Earlier this month, I took a train to Rhode Island with Emily and Pam, two of my closest friends, to visit our friend Jessica. The four of us have been friends for the last twenty years. We’ve been through the craziness of college together, finding post college jobs, being single in the city, coupling off, and eventually all settling down in some way or another, with three out of four of us having kids.

There’s been a few major life transitions that have happened recently and this trip was a much needed time to breathe, relax and just hang out with one another. Most importantly, the trip was kid and husband free, which is a VERY rare occurrence.

When we were planning the weekend, we decided on a fancy dinner for Friday night, a spa day on Saturday and staying in on Saturday night. Our night in ended up being everyone’s favorite. I arranged for Red Baron Pizza to send us a bunch of pies, a few bottles of wine and an assortment of “mom patches” for a #Wingmama party. Have you seen Red Baron’s Wingmama ad yet? It features Kristen Hensley from I Mom So Hard and it’s hilarious.

I was introduced to Red Baron a few months ago when I was invited to a #Wingmama party in New York. I nibbled on their brick oven pepperoni pizza (which I never would have guessed was frozen pizza if the boxes weren’t out), tried on leather bomber jackets with patches like “Tantrum Slayer” and “Napkin Ninja” and traded parenting war stories with about a dozen moms in the penthouse of the Greenwich Hotel.

Our party in Rhode Island was decidedly more low key.

I spread out the patches and we all laughed at the “Where’s my Phone” patch the hardest. I say that about 1,000 times a day. Emily picked up the “Me Time” patch which seemed highly appropriate.

At that point, Pam, who had spent a good part of our trip fielding phone calls from her husband, came back into the room and told us that apparently, a neighbor kid had a huge diaper blow out in their daughter’s room. Then when her husband was trying to clean it up, someone else dropped a snow globe and it broke into a billion pieces. It was everywhere. Not just glass but some sort of iridescent glitter goo.

“So, let me get this straight. While we are eating pizza and drinking wine in Rhode Island, your husband is back in New York trying to clean up a mess that contains poop, glass, glitter and goo?”

“Yep.”

“And he needs to call you to figure out what to do?”

“Yep.”

“Maybe you should give him the ‘Deal with It’ patch.”

Pam said that she told him to turn on a movie for the kids so that he could clean up without them disturbing him and he hadn’t even thought of that yet. Men.

Emily and I then lamented about how we are SO GLAD we no longer have to deal with diapers and blowouts.

Jessica chimed in, “You know who still has to deal with diapers? ME.”

“YOU? What do you mean????”

Jessica does not have kids. She has cats.

She told us about her cat getting sick and all the ridiculous things the vet instructed her to do, that ranged from diapers to pajamas.

“Your cat literally wears pajamas?”

“I MOM THE #$@&% OUT OF THOSE CATS.”

Normally, I make fun of people who compare having pets to having kids but Jessica’s cat tales seemed pretty legit. I gave her the “Mom Hard” patch.

Then I told everyone that although I’d graduated from diapers, I had moved onto more complicated parenting problems like LYING.

I told them about a recent incident that had happened with Mazzy. We were lying in her bed talking and I asked if she had any stories to tell me about school. She said she did not but I insisted that she must have something to tell me.

“Oh! Here’s something cool. We dissected a frog in science today!”

“Really? Wow!”

“Have you ever dissected a frog, Mom?”

“I did, but I don’t think we did it until the 5th grade.” I then asked her tons of questions, all of which she answered and we had a very in depth conversation about her frog dissection experience. It was way more details than I normally get from her and I was pretty stoked that something-science related had left such an impression. I thought Mazzy’s story was so interesting, I told Mike the following day. “Really? Wow!” He was impressed too.

A few days later, we had Mazzy’s parent teacher conferences and I was planning on bringing up her frog dissecting excitement with her teacher. Then this conversation happened on the way to school:

“Mom. I have something to tell you.”

“What?”

“I didn’t really dissect a frog.”

WHAT NOW???? “So… why did you tell me that?”

“Because you wanted me to tell you something about school and I thought that would get you to stop asking.”

Pam asked if there was a “Super Gullible” patch. Emily wondered about a “Pants on Fire” patch. We decided “Zip it” was most appropriate.

“I’ve got one!” Emily volunteered.

She told us about the time she got a call home from school about her son getting in a fight with another boy. She called the other boy’s mom to commiserate and the mom said that she didn’t get the same call. Emily tried to explain what happened but the mom insisted that it was not her kid. Emily said that she had heard the story firsthand from the school and thought the mom was in denial. Later that day? She found out two boys at the school had the exact same name, first and last.

Oops. We gave her the “Running on Fumes” patch.

After a few more war stories were shared, Jessica made the request of the night. “Okay. Can we talk about something other than kids now?”

Could we???? We promised to try.

Then we drank more glasses of wine, inhaled a few more slices of the four cheese pizza and chatted about everything but kids (jobs, college memories, future plans) until we were a little drunk, very full and ready to go to sleep.

Then we awarded ourselves the “Nailed It” patch.

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Share your favorite parenting war story and what patch you think it should earn below!

This post is sponsored by Red Baron but these parenting war stories are all our own. Check out the video below from What’s Up Moms— they threw a Wingmama party too!