~ What they don't teach in sex ed ~

I am a mediocre Mother. I've learned, in the past 9 years, to suck in my pride & deal with it.
I've been known to *gasp* forget on Tooth Fairy night(s)! I'm guilty of hollering at the Turkeys for leaving backpacks & lunchboxes strewn throughout the living room, kitchen & dining room, while the diaper bag, and my purse, & shoes are just tossed wherever they happened to land when I tornadoed through the door. My weekend catchphrase is, "If your hungry...make yourself some food."

All these things, (and more...oh Lordy! SO much more!!) conspire to instill in me a daily gut wrenching of "Mom guilt"

(I'm convinced that if we could make all girls between the ages of 12-20 feel a smidgen of the guilt their children will cause them....we'd have a serious decline in teenage & unwanted pregnancy's!)

I try and bribe my guilty conscience with the ideology that I really do have great kiddo's and so, I must be doing something right. Right? But, in all honesty, I don't think anything I'll do will ever be enough.

Those kids rock. And they roll. And they're the bomb dot com.
I think...(and what I think is the only thing that matters since I'm the one raising the buttheads)
that having guilt is all part of being a parent. Maybe I'd feel a little less guilt if I had millions of dollars and could give them all their hearts desire, but there would be something still.
I feel guilty when my son tells me he's bored. A little pang in my chest telling me that I need to find something fun, creative, constructive to engage his beautiful brain so it doesn't turn to mush.
I feel guilty when my oldest daughter tells me a girl in class was mean to her; like I should have been there to tell the other girl off.
Mean girls don't disappear with money. I'm willing to bet they get worse, actually. Boredom & Money have never really seemed to just be cool. They usually end up in a 3-some with drugs or worse.

Tonight the baby didn't want to go to sleep. I kept laying her back down with her woobies, her sister's "Lucky" lion (we give her what she wants. we don't fight it), giving her kisses, smoothing her blankets, and singing her lullabies......ok. no lullabies. They ask me to stop when I sing.

But she just kept popping back up. Like a friggin' Jack 'n' the Box. She doesn't just get up and roam around though. Oh no. She beelines straight to me with her lips puckered up and makin' kissy noises! The demon!
How do you punish that? I can't tell her to go back to bed and ignore those elusive kisses! And, once I've kissed her, I can't punish her for being up again.
After about 14 tuck-ins, woobie searches, & kissy marathons ~ I finally lost it. Kid had to go to sleep. I told her I was going to spank her fanny if she got up again. She didn't listen. Surprise...surprise. I fought those little lips though! I used my super human Mom shield to fight the magnetic pull they have over me, and I smacked her little diaper, turned her around and marched her right back to bed.

Ignoring those tears was the worst part of my day.
I wanted to run in there, scoop her up, and snuggle her little sobs away. But, I acted like a parent who has to teach her children limits, rules, routine....blah blah freakin' blah.

The point is. I did what I had to do in order to maintain my status as Alpha Dog around here. If I didn't, these Turkeys would skateboard all over me. But, it sucks. So, now...I'm sitting here with "Mom guilt" wishing I could wake my baby up and tell her that I didn't mean it. She can do her Jack 'n' the box routine all night long if she wants to.... as long as she gives me those sweet 'n' sloppy kisses in return!

Good Night & Tip Your Waitresses!


P.S. She went right to sleep after I showed her diaper who's the boss around this dump!