My sister and I have a saying when we do something totally ridiculous with regards to our kids… ‘Mother of the Year’. Try it – it’s perfect. The kid drops a cracker on the floor of the coffee shop and promptly eats it…look at the old lady giving you the death glare, shrug your shoulders and say, ‘yup, I’m the mother of the year!’.
Sometimes though the mother of the year thing is a little more serious and leaves you with the shudders of ‘what if’s?’. Recently, Will was hanging with my friends dog who we know very, very well. He was hugging and kissing everyone and did it to Tallulah too. We all went awwww and thought it was adorable. I thought nothing of it until we went to the park the next day and he went to do it to a strangers dog. I flipped. What the eff was I thinking letting him do that? I could barf everytime I think of what could have happened if Cujo let loose on Will’s face. Needless to say we’ve been working on the ‘only pet the doggy’s back’ and he’s been great with it. My freak out seems to have put an element of fear back in him, just enough to keep him from hugging and kissing. Yup – Mother Of The Year!
Yesterday, I was racing to get to a baby shower. I leapt in the shower to take a quick one. Normally I do a scan of my bedroom and shut the door and give Will free reign. It’s the only way for me to have any personal hygiene and has never been an issue. But yesterday I couldn’t hear him which ultimately means he’s up to no good. I rinse off the soap, hop out of the shower and call him – and in he runs with two pens and a bottle of prescription meds (which topped the time he had opened all my tampons and found a box of condoms…I guess someone should have fun with those). Oh yeahhhh Mother of the Year all right. Moron. Not only did I leave those out on my bedside table, I left the door open AND the gate open at the top of the stairs.
What is your ‘Mother of the Year’ moment. We all have them and admitting them is the first step…..
**Here is Will with his buddies at my dad’s farm this weekend…Now, had the keys been IN the tractor, that would have been Mothers of the Year material…but they weren’t.**
Ahhh, so nice to know that I’m in good company. No doubt, you felt horrible when the incident (s) happened, but most of the above stories have provided comic relief in a “there but for the grace of god…” kind of way. We’ve ALL been there and been judged and all I have to say about that is, the judgers probably don’t have kids and if they do, they’ve all either had lobotomies or their adventure genes removed. Rejoice in the adventurousness of your kids – I know I do (even though my finger nails are sometimes bitten down to the quick!).
oh my god Christine – i’m peeing my pants over here. THAT is HILARIOUS! Guess we’re all guilty together…I love it! Roberta – how the hell did Fraser survive!! Classic stories everyone.
Oh I forgot to share one of mine.
Oldest was 17mos old – I was just about due with #2. Hubby left his Corona on the end table beside the sofa and went into the kitchen. Toddler silently guzzles back a bunch of Daddy’s beer (while I’m vegged on the couch watching tv)
Toddler wakes up at 5am wanting a drink. CHUGS back cup of water after cup of water. He was hungover. That’s probably the worst one.
I’m not even sure how many of my facebook status’s have been my “Mother of the Year” moments. I think that maybe if I put it out there and just admit it – then it’s not as bad. As you’ve seen with this post – people come out and share theirs with you! It’s one of those times that Mommies can come together without judging – because none of us are perfect.
I am so comforted by all these stories because The Boy is already a wild man at 10 months old. I am bracing myself for the amount of eye-rolling, staring, “can you believe she lets her child blahblahblah” I’m going to get with him:)
Nice to know I won’t be alone!
SO REASSURING to read these and know that i am not the only one.
here’s a few:
–left cough syrup on bathroom counter in middle of night. 2-yr old Boy promptly drank it (yummy grape flavour!). still don’t know how much. had to take him to hospital where they made him drink TAR.
–left gate open. The Girl, 2 at the time, promptly rolled down the hard wood stairs, landing on her eye, which swelled up and turned black within minutes. still convinced that entire hospital staff thought i punched her in the face.
–last leg of flight to india with kids when there were only two kids, and ages 3 and 1 respectively. after the plane landed in delhi, Boy needed to let off some steam so i let him jump around a bit. As we got off the plane, blood was gushing from his mouth b/c he had split his lip so badly with a fall.
I have to say I was definitely nominated the “Mother of the Year” when my 18 month old son at the time walked into the living room with a carving knife that I had left on the counter….he was at the perfect height to reach for it. All our knives and sharp objects are now placed up in a wooden block on top of the microwave. I should have really won an award for how I coaxed him to give to me. My husband was so proud at how calm I was….even though I almost crapped my pants!!
Another time was when I shut the car door and somehow locked my kids in the car with the car running….thankfully at 3 yrs old I got my son to undo his seatbelt and unlock the car for me as I panicked at the window…
I am sure there are others but these two have to be the most award winning ones.
I had so many moments with Fraser I can’t begin to count them all…suffice to
say that my neighbour commented that my children always seemed to be
“airborn” whereas his children were always firmly planted on the ground!! One day
when I was sick with some sinus thing…I had slept for most of the afternoon
until Toran needed to be picked up…went over with Fraser and got her…came
home and had a recall moment half an hour later…forgot to pick up my friend’s
two kids who I picked up in the carpool…must have been the advil I was on…one was in kindergarten…one in
grade one…eventually they made their way to the office and called their mom…
needless to say…we didn’t carpool the next year…we are still great friends to this day…
another time fraser wandered at Costco…they had to close the doors until
he showed up…
one wonderful time we were at the mall…he let go of my hand, shot out in front of me, ran into a store, jumped into the display window before I could grab him and put his hand directly onto the floodlight…someone selling water at the kiosk had
to hose down his burnt hand…never took him to the mall again!!
another time, before I could get him into the shopping cart at Safeway, he ran over to the cookie bin and proceeded to start emptying it onto the floor…had to race him
out at great speed…no groceries that day!!
another time at costco, he put his hand out under the wheel of my shopping cart…he was four or so…went right over the hand…split his thumb wide open…
had to abandon the whole cart and take him to the emerg…
another time he and his friend were playing ball hockey during a dinner party/
barbecue…his friend missed his eye by a centimetre with a plastic hockey stick…hospital and 10 or stitches later…my friends cleaned up the kitchen and went home…and took Toran with them for the night!!
Let’s see there was the splinter from our wood floors that he refused to let us touch…the time he sliced his hand when he closed the step ladder on himself…
The funny thing is I hardly ever had to take him on errands because there
was a wonderful day home near by…thank God!!
He was always up a tree…rode a two wheeler at 2 1/2…probably had the smallest
bike ever…Toran took off his training wheels unbeknownst to me while they
were outside, so he could ride better…the next day I said I was going to give
him a lesson…he said it’s okay mom, I already know how to ride it…!!
a bicycle story that I’ll never forget…we were out with a friend and her son
who was a good buddy of Fraser’s…they were about four…the boys were riding
on the sidewalk in front of us in our lovely quiet neighbourhood which had almost
no cars as there is no through street…what could happen right??? well, fraser
wheeled into someone’s driveway…as he wheeled into their open garage to
turn around, the garage door started to come down…the woman had only
recently come home, was putting her groceries away and by remote had
pressed the garage door opener…while my friend and I were frozen in our
tracks watching this unfold at record speed…he looked at us… dumped the bike
and ran out under the door before it closed completely…She didn’t answer her
door, so I had to call her and explain that my son’s bike was in her garage!!!
And this all happened despite the fact that I had him at preschool five mornings
a week for three hours…I needed the break from him…!! I worked two
mornings and two evenings and Dennis would be home at five every day…
you’ve never seen a kid who a) moved so fast in your life and b) was
always a step ahead in the schemes he would come up with…you couldn’t have
predicted half the stuff…he lasted three weeks in a playpen before he
climbed out…I found him perched on the top of his railing of his crib before
he could walk…one leg on one side and one on the other balancing precariously…
we had to then keep the side of the crib down which led to a whole new set
of issues!! You couldn’t hide anything from him…he had eyes in the back
of his head!!
If I sound like somebody with post traumatic stress syndrome, I probably
am!! LOL
Sara…you’ve only just begun if Will is anything like Fraser was!!
Toran… I can’t even remember anything except that she got into trouble
when she played with my friend’s son and ended up teetering on a ladder
that was about seven or eight feet high leaning against the deck…and
one other time she climbed on her dresser and it fell over and landed above
her against the wall…
God…when I think of all these things, I sound like a “real mother of the year”!!!!!
and the relatives wondered why I never brought Fraser east!!! I was too afraid to…LOL
ohhh Jen – brutal! My friend was JUST telling me, as I was posting this, how she ran her kid headfirst into a glass table this week while on vacation, knocking her out. This made me think of that. Looove the judgement. I let Will have a screaming tantrum, lying on his back, on the sidewalk this weekend – I sat on a stoop and waited…I was judged, tried and convicted by about 10 different people.
My Mother of the Year’ing began when I self-annointed myself as Mother to my baby brother, 11 years my junior.
And since my parents were abiding by the rules of Third Child Parenting, no one really had a problem wiht me taking on this role.
When he was 3, and i was oh-so-wise at 13-going-on-30, I desperately wanted to tote ‘my baby’ around in one of those child carriers for bikes that had just made their way onto the suburban neighbourhood scene. But i didnt’ have one. Dammit.
Thankfully, i did have a RedRocket Wagon, a skipping rope, and my new mountain bike. So, once I carefully placed my darling brother into the wagon, put on his hockey helmet (b.c i am clearly responsible), and showed him how to hold onto the sides of the wagon, off we went on our tour suburban Ancaster. All was well until we went down a hill, and all of a sudden i saw the little red wagon travelling beside me… seems that those little things (with small children that dont’ weigh much) can travel much faster me and my 13 year old self. And stretchy skipping ropes have way too much elasticity to securely afix a child-filled wagon to a bike.
So, the wagon eventually tipped, and my brother rolled down and across the road, landing ever-so-gracefully in a ditch on someone’s lawn. Ooopsie.
He was fine. the helmet did its job. his face was scaped up, and he was pissed off at me, but thankfully my parents could not understand him at this age (refer to the Third Child Parenting handbook rule of “allowing older children to speak for, and intepret, everything your third child has to say”), so when we arrived home and my mom asked what happened, i was able to effectively interpret his irate jibberish to my mother as “Mackenzie fell.”
So, I will respectfully accept this 1989 Mother of the Year Award on behalf of my mother, for I could not have accomplished any of this exceptional co-parenting without her.
I’ve definitely had more than a few of those. I am of the “free range parenting” philosophy so my kids have likely had a bunch more scrapes and close calls than those from the “helicopter parenting” clans.
Here’s one of my fave Mother of the Year experiences:
My kids are nearly 4 years apart so when my son was in grade one my daughter was still a few years away from Kindergarten. However, she spent a lot of time at the Big Kid school, playing on the equipment and running around while my son played with his buddies and I chatted with other moms. I really let her do her own thing while keeping an eye from a distance. She’s very coordinated and has pretty good judgment so I never worried too much.
But one day I casually glanced over from about 50 metres to see a woman holding a little girl in her arms and looking around frantically. I soon figured out that the little girl was mine and she had fallen from a high place and bumped her head! I of course ran over to evil glares from many and scooped her up. She promptly stopped crying and fell asleep in my arms. This was NOT good. I got someone to watch my son and ran to the local walk-in clinic. By this time she was wide awake and happy as can be. After a thorough once-over by the doctor he said she was fine and dandy but, just in case she had a mild concussion, I should keep an eye on her and wake her every few hours throughout the night.
Needless to say I didn’t sleep a wink. And when I arrived at school the next day I was awarded The Mother of the Year award by a whole new set of judges!