Gena:                                                                                                                                                                    

I am a perfect mom.  I am the mom my friends look up to, the one my family calls on for advice.  My children lovingly obey my every word and even my husband idolizes my parenting skills…Do I have your attention? Great!  Now let me tell you the truth…

It was a day like any other day when like an unexpected gift, Nevaeh’s dream came true.  She found a bird! But not just any bird, he was a beautiful green color with scarlet red on his belly, oh and did I mention, he was dead!   This is the part where my common sense began to fail me.  We lovingly named him “Petey” (as in the dead bird from dumb and dumber) and decide that it would be ok for her to cradle him in her arms and carry him around like a long lost friend.  It seamed harmless enough till Petey joined us at a family event and my sister-in-law clearly became appalled at my unwise parenting choices.  The highlight of the story was when Nevaeh woke up in the middle of the night with a raging fever and I ended up on the computer researching bird flu!  I begged God to take me and not my sweet little girl, because it wasn’t her bad choice but mine that made her sick!

The next day her doctor reassured us that everything was fine and luckily the only thing damaged was my pride!  That day is now commonly referred to as “the day I lost my mom of the year award”!

So I ask myself,  “do I compare myself to other moms?”  and to this I have to answer honestly, Not often.  I do very frequently compare myself to my harshest critic though…me.  I know the kind of mom I strive to be and frankly, I often fail miserably. Lets just say that I have to apologize to my kids so often that to them I think it is equivalent of them asking me for a drink of water!  

I talk often to mothers of grown kids and know that the advice most often given by them is to do your best and your kids at some point will make their own decisions, in spite of all of your hard work! Encouraging?…I’m not sure about that, but I like the honesty!

   

I think that it would be healthy for all of us moms to stop assuming that other moms have it all together and its tied up with a pretty little bow. I want to only compare myself to the mom that I want to be and strive daily to be THAT mom.   I want to be the mom that can look back and have no judgment, no disappointment and no regrets.  Is this a lofty goal? Probably so but I wont base it on any one else’s successes or failures, only my own.

While I am fully aware that Fridays are the days we are both supposed to weigh in… I am tired, grouchy and just plain nasty today (to put it nicely). In the interest of still having friends and loved ones after my post…I am going to keep my opinions to myself and go find some sort of tool to rip my ever loving ovaries out because mama is going to go postal if these cramps don’t go away!!! Have a great weekend!:)