Catherine, over at Her Bad Mother wrote a post about what she loves about being a mom. She then asked if I would participate – I agreed but warned her that my post would either be cutesy/sappy or highly sarcastic depending on the day I had had with them when I wrote it.

Luckily for my kids, it was a pretty good day. I had many ridiculously adorable moments, such as having Breanna “exshersize” with me while I was doing the 30 Day Shred. As if a three-year-old bouncing along beside you while you work out isn’t cute and funny enough, she added to the hilarity by using some Mega Blocks as hand weights. I would have taken a picture but I was busy sweating and breathing and occasionally cursing Jillian Michaels and her damn killer workout.

Then Hayley came home from school and after a quick supper we all went to her school – in lieu of Parent-Teacher night after report cards were distributed, they had student-led conferences. Just like last year’s conference, it involved having Hayley bring us into her classroom so she could show us her work. She read a book to us, showed us her recent classwork, and took us on a tour of all the things they’ve been learning as they study Ancient Egypt, including her very own pyramid, mummy, and sarcophagus. So I came home all over-the-moon proud.

Between the two of them, despite fighting bedtime with a lot of effort, they have forced me to write the happy post instead of the snarky and sarcastic post. Well, maybe a bit of humor, but no sarcasm.

Five things I love about being a mom? Okay.

1. That feeling of pride whenever they say/do/learn something amazing. Seeing them take their first steps, hearing them say their first words, it’s incredible. And it isn’t any less exciting the second time around either. And the older they get, the better it is. I’m so proud to hear Breanna rattling on and on about her day or explaining – in great detail – how to play golf on the Wii. To go from mumbling two-syllable words to rambling paragraphs worth of storytelling is awesome. And listening to Hayley explaining all about Egypt to us in her class tonight made me so proud that I could have just about burst. Kids will disappoint you at some point, it’s inevitable, but my god, they will make you so proud that you produced someone so intelligent/funny/engaging/etcetera that it’s not even funny.

2. Seeing everything in a new light. I can walk out my front door and walk around the block and not really notice anything in particular. I’m too busy listening to my iPod or thinking deep thoughts about, you know, what to have for dinner that night or why the hell George made me watch The Boy in the Striped Pajamas when surely he knew it would make me cry until I feared I would vomit, so I don’t see the little things. Kids do. Kids see the bee buzzing among the wildflowers on the side of the road. They stop to inspect the crack in the sidewalk and wonder aloud as to what could have caused it to break like that. They look at the clouds, the leaves, the ants, the gum wrapper being swept down the storm drain, the bird sitting on the roof, everything. And I will tell you right now that sometimes it is really goddamn annoying because when you really just want to hurry the hell up and get home so you can pee, you don’t want to stop and blow yet one more dandelion seed or pick up any more pine cones. But you know what? If you stop and just follow their lead, it is truly amazing to look at our insane world from the simplicity of a child’s point of view.

3. Kids break up the monotony of life. Being an adult sucks. Sure, we don’t have a curfew and we don’t have to eat our vegetables if we don’t want to (but we should since we’re now role models!), but we have to pay rent/mortgages, pay bills, buy groceries, cook, clean, blablabla. It’s exhausting. Which is why kids rock, because when you’re sitting there with your online banking open and you’re transferring all your money to this utility and that creditor, it’s just really nice to have a good excuse to go outside and kick a ball around, get down on the floor to play with dinosaurs, or get your ass kicked by your kids on the Wii. It keeps me young. I think.

4. Candy and chocolate. Kids love to get cookies and candy canes at Christmas, chocolate bunnies at Easter, and candy of all sorts at Halloween. But seriously, they have these itty bitty bellies that can’t hold all those treats. And their teeth – think of the havoc on their teeth! Let’s not even talk about the sugar rush and subsequent crash. Kids just can’t have all that junk. Which is why it’s so handy that we’re around to help them out by eating some of it. Or half of it. While they’re asleep and completely unaware. Hey, it is TOTALLY for their benefit! It’s hard work eating all those Cadbury eggs!

5. Unconditional love. I’m sure that there is a point where you can break a child enough that they no longer love their parents. Generally though, I like to assume that most of us are just doing the best we can, making mistakes, and dusting ourselves back off so we can try again tomorrow. There are days that are so much fun and so full of laughing that the hours fly by. Other times there can be days where the kids fight non-stop, push every button I’ve got, and I end up realizing that I yelled more than I laughed. But I love my kids with everything in me and just as wonderful, I know they love me too. No matter how frustrated we all might get with each other, at the end of the day, the love is still there and it’s still there the next morning when we start all over again. The unconditional love – mine AND theirs – is one of the best things in the entire world.

There are times when my list of five things I love about being a mom might have included sarcastic quips like, “I love to clean the same thing up 8742934 times a day!” and “I love never ever getting to use my own toilet without a three-year-old talking to me!” but today was a great day so you get the great list.

Because I have great kids.

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Catherine’s purpose in starting us off on writing about this topic is because she’s working on a project to see if you can get “around the world in 80 clicks” – connecting moms all over the world like one giant playdate. Here are the basic guidelines from Catherine herself:

Here’s how it’s going to work: this post that you’re reading? Is the departure lounge. I’m going to link to a couple of other mom bloggers here in Canada, and to a couple of mom bloggers from other countries around the world, and they’ll write their posts, sharing 5 things that they love (or maybe what they don’t so much love – this playground doesn’t force conformity) about being a mom, and then they’ll tag a few more bloggers from their own country and from other countries, and so on. And you’re more than welcome to join: just write a post of your own (5 things that you love about being a mom) and find someone to link to and tag – someone from your own country, if you like, but definitely someone from another country (Google is a good resource if you don’t know any; google any country name and ‘mom’ in their blog search function) (be sure to let them know that you’ve tagged them!) – and link back here and leave a comment and we’ll add you to the ‘itinerary,’ which David will compile and post and update as the tour proceeds.

If you play along, please go to Catherine’s entry and comment, and definitely comment here too so I can go read what you write. In the meantime, here are my tags – some local, and some international.

Angella, a fellow Canadian on the opposite side of the country over at Dutch Blitz // Tertia of So Close, blogging about life after infertility in Cape Town, South Africa // Jodi is an American mom in Tuscany (ohhh, Tuscany…) // Mara of Monkey Jumping on the Bed, a Canadian living in Panama // Neera of Our Life, A Jigsaw from India.

Check them out over the next few days when they will hopefully join in, and please remember to let me know if you do this too!