What to Expect When You Have No Expectations

I vividly remember the day I realized I was an unfit mother. It was about a year and a half ago. My little sister probably remembers it well too. This is what she heard when she checked her voicemail messages:

"Michelle, it's Amber. I'm gonna need you to come over the second you get off work. I am done being a mom. You may think Cora is cute, but today cute doesn't cut it. She managed to take her very dirty diaper off while 'taking a nap,' but don't worry, none of it got on the floor because there wasn't any poop left over after she smeared it all over the door. Oh and then my diaperless child proceeded to pee all over her carpet, write in fabulous blue ink all over our new leather couch and then, in an attempt to clean off the ink, dump an entire glass of milk all over the same couch. And this was all in the last hour. So please, come. Now. You might have to drive up and down the streets to find her because as I am leaving this message, I am opening up my front door, setting her outside and locking the door behind her. So hurry, please."

No need to call Child Protective Services, I let Cora back in. But not before I had an actual stomp-up-and-down-while-flailing-my-arms-and-screaming-at-the-top-of-my-lungs fit (feel free to judge me until you try it and realize just how therapeutic it is!).

Now why am I fessing up to yet another weakness as a mother? Simple. The day I put up my arms in surrender and gave up on being an amazing mother was the day I became one. I shut the parenting books and the "How To" guides. I came to terms with the fact that I had royally screwed up from day one. Actually before day one. I mean I never played her Mozart while in utero and I couldn't keep down a single pre-natal vitamin, much less anything else for the first 7 months of my pregnancy. And when I could finally keep something in my stomach, I ate a fat, juicy hot dog (gasp) and enjoyed every last salty, nitrate-filled morsel. And it just got worse after Cora was born. She was a formula baby after about eight weeks, she chewed on filthy, lead-filled car keys, and she ate solids before the magical age of four months. I could probably teach a class on how not to raise a child, yet here Cora is, still thriving 3 and a half years later.

And you would think I would have put all that trial and error to good use when parenting the second time around, but no. I didn't want our family to be unbalanced. So Claire is being blessed with a whole new set of screw ups and parenting missteps. Plus Claire gets the privilege of growing up with a mommy who has now officially lost her mind. Two separate incidents last week prove my point.

The first one finds me frantically dashing through the house, nearly late for Pilates, searching in vain for my water bottle that I had just re-filled and set on the counter. Trying to stifle his laughter, Mark asked me if the water bottle I was tearing the house apart looking for was the same water bottle I was holding in my hand. It was.

Next episode was a similar situation, but with a change of scenery. Sitting in my car, digging through my purse for the third time, looking for the elusive car keys that I had been holding in my hands just seconds earlier, I replayed the last few moments in my mind. They couldn't have gotten far. I had them in my hands when I tucked Cora and Claire safely into their car seats. And then they vanished into thin air. I searched under my seat, on the roof of the car, all along the floor board until, in a last ditch effort, I began rummaging through my purse again. Cora, frustrated that mommy was preventing her from getting to preschool on time, asked what I was looking for. I told her I had lost the car keys and if I didn't find them we were not going anywhere. She flashed me a look I am sure I will grow accustomed to during her teenage years, but seemed a bit premature for someone not quite able to tie her own shoes, and said "If you lost the keys how did the car get started." Good question.

I am sure if I was still reading parenting books there would be a chapter in there about how your children suck up a little bit of your brain power as they grow in your womb and that, sadly, they never give it back. But what can you do? At least I am giving my children plenty of fuel for the stories they will tell as they get older about their unfit mother with very few marbles who still happened to be a tiny bit amazing.