20 Ways I Fail At Being A Crunchy Mom

1. I had my kids in a hospital.

With epidurals in place as quickly as possible. I loved being surrounded by all of the shiny sterile equipment and white-coated doctors and Percocet and people telling me what to do and when to do it. That doesn’t work for everyone, but it worked for me.

2. I used disposable diapers.

Fashion is important when you are a baby, and cloth-diapers are not very slimming. I’m totally kidding. I just couldn’t imagine rinsing out poop in the toilet.

3. I don’t can my own jams and jellies out of raspberries I’ve organically grown

My life is complicated enough.

4. My kids have plastic toys.

They do, it’s true. They don’t use most of them because apparently my children find joy in begging for all kinds of toys and then mocking me by only playing with rocks and sticks and toilet-paper tubes.

5. I vaccinate.

And, even more shocking, I do it on the schedule that the pediatrician recommended. Whoa, now I’m just talking silly-talk. Again, I realize this does not work for everyone, but it worked for us.

6. We don’t co-sleep.

If I sleep, I can parent. If I don’t sleep, all bets are off.

7. Sometimes I forget my reusable bags.

Gasp. I know. This often feels like a serious offense around here, and I have found myself apologizing to everyone around me in the checkout line while resorting to excuses other than “I just forgot.” It’s scary out there.

8. If we had to grow our own food, we would die.

Quicker than you can say, “I forgot to water the garden again, honey.”

9. I buy Velveeta.

I’ve always loved this melty cheese sensation hidden in the back of my refrigerator. Shhhh…don’t tell the leader of my local commune.

10. I only do yoga to try to make my butt look better.

When the teacher asks us to create an intention at the beginning of the class, mine is always secretly “to make my buns tighter.”

11. We are not vegan or vegetarian.

Nope. We really love bacon around here. We love it and put it on everything. We can all watch Charlotte’s Web while eating bacon and feel totally OK about that.

12. We watch shows, movies, Netflix, everything.

We actually don’t own a television. But it’s only because ours stopped working one day and we are kind of lazy. Also, we own every other show-watching device known to man so we don’t even miss it.

13. I wear shoes. And bras.

I mean, most days. If I’m going somewhere fancy.

14. I use soap.

I do have a confession though: I don’t shower every day (please don’t send me hate mail) but soap is in my life, yes.

15. I do not grind my own grain to make bread.

Do people actually do this? I wouldn’t even know how to go about doing such a thing.

16. I don’t believe coconut oil is the cure for everything.

It’s probably only the cure for, like, half the things.

17. We go to a doctor when we are sick.

I choose to believe that doctors are doing their best to make us and our children feel better. I like doctors.

18. I don’t homeschool.

My children thank me for this every single day. They ride a bus (what?!) to a public school (no!) and it’s wonderful because I’ve found that absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder and the math less painful.

19. I don’t think that Brewer’s yeast should pretend to be popcorn salt.

If you don’t know about this horrible thing people do to popcorn, you are lucky. I’m sorry, but yeast on popcorn just makes the popcorn feel sad.

20. And finally, I’ve never made kale chips.

They are probably going to kick me out of the commune now.

I do what works for me, and I’ll admit, I fail at being crunchy most of the time. So please, don’t stop talking to me, my hippie friends, but don’t invite me over to your placenta-eating party, either.