Five Ways Teens Are Grosser Babies

1. They Stink. Is there anything sweeter than the smell of baby or a toddler who smells like baby shampoo with overtones of mashed arrowroot cookie? Even the little kid sweat, dirt and sunshine smell of kindergartners is pleasant in a way. Except one day all of the good smells go away and you’re left with a teenager covered in pimples who smells like a strange mix of ass, BO and greasy hair, with stinky cheese undertones and in the case of boys – an entire can of Axe body spray.

2. Speaking of Ass… Your toddler running around the house naked and seeing the occasional flash of toddler butt is kind of cute. Your teen dropping trou and flashing his hairy ass, is not. My teens find it intensely funny to moon me… only I’m having a hard time seeing the humor. What I am seeing is hairy ass and if they drop ’em too far – dangly bits. I could have gone my entire life without seeing that and never once have felt like I missed out on a life experience.

3. Gas Attacks. Let’s face it, when your toddler says “Mommy, I tooted!” it’s at least a tiny bit charming. If you have a clever one, and they point the finger at you when someone asks them “who tooted?” you will all have a laugh over it.

Now imagine you are sitting at the computer screwing around on the internet and a hand flies into your field of vision as it is opening. You have a “WTF are you doing!” mom moment and open your mouth to holler, because now you’ve lost your high score on Bejewelled Blitz. Except right when you open your mouth the stench of fart hits you and all you can do is cough and gag.

That’s right; teenagers have the ability to catch their farts in their hand and throw it in your face. If they get bored of tormenting their siblings with this trick, your status as The Mom does not grant you immunity.

4. Snot Happens. Really, it is kind of gross when a toddler with a cold has green pussy snot running down their face. It’s even grosser if they try to lick that shit up, but teenagers can still trump a toddler any day.

Both of my boys have worked in greenhouses over the summer. Greenhouses are kind of dusty with all of the soil, so what do they do when they get home? They shower, of course, which is cool. What isn’t cool is them blowing their nose on the shower walls and leaving the dirty boogers there to dry out. The water is right there, what is so damn hard about rinsing your effing snot down the drain? You thought getting dried crusty snot out of a baby’s hair was hard? Try scrubbing it off of your grout someday. You’ll need a putty knife to scrape that shit off.

5. Bathroom Woes. When my guys were little, I would stick them in the bathtub and while they splashed around I could scrub the toilet and sink. Once they were done and tucked into bed, I’d get the tub before my shower.

These days you need a hazmat suit to enter my bathroom. Boogers on the shower wall dims in comparison to the fact that my son still hasn’t figured out how to flush the effing toilet. He claims there’s never anything to eat here. I call bullshit because I’ve seen the proof – he’s finding plenty to eat. Aim is still an issue and I really wonder why we teach boys to pee standing up.

The sink is always full of toothpaste gobs. Sometimes one of them will hork in the sink and not rinse it out – even though the water is right there! My bathroom vanity is constantly littered with twists of toilet paper that they use to blot up their zits, used cotton swabs and gobs of toothpaste. I never lean against the counter unless there is a towel over the edge. More than once I’ve gone to work with a gigantic smear of toothpaste ground into my shirt. So no, you don’t get to wear clean shirts once the baby years are done. It’s just different stains. On the plus side the minty aroma of toothpaste does smell better than baby puke.

So as you’re cleaning up that diaper blow-out console yourself with how cute your baby is… because there isn’t a damn thing that’s cute about teenagers.