10) This isn't really a terrible thing, but at some point or another, you will lick your thumb and clean your child's face. "Mom Spit" is a very conveniently available cleaning solution, and it gets the job done when you don't have a wipe, towel, or washcloth handy. Your child, however, will hate it, and you will think, "Gross! I'm that mom!" while you give your kid a spit bath. And then you will do it again whenever necessary, thinking all the while, "Gross! I'm that mom!" The good news is that kids eventually learn to clean their own faces to avoid another application of "Mom Spit."
9) Before I had kids, I would often pick the shopping cart with the "bum" wheel. This rarely happens now but I am amazed at how frequently the first (and sometimes second and even third) cart I choose has a busted seat belt. Now, this may have always been the case, and I never noticed because it was irrelevant in my b.c. (before children) era life.
8) Babies and toddlers have really hard heads. God, in His infinite wisdom, designed them this way, presumably so that they will survive all of the potentially suicidal things that they will attempt during the toddler phase. They will somehow bash their heads into yours (probably on more than one occasion). The funny thing is that they will be fine and you will really be hurting.
7) I forget to eat sometimes...This is largely due to the two little people who are constantly eating food from my plate. And it doesn't matter if I take food directly from my plate and put it onto theirs; they will still steal my food. I guess it just tastes better when it comes from Mommy's plate.
6) "How did this get here?" The combination of kids' not-so-great organization skills and your own "mommy moments" brought on by lack of sleep and stress from various "Murphy's Law of Motherhood" events results in finding interesting things in very odd places. Sometimes it's my own doing. For instance, I have a tendency to use the laundry room as a collection center for toys that the kids have temporarily "lost" and then I forget about them, too. Then there are all the times I've nearly killed myself slipping on a toy car, particularly when they end up on the kitchen floor while I'm trying to cook. I once found some Pillsbury refrigerated biscuits in the pantry, and on more than one occasion, I've snapped back to reality only to realize that I was in the process of putting the milk in there, too. Tons of small objects have been dropped down the air vents over the past 4 years at our house. I'm constantly finding odd little things in the pockets of my jeans or coat: a paper clip/coin/small toy (or anything else deemed "choking hazard"), an alphabet magnet, tissues with other people's snot on them (these also turn up frequently in the dryer since I forget to remove them from my pants pockets), Goldfish crackers, and so on--always stuff that screams "I'm someone's mom!" And don't get me started on the van! Goldfish crackers are just the tip of the iceberg...
5) Traveling with children is a major event. The younger they are, the more gear they seem to require. Even a simple trip to the store requires me to pack a bag with snacks, sippy cups, extra diapers... (My rule of thumb is to always pack one more diaper than I think I will need for any particular outing~ this has saved me one several occasions!) Something inevitably is forgotten while packing and something always gets left behind. It might not be anything that's of utmost importance, but it will happen, you can count on that.
4) "I'm hungry" and "I have to go to the bathroom!" You hear these words a lot when you have small children. And it's usually just after they have eaten or used the bathroom, or in more frustrating instances, it's right after you have gotten them strapped into their car seats or bundled into their snowsuits.
3) "I just cleaned that!" is a common phrase I hear myself uttering. It's a never-ending cycle of laundry, dishes, picking up toys, bathing children, scrubbing down various surfaces... As Phyllis Diller said, "Cleaning your house while the your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing." The good news is that nearly everything in your home is washable (children included)! Some of my favorite words that I can find when shopping are "machine washable" or "dishwasher safe."
2) If someone is going to get sick enough to require medical treatment it will almost always happen late at night, and if you're really lucky, it will be a holiday weekend, too. Off the top of my head, I can recall trips to Urgent Care on Mother's Day and the E.R. in the middle of the night over Memorial Day weekend.
1) I wait as long as I can before getting ready to go out sans children, but no matter how hard I try, the kids will somehow mess up my efforts. It might just be that they will pull off my necklace or muss my hair. However, I will usually end up with something yucky on my clothes. It's always something that would not have ended up there in the "b.c. (before children) era": snot, drool, spit-up (although I don't really have to deal with this anymore, thankfully), urine, blood, partially chewed Goldfish crackers, peanut butter, jelly, apple juice, ... you get the idea. And yes, I've even discovered poop on my jeans while out without kids!
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