What's your policy on returning books that smell?

So have you seen that Luvs commercial with the mom in the restaurant who, after having kid #1, looks all haggard and on the edge of a nervous breakdown, but after having kid #2, she’s got it all together with showered hair and an “I am woman, see me nurse” attitude? (Here’s the youtube playback in case you’ve been living in a doomsday shelter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgmbJso-2-o). Well, I find the whole thing irresponsibly misleading.

Not the breastfeeding part. I could care less about that. If you feel comfortable enough to nurse in public, great, whatever. I didn’t…equally great, whatever. What I have a problem with is the idea that you’re supposed to have this whole mothering in public thing down as soon as kid #2 starts crowning. (And also that you’d be asking someone to look away from your rack because, honestly, after kid #2, business is slow.)

Like this well-composed matron, I too took my children to a restaurant by myself once. And I will never, EVER, do that shit again.

First of all, the coloring sheet that they gave Suttie kept him occupied for all of 18 seconds. Like, wham, bam, I’ve scratched two blue lines across this thing, and now I’m ready to party. Maybe it would have helped if the coloring sheet featured a more engaging character than a dancing piece of toast, but, truthfully, probably not.

So, I did what any reasonable parent in the 21^st century would have done when you’ve got a 1 year old trying to use the salt and pepper shakers like binoculars; I gave him my phone to play with. And it still surprises me the looks I get when people of a certain age see my four year old playing on my iPhone. But listen, folks, if you knew it was about meltdown thirty and you could only entertain one of your children until the food arrived, you’d be handing over your Jitterbug as well.

And once the food did arrive, that’s when the real fun started. After her first bite, Molly dropped her sippy cup and since that was such a laugh riot among the other guests, she proceeded to drop every bit of food that she had, leaving me to loosely apply the five-second rule so that she wouldn’t starve. Meanwhile, Suttie spilled his juice on my untouched sandwich, so my meal consisted of shards of mum-mum crackers that were spread across the table and, I’m not proud to say it, some free-floating fruit snacks that I found near the bottom of my purse.

And as we muddled through, with me having to get down on the food-covered floor every few seconds to search for paci, sippy, and food chunks covered in the least amount of hair, nearby patrons looked on (because, in those moments, who doesn’t want an audience?) and said asinine things like, “Oh, I remember those days.”  Do you, now? Well, do you also remember how awkward it was to have someone stare at you through those less-Walton moments? Quick! Turn around! There’s an elderly woman over there struggling to free her cane from the table legs and you’re totally missing it!

And that poor waitress. She could just tell that I was gonna leave all that mess on the floor…because I made a hand motion around the bottom of our table and mouthed “I’M SORRY.”

But it’s not just in restaurants where our kids can show the world how frazzled second-, third-, and fourth-time mothers can still be (fifth-time moms, you should really have your shit together by now). Today’s visit to the library was a prime example. I’ve been meaning to take the kids to the library all summer, but something always seemed to get in the way…swim lessons, endless errands, my night terrors of them ripping books apart with their teeth. But with only five days left before the end of summer, I’ve been trying to cram in all of the outings that I’ve previously avoided in the hopes that, when Suttie looks back at the pictures, he’ll think we rocked it from June all the way to August.  (We have a similar plan for Disney. I’ve just got to put the finishing touches on my Mickey and Goofy cut-outs and then…Voila! Their memories might say they’ve never been to the house of mouse, but these pictures of them next to a plywood Donald sure as hell do!)

Now, I should have known it wasn’t going to be a good day to visit a quiet, peaceful space. Earlier, coming back in from the porch, I clocked Molly straight on her forehead with the front door. And after she stopped screaming, I said, “And that’s why we watch where we’re walking,” to deflect some of my guilt. Needless to say, she was already in a special mood.

As soon as we walked into the library, Suttie took off for the computers because apparently we live in a primitive cave dwelling without electricity or running water the way he was charging at those screens. But this was a problem because he can’t work the computers by himself, and Molly’s 30-second stroller ride into the library was 15 seconds too long, as she was already contorting herself out of the straps and sputtering something like, “Release these chains, dark villain!”

So, I did the unthinkable, the unbelievable, the nearly unspeakable. I let her out. And while I was trying to help Suttie reset the computer’s language from Spanish to English because it takes a preschooler only 10 seconds to change the system’s fundamental setup, Molly had found her way over to a quiet study group in the corner and was trying to pull books out of one of the members’ backpacks without her noticing (which I have to say was pretty impressive…until she slammed one down on the floor and cackle laughed. If she could have held it together, we’d have ourselves a new ebay auction about now.)

After retrieving Pick-Pockets O’Neal, we sought out our borrowings. And I now know that it is impossible for a four year old to not pull books from the library shelves. Before we even left the car, I painstakingly reminded Suttie of the library’s dos and don’ts. Do be quiet. Don’t put your mouth on things. Do have fun. Don’t have so much fun that I have to beat you. One of those don’ts was don’t pull books from the shelves because we’ll never get them back in the right spots and the librarians will come to our house while you sleep and cut up your library card and then put a curse on our whole family (it’s important for kids to face real consequences).

But he physically couldn’t do it. And not for lack of trying. It was like Peter Pettigrew’s silver hand in Harry Potter. He didn’t want to pull them down and he fought against it, but the magnetic force between his fingers and those bindings was like something out of Star Wars. It scared us all.

So armed with at least fifteen books (because, rather than admit that I let my kid pull a bunch of books down that we didn’t want or need, I just played it cool like, “Yeah, we meant to get this book of Alabama roadmaps. Who doesn’t use paper maps these days?”), we went to check out, and about five steps from the checkout desk, Molly spat three large drops of some unidentified, half-digested liquid onto the carpeted floor. And there I was…with nothing. No wipes, no burpcloth, no rag…just me, a stroller full of books, a toddler writhing in my arms, and a kid walking next to me asking if they give out suckers. So I did what any reasonable mother would do, I looked around to see if anyone had noticed the vomitus incident and then I stepped over it. Because sometimes that’s all you can do – leave your crumbs (or bile) on the floor and shame-facedly speed walk out of there.

And I dare Mama Luvs to say she would have done anything differently because what they didn’t show at the end of that charming commercial was her acid-reluxing baby pull off the boob and spew curdled milk all over her well-ironed blouse while child #1 took a leak in the decorative fern. Oh, kids, we laugh, so that we don’t cry.