Free Mommywood by Tori Spelling Page B

amazing cocktail parties we could have.
    The people who sold us the house told us what an exceptional neighborhood it was. Everyone was friendly and we were lucky to be moving in that spring, because every third year Beaver Avenue threw an incredible Fourth of July block party.
    That wasn‘t all. Every Halloween our neighbor had a wine bar for the adults and cupcakes for the kids. Another neighbor told me that a nearby block had a party—a ―progressive dinner.
    Five houses in the neighborhood would host. The first house would serve cocktails. The second house would serve hors d‘oeuvres. The third house would serve appetizers. The fourth house would serve the main course, and the last house would serve dessert. The neighbor said, ―We should do that on Beaver Avenue, and I was completely on board: ―We should!
    As soon as we closed on the house, we started doing some minor work on it, and every time we came to check on the progress, there was some new neighborhood feature to be excited about. We saw kids playing out in the street: would their parents be our new best friends? There were people taking walks in the early evening: it must be so safe! I was going to have neighbors! A neighborhood! I got a double stroller and imagined that as soon as the baby was born I‘d take long walks with the two babies. The double stroller was the übermom accessory. I was on my way to a minivan and proud of it. But life doesn‘t always go according to plan, and for all my fantasies, I was no June Cleaver.
     

People Randomly Die
    I had a wonderful husband, an adorable son, and a daughter on the way. We had an income, and now we even had a family home that was almost ready for us. My dream life was coming together. But for all my ongoing efforts to be and prove myself a normal mom, I had to come to terms with the fact that—
    Mommywood aside—I‘m just not one hundred percent sane.
    I‘ve always had irrational fears. A sniper would open fire on me as I walked across a parking lot. The baby would kick a hole in my uterus. A shampoo bottle would get upset if it was facing the opposite way from all the other hair care products. And always, always, the plane would crash if I wasn‘t wearing a certain necklace or carrying a particular stuffed animal. Or both. Now that I was a mother, and very nearly a mother of two, I was supposed to be the grown-up. I was supposed to reassure Liam when he was frightened. I was supposed to be a point of calm in the storm. A rock. But here‘s the thing. In the past I always knew my fears were irrational. The way I kept them under control was by reminding myself how unlikely they were. But now that I was a mom, my irrational fears were replaced by a whole new set of worries. And these fears were real.
    A week before our baby girl was born, Dean was out with Mehran getting a tattoo of all three kids‘ names. They were filming it for our show, although that little adventure didn‘t make it on the air. I was home with Paola, a babysitter we had hired as I reached the end of the pregnancy. I‘d been having pain when I carried Liam, and my doctor told me I needed to stop lifting him up, so Paola came to the rescue. That afternoon, it looked like Liam was starting to get sick. He was running a fever, he threw up, and he was a little out of it. So we gave him a bath and some Tylenol and put him to bed. Then Dean texted me that he was going to be home in half an hour. It was 8:30. I told Paola she could go home, but she insisted on staying with me in case Liam woke up. (Remember? I couldn‘t lift him out of his crib.) I went to lie down in my room. Liam was in his room, next to mine, and Paola was downstairs watching TV with the video monitor. Next thing I knew Paola was sprinting upstairs. I came out of my room and asked what was wrong. She said, ―I think he threw up, and hurried into his room. I followed behind.
    When we found Liam he was blue and didn‘t seem to be breathing. His eyes were white,