In honor of Mother's Day, I thought I would take a minute to blog about the three coolest kids I know. Stewart, James, and Taylor have made every day of the last 19 years and 8 months an adventure!  Most days it is a wonderfully amazing adventure.  However, every now and then.....

The following is a list of 5 embarrassing mom moments (because typing all 3,129 - yes, I have kept track - would give me carpal tunnel).  Enjoy!

5.  While I was teaching music lessons one day, my boys decided to take their little sister out to play.  Since Taylor was only 3, I asked them to keep a close eye on her.  When James came in a little while later in a panic and screaming something about Taylor, I ran like crazy to see if she was okay.  Oh...she was!  James had been so upset he had been unable to communicate the problem to me.  She had decided to kiss the neighbor boy!  By the time I got to her, he was at the controls of her hot-pink Big Wheel and she was hopping on the back.  I can't say for sure, but I think they were heading for Vegas.  Bottom line:  She is the only one of my children who has a height requirement in place before she can kiss another boy.  You know...sort-of a "You must be this tall to ride this ride" kind of rule. 

4. I don't know if this particular story qualifies as embarrassing, but it must be told.  When my oldest was my only child, I worked as a tutor in the evenings.  That gave us all morning to mess around, so we did!  A personal favorite of ours was "Hide and Seek".  I was running a little late for work one day, so I was getting both of us ready in a rush.  When I went to grab the keys, they weren't were I kept them.  I looked around for a few minutes until I heard this tiny little giggle.  Sensing he knew something I didn't (watching those detective shows had really paid off!), I asked him if he knew where my keys were.  After a full minute of hysterical giggling, he said, "I hid them!".  He kept on giggling as I ATTEMPTED to calmly ask him where.  He giggled for about 30 more seconds, and then said (without a giggle!), "Ummmmm....I can't remember."  Suffice it to say, I was an hour late for work that night, there was not much laughter in the land for a few days, and the keys finally showed up in one of my boots....6 months later.....

3. One Christmas season,  I was busy doing something in the kitchen (I can't remember what...but I think we can all assume it wasn't cooking!) while my boys were playing in the living room.  They were about 4 and 8 at the time.  One of them had a balloon, so they invented this game where James would throw the balloon over the railing and Stewart, standing down below, would try to hit it back up.  It must have been much more entertaining than it sounds, because they were laughing like crazy.   In the middle of it all, there was a horrible "thumping" sound followed by James letting out a scream.  Being the fantastic mother that I am, I stayed right where I was and yelled for Stewart to be nice to his brother.  After about 5 minutes, Stewart finally came in the kitchen and suggested that maybe I ought to come take a look.  Low and behold - Jay was bleeding like a stuck pig.  He had slipped on the rug and cut his head open!  I grabbed a couple of towels, slapped them on his head, and started herding them both to the car.  As we were heading to the After-Hours Clinic, Stewart gets all serious and says, "Before we go in there, we need to get our stories straight!"  Note to self:  While watching those detective shows has made me better at solving little children crimes, perhaps I shouldn't have let the child watch them with me.

2. Taylor was an early speaker.  The problem was that she had verbal dyslexia!  I was dad, Rob was mom, James was Stewart, Stewart was James, juice was milk...you get the idea.  One day, while navigating the Walmart jungle, she and I ended up on an aisle alone.  Rare experience at Walmart, right?  I happened to have a tickle in my nose, so I very quietly sneezed.  Taylor, who heard my sneeze since she was sitting in the child's seat, yelled out, "Ewwwwwwww!  Mommy!!!!!! You just pooped!!!!!".  I was quite the popular attraction as people came from the adjoining aisles to find the crazy, poop lady!  Thanks dear!

1. Stewart.  Stewart, Stewart, Stewart.  So MUCH vomit - so little blog space.  If I wasn't deadly afraid that someone might attempt to read this blog while eating, I would devote an entire entry to all the many places and ratings (mild to nuclear) of this child's spewiness!  I think I'll just share the one that was the most publicly embarrassing.  To be clear, I don't mean the ONLY time it happened in public.  I just mean the worst of all the public vomits.  It  happened in Smith's grocery store one day.  It was one of those weeks where you decide to buy for the entire week.  At just about the moment when I piled the last item on the tippy top of the mound in the cart, my darling boy turned around in the child seat and offered a Mt. Vesuvius-sized spew festival.  The short version is that I was given a plastic bag to toss paper towels in as I wiped down EVERY item (not one item was spared - true story) so that the grossly underpaid cashier could take it by the corner, scan it, gag three times, and bag it.  We were not welcome in that store for a few years afterward. 

Despite the above, I LOVE these kids. To all the amazing moms out there who do it ALL with little sleep and no pay, Happy Mother's Day!