The Weekend Book

My 3-year-old attends preschool, and a week ago… yeah, that’s right, A WEEK AGO, we were fortunate enough to be the first family to take home The Weekend Book.

The Weekend Book consists of a basket, a stuffed animal and a black-and-white composition notebook, which you’re supposed to fill out, telling your weekend family story. It’s an adorable premise and I remember enjoying it with my oldest child, but life was a lot less complicated seven years ago. When Monkey’s teacher handed me The Weekend Book this time I saw stars, spinning Bugs Bunny, and felt faint. I didn’t need to add something else to my list. I think Monkey’s teacher, whom I’ve known for a gazillion years, saw the look in my eye and promised I could keep the book longer than the weekend (as we didn’t have school this past Friday). That was 10 days ago, and I just sat down to fill out The Weekend Book now. Ultimate slacker. At least I’m consistent.

I’d taken pictures of all the smiley moments we’ve had in the past two weekends and I cut them out, glued them into the book, and wrote cute, anecdotal stories about the fun weekend and the nice things we’d done. The Weekend Book is like the real-world Facebook. Everyone is all “Ohhh” and “Ahhh” and “my kid is so cute” and “share if you’re the mother of a son with webbed feet and you love him no matter what.” The Weekend Book is a mirage for the family I wish I actually had. The family where babies never cry and toddlers never throw Legos at your ass and no one ever asks for lollipops at 6AM: where you don’t itch your face and find poop on your finger, where there is no “he hit me” and “he hit me first.”

This got me thinking: What if I were to be honest with The Weekend Book? I mean, yes, there were good times during the weekend, Duh? I have the smiley pictures to prove it… but what if I were to chuck the ridiculous shit in there too? The real-deal truth that happens over here? So here I go…

The REAL Weekend Book….

We were utterly mortified to have The Weekend Book this week. On Friday, Mommy made a fantastic dinner, which no one ate because the three year old seemed to think there were onions in it. There were not. After dinner, Mommy did the dishes and cursed under her breath that the dishwasher is falling apart, while Daddy tried to bathe all the kids without incident to no avail. There were incidents. Many incidents. Including the one where the oldest boys wanted to both pee in the toilet at the same time. More clean up for Mommy. She hates that shit.

After dessert, attempted to beat each other into submission while fighting for couch dominance. No one was the victor here and bedtime was pushed up by 15 minutes.

On Saturday, we had lots of soccer games, and Mommy was a complete psycho trying to find all of our uniforms, water bottles, and socks. Mommy is completely unable to focus and should probably be on a regular schedule with a mental health professional.

Saturday night, we had another gourmet dinner which nobody touched again, because the three year old was convinced he saw blood in a fully cooked, boneless, skin-less, chicken thigh. Then Mommy drank wine and pretended she was childless.

On Sunday, we had a completely anxiety ridden walk to the farmers market while the three year old scared the shit out of Mommy with his scooter riding fearless ways. Mommy bought two pounds of shrimp to make for dinner and no one will eat it because that’s how we roll.

Mommy is really thankful for the teachers’ of her children. She filled out The Weekend Book because there WERE good times in the last 10 days (she has the pictures to prove it) and because these poor teachers already have to deal with her kids at school.

They don’t want to know the crazy shit that happens at home.

Related post: The Morning Routines of Four Regular Women