Friday, July 18, 2008

Real Moms

I just finished reading Real Moms: Exploding the Myths of Motherhood, by Elisa Morgan and Carol Kuykendall. At times, I felt the authors were speaking directly to me! Here are a few "real mom" statements sprinkled throughout the book that I connected with.

"A real mom . . ."

" . . . picks her kids' noses." Yes, I do that on occasion.

" . . . puts dirty socks on her kids when the clean ones run out." Sometimes you just can't keep up with all the laundry.

" . . . really likes to sleep, but when that sick or scared-from-a-nightmare child only wants Mommy, deep down she really likes that too." Thankfully those nights aren't very often, and I like them even better when I can go right back to sleep.

" . . . sometimes gets tired, frustrated, and mad at her kids."

" . . . fusses at her kids a good part of the day, then lingers over them as they sleep."

" . . . sometimes has bad days (or weeks)."

" . . . always loves her kids . . . she just doesn't always like them."

" . . . thinks that occasionally the television makes a wonderful babysitter."

" . . . shoves all the dirty dishes in the oven when an unexpected friend arrives." The dishwasher works great for hiding those things I haven't gotten to yet.

" . . . smiles at her little angels as she passes someone else's screaming brats in the grocery store - and knows she shouldn't." Yeah, this usually happens the other way around for us.

" . . . uses real plates when entertaining guests. But lots of times the family gets paper plates." They're in the pantry, second shelf, to the left.

" . . . hardly ever gets all the laundry folded and put away. She just grabs wrinkled shirts from the pile."

" . . . knows that childhood passes so quickly - but not quick enough some days." Grocery days!

Here are a few I came up with on my own:
*A real mom sometimes falls asleep while reading to her children and makes up nonsense words in the process.
*A real mom makes her children take swimming lessons, whether they want to or not. And she makes them go underwater to get used to it.
*A real mom wraps up an uneaten lunch and serves it again instead of an afternoon snack.
*A real mom makes sandwiches for lunch a little more fun by cutting them differently to make two houses. Sometimes she makes a window in each one to make sure they taste good. :o)

I'm sure I can come up with more, given a little more time. :o)

Got some "real mom" thoughts to share? I'm sure I can relate!

4 comments:

PoMonkey said...

Along the same lines, you may get a kick out of another friend's blog today:
http://www.familyofblacks.com/2008/07/things-i-never-knew-id-say.html

PoMonkey said...

Sorry about that...try this:
http://tinyurl.com/59mr4f

Anonymous said...

this reminds me of when you were pregnant with caleb. a group of us went to western sizzlin' for lunch. brooklyn was about 7 or 8 years old. she was about to eat dessert & there was already a little bit of her chocolate on her spoon. she said, "Moooom, it's DIRTY!" so instead of getting up to get her a new spoon, jennifer licked it off, and handed the spoon back to brooklyn. there was no more chocolate on it, so brooklyn was satisfied & ate her dessert! haha! and i remember jennifer told you, "watch & learn!" haha!

Ashley said...

PoMonkey - Thanks for the link. That's funny!

Lindsay - I don't remember that, but it's true: Real moms will lick food off a spoon to make it "clean". They do the same thing with pacifiers - as long as it's not the first child's. :o)