Day 1—You are Mama Warrior. That chart will be full of stickers in no time. You will be giving lessons on this soon. This is going on Pinterest.
Day 7—You’re wearing down. Chin up, buttercup. All the screaming is worth your new phase of toddler underwear. This battle surely only has two or three days left in it.
Day 19—You are singing “I believe I can fly” outside the door of the bathroom, because that makes sense somehow. You are ever so slightly coming unhinged. You refuse to offer another pull-up so he can poop in it in the corner. This is not your life. You went to college. You were president of the Honor Society. How are you getting bested by a three-year-old’s intestines? You are a smart person. People love you. Your days used to make sense. You used to wear pants with a button.
Day 52—I see you over there crying, eating all the M&Ms. Just throw a pull-up on him and call it a day. Maybe he’ll give it up by middle school. You don’t care.
HOW TO HAVE FAMILY DEVOTIONAL AT DINNER
1. Emotionally invest in high hopes. This is key. Envision a sacred family moment. Prepare to feel sentimental. Crushed expectations are an important part of this.
2. At the onset of dinner, immediately break up several sibling fights while husband plays Candy Crush.
3. With thinning patience, begin carefully selected family devo. Get interrupted several times, because there’s not enough ketchup, where’s more bread, does this have onions in it, can I have orange juice instead of water, his elbow keeps touching me, no offense but this is kind of boring.
4. Field questions about a sleepover Friday, an ortho appointment, armpit hair, and a new data plan.
5. Take deep breaths. Act like you’re teaching Sunday school. You are so interesting. You aren’t having rage issues while talking about Moses.
6. Imagine that your family is totally into this. They are not, but imagine it.
7. Finally lose your crap like a raging maniac. Slam devotional book on dinner table, screaming, “Forget it! Just hate God!” while family stares at you like you’re a crazy person because you actually are.
8. Watch husband roll eyes and pour you Pinot Grigio. Eat your cold dinner in shame.
Programming Note: Successful family devos are an important event in The Contest (see chapter 3). You may just sit this event out rather than drop in the rankings.
HOW TO CHOOSE THE CORRECT COLOR PALETTE FOR YOUR PRESCHOOLER
1. Don’t. You will be wrong.
HOW TO CHOOSE THE CORRECT PROM DRESS, FRIEND, CLASS, BOYFRIEND, GIRLFRIEND, SWEATPANTS, HAIRCUT, MUSIC, JOB, BEDSPREAD, LIFE PATH FOR YOUR TEENAGER
1. Don’t. You will be wrong.
HOW TO DO LAUNDRY
1. Separate lights and darks. This is the best you can do. I guess the reds and blues go with the black shirts, and the gray stuff goes with the lights. I don’t know, man. Wonder why you bought all these clothes for people.
2. Put lights in washing machine and start.
3. Remember this load two days later.
4. Rewash the lights that now smell like a filthy neighborhood pool lined with mold.
5. Remember them the next day. Laundry is hard. Don’t feel bad about yourself.
6. Wash a third time, and add bleach to counter the mildew-soaked fibers that are semipermanent now.
7. Put lights in the dryer and start the darks.
8. Remember the darks! Yay you! Despair at the light load in the dryer. This is like discovering the dishes in the dishwasher are clean. Throw the load of lights on your bed to “fold in a few minutes” while you move the darks to the dryer.
9. Co-sleep with the light load that night. Give them their own bed space, like a person. Bonus: they can double as an extra pillow and blanket!
10. The next morning, move lights to the floor to “fold later today,” and proceed to step over them until next Tuesday. Make sure to get some of the dirty clothes you take off mixed in with the pile.
11. Pull dark clothes as necessary out of the dryer for the next five days, one item at a time.
Programming Note: If this laundry situation causes you to go on a rage bender one day, like an asylum escapee, perhaps your husband could adopt the Brandon Hatmaker Approach and emergency purchase four color-coded baskets per family member correlating with an elaborate laundry system he invented on the dash to Walmart, and if you specialize in math, you realize that a well-timed meltdown might result in your spouse doubling down with twenty-eight laundry baskets. We don’t play in this family.
Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? In my heart it don’t mean a thing.1
— TONI MORRISON
CHAPTER 22
STRING EIGHTEEN PARTIES TOGETHER
Allow me to share last night’s dinner conversation courtesy of the “4th Grade Public School Puberty Talk” starring girls in one room with their teacher and boys in the gym with the coach:
REMY: Ben, you are going to get the puberties too.
BEN: I’ve already started!
REMY: You got your period?
BEN: Oh my gosh. No. I am getting pit hair, and my muscles are getting awesome.
REMY: Periods mean we have babies. I think they come out of our butt.
SYDNEY: No, they don’t, Remy! You don’t poop out babies.
REMY: Well, girls have three holes, and they come out of one of them.
BEN: WHAT? Girls have three holes? My friend was right!
SYDNEY: You have two of them, Ben!
BEN: I know. We pee out of our eureka.
SYDNEY: It’s a urethra!
REMY: Puberties means we get hair on our privates.
BEN: Our health class video was animated, and it zoomed in on the penis and one by one, hair started popping out. Pop, pop, pop! I heard you get hair on your nipples.
SYDNEY: Ben, I bet you were born with a lot of hair.
BEN: On my nipples?
SYDNEY: Oh my gosh.
REMY: Do moms have hair on their nipples when they feed their babies?
BEN: Gross! The babies get hair in their mouths?
REMY: It’s the puberties.
LORDT. We are obviously raising children with basic biological competency. (This table talk was sponsored by Cabernet Sauvignon.)
It is raining teenagers in the Hatmaker house: we have one in college, two in high school, one in middle, and one lone innocent in elementary. We are in a completely different parenting space than we were ten years ago, when my days revolved around preschool, playdates, and the Kids Eat Free website (sincere apologies to Kerbey Lane where kids ate free on Tuesdays and my friends and I brought eleven children; it was less a dining experience and more an invasion).