Canvas Prints
Bedtime antics
You have read The Hungry Caterpillar for the 10th time that night and your tot says “just one more book, mom”. You decide to be magnanimous and decide to oblige her, a few minutes later she decides that she is hungry now and only a glass of lukewarm with her favourite chocolate topping will do. Of course, she will take forever to down that cup of milk which will lead to one more round to the bathroom and another battle of the toothbrush. By the end of it mad mommy is at the end of her rope and screaming “GO TO SLEEP NOW”.
The illogical tirade
The kid is bawling his eyes out, face puffy, nostrils flaring and incoherent words coming out of his mouth. You can make neither head nor tail of what is causing this explosive scene only catching bits and pieces of the one way conversation. “Can’t find teddy”, “cousin P touched my juice”, “wanted the red candy not green” and so on. You try every trick in your armour to turn the situation but no success since you can’t go beyond that screeching whining going on. All mommy wants to do at this time is to put some earplugs and smile like a lunatic.
Privacy pirates
It has been a hectic day of managing never-ending chores, dealing with one after the other situation and all you want to do is soak in a bath for some quiet time or have a refreshing long shower. But 2 minutes into the bath and the door goes BANG BANG BANG. Mommy, I need to go pee or poop or worse I have stuck a toy piece stuck up my nose. If only you knew that being a mom meant never going to the bathroom alone, I think most of us would have reconsidered.
Stuff my kid ruined
I have lost two, yes you read right, two iPhones to water (actually one was dunked in cereal), around 10-15 dresses ruined because of paint, food even grease stains and the countless number of my books, my precious books torn from cover to cover. You know you have completely lost the plot when your brand new mp3 player is found flushed down the toilet.
Toy room mess
You can’t believe your eyes, the playroom you just organized a few minutes earlier with every toy in its perfect place, all the puzzles in their respective boxes and the stuff toys lined up like they should be, is a MESS. Not an ordinary mess, then –you can look for it all night but you won’t find that missing wooden alphabet– kind of the mess. After your umpteenth lesson about putting the toys back in their labelled boxes, nothing has changed. What’s a mom to do but grab a trash bag and dump them out. I meant the toys, not the kids.
Daddy trump
It is the ultimate trump card for kids. Mom says” no candy before bedtime” but dad said “it is okay to have one”. Mom said “no cartoons after 8 pm” but Dad says “okay honey, 5 more minutes”. Aaarrgh!! Mushy Daddy is a pushover and all this angry mom can do is scream in silence.
Going gone!
You KNOW that bowl of cereal is going to fall down the way your toddler is carrying it and you say as much. The overconfident tot says no mom, it won’t and then in freeze motion, you see your favourite cushion completely drenched in milk and honey loops. Another scenario, you have warned your little one that the way she is slurping her strawberry milk it will fall and stain her favourite t-shirt but to no avail. Not only do you have to change right before you were set to leave but you also have to manage a distraught child and wish for 10 more hands to manage all the tasks your klutzy monster creates for you.
The poop plan
You asked 15 times if she wanted to poop before you went to that crowded fair or wedding or whatever. Every time she said an emphatic NO! Five minutes into the place and she goes I need to poop RIGHT NOW!! As a mom, smelly public bathrooms are something you want to avoid at any cost but thanks to poop machine personified, there you are holding your nose and willing the task to get finished as soon as possible.
Morning Madness
You pray every night that to god, “please let this school morning be different than every other” but no that is not to be. You wake up a whining, crying child who is contorting her body in ways you didn’t think was possible. You drag the wily body to the bathroom where you have to pry open her mouth to brush her teeth, restrain her to take her bath and develop agile movements to dress her before she collapses on the bed while throwing a tantrum. Somehow you manage to down that glass of milk in her throat, get her to school on time and finally reach home. And realization strikes that you have to repeat all this again tomorrow morning and probably for a long time to come. Gah!!
It is all in the public
Probably the one thing that affects all mothers equally is how their children behave in the public. Us mothers, we are a judgmental lot and it is most often when we are in public that our sanity and mothering skills are put up to judgement by our munchkins. Remember that time when you son laid down on the mall floor screaming at the top of his lungs for one more overpriced balloon. Or that time when your cherubic daughter suddenly went ballistic and started pulling the hair out of that perfectly innocent playdate to your horror. These are the kind of times you wish you were swallowed whole by a black hole or you could at least trade places with your husband.
As much as we love our children, there are moments in our life when we don’t enjoy being a mom (whether working or a stay-at-home mom) and it is okay to have those bad mommy moments too. Whatever challenges you faced before your pre-mommy days, nothing prepares you for the sheer stress yet the utter joy that motherhood is. It sometimes takes these difficult moments for us to realize and cherish the countless wonderful moments that our children bring to our life. We are not perfect and neither are our children but there is always the promise of tomorrow.
