Why I Will Never Win Mother of the Year
1) The bottle stays out all night. It's just easier. Two bottles on the nightstand before bed = a few more minutes of sleep for me, and I'll be damned if the so-called bacteria build-up (or whatever) isn't worth the tradeoff.
2) The five second rule? It's like a 97-hour rule in our home, sometimes longer. If it falls on the floor and isn't coated entirely in dog hair, it goes back in the baby's mouth.
3) The F-word
4) The MF-word
5) The GDMFCS-word
6) I cannot snap those pajamas more than once a night. I just can't. She needs a diaper change after getting ready for bed? The pjs will remain unsnapped, the legs flopping around uselessly like some sort of 80's Issey Miyake creation.
Mama, my feet are cold and you hate me!
7) The number of times she's fallen off the bed so far: Six.
8) That I know of.
9) The crib that's been used one night and one night only. Which also explains why she keeps falling off the bed.
10) The dirty baby jeans that keep going back into the dresser instead of the laundry. Then every Friday, after laundry day has come and gone without their inclusion, I shrug and think, Eh, what's one more week.
11) The television. She shows no interest in it, unless this video is playing. And yet when we're in desperate need of a little free time we find ourselves urging, "Look Thalia! Look at the big red dog! Don't you want to watch the big red dog? C'mon, watch the doggie! Watch the doggie!"
12) The fact that we've done, um, things in front of her.
13) The fact that this list is not nearly over. Not by a longshot. No way, no how.
2) The five second rule? It's like a 97-hour rule in our home, sometimes longer. If it falls on the floor and isn't coated entirely in dog hair, it goes back in the baby's mouth.
3) The F-word
4) The MF-word
5) The GDMFCS-word
6) I cannot snap those pajamas more than once a night. I just can't. She needs a diaper change after getting ready for bed? The pjs will remain unsnapped, the legs flopping around uselessly like some sort of 80's Issey Miyake creation.
Mama, my feet are cold and you hate me!
7) The number of times she's fallen off the bed so far: Six.
8) That I know of.
9) The crib that's been used one night and one night only. Which also explains why she keeps falling off the bed.
10) The dirty baby jeans that keep going back into the dresser instead of the laundry. Then every Friday, after laundry day has come and gone without their inclusion, I shrug and think, Eh, what's one more week.
11) The television. She shows no interest in it, unless this video is playing. And yet when we're in desperate need of a little free time we find ourselves urging, "Look Thalia! Look at the big red dog! Don't you want to watch the big red dog? C'mon, watch the doggie! Watch the doggie!"
12) The fact that we've done, um, things in front of her.
13) The fact that this list is not nearly over. Not by a longshot. No way, no how.
posted by Mom101 at 12:13 AM
65 Comments:
lololol...I totally have a post like this brewing. Must be a Virgo thing goin' on.
I'm right there with you on numbers 1-6 for sure. The others I'm neither confirming nor denying.
I'd like to see a "Crappy Mother of the Year" award. I could give you a serious run for that one.
LMFAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i love that you admit all this shit. admit it proudly dammit! you rock!
I'm not going to win that award either. And my reasons are similar to yours. Especially the MFCS, without the GD because that just takes too long to say; I like to get straight to the point.
And how 'bout letting the kid wallow in her own shit for an inappropriate amount of time?
The sign of a brilliant mom is that you go with it. Just keep doing what's right for you and odds are that you will win mother of the year directly from Thalia.
Re #s 3,4 and 5. I think the answer is to use British swearwords, wanker, bloody bollocking arse-poo and so forth. When I went to the U of MN I carpooled with a French teacher who had 2 small children. We used to shriek "Wanker!" at rubbish drivers merrily, of a morning, confident that her children could go to school and repeat what they'd heard without their day-caregivers understanding ("What does Ella mean by calling Martin a wanker? Oh, it must be something French, the mother teaches it you know. I expect it probably means something very charming and rather lovely"); and any (further)phonecalls to the CPA having to be made.
I love it. I'm with you on the snaps. I swear there's like 50 gazillion of them.
When my daughter was a baby I would warm the bottle and wrap it in foil just in time for that mid-nite-early-morning feeding. Bacteri-Whatever!
I love your post! Hilarious!
Oh truer words have never been spoken! I could have SO written that post myself. Only I threw the damn snap-up PJs in the garbage one day in an act of definace for their stupid engineering!
I'm a firm believer that a few germs build one's immune system....at least that's what I tell myself! Oh, and dog hair is so easy to pick off...um, not that I would know that...
Oh and those snap PJ's? If the jammies didn't have zippers on them I refused to buy them. I learned that by the time I had my third kid.I was a slow learner.
Aw c'mon, where are all the indignant perfect mommy comments? Who knew there were so many of us crappy mamas out there? Solidarity!
My personal fave is the ba-ba out all night. Been there! Oh, have I been there. Basically EVERYTHING became a deal, a wrangle, a prayer, a plea for: More Sleep. I will do ANYTHING for more sleep.
this is awesome. i think that we should have a fabulous lassez-fair mom award. me and you both, would totally be in the running.
I can identify with ever single one of your points up there!
Man, I haven't told anyone about how we take 2 bottles upstairs for the nighttime feedings. I'll be damned if I'm gonna go downstairs and warm up a bottle when she wakes up!
And, I give 'em to her cold. Sometimes she likes a "cold one" - we justify it saying it must be "refreshing". Maybe it's like a "baby beer" - a "cold one"!
Please. Off the bed? I'm walking around with a little girl in a cast - wearing the wrong shoe on her right foot (her insistence)- and a pair of underwear around her neck right now (she puts anything with a hole on around her neck...). Who wants that award anyway - I say hold tight for an Emmy :)
my sons are living proof that the aforementioned foibles are not fatal. altho'... both of 'em do have ADD (like me) and both continue to live at home (surely i've mentioned this before?), since they are yet to be gainfully employed and/or full time college students and/or graduates.
my kids lived in tee shirts and diapers. and when it was warm... diapers. period. no muss, no fuss, no laundry.
personally, i think your "alternative" approach to parenting is... refreshing. (i broke every rule... and i mean every rule.) oh, and just so ya know? a new study came out last week supporting the theory that overprotected children have greater problems with allergies and asthma that kids who are allowed to hang around animals/dirt/whatever! : D
hahahaha! just read the "...my kids lived in tee shirts and diapers..." part and realized i should have qualified that a bit! i "dressed" them this way until they were around 2-ish (for the most part!) these days it's "tee shirts and undies", for, of course, every kid is eventually potty trained!
You are supposed to snap those jammies? I never did! LOL
For an obviously abused and neglected child, she sure is cute and seems happy. Keep it up.
Going to get bottles because you neglected to leave them on the nightstand = another opportunity for baby to fall off the bed.
Not that I've ever experienced this. No. Of course not. (whistles, looks away) I'm just saying that the leaving the bottles out is actually a safety mechanism, so go you.
i second the use of british swear words. my son can call people "utter knobs" or "gobshites" with the best of 'em.
we also prepped both bottles and let them sit--no ill effects that we could see. also abandoned GD popper sleepers for zipper ones.
just read the other entry on how she smiles but does not sleep--hilarious!
I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE! Yippie!
Mother of the Year awards are highly overrated, anyway. At least that's what I tell myself when I put off changing Rosie's poopy diaper in the hopes that J will smell it first, plop the kids in front of Sesame Street so I can do some blogreading, let Mimi eat Easter candy before dinner, etc. Hey, nobody's perfect, right? So what if some of us are... ahem... much less perfect than other somebodies.
My firstborn rolled off the couch quite a few times, and barrel-rolled down the stairs once. So far so good. And I think dog hair is a good source of protien, no?
Just found your blog a few weeks ago and was just reading your Crazy-Hip Mamas interview thingee - I'm a primary earner to a stay-at-home daddy type, too. Great writing!
Peeing my pants at caption on pjs pic - "why do you hate me?" My kids are 4 and 2, and we continue to find new ways to be bad, bad parents. It never ends.
The list gets longer and more interesting as kids get older....at least that's what I'm finding out.
My younger son has a pair of jeans like that too.
Brilliant. So much better than my Rubbish Mummy post, too - which was rubbish because it wasn't really very rubbish. And it could have been so much more rubbish, cos I do/have done all this stuff you describe, and more.
Particularly the dirt thing. Dirty stuff in mouths, on bottoms, in bottles...
Can you tell I'm rather competitive?
But the dirt stuff doesn't really count as Ribbish-Mummy-worthy, cos germs are actually GOOD for them. They are! They build up the immune system! Disinfectant bad, dirt good. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
But ay karumba, that baby is cute. I want to eat her.
I suppose I could claim to be so rubbish that I ate my own child, but I'd be lying. More or less. I mean, I sometimes nibble his nose a bit. It's too irresistible.
I can related to many items on your list. I hated those pajamas with snaps on the legs. Give me an easy zipper any day.
Yeay! I can so relate to some of these things...
Every night I sneak into my son's room and leave an opened pack of fruit snacks. This is so he will eat them and give me a few more minutes of sleep. And then I consider this his breakfast. And I've done the dirty clothes thing as well. And I still curse too much, MFCS! Especially in traffic.
Thanks for sharing.
ROFLMFAO!!!!
I swear waaaaaaayyyyyy too much.
My son will try to eat cookies from the "I just swept that and it's going in the garbage!" pile. I think sometimes he's successful...
Oy!
I can't begin to list my faults, I don't want to take over your blog. Maybe I'll have to post them...
Oh, thank God I have someone to look down on now. Because I haven't done every. single. one. of these things. ((cough, cough)).
Well, except that the unwashed object of clothing in our house are the ZIP UP JAMMIES because he only has one pair. I mean, gross--you've *seen* D eating yogurt, right? Eeew.
Oh, and instead of the bed, he simply launches himself off of chairs. Which is why our house now looks like Bad Chair Time-Out Corner--all the chairs are facedown on the floor. Oy.
Great post!
Oh you make me feel much better about my mothering skills- or lack thereof.
Whatever. I'm convinced that as long as your baby feels absolutely 100% loved and adored by you, she will totally ignore the small stuff.
You have a laundry day? I suck.
I use the big bad C-word. I think I might be the only woman in the United States to do so. Perhaps we should have our own awards ceremony. I might have a shot at winning.
Well I know I'm not getting it either. My kid threw my camera in the tub the other day, and I could barely stop myself from laughing. None of yours are bad at all. Plus she still has a pacifier at 21 months, and she may go to kindergarden with it. Great post.
Little tip - by buttoning even just one button on the onesie, you will increase your mom rating expotentially.
And thanks for the ego boost on my blog. Your blog friend rating just went off the charts.
Toyfoto: Which (Big Bad C-word) one? I got both in my vocab...u... uh, sign me up for that other award ceremony.
;)
Yep, the f word is what's keeping me down as well.
And for the record, without the TV and the dozens of shows played over and over and over, i would have thrown myself out the second story window long ago.
you are SOOOO not alone.
Well, you know what they say, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Except...I don't see that you have a problem. We've all done those things, and anybody who says they haven't is a lying POS. ;?)
this is the BEST LIST EVER.
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Kyle does that with the jammie bottoms too - actually any item that has crotch snaps. He also neglects to put her bloomers back on after changing her diaper.
But I'm not going to complain. That's one less diaper I had to change.
Looks like the awards ceremony for mom of the year would be empty because it sounds like we've all done things we're not so proud of, me included! Kudos to you for being the best mom YOU can be. Hey, she's still breathing isn't she???
Awesome list and I thought I was the only one who did the bottles at night thing - thanks to you and all of your commenters for making me feel not quite so alone in my world of quality parenting.
My kids are older and I have been able to do far more damage so I might have a slight edge!
I would not own a baby sleeper that did not zip up the front and I will not give a gift of a sleeper that does not zip. First of all, you've got a new baby and you're not getting enough sleep and your hormones are all over the map and those little snaps that never line up are designed to push you right over the edge. Those little snaps? A Well-Butrin conspiracy. You heard it here first.
oh, and by the way, cursing can be a fabulous way to get your kid's attention. there's nothing like gently calling your screaming/tantrum prone 9 year old a little mother f*cker to make him stop screaming and beat a path to his bedroom. trust me... it's golden
D to the I to the T to the T to the O.
On every single one of them. Except #9 - we've gotten a week out of our crib now. And I would add a few curse acronyms. And add the following: leaving Baby in Jolly Jumper while blogging. Two feet away, but still.
Oh, yeah, and... you change diapers after bedtime? In our house, if it isn't oozing up her back or down her leg, it's just extra warmth until morning.
Okay, so I did snap all the snaps back when he still wore those snappy things (it's all zippered and pull-on things now-- I learned). Every single snap, every single time. Even when I hadn't slept in three days and had to unsnap and resnap them five times to get them to line up right. It never occurred to me to just not snap them. I mean, he's a baby? Why would he care? I could have left them unsnapped . . . I COULD HAVE LEFT THEM UNSNAPPED!
Great post, btw. We totally have the 97 hour rule for food the boy finds on the floor here, too. But then again, we kind of have a "Let the boy eat anything with calories that isn't deadly poison" rule, since he so rarely wants to eat anything . . .
I just rolled in the floor reading this.
I am the proud parent of a son who during the letter "F" week at school raised his hand in circle time and dropped the F-bomb. The teacher was horrified, I was almost smug with the fact that he KNEW it started with the letter F.
So sue me.
Heh, congrats on MotW!
My kids are older, but I can still relate...I never did things the 'right' way, and I still don't. I'm still kinda stumbling along in this whole parenthood thing.
This is hilarious! I'm so glad other moms leave the bottles out all night! I always felt so ashamed!
As far as the swears, just wait til she repeats you! I said dammit one too many times while I was trying to get my daughter's computer to work (yes, at 2, we let her play with her own computer---bad mommy to fry her brain already), and she said it back to me. I quickly said, "oh no, I said 'down it'; yes, that's it, 'down it'," while my husband yelled from the other room, "I told you to watch your mouth!". . .
Oh, and number 12; yes, all three have been in the room at one time or another. We've now been banished to our closet for 'those moments'---isn't that a lovely image?
Rest assured, Katie and Tom's daughter will have a MUCH longer list
I hear you on the dog hair one. I won't be surprised if my son coughs up a hairball soon.
My child chews on dogs toys daily, so I'm not winning any awards soon either. In our house its not enough that it (whatever goes in Julia's mouth) is covered in dog hair, but how many times the dog has licked it and what the dog ate before he licked it that matters.
Funny post, I found myself checking off my list along with you... Baby fell off the bed - Check. Swearing - check.
But here's why you DO win mother of the year: because a sense of humor = more important than some freakin' snaps.
Greetings, dear. I'm not in your league, but may I link to you? I found you via Chilld Bride Sam.
Cheers.
Randall: I have a league! I'm so excited. And to think, no one told me. I'd be honored to be on your blogroll.
Thanks for all the supportive comments my friends. As someone very smart on here said, if all of us are doing all these "bad" things then who is it making us feel bad about doing them anyway?
It's Dr. Sears, isn't it. I bet it is.
97-hour rule? Ours is more like the three-month rule.
"That's not mold - they're just flecks of flour."
"On raisin bread?"
"Look, do you want a piece of toast or not?"
Great list. Just think how long it will be when Thalia is eleven!
Oh yeah, most of that list applies to me as well. Especially the falling off the bed part and watching TV part.
So terrible. LOL! I'm right there with you. Except I leave the bottle in the CRIB with him so I don't have to get out of bed. He just rolls over, grabs it and so be it...
Numbers One through Five-YES! I busted out laughing at the Issey Miyake reference. And I would like to nibble on Thalia's neck please.
Also, thank you so much for your kind words on my blog post. It really does help to know I'm not alone.
How funny! Last Saturday I blogged about my mother telling me on Thursday that Tot's hair smelled like pee. Did I run, appalled and disgusted, to bathe her, being sure to shampoo twice? No, of course not. My mom said that she would give her a bath on Saturday. I figured she could wait until then. I then made sure to let everyone know that they could just leave it in the comment section of my MOTY award assessment. Along with many, many, many other things. We all may need to make a list part of our personal blogs. Maybe it could be one of those "tag, you're it" things. It would be quite intersting...as long as no one contacts the authorities on any of us.
funny post...definitely
OMG - you are killing me! LOL! I just found your blog through my husband's (www.easilyamusedinstitute.blogspot.com)links, and have been reading your archives for hours! Thanks for the laughs!
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