Reading · What, Like It's Hard?

I hadn’t even made it to the restaurant yet, but in my head I was planning my early exit.

The baby is going to scream the entire time.
I’m not going to have a second to actually eat.
Will the bigger girls sit and color?
Or will they be inconsolable over the fact that I forgot the backpack with their toys and water bottles?
Everyone is going to stare at us.

Why am I even doing this?

Then I remembered–it was my parents 35th wedding anniversary and my brothers had planned a dinner at the restaurant where they got engaged.

Yes, I had a 3 year old, a 1.5 year old and a 3 week old.

But this was a moment I didn’t want to miss.

And these three little girls are a part of their legacy, too. Of what began 36 years before during an ill-advised April Fool’s Day proposal. So off we went. I took a deep breath and walked in.

Well, toddled because car seats are heavy but you get the picture.

The baby did cry a bit, until my dad held her and that was the beginning of their unexpected special relationship (he’s still the only one who can get her to nap.) The bigger girls were entertained endlessly by their uncles and I actually got to eat an entire, only luke-warm, dinner.

Strangers smiled, little teddy bears appeared out of nowhere and were gifted to my little ones, and we only had about 8 bathroom breaks. All around, a success.

That I spend days dreading.

On the way home I thought about the best piece of parenting advice I’ve ever gotten, and it had absolutely nothing to do with screens or naps or discipline or ‘sleep when the baby is sleeping.’

It was my aunt, a mom of four, who saw me wrestling my three kids into a wagon/car seat contraption and put her hand on my arm.

“It’s a muscle,” she said.

She wasn’t talking about my lack of biceps or abs. She was talking about taking kids places.

She said that the most important thing that someone told her when she had her third and felt way in over her head was that easily taking multiple kids out into the world is not a genetic trait some people are just born with.

It’s a muscle that you have to exercise to build.

The moms you see with three kids in Target aren’t different from you. They aren’t blessed with unusually compliant children, or just more naturally calm than you are.

The difference is that they’ve practiced.

Like, a lot.

What I genuinely didn’t know in the early days was that I too could learn how to take my kids out into the world. But, like any muscle-building exercise, it would, um, hurt in the beginning.

You’ll be full of regret. You’ll worry that everyone is watching you, while you’re sweating and swearing under your breath that you’ll never do this again.

But then you do and it gets just a little bit easier by the fifth time. Then a lot easier by the fiftieth time.

It will still be hectic, there will still be days when someone is screaming and you forgot the snacks and oh god did I leave the diaper bag in the car again??

But it won’t be the end of the world, because you’ll be practiced. You’ll know that there’s a light at the end of this tunnel and that god damn it you can do this.

Because you know that the tenth time is easier, and the hundredth time is just Tuesday.

Building that muscle matters, because without it the world starts to shrink. One outing becomes too hard so you skip it. You do the same for the next one.

Before long, the only places that feel manageable are the places specifically designed for children.

Somewhere along the way we started acting like kids belong in playgrounds, children’s museums, and trampoline parks—but nowhere else. You used to hear dads dealing with meltdowns at the drug store, moms having spirited debates with four year olds at the grocery store, grandmas catching up with their grandkids in line at the deli. Kids running through hardware stores, sitting at a table next to you in a restaurant.

The other day I was shopping with my three kids and a fellow mom came up to me. She said it was, and I quote, “so nice to see a mom out with her kids and enjoying her life.”

I said thank you and abruptly left to go find where my two year old wandered off to, but that sentence has been living in my mind rent free.

“Out and enjoying her life”

The thing that stuck with me wasn’t that she said I looked happy, it was that she seemed surprised by it.

I think we’ve accidentally created a culture where motherhood and participation in public life feel like opposing choices.

There’s a reason parents feel like this. Spend enough time online and you’d think every restaurant and movie theater is full of people waiting to be annoyed by a child.

But the reality isn’t like that.

We spend an enormous amount of time worrying that one grumpy person might roll their eyes or be visibly annoyed by the chaos of kids.

But most people love to borrow some of your chaos for a little bit.

The older woman that tells you that her little girl had the same strawberry blonde curls as yours, and ‘aren’t they so beautiful.’ The dad who informs you that he has three girls too, and that they’re just as wonderful in their 20’s as they were during the little years. “Just wait til they’re smarter than you,” he says with a smirk, and that immediately becomes your favorite ‘just you wait..’ of all time.

Cashiers strike up a conversation with your kids, a couple across the room waves at them and starts a round of peek-a-boo.

A kind teenager reads them a page of the book they’re looking at.

And most of the time, trust me on this, your kids will charm free donuts or cupcakes or slices of american cheese from any grocery store you walk into.

It’s honestly so lovely to watch. Every day that I take my kids out into places ‘not deemed suitable for kids’ I have some interaction that reminds me that I’m doing this for a reason. That this is the best part of life.

Kids are magic, and most people believe that.

And for those who don’t, there are retirement communities.

The moms who make it look easy aren't different than you

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