Dear Celebrity: Snooki Edition

Dear Snooki:

This letter is based on the assumption that the recent rumours that you’re pregnant are true.

Look, you are currently the butt of everyone’s jokes, but I have made a conscious choice not to do that to you. Not because you’ll ever know if I do or don’t, but because I remember a time not too long ago when I was in your shoes. I was once the girl who partied like it was her job, although I guess for you it actually is a job. I had my share of dancing on tables and drunkenly running off my mouth for no other reason than because I could and I had nothing to lose. The only difference between us is that your life is filmed on camera and mine wasn’t. Although, it’s true that if someone had offered me a reality show, I would have taken it. I legitimately contemplated signing up for Real World after a particularly crummy break up. I was also once the girl who, at twenty-three, was unmarried but very suddenly and so very unexpectedly needed four pregnancy tests to make me believe that I was pregnant. It was scary as fuck. From that moment on, it felt like everyone I knew was watching my every move. I became the girl that everyone expected to fail because party girls make good gossip but they don’t make good mothers, right? Well, Snooki, the reality is that now you do have something to lose in this world. And that’s a game changer.  Most people aren’t going to give you the benefit of the doubt, but even party girls can change their ways, if they want to. So as a former hot, hot mess, let me tell you two things that nobody else will.

It’s okay to mourn the loss of the life you had. You have the right to cry, to get mad at yourself, at life, at everyone. It’s perfectly normal to be upset about the major changes that are coming your way, because there are some huge-ass changes coming your way.  You just have to remember that at the end of the day, it’s not about you anymore. It’s about the life that’s growing inside you. From now on, your decisions have to be made based on what’s best for that child. So here’s my next piece of wisdom.

Get the hell out of dodge. If you stay in the spotlight to raise this kid, you might as well start telling yourself you’re a bad mother because that’s all you’re going to hear from those around you. Hollywood is a world where people not only expect to see you fail, but they want to see you fail, and they will hang you dry for even the smallest parenting mistakes. And you know what? You’re going to make a shit-ton of mistakes because, like the rest of us, you will have no clue what you’re doing. And that’s okay, but Hollywood will make you feel like it’s not. That’s the other difference between us. Yeah, I had everyone I knew watching me, but you’ve got everyone in the whole world watching you. My mistakes don’t get plastered all over Facebook or become a Twitter trend heard ‘round the world. Yours do, and yours will. So go back to Jersey and surround yourself with family. They might give you some grief but they won’t be waiting and hoping for you to fail miserably.

I hope it goes without saying that I don’t think you should plan a reality show around your pregnancy. MTV already did that with a bunch of teenagers, and look at how well that turned out for those poor girls. Take a page out of Jaime Lynn Spears’ book - when life hands you an unexpected pregnancy, just turn the cameras off and go home. 

-Alice

Why I Don't Want to Potty Train My Daughter

If I were to write an essay called, “Why I Love Diapers,” it would be the shortest essay in history because I can sum up my reasons in one word: convenience. If the essay were titled, “Why I Don’t Want to Potty Train My Daughter,” that would be different. I’d need to include categories. Things like laziness. Fear. Pressure.

I’ll start with the laziness.

It’s not that I “enjoy” changing diapers. It’s just that, gross as a diaper might be, it’s easy to do. It can be done anywhere, anytime. In the car and your kid pees out the entire juice box you gave her? Pull over. Just entered Ikea and you can smell something funky already? Find the bathroom. Out for a walk? That stroller doesn’t lay back for nothing. And once the diaper has been changed, you (usually) don't have to worry about it again for at least a couple of hours, as opposed to every 15 minutes or every time your child takes a sip of water. The key with diapers is that you don’t have to think about your child’s bodily functions until after they’ve happened. Once you get to potty training, you are not only thinking about them as they happen, but you’re trying to anticipate them all freaking day long. That's exhausting and inconvenient. 

And that brings me to the fear. In addition to being passive aggressive, emotionally sensitive, and hot-tempered, I’m also a worrier and I fear what having to constantly think about whether my daughter has to, is about to, or has just dropped a deuce will do to my psyche. I already hover around Thumper; I can only imagine how this will intensify during potty training. If she says no when I ask if she has to pee, I probably won’t believe her and will be left to neurotically debate in my mind whether I should make her sit on the potty anyway, if I just made her pee her pants by bringing it up, or if I think making her sit on the potty when she doesn’t have to go will make her hate the potty and ruin what little progress we may have made. I’m getting a headache just thinking about having to think about it.

Finally, there’s the pressure. Sometimes it feels like everyone I know is asking if Thumper is potty trained, and why she isn’t in pull ups or underwear. It makes me to want to not potty train even more because, well I guess because I’m stubborn like that, but also because she’s barely two and a half. Who the hell cares if she is still in diapers? If I’m the one changing them and I don’t care, why do the people who don’t have to change them? It also feels like suddenly every child we know who is even remotely close to Thumper’s age is potty training or trained. This doesn’t faze me so much, but it did make Dawson promptly take Thumper to Wal-Mart in search of princess underwear. I guess he forgot that he goes to work every day and I’m the one who stays home, and that just because he’s ready for Thumper to be in big girl undies doesn’t mean that Thumper and I are.

I’m just not excited about having to make sure I know where all the bathrooms are in any given building that I may enter. I’m also not excited about the fact that even after Thumper is “potty trained,” I’ll still be wiping her butt, on constant did-you-wash-your-hands duty, and probably finding poop on my floor at random for years to come.

I know that potty training is inevitable. I know that it’s coming, and probably soon. Just...not yet. Please.

-Alice