Exceptional Motherhood

Note:  I wrote this, posted it, and then spent an hour fussing over my worry that someone may not it take it to be what it was intended because it's hard to read sarcasm, and because I think I'm funnier than other people do.  So, let me be clear that this is in jest.  It's meant to be funny, me laughing at myself and my current situation.  I'm not currently berating myself for not being able to control everything that happens to my kids.  The examples are real, though.  Enjoy!

We all know by now that I struggle with motherhood.  Sometimes.  A lot.  Not all of the time, thankfully.  There are awesome days when I love my two little sweeties so much that I think they are the cutest little turkeys in the whole world and even their naughtiness and antics don't shake me.

And while I appreciate all of your kind words of encouragement regarding the whole subject of mothering, I'm here today to convince you that there is nothing you can say that will convince me that I'm a great mom.  Let me share with you some examples of the exceptional mothering that happens around my house.  (Be warned that there are potty stories involved.  Skip it if these hilarious stories about my children's bodily fluids will gross you out.  Or you could buck up and read on ahead because my life and stories of my children are so awesome that you won't want to miss out.)

Example 1:  We have been having some beautiful Fall weather around here lately.  One day last week, I decided to take the boys to the park.  I love park days like that one.  It's one of the only times when both of my kids are awake that they aren't demanding a lot from me.  No one was whining, fighting, or bugging me!  I do love to sit back and watch them play.

Okay, so this particular park is a dream land for aspiring climbers.  It is designed for older kids, and there are three stories of stair and ladder systems that culminate to a very long slide.  Hobbes climbed all over that structure!  He's 20 months old, and probably shouldn't be able (allowed?) to climb those heights.  But I couldn't keep him off them.  And he performed just fine, aside from having to save him from certain doom a time or five.  So I left him alone to play.  Awesome momming?  Or terribly trusting and awful to put him in such dangerous situations under the eyes of the other mommies/grandmas/daddies who were wondering why I was allowing this to happen?  Hmmmm.

Example 2:  This happened at the above mentioned park, which happens to be downtown, right off a very busy road (safely separated) and close to a busy YMCA.  Not isolated or private at all.  Okay, so I mentioned that the boys were happily playing, so I took the opportunity to answer a phone call from a good friend, who very much needed a listening ear at the time.  She and I had a lovely long conversation while I supervised my kids from afar.  At one point, Gunner ran up to me and told me that he needed to use the potty.  Here's where it gets good.  I was on the phone, in the middle of her important story, Hobbes was on the other side of the park, and I realized that there was no way I was going to gather everyone up and get him to a potty in time.

So he decided to take care of it himself.  He trotted off to a distant tree (closer to the busy road and more seeing eyes), dropped his pants, and peed on the tree.

I was only slightly mortified when I realized that there was a grandma there watching everything and judging this negligent mommy.  (And to my good friend on the phone, it was totally worth it.)

Example 3:  The boys and I were invited to a friend's house the other day to play.  These are new friends from our ward who we have hung out with less than a handful of times.  But we like them a whole lot.  While we were there, I noticed several times that Hobbes's diaper was awfully saggy.  I thought he had just peed a lot, and it was super soaked.  I put off changing him because I was talking to my friend, and I thought it would be fine until his pre-nap diaper change.

After lunch, Gunner notified me that Hobbes was trying to climb over the baby gate.  I went to see what he was up to and found him desperately trying to get to a new diaper from the diaper bag.  Here's what happened.  His saggy diaper was actually a broken diaper.  It had broken at the strap and wasn't even covering his bummy.  He had had his post-lunch poop, and was wet and poopy all down his pants and on my new friend's hardwood floor.  Nothing a little sanitizer can't fix, but still.  Gross.  It's a good thing that this new friend has four kids of her own.  Otherwise I might have been too mortified to ever talk to her again.  

The worst part of this is that I had noticed that something was wrong long before the badness happened.  Should've acted on those promptings, folks.  This is not good mothering.

Example 4:  Hobbes snuck into my bedroom yesterday and came out with Spiff's deodorant.  He climbs onto the toilet to get into our unlocked medicine cabinet (gotta fix that!) that is located directly above.  He loves Spiff's deodorant and will take any chance he can get to get his little hand on it.  He loves smelling it, rubbing it all over himself, and licking it...while saying "Yum" and nodding his head.  Weird kid.  He won't eat raspberries, but he'll eat deodorant.  But seriously, what kind of a mom allows this to happen?

Example 5:  Yep, there are more.  This last Saturday, Hobbes took an early nap, which means that by the time we were done with dinner, he was really really tired.  He gets the crazies when he is tired, and that evening, he was racing around the kitchen annoying me while I was trying to work on a project.  After a while, he started climbing all over the bar stools, trying to get on my lap. I didn't want him on my lap, so I kept putting him off.  To my surprise, he climbed on the back of the stool I was sitting on.  Thinking to myself, "That is so dangerous, I need to get him off now!", I stood up to grab him.  Never stand up if that happens!  He and the chair fell right over onto the tile floor.  The chair hit his foot, and he chipped a tooth somehow.  Poor little guy!  And again, what kind of a mom let's this stuff happen?!

I could go on, but I'm not going to.  I think I've incriminated myself enough for one day.  I think I'll go take a nap while my kid watches a movie.  Good mothers do things like that.