Confessions of Mommy

Before Easter gets here, I realized that now is a good time to wipe my parental slate clean with a few… well, confessions.

These aren't the big confessions, the ones that carry criminal fines or require significant time in pews. These are Mommy Confessions. Crimes which, in the big book of Good Universal and Loving Parenting (known as GULP), carry niggling guilt sentences of 20 years.

This is the perfect time of year to face those little crimes, wipe the slate clean and restore our self-esteem in our parenting ability for at least a week. By merely admitting to these little missteps, you too can go Mommy Guilt-free just in time!


In the spirit of self-sacrifice, I'll go first. Here are my 10 Mommy confessions for spring.

1) I have tricked my children. I have taken advantage of my child's inability to count to get her to eat six more bites instead of two more.

2) I have threatened my children with punishments I never intended to carry out. I never intended to not go to Grammy's house, even if they poured syrup on each other and rolled in bark mulch.

3) I have agreed to things only because I was relatively sure they'd forget about it later or lose interest. I was secretly hoping against having to go to the top of that really big slide in Landa Park since that was the day I decided to wear a skirt and heels. (I see Paris! I see France! Do they still sing that song?)

4) I have wished my children were older, if only because I didn't want to here those five little words shouted in the middle of a quiet library again: I HAVE TO GO POTTY!

5) I have wished my children were younger, so that I could carry them to bed without getting a hernia.

6) I have ignored the first yell for Mommy, hoping they'd find a way to work it out with each other if I just stayed out of sight. Note to self: crouching behind the couch is a lousy hiding technique.

7) I have banned certain children's television programs from our household from the day they were born lest I have to listen to Barney's "I Love You" song.

8) I have gotten my children hooked instead on songs from my favorite musicals, even though Les Miserables is not exactly the most child appropriate Broadway show.

9) I have pulled out the cookies in a desperate bid to get my child to eat, lest she evaporate, despite the fact that she says she isn't hungry and probably isn't.

10) I have explained that I'm too big to fit inside the fast food playscape even though I can squeeze in there if I exhale fully and practice some of the more advanced yoga moves.

There. I feel much better now. Now it's your turn. Fess up. I can guarantee you'll feel better and from what I've heard, the Easter Bunny is very forgiving of these things.

At least I hope so. I love those chocolate eggs.

Fun. I can do fun. Really. Okay. Maybe not.

"Are you the fun parent?"

The neighbor's child, the one that always asks the pointed questions around here, was in my living room, asking me the one question I never wanted to answer.

But, like a smart lawyer who knows the answers to every question before asking them, she knew the truth.

No. I am not the fun parent. Daddy is the fun parent.

How did this happen? I had such plans. When I was in high school, I always figured I would be the coolest mom ever. Even my friends, as I got into my twenties, said "Boy, you are going to be a really fun mom."

And in that wonderfully blissful assumption of youth I thought, "Darn straight, I am."

As I grew up I had all the requisite background for being the fun parent. I was once a professional clown. I could twist balloons into dogs or giraffes (dogs with longer necks) or bunnies (dogs with longer ears). I remembered countless knock-knock jokes.

I even, at one time, collected comic books and could name all the members of the X-men – classic and new. My nephews were in awe.

I can't even blame it on being the stay at home parent who has to lay down the law, because for a time I was the after 6 pm parent and I STILL was not the fun parent.

Don't get me wrong. I have my moments. There was the night where we had sports caster bath time where every action in the bathtub was described in detail by the mommy-play-by-play announcer. And let's not forget opera day where we sang all our conversations in big, high voices (which went on for two hours before Daddy begged for mercy).

Yet motherhood has brought out the In-Charge-Marge in me. I confuse productivity with play. We must finish our rice painting! Let's color ALL the macaroni!

I plan complex outdoor activities when really all anyone seems to want to do is run screaming from the tickle monster. For four hours.

And I don't want to watch a movie 700 times so I can recite every line by heart. (Except for the Princess Bride. I love that movie.) Instead want all movies to teach something, anything. The capital of Uganda. The habitat needs of salamanders. The names of all the planets in the solar system.

I am so not fun.

Now that I've faced it, I find myself sneaking in fun. Last week it was green pancakes. Then there was a brief moment of pirouettes in the parking lot.

If I can't be the fun parent, I can at least have my moments.

Would someone please find the adult around here?

Growing up is definitely over rated.

You don’t discover this until you have kids and then it hits you like a ton of marshmallows.

Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m a victim of arrested development. Or worse, perhaps I’ve caught some sort of “Benjamin Buttons” reverse aging disease.

For example, just the other day I rode the grocery cart like a modified scooter all the way back to my car. Did you know there’s no steering on those things? Good thing they put those little rubber bumpers on them.

Then I caught myself lingering over the bubble gum at the convenience store, finally opting for the one with the comic inside. That Joe Bazooka. What a goof.

More than once I’ve turned off the news in the car and opted for a kids book on tape. If you haven’t heard a good Hank the Cowdog lately, you’re missing out.

At this point in my life I imagined I’d spend a great deal of my time doing all the grown up stuff. Learning about a bunch of dead guys, reading labels carefully to select the products with precisely the right amount of trans fats, or watching the news until facts on world events leaked out my ears.

Instead I’m avoiding stepping on cracks, stopping to see what prizes they’re offering in sugar coated cereal, and whistling tunes from cartoons. I fully expect to start finger painting any minute.

I suppose it was inevitable. After all this kind of thing is infectious. It’s simply not reasonable to expect that you’ll catch your kids’ colds but not their sense of fun.

In fact, this whole thing reminds me of the famous entomologist who discovered the organ that ants use to get others to follow a trail to food. Scout ants lay down a scent trail with an organ in their abdomen.

Of course this entomologist had to go around the country and demonstrate how this scent thing worked. But he didn’t just toss up some slides.

He wrote his name on the top of the table using the scent, then let out a bunch of ants. All of the ants ran immediately over and spelled out his name, following the scent trail he’d written.

Now that’s cool.

Proving once again that in a very real way, lots of us never grow up.

Weeeee!


('course now I feel a little guilty about the ants I'm killing with ant bait in my kitchen. Luckily it's just a little guilty. I can do little guilty standing on my head.)

Bare Inspiration

Sometimes people will ask me if it's hard to keep writing a column every week.

Not with this cast of characters.

In fact, there are weekends where my column just writes itself - like one particularly memorable weekend. I'd just dropped off my grandmother after we'd been out for twice as long as anticipated.

It's never good at my house for Mommy to be gone twice as long as anyone expects. This is how we end up with pet lizards that require live crickets for lunch and captured tarantulas that everyone is too scared to look at, let alone release back into the wild. So I was anticipating trouble.

When I pulled into the driveway, I came upon my husband and two daughters sitting outside in that unmistakable posture of people who have narrowly avoided complete mental breakdowns.

Apparently, while I was out (for once, my timing was perfect), my husband had released the girls to playing in the backyard while he vacuumed out his truck. A fairly picky guy about the condition of his vehicle, he was soon lost in the task of master detailer. He didn't notice the long stretch of relative silence that is a sure sign of impending disaster until it was too late.

Suddenly there was a cry from the back yard. He ran over to find that our youngest had been knocked over by the dog, bumped her head on a rock, and while fine for the most part, was quite upset.

And naked.

I believe I deserve some sort of award for not bursting out laughing at that point in the story. In fact I may have given myself a hernia in the process.

Everyone involved, including the four year old, denied any knowledge of exactly how or why she came to be naked. When I asked her point blank, she just looked at me as if the question itself made no sense.

So like the mystery of lost socks, the Bermuda Triangle, and why bumble bees can fly, the day Mireya decided to play in the buff is just one of those episodes in our life that will remain shrouded in obscurity.

Maybe shrouded isn't the right word. But you get the idea.

Hopefully the next time I'm delayed coming home I'll get another column out of it – as long as I can avoid getting a hernia in the process.

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