Does Having a Baby Make You a Woman?

Madonna, Child, & Stray Hand

Photo credit: Christina McPherson Photography

We are coming upon Easter, that time of year when we celebrate the greatest miracle of the Lord by dressing middle aged men up as creepy bunnies and letting them loose at our malls. It is also the time of year when a new mom can really shine, as she approaches one of the first major holidays with her little one. {If you do not celebrate Easter just mentally insert your own holiday into this post and really, you won’t be missing anything.}

It is time for new moms everywhere to step up to the plate (and I do not mean to your own dinner plate), and host a holiday. If you’re the sort of person who has for years been able to whip up a candied yam at the drop of a hat you are probably not concerned about this. I have night terrors about candied yams. For the sake of full disclosure I am not *technically* hosting Easter, but I am providing the following dishes, with Brian’s help: Rice Pilaf, Asparagus, Brussel Sprouts, and 3 bottles of red wine. Not impressed? This is what happened when we hosted Christmas Eve:

Plumber on Christmas Eve. And a partridge in a pear tree.

Angry elf.

The disposal got backed up on all the things I didn’t know you were not supposed to throw down the disposal, and we had some overflow, if you will. You know you’re doing a good job of hosting when your toilet plunger makes its way right next to your passed apps. I think you can see that we are not up to the task of hosting major holidays.

The thing is, I always assumed that once I had a baby the homemaker/holiday-hosting gene would emerge, just as post-delivery hemorrhoids would emerge. These were givens, I thought. In that light, I pictured myself setting up crafty holidays, with cute Easter baskets and a baby dressed in some sort of festive holiday-themed clothing. (Note: As I am typing this I am realizing that we do not have an Easter basket OR an outfit for Nolan).

Anyway, this week I’ve had a few experiences that seriously call into question my long-held belief that once I became a mother I would also become a woman. A woman capable of hosting holidays, if called upon. For years I’ve shown a distinct lack in the womanly arts, as they were, and felt pretty confident that once a little baby was expelled from the old womb I too would experience a re-birth, but instead of as a fetus it would be as Marmee from Little Women. Or at least as Kris Jenner. But this week all of my visions of lady grandeur have come crashing down around me.  You see, I already have a 6 month old baby, and therefore should be well into the swing of womanhood at this point. Instead I seem to be taking steps backwards.

It started out this past weekend, when Brian was vacuuming Nolan’s room. Brian’s vacuuming triggered me to remember that I have not vacuumed the baby’s room since his birth we moved into the house a YEAR ago. I do “clean” his room by taking moist tissues, and sometimes when I’m ambitious moist handfuls of Scott’s toilet paper, and wiping up the loose dust around the edges of the room.  But this “doesn’t count” according to most moms and also according to the board of health.

Watching Brian move that vacuum with the grace of a rhythmic gymnast, I decided that I too should do some real cleaning. I was all, “I’ll take it from here, Brian,” and I could clearly see the look of love and adoration in his eyes for his homemaker wife. And I was doing awesome, really awesome, until I realized that I don’t actually know how to use our vacuum.

Complicated Cleaning Machine

Right away Brian could see that something was amiss. He was watching me a little too closely, and it seemed unlikely that he was staring so intently due to finding my cleaning prowess enticing in some way. I had to consider that he was maybe noting a flaw in my method. I panicked and feigned not seeing Brian so that I could continue pretending I was a woman, but eventually he had to intervene.  “Lizzie, that is an attachment on the vacuum. The attachment is what lets you get into those corners and small spaces.” Of course I know that Brian, I was just pretending to have no idea how to operate our vacuum. I was just kidding by trying to shove the overly large head of the vacuum into tiny spaces that it could never possibly fit in to. What do you think I am, an idiot! Secretly I was relieved he said something. I’ve never known what that attachment was! I didn’t even know how to detach it from the body of our vacuum!  I think we may have a very complicated model, which you can be the judge of based on my photos.

Fancy dirt-sucking attachment

I must admit that once Brian showed me the glorious power that our machine is capable of, I felt alive and on fire with a passion for cleaning! This feeling came and went in a burst, but for a few amped up minutes I busted from room to room sucking up all the dust that has been making itself comfortable for the past year. Scott’s toilet paper, as we all know, is the BEST, but it just doesn’t compete with the vacuum, even when damp!

And then, on Wednesday I found myself scrounging for breakfast foods, as I so often do. I came upon a slice of bread (bakery bread I think! It was the nicer type of bread with little specks of actual bread-materials that make it look more real than the smooth white bread that I also enjoy). Anyway none of that is the point. I shoved a piece of bread into my mouth with the grace of a starving baboon. A few chews in and I could taste that something was “off” yet I continued to chew. I then paused my jaw muscles to better assess the situation, and yes, something was off. I still did not spit the bread out. I just chewed more slowly hoping that I had been mistaken. Finally I thought to look at the bag of bread which was sitting right there. It was entirely overrun by mold. Mold, mold, mold. I reluctantly spit the bread out. Upon reflection it should not have taken that long for me to spit the bread out. Marmee and Kris Jenner would never make that mistake.

Clearly moldy, yet somehow still enticing.

My biggest defeat of the week came on Thursday. I was visiting some former students, in order to lead them in an egg cracking competition that my family is known for. I will get into the details of this at a later post, but the key thing to know is that the game is basically that you hard boil some eggs, jazz them up with fancy colors, pair off and then smash into one another until one egg gets crushed and one is victorious. It’s run like a tournament for personal acclaim, in keeping with the spirit of the resurrection of Christ.

It’s glorious and I was excited to run this activity.

Come to find, it is REALLY important that you fully boil your hard boiled eggs. It was to my surprise that of the 30 eggs I brought into school for the competition, not a-one of ’em was actually cooked. Oops! This resulted in exactly what you would think, which was a roomful of teenagers smashing their mostly raw eggs into one another, causing an explosion of egg junk all over the classroom. When I think about it I did feel some trepidation that maybe I was not boiling the eggs properly, but who messes up such a basic task? Not this mom! (In case that line confused you, it was this mom who messed it up).

I felt like Chunk, when he recounts the time he vomited in the movie theater causing all of the other patrons to also vomit, while almost having his hand blended off. Goonies contained a lot of life lessons if you watch closely. In addition to the Chunk/hand lesson there is also the very clear message that opera singers are not to be trusted. Thank you Speilberg.

When reviewing all of the data, I have to concede that the simple fact that I own have a baby does not mean that I have achieved the status of woman. I hope that you can look yourself in your recently cleaned mirror and say that you have indeed reached this status. Those of you without children and those of you who aren’t women are most likely more womanly than me already. If so, congratulations. If not, put down your half-assed Easter basket and meet me for a drink.

Please get your shit together by the 4th of July, Mom.

Have any holiday disaster stories? Have a husband who is more of a domestic goddess than you are? Comment below! Nolan and his thighs would appreciate it.