Adventures in Mommyhood

Written by Elle. Double U. Pepper

It was 1987 and I was half way through my my seventh birthday when the movie Adventures in Babysitting came out. If you do your math you’ll realize I’m now 40, which makes me an 80s kid … but with two kids of my own. My life may not be as wild as the movie, at times, but there are funny similarities only a true mommy can understand.

I’ve taken to reliving those moments during the few times I can get uninterrupted time at the end of the day. And it’s one scene in particular that resonates with me -- the movie’s last 10 minutes. With the clocking ticking down before the parents return, Elisabeth Shue desperately tries to clean up the house: half boiled noodles thrown throughout the kitchen because no one wants to eat them, toys strewn across the floor, sofa unmade. Basically, the house in shambles. Elisabeth races furiously to undue a night of “adventures” so the parents won’t notice, all the while putting the kids to bed and not breaking a sweat.

Now substitute the babysitter for me. The mommy! This is what I do every night and every day. I might be the parent, but I’m racing just as furiously to clean the house after a day of my two children. And my own internal clock is ticking towards another sunrise, before I have to do it again... hopefully better.

It’s art imitating life, and it seemingly never ends. Including the guilt that comes with it. Can I do this again? Can I do it better?

This is what it means to be a modern mommy. It’s not just just an adventure, it’s “Ghetto Fabulous.”

Not ghetto in the modern sense (but sometimes the house will start to look like it, ugh) but the other definition: to restrict to an isolated group.

Sound right, mommies?

Our lives can be isolating — you have to be one to understand — but it’s fabulous in its own sense. What we experience is raw, real, fantastic, scary, exhausting, amazing ... It’s everything — the deepest love and the darkest hole. How incredibly unexplainable loving someone or two someones is.

I began as me then got married and became a we … and then we became three and add one more to make four. And everything in the middle is unbelievable. I have been split so many times that I’m not really myself but a part of something so much bigger; larger than life and yet sometimes I feel almost invisible until I catch my shadow or reflection in my children. They embody where I don’t anymore... and I’m ok with that... really. Being a mommy is my career and my children are my rèsumè, letters of recommendations and my renaissance.

Often times I think about all that goes into a day — one whole 24 hour cycle, with few of them for sleep... for me, too... just not the same sleep anymore. But when my two sons doze off into dreamland, I’m in awe watching them rest so peacefully... through their baby monitors even though they are far from babies anymore. I take a deep breath because putting them to bed is like a science experiment: what gets them there, what keeps them there, and what wakes them up happy and ready to start a new day. All these questions for them I’m questioning for me, too. This is often times how mommies grade themselves because we’re constantly put to our own test only hoping to pass.

What makes it worth it? The love you feel when they love you back. It’s like being rich and poor at once and what motivates me to be an even better mommy.

When my children ask me where babies come from, I always tell them love, science and magic.

The love between their daddy and me, the science in creating these two beautiful boys, and the magic that makes them who they are.

Also, how I’m able to be mommy every day, hoping I do it better.

Every mommy feels this way. And it’s why we’re magicians.

You want a true adventure? Spend a day with a mommy.