There are just some days that I wish my day could be edited down into a three minute highlight reel. Like all those awesome plays and super cool catches, dunks, touchdowns, tackles, goals, hits, swings, homeruns with bases loaded, mascot brawls…Yeah, I wish my day could look something like that.
There are so many really great moments in my day (seconds, really) that I would love to just savor and watch over and over in slow motion saying things like “ahhh!” or “woah! did you see that?” or “no way!” Moments I would love to capture and bask in before I have to move on to the part where the commentator says “you DO NOT want to be that mom right now.” I swear that most of the time I feel like a really good mom. I play “store” with my four year old even when I am so tired I want to fall over. I carry my fifteen month old even after I have just put her down and just picked her up and then just put her down and then picked her up again all the while trying to load the dishwasher or carry a laundry basket up the stairs (which I am convinced were created by the devil himself, I think you actually have to climb stairs into Hell – don’t quote my theology, it is for sure wrong). I flail wildly during dance *hour* (okay, fifteen minutes) each night so that we can get the last few remaining wiggles out before we head up for bed. I tell really great bedtime stories. I arts and I craft and I instill manners, ethics and morals at every turn. Believe me I am not tooting my own horn because Lord knows I am crabby and tired 99% of my day, but I do feel like there are some really great moments that get glossed over in an instant because there are other things that need to be tended to (i.e. stinky diapers, boogers, wiped bottoms, and for the love could I please at least brush my teeth without you taping your sister!).
My point is that I feel like a good mom, but somehow I cannot see that I am a good mom. There just isn’t any stinkin’ proof! No footage, no highlights reel, no stats. The other night after he got home from work, I showed my husband a video of my son and I playing that afternoon. We had been playing “store” while his Sissy napped. The living room was a disaster (so NOT the business for my OCD, yet I prevailed) and there were items for sale everywhere. There were also raffle tickets (almost 1,000 of those scattered), coins and wristbands he had gotten from “daddy’s work office.”
But, I filled my shopping cart with wares and various assorted sundry from the toy bins as well as lots of plastic fruits and vegetables. I went to the area that was his “cash register” and proceeded to “check out.” With each and every beep, he scanned the basket full of crap my items, then wrote up a “ticket” (receipt), took my cash (cards with pictures of pirates) and even gave me change (actual cash – not correct in the slightest, but A for effort). THEN, he loaded my stuff into a bag and packed it into his sisters little Minnie Mouse car and I was on my way. Twenty minutes later we were repeating the same process over again.
After my husband watched the one minute clip, he said “Wow, you are doing such a great job with these two kiddos.” And for some reason I felt shocked that he would notice in such a short video. But, you know what? He’s right. I am doing a great job! I just kinda wish that I had some proof to confirm that I am on the right track, like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sshr8e3iQwc&feature=related. I’m probably never gonna get the satisfaction and confirmation that I’m looking for, so until then I’ll just keep playing “The Best DANG Mommy Show Period!” highlight reels at the end of my day in the form of pictures and videos I’ve taken of the kids. And then I’ll go to sleep and do it all over again the next day, hoping that something sticks.
And if I could just bottle up those last few moments of each day that I have with them watching their heavy little eyes blink slower and slower before they close and drift off into dreamland I would know that I know that I know that I am a really great mother and that I am 100% the only Mommy they need.
p.s. I stinkin’ love Deion Sanders, always my favorite!
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