Wrestling in a Skirt

Sounds hot, right? 🤣

There is nothing better than waking up on a warm, sunny day and picking out something summery to wear. A cute top and a billowy floral skirt–ahh perfection. I pull in a deep breath, stretch a smile across my face and open my bedroom door to face the day. I can already imagine what’s waiting for me downstairs: two smiling kids pleasantly sitting at the table eating the breakfast they magically made for themselves, and watching a cartoon in silence.

Or, let me paint an alternative picture for you. The real picture…

It’s funny how my brain resets every night, convincing my subconscious that I have an easy, care-free life. I think it’s the same selective memory that convinced me childbirth wasn't so bad. The mind is powerful. I’m telling you. Each morning, I wake up feeling blessed. I love these babies more than anything. I don’t know what I would do without them. I’m here on this earth to be their mother. Life is perfect. Perfect as in, I even hear cute little birds chirping a pretty song outside my window. 

Those aren’t birds. That’s the TV. 

Anyway, back to the wrestling in the skirt thing…

As my feet hit the bottom step, I grab the banister and curl around it, trying to duck from an incoming flying object of my older son’s choice. Today, it is a transformer. On a side note: I’m a girl. I wasn’t bred to be a boy-mom. I wasn’t trained, and I didn’t study up on boys' toys. When my son hands me a transformer and asks me how it works, I look at him the same way he’d look at me if I asked him to braid my hair. These toys should really come with detailed instructions for the mom who wasn’t raised around boys.

Breakfast is a cattle call. Both kids are shouting at me while my chin rests on a shelf in the pantry. I think I’m starting to remember the details of what really happened yesterday. 

I dump the cereal, pull out the granola, pour the milk, and place it down on the table for my royal princes. It’s at this moment where I’m reminded fifteen times in fifteen seconds that I forgot the spoons and the napkins. It’s at this moment when I trip over one of those tiny little cars that somehow “fell” out of the toy box twenty feet away from where I cleaned it up the night before.

There have now been thirty requests for a spoon.

I look at the clock. It's only been five minutes since I’ve left the comfort of my bedroom, and there is no turning back now.

Normally, I wouldn’t think I’d need to plan out every minute of the next three hours of my life because, usually, it all ends the same. 

I should have sat down and made a good long plan. Thought about the choices I was going to make. I didn’t.

It was going to be a special day—a day I’ll forever remember as the day I wrestled in a skirt.

So, in my infinite wisdom, I made the kind of decision only a sleep-deprived mother makes—heading straight into a packed sandwich shop at the peak of lunch hour.

I’ve got one kid on the hip, the other by the collar, waiting in the pickup line for call-ahead orders.

The older child is now perusing around the chip rack and the younger child has spotted the older child’s “fun.”

The younger child shimmies out of my arms while I’m paying.

It’s fine. They’ll watch each other.

Nope.

The older child returns to my side, handing me a family size bag of…horseradish chips. Seriously?

Do you know what the word “no” does to a child?

I do.

He’s yelling at me. The cashier tells him to respect his mother. Now he’s even angrier. Why did she feel the need to insert herself?

The younger child is pulling multiple bags of chips off the rack so I ask my older child to hold the bag of food I just purchased. He drops the bag, on purpose, allowing all the food to fall out of the bag and onto the stampeded ground. Then, he stands there and stares at it.

The younger child falls to the ground in tantrum mode.

Mom realization: I don’t have enough arms and I’m wearing a stupid skirt shorter than I should have worn. Nice move, Mom.

There are at least fifteen men on their lunch break behind me who I probably mooned in the process of reaching for my little one. I hope they enjoy the show because I’m now on my knees in the middle of the shop, picking up the sandwiches, the forty bags of chips, and my two-year-old, flat on the ground—dead-man-float style. As I surrender to all fours, hovering over my son, negotiating, begging him to get up and walk out with me, I remind myself, again, I’m in a skirt…on the ground, peeling my child’s death grip away from the sticky linoleum tiles. And you know what I realize at this exact moment? I can’t be elegant while wrestling in a skirt.

At minute five of my visit to the sandwich shop, the woman behind the counter offers to help me out. While I deeply appreciate the gesture, my mom-feelings were hurt when she just offered her two cents to my oldest, telling him to respect me. Never mind, sweeping the three of us off her busy floor. I swear I can handle the two beings I brought into this world (Very funny. I know. I meant to say, I should be able to…). I stand up, put the sandwiches down, flip the little-one over my shoulder, fold in half again (yup, another show), grab the bag of sandwiches, shove it under my arm, grab my older bandit by the hood of his sweatshirt, and drag them out of the shop. There was definitely a round-of-applause when I left.

I’m not just a stay-at-home mom, I'm working the whole time, even if no one's paying me for it. I don’t lounge around in sweats every day (although I’d like to), I actually put effort into my appearance every morning (I still don’t know why), and I make an effort to live a “normal” life with two kids (what the heck is normal?). I look each day, head on every morning and say, “I can do what I want. I will do what I want, hard or not.” I cannot do a darn thing—let’s be real.

I’ve been pulled aside by three older moms in the past week, all who have warned me about these years flying by. I’m sure they do.

With all due respect, I’ll probably say the same thing to a thirty-something-year-old mom when I’m in my forties, but right now…this is hard. Really, really hard. I’m tired, moody, and while I applied make-up to the dark circles under my eyes this morning, it may or may not be in the right place now.

More importantly, I may not be elegant while wrestling in a skirt, but…I can say, without a doubt, that I CAN wrestle in a skirt.