The phrase Super Mom needs to die

On March 20, 2014March 24, 2014 By JillIn Mommy Musings1 Comment

I was sitting in a doctor’s office yesterday, waiting to be called in (the doctor was running 30 minutes late. NOT A PROBLEM when you are kid free and dear old Mom is watching your child!)

Thumbing through a magazine, I notice this article about Jessica Alba and how “even she isn’t a supermom,” and how having children changed her. She even goes as far as to admitting eating her kid’s leftovers. Gasp…

UM!!! FOR REAL..BIG DEAL!…I cannot stop thinking about how this fact was even mentioned, let alone made a highlight of the article but that’s beside the point.

There are thousands of articles written about the supermom, and we hear this term a lot in parenting circles…visions of lip sticked, hair freshly highlighted, gym bodied women, shopping in Whole Foods while their cell phones beep reminders about play dates, volunteering commitments, and appointments. All the while planning to go home and bake a five tiered cake and put together dazzling, homemade invitations for yet another party she’s hosting next month. Ok, so this woman is “super.” Good for her. Note I say, this woman is super. Minus the mom part.

I googled “Super Mom.”

There were thousands of articles relating to this topic.

There was an article entitled Best and Worst Celebrity Moms.

This was the description from the site.

Celebrity moms are the media’s newest big thing – some are idolized and emulated, others criticized and ridiculed – but as a culture, we’re clearly obsessed. We track every stage of their baby bumps, scoff at their post-baby bodies, drool over their kids’ outfits and desperately search for any traces of normalcy that show us, Hey, they’re just like me! Love them or loathe them, here are 50 we couldn’t ignore.

This kind of thing really irks me. These women are moms; they are doing the hardest job in the world. Some dress great, some don’t. Who cares? I like seeing what celebrities are wearing as well but again, but I don’t like the mixing of the mom in there.

I saw a link to YouTube, featuring a reality show with ten celebrity mothers, who along with their kids compete with other celebrity mothers on various compatibility levels and win the title of ‘Super Mom.’

I hate the concept of the “super mom,” or “the got it together mom.” This term is way over used and the line is getting blurry. Fantastic woman verses a fantastic super mom.

Some of us are more organized, more put together, more driven than others. We knew girls like that in high school, women like that in college, and the ladies we socialize with today.

This is the way it is. We are all wired differently. This is a fact from the beginning of time. What I can’t fathom is the mix of the super and the mom part. How are you not automatically super if you’re a Mom?

You carried a child around in your belly for nine months, gave birth (enough said) or went through the exhausting process of adoption or a different method to have a child. You gave a piece of yourself, and you became more self less. You began to live a completely different existence, taking care of someone else or elses…always thinking about your child or children. Sacrificing so much…your free time, your alone time, your sleep, your money, your sanity (but that might just be me), and basically your…everything.

Johnson&Johnson coined the term, “Having a baby changes everything.”

All moms are super. Enough said.

Cool as a Cucumber on a Manic Monday

I. will. remain. calm.

Even though she is jumping around like a Mexican jumping bean.

Even though she screamed and carried on during Gia’s dance class, where she wanted “in, in, in.”

Even though she tried to bash Gia’s head with the broom quite a few times.

I will be calm, cool, and collected.

Yup, going to try this, not going to raise my voice today, will get a boot camp booty (Lord knows I need it) workout running up and down the stairs to put G in timeout when she is sassy, rather than yell. I’ve been raising my voice quite a few octaves in the past couple of weeks, and waking up with a sore throat and a sorry heart. Plus, it’s not working…I know this. I was a teacher. But, still, sometimes, I just can’t help it.

Ok, it’s noon and kids are eating each other like a scene from National Geographic- let’s get creative before one child gets eaten! Keep calm and carry on (why is it I feel they created this saying for me and it’s also EVERYWHERE NOW!)

First we devise a scene that is slightly disconcerting if you think about it, kind of like the way I feel about that nursery rhyme about the blackbirds. Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye, Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie

It gives me goosebumps thinking about these birds in the pie!

I can’t explain how excited they were to do this…running to get bowls and their furry friends to cook them up. Strange, I know, but it occupied them.

Then I rummaged through the closet of crappola and found the second box of Christmas cards from last year that were sent by mistake from Shutterfly.

What can we do with these? Spend an hour cutting out the pictures and make a scary, OCD looking sort of collage, like the apartment wall at Carrie Mathison’s from Homeland.

Sheer brilliance

Moving on to balloons…many sightings for these balloons today. These are a few of the highlights…

and um, does anyone think this is totally odd? What does this remind you of?

balloon — Look closely – I’m in a cupcake foil. Want to eat me?

Arts and crafts (Is anyone starting to feel that this was a little like toddler mission impossible?)

Unusual dressing up…

and I actually managed to make something a little fancier than meatloaf!

Happy Monday and here’s to takin on Tuesday!

On March 18, 2014 By JillIn I need a glass of wine, What's Going On?Leave a comment

Maybe I’m a boring blogger

On March 16, 2014 By JillIn Mommy Confessions, Uncategorized4 Comments

Last night I cried. I sat on the couch, it was two A.M. I thought about my girls, mostly Gia, and how I neglected her a lot this week. She wanted to play with me. I wanted to do blog stuff. I crawled into bed with her last night, cuddled up to a sleeping beauty, and whispered how much I loved her and promised to be more mommy.

Whenever I think about being a mom and how it felt to be a daughter, I always think about this one incident. It was the saddest night- The man I thought was going to marry me, broke my heart, and the only thing I remember about that night was my Mom spoon feeding me oatmeal on the couch as I struggled to breathe.

That was years ago and obviously things have changed. I have two girls, married an amazingly fun and kind man, who is an awesome father. Things are good – I stay home. I’m lucky to be able to do this but sometimes I feel unfulfilled. I started this blog in January for fun, to document some of the craziness, without any intentions of trying to make money, trying to be funny, or trying to do anything…I like to write and I thought it would be fun, and a way to keep me focused on the little adventures of everyday, instead of worrying what I’m doing wrong and what parent information don’t I know about.

Kind of like shopping in your neighborhood mom and pop shop of mommystuff rather than stepping foot into the enormous Mega Mom store a few towns away where moms have all the latest gadgets, know all the no no’s in infant eating, and have their kids enrolled in the latest trending must do activity like Yoga Brain Balance or something like that. I just find it easier to bake my cookies and bang on pots!

If you have been reading my former posts, you can see I’m a bit all over the place, ideas, projects, plans, stopping them, changing them…running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Clearly, the blog hasn’t been my ticket out of the therapist’s chair.

Curiosity killed the cat

I started out with a few posts and shared them with my friends and it was nice and then a bout of insomnia hit and I started googling Mom blogs and funny Mom blogs, and there were thousands of them, 98, 900, 000 results on google to be exact- ones that had awards on them, featured on well-known sites, blogs with thousands of followers, blogs that were making a penny or two.

I started reading these blogs, some were unbelievable with their crafts and creations, some were useful, and some were funny. A large part of the so called “hilarious blogs,” were shocking …“fucking disgusting, smelly farts, vagina, kids are A-holes, I want to punch you in the face, but cracks….” You get the gist.

I get it, this sort of train wreck writing sells, and people flock to these sites to see the crazy. I have been playing around with the description of my blog and threw in the word crack…last night I changed that. I am not one of those balls out there kind of blogs – Fuck –is a word only used in extreme situations- SORRY DAD! And I’m not going to call my children little A-holes, like a popular blogger out there does. (I may think it…haven’t we all? But I won’t write it).

So I am going to stop snooping around and trying to figure out what sells (as much as I want to post some sexy shots of me in a bikini – hahahaha – Just kidding – Never. People would be sending me diet and fitness books after that for sure!

I’m no Martha Stewart (the extent of my creativity is chocolate covered oreos with googly eyes) and I’m not Mother Theresa with a potty mouth, so from now on, it’s just me sipping my wine, chugging my coffee, munching on Cheez its, hanging with the girls, and making creations like this!