This is the story of all-too-many brown girls everywhere -- a story that some of us African American moms are desperately trying to change with our generation of daughters.

Which is why there was such an uproar recently when Newsweek’s Allison Samuels openly criticized Angelina Jolie, a white mom, for letting her adopted, Ethiopian-born daughter, Zahara Jolie-Pitt, sport hair Samuels said was “wild and unstyled, uncombed and dry. Basically: a ‘hot mess.’” 

I'm not a very observant mom. Actually, a better way to put that is: I am not observant AT ALL. I'm rarely the first person to notice if one of my kids has a bump or a scratch, and when I'm in the throes of dealing with a whiny, unhappy kid, it hardly ever occurs to me that he might not be feeling well. I'm much more apt to assume he's just being a brat. I know, I know. That's, like, forty Mom Demerits.

Both of my kids have been out of sorts for a while now. It started with runny noses. Molly had it first and I thought, "Teething!" because one time I heard someone with authority say that a runny nose without any other symptoms often means teething and I REMEMBERED. I have no idea if it's actually TRUE, but there I was feeling oh so proud of myself for 1) noticing and 2) coming up with a diagnosis. Parenting win! Then Jack came down with a runny nose and I had to reevaluate -- unconnected grossness, or a cold making it's way through my family?

For the last two years we’ve adopted the tradition of sacrificing our sugary goods to earn the good graces and fabulous gifts of the Halloween Witch. She flies through the night sky two days after Halloween, collecting all treats that have not yet been consumed by the children of the land to add to her sticky, sugary, tooth-destroying stash. In return for these leftover treats, she leaves a toy for each child who gives up his or her candy completely.

Our dentist told us that it was much better for the kids’ teeth to eat a bunch of candy every day for a short period of time than to eat a little bit every day for weeks or months. The idea of fighting with them for weeks about when and how much candy they could eat was absolutely agonizing to me. So we told the kids to just eat whatever they wanted as fast as they could and let the sugar-high chaos ensue. In the end, we turned to the Halloween Witch for help when we realized that we absolutely could not handle what our children became each year as they barreled their way through a seemingly unending candy gorge-fest.

This Saturday, I turn forty. Forty years old. The big Four-Oh. As in, OH my goodness, you must be kidding me. Moms are forty. (And we all know moms are old!) People who say things like, “I remember when I used to go out and do that!” are forty. In fact, when I was younger, forty was so old I was amazed that my parents actually knew how to go out and have fun without having kids show them what fun really was all about. Forty was so over-the-hill. Forty marked the difference between us and them. It was huge!

Today? Oh, today forty means something entirely different.

I don’t mean to holler and yell like a banshee when my kids get out of line. It just, like, happens.

Usually, I yell after I’ve asked them nicely five times to do something -- like move their crap off the kitchen table or straighten up their rooms or go to sleep already because it’s 10:30 p.m. and I put you in your bed two hours ago and I’m tired, dammit, and I want to give your father some so that I can pass out from exhaustion.

Or I might yell if they start sparring each other like they’re prepping for the next Tyson vs. Holyfield heavyweight fight.

I’ll definitely raise my voice at my kids if they’re defiant. Talking back gets my goat. Pretending you didn’t hear me when I know good and doggone well you did takes me over the edge.

And so I pump up the volume.

This week I will let a strange man into my house when my husband isn't home. I will greet him with heaps upon heaps of kisses and shouts of delight because he will be bearing gifts of mops and sponges and environmentally-friendly cleaning supplies. He is coming over to CLEAN MY HOUSE.

A few weeks ago, an old friend blasted an invitation to all of her Facebook contacts: her green cleaning service was in need of some fresh houses for training purposes. Was anyone interested in housecleaning at a wildly discounted rate? I just happened to spot this message when I was using Phillip's computer and it took me all of .002 seconds to draft a reply. It went something like, "YES PLEASE. HOW ABOUT THIS AFTERNOON?"

I shop at the grocery store, so I have lots of time to contemplate what my life would be like if I were a celebrity mom. I’ve decided I’m against it, and I will tell you why.

1. I would not like to claim the world record for "Celebrity Mom Hiding a Baby Bump for the Longest Time Ever Without Producing a Baby." It seems that every issue of OK! or US Weekly shows a picture of some celebrity on the cover either “hiding” or “showing off” her baby bump. If she’s holding something in front of her abdomen, she’s “hiding.” If she’s walking like a normal person, she’s “showing off.”

It’s not that I hated how I looked, really. It’s just that after a while, it was hard to be judged, and not start co-signing the judgments. Maybe my skin was a little too dark. My hair a little too kinky. My affinity for books and dolls and sewing a little too nerdy. My butt and hips a little too big for a kid my age.

I wasn’t perfect.

Plenty of folks -- mostly adults -- stood at the ready to remind me of this. Picking on kids and their flaws was, like, a thing for the grown-ups in my life. Adult cousins thought nothing of saying I shouldn’t play in the sun because I was “dark enough as it is”; my mom’s grown friends often clucked that the chlorine from the pool would make my hair “even nappier.” One woman, the mother of my best friend, made a point of telling me every time she saw me that I was “getting fat.”

I'm not a great cook. I have a dinnertime repertoire of about four or five dishes, and these I can usually manage not to burn or otherwise destroy. I have a really hard time THINKING of things to cook let alone ACTUALLY COOKING them, so I am proud to tell you that the slow cooker pot roast I tried tonight was a resounding success. The Internet told me I couldn't go wrong with a crockpot, but I hadn't really tested its abilities until tonight when I presented my husband with a steaming platter of meat and potatoes. A few bites later Phillip turned to me and said, "You can make this tomorrow night too." That giant glow you saw out your window at 6:30 p.m. Pacific Time was my thrilled and beaming face.

Laylee’s always making plans. She wants to build things or have Santa or Dad build them. When she describes these plans to me, they usually involve building a house similar to our own only smaller and just for her. Depending on her mood she’ll either want the house outside in the backyard to serve as a clubhouse, over her bed to ensure she never need sleep again at bedtime, out front so she can sell her baked goods out the front window, or in the family room in front of the TV.

When I recently told her to put the “house” on her wishlist, she said, “OH Mom! This isn’t a wish. It’s a Dream Come True.” Do you wanna know what would be my Dream Come True? My Dream Come True would be for everyone in my house to stop being sick all of the all the time. My Dream Come True would be for us all to never be exposed to germs again or mutate in some way that we are impervious to them.