Sometimes Being A Mom Is . . .

Ollie & Me looking at sheep.  Photo by Sue Richardson

The part of this picture you aren’t seeing is me standing in sheep poop.  The part of this picture you aren’t smelling is that fresh farm smell, also vaguely reminiscent of sheep poop.  And cow poop.  And chicken poop.  But my boy wanted to see the sheep.  So I stepped in the poop.  In the past week I’ve also:

• Stepped in vomit in the middle of the night on my way to the bathroom to wipe more vomit off RedDog’s mouth and sit with him while he barfed {his favorite vomit word ever}.
• Wiped a runny green baby nose with my bare hand because I had nothing else to use and it was about to go in his mouth.
• Used my same bare hands to wipe diaper rash cream on parts of a bum that don’t see the sun.
• Changed more poopy diapers than I’d care to on a baby who thinks he’s Houdini and spends the whole changing trying to escape.  Poop may or may not have gotten on my hands.
• Stuck my hand into my almost-a-teenagers mouth each night to turn his orthodontic expander “a click”. Teenagers have nasty breath at the end of the day.
• Squeezed a zit on the nose of said almost-a-teenager.
• Picked dry, puss encrusted skin off my daughter’s constantly infected earring hole.
• Caught chewed up food from a kid’s mouth in mid air to prevent it from hitting the floor.

The conclusion I’ve come to is that being a mom is gross.  We do gross things.  It’s weird too, because we do gross things without giving it a second thought.  Because we love our kids.

If you’d read the list above to me as a teenager, I would have excused myself to dry heave in the corner.  But now, I know I wouldn’t change it for the world.  It’s part of who I am.  Except for the poop on the hands part.  That will always be wrong, wrong, wrong.

PS.  I have been chronically washing my hands this week also, just in case you were disturbed by bums and mouths being in the same post.