Parental Privacy & Reality Check

20 years ago if I told you I woke up covered in pee, your response would have been, "Wow!  You must have been really wasted last night", or "Geez!  That guy you were with must have been really wasted last night."  Fast forward to this morning.  I woke up covered in pee thanks to a toddler who forgot to visit the potty before crawling into bed right, smack dab, between my husband and me last night.  This pee incident concludes a very tension-filled 12 hours where I have been asking myself why I didn't know that becoming a parent meant giving up basic privacy rights.

I know that becoming a parent means you change everything about how you think and live, but just once, I would like to be able to use the bathroom without having someone knock on the door, yell to me at the door, or just come in through the door.  When they were younger, they actually sat on my lap while I was on the potty, and would get angry or upset when I removed them from my lap, so I could wipe.  None of those fucking, 'life with kids is beautiful' parenting books ever tell you that, but it happens to all moms!

And don't get me started on the sex life!  Once upon a time, there was something called morning sex, and my memory is extremely cloudy due to the passing years, but I seem to recall enjoying it.  On the weekends, my husband and I used to lounge around in bed until close to noon, sometimes asleep, sometimes awake, then when we did get up, we enjoyed the whole day together.  Now, it's 8:30 am on the weekends when I'm usually roused by my toddler kicking me in the head, because she sleeps like a disturbed puppy having a squirrel chasing dream.  It's all about breakfast production, getting dressed, rushing out to a lesson, and figuring out what activity to do that day, because so help you God if you don't have a plan and the kids have to sit around the house.

On some lazy Sundays, we used to have afternoon sex, but gone are those days as well.  Even if the kids are watching movies downstairs or playing with toys, they can (and will) at anytime barge into your room and demand your time.  This means that any semblance of a sex life is relegated to evening hours between the time you finally get the kids to sleep until the time they come in and want to get in your bed with you, and even then, there are no guarantees.

My nearly 10 yr. old now believes that our house is going to be robbed at any time even though we live in one of the safest suburbs in SoCal, have an alarm system on our house, and have a private security service that patrols our neighborhood.  She is using this excuse to sleep on the sofa in our bedroom, and throws a fit every time we lock our door.  My revenge for her ridiculous behavior is that in about three years she is going to figure out why we lock our doors for about 45 minutes in the evening, and will be completely grossed out.  Until then, we have to try to steal, sometimes successfully, sometime not, less than an hour of privacy to actually be a married couple.

I've always been tempted to write a book about what parenting is actually like, but the problem is that if I did, no one would want to have kids.  Don't get me wrong, I love my little monsters, but the preconceived notion of what parenting will be like, as opposed to what it actually is, are polar opposites.  When I brought Shayna home from the hospital, I envisioned this beautiful scene of me spending time lounging on the couch with my new, sweet baby and my oldest daughter cuddling up together to enjoy the new life in our house.  Instead, I got a colicy infant who kept a very sore and tired me trying to figure out how to sooth it, while the resentful 6 yr. old pouted, screamed, and developed a new war cry yelling, "You care only for the baby!".

I've been told by other parents to enjoy this time with my kids while they're young, but I would be lying if I didn't say that I am looking forward to getting a few things back as they get older like an undisturbed bathroom run, a bed with only myself and one other person in it, and more than a 2-3 hour window for sex.  The kicker is that by the time we have free reign again for intimacy, I will be menopausal and he will be over-the-hill, but at least we won't have to watch the Disney Channel anymore.

Revenge of the Summer Kid Movies

While sitting through a painful viewing of the cinematic excellence known as "Smurfs 2", I began to advance my theory about the people who make summer movies for kids.  These people hate their parents and have made it their life's work to torture other parents.

This theory first appeared in my head as I sat through the minion-filled abortion that was "Despicable Me 2" with my enthusiastic 4th grader and my toddler.  It was further advanced while attempting a drive-thru viewing of "Epic", the film that not even Beyonce's voice, could save.  After an afternoon of watching little blue-skinned cliches dance across the screen, I'm convinced my theory is 100% correct.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate animation or all children's films.  "Wreck It Ralph" was a great movie with a good plot and terrific characters.  I liked "Tangled" even though the whole princess thing has never found a place in my heart, and I'm a really big fan of the "Monsters, Inc." and "Toy Story" franchises.  I just find that, much like grown up movies coming out of Hollywood, most of the summer releases lack substance.

In a way, the thing that pisses me off the most is that the people who make summer movies for kids know they don't have to try that hard.  Summer is a long stretch of time, and the options of what can be done with kids might seem vast at first, particularly in Southern California, but after awhile, you want to do something different, that doesn't involve a potential 3rd degree sunburn.  Movies are always a fun idea, but the crap they put out in the summer just ruins the whole experience, particularly if you happen to be a fan of animation.

I love animation.  I'm one of those freaky people who have been watching cartoons since I was three years old, and never stopped.  On any given late night, my television watching includes a selection of what my husband refers to with disgust as "your fucking weird cartoons", such as something from Adult Swim along with reruns of "South Park" or "Family Guy".  I nearly came unglued when "Metalocalypse" appeared on t.v., because it was heavy metal plus cartoons plus dark humor plus a whole lot of wrong.  What could be more perfect than that!

The sad thing is that the summer isn't over.  I still have to stomach "Planes", which is clearly a ripoff of "Cars", and "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2".  The only positive thing about these crappy summer kid movies is that they only last about an hour and 15 minutes, so by the time I've made it through a tub of glorious movie theater popcorn that I shouldn't be eating, I only have to sit through 30 minutes of lame jokes before I can go back to the minivan and pretend I enjoyed the experience just as much as my kids.

I guess the only thing that could be worse are the inevitable 'tween movies that are sure to come as my daughter nears her 10th birthday.  She has already put me on notice that the One Direction movie is coming out soon.  I know I'm going to be the one stuck watching it with her wishing the whole time that I could fast forward through the next four years of movies, and go straight to the teenage horror film obsession, but I know that will be a big cheat, too, because by the time her movie tastes improve, she won't want her mom to go with her.