When you're not mom enough

I'm a bad mom.

I grumble when Eli clambers into my bed at 5 a.m. I lose my patience when he won't stick out his feet so I can put his socks on or open his mouth so I can brush his teeth. On more than one occasion I have stomped away from him — my 2-year-old — and slammed the door while he stood wailing in the hallway.

But I'm also a great mom. I can get Eli from playtime to bedtime in 20 minutes flat and still have time to chat together in bed ("Talk to me about my day!" he demands). I let him ride his scooter to school and splash in puddles when it rains. I teach him about kindness and good manners and I hold back my flinch when he's sick and vomits all over me.

Some days I'm Supermom. Eli and I read books together and he walks companionably next to me. We share snacks and conversation and he'll say things like, "Great idea!" and "That's a good plan" and "Thank you, Mom!" I am like a generous benefactor, charitably bestowing gifts of screen time and treats upon my progeny.

Other days I'm unhinged and unmommed. Every other word out of my mouth is "no." We get into power struggles over whether he can do nonsensical things like sit on the bathroom stool while putting on shoes, or I refuse to give into his whining demands for "milk in a waaaaaater bottllllle" out of spite. (Why do you want milk in a water bottle, you tempestuous creature? It's a water bottle. Literally by its definition it is made to serve water!) Dreams are crushed. I am the meanest mommy in the world.

It's tempting to blame these incongruities on Eli — toddlers are, after all, mysterious and unpredictable, and what delights him one day may tick him off the next. (Earlier this week I was all jazzed to take him out for a morning run — I even sweetened the deal by offering to buy him a bagel on the way out, like the Holy Grail of breakfast foods — and literally on his way to get in the stroller he suddenly decided he wanted to stay home and eat string cheese instead.)

There's always a part of the day you're going to dread, when the gears grind uncomfortably against each other to bring things to a halt. I, for example, am spectacularly bad at getting Eli out of the house in the morning.

What I want to do: Get Eli to go the bathroom one last time and sit still so I can help him put his socks, shoes and jacket on.
What Eli wants to do: Run around the house like a madman, couple all his chuggers together, finish building a huge tower of magnatiles, take his pants and underwear off completely, hide under the table, beg for snacks, cry, find paci and soft blankie, request milk, refuse to go to school, et al.

Phil, on the other hand, is great at this kind of transition, because he specializes in throwing Eli a mini circus for each stage of the proceedings, which is something I refuse to do on principle because I am not a clown and I am not here to entertain you so I can trick you into putting your damn feet in your socks.

So every morning Eli and I do the same frustrating dance, in which I feel myself getting madder and madder — like a balloon slowly expanding with rage and the rage is ridiculously made out of the fact that my kid won't let me put his shoes on. This morning, in an epic parenting standoff of which I am the opposite of proud, I demanded that Eli pee in the potty while he wailed, "I wanna pee on the FLOOR!"

Obviously both of us have some growing up to do.

So what's essential — and yet so freaking difficult — for me to remember is that it's really in my hands; how can I expect him to be more mature when I'm behaving like a toddler myself?

So: deep breaths. I can be a grumpy mom, or I can be a great mom. What kind of mom am I going to be today?

(Not the kind of mom who consents to serving milk in a water bottle, though. I can tell you that much.)

The laws of toddler motion

This weekend we had a remarkably perfect unremarkable day. Eli woke up before 6 a.m. as usual and I presented him with a flashing Mickey Mouse cup, a Mickey spinning toy and a card full of Hot Wheels stickers in honor of Valentine's Day. In the morning Phil and Eli lounged in their pajamas building intricate towers out of magnets and blocks while I ran a frigid local 5K with the women of my moms' running group. When I got home we packed up and headed to Williamsburg for swim class, where Eli blew bubbles like a champ and had to be dragged bodily from the pool while insisting that he had to keep looking for "treasure." He slept in the car on the way home and then we all headed back upstairs for more playing before Phil's mom arrived to put Eli to bed so Phil and I could go on our Valentine's Day date at Luke's Lobster.

It was unremarkable because we didn't do anything out of the ordinary, but it was remarkably perfect because it was virtually tantrum-free. That's 12 hours without any meltdowns, fits or crying jags. There was no stomping of feet or banging of heads or flinging of toys, no wailing or shrieking or howling.

I wouldn't say that Eli is any more dramatic than your average toddler, but he can throw a temper tantrum with the best of them. He's been known to fling himself to the ground and beat it with his fists after, say, being denied a fourth slice of cheese. On one memorable occasion, he cried because he wanted to go inside the picture in his book and he couldn't because, well, it was a picture inside a book. A few weeks ago, while suffering from the lingering after effects of a virus, he was having such regular meltdowns over such inconsequential occurrences that Phil declared, "This is not normal behavior!" and insisted on bringing him to the doctor, who diagnosed him with a very grave condition: Eli, he explained, was 2 years old.

The mysterious non-patterns of toddler behavior are particularly difficult for Phil, who's an engineer, to understand. In his mind, a particular pattern of input should reliably produce a similar pattern of output (let's call this Phil's Second Law of Toddler Motion). He likes to analyze Eli's tantrums to review how we can change our behavior to prevent future meltdowns. (This Monday-morning post-tantrum quarterbacking is exactly as enjoyable as you can imagine.) So he's always saying things like: "Historically we know that when Eli eats yogurt for breakfast during a waxing moon phase, he'll require one or more hours of physical stimulation before 10 a.m. in order to facilitate optimal midday napping. So in the future we should ensure that all yogurt consumption is accompanied by early visitation to (a) the Hall of Science or (b) Twinkle Playspace."

But what Phil's Second Law of Toddler Motion repeatedly fails to account for is the Toddlers Are Bat$&!t Crazy escape clause, which decrees that every force you exert upon a toddler to produce a reaction will eventually be accompanied by an equal and opposite reaction. Like last night at dinnertime, which went like this:

Eli: "I want a meatball. I want a meatball. I want a meatball. I WANT A MEATBALL!"
Meatball is placed in front of Eli.
Eli: "I don't want a meatball! I WANT PEANUT BUTTER!"

So when we had this remarkably perfect unremarkable day, I had a realization that was a relief: We hadn't done anything differently than usual. We hadn't hustled Eli out of the house as early as possible to burn off energy or fed him a specially protein-packed lunch or infused the morning with the correct balance of screen time. We just had a remarkably perfect unremarkable day because, well, toddlers are bat$&!t crazy and this time it worked in our favor.

Rachel's Laws of Toddler Motion

1. A toddler in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by a parent attempting to direct the motion of the toddler toward the door of the house because it's time to leave, at which point the toddler will plant himself in a corner and refuse to move. A toddler at rest has probably been clubbed over the head or plied with a pacifier and blankie.
2. The acceleration of a toddler toward an object is inversely related to the parent's desire for the toddler to leave the object alone (i.e., the more forcefully a parent expresses a desire for the toddler to stay away from the object, the faster the toddler will accelerate toward that object). More undesirable objects will require a greater magnitude of force to be exerted on the toddler: For example, a toddler's acceleration toward a toothbrush at bedtime will require a much greater magnitude of force than his acceleration toward a cookie.
3. For every action there is an equal and opposite bat$&!t crazy toddler reaction.

The big suck

I love my Eli. I love that he is goofy and enjoys a good laugh more than anybody else I know. I love that he still vigorously enjoys peekaboo and demands tickles and pretends to read his favorite books to me at bedtime. I love that he loves bagels and "Wheels on the Bus" and vehicles of all kinds.

But I hate his pacifier.

Our family affair with the pacifier is long and storied. Before Eli was born, when I was going to do everything right and establish the perfect breastfeeding relationship, I decided we weren't going to introduce bottles or pacifiers for at least a month. When my mother tentatively inquired as to whether we had any pacifiers in the house, I self-importantly told her that I hadn't purchased any, because we weren't going to be needing any. Just boobs for my kid, thanks!

(She later took it upon herself to buy some pacifiers and thrust them on me "just in case." Thanks Mom!)

As a newborn, Eli was jaundiced (boobs were not enough for my kid, apparently), so he had to go under the bili lights at the hospital. There are few sights sadder for a new mom of an otherwise healthy baby than your tiny infant with a big black mask over his eyes under those scary lights. (Remember when Scully did an alien autopsy on The X-Files? It's like that.) Apparently Lenox Hill is not one of those "baby-friendly" hospitals you hear about, because at some point a nurse gave Eli a pacifier to comfort him. (They also gave him formula, at which point I had a total breakdown.)

When we were packing up to leave the hospital, we strapped Eli into his carseat. He started crying. Phil and I looked at each other. Suddenly Phil disappeared and, in a flash, reappeared with a pacifier he had apparently begged off a nurse in the hospital nursery. And just like that, our obsession with the pacifier was born.

Newborns have a biological need to suck. It's comforting. It's soothing. (That's why the British call pacifiers "soothers.") Some parents take their kid's pacifier away after they've mostly outgrown that need but before it becomes a major addiction, around the time they recognize that they're getting up multiple times a night to reinstall it in their kid's mouth. Not us! We persevered through that stage until Eli could find his mouth with that pacifier blindfolded, and then we bought pacifier clips to ensure that it would never be more than six inches from him anyway. On Eli's first day of daycare at 10 months old, I brought him into the classroom with his pacifier clipped onto his collar. "You're going to need this," I told his teachers.

Once, we brought his school pacifier home for a weekend to wash it and forgot to send it back on Monday. His teachers literally gave him the empty cap to a bottle to suck on at naptime.

Now Eli is 2 years and 4 months old. He's getting to the age, in other words, where we really should think about losing the pacifier. He is theoretically only supposed to have his pacifier for sleeping (which in our laissez-faire parenting attitude also means the first hour after he wakes up and sometimes the last hour of the day before bedtime). He knows he's theoretically only supposed to have his pacifier for sleeping, so when he wants it he pretends he's going to go to sleep and lays down on the floor just so he can take a hit. But he also likes to have it in the car, sometimes in the stroller, and when he's watching Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood on TV -- when he's bored or relaxing, in other words, like his pacifier is a glass of wine or a good Scotch. This often means it feels like I'm battling with him to give up the pacifier: "No pacis during playtime," or "You may have your pacifier back if you want to get into your crib with it."

One of the parenting philosophies I became interested in after Eli was born is something called Resources for Infant Educators, or RIE. RIE is also called "mindful parenting" and it's based on the idea that we should be respectful and authentic in our interactions with children. (Sounds good, right?) There's a lot about RIE that I think is over the top and untenable -- RIE parents, for instance, don't believe in placing their babies in any position they can't get into themselves, so they don't do tummy time, babywear or even put their babies on swings at the playground (since they can't get up there themselves). That's a little much, right?

But one thing that does ring true for me about RIE is the idea that we should respect our children as autonomous beings. And I have to be honest, it feels a little disrespectful for me to poke holes in all Eli's pacifiers and claim they broke, or for me to encourage him to leave his pacis for the paci fairy, or to tell him that pacifiers are for babies and he's not a baby anymore so he doesn't need one.

(Except I know of people who have done these things and guess what? Their kids don't have pacis anymore and they're not pulling their hair out while their kid wails, "I want my paaaaaaci!" for the millionth time, so who am I to judge?)

And also hypocritical, because in the past few weeks Eli's also become enamored of a little blue blanket (which I'm 99% sure happens to be the blanket he was wrapped in at his bris) that he calls "Soft Blankie," and I have zero problem with him taking Soft Blankie places, so why do I have such an issue with the pacifier? I sucked my thumb until I was 6, why should Eli have to give it up now?

And also, if I'm being honest with myself, kind of selfish. Because when Eli is damp from a bath and runs off to find his paci and Soft Blankie and then crawls up into my lap with his pacifier in his mouth, it reminds me that he's such a little boy, that he has the rest of his life to grow up. It's not affecting his speech. He's going to need orthodontia anyway. Why not allow him this comfort? No one ever went to college with a pacifier, right?

Last week we read Leslie Patricelli's Binky, about a boy looking for his lost pacifier. "How would you feel if you didn't have your pacifier anymore?" I asked Eli.

"Crying," he said.

"Why do you love your pacifier so much?"

He sucked thoughtfully. Then he said, "Because I have to go to sleep!"

This weekend we had one battle after another about the pacifier; I must have said the words, "It's not pacifier time now!" a dozen times. In my frustration I thought, maybe it's time. Maybe it's time to take all the pacifiers away.

The truth is, though, I couldn't do it. It's a big, bad world out there. We all need a little something to help us cope.

"How we spend our days is how we spend our lives"

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing....There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet." --Annie Dillard

I have a new Facebook cover photo. It's a picture I took of Eli riding his scooter on the boardwalk at Long Beach (that's Long Beach, Long Island, not Long Beach, California) at sunset, bundled in his red winter jacket against the chilly December wind.

The picture is perfect. In fact, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't considered the photo opportunity when I spontaneously decided to load Eli in the car that afternoon. (And I had two dastardly ulterior motives: (1) Eli had taken a random 10 a.m. nap that morning and I knew he'd sneak in another one in the car and (2) I knew it would make Phil jealous.)

But what you see on Facebook is of course not the whole story. Earlier that day, we had gone into Manhattan so that Eli could see his 11-year-old cousin, whom he adores. Then we split up so that Phil could go with his family to a football game while I took Eli home. I found myself in the middle of thousands of tourists in Bryant Park, and all of them were behind me trying to squeeze by the line for the carousel, the line for the ice skating rink and the line for the food truck while Eli insisted on trying to push his stroller himself through the crowds. In desperation I snatched him up and took off while he kicked and screamed, alternately crying for his pacifier and telling me that he wanted to go on a "venture" (adventure -- I have no idea where he picked that up). Somehow I shepherded him onto the subway, where his pacifier fell on the floor a few stops from home. There are not enough wipes in the world to clean the subway floor off a pacifier that's going into my child's mouth, so the whole car (and then the whole neighborhood) had to listen to Eli wail for his paci until we got home, at which point he disembarked for his stroller and casually announced, "I'm going to play."

I think I may have actually bellowed, "I THOUGHT YOU WANTED YOUR PACIFIER!" I have been planning to let Eli decide when he's done with his pacifier, but at that point I wanted to throw them all out the window.

So then Eli was happily playing with his extensive play-doh collection, but it was unseasonably warm and I couldn't bear the thought of staying inside. I figured we could sneak in another nap in the jogging stroller, so I told Eli I wanted to take him for a run. To my surprise, he said, "I don't want yellow signs" -- our usual running route through Forest Park is full of yellow signs that Eli takes great delight in pointing out at each turn.

I said, "Well, where do you want to go?" and he said -- I swear to you -- "I wanna go a place magical!" (I have no idea where he picked that up either.) So I thought a minute and said, "Well, what if we go to the beach?" Because what's more magical than the beach in December?

He literally jumped up and down and yelled, "YEAH!"

So I grabbed his scooter out of the closet (at which point a large keyboard fell on my foot, temporarily crippling me) and hustled him to the car. He fell asleep, as I predicted, and just as I was turning onto the street that leads to the beach I heard a sleepy voice say, "Hey! We made it!" I installed him in the jogging stroller with his blanket and pacifier and we took off down the boardwalk, running extra fast to warm up against the cold. After a short run, I yelled, "Anyone who wants to go onto the sand raise your hand and take your pacifier out of your mouth!" and we ran down the ramp to the sand, where Eli giggled and said, "Take my shoes off!"

We tickled and cuddled and rolled around in the sand. We shivered at how cold it felt on our feet and we admired the sunset and the airplanes. Our noses ran and our toes tingled. I felt heart-stoppingly happy.

It was getting cold and dark, so I let Eli scoot on the boardwalk for just a few minutes before it was time to go.

And then, the car ride home. Google Maps informed me the trip would take a long 45 minutes. Eli polished off most of a box of peanut butter crackers and tossed the remainder up in the air, where they rained down on my head like confetti. Then he started requesting that effing pacifier again. I knew, I knew it was somewhere on top of him, because I had handed it to him along with the peanut butter crackers, but he kept yelling that he couldn't find it, and I kept yelling back that I couldn't find it either because I was driving, and then he begged me in a small, sad voice, "Stop driving, Mom, please, Mom," and I kept telling him that there was nothing I could do and I didn't have it, and finally I dug his LeapPad out of my bag and tossed it on top of him, but after a few minutes I heard, "It can't work!" and he handed it back to me at a red light at which point I saw that he had been entering "xksxkkwskkewk2wk2" into the calendar (who knew this thing even had a calendar?), which I quickly exited out of and gave it back to him.

At some point during the maniacal drive it occurred to me that our whole day had actually been a perfect encapsulation of parenthood. A frustrating, embarrassing, exhausting morning followed by an hour or so of shining, heart-exploding joy followed by more teeth-grinding and hair-pulling. When we got home, I opened a bottle of wine while cooking macaroni and cheese and shooing Eli away from the burners while the pasta cooked, but then we sat down at the table together and Eli made polite, mature conversation ("You have macaroni and cheese, Mom? Eat more macaroni and cheese, Mom!") and we smiled at each other over our bowls of bunny pasta. A parenting roller coaster.

It's a complete cliche to say that moments like the one on the beach are what makes all the aggravation worth it. In fact, it might be more accurate to say I'm driven to manufacture moments like those because I need to feel compensated for all that aggravation, like, I had a miserable morning so we are going to do something zany and epic and we are going to enjoy it, damn it! At the end of the day, feeling drained, I found myself trying to analyze what had gone wrong, as though if I had just been a calmer, more patient, less selfish parent in the first place we would have had a more even-keeled day. Sometimes -- and I'm sure I'm not alone in this -- I feel like I respond to toddler behavior by sinking to that level myself: But I don't want to be responsible for convincing you to use the potty this morning! But I don't want to sit here while you demand that I play play-doh a certain way! At least once a day I find myself surprised to be thrust into the position of decision-maker, of responsible adult, of Mom.

So I want to stop trying to quantify these moments, weighing whether they are "worth it." The days are what they are: frustrating and joyful and exasperating and funny and challenging and exhilarating and maddening and meaningful all at the same time.

My lionheart

It's Saturday afternoon at our temple and we're all gathered in pajamas for a Shabbat/Hanukkah (or "Shabbatukah," as Phil likes to call it) celebration. On the rug, a group of one-year-olds is shaking jingly instruments while someone sings Hanukkah songs; a few feet away, the cantor is lighting Hanukkah candles with some older kids. On the other side of the room, everyone else is engaged in various stages of constructing a menorah out of modeling clay and popsicle sticks.

Everyone, that is, except one toddler, who is racing around a large round table, faster and faster, like a tetherball whipping around a pole. He appears, much like a hamster in a wheel will never tire, to have been running around the table since Judah and the Maccabees first defeated the Greeks, and the look in his eyes says he is prepared to keep running around that table until someone procures some jelly donuts; that might entice him to stop.

That one? Is mine. Phil and I sat there watching, half amused and half dismayed, as a tween volunteer tried to entice Eli to sit down and color on some dreidels. Part of me thought I should help her out, but part of me also wanted to see how long Eli could keep running in circles around that table. (The answer: Longer than you would think.)

Maybe it's the looming winter or maybe it's just those terrible 2s, but these days Eli seems to be more of everything than ever: louder, faster, more insistent, the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. At 6 a.m. every morning, I hear his voice hollering for me from his room, and when I enter in a sleepy stupor his arms are already reaching for me from his crib. "I wanna go in the bed," he announces, and once installed beneath the covers, I can feel his toes poking insistently into my flabby side, his hands moving restlessly over my chest. Every few minutes he pops up like a groundhog to peer out the window and make some observation ("It's dark out! The cars are moving! A siren!") until finally he's had enough and he declares, with all seriousness, "I have to go play."

Sometimes, while I'm frantically trying to open a container of yogurt or a new package of play-doh before his whines ascend to wails while he sits close to me practically panting like a dog, I can feel him vibrating with energy and I'm overwhelmed by the force of his desire. "I want it. I want it!" he'll repeat doggedly, and I'm left spinning out the same platitudes about patience and waiting just a minute. The other night he shrieked through a public menorah lighting because he was desperate for a jelly donut, which I had said he could not have until the menorah was lit. In these moments it's hard to decide when to dig in and when to let go, what's not worth engaging in a power struggle over and what might be spoiling him for life.

Bedtime is my favorite time of day. Not for obvious reasons (ha, ha), but because Eli and I kick ass at our bedtime routine, which he has succeeded at lengthening in ever-incremental steps over the past year. (We used to read a few books, get into the crib and sing a night-night song. Now I read a few books, say "Last book!" at least twice, then Eli gets a turn reading a book, then we "sit for a minute," then I "rock a baby," then we do crib and night-night song, which Eli interrupts every single night to inform me that he will be playing with "toys and chuggers" tomorrow.)

Usually I'm in sort of a rush to speed things along, because I have this idea that it's like now or never, if he doesn't get into the crib and go to sleep now he'll never let me leave. And usually Eli is popping up off my lap to choose another book from the shelf, or playfully tickling at me with his fingers, or whipping his blanket over his head to hide.

But the night of the Hanukkah celebration I was struck forcefully as we sat there together by how still he finally was. There was no squirming against me or feet sticking my sides or palms gently patting my cheeks. Literally the only sound I could hear besides the classical night-night music was that little squeak-squeak from his pacifier, the same rubbery sound it made when he was a baby and I had to hold it in his mouth so it wouldn't pop out from the force of his sucking.

The first time I ever heard Eli sing along with a song that wasn't a nursery rhyme, we were in the Gap and they were playing a song called "King and Lionheart." "Howling ghosts, they reappear in mountains that are stacked with fear, but you're a king and I'm your lionheart." It was the "lionheart" part that Eli was repeating, and ever since then I've thought of him as my lionheart: strong and brave and intense.

Eli was never all that interested in being held. As a baby, he would arch his back against us, as if to say, "Put me down!" He disliked being carried, snuggled or rocked, any of those things that babies are supposed to crave. Now, it feels like a rare treat when he'll sit in my lap, and even rarer when he'll sit there, still, and let me wrap my arms around him.

So that night we just sat there. I resisted the urge to make conversation, to chat about our day. I just breathed him in, kissing his soft hair, trying not to caress him too much and ruin it. He was heavy against me in a way that felt reassuring and familiar, like: This is the weight of my child. As I always do, I felt a quick flash-forward to the future -- Someday he won't wait to sit in my lap like this and someday it will be weird and creepy even if he did -- and nearly burst into tears. Instead I just burrowed further into the chair and nuzzled him into me like a Russian nesting doll, his head tucked under my chin.

"I love being your mommy," I murmured, and it was true. But I love some moments more than others, and that moment felt like the sweetest of all.

As the world comes to an end
I'll be there to hold your hand
You're a king and I'm your lionheart...

Mastering the subtle and complex art of the #humblebrag*

*Disclaimer: Fully aware that this whole post is a humblebrag

Like most new(ish -- now that Eli is nearly 2 I suppose I need to add the "ish") parents, I could easily brag about my kid all day. Unfortunately, bragging about a human being who still requires supervision in the bathtub is somewhat gauche. Also, when you're a new(ish) parent and you brag to a non-parent about your kid's accomplishments, their reaction is generally underwhelming.

Me: "Eli just started saying 'yes' this weekend. It is SO CUTE!"
Non-Parent: "Um, what did he say before?"
Me: "Well, nothing. Like if you asked him if he wanted cheese, he'd say, 'Cheese?' But now, he says, 'Yes,' and it is so cute! I'll say, 'Eli, do you want to help Mommy do the laundry?' and he'll say, 'Yes.' So cute!"
Non-Parent "..."

As a new-new mom, I wasn't really into bragging about Eli's babycomplishments. Partially because (sorry, Eli) there wasn't much to brag about (late sitter, late crawler, average sleeper). I mean, yes, he was the cutest and squishiest baby on the planet with kissable cheeks like two juicy tomatoes (um, ahem). But let's be honest, if you've seen one video of an infant rolling over you've seen them all.

Then Eli hit toddlerhood, and the milestones became more and more interesting to me. My kid can run! Scoot! Sing! The urge to brag was suddenly irresistible.

Unfortunately for me, it's still in poor taste to brag too much. That's why for the past year I have been working on mastering the subtle and complex art of the humblebrag, a totally 21st-century term which Urban Dictionary defines thusly:

Subtly letting others now about how fantastic your life is while undercutting it with a bit of self-effacing humor or "woe is me" gloss.

(I believe the original humblebragger was Benjamin Franklin, who said, "Hide not your talents, for use they were made. What's a sun-dial in the shade?")

Humblebragging about your toddler can also be hashtagged #momofanawesomekidproblems --  basically the equivalent of #firstworldproblems or #whitepeopleproblems.

Every parent has their own humblebrag expertise. Like this weekend I was talking to a mom who has trouble getting out of the house early because her kid is such a good sleeper that she doesn't get out of bed until almost 9 a.m. (whereas the only reason we are such impressive early birds in my house is because Eli is screaming his head off every. single. morning before 5:30). Or those moms who are like, "Should I be worried that my kid eats an obscene amount of fresh vegetables and turns up his nose at processed foods?" Or my personal favorite, "My daughter is potty trained so early that I can't even seem to find underwear small enough to fit her!"

My humblebragging weakness is Eli's language. My kid is a talker. He wasn't a particularly early talker, and he started off pretty low-key (his first word was "ball"). But being a pretty verbal person myself, hearing him collect more and more words has really jazzed me up as a parent in this last year of toddlerhood.

My descent into humblebragging started innocently enough. "Oh man," I'd say casually when Eli had just a few words, "Eli thinks every single vehicle he sees is a bus! 'Bus, bus, bus,' that's all I hear all day."

Or, "I don't know how we'll ever take Eli's pacifier away now that he knows to ask for it. He doesn't even call it a paci, he enunciates it super clearly: pa-see-fi-er!"

Once he could put words together, the ball really started rolling. "We're definitely in the terrible 2s now," I'd say. "Eli's first full sentence ever was 'Don't touch it, Mommy!'"

"Ugh," I'd moan. "Eli wakes up so early. He comes into our bed and then he'll look out the window and go, 'Oh, it's dark out!' Then as soon as it starts to get light out he'll go, 'The sun is coming up!' And I'm like, Just lay down and go back to sleep!"

Lately, my humblebragging has come to feel a bit desperate. It's basically like, My kid is really awesome, just let me BRAG already. But for some reason, I always feel the need to blunt it with some kind of eyeroll, like, "Ugh, toddlers are so bossy. Eli's latest game is to play with his doctor set by ordering me to cry so he can pretend to give me medicine. He's always running up to me and demanding, 'Mommy, cry more!'"

I think perhaps what we parents need is a sort of reverse Purge, where one day a year we have the freedom to brag about our kids as much as we want without feeling embarrassed. "Eli has started to say 'please' and 'thank you' without prompting! And sometimes he requests that I hold him and rock him like a baby!" (OK, that last thing is not necessarily impressive, it's just really cute.)

So to everyone who's been the victim of a humblebrag attack from me: I apologize. It took me a solid nine months to get the hang of this parenting thing, so when I finally figured out how cool my kid really was, I just wanted to share it with everybody. Humbly.

Now let me tell you about the time we were at the beach and Eli kept pestering other sunbathers by repeatedly informing them, "The ocean is coming! The ocean is coming!"...