I am SO making this Chicken Spaghetti recipe.

I was really anticipating receiving my copy of Even June Cleaver Would Forget the Juice Box because it’s a book about how to stop the relentless cycle of trying to be perfect mothers and berating ourselves when we aren’t. Who doesn’t need a reminder that being good enough is, well, good enough.

When I first started reading it, I wondered if maybe I didn’t need it after all since I’m not someone who lies awake, anxiously wondering if my kids are doomed to work at strip bars because I didn’t get them into a perfect preschool that will lead them straight to Harvard and onto the path to a great career. I don’t flog myself over the fact that I yell sometimes when I get mad. I never scheduled either of them into ten different activities while worrying that they aren’t popular enough with their friends. Maybe I didn’t need a book to tell me to ease up on myself.

Except I do, because tonight at Hayley’s soccer orientation, Breanna blew through her diaper with a massive poop and I had neglected to bring a) any wipes, b) a blanket, or c) a pair of clean pants. Frankly, after all of that, I was a little relieved to discover that at least I had put DIAPERS in the damn diaper bag. And so I stood there, silently berating myself for being such a craptacular mother that I had left home without the essentials, and suddenly I caught myself, thought of the book and how it explains that we have an automatic thought process that makes us do this to ourselves, and I laughed a bit and just did what I could with the situation at hand.

(I pulled out the Mai Tei wrap carrier that was in the bag, laid her on part of it on top of a table in a spare room, then used one of the ties to wipe her clean, put the diaper on, decided the spot that had leaked on her pants wasn’t that big and wouldn’t even touch her skin anyway since it would be against the clean diaper, and just pulled her shirt waaay down so no one would see. And yes, I will wash the carrier.)

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Well holy crap. Who is this big kid in a soccer uniform complete with shin guards and cleats?

(And why did they give everyone such enormously huge socks?! The heel comes up past her ankle!)

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1. Why my laundry can’t fold itself. I go and get it, I sort it (sort of, I’m a bit lazy with the sorting), I wash it, I dry it (and Breanna is a big fan of helping me put the wet stuff in the dryer) and I haul the dry things out to the living room in baskets. The least it can do is fold itself dammit.

2. Why there were wet flurries of snow with the rain last night. And why some of the Maritime areas got actual snowfall. In May. Suddenly I’m glad I haven’t planted a tomato plant yet what with all the frost and crap going on.

3. Why Melinda was voted off last night. Trust me, as a big Blake fan (Hi, I’m Sherry, and I’m a Blaker Girl) I’m thrilled he’ll still be there next week, but I really wanted a Blake-Melinda finale. Alas. Then again, it’s not the first time the best singer has gone home after the top three .

4. Why the apartment seems to get messier the more I try to keep it clean.

5. How I came to volunteer to be the assistant coach for Hayley’s soccer team. I’m not sure I know what I just got myself into!

I’m pretty sure I mentioned it back when we actually didn’t but I’m too lazy to check the archives – anyway, a couple of months ago we signed Hayley up for soccer. She’s always loved kicking a ball around, always refers to it as actually being soccer, and one of her favorite Backyardigans episodes is the one with the Soccer Monster (her absolute favorite one is The Tower of Power with Dr. Shrinky and Yucky Man, and the state of her room makes this fitting; Yucky Man indeed).

She was really interested in playing soccer some day but I thought they had to be older until we found out it actually starts at four years old, surprisingly. Off we trotted to the registration where a giant room was FULL of kids and parents and coaches and papers and it was insane. I had no idea so many people in our area played. We got her all signed up, and that was it until May.

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I hope you brought some marshmallows to toast in all those fires of hell, Jerry.

(Part of me feels terrible about smirking over someone’s death but you know, oh WAH, fuck it. He was a hateful, horrible asshole who used God in every way that is wrong. If there is a God I hope he slapped him away from the Pearly Gates with a booming “WRONG MESSAGE JERRY” and knocked him straight down below.)

I hope everyone who celebrated today had a wonderful Mother’s Day, whether it was with their own mom or because of being a mom.

I had a low-key but wonderful day. I got to spend the entire day with these two cute little monkeys:

And I got to go visit and have lunch with my own Mama:

And then I went to visit and have dinner with George’s mom where I managed to coerce the two girls into having one little picture with me, and you can see just how thrilled they were about it, what with Hayley’s “GOD, Mom” facial expression and the fact that Breanna is clearly trying to leap down to the floor to escape:

A good day, indeed. I’m going to wrap it up by watching the new “Criminal Minds” on television in less than 15 minutes. In honor of this day, I’d like to re-post what I wrote last year:

Happy Mother’s Day to every mother out there.

To every mother of a biological child. To every mother of an adopted child. To every birth mother who has ever given a child up. To every mother who has ever taken in a foster child to try to help make one person live a happier life. To every mother-to-be who is counting down the days until birth. To every mother who has ever lost a child. To every mother who has ever lost the baby they never even held. To every mother who has taken a negative pregnancy test and tried again and again and again, forever hoping for two pink lines. To every surrogate mother who has selflessly carried a baby for another mother. To every mother who is somehow perfect and in full control of everything. To every mother who is floundering and living in chaos. To every mother who weeps tears of joy on her newborn’s head. To every mother who weeps tears of postpartum depression and wonders when it gets better. To every mother who screws up and dusts it all off and tries again tomorrow.

To every woman who is or wants to be a mother in any way, happy Mother’s Day.

Back in the early days with a newborn Hayley (which seems like an eternity ago and just yesterday all at the same time), I thought I had mapped out what made me a mother.

I breastfed her and intended to for quite some time (and in fact, I did so until she was 2.5 years old). I let her co-sleep because it was the only way I could get her to sleep. I didn’t let her cry it out because I just couldn’t do it. I used a sling a lot. I was a stay at home mom instead of putting her in daycare. I tended to her more than I tended to myself, figuring that the more I gave to her instead of myself, the better I was at being a mom.

It wasn’t that I thought people were terrible mothers if they chose different paths. Those were just the things I felt *I* had to do in order to make *myself* the best mother I could be for her.

Along came Breanna. I still chose to breastfeed her, and we’re still going strong although if she woke up tomorrow and said, “no thanks Mom, pass me a cup of milk please” I would be SO OKAY with that because dude, almost five years total of breastfeeding with only a five-month break because I was pregnant? Man, that’s a long time and I would really be content to go back to having boobs instead of milk cartons. Breanna part-time co-sleeps but she starts all her nights off and also naps in her crib and is perfectly happy there. In general I don’t let her cry it out and still nurse her down, but in moments of frustration I have put her shrieking self in the crib and walked away until she fell asleep (usually five minutes later). I did use a variety of carriers with her – a sling, a Baby Bjorn, and a Mei Tai wrap carrier – but not as often because she started walking at 9 months old so really, she wasn’t that interested in being contained when she could be traipsing around instead. I still stay home but I work from home now too so I’m in a constant battle with trying to be there for her and Hayley while still getting all my stuff done in a timely manner. And while I still care about doing things for my kids, the old adage of “if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy” has come to be true and so I do make more of an effort now to do things for me more often than I used to so that I don’t go completely batshit crazy.

So apparently none of those things were necessarily what made me a mother. They were things I did BECAUSE I was a mother and they were choices I had made. So what does make me a mother?

Unconditional love. Laughter in the middle of an otherwise crappy day. Silly moments like finding Hayley sitting in the bathroom sink because she wanted a bath in there like a baby. Proud moments like seeing Breanna climb up the ladder on the slide at the park and seeing Hayley walking down the stairs at the elementary school with her Kindergarten teacher. Did I mention the unconditional love? Vowing every night to be a better mother tomorrow. Trying to be better. Sometimes yelling more than I laughed some days. Sometimes laughing more than I yelled. Holding a crying child on my knee. Wanting to kick someone for being mean to one of them. Intervening in eight thousand arguments and fights over My Little Ponies and plastic tools. Saying “for the LAST TIME, stop throwing the goddamn ball in the living room!” at least twice a day.

Picking myself up at the end of a day and knowing that even if it wasn’t perfect and I wasn’t as great as I wanted to be, I was still fundamentally a good mother who loves her kids more than life itself, even on the days when I’m not sure I’ve liked them very much. That’s the unconditional love part again.

Those are the things that make me a mother.

And also melting over pictures like this.

(The Parent Bloggers Network is having a BlogBlast with the topic being “What makes you a mother?” in honor of Mother’s Day this coming Sunday. There’s even a prize being offered courtesy of Light Iris where someone can win a spa gift certificate. And that makes me a mom too because god knows I could use a spa treatment. Alone. All alone.)

How is it that I am a huge Blake Lewis fan and yet it was only tonight that I found out about The Blaker Girls site?! I was all set to use some future Paypal money to buy myself a Blaker Girl t-shirt but alas, they only take credit cards, no Paypal.

What? I’m a dork? Yes, yes I am.

Somehow – and I don’t know how – Hayley has been growing up. There are times I wish that we could go back to the newborn days when all she wanted was for me to hold her tight (and she didn’t talk endlessly). There are other times when I am so glad to be right here and now when she says and does things that make me laugh so hard and I appreciate this little character that she’s grown into. And then there are times when, somewhere in the back of my mind, I metaphorically curl up in a ball in utter denial that time won’t pause itself and she’s going to just keep on growing and getting bigger. One of her favorite things to say is one of my least favorite to hear: “I grow bigger EVERY SINGLE DAY!”

Yes, yes she does.

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