Skip the Yellow Brick Road.
Glinda the Good Witch, I am not.
Don't get me wrong - my kids are my life. I love them more than this life. Much more. More than anything. But despite having all the mommy feels every time I look at their precious little faces, sometimes I just need them to stop talking for five seconds.
JUST. BE. QUIET. For the love of all things holy and wonderful and beautiful in this crazy world, just stop talking for two minutes and let me breathe.
Does that make me a bad mom? No. At least I prefer to think it doesn't. There's no place I would rather be than home with my family and no name I would rather be called than Mom. I'm not perfect, and even though I would like to be, I'm not a superhero who can fix all their problems with one twitch of my nose or snap of my fingers.
All the ughs
I am me. I'm human. I get frustrated. I get upset and angry and irritated and all the other ughs. But I refuse to beat myself up about wanting to skip down a different path or sit in that intoxicating field of flowers for a few minutes and let the world just be pretty and quiet and peaceful and little-girl-gripiness-free.
Let me repeat - I am HUMAN. Just as the kids have bad days, I do, too
I refuse to be one of those moms who always has to have the Pinterest-inspired wardrobe topped off with freshly-made-from-scratch buttercream cupcakes delivered to each child's class promptly in time for snack with a song in my voice and an isn't-my-world-perfect smile on my face. If that is you and you can continuously pull it off, I applaud you.
(I wonder if you are as truly happy and perfect as you say you are and question what you do when no one is looking, but I still applaud you for pulling it off.)
I am not that mother. I'm just not. I try to stay as involved in my children's lives as I possibly can, but I have to work outside the home to help support our family. There are not enough hours in my day to accomplish all those glorious momming feats, but I accomplish plenty of other great things.
I check my girls' homework every night no matter what else is happening. They tell me about their day and what they learned.
I cook dinner for them. It might not always be 100% homemade, organic and perfectly suited to their individual taste buds, but they are reasonably fed. When possible, they help me in the kitchen, and I take time to explain what I'm doing. Other times, I just tell them to get out from under my feet, but I try not to feel bad about that. My kitchen is small, and my children are plenty.
I help them bathe. They are 8, 6 and 2. Expecting them to understand all they need to know about hygiene is impossible at this age, and I don't want to be the mom of the stinky kids.
I put them in bed at a reasonable hour and listen as they say their prayers. Maybe they don't even know what they're saying all the time or why we do it, but it will sink in over time. Good habits formed as girls mean greater possibility of good habits continued as women.
Despite my best efforts, I still end the day with ughs-a-many more often than I care to count. We live in a small house and get on each other's nerves. We're not always kind in how we talk to each other, and we're certainly not always happy to be skipping down this road called Life with this particular crew in tow. No matter how much we are irritating each other on any given day, though, and no matter how much we wish for our own quiet corner of the world for just one second now and then, we have one thing that is a constant light among all the ughs.
We are family.
There's no place like home.
In the midst of the wonderfully weird, irritatingly irksome, awesomely amazing world in which we spin, we nurture our family bonds. We make our memories. We make our home. We make our love for each other deepen and strengthen and survive, and we make ourselves see each other through eyes of love and understanding even when we disagree.
We are making our life - one laugh, one argument, one smile, one meltdown, one ugh at a time. Those girls of mine may feel like poop-slinging Flying Monkeys sometimes, but they're my Flying Monkeys, and I love them.
But I can still wish they would stop talking.
