Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Lies, Scary Mommy and a Giveaway! {Giveaway now closed.}


Jill Smoker (a.k.a. Scary Mommy) has a hilarious new book out: Motherhood Comes Naturally (and Other Vicious Lies) and it got me to thinking what was the biggest "mommy myth" I was told?

For me, the most vicious lie was from the numerous people who told me:

"It will be no problem for your toddler to share a room with the new baby."

To which I now know I should have replied to with a maniacal "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha" laugh.

When my not quite two-year-old daughter Magpie was given her new roommate, Baby Kay, it was a disaster from Day 1.

We had a small two-bedroom apartment in New York City, and we were determined to make this work. There weren't exactly a lot of alternatives. Our bedroom was too small to include a crib, which left the hall, the living room, and the kitchen as the only other options. (Yes, I do know New Yorkers who have utilized all of the above, as well as the bathroom and the closet, but I didn't want to be one of them.)

So we tried everything to make the little ladies work out as roomies.

We put the baby to sleep, and snuck the toddler in.

We put the toddler to sleep, and snuck the baby in.

We put them to sleep simultaneous, each parent with their assigned charge.

Nothing worked. You know what our kids thought of sharing a room?

Maniacal "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha." laughter.

Eventually, when every bed permutation had been explored, every partition option from hanging sheets to folding screens to strategically placed bookshelves did not work, we just moved the baby's crib into the living room, and took to spending the evenings in our bedroom.

And when the baby woke-up every time we tried to walk thought the living room to the kitchen, we moved the baby's crib back into the girls' bedroom, and moved the toddler to the sofa. It sounded so tacky to say our kid slept on the sofa that we tried to put a high-class gloss on it by referring to the sofa as "slumby." For a year, Magpie slept on slumby and peace reigned in our apartment.

Eventually the girls did learn to share a room, but it was never at any point in the transition "no problem."

And that's not the only vicious lie! Head over to Keesha's awesome blog Mom's New Stage and find out how disciplining her kids is getting the better of her, when uh shouldn't that part of motherhood come naturally, too? Apparently, not so much.

We have two copies of the very funny Motherhood Comes Naturally (And Other Vicious Lies) to giveaway.

To enter, let us know in the Rafflecopter form below what was the most vicious lie you were told about motherhood?

You can also earn extra entries by following Mom's New Stage, Random Handprints and Scary Mommy on Facebook and Twitter.

And don't forget to visit ScaryMommy.com for your regular dose of Jill as well as hilarious guest posts like Kim Forde's Stranger in a Strange Land (Having A Baby is Just Like Being a Clueless Tourist) and Anna Luther's 10 Unrecognizable Post Baby Parts.


a Rafflecopter giveaway

13 comments:

Unknown said...

"If you just relax, breastfeeding is easy." It got easier, and eventually was easy, but not for months. And those months were long, much like my breasts now.

Queendivakat said...

Oh, your husband is a stay at home dad? How lucky for you that he will take care of the baby. Bah! The baby is now 14 and stay at home dad still hasn't taken care of the baby.

Ms. Anita said...

Wow... hard to choose the most vicious. I guess that it would get easier once they were past the "terrible twos." yeah right!! lol

Kim- One Classy Motha said...

Every time we pass a park and I don't feel like going, I tell the 3 year old that the park is closed because the slides are being reconditioned.

~The Vessel said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I can't imagine trying to get our girls to sleep in the same room...our baby hardly consents to sleeping in her own.

I think Slumby deserves his own cartoon show.

Grown and Flown said...

We came up with a post filled with myths for moms with teens (linked on the SITS sharefest) and the number one lie is "Motherhood gets easier." Love Scary Mommy and Jill Smokler. Both books are hilarious.

Unknown said...

Labor will be over before you know it. It wasn't. I had 16 hours - 5 hours of pushing with my first

shannon2818 said...

I don't think I was told any vicious lies - but it was a lot different than I expected it to be.

Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms said...

The slumbly. That is awesome. I will now choose to call the closet the Suite Our-Last-Option- in Miniature. Ellen

Nicole Leigh Shaw said...

"It gets easier." It gets nothing but more complex, even when the getting sleep and having fully-healed nipples happens.

Leighann Platt said...

People told me if I had another child they would keep each other company...yeah FIGHTING!!

deborah quinn said...

We are in the middle of the 12 year old insisting that HE SHOULD HAVE HIS OWN ROOM. The boys do share a room but, increasingly, it's not working. Which is besides the point. The point is that motherhood is full of so many myths that I'm surprised Scary Mommy isn't calling this book "volume 1."

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