Thank you to all of the awesome Moms that helped me compile this hilarious list! I had planned to add a few of my own, but I think you ladies pretty much covered it. Enjoy and check out their blogs, businesses, and websites as well!

You Know You’re A Mom When……

1. A trip to Target alone feels like a weekend getaway. – Gianina C.
2. Your lunch consists of torn off crusts, uneaten pieces of green beans and puffs. – Dawn S.
3. Sleeping in = 6am and staying up late = 10pm. – Jessica A. at http://yourhealthyhappylife.blogspot.com/
4. Your purse always smells like rotten milk from the dang sippie cups leaking! – Jamie B.
5. You have to really search your closet for non-elastic waisted pants for those rare occasions you actually get to dress up. And by dress up, I mean clean jeans, a clean shirt, and my hair not in a ponytail. – Jessica A. at http://yourhealthyhappylife.blogspot.com/
6. You have learned how to dodge projectile poop. – Tara L. at http://www.lapinskasfamily.blogspot.com
7. You’re at a dinner party and you say you have to go potty. – Kristin R.
8. Your left leg is shaved and your right isn’t, you only have mascara on one eye and you’re at the grocery store looking like that wondering why people are looking at you funny. – Shanna S.
9. You ask,”Is this chocolate or poop?” – Sherree T.
10. You’re so used to rocking your baby in your arms you sway even when giving presentations or while talking to people! – Annika B.
11. You can multitask by doing at least 16 different things at once. – Kaylee D.
12. You’re walking with friends and say, “Oooh! Look 4 tractors! Isn’t that cool! Let’s count them!” My husband always says you can tell a parent of toddlers by asking them when the last time was that they ate a cheerio off the floor. A parent won’t even flinch and probably say it was earlier that day. A non-parent will look at you like you’re crazy. – Ann Z. at http://tragicoptimist.wordpress.com
13. You pee…when you sneeze, laugh, or your bladder is the tiniest bit over full. – Tammy F. at http://www.chi-townmommymayhem.com
14. You’re in public and raise your kid up in the air to smell his butt to find out if that smell is coming from your child. – Jamie P.
15. Using the toilet alone is a luxury. – Alexis B.
16. Your boobs reach your belly button. – Diana M.
17. You’re at work and go more than half the day before someone lets you know that your whole left shoulder is covered in dry snot (from comforting the toddler when they freak because they realize you’re leaving for work). – Jackie Y.
18. You sing to yourself, but slightly aloud, “I’m a little pony, clippedy clop clippedy clop, such a pretty pony, clippedy clop clippedy clop” while grocery shopping alone…. – Dawn S.
19. You are begging your husband for a minivan! – Jennifer L.
20. You wake up each am singing the Little Einstein’s theme song!!!! – Peggy C.
21. You dream of a hot lunch. – Candace H.
22. When serving a banana, you ask, “Do you want to eat that like a monkey?” – Jenna E.
23. You say things like, “Don’t put your finger in your sister’s butt.” – Laura L.
24. You know you’re the mother of a small child when you watch that child gleefully devour her corn, and all you can think is, “That’s gonna be a lot of poop later.” Melissa S. at http://homeonderanged.com
25. Your car looks like a Babies r Us threw up in the backseat. And also you think The Nose Frida is one of the best things ever created.  – Emma G. at http://ourfreshfamily.com
26. You haven’t had a solid night’s sleep in 9 years, showering before noon has become a luxury, and you can’t remember the last time you actually sat down to eat breakfast. – Marie B. at https://www.facebook.com/makeyourowndamndinner
27. Talking about poop color and consistency is normal conversation. – Kelly S.
28. You haven’t looked in the mirror in….you can’t remember when. – Chelse T. at http://eieiophotography.com/
29. A night in the hospital has its pluses. – Jodie G.
30. You try to grocery shop, take care of groceries, start wash, fold wash, take care of the wash, start dinner all before baby wakes up!! – Kristen E.
31. All of a sudden, your life means more because you can’t imagine your baby navigating this world without you. – Kristi C. at http://www.findingninee.com/
32. You go to the mall to get new clothes for yourself and come home with a bag filled from Gymboree! – Kim C.
33. You hide in the bathroom for a few minutes of quiet time. – BreAnne at http://www.thepinspiredmom.com
34. It’s 10 am and you been up for five hours already. – Laura C.
35. You no longer question what that stain or wet spot on your clothing is. The last big purchase you made as a gift to yourself and were EXCITED about is a vacuum. Erin P. at http://www.unconventionalmommytails.com
36. A vacation is more stressful than daily life. – Christine P. at http://www.musingsofasinglemama.com
37. You are so tired that you almost walk into the shower with your bra on. – Jacquelyn T.  at http://thenonmarthamomma.com
38. You find Cheerios in your purse! –  Leah M. at http://www.sandytoescreations.com

Got something to add to this list??? Leave me a comment with your “You Know You’re A Mom When” moments!

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This about sums up my day.

I SO wanted to suggest that my husband spend some quality one on one time with the baby in honor of Father’s Day, but I’m not THAT selfish….

Hope all the awesome dads out there had a wonderful, relaxing Father’s Day and hopefully you took good notes so that you know exactly what we want for Mother’s Day next year (ahem, we want to sleep in, we want alone time, maybe a thoughtful craft from the kids, and we don’t want to change any diapers all day…).

Happy Father’s Day!!!!!

I was also the expecting mother who said I wasn’t going to use TV and other electronics, like my iPad, to entertain my child. Well, guess what? Sometimes mommy needs to shower or eat a meal, so TV it is. A little Sesame Street never killed anyone.

Biggest on my list of parenting no-no’s was bribery. I believed in the importance of teaching your children how to behave and how to listen without bribing them with rewards like toys or treats. For the most part, I still believe that a child has to learn that they don’t always get their way. Tantrums are inevitable when you say no sometimes, but ultimately your child will learn an important lesson.

That being said, I have realized that the occasional bribe (like the occasional public tantrum) is also inevitable. On Tuesday, I took my 16 month old with me to Hobby Lobby to pick up some supplies for our Father’s Day crafts. If you haven’t been to a Hobby Lobby, it’s like a craft store on steroids. They literally sell everything. It’s like a child’s dream. Tons of interesting (and fragile) things to be touched. Lots of little toys and art supplies. The minute we walked into the store, Grey was trying to climb out of the cart. The store is also the size of warehouse, which made the specific, tiny items I needed like trying to find a needle in a fucking craft store hay stack. It took me about fifteen minutes to track down the only apparent employee they had working that night. As she described the 4000 different products I could use for my crafts, Grey decided to keep himself busy by browsing the items on the shelves. When I looked down, he was wearing a hideous, tan, foam safari hat. Yup. They actually make foam safari hats.

Normally, I try to avoid buying random crap to keep my kid occupied in the store. It’s a waste of money and he needs to learn that he isn’t going to get a toy every time we go out. But, it was getting late. It was dinner time. My husband was out of town. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with a major tantrum. So, I bought the damn hat. He loved it so much that I had to pry it out of his hands to pay for it. I don’t actually consider this bribery, per se. It’s more like I was teaching him about good negotiation skills….. I’ll buy this hat if you be quiet and sit in the cart. Done deal.

How could I say no to that face???

Turns out, he REALLY loved the hat. He insisted on wearing it at dinner.

Safari hat at dinner. Why not?

And when we got up the next morning, he wore it while doing some squirrel watching with the dog.

All this kid needs now is a pair of binoculars.

If I had known that he was going to love this ridiculous hat so much and was actually going to wear it around and play with it for days, I would have bought several of them. Turns out the occasional bribe doesn’t make me a bad mother after all. One thing I know for sure though, next time I go to Hobby Lobby, I’ll leave the kid at home.

I was trying to create a game yesterday for the kids similar to the carnival ping pong ball toss where you can win the goldfish. After showing them how to throw the pong balls into the cups, I realized that my subconscious mind was apparently craving a game of beer pong.

There are three essential items needed to survive in my house on a daily basis: vanilla soy milk, coffee and vodka.

There are a small percentage of women who excel at motherhood in an extraordinary way, much like how a small group of people are talented and successful in sports or music.  I described them in an earlier post called Professional Parenting. It’s like they were born to raise children. These moms spend their free time browsing Pinterest, collecting the latest organic and delicious recipes for the home made baby food that they exclusively serve their babies. They’ve read all of the parenting books and their kids have been sleeping through the night since they were four months old. They are perfectly patient parents all the time…and why wouldn’t they be? Their children are always well-behaved.

Unfortunately, this isn’t me. My days can pretty much be described as damage control – pulling Play Doh out of my son’s mouth, scrubbing his hands after he’s played in the toilet, rerunning the same load of laundry over and over because I keep forgetting to switch it to the dryer. You get the picture. It’s insane, really. To keep myself from completely blowing my stay at home mommy stack, I have a few guilty pleasures that are crucial in getting me through my day.

1.) Coffee – Did you know that a Keurig can brew a cup of delicious coffee in under 60 seconds?? Having access to a cup of coffee in 60 seconds any time of day is amazing. When your kid insists on waking up before the sun rises every day, caffeine is a necessity. I’m not going to lie; I’ve definitely dozed off during the 7:00am episode of Sesame Street. (Don’t judge me. At 7:00am, I’ve already been up for two hours). Coffee is literally the only thing keeping me from falling asleep at the parenting wheel on a regular basis.

Keurig is not even paying me to post this.

2.) Mindless Television – Spending 15 waking hours a day with a toddler can make you feel as if your head is spinning. A quick fix to a mentally exhausting afternoon is an hour of some good, trashy television to put my mind back on track. Dance Moms, The Housewives of Wherever, The Kardashians – anything will do. I can’t explain why, but zoning out while watching people that are crazier than I am always makes me feel better. 

I don’t even care how many different shows they have, I will watch all of them.
photo via eonline.com

3.) Vodka – Or any other alcohol for that matter. I have one cocktail every night to wind down after a long day of baby chasing. (Sometimes more, depending on how insane the day was….) Thus far, vodka is the only fix for drowning out the Elmo’s World theme song that is constantly streaming through my head. Plus, when you’re dealing with teething induced tantrums like the one picture below, it’s actually impressive that I’m capable of waiting until 7:00pm before pouring my first drink.

A tantrum from a Mother’s perspective.

4.) Internet – As a stay at home mother, more than a week can easily pass and the only public places I have been to are Wegmans and Target. Due to my serious lack of socialization, the internet is sometimes my only connection to the outside world. Facebook, Twitter, Yahoomail, and WordPress are some of my closest friends these days.

Who needs a new phone if you can still Facebook?

For the amount of time I spend on my iPhone, it’s actually amazing that I have only broken it twice. But who the hell cares if the screen is cracked as long as it still has internet connection? Am I right?

Pinterest, chocolate, or whatever it may be, I think every mother has a secret list of must-have guilty pleasures. While sometimes I feel bad for indulging in some trashy reality TV while sipping a strong cocktail at night, if it gets me through the day and keeps me sane, then it’s totally worth it.

I want to preface this list by saying that, of course, having a child is a blessing and being home with him is an amazing opportunity. However, that doesn’t make it easy or enjoyable all the time. So many women told me how incredible it is to be home with their children every day (and it is, sometimes), but no one shared with me how hard it can get. So here it is: my cold hard truth about stay at home mommyhood.

Things No One Told Me About Being a Stay At Home Mother

1.)    Being a stay at home mother is sometimes like being sentenced to a prison in which personal space is nonexistent. A little 16 month old ball and chain follows me from room to room, begging and whining for my attention every single moment. I love spending time with him, but every few hours I am naturally craving a break.

2.)    Parenting has so many joyful moments and exciting events. However, when you stay home with your child all day and you get up with them at night, it sometimes feels like a never ending shift at an exhausting job working for the most demanding boss you can ever imagine.

3.)    For the very short time that I actually sleep at night, I dream about what it’s like to get more than five or six hours of sleep.

4.)    After being a stay at home mother for almost a year, just about every item of clothing that I own is now stained in some way.

5.)    You can read “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” or you can save your time and just accept that you will literally NEVER know what to expect when it comes to the challenges of parenting.

6.)    As a stay at home mother, I can easily go more than two weeks without ever being alone. I haven’t spent a full day without my child in more than six months.

7.)    My husband counts the hours until he can come home from work and spend time with our son and I count the hours until the baby’s in bed so that I can relax.

8.)    The only other person I have to interact with most of the time is a baby who can only say about 15 words. And so developed my social media addiction. Being able to connect with other parents when things feel out of control has kept me sane.

9.)    If I take my eyes off my 16 month old for more than the blink of an eye, I usually find him eating dog food or playing in the toilet. Yesterday, he opened the back door and walked out in the 25 seconds that I was on the toilet. Ridiculous, right? Being on such high alert all day and all night is the most mentally exhausting task I have ever endured in life. And I do it on very little sleep, nonetheless.

10.) I dream about having a full time job every day because doing anything else for 40 hours a week has to be easier than dealing with a teething toddler all day.

11.) At night, I spend about fifteen minutes clearing the dinner table and scrubbing a massive pile of dirty dishes. I bleach the counters and wipe down the stove. I empty the trash and sterilize the baby’s bottles. And honestly, it might be the most relaxing fifteen minutes of my day simply because it doesn’t involve chasing children, wiping asses, or dealing with tantrums.

12.) Even though I chose to be at home with my child, it’s still ok for me to miss my career and to daydream about going back to work someday soon.

13.) After a really long night when the baby’s been up several times and he’s overtired and throwing tantrums at 7:00am, I’m jealous when my husband leaves for work.

14.) I mentioned that I was a stay at home mom in a conversation with another woman one day. She commented on how amazingly clean my house must be since I’m home all day to keep up on it. FYI – I spend my day chasing a toddler who is usually trashing my house, so no, it’s not amazingly clean around here.

15.) Nap time is the only little break in my day and I will literally do anything and everything necessary to ensure my son stays asleep. Seriously, ring my doorbell between 12:00pm and 2:00pm at your own risk. Just saying.

I know many years from now I will look back and treasure the time I spent with my son. In the mean time, I’m going to take it day by day and try not to completely lose my stay at home mommy mind.

The Epitome of Parenting: When the delivery guys asked where to setup the treadmill, I said, “In the family room, right next to the Sesame Street kitchen.” Totally normal.

For my birthday, my husband purchased me a treadmill. I know what you’re thinking. Some women might find this offensive, like maybe he’s trying to hint that I should get my ass back in shape. But don’t worry – I asked for it. Thank God, he spent the extra cash for delivery and assembly so that we don’t have to attempt this task on our own. We’ve already built enough equipment (crip, infant swing, glider, etc.) to know that these kinds of tasks can seriously damage a marriage. We are both entirely capable of doing it on our own, however men and women are just not supposed to assemble things together. Probably because women like to read the directions and men think they’re smart enough to wing it. But, I digress, today was the scheduled delivery day for my new treadmill.

On Mondays, I’m off from work and my son and I are home alone together. If you have a toddler and you spend 10-12 hours alone with them regularly, then you know that playing with shape sorters and mega blocks gets tiring after a certain length of time. I can only pretend to be interested in reading a book called “Roadwork” over and over and over and over again for about 45 minutes before I have to take a break and send my husband a text message to remind me that there are other adults in the world. At the same time, I’m sure my son gets tired of looking at my face after 12 hours, too. Sometimes when I get him up from nap, he looks at me like, “You? Again? Where the hell is Daddy?”

In order to avoid losing our sanity, I try to make lots of plans for the days that we are home together. We attend story time at the library in the morning and we schedule play dates in the afternoon.  Unfortunately, because of the treadmill delivery today, we couldn’t make any definite plans since I wasn’t sure what time they were coming. I find it very annoying that you have to wait until the morning of a delivery to have ANY idea of when to expect these people. Needless to say, we had to skip story time because I was afraid we’d miss them. Finally, around 11:30, the guys called to let me know they’d be at my house within the hour.

Clearly, whoever decided that scheduling a four hour block of time for a delivery is not a stay at home mother. First of all, we need to leave the house!! Sitting around for four hours, especially on a day when the weather isn’t nice enough for me to take the baby outside, is torture. Secondly, you’re going to show up at my house at exactly the same time that my son goes down for a nap? Do you realize how detrimental this is to my day??? I can’t take the baby upstairs for his nap until the delivery guys show up because the doorbell/dog barking will wake him up, but I can’t let him nap too late in the day because he’ll be up all night. It’s a science, people. And lastly, why is it that delivery men get a FOUR HOUR time frame to show up for their appointments??? If I could schedule all of my appointments like that, my life would be a hell of a lot easier. Like, hey doctor, I’ll be at my annual exam anytime between 9:00am and 12:00pm, whenever it’s convenient for me to get out of my house today. Maybe I’ll tell my boss that I’ll call him tomorrow morning to let him know what time frame I’ll be showing up for work, anywhere from 10:00am to 2:00pm, depending on how much wine I drink tonight.

Fortunately, the guys showed up and were able to build the treadmill while I put my son down for a nap. I’m actually pretty impressed that they were able to get out without waking him up, so maybe today isn’t a total disaster after all. And on that note, now that I have absolutely no excuse, I should probably get off my computer and get my ass on that treadmill before the baby wakes up.

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Photo via healthtap.com

A few months ago, my husband looked at me in the morning when we woke up and asked what was wrong. I said I was exhausted, which was actually an understatement. “Why can’t you sleep?”  He asked. “Do you have a sleep disorder or something?” Well, the answer is yes. I do. It’s called motherhood.

When I was pregnant, every mother I spoke to was telling me to sleep while I had the chance. Honestly, I wanted to punch them in the face. Alright, ladies, let me just ignore the nine pound human being kicking me in the ribs, the fact that I need at least six pillows to get remotely comfortable, and the problem that I need to pee every eight minutes. Sleep while I can? Are you for real?

Now, I get it. I know why they say that. Motherhood is actually far more sleep-depriving than pregnancy. I expected to lose sleep in the beginning. I knew the baby would be up every two hours to eat. What I didn’t know is that almost sixteen months into parenting, I still sleep so little that I could probably be diagnosed with motherhood-induced insomnia. I literally have not slept straight through the night in two years.

While we have had a few stretches of time when the baby was sleeping consistently from about 8pm-6am, something always comes along that totally screws any progress we’ve made. You know what I mean – a bad head cold or an out of town trip that ruins the routine. And teething is the absolute worst culprit of them all. I don’t blame my son. If I had five sharp teeth cutting through my gums and and waking me up constantly, I’d scream at night, too.

Several weeks ago, I stayed at my mom’s house for a few days while my husband was out of town. My fifteen month old barely slept that entire weekend. One night, he got up twice to drink bottles of milk before getting up for the day at 5:30am. In the morning, my mom asked me, “Why’s he getting up for bottles at night? He’s too old for that. That’s just a bad habit.” First of all, I HATE comments about my parenting choices from anyone, especially my mother. My theory is, unless you are offering me a solution and you are willing to come over and train me in how to fix the problem, then don’t point out my parenting problems.

While I was pissed at my mom at the time, she’s right. And let me tell you, the only thing worse than annoying comments from your mother is when she’s actually saying something that makes good sense. In my defense, here’s what happened. Over the past several months, when my son woke up at night crying, I gave him a bottle and rocked him back to sleep. That’s what I’ve always done since he was a newborn. I guess I didn’t consider that it was eventually going to become a bad habit. Plus, at 3:00am, I’m pretty much running on auto-pilot. I’m practically sleep walking at that hour, so I had no idea what the hell I was doing. But the result of this night time routine is that I’ve created a monster. A midnight milk craving, bottle slugging, toddler monster.

The problem with motherhood for me is that there are a multitude of reasons why I have insomnia beyond my milk addicted toddler. Between making mental to-do lists while laying in bed and getting up to pee because I drank too much wine, I literally never sleep. Then, I fall into the trap of clock watching, counting the minutes until my alarm goes off, followed by getting pissed at the neighbor’s dog for barking outside my bedroom at ridiculous hours of the night. Of course, if I’m awake, then I might as well check my e-mails and post a bitter Tweet about how tired and crabby I’m going to be in the morning.

We decided to wean the baby off bottles during the day and midnight feedings in an attempt to help him learn to sleep through the night. By the way, it’s not helping my insomnia situation. I feel like we are having a battle of the wills at 2:00am every night. Unfortunately, I created a strong-minded, persistent child who is determined to spend every night torturing me until I give in to his crazy addiction. I swear, if there was bottle rehab for babies, I’d send him.

But my mom’s comments are constantly swirling in my head and I know I can’t give in and let him drink all night. That’s the thing about mothers. Even when they live out of town, they are constantly nagging you. I know once we get through it, we’ll all be sleeping a little bit better. Now if I could only find a way to stop spending my nights making my grocery list in my head and counting how many minutes I have left until my dreaded alarm goes off. I should probably stop Tweeting in the middle of the night, too, but my social media obsession is an entirely separate blog post in itself.

In the meantime, I’ll give you all pregnant ladies some advice. I know – you’re going to want to punch me in the face for saying this, but get some sleep while you can. Seriously.

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As a certified early childhood education teacher and former Center Director of a local children’s center, I feel passionate that a strong educational foundation is key in preparing children to enter formal schooling. Now, as a work at home mother to a toddler, I am more interested than ever in resources that are available for parents to use at home to help encourage a love for learning at an early age.

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These days, technology is such an important part of our everyday lives. Before my son even said his first word, he was already holding my iPhone and pretending to babble away. That being said, when my son is using my computer or the iPad, I want it to be for educational purposes. ABCMouse is wonderful because it provides both a fun and educational way for children to use the computer.

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