Oh Let's All Go To Trix's House And Make Our Children Cry! A Mommyblog

The mom was just trying to show what a good mom she is. She's on top of her kids' behavior. She cares. And that's why she'll make them cry at my house on Christmas.

It's already a perfect day. There are the traditional champagne and strawberries and bagels and lox. There is the traditional Christmas Pineapple. There is the traditional Season Three of Game of Thrones! We have made sure it is paused at a boobless scene with an unaccountable lack of throat blood, because children are coming! Hooray!

And the girls are five and nine and lovely, and they are probably just like the daughters we would love to have maybe. The living room is just boring adults talking about slumlords and operating systems and stuff, so the girls are off quite capably entertaining themselves in what is going to be the baby's room, filled with the dolls my grandma used to make for children all over the country, and all her creepy-wonderful 1930s kittens that look haunted, and other cool shit. But CATASTROPHE! The girls have returned to the living room, and they smell like ... PERFUME! Because they have ... TRIED ON MY PERFUME! You guys, the humanity.

They are given a timeout, sitting on the floor against our front door. They are given an extended timeout because one was silently playing with a trinket she had received in her stocking instead of dwelling properly on her crime against the state. (Which, by the way, she hadn't even had anything to do with except being near the perpetrator at the time.) They are allowed to get up 10, 15? minutes later, having been properly reeducated, but first they must give my husband and me a tearful -- weeping -- apology for having touched my things. My things, it should be noted, that came in a GIANT SPARKLY BLUE BOTTLE SHAPED LIKE A STAR. I would touch that at someone's house, and I am 41 years old.

As the girls' tears flow down their cheeks, my husband and I don't know how to answer their apology. "You've done nothing at all wrong and there's no need for an apology" is correct, but we can't undermine their mom in our home. "I forgive you" is some bullshit. "Uh that's okay sweetheart, we don't mind," is what my husband finally comes up with, which is still perilously close to disagreeing with their mother, but good job saying words, husband, with your mouth. You're a better man than I.

I did the only thing I could think of and invited the girls to come look at my grandma's dolls with me, and then dressed the elder daughter in my other grandma's mink coat. (It's been dead probably 60 years. Also, it's quite perfect when marrying in a blizzard .) You wanna see touching things? Try this one on, mom! 

I have seen terrible children in my time. (This one time, at the Penticton Peach Festival in Canada, the children ran around literally knocking old ladies to the ground, like tiny Hell's Angels at Altamont. My then-eight-year-old son, witnessing the carnage, came and sheltered at my side, away from the marauders. Their parents didn't say boo. Fucking Canada.) I have seen exhausted children trying to keep themselves awake by running in circles and screaming while their parents explain the kids have "so much energy!" I appreciate that the mom wants her girls to be respectful, but more importantly, she wanted us to see her wanting the girls to be respectful. Lady, not to tell you how to parent (you're from Montana; you will never, ever see this post, or I wouldn't be posting it, because I am a pussy), but if you don't let your kids do completely natural kid things like TOUCH THE PRETTY THING WHAT ALSO SMELLS GOOD, they are going to run off at 15. With Hell's Angels. Probably to Canada.

The end.