I hate holiday cards these days.  Gone are the days of sentiment, well-wishes, or spiritual words.  No more Christmas letters outlining familial achievements of the past year.  No more envelopes of cash from Grandma.  Instead, starting the 1st of December, I receive an onslaught of photo cards that continues until the late bloomers ship theirs out in early-February.  The tell-tale envelopes give it away, and out slide glossy pictures of my friends and family.  They are smiling and affectionate; their hair is washed and their husbands are probably wearing pants.  Their arms are slung around their adorably coordinated moppets wearing holiday-hued attire.  For one moment, immortalized by the camera, everyone gets along, everyone loves each other, and everyone wishes me a “Happy Holidays! Peace & Love, The Smithsons.”

Stupid Smithsons and their stupid stupid holiday card, which is stuck to my fridge, along with 25 other ones.   Each card I receive reminds me of my failings as a parent and amateur photographer.

The first 100 attempts at snapping the Holiday Card picture are epic fails.   My 2-year old refuses to sit next to her 8-month old sister, preferring to contort herself out of all pictures of the two of them.  Perhaps it’s because the baby has been stewing in her own diaper juices for a while.  Or because she’s been wearing the same pair of pajamas for three days.  When I finally strong-arm them both onto the loveseat, the words “say cheese!” cause my toddler to bear her teeth like a miniature zombie and jam a pencil up her nose, while the baby manages to flip upside down and wedge herself between the couch cushions.  Happy holidays!

And then, through sheer grit (and a ton of bribery, cajoling, and empty threats), I get that magical shot, where both kids are clean, facing forward, and more or less expressing Peace & Love.   I send this Holiday Card so that everyone will know that, for 30 seconds out of the year, we’re great parents.  Don’t be fooled- the photo omits the mayhem, the “diapers-as-hats,” and the stickiness that comes before that fateful click.  But no one wants to put that on their fridge.

Or perhaps you do.  If you, too, enjoy that hearty mix of jealousy, exhaustion, and inadequacy this season, feel free to display our real holiday card (you should get it by mid-February):

Peace & Love,

Ali & Family

After the birth of my oldest daughter, I realized that the first order of business was to feed her.  There appeared to be three options: A) Breastfeed B) Formula-feed, or C) Pre-chewed french fries.  I chose Option A because doctors, friends, magazines, and the cashier at CVS all said the same thing: Breast milk is the best gift you can give your baby (although Sophie the Giraffe is a close second).  So, like a beer garden after Memorial Day, I was officially open for business.

Day One: I met with a hospital lactation consultant named Rhonda who touted a 99% success rate with getting babies to latch.  She wore a t-shirt that said “Breast is best” with what appeared to be cow teats on the abdomen.  Rhonda informed me that while my milk supply hadn’t come in yet, I could still put the baby on my chest and let her nurse.  That struck me as kind of a tease; like chewing gum when you’re hungry.  But I gave it a shot.  My baby attached herself to me and began to move her little mouth.  I felt all snuggly and maternal.

Day Two: Baby would not latch.  She penetrated the airwaves with relentless hunger screams, and my shoving of a boob in her mouth only muffled her cries.  I returned to the lactation room.  Rhonda tried a variety of techniques with me.  She instructed me to hold the baby as I would hold a football (which I interpreted to mean “by my fingertips, at arms’ length”).  When that didn’t work, we tried the cross-body hold, which involved some unnatural Twister-esque arm positions (“Left hand on green.  Right hand on the baby’s sternum”).  Finally, Rhonda turned the baby’s head sideways and, in one swift motion, shoved it on me.  The baby happily nursed, and I exhaled for the first time in forty minutes.

Day Three: Where the hell was Rhonda? I tried her “shove baby’s face on boob” trick, and the baby’s head wound up in my armpit.  I felt the way I usually do after leaving the beauty salon with a new haircut.  The stylist insists that I will be able to replicate the results at home, but the minute I wash my hair, my Beyonce waves turn into Weird Al curls.

Day Four: I left the hospital today with a baby, three small pumped bottles of milk, and a ton of free samples of formula.  They seemed to represent the angel and devil on my (very sore) shoulders.  I just wasn’t sure which was which.

Week One: I broke down and contacted a lactation group.  They insisted that I stick with breastfeeding, as it was the only way my baby would grow up healthy, smart, and with shiny Beyonce hair.  I explained that I knew many people that were formula-fed and turned out okay, and the consultant snapped, “Oh yeah?  What did they get on their SATs?”

Week Two: I accidentally slept through one of my baby’s feedings, and woke up to find my chest the size and consistency of unripe cantaloupes.  When I ran to show my husband my new porn-star physique, he pointed out that one side was significantly larger than the other, so I should probably even them out before posing for any calendars.

1 Month: Baby finally got the hang of nursing and seemed to enjoy it.  Every moment of every day.  Breakfast turned into lunch, then a mid-day snack, followed by dinner, then a nightcap.  While I was always appreciative of a hearty appetite, I had to pee for the past six hours, but couldn’t get up for fear that the few minutes I was away would cause my milk supply to dry up and my baby to starve.

2 Months: I’d heard somewhere that formula-fed babies slept better at night.  That sounded pretty great.  I picked up one of the formula samples temptingly. It would be so easy.  No one would know.  Suddenly, Rhonda came up behind me and smacked the bottle out of my hand.

“Breast is best!” she screamed, then disappeared.

I’m not sure how she got into my apartment.  Perhaps I hallucinated her.

3 Months:  Maternity leave ended and I returned to work.  That meant the all-you-can-eat dairy buffet was replaced by bottles of milk lovingly pumped in my supply closet while watching “Game of Thrones” on my phone.

6 Months: Many of my mom friends have started supplementing with formula.  They are getting a lot more sleep than I am.  However, I decided to stick with the nursing because I am cheap and formula is not (even with a coupon), and I really wanted my child to do well on her SATs.

Also, I didn’t want to disappoint Rhonda.  Even though I’m pretty sure she was a figment of my mind, like Brad Pitt from “Fight Club.”

9 Months:  Remember that college drinking game “Never have I ever…”?  It’s fun to play that game, replacing drunken  escapades with breastfeeding anecdotes.  “Never have I ever…nursed somebody else’s kid.”  “Never have I ever…nursed in a cemetery.”  “Never have I ever…nursed two babies at once.”  “Ha, take a shot, Rachel, you totally nursed your son in the bathroom of an Applebee’s.”  Let’s face it, by this point, most nursing mothers have done some pretty weird shit.

12 Months: The American Academy of Pediatrics says it is okay to stop nursing now.  I have generously given my nutrients, body, and time over to my darling infant, and now I must stop immediately or else my child will develop “mommy issues.” But weaning was not going well.  My go-to response for quieting the baby was to nurse (she can’t cry with her mouth full).  So each night, I reached a point where I said, “Tomorrow will be the day I wean.”

12 Months, 1 Day: Rhonda stopped by.  “Ugh, you’re still breastfeeding?”

“I’m trying to wean.  It’s not easy.”

“You know your child has teeth now, right?”

“Help me, Rhonda.  Help me get her off of my boob.”

“Just turn off the taps.  Plug up the dam.  Pull up the anchor.”

Rhonda’s analogies were confusing.

Her parting words: “Your friends, family, and the World Health Organization all find this icky.  End this.” And she was gone in a puff of condensed milk

I was confused.  Where did all my breastfeeding cheerleaders go?  Nursing seemed to come with a multitude of mixed messages.

I was tired of all the judging that followed moms who just wanted to feed their kids.  I felt like a failure when I struggled with nursing, pressured to keep it up for a year, and uncomfortable if I wanted to continue longer.   Friends who formula-fed by choice or by need were made to feel like they were short-changing their babies.  I bet if you fast-forwarded eighteen years, all of our kids would have at least gotten into their safety schools, regardless of their milk intake at age zero.

13 Months: I sloooooowly cut back on my baby’s feedings each day, and she officially kicked the habit.  I was free!  My body was my own again.  I could drink whenever I want to, wear a bra that doesn’t unclip, and stop lining the fronts of my shirts with plastic.  Free!

13 Months, 1 Day: I can’t possibly be pregnant again.

The year 2002 was Grandma’s last Thanksgiving with us. To be clear, she lived for another decade after that, but 2002 marked the year she renounced the holiday and refused to join us for the day’s festivities. While we were sad that this was so, the events of that day made her decision understandable.

The night before Thanksgiving, my dad would drive to Queens to pick up Grandma and bring her back to our house so she could help cook. While having her around during the day was indeed helpful, we dreaded having her sleep over on the den couch, since she turned in around 8pm, and it meant the television was off-limits. My brothers and I would inevitably wind up in the basement, staring at the wall, counting the hours until it was acceptable to go to bed.

That year, my roommate Kim came home with me for Thanksgiving; her plane ticket home to California would have cost more than a month’s rent in New York City. So she reluctantly agreed to forsake her family tradition of eating turkey burritos on the beach to trudge out to Long Island with me.

My brother Andrew, a college freshman, picked us up from the train station. He immediately announced that our other brother Jeremy would not be coming home for Thanksgiving this year since he was “very busy” (which I interpreted as “very hung over”).

My Aunt Clara, Uncle George, and their daughter Annette showed up first, with a beautiful blue water pitcher as a hostess gift for my mom. Clara and my mother had an odd rivalry when it came to meals; they both felt the need to perfect each other’s food. If my mom stirred the mashed potatoes and put them on the table, Aunt Clara would come along and give it one more stir. If Clara brought out the gravy boat, my mom would taste it and add more salt. Once, after each woman had fiddled with the sweet potato pie, Uncle George added more marshmallows to the top. Both women refused to speak to him for the rest of dinner.

My cousin Louise showed up next, with Aunt Rita in tow. Aunt Rita almost never came to family functions; I think she felt she was too bohemian for my straight-laced clan.   Aunt Rita was currently engaged in an affair with a married man named Reginald, and at age 70 no longer felt the need to hide the details from her children, extended relatives, or strangers at the supermarket.   The floor manager at Walgreens was bewildered to hear about her conquests, but happy that she was so satisfied sexually.

My dad sat near the front door and observed the guests’ arrivals. He was especially cautious since three years earlier, when he’d helped an older relative up the front steps, hung her coat up, and brought her hostess gift into the kitchen. It wasn’t until an hour and three courses later that we realized she was looking for the Morgenstern’s house next door.

Mom asked me to keep an eye on the turkey and make sure it was taken out of the oven by 4 pm. Kim and I sat in the kitchen companionably, peeling potatoes while my grandma sautéed onions on the stove. The heat was getting to her; she kept lifting the back of her shirt and leaning toward the open window. Andrew bounded in. “Hi, Grandma!”

“Andrew, would you do me a favor?

“Sure, Grandma, what do you need?”

“It’s very hot in here. Could you unhook my bra and slide it off my shoulders?”

Kim and I froze mid-peel. Immediately our eyes darted to Andrew. The look on his face confirmed that we had, in fact, heard correctly. With shaking hands, Andrew did what he was asked to, while our grandma gave him instructions.

“There are two hooks; make sure you get both of them…”

While Kim and I stared intently at our potatoes, Aunt Clara came in, looking around to see if my mom was watching. When the coast was clear, she grabbed the turkey baster, opened the oven, and added several squirts of drippings to the turkey.

My very pregnant cousin Annette was nervous about the food being served. “Am I allowed to eat turkey? I don’t think pregnant women can eat turkey.”

“I’m pretty sure you can eat turkey,” I replied. “I think it’s cold cuts you need to stay away from.”

“You can eat cold cuts as long as you heat them to a certain temperature,” Aunt Clara added, while rearranging the vegetable platter.

We all decided that, to play it safe, we would let the turkey stay in the oven a little longer than necessary to make sure the listeria had been killed off.

Gradually people began to sit around the table. My mom filled her new pitcher with ice water and set it out. The second she left the room, Aunt Clara added more ice. I found Andrew in the basement staring at the wall. I patted his shoulder in sympathy and told him dinner was ready.   He said he’d be upstairs once he finished his bottle of Jim Beam.

Annette was trying to pick the feta cheese out of her salad. “Unpasteurized cheese is very dangerous for unborn children.” She looked at my mom for confirmation.

Mom squeezed more liquid onto the turkey. “I ate feta cheese for all three pregnancies, and my kids turned out fine.” Just then, Andrew stumbled up the stairs clutching a tumbler and let out an enormous belch.

While Kim chatted with Louise, I made small talk with Aunt Rita.

“So, um, where’s Reginald?”

“Oh, you know, he’s spending Thanksgiving with his wife and her family up in Poughkeepsie. But he’ll spend the whole month of December in Florida with me.”

“And his, er, wife, is cool with that?”

Aunt Rita threw her head back and laughed. “Oh honey, it was her idea!”

Before she could launch into tales of senior swingers clubs in the Boca Raton area, my mom jumped up from the table. “Something’s burning!

Sure enough, clouds of smoke were billowing from the oven. The turkey! In my attempt to save Annette’s fetus from salmonella, I had forgotten to take it out. We all sat around the table staring at the oven, waiting for someone to take charge. That someone was Grandma. After waving a dishrag through the smoke, she yanked out the turkey, teeming with a ridiculous amount of juice.   The tray was too heavy for her, and the turkey pitched forward onto the floor. While she made a wobbly grab at the turkey squirting over her feet, the tray of grease spilled into the oven, catching fire. My grandma clutched at her chest where hot grease had spurted.

“My nipples! My nipples!”

“Mother!” Uncle George and Aunt Clara leapt to her side. Clara grabbed a water glass from the table to splash on her, but unfortunately it was Andrew’s glass, and contained not water but bourbon.

Now Grandma, George, Clara, AND Andrew were all screaming. Aunt Rita cackled in the background. I grabbed my mom’s new water pitcher and poured it over my ailing grandma. At that moment, we all wished she hadn’t chosen a white shirt to wear that day. There was a long pause before someone asked,

“Um, where’s Grandma’s bra?”

I looked for Andrew, but he had grabbed the bottle of bourbon and hightailed it back to the basement.

After a rudimentary inspection, it was determined that Grandma’s nipples were lightly singed but not burned, and no further remedy was needed. My father knelt on the floor and began to carve the turkey right then and there, and the rest of us (even Annette) cracked open a bottle of wine to watch, transfixed.

Aunt Rita slurped her wine. “I wish Reginald was here to see this!”

“Who’s Reginald?” Kim asked innocently. Louise rolled her eyes and threw a napkin over her head.

“Reginald is the man I am currently having the best sex of my life with.”

“Oh,” said Kim, “that sounds nice.”

There are two camps of mothers out there.

Camp #1 features the moms who have their shit together.  They have five boys under the age of four, yet have time to puree their own baby food from the vegetables they picked from the organic garden they planted in their backyard, and then pin photos of it to their Pinterest board.   Their birthday parties have themes.  Their babies’ nurseries have themes.  Their children’s wardrobes have themes.  And while it’s easy to mock their Stepford-esque, highly efficient world, I find myself thinking how that mauve accent wall in their nursery actually looks pretty cool.  They represent aspects of parenting that I secretly aspire to.

Camp #2 is filled with mothers who boast about how terrible they are at parenting.  There is a magical one-upmanship that exists between moms competing to be the worst.  Where Camp #1 moms might post a picture online showcasing their fancy new shelving system or freshly painted nursery mural, Camp #2 moms will post a picture of a wall their toddler projectile-vomited on, while bragging how it’s been a week and they still haven’t cleaned it.  Other moms will “like” the photo and comment how they too leave their child’s bodily fluids all over the house.

I don’t belong to either camp.  My nursery is neither color-coordinated nor covered in child excrement.  The popularity of book clubs and hiking groups proves that boring things are more fun when you do them with like-minded people (and if snacks are provided).  So, while motherhood is anything but boring, I definitely could use some bonding.  And some snacks.  I needed to find my mom camp.

Which is why, one random Saturday last year, I announced to my husband that I wanted to paint our daughter’s nursery.

My husband was confused.  “But the nursery’s already painted.”  Sure, yes, the walls were already a dull weak-piss yellow,  but that was the handiwork of the previous tenant.

“I really think it would look nicer with an accent wall.”

Perhaps he wanted to see the bulletin board I compiled on Pinterest?  He did not.  “Let me get this straight: you want to hire a painter to come in and paint one wall of the room?”

Despite the fact that both my husband and I are artists, we have never lifted a finger to decorate our apartment.  Give us a brush and a blank canvas, and we could create a masterpiece.  Give us a roller and a blank wall, and we will stare at each other until one of us says “Do you know how to get the lid off the paint can? ‘Cuz I don’t.”  And then hire a professional.

“I guess we could do it ourselves,” I said with the same level of conviction I had once said “I guess I could try natural childbirth” and “I guess cloth diapers are more economical.”

That was clearly not going to happen.  The “nursery” had been created from our guest room, and other than sticking a crib in the corner, we had done nothing to aid in its conversion.  We still kept the guest bed in it, we still had our bookshelves and drafting table there, and unless our toddler suddenly decided to read Kafka or invite friends to stay over for the weekend, this was still technically not a room for her.   I had to admit that our toddler was subletting our guest room.

“Well, if we don’t paint it, how can we make it more, um, kid-friendly?” I asked, eyeing the paper shredder we kept plugged in a few feet from the crib.

“What about Winnie the Pooh?” My husband pulled out  a box of decals we had purchased thinking they were just really big stickers.  “I mean, the room’s already yellow.  We can give it a Pooh theme.”

As we stuck Winnie the Pooh decals around the room, I knew no one was going to pin pictures of my nursery.  Camp #1 had  rejected me, and I wasn’t even sure I belonged there anyway.  Besides, my daughter subsequently went around telling everyone that she had “Pooh all over her walls,” so people placed me in the “defecation-as-decoration” Mom Camp #2.  Perhaps I should check in and see what they were up to.

On a Friday night, I tagged along with my friend Lori to her group’s Moms’ Night Out.  Which wasn’t actually a night out, but a gathering at one of their houses where the moms drank wine in the kitchen while the kids played video games in the basement.  Win-win!  I placed my bottle of pinot grigio next to the others on the counter and tried my best to be social.

There were three other moms there (including Lori), and as I joined in the conversation, I realized that none of them had a Pinterest account.

A woman named Beth, wearing a hoodie and Pajama Jeans, opened a magnum of white wine and began to down a generous glassful, all while bouncing her three month old on her knee.  When the baby began to fuss, she shifted her wine glass to her other hand and began to nurse her baby.

“Wow,” I said, in a way that inadvertently came out sounding falsely admiring.  “Look at you, multitasking.”

“Hey. People used to drink and smoke all the time around their kids.  Even while pregnant! And they turned out fine.  Just look at ‘Mad Men.'”

I did look at ‘Mad Men,’ but not for parenting advice.  Lori chimed in, “I drank a six-pack of beer before nursing.  Beer is supposed to increase your milk supply, and I wanted to keep my baby nourished.”  I wondered if all those keg stands Lori did in college were really to help nourish her future babies.

The room began to swell with overlapping stories involving booze and babies.  I was riveted, secretly hoping that someone would disclose having done a shot of tequila off their newborn’s umbilical stump.

Another mom, Julia, offered: “I usually bring a water bottle filled with vodka to my son’s soccer games.  You know, to stay warm.”

“After a game once, didn’t he accidentally chug your bottle instead of his?” Beth asked, while Julia looked down and smirked as if this were an amusing college anecdote.

Suddenly, the “bad-parenting” conversation began to take on an air of frenzied competition.

“Remember that time I almost fed my kid rock salt, because I stored our outdoor chemicals next to our spice rack?”

“You think that’s bad- my son drank most of a magazine insert shampoo sample before I realized it wasn’t a GoGurt packet.”

The other mothers looked at me expectantly.  I racked my brain- my daughters have never ingested anything toxic.  Yet.  But for the sake of camaraderie, I needed something.

“That’s nothing.  My daughter drank a cup of paint thinner thinking it was juice.”

Too far.  Somehow I crossed over from “comically neglectful mother” to “serial killer.”

I added, “She’s totally fine.  But our contractor couldn’t start painting her bedroom til we replaced it.”  The looks of horror on the other women’s faces didn’t go away.

“You…hired someone to paint her room?” Beth inquired, as some wine dripped on her baby’s neck.  “It’s pretty easy to paint a nursery yourself.”

“Seriously, you can paint it yourself in half the time and for a fraction of the cost.” Julia was aghast.  Apparently, even Camp #2 mothers knew how to paint a wall.  I was losing them, fast.  Soon I would have no mother group to belong to.

“Heh, I needed to call in a professional to fix the nursery walls ever since my baby pooped all over the room and we forgot to clean it up…”  I slurped my wine.  “…for months.”

Finally, a story we could all relate to.  We clanked glasses and drank to our own incompetence, which didn’t seem that bad, since we were incompetent as a group.

My husband and I never painted our daughter’s nursery, but we did finally move the paper shredder to another room.  You can see pictures of it on my Pinterest board.

My husband and I went out on a date.

A real date, not one of those nights where we order takeout and watch television shows we DVR-ed in 2013, and call it “dinner and a movie.” The plan was to head into the city, walk around a bit, and meet some friends for dinner at a trendy new tapas place called Piccata (Yelp said it had the “best duck confit meatballs south of Houston Street” so it must be good). We got my 15-year-old cousin Alexa to babysit for our two kids, which we were a bit nervous about, considering both our toddler and baby can best be described as “high maintenance.”  But Alexa was eager to watch the “cutest babies on Earth” (her words, not mine), and didn’t seem to mind watching Disney Jr. for hours while having endless tea parties.  Speaking of which, she had a party to get to afterwards (probably not of the ‘tea’ variety), so if we got home by 11pm, that would be amazing. Since we were about to take the city by storm, that seemed unlikely.

While on the 45-minute subway journey, I felt my phone buzz. I never got reception on trains, so I was initially excited. Until I checked my phone: 10 texts from Alexa.

“The baby’s crying. LOL.”  Alexa, like most teenagers, was full of mixed messages and misused emoticons.

“She won’t stop crying. Ha what should I do?”

“She is screaming so loud she woke up your other daughter.”

“My head hurts. ROFL. What time are you coming home?”

“This was a terrible idea, hon,” my husband sighed. “We should just go home.”

“You really want to go home to a shrieking baby?”

We decided to stay in the city. I called Alexa and talked her into pushing the baby around the living room in a stroller while singing Broadway show tunes.   Like most couples venturing out after a long hiatus, we were disgustingly early for dinner, so we tried to find a bar nearby. I wanted to Google “fun bars where cool people hang out” but my husband said that a cool person going to a fun bar would never need to use a search engine. Unsurprisingly, we ended up at the bar next to the subway stop.

Ahead of us, there was a short line of twenty-somethings waiting to get into the bar. You could tell they were young because they traveled en mass, were nervously hunting around for their IDs, and wore outfits I wouldn’t ever let my daughters out of the house in.

When we reached the door, we received our first slap in the face- the bouncer waved us in with nary a glance at our proffered IDs. It’s a sad day when no one wants to see your ID except the CVS cashier verifying your credit card signature.

As we made our way toward the jam-packed bar, we were intercepted by a hostess.

“Do you guys want to sit at a table?”

“Nah,” I said, “We’ll just grab drinks at the bar.” Although the bar was encircled by what appeared to be an entire fraternity downing car bombs.

“Wouldn’t you prefer a quieter section?” Oh boy, did I ever! We allowed the hostess to lead us to the back of the bar and I happily plopped down at a table.  In a chair with a back.  As far as I was concerned, that was good livin’.  My husband eyed the lively front bar and sighed the sigh of a 40 year old father of two.

A waiter came by and asked what type of water we wanted: still or sparking. My husband and I paused, but only because we wanted to order drinks, not a meal. The waiter chuckled. “Don’t worry, folks, the water’s free.” We laughed awkwardly with him. Clearly that guy thought we were so old and cheap that we’d rather stick our heads under the bathroom tap than shell out for agua. He eyed me as if I was seconds away from pouring the contents of the breadbasket into my purse. We drank our awful watered-down drinks fast and ran out of the bar (good riddance, since the music was so loud I could feel the bass thumping in the back of my throat).

Now all we needed to do was find Piccata, the restaurant where we were meeting my friends for dinner.

“The address says 434 Bowery. I think we’re on the wrong side of the street,” I observed.

We both whipped out our phones and opened up a map of the area. Because we were super-cool, and not touristy at all, we proceeded to walk with our phones in front of our faces, past a deserted warehouse and a fun-looking place called “Store for Rent,” until we found 434 Bowery, which was not a hip restaurant, but a homeless shelter. “Should I ask inside if they know where Piccata is?” I asked, quickly slipping my phone back in my bag.

“Um, let’s just try the other direction.”

Sure enough, Piccata was located in the abandoned warehouse. You could tell it was hip and trendy because there was no name or number on the building, and because shirtless skateboarders were congregated in front.

The trouble with tapas restaurants is that all the portions are so small that you wildly overcompensate and order 20 dishes. After a few glasses of sangria, you are no longer aware that you are spending $25 for a plate of three duck confit meatballs split amongst seven people (it is always impossible to divide the food evenly and one person always ends up stuck licking confit off the plate).

At this rate, my husband and I realized that we would run out of cash fast. My husband lovingly volunteered to dash out to a nearby ATM to restock.

Five minutes passed. I got a text from Alexa:

“Where do you keep your cleaning supplies? Just curious…Haha.”

10 minutes passed.

I divided an asparagus spear into little pieces and circulated the plate.

15 minutes. Did my husband forget which abandoned warehouse we were dining in? Suddenly he slid back into his chair.

“We’re all set. Got the money.” He nibbled on a goat cheese crostini the size of a fingernail.

“Thanks, hon. You were gone a while. Everything okay?”

“Yesssss.” He got quiet. “…I may have stopped for pizza.”

“WHAT?!!! You left dinner to go eat?!” Mostly I was just pissed he didn’t bring me a slice. To make up for it, he let me eat the rest of his crostini.  My phone pinged. Alexa.

“You don’t need to come home. The baby puked on the couch, but I covered it with a blanket. LOL. She sure is loud. What a cutie. You almost done?”

It was time to make our exit. We hightailed it out of Piccata and made it home before 10:30pm. I tucked in the baby, who had fallen asleep five minutes before our return, while my husband dropped Alexa off at a party that was first starting at 11pm (“Drive slowly, I don’t want to be the first one there,” she said).

And then I made myself a giant sandwich.

Don’t want to live with them; don’t want to live without them: grandparents add many wonderful qualities to your family life. They tell your kids embarrassing stories of when you were their age. They ply your kids with food, clothes, and new toys, all for a hug and high-pitched “I love you, Grandma!” They have stilted, awkward conversations on the phone with toddlers, proudly display crayon scribbles on their fridge, and keep a carton of expired ice cream in their freezer. But finding the right balance between “involved” and “entrenched” can be tricky. If you do need duke out some issues with the grandparents, keep in mind the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

Issue #1: Gifts

Parents: You buy your daughter a Barbie; they buy her an American Girl doll family. You buy your son baseball cards; they take him to a World Series game. You buy him a Hess truck; they buy him a Toyota Prius. While you are overwhelmed by their generosity, you wish their generosity wasn’t so, well, overwhelming.

Grandparents: Whether you only have one grandchild or twelve, your role is to buy them stuff their parents won’t. If that means having to take out a second mortgage on the house so that your grandchildren can come to Tuscany with you, so be it. On second thought, why not just give the grandkids the house?

Winner: Parents. While all the extras are flashy, in the long run your kids will appreciate the time you spend with them, the life experiences you provide, and the values you instill in them. And the four-year, out-of-state tuition you shell out for.

Issue #2: Babysitting

Parents: Your parents are your go-to first choice for babysitters. Growing up, they were so strict with you, you’re sure they will keep your kids in line. However, you notice the youngest generation gets to stay up later and play a lot more Nintendo with them than you did. Hmmm.

Grandparents: The way to your grandchildren’s hearts is to be as vastly different from their parents as possible. Which is why babysitting often entails binge-watching Peppa Pig while eating Carvel cake for dinner.

Winner: Grandparents. Listen, parents- do NOT look this gift horse in the mouth. If you try to make “suggestions” for how they should handle your kids while you’re away, they will suddenly have a bridge tournament the same weekend as that wedding you want to attend.

Issue #3: The Crib

Parents: You’ve received countless propaganda insisting that you put your baby to sleep on his or her back (your child even has a onesie that says “This side up” on her tummy). The crib should be a barren wasteland devoid of toys, blankets, bumpers, and other life-threatening sources of entertainment. And don’t even think about a crib with a drop-down side.

Grandparents: You stuffed your children’s cribs with more toys than an FAO Schwartz, and they lived to tell about it. You were told to put babies on their stomachs so they wouldn’t choke on spit-up, and they lived to tell about it. And without a drop-down side, how can you reach into that ridiculously deep crib to pluck out the screaming youngster?

Winner: A draw. Everyone turned out fine. Who knows? Next year, the American Academy of Pediatrics might recommend placing your baby in the crib on an upside-down diagonal, surrounded by toys the same color as your womb.

Issue #4: Dinner

Parents: You spend hours preparing a kale stew, and your in-laws show up on your doorstep with corn dogs and potato chips. You try to convince your toddler that soba noodles are the same as macaroni, only to find your parents let her skip dinner and go straight for the homemade Tollhouse pie. Your child’s need for proper nutrition should trump the grandparents’ need to be popular.

Grandparents: If the goal is to get the children to eat, then why does all their food look like stage-prop vomit? Why should a toddler eat sushi when there’s five Friendly’s within driving distance? Also, you ate nothing but pizza-flavored Combos for ten years, and look how well you turned out.

Winner, winner , chicken dinner (but only if it is boneless, skinless, and cut into dinosaur shapes): Parents. You have the right to stuff your kiddo’s faces with whatever you deem fit. Good luck with that kale dish.

Issue #5: Parenting Skills

Parents: Perhaps your parents are making up for mistakes of the past, or showing off their spotless track record. Either way, they make no bones about pointing out your parenting shortcomings: Your infant son is sucking on a battery. Your baby has been sitting in her own poop for the better part of the afternoon. Your daughter pulled chewing gum off the underside of a park bench and put it in her mouth. Nag, nag, nag.

Grandparents: Your own kids turned out pretty fabulous, so clearly you did something right. It is your duty to impart to them the wisdom of decades of perfect parenting every time you would handle a situation differently. And you definitely don’t remember the time you left your daughter at a Chuck E. Cheese for an hour and a half while you accidentally brought home her friend Caitlyn, who you thought was your daughter, since both of them were wearing pink dresses.

Winner: Grandparents. Parents, your son really should take that battery out of his mouth. Gross.

Issue #6: Visitation Rights

Parents: Maybe one set of grandparents wants to visit every other day, bringing new wardrobes for the kiddies, a dessert that appears to be made solely out of pixie stix, and a camcorder to record every soccer game and recital. Maybe the other set of grandparents wants you to drive over an hour to visit them, where they serve quinoa, have lots of un-gated staircases, and don’t even know which channel is Disney Jr.   Can’t there be a happy medium?

Grandparents: Sometimes you just want to quietly finish the latest James Patterson book without a Nerf football hitting you in the side of the head, or vacation in a place without themed characters walking around. And other times, you want front-row seats for your three-year-old granddaughter’s jazz routine to “Ghetto Superstar.”

Winner: Grandparents. Dear parents, the grandparents finished raising their own kids thirty years ago. As great as it would be to dictate the terms of their involvement with your kids, they are free to visit or not visit as often as they like. Remember, you can always not be home.