December 1, 2009

A Few Words from a Former A-Lister

Well, I finally seem to be coming out of my Turkey Day coma and I’m getting back into a routine of some sort and getting a post up today! I feel like such a slacker…but I guess that’s what consuming two or three pounds of food over the course of a long weekend does to you. I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday! I enjoyed a very quiet and pleasant Thanksgiving Day with my two boys, and then on Friday morning I hopped on a plane for a quick 24-hour trip to Pittsburgh (my hometown) for a family baby shower. I was so excited to take this trip for a few reasons. First, my mom was flying in from her home in Florida and meeting me there and I always love the chance to sneak in a visit with her even if it’s only for a few hours. She and I always have so many laughs when we are together, and there is usually plenty of wine involved resulting in even more comedy. This trip was no exception. Second, my grandfather lives in Pittsburgh and I don’t see him near enough, so it was so nice to catch up with him a little and fill him in on everything that is going on in my world these days. Third, basically my mom’s entire side of the family lives in Pittsburgh as well, and getting together with all of them is like coming home, no matter what state I happen to live in at the time. I guess I’ll always be a girl from the ‘Burgh at heart.

On Saturday morning, all of my lady relatives met up at one of our cousin’s houses and piled into three different cars to make the 45 minute drive to the baby shower. There were only two women in each car, but I won’t go into any further details on that. It’s a female thing I guess! When we arrived, we were greeted by the mother-to-be and she was glowing and looked absolutely stunning. She is one of those “cute pregnant chicks” who is all belly and hasn’t gained an ounce of weight anywhere else. Normally this would really tick me off, but this mama is one of the sweetest girls I’ve ever met, so I am making an exception to the rule and saying that she 100% deserves to be the “cute pregnant chick.” She doesn’t know how lucky she is that she looks so good. Everyone at her shower was commenting on how beautiful and tiny she was. When I was eight months pregnant, all I heard was plenty of people asking me, “What are you eating??” I would usually just shrug my shoulders a little and try and change the subject, but truthfully, I wanted to respond to that question by saying, “What am I eating? Everything in freakin’ sight you moron! In case you hadn’t noticed, I am PREGNANT and this is the one time in my life when I’m supposed to be able to chow down without any guilt, so please shut up and step aside so I can grab another Krispy Kreme donut!” (I’m not bitter or anything…I swear).

The shower was beautiful, and after a delicious sit down luncheon of plenty of rolls, salad, chicken stuffed with three different kinds of cheese, mashed potatoes, and a lovely slice of chocolate cake, a chair was brought to the front of the room so the mother-to-be could open all of her gifts. As I sat at my table and watched her admire all of the wonderful things she was receiving, I started to fidget in my chair a little. For the most part, I was fidgeting because the waist of my pants was starting to cut off my circulation after a Thanksgiving dinner complete with all the fixins, half a cookie sheet of nachos covered in chili and sharp cheddar cheese, rolls soaked in garlic butter, fried zucchini, chicken parm, and angel hair covered in more cheese from the delicious Italian dinner my granddad had treated me and Mom to the night before, half a bottle of wine (one of those BIG bottles) at his condo before dinner, two glasses of wine at the restaurant, and now everything that was just served to us at this baby shower. Are you getting the full effect? I hope so.

The other main reason that I started to fidget in my chair is because being at this baby shower brought back so many memories of my own baby shower four years earlier. I vividly remembered just how special I felt on that day…and pretty much every single day throughout my pregnancy. Being pregnant is a little like being a celebrity. For one thing, everyone loves you. I mean, EVERYONE! Everywhere I went, people who didn’t even know me would open doors for me, offer to carry things for me in stores, heck, I even think that someone gave up their table at a restaurant one time for me and my husband because they must have known that I needed to get fed a lot quicker than they did. I was a total A-lister! I was the star of the show and everyone did whatever they could to cater to my each and every need. I didn’t need a red carpet or papparazzi to know that all eyes were indeed on ME!

As I thought about this concept and kept watching the mother-to-be opening more gifts, I realized that a woman’s baby shower is pretty much her last hoo-rah. It is the very last time that she is the main attraction. As soon as that baby comes, she goes from A-lister to S-lister. I’m sure you are all wondering why I say “S-lister” instead of “B-lister” or even “C-lister”. The descriptions below should help clear a few things up.

1. The “A” in A-lister stands for so many different things. A few phrases that come to mind to describe the A-lister are, “Awww! She’s Absolutely Adorable!” “Awww! She will be the most Affectionate and Awesome mom!” “Awww! She must be ready to burst with Anticipation of that little Angel’s arrival!”

2. The “S” in S-lister can be summed up in these statements: “Screw you lady! Step aside Sister! There is a baby involved now and you’ve officially taken the backseat. See ya!

I’m sure this isn’t news that any of the preggo chicks out there want to hear. Sorry girls, but this is the God’s honest truth. Enjoy the spotlight now, because this is your last curtain call before your bundle arrives.

In thinking a little harder about the whole transition from A-lister to S-lister, I realized that part of the reason this shift is such a shocker to new moms is because of the false picture painted by the gifts they receive from baby shower guests. Now don’t get me wrong here…I mean, nobody wants to burst any pregnant chick’s bubble or anything like that, but some of the gifts that are given nowadays just really aren’t practical and I believe they provide the new mommy with an unrealistic expectation about how rosy and perfect things should be after that baby comes.

Let’s start with a gift that I’m sure all of us received at our own showers, the baby wipes warmer. I will be the first one to admit that I was overjoyed by that gift and at the thought of not having to shock my little one with a cold baby wipe on his little tush when I went to change him in the dead of winter. It was only after my poor baby boy had a bout of diarrhea at 3am that was seeping out of every opening of his little onesie that I realized that the last thing I wanted to do while cleaning him up was to add HEAT into the mix. I mean, why on earth would anyone want to add heat and amplify a stench like that? I unplugged the wipes warmer that night and never used it again. And you know what? My little one never batted an eyelash when I used room temperature wipes.

The next gift that is pretty much inevitable at every baby shower is the hand-knitted stark WHITE cardigan sweater. I mean, sure, it is absolutely darling and so thoughtful and I’d probably make one too if I knew how to knit or even sew for that matter, but C’MON!! Just as an adult wearing a white shirt is a magnet for spaghetti sauce, a handmade white sweater on a baby is practically begging to be thrown up on. All I can say for the sweater is to either stick the baby in it real quick for one photo to send to the gift giver, or from now on tell all the knitters out there to make the sweater in more of a baby formula cream color to at least make the puke stains less noticeable.

The final gifts of impracticality that I’d like to discuss are rattles or any sort of noisemakers for that matter. Sure, they are cute, and it is cute to shake them in front of the baby a little in the hopes of catching a glimpse of what is indeed, a smile, and not some bout of gas. What isn’t cute is when that baby is screaming his head off while you have some sort of visitor over there who thinks that she knows all the tricks for calming down a screaming baby and one of those seems to be shaking a rattle in the poor little bundle’s face. Yeah, just what the new mom AND the kid need. MORE noise.

Since I’ve taken it upon myself to discuss all of the gifts that I think are completely impractical, I decided that it was only fitting for me to come up with some sort of gift that I believe a new mom will just get way more use out of. Thus, the “S-lister Survival Kit” was born. I am pledging right now that for any baby shower I attend in the future, I will be slipping Miss Preggo a gift under the table while no one is looking. I will tell her to take that gift home, and not to open it until about two weeks after she brings the new addition home from the hospital. I really think I may be on to something here.

Contents of the S-lister Survival Kit:

- A nice supply of assorted “nips” (airplane sized bottles of booze…perfect to drown out the agony a little)

- Bottle of eye makeup remover (to clean up unintentional streaks from the incessant bouts of crying)

- A few Tide pens (no explanation needed)

- Brown paper bag (in case of hyperventalation)

- Copy of book “Babyproofing Your Marriage” (give me one new mommy who hasn’t had one negative thought about her husband in the few weeks after bringing the baby home and I’ll provide her with her very own medal of honor. She’s lying by the way…)

- A pack of cloth diapers to be used as burp pads (They’re the BEST and there is just no need for the cute little burp pads with teddy bears on them. Those don’t soak up a thing!)

- A bottle of Baby Powder (not for the baby…but to put in her hair to soak up the grease on days when she can’t shower…so, for most days of the week)

- A bag of Hershey Kisses (just so she knows that someone loves her and is thinking about her and has gone through the same challenges as her and she’s not alone…and also just because sometimes a piece of chocolate just makes everything better)

- A tube of Preparation H or Tucks Pads (because if she knows me at all then she knows I’m not shy about post-baby hemorrhoids)

- A little card with the web address to this blog (in the hopes that I can help her feel more normal by providing a few laughs on sleepless nights)

- A Tiara (for days when she just needs to feel like a princess again…why not? She deserves it!)

I guess the cat’s out of the bag on what any of my future mom-to-be friends can expect to receive from me at their baby showers. Hope I still make the guest list!

The Mommyologist’s Last Word: There is something that all the S-listers have to look forward to. Trust me when I say that you will feel like an A-lister again when your baby grows up a little, looks at you adoringly and says, “I think you’re the best Mommy in the whole world! Thanks for making popcorn!” I know I felt like a celebrity when my son said that to me last night during our “Grinch Who Stole Christmas” pajama party. It made all of my S-lister moments more than worth it!



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Posted Under: baby shower, new mom, pregnant
November 21, 2009

Tall Tales From La-La Land: Volume Two

Ok…let’s see…where shall I begin?

I came home late this afternoon from running the day’s errands and had a nice story going in my head for what my next post would be all about. I came in the house, set my son up with the Happy Meal I’d just bought for him, and started the process of checking my emails, facebook, twitter, and of course my blog. I didn’t get past checking my emails before I decided I just had to save my original idea for a later post because more than one person had sent me a message wanting to know my thoughts on a completely appalling article that came out today. I decided that it would just be a complete and total disgrace to the “Mom-Code” if I didn’t share my reactions to this disgusting story with all of the other “I don’t have 5 different nannies and a celebrity trainer”- challenged gals out there. The self-esteem-extinguishers over at Yahoo! even had the nerve to post it on their home page today. If you’ve already been on Yahoo!, then I’m sure you can guess which article I’m referring to. If not, I’m posting the link below for your reading displeasure. If you’re drinking a hot beverage right now you may want to put it down first before clicking.

“Heidi Klum Bounces Back after Baby”

As if the Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. new baby article featured in People that I discussed in an earlier post, Can We Please Cut The Crap Already?, wasn’t enough to make every new mom in America feel completely fat and useless, Victoria’s Secret had to go ahead and shove Heidi Klum onto a runway just five weeks after giving birth.

“Are You Freakin’ Kidding Me?”

After I clicked the link to the article on Yahoo!’s home page, it brought me to the page that they refer to as “OMG.” I am going to assume that this stands for “Obnoxiously Manipulative Garbage.” I call it manipulative because once again, it is aimed to fool new mommies, not to mention impressionable teenage and college-age girls into thinking that the celebrity world is in fact reality and that it is the “norm” for how women are expected to look and behave. The title to the story on that page reads: “Heidi Klum “Excited” About Walking Runway Five Weeks After Baby!” Excuse me? Did I read that right? She’s excited about walking the runway? Five weeks after I gave birth I wasn’t even excited about walking downstairs in the morning let alone some runway. To be quite honest, I wasn’t even excited about getting out of bed in the morning after having to get out of bed twenty times the previous night. You know what I was excited about five weeks after giving birth? I was excited that my baby was off the boob by then and I could indulge in a glass of wine or five every night. I was excited when the weekend came because I knew with the hubster around there was a 99% chance that I would get to take a shower. I was excited because the hemorrhoids that had plagued me for nine months strait were finally starting to shrink a little. Heidi Klum can HAVE her runway. I would’ve been content if someone would’ve dropped off some Preparation-H.

After declaring how excited she was to be back doing fashion shows just a short five weeks after childbirth, (and let’s not forget that it’s her FOURTH child that she’s just given birth to), Heidi went on to say that she is “keeping it all together.” I’m sorry, but how can she claim that she herself is keeping three kids and a newborn together when we all know very well that she most definitely has an entire army of people who are doing the actual “keeping it all together” so that she can spend her time in a more productive manner by modeling sexy lingerie and having her hair and nails professionally done on a daily basis. Why can’t Heidi, (or any other celebrity mom out there for that matter), go a different route and be HONEST for a change and say something more like, “I live a privileged life and I am very fortunate to have an entourage of people who get up with my newborn baby in the middle of the night so I don’t have bags under my eyes, take my other children to and from preschool, play with them and take them to the park, do the laundry for a household of six, clean my entire house on a daily basis, and deliver calorie-proportioned meals to my kitchen after I’m done with my three hour workout session with my trainer in my private home gym.” Guess she thinks it’s just easier to keep up with the illusion of perfection than to give a little bit of a sigh of relief to “normal” new mommies.

When asked about how her new bundle was doing, Miss Klum went on to say, “She’s great. I pre-pumped a lot of milk, left it in the freezer.” I need some clarification here please. It is common knowledge to anyone who is breast feeding or has ever breast fed that the more frequently your baby eats, or the more you pump, the more OFTEN you have to empty your breasts. How many times a day is this woman pumping in order to have enough of a supply of breast milk to keep her baby satisfied for hours if not days on end? I mean, some of those top-of-the-line breast pumps are pretty good, but they aren’t good enough to turn you into a milk factory for God sakes! If she’s pumping as much as she implies, then they must have her in some pretty incredible corset to bind the twins together and stop them from bursting out of the top of her bustier otherwise she’d never make it through an entire fashion show. Maybe I’m a complete and total idiot, but I just can’t seem to wrap my head around this one.

It wouldn’t be a celebrity interview without asking the question of how she’s lost the baby weight. Heidi’s response was, “Every time it’s the same. You know, if you kind of gain 45 pounds, then it takes time to kind of go down again.” Let me translate this statement out of la-la-land language into something that everyday moms can understand. What Heidi was really trying to say was, “I will be completely humiliated if everyone reading this article realizes that I actually gained more like 50 pounds…45 sounds better, so let’s go with that. I still have 20 more pounds to go and I don’t really want them to know that either, so I’ll just be vague and go the whole “kind of” route. Hopefully the readers won’t realize that in all actuality, Victoria’s Secret has my fat ass crammed into three layers of Spanx, and underneath the layers of tuille and some other unknown material, I don’t have a six-pack yet and my hips are still a few inches bigger than they were before I popped out four kids.” I guarantee she would’ve won a medal if she’d admitted it.

I’m sure that this won’t be the last time that I go off on a rant about how Hollywood is single-handedly giving at least half of the women in America a self-image complex. It is one of those subjects that really hits close to home for me and brings back memories of feeling hopeless and alone and wondering what in the hell I was doing wrong because I didn’t look exactly like some model on a magazine cover. It is my hope that us mamas and all women for that matter can band together and spread the word that it is OK to be sleep deprived, fat, and a complete sobbing soup sandwich after having a child.

I can think of no better way to close this post than with a comparision of Miss Heidi’s photo five weeks after giving birth, and a photo of me five weeks after giving birth. While Heidi looks like a Vegas Show girl, in my photo you will notice that my hair has not been washed, and you can tell that my pre-baby clothes are nowhere close to fitting me because I’m sitting on a couch in a pair of lounge shorts and a Bad-Dog Beer T-shirt. Did I mention that I’m holding my five-week old little guy in this photo? Isn’t that what a mom should be doing five weeks post-baby instead of walking the catwalk?


The Mommyologist’s Last Word: “For those of you who’d like to tune in, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show will air on December 1st. I plan on watching and paying close attention to Heidi in the hopes that her illusion will be exposed by a Tuck’s Medicated Pad falling out of her outfit.”

Note: Heidi Klum photo courtesy of Yahoo!.com


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Posted Under: celebrity, Hollywood, new mom
November 12, 2009

Tall Tales From La-La Land: Volume One

Yesterday evening as my little one was happily watching the new “Up” DVD that I’d bought him earlier that day at Target, I took advantage of having a few moments to myself and picked up the issue of People that I bought last week but never got around to reading. It’s the issue that has Fergie on the cover with the article titled “Rocked By Scandal.” I love a good Hollywood scandal because it makes me feel better about my own “normal” life, so I thought that this magazine would be a fun read. There was also a cover article with the first photos of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr.’s new baby girl, Charlotte, which I was even more interested in. Ever since I had my own baby, I’ve just been way more interested in anything celebrity baby related. I’ve always thought that Sarah Michelle and Freddie seemed like a pretty down to earth couple, well, atleast they seem as down to earth as you can possibly get out there in la-la-land, so I was really looking forward to reading all about their new addition.

I wasn’t surprised that Sarah Michelle looked absolutely stunning in all of her photos in this article. There were no bags under her eyes, her hair had actually been washed and blown out and looked all voluminous, her make-up was perfect, and it looked as if she was already back in her skinny jeans just six weeks after giving birth. (That BITCH)! At any rate, this really didn’t bother me at all, because I’m sure that if People magazine got a hold of me and prepped me for a photo shoot, I would look absolutely hot as hell and would graduate right back up to MILF status. I mean, c’mon, it’s a magazine and anyone looks good after a team of professionals has worked them over from head to toe.

The article started off okay and I was actually kind of nodding my head in agreement as miss Sarah Michelle talked about how she can’t remember anything anymore unless she writes it down. “I can relate to that”, I thought. I can’t even remember to pick up milk at the grocery store unless I have it on my shopping list or my three-and-a-half year old is there to remind me to add it to the cart. It’s pretty bad when you rely on your preschooler to remember what items are needed from the grocery store. I was almost fooled into thinking that maybe, just maybe this Hollywood star was just like the rest of us and was trying to get through the first couple months of mommyhood without being admitted to a mental institution. Then I made the mistake of turning the page to continue reading the article. That is when the inevitable celebrity bullshit started.

I think that Sarah Michelle officially lost me when she declared that she went into labor at the gym. The gym? Seriously? I can remember doing a prenatal yoga DVD up until about my sixth month and then laughing hysterically because I was just too big to get into any of the poses. During my last trimester, I was lucky to walk out to the mailbox without breaking a sweat let alone hit the gym! My fat butt was perfectly content to sit on the couch, eat snacks and watch soap operas and Oprah. The article then went on to tell how she came home from the gym and still did not realize she was in labor. Um, hello? All I know is that when I was in labor clutching the side rails of the hospital bed to try and deal with the agony, there was no mistaking what was taking place. According to Freddie, Sarah Michelle was, “calm, very centered, and very prepared.” He also compared his wife to Ghandi. Ok, at this point I was reeling and felt like I was about to puke. Ghandi? On the day of my son’s birth, my poor husband probably would’ve compared me to either Humpty Dumpty or the girl from the Exorcist.

I don’t know why I even kept reading this article, but I guess since I was already that far in I thought I might as well finish and see what other good laughs I could get from it. I about threw the damn magazine across the room when Sarah Michelle announced that they “do have someone who helps five days a week”, and that Freddie is “very hands on” and wouldn’t let her change a diaper the whole first week and cooked her all these amazing meals. All I know is that I can 100% guarantee that if we’d had someone helping us out five days a week when my son was born, I wouldn’t have had to change a diaper either. And if there was someone there helping out, then why in the hell would I even have my husband bother to change a diaper? Even better, my hubby is an awesome cook, so if there was someone else there besides us who was already changing the baby’s diaper, feeding him, AND getting up with him in the middle of the night so my husband would have the time and the energy to cook up some amazing meals, then I would’ve said, “More power to ya honey! Cook away!” As if I wasn’t already irritated enough, little miss Sarah Michelle had to top things off by saying that she “wasn’t going back to work anytime soon.” Let me get this straight. The chick isn’t working, yet she still feels the need to have someone there “helping” five days a week. What the hell is she doing all day if she’s not working and someone else is taking care of her baby girl? Ok, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. She’s probably doing all sorts of luxurious things that I only dreamt of as a new mom like bathing, eating, sleeping, etc. Needless to say, I am totally over Sarah Michelle and Freddie.

After I finished reading that article, I paused for a moment to think about why it bothered me so much. I mean, it was pretty typical of any other celebrity baby story I’ve ever read. It dawned on me that the reason I get so upset about these types of articles is because somewhere out there, there is a brand new-mom who is sitting there on her sofa and crying reading that article because she thinks that is “the norm” and she can’t understand why she is still carrying her baby weight after six weeks, why she looks and feels like absolute hell, and why in her completely sleep deprived and overwhelmed state of mind she is questioning whether this was the right time for her to have a child. I know that she is out there because three-and-a-half years ago I WAS that girl, and I’d never felt so isolated in my life. I just want to shout from the rooftops to all of those poor new mommies out there who are feeling the same way that YOU ARE NORMAL and HOLLYWOOD IS A FREAKIN’ FAIRYTALE!

The false picture doesn’t stop with the celebrity baby articles, actually those are just the beginning. If you want to see a good example of how Hollywood tries to trick women into thinking that it is normal for mothers to look like beauty queens 24-hours a day, just tune into “Ghost Whisperer” every Friday night. Before I go any further, I will say that I love Ghost Whisperer, and I have absolutely nothing against Jennifer Love Hewitt. I think she’s cute as a button and for the record, that girl is NOT fat. On the show this season, her character, Melinda, has a five-year old little boy to take care of, and she also manages an antique store and talks to ghosts and solves their problems in her “spare time.” Take a good look at Melinda the next time you watch. I mean, the chick is dressed to the nines in every single episode! They have her in these dresses that I can’t even think of an occasion in my normal mommy life where it would be appropriate to wear them. I didn’t even look that fancy at my own prom! And don’t even get me started on the make-up. I put on make-up every day too, but I put on subtle “mom” make-up. I don’t look like I’m going to the Academy Awards when I drop my son off at preschool. I think they even have her wearing false eyelashes! What mommy in her right mind has time to glue fake little hairs to her eyelids on a daily basis? Let’s not forget to mention the fact that her hair is always perfectly curled and is never pulled back into the dreaded “I haven’t washed my hair in two days” ponytail. Apparently that would just be a disgrace on the Ghost Whisperer set. On last week’s episode, there was a scene where she woke up in the middle of the night and was having some sort of ghostly vision. As she sat up in the bed, I noticed that her bedtime attire was right up to par with her daytime look. She had on this sexy, black underwire bustier looking thing. I’m sorry, but do normal women really sleep in underwire? I go to sleep each night in an old Kappa Kappa Gamma t-shirt and pajama pants from Old Navy. I may not be the sexiest chick on the block but atleast I don’t wake up with red marks under my boobs from the underwire cutting into me!

Hollywood sure paints a glamorous picture of their mommies, that’s for sure! Out here in the land of REALITY though, it’s just a totally different story. This morning I was rushing around getting my son ready for preschool, and I was so pleased with myself because I managed to get dressed, get my make-up on, (once again, no time for a shower because I wanted to have coffee), and get downstairs and ready to go with about seven minutes to spare. I left the house thinking that I may not be a celebrity, but I looked pretty damn good for getting ready in 20 minutes.

After I dropped the little man off, I ran to the grocery store to pick up something to have for dinner tonight. I was totally psyched because pork tenderloins were buy one get one free. SCORE! I noticed as I made my way around the store that I was getting a couple of weird looks from people, but I just figured maybe they were impressed with the new color job that I got at the salon a couple weeks ago. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized what they were staring at. In my mad morning dash to get ready on time, I had put my shirt on inside out.

Not only had I walked all over the Big-Y grocery store with tags hanging off the side of me…I’d also dropped off my son at school dressed like this. I wonder if the other preschool moms even noticed? Nah, probably not! And even if they did, they’d probably just think to themselves, “Thank GOD that girl is a normal mom just like the rest of us!”

The Mommyologist’s Last Word: “If you want a real and honest picture of what a brand new mom looks like, put down the People and head to your local mall at around 10am. You will then catch a glimpse of the “stroller patrol” complete with plenty of other new mommies who are out there, just trying to get through the day one leaky boob at a time!”



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Posted Under: Hollywood, magazines, new mom, TV shows