Wait, I'm the Adult?! Life, apparently, requires supervision.

August 29, 2026
By Emergency Contact

Hi. Apparently, I’m Someone’s Emergency Contact??? Yes, the question marks are part of the name because I have questions.
For the sake of brevity—and because none of us have that kind of time—you can call me Emergency Contact. Or EC, if we’re friends.
Considering you’re about to read about my children farting, my breastmilk getting dumped, and my bathroom-cleaning habits, I think we’re about to be friends.
Welcome to Wait, I’m the Adult?!
Life, apparently, requires supervision.
Unfortunately, everyone keeps looking to me for it.

The Day Started at 5:30 A.M.
Well, it was supposed to.
I missed my 5:30 a.m. pump this morning.
Technically, I didn’t miss it. My alarm was off, because apparently at some point Past EC made an executive decision that Future EC would absolutely remember to turn it back on.
She did not.
This is why I should not be left unsupervised.
Normally, something like this has the potential to send me into a guilt spiral. Pumping has a way of turning ounces into morality if you let it.
Miss a session? Bad mom.
Pump less than usual? Obviously, you’ve purposely neglected the tiny human.
Baby is perfectly happy and fed? Irrelevant. The tiny numbers on the bottles have spoken.
But this morning, I did something absolutely fucking revolutionary.
I gave myself grace.
I adjusted. I pumped later. I made coffee. I put on Blue Bloods. And somehow civilization continued despite my blatant disregard for the sacred 5:30 a.m. pumping schedule. I know, I know, how fucking shocking!

Then Meatball woke up.
A note before we proceed: you won’t know my children’s real names here because the internet is fucking weird.
My oldest will henceforth be known as Grandpappy.

The baby is Meatball.
There are reasons.
None of them are particularly good.
Meatball woke up ready to deliver what can only be described as a TED Talk.
There were babbles. There were squeals. There were aggressive raspberries. At one point, she stared directly into my soul, blew a raspberry at me, and continued about her business.
Her word of the day was PBBBBT.
Then she farted.
Riveting presentation. Five stars. No notes.

Grandpappy eventually joined us, politely said good morning, and contributed his own fart to the household soundtrack.
Apparently, I am raising a human brass section.
And somewhere in the middle of the coffee, baby babbles, farts, television playing in the background, and the completely ordinary chaos of our house waking up, I had a thought that hit me harder than I expected:
This is exactly the morning I envisioned when I was fourteen.
Not this specific morning, obviously.
Fourteen-year-old me probably wasn’t sitting around dreaming about breast pumps and human trumpets.
But this.
A home.
My babies.
Breakfast.
Noise.
Safety.
Ordinary life.
I wanted this.
And somehow, against every fucking odd, I have it.
Which was beautiful.
Naturally, everything went to shit shortly afterward.
Because motherhood is messy.

Welcome to Professor Mama’s Home Ec Academy

Grandpappy had asked me if he could help me cook.
Since he’s homeschooled, I’ve been trying to take advantage of the fact that learning doesn’t have to look like sitting at a desk with a worksheet. Cooking is math. Cooking is reading. Cooking is following directions. Cooking is problem-solving.
More importantly, cooking is a basic fucking life skill.
I don’t want to raise a man who thinks feeding himself is some mysterious feminine art passed between women under a full moon.
We all cook.
We all clean.
We all take care of our homes.
So today’s class at Professor Mama’s Home Ec Academy was breakfast quesadillas.
We kept the eggs simple: microwave, thirty seconds at a time, stir, repeat. Turkey sausage crumbles got warmed up.
Then came the cheese.
Grandpappy had to taste-test the cheese before he was willing to put it on his quesadilla, because apparently, we have very strict regulations regarding acceptable dairy products in this household.
Cheese sticks? Delicious.
Cheese pizza? Absolutely.
Mac and cheese? Obviously.
Grilled cheese? A staple.
Mozzarella sticks? Say less.
But cheese?
Just… cheese?
Apparently that’s a fucking abomination.
I don’t make the rules.
Actually, I’m allegedly the adult, so maybe I do make the rules, but Mini Food Critic has veto power where his own taste buds are concerned.
He cautiously sampled the offending cheese.
It passed inspection.
Only then was it permitted to enter the quesadilla.
My quesadilla got southwest queso because apparently, I respect cheese in all its beautiful forms.
Then into the air fryer they went until crispy.
Grandpappy had officially cooked breakfast.

And, perhaps more impressively, voluntarily consumed a previously unapproved form of cheese.
Professor Mama’s Home Ec Academy was already exceeding expectations.
Meanwhile, Meatball was enrolled in Intro to Culinary Exploration.
We’re doing baby-led weaning, which sounds very sophisticated until you’re sitting across from a baby who is mostly just assaulting a tortilla.
I gave her soft scrambled egg and lightly toasted strips of tortilla.
She grabbed it.
She investigated it.
She put it in her mouth.
She dropped it.
She became personally offended that gravity had been permitted to exist without consulting her.
We tried again.
Eventually, the culinary exploration was interrupted by a massive pea colored shit, because motherhood refuses to allow any activity to maintain a consistent theme.
Class dismissed temporarily.
Once Meatball was clean and back in position, she tried again for a while, but eventually she was just pissed off.
She wanted food in her belly and lacked both the dexterity and emotional bandwidth to continue this particular educational experience.
Fair.
So I spoon-fed her some applesauce.
Then I bottle-fed her some pumped breastmilk because, despite all the hours I spend extracting milk directly from my own body, Homegirl does not latch.
Meatball is, in fact, personally offended by my nips.
She would like the breastmilk.
She would simply prefer that it arrive through the appropriate channels.
Apparently straight from the manufacturer is unacceptable.
Fine.
So sometimes baby-led weaning is baby-led, and sometimes the baby leads you directly to:
“Ma’am, please just put the fucking food in my mouth—and keep your nips away from me.”
We adapt.

And Then There Were Six Ounces

Which brings me to the next important fact about pumping:
Every ounce of milk Meatball drinks has to first be extracted from the manufacturer, packaged, and presented to the customer in her preferred titty-free delivery system.
And at some point during this otherwise lovely morning, Grandpappy was helping feed his sister.
And then it happened.
Six ounces of breastmilk.
Spilled.
On Meatball.
On her bed.
Gone.
Six. Fucking. Ounces.
If you’ve never pumped breastmilk, six ounces might sound like six ounces.
It is not six ounces.
It is time.
It is alarms.
It is attaching yourself to a machine multiple times a day.
It is planning your life around when your boobs need to be emptied.
It is washing pump parts.
It is interrupted sleep.
It is staring at bottles and doing mental math.
It is work.
And there it was.
Everywhere except inside my baby.
The customer had somehow managed to receive the product topically.
I was devastated.
Grandpappy apologized.
And I didn’t respond.
Not because I wanted to punish him.
Not because I wanted him to feel bad.
I was just too fucking upset.
I knew it was an accident.
I knew he was trying to help.

I also knew that if I tried to have that conversation while I was that upset, I wasn’t going to be the version of myself I wanted to bring into it.
So, I walked away.
Lady Glitter Sparkles—our household’s other resident adult, whose government name you will also never receive—washed the milk-covered Meatball.
Laundry was started.
I went and regulated my own damn emotions.
Later, I went back to Grandpappy.
I apologized for not acknowledging his apology earlier.
I told him I had been really upset and needed some time to calm down.
I accepted his apology.
I told him I knew it was an accident.
I asked him to please be more careful next time and to ask for help if he needs it.
And then I thanked him.
Because before those six ounces hit the bed, he was helping me feed his sister.
That mattered too.
I hugged him.
I kissed his head.
I told him I loved him.
And I thanked him for being patient with me because Mommy is still learning too.
He accepted my apology.
I accepted his.
And I watched the tension leave his face and body.
That part stayed with me.
Because my children are little humans with feelings.
They deserve apologies.
They deserve a mother who can say, “I didn’t handle that the way I wanted to.”
They deserve to know that Mommy can be upset with something that happened without them becoming the problem.
That mistakes don’t make love disappear.
That conflict can end.
That we can walk away, calm down, come back, talk about it, hug each other, and be okay.

I am still learning how to be their mother.
I hope I never stop.

Naturally, I Responded by Cleaning Everything
Apparently, my nervous system’s preferred response to a chaotic morning is:
Fine. I’ll disinfect the fucking house.
Breakfast got cleaned up.
Surfaces got disinfected.
The kitchen got swept.
The bedroom got swept.
Laundry was already going because of The Great Breastmilk Disaster of 2026.
Then I moved on to the bathroom.
And when I say I cleaned the bathroom, I mean I cleaned the fucking bathroom.
Things got moved.
Things got rearranged.
I swept underneath things instead of performing the ceremonial household ritual of sweeping vaguely around them and declaring victory.
By this point I was pouring sweat.
Why?
Because our thermostat was set to 75 degrees. Thanks, Lady Glitter Sparkles!
In summer.
Seventy.
Five.
Degrees.
I would like the record to reflect that this was an act of violence.
Eventually I sat my overheated ass down in front of a fan with a Body Armor because I was approximately six minutes away from becoming one with the floor.
I later acquired an additional fan.
This was perhaps my greatest accomplishment of the day.
And somewhere during all of this, the bathtub looked at me.
I looked at the bathtub.
The bathtub knew what it had done.

And I decided:
Fuck that tub.
Not today.
Executive clemency was granted.

The Mess Is Kind of the Point
By noon-ish, I had already missed a pump, recovered from missing a pump, made breakfast, taught Grandpappy to make breakfast, witnessed him cautiously expand his cheese portfolio, introduced Meatball to the cruel realities of tortillas and gravity, dealt with baby shit, spoon-fed
applesauce to a tiny food critic, provided bottled breastmilk through the customer’s preferred titty-free delivery system, lost six ounces of that same breastmilk, gotten upset, regulated myself, repaired with my son, cleaned half the damn house, nearly heat-stroked myself because someone
apparently believes we live in a terrarium, acquired a fan, and pumped again.
Meatball, meanwhile, had still made absolutely no meaningful attempt at taking a nap.
Of course she hadn’t.
And somehow, despite everything, I kept thinking about what I’d realized earlier that morning.
This is the life I wanted.
That’s the weird part.
Because I think when we imagine the life we want, we imagine the polished version.
We imagine making breakfast with our children.
We don’t imagine someone farting during it.
We imagine patiently teaching them new things.
We don’t imagine the baby shitting halfway through the lesson.
We imagine siblings bonding.
We don’t imagine six ounces of breastmilk being dumped directly onto one of them.
We imagine being emotionally safe parents.
We don’t always imagine what that actually requires of us when we’re angry, overwhelmed, overstimulated, disappointed, or exhausted.
We imagine the beautiful parts.
But the beautiful parts don’t exist separately from the mess.
They’re tangled up in it.
Motherhood is laughing at a baby blowing raspberries and wanting to cry over spilled milk a few hours later.
It’s being proud of your child for helping while also being devastated by the result.
It’s knowing you need to walk away before you speak.

It’s coming back.
It’s apologizing.
It’s accepting apologies.
It’s feeding your baby applesauce because today’s educational culinary adventure has officially gone to shit.
It’s spending hours pumping milk for a baby who regards your actual nipples as a personal affront and insists upon a titty-free delivery system.
It’s cleaning the bathroom because the mess is making your brain itch and then looking at the bathtub and deciding that bitch can wait.
It’s being completely exhausted by people you would move heaven and earth for.
It’s wanting five fucking minutes alone and then missing them when they’re asleep.
It’s messy.
I’m messy.
Not in the quirky “Oops, Mama needs wine!” decorative-kitchen-sign kind of way.
For the record, I don’t drink alcohol anymore. I don’t use any intoxicants.
Life is already weird enough sober, and apparently, I’m responsible for a human brass section. I need all my available faculties.
But I am messy in the human way.
I’m still learning.
I’m still healing.
I’m still figuring out when to push myself and when to give myself grace.
I’m still figuring out how to raise humans while simultaneously discovering that apparently, I am also a human and not simply the emergency-response system assigned to everyone else.
Some days I get it right.
Some days I apologize.
Most days include bodily fluids.
But tonight, my babies will know they’re loved.
Grandpappy knows we’re okay.
Meatball will probably blow another raspberry directly into my face.
Or latch directly onto my mother fucking mouth because while my nips are personally offensive, my mouth is apparently a tasty treat.
Eeeeeyyyyuuuuccckkkk!
The laundry will eventually get done.

The bathtub remains on notice.
And fourteen-year-old me?
She’d probably look around at all of this—the noise, the chaos, the coffee, the babies, the laughter, the mess—and recognize it immediately.
We made it.
Nobody mentioned there’d be this much fucking laundry.
Or pumping.
Or shit.
Or such strong opinions about nipples and cheese.
But we made it.
— EC