My Dishwasher Techniques, My Business.

Yes, I load the dishwasher like I’d imagine a sociopath would, and no, I have no intention of changing that.

When Barton loads the dishwasher, it is an extremely stressful process for me. It’s actually very hard to watch because it’s tedious and slow and absurdly efficient, which is the complete opposite of my dishwasher strategy.

When Barton loads the dishwasher, he takes on the mannerisms of a REALLY anal brain surgeon (the worst kind, you know?). He first thoroughly rinses every single molecule of food off each dish, even the nano-molecules that cannot be seen by the naked eye or probably even by the world’s most powerful microscope. (Not a scientist here! Just a girl who has a pretty good handle on the efficacy of powerful microscopes. It’s a weird niche, I know, but definitely comes in handy more times than you’d think.)

Next, he meticulously loads the already-sparkling-clean-dishes into the machine with gentle yet skilled hands, placing each dish in the exact correct spot and making sure not to waste any room or bump into any other dishes in the process. It’s like watching a really slow, really boring, really well-done game of Tetris. When he’s finally finished, everything is neatly organized AND the dishwasher door actually closes without him having to thrust his bodyweight against it and possibly break a glass or three in the process. He simply closes the door gently and it shuts, no issues whatsoever. And all this time I literally thought the only way TO shut a dishwasher door was by using your entire torso?

He wouldn’t dare put his dirty clothes in the hamper and he sure as heck won’t ever lock any door in our house (keep that on the DL from the robbers please), but he WILL keep our household running on all cylinders by making certain that the dishwasher is handled by a mature, responsible adult.

On the other, more reasonable hand, when I load the dishwasher, it’s a quick, reckless, thrilling and sometimes (read: most times) dangerous endeavor. For starters, I cannot say in good conscience that I rinse the dishes with the same vigor and care as Barton. Some ketchup here? No biggie. A little dried yogurt there? It’s all good, guys. An entire vat of mashed potatoes crusted over onto the Tupperware bowl? Into the machine you goooo! Doing the dishwasher’s work FOR the dishwasher is teaching my kids a terrible life lesson and I won’t be responsible for instilling that in them at such a young and impressionable age.

If not rinsing off the dishes first is a problem, then the way I load said dishes is a whole damn dilemma. My strategy is simple: get the dish things into the machine thing as quickly as humanly possible and in any way possible, because there are approximately 3 kids needing 17 other things out of me, and then I have an additional 47 things to get done after that. Also, I just hate loading the dishwasher, so the sooner I’m out of my misery the better.

I’m a pretty efficient lady in most areas of my life, but the way I load the dishwasher is incredibly inefficient, and I make no apologies about it. Plates are lying completely horizontal on top of other bowls, kids’ cup lids and straws are jutting out of the wire baskets and causing a scene, things are perpendicular when they CLEARLY should’ve been parallel and, Barton’s absolute favorite: nice cutting knives are thrown haphazardly in the utensil basket. Apparently it’s detrimental to the quality of the knife to run it in the dishwasher, it can cause rust, maybe even corrosion, yada yada. The point is, if you want to see a grown man who’s in love with his wife seriously question that love, grab the popcorn and watch Barton when he realizes I’ve once again put a nice, expensive, sharp cutting knife into the dishwasher.

Now I don’t want to give myself a bad rap regarding my household skills; I’m really good at cleaning literally everything, I can make a bed with the best of ‘em, and I have an unexpected propensity for fixing things and putting things together. (I single-handedly assembled our first dining room table from World Market in 2013, and Barton’s been spoiled ever since. My hands have the callouses and his are as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Seriously, he has beautiful, freakishly smooth hands to the point where he garners a lot of attention for them. Let your hands linger a little next time you shake his hand and you’ll feel those satin stunners for yourself.)

I guess what I’m trying to say here is: my dishwasher loading techniques, my biznass. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go fish out broken shards of wine glass from the bottom of our dishwasher and sharpen all of our nice knives before Barton gets home.

Good Parenting vs Smart Parenting: Part I

Good parenting: putting shoes on your child.

Smart parenting: always keeping an extra pair of shoes in your car, because you know you’ll inevitably realize the baby (aka the four year old) isn’t wearing shoes when you’re unloading everyone out of the car for a chaotic Shake Shack dinner. (For what it’s worth, Shake Shack is very accommodating to shoeless people, if it ever comes to that. Don’t ask me how I know.)

It kind of doesn’t even matter what size shoes you keep on hand, to be honest; when in a moment of desperation, you will make it work. Everyone’s feet are magically the same size when you’re trying to get everyone into Target to buy two last-minute birthday gifts and emergency toilet paper on a summer Tuesday.

In our household, we just assume the baby will not have shoes on her feet, or anywhere in her general vicinity. That’s why I keep extra shoes in a lot of different places: my car, my husband’s car, other peoples’ houses, once I even asked Starbucks if I could store a pair behind their counter (kidding, but I wish I wasn’t, because that would’ve come in extremely handy on several occasions).

Moral of the story: if you have kids, but especially if you have a third kid, you need to stock your vehicle with footwear. There are entirely too many things to keep track of when trying to leave the house in a timely fashion with three children— keys, phone, purse, clothing for all parties involved, sports paraphernalia (because you will always be driving someone to a sports gathering, always), snacks, more snacks, nope that’s not enough snacks PACK MORE, did I mention snacks, 14 water bottles (the math doesn’t math, accept it and let it go), an impulsive late-night Amazon purchase you thought would make you feel alive but you’re returning to the UPS store, shoes for child number one, shoes for child number two, you get the picture. It’s clearly unreasonable to think the third child will also have shoes on, in the midst of all that chaos.

Keeping a pair (or three) of shoes in the car for your last child especially is something no one talks about enough, and I’m remedying that right now. If I had a penny for every time my husband or I, while driving to a nice outing with the kids, frantically uttered, “is the baby wearing shoes??” I would be paying someone to replace my creepy 1980’s jetted jacuzzi bathtub with a sleek clawfoot beauty right about now, among MANY MANY other things.

Case in point: I threw all three in the car today to go pick up our dog from the vet after her spaying appointment (and man, that “cone of shame” is really something). The “baby” traipsed through the vet lobby barefoot, petting and kissing all the sick dogs, while I halfway listened to our discharge orders and paid them a month’s worth of mortgage. (In another life, I want to come back as a vet. Who’s with me?) I said to the vet tech, a little too maniacally, “Whoops, forgot someone’s shoes! Oh well, I’ll give her a bath tonight!”

Editor’s note: Bath is TBD.

The Trader Joe's Stickers That Gutted Me.

I saw the Trader Joe’s stickers tonight as I was cleaning out my car.

Does everyone know about the turtle hunting game at TJ’s? They hide several stuffed turtles around the store, and if your kid spots all of them, they can tell the cashier and they’ll give them a sucker OR the underwhelming stickers. You’re welcome.

First, let’s just call it what it is: the Trader Joe’s stickers are subpar at best. For such an incredible company, I feel like they could definitely beef up their sticker game. Their stickers are a mere step above the boring Target stickers which, lets be honest, are trash. They’re literally just red targets, the same stickers I find stuck to Target delivery boxes. In the same vein, the TJ’s stickers are just photos of dull flowers with muted colors, which is a far cry from the high standards Tru has set for her stickers (i.e. if it’s not Elsa or a vibrant unicorn whose colors assault your pupils, don’t even waste her time). As an aside, I never knew I’d have so many passionate opinions on stickers as a parent. But that’s neither here nor there.

Anyway, every single time Tru and I go to Trader Joe’s, she gets so excited for the second-rate stickers. She doesn’t even like or care about the stickers, yet she still wants them. (She has this whole being a woman thing down pat already, at the ripe age of newly three.) She begs me for the stickers at the checkout line, and I, in turn, prompt her to ask the cashier herself. She asks in her sweet, shy, shaky voice for a strip of stickers, and when the goods are securely placed in her little hands she is grinning from ear to ear.

That first sticker is rife with potential. Will it go on her hand? Her face? My car window, where it will stay for the next six to twelve months before I finally scrape it off with the help of Windex and a few curse words? By the second sticker, the excitement is waning a little, but she still manages to muster up enough enthusiasm to slap it across the headrest of my seat.

The third sticker is left untouched— along with the fourth, fifth, sixth and so on— never to be thought of again, like the carrot sticks in my kids’ lunches every damn day. She mindlessly drops the strip of now-boring stickers to the floorboard of my car (where it rests comfortably and familiarly with yesterday’s granola bar, last week’s rotted apple and approximately 47 water bottles. Why is it an unwritten rule that, as a parent, you must always have an inordinate amount of half-filled water bottles rolling around on the floorboard of your car at all times? And then you have to lug said water bottles into the house weekly— or daily? And you don’t even recognize yourself anymore if you don’t have an armful of half-filled water bottles? This phenomenon is not talked about enough, and I’m going to make it my mission to shed more light on this issue.)

And then tonight, unexpectedly, on a humid August evening on the eve of the first day of preschool, I spot the discarded stickers. And my stomach drops and I get that all too familiar feeling in the base of my throat and I feel butterflies— but not the good kind. The despondent kind. Depressed butterflies. Butterflies who need some ice cream and a chick flick. And maybe some Zoloft.

The mere sight of the stickers immediately triggers a slideshow in my mind (or should I call it a reel? Isn’t that what the kids are doing these days? Whatever, I almost called it a PowerPoint presentation initially, so l think everyone should just be content with “slideshow.”) I involuntarily witnessed a slideshow of my summer with Tru flash through my mind, like a montage of happier times during the saddest part of a movie. I see the stickers and I immediately see her, sitting in the Trader Joe’s basket, her skinny legs dangling free (and, most definitely, with no shoes on. For third children, shoes in public establishments are a pleasant surprise. Sometimes pants are a pleasant surprise. Okay, most times.) I see her tiny finger pointing to the bananas and babbling about how she loves “wama-melon” and asking for a snack every 7 seconds and asking me when Elsa is coming to her house. I see myself tired and drained from a summer of non-stop Tru, from not working out due to lack of childcare and feeling stagnant mentally and trying in vain to clean up the house and probably drinking too much wine.

I see myself in aisle three of Trader Joe’s (gotta stock up on those Barebell protein bars, guys— they are like candy bars. Maybe they are candy bars…? Is that why I’ve gained five pounds this summer? It could also be all the pizza. I guess we’ll never know.) Anyway, I see myself in the aisle, probably wishing I was alone and counting down the days until school starts. I see myself getting frustrated when she starts melting down because I won’t let her open the loaf of bread in the middle of the store. I see myself getting annoyed when she keeps asking me to watch Cocomelon on my phone. I see myself giving in (pretty easily) and giving her the show, just so I can get this errand over with and move on to the next million chores I have staring me down that day.

Yet in this moment, as I stand here staring at the strip of unused, inferior stickers in my car, my entire body longs to be in that aisle again with her at 8:47 on a Tuesday morning. I ACHE for it, in fact. It makes no sense, and I start to feel the tears welling up. And I know that tomorrow she starts school, and that we won’t be making early-morning Trader Joe’s runs anymore, and it makes me feel almost nauseous that it’s over. Of course, there will be more TJ runs with her in the future, but not at this exact age. Not at this exact time. And probably not at this leisurely pace.

And sure, we have next summer. But next summer she will be four. And she’ll be eligible for lots of summer camps. And I’ll of course sign her up for as many as possible (in effing JANUARY, waiting with bated breath at my computer with sweat trickling down my brow like a PSYCHO with the rest of Nashville), but her voice will be different. And her little legs will hang down a bit lower in the grocery cart seat. And she’ll probably have shoes on (okay, that’s a stretch, sorry). And maybe she’ll still ask for the boring stickers. But she might not be as excited for them. And I might not find her sticker strips in my car anymore. And then one day I’m going to wake up and realize I’ve been going to the grocery store alone, a lot.

Forget the water bottle phenomenon, guys— what we actually need to discuss here is how I can wish so hard for school to start and wish so hard to make a grocery run alone, yet when I’m finally faced with that reality, my heart physically aches. WHY AM I THE WAY THAT I AM? (A question I find myself asking entirely too much lately, mainly centering around my inability to not eat lots of cheese.)

I’ve been LIVING for the start of school. I’ve felt depleted and worn out and kind of like a shell of myself these last fews weeks. I want to exercise regularly and I want to keep a tidy home and I want to write more and I want to have an actual career and I want to go to the grocery store without bartering with a three year old over YouTube videos, and I can’t do any of those things when I have said three year old attached to my hip from sun up to sun down. And despite all of these feelings, the Trader Joes stickers almost brought me to my damn knees.

To anyone else, the stickers look insignificant. They look like what they are: trash cluttering up an already-messy car. (But honestly. that’s on the Trader Joe’s sticker designing team; maybe if they put some more of the budget into that instead of the employees’ Hawaiian button-downs, less stickers would be tossed in the dumpster.) My point is, it’s funny how, as a parent, otherwise inconsequential things start to have meaning— meaning that utterly rocks you when you least expect it.

After picking up the armful of water bottles from the car, I spent the rest of the night grieving the end of this summer with her and mourning the loss of those leisurely, sleepy, muggy summer grocery trips together, just the two of us. With no other agenda other than picking out the best snacks and making sure we got our hands on those silly stickers.

My only consolation is that all of us— every mom with a beating heart— feels this at some point, too. My trigger tonight was the stickers, but maybe yours is something more obvious, like taking down the crib, packing up the tiny clothes or donating the rest of the diapers. I might’ve actually said out loud tonight, a little too over-zealously, “at least we are all in this together!!!” And it made me feel better because, you know, misery loves company. And that comforted me immensely, because I guess I’m a jerk like that. And probably because I’ve been with small kids all summer. Or maybe that’s just who I am. WHY AM I THE WAY THAT I AM? (I told you this is a recurring theme in my life.)

Happy back to school, Mamas. We can mourn the stupid stickers, but we can also be happy for this next season of life. And at least our car windows won’t be ruined anymore.

On Self Confidence and Vests

I struggle with self confidence.

My therapist says it’s because I was a child star*

*Child star can be a broad term, so I’ll help you out here. Think a mix of Amanda Bynes and Jojo Siwa, but without the future substance abuse/legal issues and lesbianism, respectively. Oh, and also a lot less famous.

(Just a girl with a perm, singing about a broken heart)

You would think someone whose face was plastered on a Space Center Houston NASA billboard on Highway 6 when she was 8 years old would have soaring confidence. Offensively, grossly obnoxious confidence. But let me tell you, that extreme level of fame isn’t all its cracked up to be down the road, guys.

(Trudy has photos of this from every angle, if anyone needs to see it from a different perspective.)

To help you understand, maybe I should delve into the singing days of my child star era; when I used to sing onstage at the Texas Opry Jamboree in Magnolia, Texas, every Friday and Saturday night from age 6 until 16. There was no vest too sequin-y, no perm too curly, no cowboy hat too tall for this Texas crooner. I even recorded a cassette tape entitled, “Hayley Frank: Just Kickin’ Back.” It featured 10 tracks, such as Patty Loveless’ “Blame it on Your Heart,” Hank’s “Hey Good Lookin’” and a song called “Old Cold Tater,” which, looking back, maybe should’ve stayed on the cutting room floor. The cassette jacket featured a photo of me just kickin’ back, looking relaxed, famous and talented. (With a perm, of course.)

I was also a competitive clogger for years (and I had ZERO appreciation for that insane level of calorie burn at the time. Youth is wasted on the young, damnit.) In between my singing performances, I would don a huge petticoat, cumber bun, bowtie and vest (vests were a big part of my life back then) and clog my heart out to bangers like Cotton Eyed Joe or Turkey in the Straw. I even traveled across the country to clogging conventions and convened with thousands of other avid cloggers, bonding over the fact that we had a job to do, and that was to entertain the masses with our heel clicks, pivots and double-step-rock-steps.

Then there were the commercials. There were many, but the stand-out performance was my role in the “Smoking Kills” campaign, where I summoned every sad, stoic bone in my body and gave an Emmy-award-winning gaze as several black hearses rolled down the street (…presumably holding the bodies of ex-smokers. BUT it was INFERRED. It made you THINK, guys. That’s the sign of all great art. A commercial before its time, really.)

Next up (we are honestly just getting started here), there were the pageants. The bathing suit portion was stressful and the live interview questions gave me ulcers and we might’ve gone into debt funding the bedazzled ball gowns necessary for the competition, but I did it all for the world peace, damnit! My parents still have one of my crowns in their attic and my kids want to play dress up with it, but I’m not ready to relinquish my crown just yet (#PageantProblemz.)

We can’t forget the very impactful, in-person meet and greets/autograph signings. I signed on with a local TV station, UPN 20, to be a “UPN Kid,” which just meant I traveled around to places like Six Flags AstroWorld, Houston Rockets Basketball events, county fairs and local malls to “meet and greet” all our adoring fans and sign headshots of myself for 4-year-olds who had literally no idea who I was.

I did print work for the JC Penny catalogue. I modeled clothes through a modeling agency who made it their mission to visit every makeshift mall runway in the greater Houston area. I danced and sang in Walmart parking lots, shoving my talents down the throats of people who were just trying to get their laundry detergent and Doritos to their car. And somewhere in between all of that, I played piano and guitar.

When I moved to Nashville, the dream didn’t die. I sang on stage at Tootsies, started writing country songs and got a job at Posh in Hillsboro Village to make some money while I worked on becoming discovered. And I still don’t think this even scratches the surface of the entirety of my childhood.

And now, I am a 35 year old stay-at-home mom, with no billboards and no applause and no headshots and, worst of all, NO VESTS. 

I’m just a washed-up child star with no vests, you guys.

So, circling back to my therapist’s theory: maybe, just maybe, this is why I struggle with my confidence.

ALL OF THIS TO SAY, the other day it hit me that while I may lack confidence in so many areas, there is one area where I do feel confident: being a mom.

Let me clarify that statement. I am not confident that I am the best mom and that I am doing everything right. I actually rarely know what the hell I’m doing when it comes to important parenting things like setting limits, establishing routines, or practicing sight words. (Sight words will be the death of me.) In fact, here is a little convo snippet between me and my kids to prove my point…

Talley: Mom, why do you say “Oh God” all the time?

Me: Talley, I don’t say that.

Talley: Yes, you do, Mom. 

Scout, chiming in: You do, Mom. And you also say “Oh shit” all the time, too.

Me: *stares out the window philosophically, takes a sip of wine vigorously.*

I should also let it be known that Scout repeatedly got in trouble last school year for tripping boys on the playground and stepping on their shoelaces so they would fall. (I was horrified, Barton was the most proud he’s ever been in his life.)

I don’t get on the floor and play Barbies with them when they ask, I’m entirely too liberal with screen time, they subsist almost exclusively on frozen chicken nuggets, and no one flosses enough (or ever?) in this house. So I’m not at all trying to toot any horns about my parenting expertise.

Yet, still, the only thing I’m solidly confident in, is being a mom.

And by that I mean keeping them safe, keeping them laughing, keeping them LOVED. 

I never dreamed I would be a mom of three small children. A decade ago, I thought people with three children were certifiably insane. (I think I may have been right?) I didn’t think I was capable of running a big household, of keeping everyone afloat, of being the glue for a trio of little souls. 

But here I am, (painfully) carrying three kids in my body, (painfully) shoving them out of my body, (painfully) feeding them from my body, (anyone else sensing a theme here?), and now joyfully raising them. And the other day, feeling super self-conscious after walking away from a conversation with other moms (Why did I say that? Why am I the most boring person alive? Does anyone even want to talk to me? Well probably not, because of my raging adult acne…) I had a vivid, unmistakable thought flash across my brain. “The only thing I feel consistently confident in is being a mom.”

Steadfastly, unflinchingly confident.

No offense to the dads out there who do a lot of the “mom work” I’m about to describe; I know full well there are men who are more than capable of it and probably do a much better job than I do. But when I step back and look at the load I have to carry every day, the “mom gut” decisions I have to make for these little people, the prescriptions I have to fill, the extra-curricular activities I have to get them to (and cheer them on in!), the boo-boos I have to magically make better, the life skills I have to help them learn, the millions of questions I have to answer for them constantly, the little bodies I have to carry up and down the stairs when they’re tired, the play-dates and carpool obligations I’m entrusted with, the smiles and giggles I’m responsible for putting on their little faces when they’re sad, and the list goes on… When I step back and look at all of these things, I truly never feel more confident. 

I fail every single day when it comes to parenting, but for some beautiful reason it’s still the most confident role I’ve ever held. Maybe it’s because I know that no matter how many times I lose my temper at them or let them skip brushing their teeth or say “Oh shit,” that they still feel loved and safe with me. I am the person that they trust, they run to, they can let their guard down with, that they laugh the hardest with. I am the person they associate with “home.” And there’s no clogging trophy that can inspire that much confidence in me.

(Well, I guess that depends on how big the trophy is… so don’t hold me to that statement.)

Show This To Your Husband, Part I: Mother's Day Experiences Are Better Than Your Usual Robe and Slippers

On my first Christmas as a new mom— that is, the first time December 25th rolled around after I had carried a human nine months in my uterus, pushed it out, got stitches down where the sun don’t shine, wore an adult diaper for weeks then didn’t sleep again for the next three months— I woke up Christmas morning excited to see what AMAZING gift my husband had gotten me. You know, just a little gesture to thank me for bringing his progeny into the world.

I hastily peeled open the wrapping and flung open the box lid to find... a gossip magazine and an empty cardboard case of Budweiser. 

The next several minutes are unaccounted for, since I blacked out for a bit. Blacking out as a mom is the body’s way of saving you from yourself in stressful situations, like when your toddler takes a Sharpie to the new white couch or when your 6-year-old yells the F word at a playdate with new school friends or when your husband gifts you a cardboard beer carrier on Jesus' birthday. 

When I eventually came to, he was ready and waiting with a mimosa for me and an explanation for his gift: we were going on a kid-free trip to St. Louis!

As I started to come back into my body and my breathing began to regulate again, I was able to feel some twinges of excitement. A KID-FREE TRIP? Maybe this was shaping up to be the best Christmas after all? But I still had questions… LOTS OF QUESTIONS. Starting with what was inside that box I just unwrapped.

As it turns out, there was a method to his madness. The Budweiser beer carrier was because Budweiser is brewed in St. Louis at the Anheuser-Busch flagship brewery. And the US Weekly magazine was dog-eared on a certain page— I flipped to the page he had marked to find a huge spread of Justin Bieber (who just happens to be my number one celebrity crush, besides Conan O’Brien, obviously). He then explained that not only were we taking a kid-free trip to St. Louis, but we also had tickets to a Justin Bieber concert while we were there. Once again, I blacked out momentarily, but this time it was my way of regulating my internal body temperature as I got flustered picturing myself in the same building as the Biebs, sharing the same air and possibly even making discreet yet flirty eye contact when our significant others weren’t watching. 

Six years later, I still say that was my favorite trip and favorite gift from my husband, and we talk about that experience to this day. It wasn’t diamond earrings but who needs diamonds when you have a weekend away from kids and responsibilities and you get to ogle Justin Bieber on top of that? (I’m sure this statement won’t age well and I’ll be regretting it soon but leaving it in to get my point across, guys.)

What I'm trying to say is, sometimes the best gifts aren’t necessarily tangible things you can pick up at Nordstrom. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with ordering a robe and some bath bombs from Amazon Prime, and most years that will totally suffice. But maybe this Mother’s Day is the time to think outside the box, eh?

Buy tickets

If Justin Bieber concerts aren’t your thing, first of all, what kind of monster are you? But secondly, that’s totally fine (I guess)— just get online and look up tour dates of a few of your wife’s favorite artists. But don’t stop at just live music, there are plenty of other tickets you could buy for a fun date night: a play at a theater, stand up comedy, art shows, movies, etc. Not up for traveling? Do some digging on the ol’ Interwebs and find something in your own city or somewhere you can drive to. 

Write her a letter

This may sound elementary and self-explanatory, and it is, but there’s just something about a hand-written letter that makes a mom black out a little. (Am I the only one blacking out on a consistent basis? And not at the hands of alcohol? Do I need to see a doctor for this? Please let me know ASAP.) *Important differentiation: this is NOT a pre-written Hallmark card where you write "I love you" at the bottom. This is a blank sheet of paper with a heartfelt LETTER transcribed on it. Bonus points if you write it on pretty paper with some sort of letterhead, watermark or design on it. 

If you have children who are old enough to write, have your kids write letters, too. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, just a note expressing how much you guys love and appreciate her. If you’re feeling especially bold and self-congratulatory, you could even pen a Haiku or some song lyrics, and then brag about your brilliance for the following few days or weeks.

Record interviews

Channel your inner Oprah Winfrey (but less self-righteous) and interview your kids about why they love mom and some of their most fond memories of her. There are lots of apps that allow you to record voice interviews as well as fun video messages that she will treasure forever. 

Snag reservations at a new or fancy restaurant

This one is a classic but the trick is to make it feel super special and go to a "hot spot" that she'd normally never go to. It's easy for moms of little kids to feel like they're in a rut; maybe the only restaurant they've been in lately is a McDonalds and maybe they forget to wash their hair for 9 days in a row (just me?) and maybe they haven't seen their own cleavage in months (or, in my case, years. It doesn't exist. Shout out to breastfeeding.)

What I'm trying to say is, I realize O'Charley's has delicious rolls. Exceptional rolls. How do they make those rolls? But this dinner date is not an O'Charley's kind of night. This is a "hot new restaurant that just opened up and it's hard to get into but daddy came through so put on your high heels baby, cause mama is going out" kind of night. Except if you want to make it less weird you don't have to refer to yourself as "Daddy," or at least not in public. (You can swing by O'Charley's on the way home and grab a basket of rolls to go and go to town on them in the comfort of your own car.)

Sign up for a cooking class together

No matter if she’s a pro in the kitchen, or if she has trained her kids to know dinner is ready when the smoke alarm sounds (I am the latter and it’s actually very convenient), cooking classes are always a neat experience and a fun way to up her culinary chops. Search for cooking classes in your hood (Whole Foods does them, as well as Sur La Table) or even a simple sushi-making class somewhere. 

Book a photo shoot of the kids and/or family

This sounds daunting but it’s not: ask friends if they have a local photog they love, ask a creative friend with a decent camera to snap some pics, or do what I do when I need anything at all and put it out into the universe via an Instagram plea. If there’s one thing moms love, it’s an effing family photo. Ask any mom. Any mom would walk through fire and swim an ocean and then swim another ocean while on fire if it meant she would score pics of her children all smiling and wearing shirts that don’t have stains on them. 

Give her a gift card for her to shop ALONE

Alone is the key word. Whether her happy place is Nordstrom, Target or TJ Maxx (or all three? The Trifecta, as I like to refer to it) it will mean a lot to her to have a reason to venture out ALONE and peruse the aisles in peace. Also, and this is important: she cannot at all be held responsible if she spends more than what’s on the gift card. I didn’t make the rules, I’m just relaying them to y’all gently yet firmly.

Gather family recipes

My sister-in-law gifted me this one year and it’s still proudly displayed in my kitchen. Type them up and get them printed and bound using the Shutterfly app to make a real book, or go even simpler by photo-copying the recipes and simply combining them in a 3-ring binder. Then she'll have a sentimental experience and fond memories every time she cooks one of the recipes from the book.

Go wine tasting

What mom doesn't want to get drunk under the guise of a *classy* wine tasting? Research a winery in your city or somewhere close by and book a reservation for you two to get weeeeirdddd-- I mean, for you two to refine your palates and sit around saying sophisticated things to each other like "oaky," "buttery" and "tannins." Want to take things up about a thousand notches? Of course you do. Book a trip to wine country and make her the happiest little lady on the planet. 

Enroll in a dance class together

Okay, so this might be pushing it a little... but I figured I'd add it anyway, on the off chance that there are some guys out there reading this that are just itching to strap on their dancing shoes and learn the fox trot or the cha-cha-shimmy-slide but were too embarrassed to admit it and needed a valid excuse to actually do it. Voila: you're doing it for your wife! Nothing to be embarrassed about. (Kinda.)

Book a couples massage

Kill three birds with one stone: get her a massage, get yourself a massage, and earn points for spending quality time together. Boom. Power move right there. This one is a no brainer. 

Sign her up for an Instacart subscription

So this isn’t really an experience, but it will SAVE her from the dreadful experience of grocery shopping. Or, even worse, grocery shopping WITH KIDS IN TOW. A reasonable annual fee gets her unlimited grocery deliveries from a variety of local places and saves her time, energy and sanity week after week after week. 

The Holidays are Coming! What That Means for Parents of Small Children.

I have some alarming information, you guys. Is everyone sitting down for this? Have a seat, pour a drink, lather your entire torso in CBD ointment or whatever the kids are using these days.

In approximately two months, it will be 2022. Let that sink in for a second.

Is that mind blowing for anyone else? I still remember the end of 2019 as if it were yesterday. I was getting over one of the worst cases of the flu of my lifetime (or was it actually the RONA??? Yes, I probably definitely had the rona... says every single person who had a cold in the second half of 2019.) Also, I was pregnant, so that surely didn’t help things. Just as I got over the flu, 2020 rudely rolled in bringing with it news of Kobe Bryant and his daughter’s tragic deaths. As a pregnant hormonal lady with two children and chronic health/death anxiety, I was NOT OKAY. I couldn’t stop thinking about Kobe’s horrifying last moments with his daughter, to the point where I told Barton I needed therapy to get over it.

But here’s a little secret: the best (and cheaper!) way to get over a tragedy like that is to just move on to the next overwhelmingly distressing issue that keeps you up at night and makes you wish you did hard drugs. Lucky for me, I had a wonderful contender for that: Coronavirus!

Side note: I kind of want to say “I told you so” to everyone in my life, but I realize that’s childish and petty of me. So I’m going to type it instead: I told you so. Let me explain.

I tried to warn everyone about Covid, but no one listened. On Valentine’s Day night 2020, I remember sitting there googling the latest Coronavirus news out of China and just crying the rest of the entire evening. (I really know how to sex up a February 14th, eh?? Bow-chicka-bow-wow, babe. Now can you hand me a tissue to soak up this mix of tears and snot running down my chin?)

I was 100% convinced the virus was going to make its way over to the US—and quickly—and I was so confused but mainly horrified by the fact that none of my friends or family were worried or concerned or in the fetal position weeping violently on Valentine’s Day. I went around warning everyone within a 2-mile radius of me of the impending doom that was coming for us all, and I spent my nights fervently researching this frightening foreign foe. Everyone told me I was crazy (a claim which would normally hold up fantastically in any other frantic situation I’m panicking about, but NOT THIS ONE, you guys).

When it finally began to hit here, I took matters into my own hands trying to save us all. Barton kept yelling at me, “Hayley, you don’t have to solve Coronavirus! You are not the head of the CDC!” Maybe, just maybe, he was right… (*me looking far out into the distance at nothing in particular*) …but I couldn’t take that chance. So I foraged on, fighting the good fight, soaking my family’s extremities in sanitizer and feeling prudently proud and wise beyond my 32 years that I spent several extra months worrying unnecessarily about Coronavirus before it actually became a real, tangible problem in the US!

Anyways, cut to today and we all know how the Covid story turned out. We trucked on through 2020 and somehow made it to 2021. We parents, specifically, survived schools being in and out (and in and out), and somehow made it through another long, hot summer full of our spawn yelling at us that they’re bored every 11 seconds as we are sweating our asses off at the pool and buying them their seventh snow cone and figuring out how to hide our flask of tequila under the beach towel so the 16-year-old lifeguard won’t strip us of the only joy we have left. (If you missed my summer survival guide, bookmark it now for next year.)

But this is not a piece about Covid. Lord knows I do not want to open that can of polarizing, PTSD-inducing worms. No, this is a piece about what looms before us now as we near the end of 2021…

The holidays are back again.

It’s no secret that most people have a love/hate relationship with the holiday season. If you’re a parent, as I am, this sentiment rings even more true. So as the daunting (but exciting, but daunting AF) task of getting through the holidays with kids emerges on the horizon, I’m explaining what it REALLY means for us parents.

Halloween: This is the holiday where you start off naively excited about things. Fall is in the air, the weather is turning crisp, cheery pumpkins are on every corner. You’re feeling fresh and ready to dive into the festivities head first. You beat the rush and got all your kids’ costumes early, planning every detail out to a T. You bought a haunted gingerbread house with plans to construct it together as a family while listening to “Monster Mash” and telling spooky stories. You plan out your Halloween Movie Marathon Month and watch a new scary movie every night huddled under blankets. Life is good, you think; this year the holidays are going to be different.

But as the main event finally approaches, things take a dark, yet familiar turn. After being downright ecstatic about their costume all month, your kid suddenly no longer wants anything to do with the intricate character you had planned for them. So you find yourself on your laptop at 2 a.m. with beads of sweat rolling down your furrowed brow, searching for a last-minute back up costume you’ll end up paying $72 to get rush-delivered in time for trick or treating. The haunted gingerbread house walls didn’t stick together with the stupid f**king frosting they expect houses to be built with and you spent the entire time cursing the crumbling exterior while your kids ate all of the candy decorations and then complained of a stomach ache all night. And the scary movies majorly backfired, because every night your kids are taking turns getting into you and your spouse’s bed and sleeping with their feet wedged in between your ribs, claiming they’ve had nightmares from the movies you made them watch. (The movie was called “Spooky Buddies!” and was about a pack of adorable golden retriever puppies trick-or-treating dressed up as puppy ghosts—you need to get your shit together, Liam.)

Also, it’s important to add that you didn’t even get to really enjoy Halloween because all anyone is yelling about these days is how you have to get all of your Christmas shopping done NOW because all the toys are going to run out this year or something. And every aisle at Target is already loaded with Christmas decorations when it’s still 87 degrees outside and that fills you with inexplicable rage that you should probably see a counselor about.

Thanksgiving: You’ve recovered a little bit after the chaotic blood-sugar-spike known as Halloween, and now you’re moving on to the calmer, less exciting, sometimes-forgotten middle-child of the holidays: thanksgiving. For parents of small children, this holiday mainly just consists of volunteering to supply some sort of potluck dish for your kids’ Thanksgiving school parties, and then forgetting the night before and buying a pack of hotdog buns at the gas station on the way to school.

Maybe you’ll make a turkey by tracing your kid’s hand or tell them you’ll bake a pie together (disclaimer: I do NOT condone baking with kids. Ever. If someone says it’s fun and enjoyable, they are dirty liars.) But you’ll mainly just spend this month cleaning up moldy, mushy pumpkins off your porch, trying to detox your family’s bodies from the masses of candy corn you’ve all injected into your bloodstreams and starting to mildly panic about the impending days (and days… and days…) your kids are about to be off from school.

Also, you still cannot enjoy this holiday because now even more so people are screaming at you at the top of their lungs that you have to have every morsel of your Christmas shopping done by this point, and then they begin shaming you if you haven’t. Oh, I almost forgot: it all culminates with you eating your feelings by gorging on turkey and dressing and getting too drunk off of Pecan Pie Martinis while your extended family debates whether or not masks should be worn in schools still.

Christmas: You’ve gained upwards of 12 pounds at this point, but the stress is still palpable so the calories are still flowing. You waited too long to buy your kids’ the gifts they really wanted, and now everything is backordered so you settle for a stripper-looking doll wearing fishnet leggings and the word “Bae” written on her crop-top shirt because it’s the only thing Target had left. Any gifts you DID have early, you wrapped in pretty paper and bows and put under the tree but that was a huge waste of time because your small child already ripped into it five minutes afterwards while you were taking a shower.

There are countless school Christmas parties and ornament exchange parties and cookie decorating parties, which are fun but exhausting, and even your insatiable kids are getting a little burnt out and sugared out. But you cannot show any signs of weakness; you see a light at the end of the tunnel and you’ll be damned if you crumble now. And don’t forget waiting for two hours in a line at the mall with small children to see Santa, just so they can sob in his lap for 30 seconds and you can pay $45 for a photo of it. (But you get a small, blurry magnet photo of it too, so it’s worth it, obviously.)

But hey, you aren’t Scrooge! The hustle and bustle is honestly fun at points and you really DO have some Christmas spirit—until you’re faced with the aftermath of three kids opening 456789 presents on Christmas morning, and your living room looks like a rainbow-colored landfill. And an hour later the kids are asking to watch their iPads because (you guessed it), they’re bored. Time to get drunk on Mistletoe Martinis now.

New Years Eve: You’ve almost made it! If you’re like me, you ripped all your decorations down the day after Christmas (FEELS SO GOOD) and your life is showing signs of resuming a semblance of normalcy again after these three crazy months. You buy a bunch of celebratory headgear for your kids that says “Happy New Year!!” in sparkly letters and you’re trying to get into the festive spirit, but all you can think about it “how is it already 2022 when I can’t even process the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual trauma I endured in 2020?”

You quiet those distressing thoughts with cheap champagne while your kids do a fake “ball drop” at 6pm while you make your New Years Resolution list consisting of things like “be a better parent” and “make self-care a priority,” and in the moment you really admire your delusional optimism- you really do.

You and your spouse fall asleep on the couch at 9:30pm while debating if Ryan Seacrest is gay or not and laughing maniacally about the resolutions you made, and you wake up in 2022.

Welp, there you have it! Enjoy the last two months of 2021 (that’s a mere 60 days, if anyone was counting).

How To Hit On Women Via Social Media: A Guide For The Otherwise Creepy Guy

This is the story of how I went from a single woman to a betrothed woman to a wedded woman, all thanks to one thing: social media. (And to Clay Travis, if you ask him, but mostly social media.)

For those of you who don’t know, I met my husband after he read my debut article on OKTC back in July of 2011. It was so sweet: he politely asked Clay for my phone number and then promptly called me on the telephone and proceeded to ask me out on a proper date to the nicest steakhouse in town the following evening. LOL, just kidding, you guys! He saw my name in the byline, let an entire month drag by, then sat behind a computer screen and searched for me via Twitter and proceeded to hit on me via social media, telling me he was partying at Paradise Park that night and I could “hit him up” if I wanted to join. I mean… *SWOON.*

But here’s the scary part, y’all: it worked. IT FREAKING WORKED. That is either really terrifying or really amazing or actually a little bit of both. So I’m here to break this down and explain what he did right. Consider this your non-creepy guide to getting a wife via social media (for the otherwise creepy guy). Shout out to all the guys out there who are “only reading this to pass on tips to their creepy friends.”

1. He DM’d me.

If you’re going to use Twitter as your vehicle of choice for running game, then you had better get familiar with the “Send Direct Message” button. There are not many things more painful for innocent spectators than witnessing public Twitter banter between horny, lonely people of the Internet. Or worse, one horny, lonely guy Tweeting at an indifferent, unresponsive female. When the world can see your failed attempts at getting lucky, you need to reevaluate your actions and probably your life in general.

2. He complimented me.

“Hey. Had no idea you were so funny.” That was his opening line, in reference to my OKTC article. Some important background info you need to know is that we’d actually met briefly at a Nashville bar the year before. We had introduced ourselves, shaken hands, made some small talk, but I immediately went on with my night and didn’t think anything of it, mostly because he was wearing a neon bandana wrapped around his forehead and a T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. It later came out that he thought I was “quiet” and “shy” and “just another blonde girl” (translation=boring and not funny and probably really dumb). After reading my article, he was genuinely flabbergasted that someone like me could form sentences that would entertain him. So, his opening line was essentially a backhanded compliment… but a compliment, nonetheless! And if there’s one thing a single girl loves, it’s a damn compliment. And we don’t even care how it’s presented! “Hey, I’m having more fun with you than I thought I would” = STOP IT WE ARE BLUSHING. “Hey, you’re actually better looking than I remembered you being last time” = WE ARE YOURS FOREVER WHEN ARE WE MEETING YOUR PARENTS HOW MANY BRIDESMAIDS SHOULD WE HAVE. So, yeah, compliment her, guys.  It’s easier than you think. We ain’t hard to please.

3. He played it cool(ish).

If you’re already going through the trouble of stalking nonchalantly perusing the Interwebs trying to track her down, you’ve already used up your overzealous card for the foreseeable future. Like, you’re already not playing it cool to an extent, so don’t be afraid to chill the eff out a little, k? In this case, he took the UBER cool guy approach, which can be tricky if you’re dealing with a girl who has a strong sense of how to play “the game” (SPOILER ALERT: I DIDN’T. GAME? WHAT GAME?). The second half of the DM read, “Lemme know if you’re gonna be out and about tonight,” and then he added his cell number. That’s it, no “What are you doing tonight?” or “Would love to meet up,” not even the correct version of the words “let me.” (That part was a little offensive to me, and I told myself if he ever used “u” in place of the actual word then he was toast.) And what did I do? I put those digits to good use and texted him that same night. (SRSLY though, WHAT GAME?)

4. He swooped in when his prey was vulnerable.

Actually, he had no idea how great his timing was, so I can’t fully give him credit for this move. However, he Tweeted at me exactly when my roommate’s boyfriend was coming to town to visit for the weekend, i.e. as I was preparing to be the dreaded third wheel and just eat my feelings for the next three days.

GUYS, THIS IS AN IMPERATIVE MOVE. You need to figure out a way to adhere to this step.

“Heck, what do I have to lose?” I’d thought as I was texting him. “The person on the other end of this line can’t be any worse than the thought of accompanying my roommate and her boyfriend on yet another romantic dinner and then trying to spoon with them on the couch afterwards and talk about our futures together.” So use your resources, ask around, stalk her roommate’s Facebook, do whatever you need to do in order to time this out correctly and figure out when she’s at her weakest (and maybe even a little delusional?). When a girl is lonely and sad about being single and sick of being the third wheel, it’s amazing how much better you’ll look.

5. He finally did initiate real human-to-human contact (…eventually).

So yes, the tweeting and texting did go on for a few weeks, but eventually he moved the party from the virtual world to the actual world and asked me on a brunch date to only the classiest of classy joints, YOLO’S in Green Hills. (Sadly, YOLO’S has since been shut down since that first date, most likely due to extreme health code violations, although we don’t have this on good authority. RIP YOLO’S, you really did only live once.)

So there you have it, everyone. A simple, effortless, frankly lazy DM brought Barton Simmons the greatest happiness of his lifetime: having someone always there to critique how he eats and someone to ask him seven times every night if he locked the doors. Oh, and it brought him three daughters, and three weddings he will eventually have to fork over his entire inheritance for. So if you’re in the market for any of these joys, don’t sleep on the power of social media to make your romance dreams a reality.

Our Houzz Home Tour

Back in July, we were so honored when the lovely and talented Caroline Sharpnack came to photograph our home for her “My Houzz” series on Houzz.com. Styling our house is one of my most favorite things to do (ask Barton, I rearrange our furniture at least three times a week…he thinks I’m certifiably insane. But I will say I have strange, unbridled strength when it comes to lifting couches myself…) So it was so nice to get this amazing opportunity to showcase our space. Also, I was selfishly so excited to have these images to look back on one day to always remember our first home as a family of four.

After seeing these photos, everyone has asked me how our house is this clean. LOLOL. Guys… it’s not. Ever. And I do not handle it well. At all. Like, literally I have major meltdowns daily over the mess (again… ask Barton… again, he thinks I’m certifiably insane). This was literally one hour out of our lives where it looked like this, and honestly I wasn’t physically or mentally prepared for how hard it’d be to keep Scout from destroying it for those mere 60 minutes. I was sweating bullets sprinting around the house behind her, picking up things literally the second Scout threw them on the floor. I was pleading and begging and, at one point, crying a little bit (not proud of that but my child is scary sometimes). I was bribing with cookies, bags of skittles, trips to Disney World, real live ponies as pets… I left no manipulative stone unturned.

When she wasn’t busy ransacking the house, Scout spent her time terrorizing poor Caroline. “Hey Picture Lady! What you doin’ now, Picture Lady???” (Scout called Caroline “Picture Lady” the entire shoot, and to this day she STILL references Picture Lady here and there. Caroline must’ve made quite an impact on her!) Sweet Caroline was patient and totally understanding, and I think I must’ve apologized to her approximately 400 times over the course of the shoot. But, we did it! Her photos turned out awesome and I’m so thankful to have these sweet memories of our home to pass on to my girls one day.

Caroline is a Nashville-based interior, architectural and lifestyle photographer— check out her incredible work at www.carolinesharpnack.com or her instagram @carolinesharpnack!

Here’s the link to the story for all the details: https://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/112397915/list/my-houzz-kid-friendly-touches-in-a-new-nashville-home

Click through for all the photos!