Reasons Mommy Drinks
Page 5
INGREDIENTS
1 ounce Pimms
3 ounces lemonade
Splash of ginger ale
Sprig of fresh rosemary
INSTRUCTIONS
Fill a glass with ice. Pour in the Pimms, lemonade, and ginger ale and stir. Garnish with the rosemary from your herb garden. Yes, you have an herb garden now. Invite the neighbors over, slap on an apron, and surrender to your new domestic life.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
One day in biology class you’ll learn that animals are attracted to other animals who display good symmetry (which the brain apparently equates with good genes and the production of healthy offspring). What’s not taught in school is how the story ends: male courts female, they reproduce, and the female is robbed of the very thing that attracted her mate in the first place.
Exhibit A: Mommy’s rack. The wonders of uneven milk supply mean sometimes Mommy’s right breast is a glorious double D, while her lowly left could play peek-a-boob under a Hershey’s Kisses wrapper.
Exhibit B: Mommy’s arms. From holding you exclusively on one side since you emerged from the womb, Mommy’s left biceps could grace the cover of MuscleMag while her right would lose to an Olsen twin in an arm wrestle.
Exhibit C: Mommy’s insides. She obviously missed the part in What to Expect where it explained that your organs shift during pregnancy and then “more or less” go back to their original pre-pregnancy positions. Probably because she was still recovering from the trauma of reading the chapter titled “Stretch Marks, Spider Veins, and the Mask of Pregnancy.”
Good thing Daddy is attracted to Mommy for more than her looks. Like the sunny disposition that greets him when he comes home from work fifteen minutes late. Oh, wait.
INGREDIENTS
1 ounce vodka
½ ounce cranberry vodka
½ ounce dry vermouth
Fresh strawberry
Peel of lemon
INSTRUCTIONS
Chill a cocktail glass. Combine the vodkas and vermouth in a shaker with ice. Shake well and strain into the glass. Garnish with a strawberry and lemon peel.
NOTE
Best consumed while avoiding mirrors.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
The wonderful thing about spending $22 on a pair of baby chinos is that you outgrow them before you and Mommy even leave the mall. The only thing growing faster than you is the mountain of outgrown Onesies causing a fire hazard in the basement. She can’t give them away in case she has a second, even though One and Done is the Dr. Seuss book Mommy is considering ghostwriting. In an effort to pull back on trips to Carter’s, Mommy has been cramming you into clothes that no longer fit, just like Christina Aguilera. At the rate you’re growing, you’ll soon be wearing Daddy’s clothes. (Mommy hopes late-century modern becomes a fashion trend ASAP because Daddy’s closet is the wardrobe that time forgot and includes every striped button-down sold at The Gap in the 1990s.) Your growth spurts are giving you major mood swings and you no longer sleep through the night, but Mommy is happy you’re growing and healthy—plus you look rad in that oversized paisley sweater vest. For the next five minutes.
NOTE
Add vodka.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Mommy can’t believe she’s going to pay a teenager $40 to sit in her living room for three hours (texting her boyfriend and eating Mommy’s cappuccino frozen yogurt directly from the tub) while you lie sleeping in your crib upstairs the entire time. But Mommy and Daddy figured that to avoid becoming a statistic, they should spend the occasional Saturday night doing something other than eating take-out Thai food in front of her Sex and the City box set, only to doze off before the closing credits. Dressed in her standby LBD and rocking her volumizing mascara, Mommy’s actually feeling pretty hot, until the sitter with Brooklyn Decker legs sprouting from a skirt the size of a Bella Band greets her at the front door. At least Mommy gets to enjoy a fancy dinner at the trendy new Italian eatery across town that the single crew keeps checking into on Facebook. Until she does the mental math on the evening’s expenses and realizes that this mushroom risotto that she could “totally make at home” (just kidding) is costing her $18 per mouthful. Making conversation is challenging when Mommy and Daddy are both sleep deprived and checking their phones every two minutes to make sure you haven’t catapulted out of your crib or started a fire. And downing a bottle of red wine isn’t an option when someone has to drive the babysitter home at the end of the night to avoid blowing another $20 on cab fare. If this is the price tag on a night out, Mommy and Daddy are going to have to crack some serious social whip. No more Jennifer Aniston movies or double dates with B-list couples until your thirteenth birthday.
NOTE
Sometimes it pays to be boring.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
One day, when you ask her why you ended up at community college instead of an Ivy League, Mommy will tell you the tragic story of the evil, vile-smelling villain that made off with your entire education fund: The Diaper. Although your career options are now limited to small-engine repair and dental office administration, at least you have this rad Learn n’ Fun pelican sorter that Mommy scored from the Pampers points program. If you think this is traumatic for you, just imagine poor Mommy having to deal with the toxic waste that started coming out of you once she introduced solids to your diet. Good thing Mommy has successfully used labor as leverage to get Daddy to own a disproportionate share of diaper changes, adding to his previous household duties of killing bugs and filling the barbecue with propane. Though the thought of spending more than a grand on diapers in your first year alone is more nauseating than constantly changing them, apparently it’s better than what lies ahead when it’s time for potty training! (Fodder for Reasons Mommy Drinks 2?)
INGREDIENTS
3 fresh raspberries
3 fresh blueberries
Cognac
Chilled Champagne
INSTRUCTIONS
Soak the berries in the Cognac for 1 hour. Chill a Champagne flute. Place the berries in the flute and top with Champagne.
NOTE
Pamper yourself for a change with this extravagant cocktail.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Nap time is the most wonderful time in Mommy’s day. In theory. According to her Mommy groups, you are the only baby in the universe not taking two perfect one-hour naps a day. Some days Mommy is lucky if you fall asleep for ten minutes in her arms after forty-five minutes of bouncing you on her former exercise ball (at least it’s getting some sort of use). On the mornings when you do magically drift off to sleep in your crib, it’s a race against time. The clock tick-tocks down as Jack Bauer echoes in her head: “There’s no time!” Mommy has less than sixty minutes to do the following things: make coffee, tackle the laundry Matterhorn, clean applesauce off the kitchen ceiling, stuff a Toaster Strudel in her mouth, make more coffee, throw out the rotting vegetables in her fridge, dry-heave while cleaning out the Diaper Genie, not learn Spanish, and sit down for three minutes of hour four of The Today Show, at which point she finally gets why Hoda and Kathie Lee are drinking wine before noon. Mommy thinks it’s hysterical that there are Pinterest boards about the crafts and elaborate meals that can be prepared during nap time. Not only is Mommy a prisoner of your schedule, but God forbid you should fall asleep in the car seat before she makes it home, because it will completely screw up your nap and screw Mommy out of the one precious hour she has to accomplish everything. “Sleep when the baby sleeps” chirps every book about the first year. Yeah right.
INGREDIENTS
Lemon juice
Sugar
1 ounce gin
3 ounces club soda
Sprig of fresh thyme
INSTRUCTIONS
Rim a glass with lemon juice and then sugar. Fill the glass with ice. Pour in the gin, club soda, a splash of lemon juice, and sugar to taste. Stir gently. Garnish with the thyme.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Nothing says baby-friendly like a two-hundred-square-foot room furnished in glass and teeming with germs. Yet somehow tagging along on Daddy’s business trip seemed less overwhelming than coping with single-parent duty back home. So for the next seventy-two hours, you and Mommy are living it up, Dylan McKay–style. Despite her best intentions and a family-sized pack of antibacterial wipes, Mommy’s germ-busting mission goes belly up when you beat her to the (shudder) remote control. At least she manages to successfully cram your perishable food supply into the refrigerated section of the minibar, which, if the limp Snickers bar is any indication, is probably set somewhere between room temperature and Calcutta. Mommy can forget about ordering room service and watching HBO while Daddy hits the town with his colleagues. The crib won’t fit in the bathroom, so it’s lights out at 7 PM thanks to the two inches separating you from the TV. Once she finally manages to soothe you to sleep, Mommy’s options for in-room entertainment are limited to holing up in the bathroom with the hotel magazine or Facebook-stalking her former coworkers under her duvet. At least she won’t be lying when she updates her status with “Having an amazzzing time in NYC.”
INGREDIENTS
Varies depending on minibar contents
INSTRUCTIONS
Fill a glass with ice. Pour equal parts cranberry juice and pineapple or orange juice and top with a splash of ginger ale. Enjoy with a pack of $15 cashews; this one’s on Daddy’s expense account.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Mommy does laundry all day, every day. Apparently, a clean Onesie is a tractor beam for all things stain-y. The perpetual spin cycle is running up her water bill and has probably killed several baby seals. First it was nuclear newborn poo causing the never-ending fluff ’n’ fold. Lately, it’s self-feeding. Mommy is worried you’re not getting enough nutrients because entire avocados are being mashed into your khakis. Of course, you think this is hilarious. As a prop comic, your go-to routine involves covering yourself in tomato sauce, berries, and squash puree, and the punch line is flinging all of it on to Mommy’s one decent H&M wrap dress. Not wanting to risk the slightest chance of light irritation on your tender skin (MOMMY GUILT ALERT), she is only using fragrance-free, chemical-free, function-free detergents, which means no stain comes out ever. She’s tempted to dress you all in black and start a Goth Baby trend. Anarchy in the crib!
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
There’s no better time to tackle a major home repair than when you have an infant, said no one ever. Mommy and Daddy learned this the hard way recently when the roof sprung a leak. Mommy is overcome with guilt when she splurges on a Starbucks flavor shot, so plunging thousands of dollars into unplanned debt to repair the water damage and reshingle the roof is giving her angina. Especially with the added challenge of ensuring your safety while living in a wrecking zone. Mommy used to go to painstaking lengths to ensure your every waking hour was filled with the perfect combination of playtime, stimulation, and rest. These days she declares victory if you make it through the day without swallowing a rusty nail or falling through a missing floorboard. And getting you to nap for longer than ten-minute intervals has become impossible now that your sleep sound track of waves and seagulls has been remixed with power saws. After material delays and Disappearing Contractor Syndrome stretch a three-week project to eight, Mommy can at least seek solace that you have a roof over your head and a warm, dry place to play. And then the basement floods.
INGREDIENTS
1 ounce vodka
6 ounces orange juice
INSTRUCTIONS
Fill a glass with ice. Pour in the vodka, top with the orange juice, and stir.
NOTE
Helps wash down the permanent layer of sawdust that covers your home.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
The time has come for Mommy to head back to work. Going to a place where people listen to her ideas, she is compensated financially for her efforts, and she can enjoy a coffee without it going cold first because someone peed on her is, incredibly, filled with mixed emotion. When people ask her how she’s “handling the guilt” of leaving you, she transforms into a Claire Danes meme as her face contorts into that of a screwed-up sad person. As she squats in the supply room pumping milk next to extra pens and industrial-grade Windex, she misses you like crazy (and misses midday naps, track pants, and not trying), but she feels proud to support her family in a job she genuinely loves. No one asks Daddy how he handles the guilt. They only ask him when he has to “babysit.” There are some Mommies who quit thriving careers with expense accounts and superelite frequent-flyer status to be stay-at-home Moms. These women are bat-shit crazy! Or they’re saints. Staying at home is hard. Then again, balancing motherhood and a career means that no matter where you are, you should be somewhere else. Uh-oh. Here comes the Cry Face again. Damn you, Danes!
INGREDIENTS
½ ounce dark rum
½ ounce cherry brandy
½ ounce light rum
3 ounces orange juice
1 ounce lemon juice
Dash of grenadine
INSTRUCTIONS
Combine all the ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake well and strain into a glass after a long day of Trying to Be Awesome at Everything.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Mommy has a love-hate relationship with the pump. Like Mel Gibson in Braveheart, it provides “FREEEEEEDOM!” However, Mommy could not feel more like a dairy cow, and not just because she is wearing a cow-printed Slanket. Mommy also doesn’t understand how science works because one side explodes while the other barely yields a drop. Mommy thought Daddy would never want to have sex again once he saw her nipples being stretched out into deformed pencil erasers, but Daddy just drowns out the “wig wom wig woms” by turning up Storage Wars.
But pumping at home is nothing compared to pumping at the office. There’s no faster way not to climb the corporate ladder than being walked in on by Mommy’s male VP while her boobs are hooked up to the Medela Pump In Style Advanced. It doesn’t matter how amazing her quarterly results are. The dude will never forget that moment, and Mommy now needs to update her LinkedIn profile. But pumping is worth it. Even though it can take a full twenty minutes of creeping her frenemies on Facebook to squeeze out five ounces, pumping means she can go back to work and still breast-feed you. It also means she can have a drink. So Mommy will continue to make like The Black Eyed Peas and “Pump It.”
INGREDIENTS
1 ounce coffee liqueur
4 ounces milk
INSTRUCTIONS
Serve over ice in a trough.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
As if she doesn’t feel guilty enough when she leaves you for work every day, now Mommy’s got to take care of business in a different time zone. After an embarrassing incident at security involving her breast pump (“Well, sir, this actually prevents explosions”), she makes it to her destination, where she compulsively checks her phone in case of an emergency, spending her entire 401(k) in roaming charges. A day of meetings is followed by a night of client schmoozery, but all she wants to do is jump on Skype and judge what outfit Daddy’s put you in (please, God, not that “pimp-in-training” Adidas tracksuit again). When she finally gets back to her room to deflate the Dolly Partons her colleagues have been ogling, it pains her to flush that liquid gold down the drain because anything more than three ounces of breast milk is on the no-fly list. At the airport, Mommy hits up the duty-free shop to get Daddy a bottle of scotch, which he’ll need after his foray into single parenthood. Following some light turbulence during which she was convinced she was going to die in a fiery crash so she hastily wrote out a will on the back of her boarding pass, Mommy arrives home to find you sound asleep and not missing any limbs. It takes every fiber in Mommy’s being not to wake you. It’s the one time she hopes you won’t sleep through the night.
INGREDIENTS
1 ounce vodka
Champagne
Dash of simple syr
up
1 ounce crème de cassis
3 fresh raspberries
Squeeze of lemon
INSTRUCTIONS
Pour the vodka, Champagne, and simple syrup into a glass. Top with the crème de cassis, raspberries, and lemon. Garnish with a swizzle stick, cocktail napkin, and a child kicking your seat.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Mommy was never living at the height of fashion, but since your birth she’s definitely reached new lows. Her closet is a jail cell for fashion crimes, containing hardened criminals like Ann Taylor and Laura Ashley. She wishes she could do a major purge and splurge, but she feels guilty even eyeing those Tory Burch flats in the window of Nordstrom because she should be BOGO-ing at Payless and fixing the leaky basement. Not only does she have zero time to buy new clothes, but when she puts on anything clean you proceed to accessorize it with milky drool, goobery hands, or pee. And honestly? Mommy isn’t super psyched about shopping at Lane Bryant, but until she loses this baby weight she doesn’t have a lot of options. On weekends, she can get away with wearing the same Banana Republic Factory Store maxidress over and over again, but during the week her coworkers are subjected to a fashion-show Groundhog Day as she rotates five business-passable outfits like days-of-the-week underwear. Speaking of underwear, poor Daddy. Her lingerie drawer is full of threadbare Victoria’s Secret, except for the one red thong from last Valentine’s Day that still has the tags on it. Daddy can dream.
INGREDIENTS
1 ounce Irish cream
1 ounce crème de cacao
INSTRUCTIONS
Pour over a scoop (or a whole pint) of vanilla ice cream.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Before you were born, Mommy and Daddy were living like assholes. Two thriving careers and no kids meant lavish dinners out, resorts with swim-up bars, and ironic hats. The financial meltdown began with all the crud Mommy had to buy for you that you really didn’t need, like the forty-seven newborn Onesies you outgrew on day two and every Fisher-Price contraption ever invented. Maternity leave’s nosedive into the red was only outdone by the euro debt crisis. She’s suddenly found herself more broke than when she worked as an intern and lived off canned corn but without the benefit of creepy old men paying for her drinks. Even though she’s now back to work, the cost of child care alone means she’s barely able to claw her way back to solvency. If only some distant relative would materialize out of nowhere to bail her out with a multimillion-dollar inheritance, she could finally fix the GODDAMNED LEAKY BASEMENT. Or at least buy a decent pair of non-elastic-waist pants.