Confessions Of An Imperfect Mom

Hello, my name is Abbey and I am a perfectionist.

Being a perfectionist was never a problem before I had kids. Even though I could really drive myself crazy with it, I always regarded perfectionism as a good thing. It meant that I was striving to be the best and there's nothing wrong with that.

Until, of course, I had kids and realized that perfect is impossible. "Perfect" is a lie created by celebrity Mommy Bloggers and 30-minute sitcoms. In my life as a parent, there are moments of blissful perfection, but they come and go and I have no way to control them. What happens more often than not are spontaneous acts of two hilarious kids and their permanently exhausted parents, who are just trying to do the best they can do.

As an effort to let go of my pursuit of parental perfectionism and to show that no parent is perfect no matter how hard they try, the following are a small sample of anecdotes which accentuate my varying degrees of parenting imperfection. Why am I sharing? Because no one is perfect, no parent is perfect, and if we can all laugh together instead of putting on the perfection front, life would probably be a lot more fun. So here we go.

Confession #1: About a year ago I made the somewhat catastrophic mistake (the catastrophe only realized in hindsight, as they often are) of taking my then four-year-old and one-year-old into the pet store at the mall while trying to kill some time waiting for something else. When it came time to leave, Layla was perfectly fine and willing to leave without making a scene. Ben...not so much. Fast-forward to me, speed-walking a stroller containing a screaming, beet-faced baby with preschooler flung over my shoulder (all the better to get the hell out of there faster). Oh, but it gets better. Ben has the unfortunate habit of pronouncing "K" words like "T" words. So as I practically ran through a mall, dodging kiosks and other strollers, Ben was screaming "I want a kitty" at the top of his lungs, but it sounded a lot more like "I want a tittie!", causing several Hollister-clad teenaged boys to yell back "Don't we all?" as we raced past them. By that point I was simultaneously laughing so hard that tears were streaming down my face and swearing to myself that I would show my son's naked baby pictures to every single girl who ever came to our house, for as long as I lived. That's right, my child was barely old enough to speak and I was plotting revenge. I can't imagine why Beyonce won Mother-of-the-year and not me.

Confession #2: One of my favorite kid-friendly ways of expressing anger or frustration (i.e. swearing without actually swearing) is to shake my head and go "Oh for the love of donuts!". Sounds innocent enough, but if my kids had any idea the words that my seemingly innocuous phase was replacing, their ears would probably bleed. And fall off. I suspect Layla is beginning to catch on because now she'll respond, "Wow Mom, you must love donuts. You talk about them all the time." My bad.

Confession #3: Because I stay home with the kids all day and essentially have to be the bad guy 95% of the time, I feel somewhat entitled to pawn off things like telling the kids bad news ("It's raining, so we can't go to the State Fair today" and the like) on Josh. Yes, I play my "Uh...I don't know, ask your dad when he gets home" card from time-to-time. And I feel really bad about it...Sometimes.

Confession #4: When the kids are playing together in their room, I occasionally yell "Hey! I heard that!" from somewhere else in the house when in actuality, I heard nothing at all. I'm hoping if they think I have super-human hearing powers they'll behave better. Or they just think I'm crazy.

Confession #5: Yogurt-covered raisins are not candy, but don't tell my kids that. Broccoli also doesn't make you fly if you eat it for the first twenty years of your life, but don't tell me kids that either. It's not lying, it's genuine concern for their health and well-being. At least, that's what I tell myself as I quietly save up for their future therapy.

Confession #6: Layla is a talker. She talks, talks, talks, talks all day and occasionally in her sleep at night. Six out of seven days, I find her hilarious and entertaining and am proud of her vocabulary and ability to articulate herself as well as she does. On the seventh day I give her a dollar to stop talking for ten minutes. Because really, even God got a break on the seventh day.

Confession #7: The other day Ben walked into the kitchen and asked me what I was eating. I said carrots. They were actually Cheetos. I maintain that I just care about their health and the event in question had nothing to do with the fact that I'm almost thirty years old and I still don't share well with others.

Confession #8: Speaking of Cheetos, when I was pregnant with Ben I had such vicious Cheetos cravings that I was in a constant state of orange-stained fingers and had a terrifying, reoccurring dream about giving birth to a giant diaper-clad Cheeto. Oh, and I always told Layla they were carrots too.

Confession #9: Layla has always been my good sleeper. Ben, not so much. He's getting better, but I still have to sit with him in his room at night until he falls asleep. I used to sit on his bed and hold his hand, but now I just sit on the ground in the middle of the room (progress!). I don't talk, or sing, or touch, I just sit there. And now I live in constant fear of how this will play out later in his life. I'm pretty sure that telling his future wife "I'm sorry, honey, but my mom has to come in here and stare at us for twenty minutes or I just can't manage to fall asleep" will not go over well.

Confession #10: Last week, a little boy at Layla's school smiled at her and I was amazed at my level of rage and quantity of  "I want to kill that kid" thoughts that rose up within me. Ben, on the other hand, flirts with everyone from little babies to the eighty-seven year old receptionist at his Preschool. I don't think twice about it. Why? Do I already have double standards when it comes to my kids? I think I need to buy more Tums.

Confession #11: I have actually uttered the phrase "Don't make me turn this car around". Worse, I meant it.

Confession #12: I have a frequent and insistent daydream. I'm lying on the couch reading a book. That's it. I'm not daydreaming about winning the lottery or the drummer from Vampire Weekend. Just lying on a couch, in a quiet room, reading a book because honestly, that scenario is less likely to happen than winning the lottery and having the drummer from Vampire Weekend present me with the check. And I will confess that some days, I'm not entirely okay with that fact.

Confession #13: As infants, both of my children spit-up in my mouth. Yes, both. You would think that I learned the whole "don't hold a baby up in the air right over your face mere moments after they ate pureed beets " thing with Layla, but I didn't.

Confession #14: Layla acts exactly like me. She talks like me, she stands like me, she has a snarky attitude like me. 90% of the time she spends in time-out is for doing something that I probably would have done too. Ben is sweet and jolly and gets away with murder because he reminds me so much of Josh. This is gonna get interesting...

What can I say? Every day I try to laugh off my imperfections as a parent and to remind myself that perfection doesn't really exist. I try to save my crazy OCD level of  perfectionism for things I can control, like what I write, how well I do in school, and the frequency and volume I employ when yelling at the TV. I can't control, and don't want to control, people, especially my kids. As long as they don't suffer from the fact that Josh and I are really just making this up as we go, then I think everyone wins in the end.

And if nothing else, imperfect stories are much more entertaining.