Why I Watch "Toddlers and Tiaras"

With the updates to the house almost complete, Peanut due to arrive any nanosecond, and temperatures reaching the high 80s (we don’t have central AC, but I’m sure you guessed that), tensions have been running high in the C household.  Apparently, my husband and I aren’t the only ones coping with copious amounts of stress.  A few days ago, Minnow asked me to get her coloring books and crayons so she could color at the kitchen table.  I obliged, and as she sat coloring I scrubbed some dishes in the sink.  A few minutes later I turned around to find her methodically peeling the wrappers off each crayon. 

“Minnow, why are you doing that?” I inquired.

“Because it helps me feel better.”

Interesting.  When I’m stressed I usually make a list or go for a long run, but, you know, different strokes for different folks.

I mean, can you blame the kid for feeling a little frazzled lately?  According to Baby Center, toddler stress is real, and can be brought on by the following:

“…having too many planned activities, the lack of a stable routine, feeling sick, a move, a separation from a beloved caregiver, or the arrival of a new sibling.”

In the last three months Minnow has been through two moves; has gone from living with her beloved grandparents and favorite dog, Harry, to spending the majority of her days with just me; and is anticipating a new baby to disrupt the only-child lifestyle she has enjoyed since birth.

Rationally, I understand what’s going on but, emotionally, my stressed-out toddler is making me feel like I am failing miserably at motherhood. Her usually cheerful and cooperative personality has been replaced by someone who, in her own words, “[Doesn’t] want to do ANYTHING!.”  Our mornings usually start out well, but unravel after she has finished her breakfast.  For example, on Tuesday I wanted to bathe Minnow before her swimming lesson at noon.  First she screamed because she didn’t want to get into the tub.  Then she screamed because she didn’t want to get out of the tub.  She refused to use the potty, then she refused to put on her swim diaper.  She fought me with feet and fists as I struggled to get her into her car seat, and sobbed during the five-minute drive to the pool, “But I don’t want to go to swim lessons!  I don’t want to do ANYTHING!”

Then when she got to the pool, she said, “Mommy, can me pick out my own goggles?  I want the pink ones!”

Every day has been like this since we moved into the new house.  It’s like living with someone who suffers from unmedicated bi-polar disorder, which I guess most toddlers do, in a way.  My days are spent dreaming up ways to keep Minnow happy, and those ways usually include too many Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies and too much time spent watching “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood" on the iPad.  At times like these, when I’m feeling like just about the most unqualified mother in America, only one thing will lift my spirits:

“Toddlers and Tiaras.”

Confession: There are few things I enjoy more after putting Minnow to bed than kicking back on the couch with a bowl of Edy's Slow Churned ice cream (or a Shake Shack shake, if my husband is so inclined) and watching two or three episodes of this TLC gem.  The mothers of “Toddlers and Tiaras” help me realize that even on our most out-of–sorts days, I could be making far more questionable decisions as a parent.  After all, I can honestly say that I have never:

- Spray-tanned my toddler;

- Fed my toddler Pixie Sticks, Red Bull, or something called “Tinker Tea,” which is, evidently, a concoction comprised of Pixie Sticks, lemonade, and soda (soda!);

- Called another person’s toddler “ugly;”

- Suggested to my toddler that “stripper” is an acceptable career choice, as long as she does it “fabulously;”

- Criticized my toddler for not having (or doing- I don’t know what the correct terminology is here) “pretty feet;”

- Allowed my toddler to ride in an ATV, with or without a helmet;

- Put false eyelashes on my toddler’s eyes, false teeth in my toddler’s mouth, or makeup on my toddler’s face (Although I have, on occasion, painted her toenails the same Essie color as my pedicure, so we could match);

- Told my toddler, in either a positive or negative way, that she looks like a “prosti-tot;”

- Allowed my toddler’s lunch to be spoonfuls of mayonnaise (mayonnaise!) straight out of the jar;

- Threatened to “kick the shit” out of another parent in front of my toddler (or ever!);

I don’t mean to criticize other people’s parenting styles (cough, cough); after all, being a parent is, by far, the most challenging thing I’ve ever done, and I went to law school.  I don't doubt that the parents on "Toddlers and Tiaras" genuinely love their children, even if they have a funny way of showing it.  I’m just saying that the next time Minnow wants to lament her misfortune because I insist on washing her hair or giving her something other than carbs for a snack, she might do well to think about little Mackenzie or Brooklyn, who certainly have more stress in their lives than she does.

Over the Bridge, Pt. 1: Home Is Wherever I'm with You

We’re halfway across the Throgs Neck when I catch a glimpse of Minnow, quietly cuddling her favorite purple dog in the backseat, and burst into tears.

“What’s that noise?” she asks, craning her neck to see around the boxes and mounds of clothing we’ve loaded into the car. 

My husband shoots me a reproachful look.  I’ve made it a rule to never let my children see me cry, but the events of the past month have tested that rule’s durability.  “Mommy is sad,” he states simply. 

“I didn’t even let her say goodbye,” I emit between sobs.  “She has no idea that she’s never going back.”  In our haste to pack the car and beat the late-day traffic, I had completely forgotten to ceremoniously mark Minnow’s last exit from our apartment by having her wave bye-bye to each room, as I'd planned.  It was, in my hormone-fueled estimation, an epic mom-fail.

“She’s two,” my husband reminds me.  “She’s already over it.”

To prove his point he addresses our daughter through the rearview mirror.  “Minnow, you know we’re not going to live in A7 anymore, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Because Mommy and Daddy bought a bigger, better house.”

“Yeah.”

“But that house isn’t ready yet, so we’re going to stay with Mimi and Grandpa for a little while.”

Minnow doesn’t respond.

“Is that okay with you?”

“Yeah.”

As we continue across the bridge, wisps of doubt swirl through my mind.  This is what I wanted, right?  To be pregnant with our second child.  It was all I could think about in the months before we conceived, but now that we’re nearing my due date, our old life- the three of us living in a rented two-bedroom walk-up in Bronxville, New York- feels just right.  Peanut is changing everything, and I struggle against so much change at once like an overturned tortoise seeking solid ground.

As a mother, I also worry about what all this change will do to Minnow and her fragile, two-year-old psyche.  The Bronxville apartment is the second in which Minnow has lived, and the first that she has truly known but will probably not remember, in her short twenty-nine months.  We moved to Bronxville eighteen months ago after we outgrew our majestic one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  What that apartment lacked in space it made up for in charm and convenience, with its sweeping vistas of the American Museum of Natural History and one-block walk to the 77^th Street entrance of Central Park.  On Thanksgiving mornings my husband and I could watch the Macy’s Day Parade balloons bob by our windows minutes before we’d see them appear on the live television broadcast.   It was a matchless home with a Shake Shack on the corner.  We were going to live there forever, or at least until we had our first child. 

But our first child, Minnow, came unexpectedly- a few months after our first wedding anniversary- and because we weren’t yet ready to shed our Manhattan skins, the three of us toughed it out in our shared bedroom for as long as we could muster.  Three weeks after celebrating Minnow’s first birthday- in true Upper West Side fashion, with afternoon tea at Alice’s Tea Cup, a picnic supper in Sheep’s Meadow, and cupcakes by Magnolia Bakery- we boxed up the life we had crammed into 600 square feet and headed north to Westchester County, where, for the same rent, we could afford an extra bedroom, a formal dining room, and double the square footage.

The Bronxville apartment was the perfect transitional residence for a family reluctant to part with the allures of city life.  The 25-minute morning commute into Grand Central on the Metro North was easier on my husband than his former indefinite sojourns underground, waiting for the B or C trains to materialize.  The Bronx River Pathway proved to be a suitable, if not wholly comparable, substitute running route for the Central Park Loop.  And although, in solidarity with our suburban neighbors, we bought a Jeep, I still preferred to do my errands the Manhattan way: By buckling Minnow into the UPPABaby and high-tailing it to the post office, cheese shop, wine store, and children’s boutique, collecting bulky packages in the undercarriage as I went.

Although I missed Manhattan terribly, the Bronxville apartment gradually grew on me.  It was there that Minnow mastered the art of toddling, and then walking, and then, to our downstairs neighbors’ chagrin, the art of galloping at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning while pulling a plastic toy tow truck behind her.  It was there that Minnow jubilantly used the potty for the first time, before steadfastly refusing to do so again for several months.  And it was there that I discovered our cozy little family would soon be expanding. 

I will miss the mornings spent eating sliced banana and watching Sesame Street with Minnow in the sun-drenched living room perched high in the treetops.  I will miss the afternoons spent trailing Minnow as she scoots around the playground adjacent to our building in a plastic canopied car, loading invisible groceries into its trunk.   I will not miss the minutes spent pleading with Minnow to climb the 53 steps to our apartment on her own because my belly is swelling and my doctor says I can no longer carry her.  Simply put, I will miss the days spent together, just the two of us.

Like I said, Peanut is changing everything.  When we learned about this pregnancy, we knew our days of living in a spacious but inconvenient fourth-floor walk-up with no overnight parking and shared laundry facilities were dwindling.  After almost four years of renting, it was time to buy a house.

And buy a house we did, with its own driveway and washer and dryer.  It’s an old, four-bedroom, side-hall colonial with a whitewashed brick façade and impeccably manicured lawn in an excellent school district on Long Island, my husband’s native land.  I couldn’t have dreamed up a better house for our family.  When we close in three weeks, it will, without a doubt, be one of the happiest days of my life.  But right now, as we prepare to plunk all our well-loved belongings into storage and temporarily move in with my in-laws on the North Shore, I have never felt farther from that first apartment on the Upper West Side, farther from that transitional apartment in Bronxville, farther from home.  

We finish crossing the bridge and merge onto the Cross Island Parkway.  I wipe away the tears blurring my vision with a glove-compartment napkin and glance at my husband, deeply focused on the road ahead, and my daughter, drinking in the view of the Long Island Sound from the security of her car seat, and am reminded of the chorus of the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes song “Home:”

Ahh, Home

Let me come Home

Home is wherever I’m with you;

Ahh, Home

Yes I am Home

Home is whenever I’m with you.

If home is a state of mind, rather than a place, then I am determined to make this next episode of my life the homiest yet.