Poker Face

Before a Body Back class last week, one of my friends told me a story about when they arrived to play at the Arboretum, minus a change of clothes, and her 4-year-old son announced he had a poop-nugget in his underwear. Not wanting to go home, she found a tree, opened his pant leg, had him shake it out, buried it with dirt, and they continued on their merry way. My response was to continue stretching, and nod along as if she was sharing about a vacation they had planned for the spring. Moms have been conditioned to be unflappable. We spend some much of our time wading through the trenches of bodily fluids.

It’s hard to horrify us.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good poop story. They are sort of my bread-and-butter as a mommy-writer, but if you are looking for a reaction of anything other than empathetic amusement, I am not your girl.

My pre-kid-self likely would have been horrified by this story. And any friends without kids, likely double up on birth control when you describe how to safely remove snot from your baby’s nose by inserting a tube and sucking it out. You know, “The Snot Sucker”.

Now, every mom has at least one friend where they share the back-and-forth daily mishaps of parenthood (if you don’t, I am happy to be yours—be warned though, you might end up featured here). Something like,

Well I forgot pants again for the baby, and now she’s wrapped in a towel in the shopping cart at Target.

😂

been there

hope you got coffee!

I think we have gotten so good at limiting our reactions, because motherhood requires us to be the queens of the poker face. Like when your sick child sneeze-coughs directly into your mouth and you have to pretend not to be completely disgusted. Or when they deliberately disobey you, we can’t laugh even though they look ridiculous colored from head to toe in washable marker.

The compromising situations I’ve been in myself as the mother of 3 young kids, knows no bounds.

I mean, my minivan doubles as a traveling toilet/changing room with two of the middle seats removed. The problem is, that only works for child-related-emergencies.

Last Tuesday, I had to use a public bathroom, while wearing my 20-pound baby (the alternative was the dirty floor), change a feminine product, keep her little legs out of the action, maintain a baby-weighted squat—as there were no more toilet seat covers, all while having my older two sing out loud the Kidz Bop version of Lizzo because I couldn’t see them and had to keep the door shut.

If you find yourself nodding along in solidarity, congratulations, you must be a mom.