A Taste of Stay-At-Home Motherhood

Ruby's daycare has had a run in with the flu, so I'm keeping her home this week. She usually goes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, then spends Thursday at my mom's house doing special stuff with grandma that almost always results in some strange artifact, like an inexplicable lump of baked clay embedded with buttons (it's a paperweight!) or an old Visa bill embellished with bows and stickers and whatever else my mom pulls out of her apron pockets.

That gives me a full day of work three days a week, which is generally sufficient for making what I need to make, although when I have Ruby on Mondays and Fridays, I sneak down to the office whenever the kid is engaged in whatever project I set up for her, whether soaping up her babies in the bathroom sink or watching her Peppa Pig DVD. When she's home, it can take me a whole day to write the same 700-word article that would normally take me a half hour, due to the constant fetching of gum, blueberries, pretzels, oranges, grapes, Starburst or whatever else she decides she needs right this second. Like the napkin she just dropped two inches away on the floor. Or moving her blanket an eighth of a centimeter so that it doesn't touch her neck.

Yesterday was frustrating to say the very least, and I found myself regarding Ruby as more of a distracting annoyance from my writing than my darling child who needs my attention. So today I decided to not even think about writing. I would just take the day off and be a mom.

First we had a tea party, complete with gloves and tiaras. You may recall that I hate to play. A boring old tea party with stuffed animals and my kid dishing out pretend food in a high-pitched voice would have made me nutters, and I would have lasted maybe five minutes. But she wanted to pretend like I was an old friend, and so I came to the tea party wanting to catch up. I asked her about her son and daughter, and about her boyfriend. Here's what I found out:

• Her son fell off the roof and broke his leg and his head. He bled a lot. 
• He was putting water in the chimney for the birds when he fell backwards and landed on the ground.
• His blood was hembrolating. It was hembrolating in his arm and his head and his legs and his eye and his other eye and his cheek and his other cheek and his mouth. I don't know what hembrolating is, but apparently it has to do with lots of blood being all over the damn place.
• He was in a wheelchair the last time she saw him because zombies had eaten his legs. They bled. A lot.
• Her boyfriend has a studio downtown. They kiss all the time.
• Her boyfriend's name is John, but he's not Johnny, the ghost who lives in the fireplace in our TV room.
• Her daughter got kicked out of school for kissing a boy. They kissed like this. The boy didn't get kicked out. 

After the tea party, we embarked on the task of getting Ruby's room in order. Ruby has been sleeping with us for way too long, not because we are believers in the Family Bed (ew, that just sounds icky) but because during her phase of refusing to go to sleep no matter what, I found it easier to plop her in my bed so that at least one of us could rest. But that monster has run its course, and for her birthday, we got Ruby a really cute set of sheets that will hopefully sweeten the deal and make her more likely to want to sleep in her own room, in her own bed. Our faces will enjoy not being kicked every night by deceptively small feet.

After getting her room all set up, I talked Ruby into watching TV for awhile. I thought I was free for at least a half hour to check my stuff and waste some time on Facebook, but unfortunately, Nick Jr. has a conscience and runs these "commercials" between shows that encourage kids to turn off the TV and get off their asses and do something productive. Ruby came rushing into my peace and quiet, wanting to make a car out of a cardboard box. Thanks a lot, Nick Jr.! I put my kid in front of the TV for a reason, and that reason is to keep her occupied, not to give her ideas about how I can keep her occupied myself. If I wanted to do that, I would not put her in front of the TV. Duh.

Normally I would make a hundred excuses as to why we would not be making a car out of a box, the top three of which are:

1. I don't feel like it.
2. It will make a huge mess.
3. Collaborating with a four-year-old on an art project is not a two-way street. It's their way or the highway. If you're like me, you have to gear up to forget all the rules, and even then, it's cringeworthy moment after cringeworthy moment as you watch your child paint the tires pink and yellow and the taillights blue, cut the windows crooked and tear off a four-foot piece of tape to cover a two-inch gap. 

But today was all about not making lame excuses that children don't give a shit about, and so we gathered up a bunch of stuff and spent the rest of the afternoon making a car out of a cardboard box. Unfortunately, I didn't think it through entirely, and now whenever Ruby wants to move from one room in the house to another, she has to get in her "car" and I have to push her wherever she wants to go. But it's a good workout for my butt, so there's that.

It was a good day, but I would not sign up to be a stay-at-home mom unless I was paid a fair living wage as Ruby's executive assistant.