Dear Mom,

Please forgive me. I never understood what true patience was until today when I spent several hours with my four year old son and a kazoo. Truly I felt like the MOST patient and enduring creature on the planet when after each lovely ear numbing rendition of a song was finished "Did you like my song mom?" was asked of me and I gritted my teeth, smiled and said, "I loved it, why that's the best kazoo playing I've heard all year."

Reminder

When your three year old standing on the threshold of your recently steamed carpet says, "Mom I don't feel good." you have exactly 1.3 seconds to aim his mouth in the direction of the tile floor before it and everything within a five foot radius is covered in vomit.

Seriously this mommy thing aint for wimps.

I'm so clever...

The other day I sneakily changed the desktop on Shane's laptop to this picture.



a few minutes after he left for work I got a text that read, "very funny."

Yeah I think so too, in fact I still get a kick out of it.

For those of you that want the back story, yes that really is a glacier that I came upon in Alaska last summer, when I went there to visit my old college roommate Jeri. Jeri is a super cool girl, who is so fun that when you hang out with her you find yourself doing crazy things like licking glaciers.

Sorry, no rodent lovers here

Today out of the blue Mason said to me, "Mom rats are uh-scusting."

You got it dude they sure are.

Ouch!

So today the timer goes off in my kitchen telling me that dinner is ready. Now if you are a frequent reader here you will remember that Max loves to climb on/in things. He especially loves the dishwasher, when he hears that thing open he comes a runnin', and always tries to climb inside it. Considering this behavior you can understand why I might have some concern when opening the oven as this is also a fascinating appliance to my Max.

So like I said the timer goes off and I go to retrieve the dinner, with Max close at my heels. Usually when opening the 400 degree oven I put Max in his high chair or call on dad to run interference, but I can smell that dinner is already getting a bit crispy so I strategically block the kid with my body and swiftly open the oven and extract the two baking sheets that have our dinner on them, and set them on the stove top. Then while constantly shifting my weight so as to keep him off guard I shut the oven door and feel relieved that I was able to keep my baby from climbing in my oven one more time. That is when I realized only seconds too late that I had made a horrible miscalculation in my keep baby from burning plan. You see tonight I had two pans in the oven instead of one and so I had to arrange them side by side on the stove top, and I was so busy with my tricky baby blocking oven retrieval that I didn't notice that the pans were both rather close to edge of the stove. To my horror I watched as if in slow motion as Max reached his little hand up and grabbed the edge of the hot baking sheet. Well you can imagine that my hands were only milliseconds behind and without even consulting my brain they grabbed that now screaming baby, and shoved his whole arm under the faucet that was running cold water. Then my brain started to catch up, my thought process was something like this...

Baby screaming...
baby hurt...
life threatening?...
no.
Ok mommy freak out mode lessening slightly...
Permanent damage?...
ER trip warranted?...
Inspect...
No. Big sigh of relief.
Baby still screaming...
Baby still hurt (and mad because now his arm and sleeve are soaked)...
Pan too close to the edge...
MY FAULT!

And then it sets in like a train wreck, the mommy guilt. Oh I feel so bad for my little guy. Seriously how could I let this happen? Shane comes to see what all of the hollering is about. He helps me comfort Max and comforts me a bit too. Showing me that Max's hand is fine. And really he is fine, although seriously upset.

Later I started to think about it. I felt so bad. I thought about another time I had a scare with Mason when he was a little bit older than Max is now. Its actually a pretty funny story that starts with me going to my doctor's office, and ends with me hurriedly wiping ultrasound gel off my pregnant belly while the nurse calls poison control. Everything turned out fine, but that night feeling completely wretched about it I relayed the story to friends. One of them told me something her mother told her about taking care of her six children when they were all very young. She said that when her kids were all small she just tried to make it through the day the best she could, and any day that ended without having to call poison control was a good day. It was funny and it made me feel better.

And tonight as my boys slept safe and cared for in their beds, I thought that poison control, and ER days do happen, and they are miserable, but most days in my kids' lives are not those days. How many good days, great days do we not give ourselves credit for. Seriously we read stories, we go to the zoo, we teach them to share, and to the very best of our ability we keep them safe. Really I think we're doing pretty good, and I think women out there need to band together and give mommy guilt a run for its money. Today lets give ourselves a break, because nobody's perfect, and give ourselves some credit for the good days.

The End Goal is Worth the Run

That is what the inscription on the back of my ipod says, the one that my husband gave me last year on mother's day. So yesterday as I was puffing along on my treadmill, I started to think what is my end goal? Seriously why am I doing this? My legs hurt, I'm all sweaty, why? Is it so that I can be Shelah? Maybe (I mean who wouldn't want to like Shelah). Is it to make all the money I've spent on shoes and treadmill and Itunes, feel justified? Probably. Is it for bragging rights when I get to the top of that hill? I sure hope so. Is it to be able to say that I did it because I said I would? For sure.

I've never been the athletic type, ever... I've always believed that to be true, always... So what does that mean now as I'm training to run a 178 mile relay race? It means that someone has been lying to me, and I think that it might have been me. I've learned a valuable lesson and its funny, and a little sad that I didn't learn it until almost my third decade in life. I learned that everything, even marathons start (and end) with one step at a time, and that whatever we believe to be true about ourselves probably will be.

I've also learned that sometimes its good to do something that's hard, so that we can learn and grow strong enough to do that hard thing. So if my fairy godmother breezed in tomorrow and told me she would give me a runner's body in exchange for a pumpkin or a mouse, would I take it? I would probably be tempted, but would it be good for me? Probably not. So every morning when I'm begging my legs to just give me just one more step... one more lap... one more mile, and thinking why? WHY!? I have to remember that the end goal IS worth the run because feeling the worth of the run in every step on the way to the finish line is the end goal.

Time marches on...

For sale. Baby bottles. Tenaciously used.