Momtales

By Shani Ratzker MD

Once again Shani Stein Ratzker takes on a humorous voyage, detailing her adventures this time as a parent of four vivacious boys. It is a book filled with personal anecdotes, funny stories, advice and encouragement on getting through the parenting years with joy and positivity. Momtales will allow you to let go of some of the stress of motherhood as you find yourself relating to the stories in this book and connecting with the author's struggles. From the craziness of carpools to vacationing with kids, from pushing through exhaustion to reclaiming yourself along the way, you will enjoy this timeless ride through the parenting journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9781663251916

Shani Ratzker MD

Shani Stein Ratzker MD resides with her husband and children in Bergen County, NJ. She maintains a private practice in adult Psychiatry and in her free time she enjoys spending time with her family and writing about her amusing experiences. She is also the author or MD: A Four-year Journey Through Medical School.

Book preview

Copyright © 2024 Shani Ratzker MD.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

844-349-9409

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-5192-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-5191-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023905719

iUniverse rev. date: 01/29/2024

Dedicated to

my children,

who fill my every day with joy

Contents

Introduction

1     Hoarders ’R’ Us

2     Steel-Cut Oats, Greek Yogurt, and Blueberries

3     Baby Steps

4     Cell Phone, Schmell Phone

5     Placing Bets (When Husbands Act like Kids!)

6     Vacationing with Your Spouse

7     I Love My Vacations. Then Again, Who Doesn’t?

8     Allergies

9     School Jitters

10   Hostess with the Mostest

11   Spread Too Thin

12   Car Seat Jitters

13   I Just Took a Vacation, and I Need Another One

14   Chanukah Presents I Could Do Without

15   Skinny Neighbors

16   Nannies ’R’ Us

17   I Just Can’t Let Go of My Baby

18   On Exhaustion

19   My Disappearing Carpool

20   Last Day of School

21   I’m a Mess

22   Help! My Kids Think I’m Ancient

23   It’s All for the Best

24   My Kids Are Driving Me Bananas

25   I’m Going Mad, or At Least I Think I Am

26   Gimmicks

27   Our Out-of-Control Lives

28   You’re So Full of Life

29   Mother’s Day

30   Minivan Wonder

31   High School Reunions

32   Summer Break

33   Sleepaway Camp

34   Visiting Day

35   Sports Team Drama

36   Back-to-School Night

37   On Aging

38   My Kid Is Acting Out—Help!

39   On Pesach

40   From All My Students I Shall Learn

Introduction

O ne Sunday this year I dropped off the wrong kid at a birthday party. Seriously, this is not a joke. Nowadays, with the evites that bombard one’s inbox informing one of all the various birthday parties that one has to get one’s children to each weekend, sometimes several in one day, it is conceivable that a mother can become confused. The birthday child’s parents usually just send you an email—Eden is having a birthday party. You’re invited—often not including the age of the child having the birthday or indicating which of your children is/are actually invited to the party. Since I don’t know the names of everyone in my children’s classes, this can get rather dicey. In my case, with four sons eleven and under, I sometimes get discombobulated. To be honest, though, I usually get it right. Either I’ll know the particular boy who is having the birthday party that week and will therefore know which of my children’s classes the child is in (and who is rightfully supposed to attend), or I’ll yell out to my kids at dinner, Which of you has a boy named Eden in your class? Hopefully with some skillful deductive reasoning, I can figure out which of my kids has a birthday party to at tend.

Who names a kid Eden anyway? I think. I imagine that the name originates from the Garden of Eden, from which we were ejected from because of our sins. And I can’t figure out in this case if the name belongs to a boy or a girl, because it’s a unisex name, adding to my confusion.

Anyway, back to me trying to decipher which of my children was invited to this party so I can be a proper suburban mom and make sure my kids are kept suitably busy with as many sports games, birthday parties, and chess tournaments on any given Sunday as possible to turn a mom who is carpooling to all these engagements sufficiently batty. If I don’t actually know which of my children’s classes the child who is having a birthday party is in, or if I can’t ask my children which one of them has this particular child in his class (say they’re all playing in the park, which is right across the street from my house—one of the main reasons I fell in love with my house and agreed to move to the suburbs in the first place), I will get up from my chair (which, don’t underestimate, can sometimes be a huge feat after a long day of work) and check the class lists in the kitchen to find out which of my boys has a boy named Eden in his class. But this particular time, I was at work when I first saw the evite, and I didn’t do any of the above. I just took a guess that Eden was in the class with my five-year-old and dropped him off at the party that Sunday.

I was feeling very pleased with myself that I had gotten my kid where he was supposed to go on time. He even had a shiny wrapped present neatly tucked under his arm and a big goofy smile on his face, being extremely happy to actually have a birthday party to go to. Well, two hours later (the parties often last only one and a half to two hours because that’s the maximum amount of time anyone can keep twenty-two boys occupied without going insane), I sent my husband to pick up our son. At that point, the mother of the birthday boy came out and said, I think you dropped off the wrong child. My husband was mortified as my five-year-old son sheepishly got into the car. Apparently, the party was for my seven-year-old, and I had gotten it completely mixed up.

My husband relayed this to me when he got home. I wanted to take a paper bag and pull it over my head and move to a different town. I couldn’t believe that nobody from the birthday party had called me during the entire two-hour period to let me know that I had dropped off my five-year-old at a seven-year-old’s party. Didn’t any of the kids recognize that my child wasn’t in their class and therefore didn’t belong there, then go over to tell the hosts that it was Dovi who was supposed to be partying with them, not Ari? What did they think, that I had just lined my kids up in a row that morning, pointed to the one who looked a little blue, and said, You look like you could use a birthday party to go to today. Put on your shoes; we’re running late? I was horrified, knowing that the host would tell her friends, who would tell their friends, and word would get out that I was certifiably bonkers.

This type of thing had been happening more and more recently, and I was seriously wondering if this deficiency could still be lumped into the category of mommy brain, that fuzzy-brain feeling we all get after having a baby, or after having had a number of children, and then proceeding to pile way too much onto our plates between work and extracurriculars and such. Or was something else, something serious, going on here?

I relayed this story to my therapist at the time. She started howling in laughter and said, You have to write this story down. That’s how Momtales came to be. I couldn’t decide on the title at first. Initially, I wanted to title it My Brain Is Mush: Tales of an Overworked, Underpaid Mom, but I thought this might be too self-deprecating. Some of the other titles I thought of, such as Momhood, had, as revealed by a quick Internet search, already been taken. So, with the approval of my children, who have seen me writing this book for most of their childhood, I decided on Momtales. My children were thrilled to see me writing a book about their lives and couldn’t wait to read it and find themselves described and talked about within its pages.

It has been more than ten years since I wrote my previous book. I have been very busy trying to stay afloat, with all the many things I have to remember to take care of each day. Thank G-d I wear many hats; I’m a mom, wife, doctor, writer, event organizer to help singles get married, and weekend entertainer (we often have family and other guests join us for the weekend). With all that I’m juggling, I haven’t had much time to publish books, but thankfully I have been writing. That has never stopped. I think once a writer, always a writer. I always have a notebook and the same blue Parker pen I used to write my other books (I just change the ink cartridge) on the night table near my bed. Whenever something funny happens to me, my husband, or my children, or when anything occurs that gives me food for thought or something to chuckle about, even if it’s midnight and I’m exhausted, and the prospect of melting between my covers sounds to be about the most tantalizing thing on earth, I’ll jot it down. If I wake up in the middle of the night with a brainstorm, I’ll pull myself out of bed by my pajamas and head to the bathroom so as not to wake up my husband, where I’ll turn on the lights and start journaling away. I find that writing has been extremely therapeutic for me. It has helped me laugh about situations that I would probably otherwise cry about and has helped my kids laugh about their lives too. It is said that laughter is the best medicine. It definitely has healing powers. When I fell and injured my shoulder a few years ago, I read that being b’simcha, or in a state of happiness, can actually be curative for stress-related ailments such as back, neck, and shoulder pain. The idea is that as you enter a more joyful state, you naturally relax the muscles around the injury site instead of tensing them up, and this allows you to heal more quickly. In my case, it reduced the intensity of the pain.

I am a huge fan of laughter. My kids can attest to the fact that we laugh often about just about anything. My older son, who is now twelve years old, has gotten in the habit of making up jokes and trying them out on me for size. I usually laugh extra hard when he tells me these jokes, even if they’re not that funny, just to show him how much I appreciate his attempt to look at the world through humor-colored glasses. I will sometimes put on music in the kitchen while cooking or baking and sing along to the lyrics. Pretty soon my kids are singing along too. I’m one of the old-fashioned types who still keeps a CD player in her kitchen and a stack of CDs with titles like 1980s Party Music. I do this just so I and my family can sing and dance and have some good old-fashioned fun. I have Country Yossi’s original albums because there’s nothing quite like eating a Sunday morning breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes (my go-to Sunday morning treat) with Country Yossi singing in the background: Seven little kids sitting in the back seat, making me meshuga in the head. I said, ‘If you don’t behave, we’re not going to the country.’ And this is what my biggest kid said: ‘Better hurry, Dad, one, two, three. Moshe Chaim lost his kippah; Usher Zeilig spilled his drink; and Malky didn’t make it to the restroom quick. Yitz dropped his ice cream, and Sheindy used her shirtsleeve …’ You get the point.

Another one of my favorites from Country Yossi is The Cholent Song, with lyrics that go like, Cholent-powered rockets will take blast to the moon. I think the old stuff is just great, but then again my mother said the same thing and was always playing 1960s music in the car whenever she was driving us anywhere, for example, Love Potion Number Nine or some Elvis or Beach Boys song. I have the Professor Green and the Simcha Machine CD that was popular when I was a child, which I put on before the holidays to get everyone in the mood of the upcoming festivities, and I cook to Shirei Shabbat, a really sweet CD that I picked up while living in Israel in my twenties that makes the Shabbos cooking and preparations go by so much more pleasantly. I learned this from the Israelis, who would open their trissim, or trellis doors, on Friday mornings and blast music from their CD players. All could hear Eyal Golan and Sarit Hadad and the voices of many other famous singers wafting through the streets of Giv’at Shmuel as we mopped our floors and got our apartments ready for Shabbos.

Being a mom is a wonderful, joy-filled, rewarding experience, but no one ever said it was easy. I heard a lecturer once say, Everything is harder than it looks. We’re all trying to be good moms and raise healthy, happy, and well-adjusted children who will turn out to be successful, self-confident adults. We want our kids to eat right, leave the house wearing clean clothes, have their nails cut periodically so they don’t look like street urchins, do their homework nightly, study for their tests, and do well on their projects so that they (or is it we?) look good in school. But all of this is a long, sometimes hair-raising process, and we moms