Mom of the Year

    Mom of the Year.  It’s a phrase we’ve all heard. Moms tend to throw around this expression. Usually, it’s a sarcastic comment. You feed your kids cereal for dinner and say “Well, I guess I won’t be getting the Mom of The Year award”.  Your son shoves a marble up his nose and you're muttering to yourself on the way to the ER, “There goes Mom of the Year again”.  I have yet to see anyone actually declare themselves the Genuine Mom of the Year. We moms are way too self critical to ever claim that distinction.  There is always someone else out there doing better, accomplishing more and flat out making us all feel insignificant.
    With that said though, I don’t think I am a bad mom. Not at all.   As a matter of fact, I’m pretty dang good at it.  My daughter is socially accepted, well fed, happy and an all around great kid. I am quite proud of the work I’ve done so far.  However, there are many, many moments that I question my abilities. There have been several times when I have hung my head in shame because I have failed.  Luckily for me, those big mistakes are few and far between.  It’s the small blunders that are way too common in my life.  And lucky for me, we can usually find the humor in them. I want to share with you some of those moments, when I knew I was out of the running for that Mom of the Year contest, but still found myself laughing.

    *When Roslyn was about three years old, she used to go to work with me.  Occasionally we would get stuck in traffic. I am not the most patient driver. I learned that I was raising a rather inpatient back seat driver when I heard Roslyn say, “What the heck is this? An idiot parade?”

    *I used to babysit occasionally for a friend of mine. She had a daughter named Mikayla. Our girls were the same age, about 2 years old. Roslyn used to call her “Mack”. For months we thought that Roslyn had made up a cute nickname for her friend. It was so adorable! One day, I said something to that effect to Roslyn. She said “No! She’s Mack! Cause I want to MACK her”.. she then went up to Mikayla and smacked her in the face.

     *Roslyn can recite this entire scene from the movie Tommy Boy...

   


     *Roslyn was about 4 and half years old. She was playing at a local park. She and a few other girls were bouncing up and down on a suspension bridge thing. All the girls were singing songs like "I'm a Little Teapot" and "The Wheels on the Bus".  There was a long moment of silence while the girls were trying to think of another song to sing. My child happily starts bouncing again and starts to sing at the top of her lungs, "THE FREAKS COME OUT AT NIGHT! THE FREAKS COME OUT AT NIIIIIGHT! FREAKS COME OUT AT NIGHT (the freaks come out!)"   I could literally feel the heat of the other playground moms staring at me.


So, I will not be Mother of the Year this year or in any year to come. I'm doing a good job and so is my husband. But the fact is, we mess up. She hears things we don't want her to hear.  She occasionally sees things she probably should not.  She has her Momma's temper. I am not a perfect mother. I'm a work in progress, just like my daughter. We are extremely lucky that things are not worse.  I mean really, she could have been singing "Superfreak". That would have just been scandalous.