This afternoon a very kind woman in Trader Joe's overheard me speaking with the kids and said "Your kids are adorable and so well-behaved, we need 10 million more mom's like you."
Can I tell you exactly what I thought about after thanking her and ushering my kids quickly away lest she experience a not so angelic moment to burst her bubble of my apparent awesome parenting? If there were 10 million more mom's like me there would be 10 million mom's who at that exact moment had worked out twice but not showered once in the last 9 hours....who currently had pee dripping down her leg that wasn't her own due to a overshot by her 3 year old trying to pee into a bag in the car just before entering the store....whose purse was also filled with a little bit of pee and had used a clean diaper to wipe off the pee and then realized it was the only clean diaper so instead of throwing it away put it back in her bag because pee is sterile and you just never know what is going to happen....whose 3 year old smelled suspiciously like fish and decided it was best to just not investigate....whose 5 year old was being an angel because he was promised that if he went all day without whining he would get a water gun (there is no way that child will ever get that water gun, it is an impossibility that any mother with a 5 year old knows)....who realized that her cart didn't hold a single thing that she actually needed but was still going to check out anyway because the 6th sense that mom's have that know when a total meltdown is imminent was blaring loudly in her ears....who was desperately trying to convince her 19 month old to keep her diaper on whispering quieting that she would promise to change the offending diaper as soon as they got to the car and then realized that the only diaper she had was the partially peed on one she used to clean her own leg earlier...who was looking at her watch knowing that there only 45 minutes left in
the day before her husband would get home and rescue her...who knew that
45 minutes would probably be about 44 too long....who used the partially peed on diaper anyway, loaded the groceries in the car and then drove around trying to kill 45 minutes because there was no way she was unloading the kids and the groceries on her own if she didn't absolutely have to....
But yes, my kids did say "yes ma'am," when I asked them to follow me without running anyone over with their lethal "shopper in training" carts and blink their gorgeous eyes at the sweet old lady, they are wonderful kids and I try to be the best mama that I can. But as she was complimenting me, she eyed a woman with two little ones that were in the
middle of a tantrum and were being dragged by their shirts to the check
out aisle and in that moment, I wanted to tell her that we are all just doing the best that we can and in any single moment that woman who appears to be the best mother ever probably has her 3 year old's pee running down her leg and that woman over there that is barely holding it together and yelling through her teeth at her kids while they run rampant through the store....well, her day probably consisted of more than just a pee accident and suspicious smelling small humans. These are all just moments and I just hope that if there are 10 million more mom's like me that they take a deep breath, wipe the pee off their leg and pour themselves a nice glass of wine while their husbands unload the groceries they had driven around for the last 45 minutes.
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