I’m not talking about when you’re knocked up. Puking. Hungry. Tired. Constipated. Dreading 20 hours of back-breaking labor only to have to be dragged in for an emergency c-section.

No, I’m talking about when there are kids around. We all have our own signs that there are kids around. Some are gender-specific, like Barbie shoes stuck in the bottom of your feet. Others are gender-neutral, like your increased amounts served at wine-o’clock. After the Pookies got back from this whole 12 days with the Biological Bum, I had my own signs that I was again withchild.

Shit … Everywhere

This morning I got up and was immediately reminded that I was again withchild simply because there was shit. Everywhere. I’m talking bath towels on the floor. Underpants in the living room. Barbie shoes in my bed. And then there were those godawful princess coloring pages.

Are your kids a fan of coloring? Disney has these coloring page packets that are great for travel, horrible for anything else. They come with eighty individual coloring sheets and a few miniature markers. There’s Princess, Cars, Mickey, Tinkerbell … a whole host of options to choose from, but they make such a mess. And then a marker is lost and it’s like the end of the fucking world because we still have forty pages left to color, and what will we do without blue?!

Shit … everywhere.

Yoga Pants … All Day

I don’t know what it is about being withchild that makes a woman lower her personal standards.

I woke up this morning and thought to myself ‘man, I could spend a couple hours getting ready and look really cute today, for which I have nothing to look cute for … or I could spend 15 minutes showering and getting into yoga pants, then clean up all that shit that’s everywhere in my house.”

I went with the yoga pants. Those little princess coloring pages really annoy me.

Unicorns In Every Nook and Cranny

I suppose this is a gender-specific thing. Or maybe it isn’t? Not sure … I don’t have any boys around here except my husband – and he’s actually a fan of the unicorns too.

Today we climbed right back onto the homeschooling horse; although, I took it a little easy for this first day back. It was handwriting, flashcards, reading at the library, and then “pick a project” as a reward. The project picked was – of course – an art project: puff painting these cute, little bags I got for a buck each at Michaels. It’s a reward for doing the work I assigned earlier in the day, so whatever.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when I returned to the living room where said project was being done and there were unicorns all over the bags. Unicorns and rainbows. The only thing that would have been better would have been if the unicorns were shitting the rainbows. Alas, that appears to not have been included.

All-Kid Acitivites, All the Time

After we did our homeschooling, I thought it would be nice if we went to the harbor. Every day we have “chores” to do, beyond my meaningless housewifey chores. Clean Agamemnon’s cage. Change Paris and Menelaus’s tank water. Stuff like that. Tuesdays and Thursdays are physical fitness-related chores; Tuesday’s being a 30 minute walk. So the harbor seemed nice.

After the 30 minutes of walking, though, of course we had to move on to the carousel and game room, nestled in the corner of the harbor village that I always try to avoid. $20 later, and a little bit of motion-sickness on my part from the carousel, I was so delirious I didn’t even realize what I was doing when I popped a whole dollar’s worth of tokens into Zoltar, the fortune teller.

He told me I talk too much. No shits and giggles. He told me I need to learn to shut my mouth.

Stuff Where Stuff Should Not Be

I’ve found things where they should not be all day. All fucking day.

I found a stuffed dolphin in my wine rack.

I found a box of markers in my hamper.

I sat down on the sofa and stood up to find a Cabbage Patch Doll’s hairbrush up my ass.

Perhaps the most ostensive sign of being withchild is that there is always stuff where stuff should not be.

The Return of Wine O’clock

And at the end of the day, when all is said and done: when the Barbie shoes have been picked up and the Cabbage Patch Doll hair brushes have been removed from the ass; when the day of “do your schoolwork” and “pick up your dirty clothes” and the “get in the tub” naggings have come to an end; once all the asses have been wiped, the errands have been done, and the laundry has been folded… Wine O’clock returns.

So I am definitely withchild again. Are you? Some may really have some classic signs – the nausea and the vomiting. A little bit of headache and sleepiness. I have Cabbage Patch Doll hair brushes up my ass and a delirium of unicorns, prancing everywhere. What are your signs?

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