mom: You will recognize the Hippie Mom with her homemade raw food vegan granola snacks in cloth containers and her children with names like Bringer of Light and Namaste Jones. My kid’s middle name is Rainbow, so I probably don’t have a lot to say about this. Hippie Mom may or may not have dreadlocks (and you may or may not stare in fascination like me to find out what exactly happens to dreadlocks when they get wet), and there might be a head scarf involved. She is at peace even when her children are mauling one another, happy in the moment, living and breathing. Don’t be surprised if Light Bringer politely requests a sip of milk from her right breast as they lounge poolside.

9. The Grandma: It is often hard to tell the Grandmas from the Moms in Boulder. Partly because women tend to have their babies later here, and partly because a lot of the Grandmas are still smokin’ hot and sporting a two-piece in a way that makes me want to cover myself with a tarp. The Grandmas seem to genuinely like the children they are swimming with. There is a lot of high-fiving and pool- jump congratulations and delicious-looking cookies at snack time. Grandmas are as awesome as Fun Mom.

10. The Discipline Mom: She expects her children’s perfect behavior at all times. No pushing, no sliding out of turn, and for goodness sake don’t blow your nose in the pool like that kid (pointing at my kid). She has a lot of rules and there are a lot of time-outs on the side of the pool and she talks a lot about good and bad choices. But all I can think is, jeez, give the kid a break, they all like to splash an unsuspecting friend in the face once in a while. It just feels good.

I have fit very snugly into all of these Mom categories at one time or another, depending on the day, or the amount of sleep that has been bequeathed to me by the children in my home. Well, except for Perfect Mom. But we all know that girl has something crazy locked up somewhere.

This post originally appeared on Scary Mommy.

My son is a thoughtful, book-loving, slightly nerdy soul. He has also been known to be ditzy, intensely focused, and gets teary with any and all emotional thoughts.

He is me.

He’s so much me that it completely freaks me out sometimes. He is me in the way he reads a book so intently that a Mack Truck could drive through the living room and he wouldn’t even notice. He is me in the way he is calm and collected for months at a time and then his sister crosses her eyes at him one day and he cries for three hours. I have found that raising a miniature me can be enlightening but also the most annoying thing in the world.

Here are 10 reasons why:

1. When he does something dumb, my genetic makeup gets blamed. Like, when he forgets that he is brushing his teeth while he is brushing his teeth and just stands there looking confused, my husband will say, “Oh my God, he’s so you.” It’s awful, but it’s true.

2. I’m not a very good adulting example. He can hardly take me seriously when I am hollering at him to not to talk with his mouth full, but he can’t understand me—because I have my mouth full.

3. I know what he is thinking, which isn’t always good, especially when he is glaring at me after I’ve taken the iPad away.

4. I see him battling the same demons I battled. Learning common sense comes to mind. It’s learnable, but everyone laughs at you a lot until you learn it. I once swept my parents garage with the door to the house open and managed to cover the entire place with a fine layer of dirt. Yup.

5. I don’t get nearly as frustrated with my other child. She acts just like my husband, and I have learned how to deal with all of that.

6. I have come to realize how frustrating I am as a human being. I don’t listen very well, I have no sense of direction, and I forget stuff all of the time. I am so annoying and so is he.

7. I really want to help him figure stuff out. But ultimately I know he will do better if he fails on his own—just like me. He has to fall out of that tree, hit his face with the tip of that hatchet, and run into a million poles.

8. At parent-teacher conferences, I am now the parent, having to hear all about things that I did at his age. It can be mortifying. Love letters, crushes, goofiness. At least it’s followed up with good math scores.

9. Trying to reason with a younger version of myself is, well, like, trying to reason with a younger version of myself. We can talk circles around each other until both of us are so frustrated that we want to throw each off of the deck.

10. And I have to watch myself go through every painful social situation all over again. He has a tender heart that will be broken many times. He will feel awkward in large groups. He will feel lonely at times.

The best I can hope for is that I will be able to guide him a bit through life, probably not in the right direction, but that’s why we had his little sister.

This post originally appeared on Scary Mommy.

My son is a thoughtful, book-loving, slightly nerdy soul. He has also been known to be ditzy, intensely focused, and gets teary with any and all emotional thoughts.

He is me.

He’s so much me that it completely freaks me out sometimes. He is me in the way he reads a book so intently that a Mack Truck could drive through the living room and he wouldn’t even notice. He is me in the way he is calm and collected for months at a time and then his sister crosses her eyes at him one day and he cries for three hours. I have found that raising a miniature me can be enlightening but also the most annoying thing in the world.

1. When he does something dumb, my genetic makeup gets blamed. Like, when he forgets that he is brushing his teeth while he is brushing his teeth and just stands there looking confused, my husband will say, “Oh my God, he’s so you.” It’s awful, but it’s true.

2. I’m not a very good adulting example. He can hardly take me seriously when I am hollering at him to not to talk with his mouth full, but he can’t understand me—because I have my mouth full.

3. I know what he is thinking, which isn’t always good, especially when he is glaring at me after I’ve taken the iPad away.

4. I see him battling the same demons I battled. Learning common sense comes to mind. It’s learnable, but everyone laughs at you a lot until you learn it. I once swept my parents garage with the door to the house open and managed to cover our entire just-cleaned-for-Grandparents-visit house with a fine layer of dirt. Yup.

5. I don’t get nearly as frustrated with my other child. She acts just like my husband, and I have learned how to deal with all of that.

6. I have come to realize how frustrating I am as a human being. I don’t listen very well, I have no sense of direction, and I forget stuff all of the time. I am so annoying and so is he.

7. I really want to help him figure stuff out. But ultimately I know he will do better if he fails on his own—just like me. He has to fall out of that tree, hit his face with the tip of that hatchet, and run into a million poles.

8. At parent-teacher conferences, I am now the parent, having to hear all about things that I did at his age. It can be mortifying. Love letters, crushes, goofiness. At least it’s followed up with good math scores.

9. Trying to reason with a younger version of myself is, well, like, trying to reason with a younger version of myself. We can talk circles around each other until both of us are so frustrated that we want to throw each off of the deck.

10. And I have to watch myself go through every painful social situation all over again. He has a tender heart that will be broken many times. He will feel awkward in large groups. He will feel lonely at times.

The best I can hope for is that I will be able to guide him a bit through life, probably not in the right direction, but that’s why we had his little sister.

This post originally appeared on Scary Mommy.

I am an awesome mom. That’s right, I said it. My kids have told me this and they are terrible liars so I know it’s true.

I am a crap mom. That’s right, I said it. My kids are still too young to tell me this, but it’s coming, I’m sure of it.

I am an awesome mom. My children know they are loved because I tell them this every single day.

I am a crap mom. I get irritated by their singing after 5 minutes, but then I try to hang on until the 6th minute and then I can’t take it anymore.

I am an awesome mom. How they look at me! Like I could win any race and slay any dragon and protect them from every scary passing thought and then make them a ham and cheese sandwich.

I am a crap mom. I get bored very easily while playing dolls and mostly like to pretend that I’m getting tucked in for a nap.

I am an awesome mom. How I look at them! I am literally so fascinated by every facet of their personality that my husband and I talk about them an embarrassing amount of the time.

I am a crap mom. Sometimes at night I don’t read a book to them because I’m so lazy and tired and lame.

I am an awesome mom. My favorite moments are with just them, marveling at her freckles and in awe of his long limbs.

I am a crap mom. I don’t always paint her nails when she asks, and I say, “I’m working” when sometimes I’m not.

I am an awesome mom. I treat them with respect. I value their thoughts. I nurture their creativity. I make them play outside even when it’s cold.

I am a crap mom. Sometimes I lose myself.

I am an awesome mom. I dance with them like a lunatic in the living room when our jam comes on.

I am a crap mom. We battle over my desire to have a quiet home and their need to just be kids.

I am an awesome mom. I rub their sore bellies, and I look them in the eyes, and I ask all the questions, and I thrill over their accomplishments, and I cry.

I am a crap mom. I only think of myself at 8 at night. I don’t want to get your water, tuck in your stuffed animal, sing you another song or voodoo you back to sleep! I just want you to go to sleep!

I am an awesome mom—with some crap moments.

And I’m willing to bet you are too.

This post originally appeared on Scary Mommy.

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