Mom Foolery

I divide my time as a mother between feelings of extreme pride and feelings of extreme guilt. Is this normal?? This is not one of those grand blogs where I talk about the meaning of life or make you cry and call your grandmother or estranged teenager you sent to bootcamp. The feelings I’m talking about are a little more down to earth and of the everyday variety. For example, I feel pride in knowing I cut my son’s hair. I feel guilt when I see said haircut in certain light.

Some additional thoughts I waller in guilt over: Toilet training makes me want to treat my toddler just like an animal in my house… I don’t allow animals in my house. When I make a snack for myself, 98% of the time I have no intentions of sharing it. At 4:00am, formula feeding seems like it might have been a neat gig to look into. I have detailed, evil thoughts of revenge on children that push my son at the park. I buy Spaghettios. I really dropped the ball on baby sign language.

Some gems that make me feel like I might be a decent mom: I can bathe both boys by myself without breaking into tears or waterboarding anyone. I keep my boys in worship service and have not been asked to find a new church from the pulpit. My toddler eats dinner. The same dinner that that my husband and I eat. At the same time that we eat. (Food allergies notwithstanding.) Along those lines, I have mastered the allergy-mom super powers and I will Wolvervine-claw anything he can't have away from his face without leaving a scratch. I'm a Nazi about brushing teeth. And bedtime. No late nights with funky teeth. Not on my watch.

All that being said, my kids seem to like me. And they're stuck with me, 24-7, nonstop, in their face, kissing them and taking their picture. At least until they begin escaping to school in a few years and comparing me to other moms that are way cooler and probably know how to use Twitter and wear lipstick.

Who Are You??

I’m just going to jump right in as if I have been doing this for years. Otherwise, some type of Grand Opening is expected, and I don’t have the time for balloons, business cards and a piñata. This is all you get.

Let me preface this and any future writing by saying that my thoughts may offend or even disturb the nicest, sweetest, most normal people I know, and for that I am sorry. But actually I’m not. This is just a dumb blog and nobody is making you read it.

Here goes…

Who are you moms that exercise? I don’t mean a casual stroll around the block where you mentally note all the shady houses that you plan on alerting the cops to when your fence ends up covered in graffiti or one of your children gets kidnapped. I mean like all out, I go to the gym, I run 65 miles a day, I swim the English Channel, I have abs and firm thighs again type of exercise. Where are you finding time to do this? I do venture out of my house for a walk but only in one of two scenarios. 1) I am pushing a stroller the length and breadth of the Titanic. 2) I am walking at 2 year old’s pace and am forced to u-turn upon hearing “My legs don’t work” or “I have to go pee-pee.” Don’t misunderstand me, I am not an obese sludge that swims around in chocolate pudding all day. I still wear my pre-children clothes (see next paragraph), I fit nicely in an airline seat and I don’t look like an overstuffed sausage when I don a swimsuit for Mommy and Me swim lessons. I am simply enamored by moms that seem to still keep a strict regime of cardio and muscle toning while I am desperately trying to remember the last time I washed my hair. In my mind, I aspire to be just like you. But in my heart, I know that navigating a labyrinth of cars, trucks and bouncy balls that blanket my house and dead-lifting a larger than normal baby are the only workouts in my foreseeable future. And I’m okay with that. Let’s just chock it up to blissful laziness and call it a day.  

Also, Who are you moms that coupon? Let me be clear, I am cheap. Cheaper than cheap. I get red-faced angry that the zipper teeth on pants I bought in the 11^th grade are starting to wear down. I will cut someone for trying to throw away perfectly good (stale and expired) food. But where is the time in one’s day to cut and sort 5000 coupons? I used to feel proud of myself for saving $5.35 in coupons on any given trip. Today that is a joke. I fully grasp what money can be saved. I’m envious. But when I go to the grocery store it’s almost like a sci-fi movie. I have x amount of seconds to fling my body through the magical porthole that gets me out of the house alone with no children. If I miss that window, I’m tooting around the aisles in a rocketship shopping cart filled with a toddler, a carseat, crumbs and drool. No room in there for a coupon trapper keeper. Let’s say I do make it there alone, it’s still a sci-fi flick as I race the clock in order to make it back home for the cute blue-eyed leech that depends solely on me for mere survival in this strange new world. No time for perusing 30 pages of coupons. And, no I can’t go to multiple stores (see porthole excuse). No, I don’t want or need a stockpile (despite my zombie-war prepper husband). I’m just trying to buy things on sale that are remotely healthy for my family and then returning home to feed it to them. And I’m okay with that. Let’s just pay the few extra bucks and leave my garage clear for cars and not crates of spaghetti noodles and laundry detergent.

Oh, the other tangents I could embark on. But alas, I have to work. Which brings me to my last point. While I am not winning the coupon Olympics or the actual Olympics anytime soon (see above), I can think of several of these questions that I am 100% guilty of and I realize that I am insane for it. For example, Who are you moms that work from home? Guilty. It was never my intention to keep working once my kiddos arrived, but my job allowed me to be with my kids and my husband allows himself to be super awesome, so it works. At the expense of abs, biceps and a coupon trapper keeper I suppose.