THAT Mom

Would you like to know a surefire way to have your ego slap the sh*t out of your enlightenment?  Just state out loud how you've got it figured out, that you've discovered a thick vein that will keep you tapped in and guess what?  Your ego will have a hay day.  EDIT: my ego will have a hay day.

Today I was THAT mom.  I put my baby down on the floor of the pet store to find the right 'jacket' for our wisp of a dog and let her chew on the hangers.  A few feet away my 3 year old didn't stop talking while finding furry balls to perch on top of her shoe a la Tinkerbell.  I actually said, too loudly, "Rosanna, stop talking" so that a complete thought could skitter through my brain.

I showed up to purchase a table from a fellow civilian a half an hour late, and when I opened the rear portal to my van (I'm in my thirties after all) our dog was trying to clamber over the seats, my baby was sobbing and my 3 year old was.....talking.  Yay.

Now it's 7pm.  Bedtime.  No one has eaten.  Eating out is the only option.  We arrive and I whip out a boob for the baby only to discover that half of my chest has been unsupported (see: nursing bra, unclipped) since the last time I fed her- 3 hours ago.  And guess what else?  The 3 year old has to go potty.  Again.  She JUST went...like we walked in the door and straight to the bathroom.  So of course, now that the boob is out, she would have to go again.  Fast forward to actually having food on the table.  This lasted approximately 5 minutes before I decided that to-go boxes were the only way to deal with Fast Hands McGrabberson if I wanted to leave with the same number of children I showed up with.

Bonus: the dog didn't poop or pee in the car!

And now......they sleep.  It is oh, so blissfully quiet.  So freaking, awesomely, divinely serene.

Don't tell anyone, but I miss them just a smidge.

TLC Hoarders: brain edition

Coming home today I felt like I needed to exhale.  A dramatic, cleansing release of breath that is paired perfectly with sweatpants and a flop upon the couch.  These last two days have been a bit crazy, a bit nutty.  Just look at the lack of naps two days in a row.  Driving us home today from a sweet little holiday shindig, I was lost in a future scenario...the one where I counted the minutes until bedtime and would then have the house to myse- wait.  We have a dog.  GAH!  The cat is pissed about the dog.  The latest addition to my resume is: let the animals work it out, but don't let the dog get too beat up.  Oye.  I've only had this job for 24 hours and I'm already over it.

Anyhow, this line of thinking meandered around for a bit until I came upon this little tidbit: why the exasperation?  Why go around acting like my current state is taxing and nigh on unmanageable?  My acknowledgement, or my statement out loud (verbal, physical, see: eye rolling, sighing, etc.) that my life today is more than I'd like to be handling is making it true for me.  The thing is, it's not true.

If I want to have a spotless house and take care of my other obligations today, then I could be stressed out.  If I want to get the grocery shopping done today and take care of my other obligations, then I could be fed up.  If I want to be crafty and make all of my Christmas decorations and have some time to be still, then I might be short tempered.  So the question is, why?


"Tension is who you think you should be.
Relaxation is who you are."
Chinese Proverb

"Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than how you think it should be." Wayne W. Dyer


The path to freedom and happiness is letting go, it's being good with what the day brought and being thankful for it.  I tend to do the opposite.  I dwell on the things I didn't get done and the way my house doesn't look like a magazine cover.  The funny thing is, nothing actually changes between those scenarios besides who I am then capable of being.

Mind: blown.

Blow it up

My friend Wendy is wise.  She said to me one day that all kids are perfect and learning how to be in the world.

I do my best to let my kid be herself.  Loud, overbearing, exuberant.  These are all words that I own, that give me anxiety.  These qualities say to me, "Be embarrassed, care about what others might think about your parenting, get that girl to stop drawing attention to herself".  They aren't what my kid is.  She is perfect.

How freaking cool is it that she can scream with excitement in a small coffee shop and care not about others' opinions.  How freaking cool is it that she will insert herself into a stranger's family to seek out their similarly sized child and then steal that child away to frolic about, as if she'd known them her whole life.  How freaking cool is my kid?

So why would I want to bring down the numbness, the separateness of my adulthood onto her?  What a lame thing to do.  By all accounts I am the one whose life is dull and lackluster, while her's is wild with vibrant colors and freedom to just "be".  Why would an unbiased observer say to me, "Yes, Mrs. O'Hagan, your child is clearly in need of a dose of your life.  The one where she dies a little.  Yes, that's my opinion."  Well, that just wouldn't happen.  Quite the opposite would be true.  That person would beg me, implore to my humanity that I see her for who she is: the most incredible person walking the earth.  And they would ask me, why- why am I so willing to snuff out that inspiring beam of unfiltered light, when I could learn so much from it?

I could only answer with the sad realization that I have crossed over.  I am that boring adult who I didn't understand as a kid.  I am fully in the embrace of rules, politeness, manners and all other form of tippy-toeing.  And it sucks.  Those qualities have added nothing to the quality of my life.  They may have inspired others to think kind thoughts about me, or perhaps to not have thought about me at all as I made no impression of myself.  At this rate, I'll go to my grave with people saying how nice I was and that may be it.  I won't have stood for anything.  I won't have lived 'out loud' as they say.  And for whom am I muting myself?

The moral of the story is that my kid is PERFECT.  I hope she never learns to fit into this social structure and instead blows it up with her amazing self.