Bad Mommy!

Well, hello again Peeps! It's been a while. Have you all dug out from the snow and ice? Our front and backyard are STILL completely frozen. And we are expecting more tomorrow and more again on Wednesday! But enough - Mother Nature will have her way with us whether we complain or soldier on - so we will soldier on. It has been quite a winter so far. It seems like life has been on fast-forward and I can't understand how we are celebrating VALENTINES Day next week. We've been buried with projects and papers and essays and auditions and try-outs and this Busy Momma is EXHAUSTED. I mean out and out tired in my bones. It doesn't help that my new best friend Peri - as in menopause - has a NEW way of torturing me. She has started waking me up in the middle of the night - EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. Yep - I can't stay awake past 9pm, but give me a call around 2:47am - I'll answer. This morning she let me sleep until 4:17. She must have felt bad for me. Now, being awake at all hours does have its advantages. I have gotten a lot of reading done! I am like a reading machine. AND I am all caught up on Nashville - so that's good. And last night, well last night I had a revelation. An insight into myself  that was earth-shattering and life altering. And here it is:

 There are many days when I would qualify to some as a BAD MOMMY!

Ok - not bad like this. Not "NO MORE WIRE HANGERS!!!!" bad. But bad by some standards of parenting. The moms who do things like this:

And this:

And this:

Seriously - WHO does this? 

These moms would look at me some days and would probably call Social Services. Seriously. The other night, I found myself doing something that the younger me - you know, the me before kids - SWORE she would NEVER EVER do. I still can't believe I did it. I really didn't want to - but I was in a bind. I was running late, my chicken hadn't defrosted,  the boys had to be at scouts within 45 minutes and the girls had a long night of finishing a Science Fair project ahead of us. And let's not forget the exhaustion factor here. So - what did I do you ask? Well, before you get too worried...rest assured - it wasn't anything like this:

Or this:

Or even this:

Want to know what I did? Well - they say confession is good for the soul - right? Ok - here it is...deep breath:

 I went through the drive-thru at Burger King for dinner. 

I know - right? I felt so guilty about this indiscretion that I could hardly eat my Whopper and Onion Rings. I kept thinking:

 "YOU are POISONING your children. You might as well be feeding rat poison to your babies. Your precious babies. Look at what you have become. You should be ASHAMED of yourself. So-and So's kids have never even TASTED  fast food. Slacker." 

Want to know what my kids were saying? 

"Yay! Burger King for dinner! We've NEVER had BK for dinner! You're the best mom in the world! YAY!!!!!!!" 

You would have thought that these kids had landed in Foxborough Farms from Mars and had never seen a burger and fries before. They were thrilled. 

Want to know what my husband was saying?

"So, tonight when we go to scouts, I have to get this religion book signed, right?Who signs it again? And then he has to bring a glue stick and scissors for some crafty thing and he has to finish working on the badge thing -anything else? I like this burger better than the Whopper - although they were kinda skimpy on the special sauce tonight. McDonalds loads you up on special sauce."

Hmmm....HE wasn't worrying about poisoning HIS children. He was much more concerned about his lack of special sauce than the possibility that we were clogging our kids' arteries or contributing to the childhood obesity epidemic. 

What the heck is wrong with me? And I KNOW that it's not just me. There are many, many of us out here who are striving to be such perfect moms that sometimes we lose our way and need one of those BK moments - a moment when we SEE how happy our kids are when we stop trying to be so darn perfect and start getting REAL. What do I mean by REAL? Well, in my house, REAL means that for Valentines day, you'll be getting a package of cards that I pick up at Target and if you don't like the character I pick - too bad for you. Find the strength to go on, kiddo. You will NOT be handing out anything that looks like this:

Your lunch on Valentines Day will NOT consist of heart shaped sandwiches and heart shaped strawberries and cucumbers shaped like hearts. Nope - it will consist of whatever the cafeteria is serving for lunch that day. Enjoy.

You will find a nice heart-shaped box of Russell Stover chocolates at your place at the table. AND you will be told how much you are loved and you WILL be tortured by your mom with hugs and kisses galore. 

You will not wake up to find your room filled with heart-shaped red and pink balloons. You will not wake up to heart shaped pancakes. You will be offered breakfast - but I can guarantee that it will not be heart shaped. AND that is going to have to be ok - or move out. 

So - if all of these confessions make me a bad mom - so be it. All I can say is that my BIG realization last night allowed me to take a DEEP breath and relax a bit. Because being a" bad mom" last night made my kids really, really happy. And to me - happy kids can only come from a good mom.