Shockingly, I wake up every morning before my two-year-old and get in an early morning workout. I am serious. It surprises me too. I know, you can throw things at me now. This is one area in my life where I excel. I do deserve one thing, right?

After I get out of bed and before my workout, I enjoy a glorious twenty-ish minutes of alone time. I drink my coffee, scroll through my phone and just enjoy the silence of silence and nothingness. Pure bliss. The best way to start my day. It’s become a habit of almost three years and I can’t imagine starting my day any other way.

I always look at my TimeHop and “On This Day” from Facebook. I see crazy pictures from ten years ago. Those were the good old college days with silver eye-shadow and bad tans. I see pictures from five years ago when my husband and I were young, carefree (and kid free) and attended concert after concert together. And then I look at pictures from the past couple years of my fat squishy little baby meatball Henry before he turned into a loving/angry swamp monster toddler.

These memories always make me laugh and smile.

One popped up today that read, “I said I would never let my kid play with an empty beer box at 7 am in the morning but I really need to get ready for work. #RealLife #MomFail #WhateverWorks”

That made me start thinking of all the things I do now that I said I would never do as a parent. Not the, “I’ll never let my kid watch a movie on my iPhone during dinner so I can enjoy a real meal” moments.

More like the, “I’ll never wipe green snot from my kid’s nose with my own shirt sleeve,” kind of moment. You know, the messy moments. The gross moments. The ones that made you throw up in your mouth thinking about them pre-kids. Really the ones that still make you throw up in your mouth when you think about them. The ones that people tell as their token “parenting horror story”.

So here goes. No blog of mine is ever complete without a good list. A list of my top three messy mom moments.

• This is both mine and my husband’s token parenting horror story. Henry was probably three months old. It was a morning after I had just gone back to work. I had gotten out of the shower and my husband had Henry on his changing table about to get him dressed for the day. He took off Henry’s little diaper and heard him fart. Before he could make a move, our tiny newborn pooped with such force that it shot about three feet and hit and splattered on the wall in front of him. Logan screamed in horror. I ran in the room to see fresh poop sliding down the wall. Then he pooped again. This one went all over his dresser and a different part of the wall. The smell was awful. Neither of us knew what to do. It was like being in a war zone and the enemy weighs less than ten pounds. And his bullets were made of poop. They were whizzing by so quickly we couldn’t react. I honestly don’t remember the rest. It was a blur. A blur of baby wipes, cleaning supplies and lots of F-bombs. For real, I remember thinking what the f**k just happened? My newborn just projectile pooped all over the walls of his nursery.
• This past weekend, I couldn’t find Henry’s brand new shoes. I had checked all his usual hiding places – the microwave, laundry baskets, his toy box. No where to be found. The shoes are bright orange so I know I couldn’t miss them. I sat Henry down for a serious talk. Which included bribery. “Mommy needs to know where your new shoes from Gigi are. If you tell her where they are this time, you can have a piece of candy.” Hey, it worked. He proceeded to tell me he made a messy mess with them so he put them in the trash. They had been missing for about three days so I knew I had to head to the toter outside. I put on a pair of gardening gloves and rifled through three large trash bags of trash that included dirty diapers, food scraps, empty cans and other gross, nasty things I didn’t want to be elbow deep in. On the last bag, I spotted orange. There were his new shoes, with an old brown banana peel slipped right on the inside for safe keeping. Luckily the shoes were Natives and are made of plastic so they were easily salvaged.
• The first time Henry ever got really sick I wouldn’t let him out of my sight. He had RSV and was going between hacking coughs and spitting up anything that was in his body. I was rocking him and just let him spit up all over me repeatedly. For hours. Poor little guy was exhausted and so was I. By the end of the night I was absolutely soaked in spit up but my little dude finally fell asleep.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Being a mom/dad/parent is hard freaking work. And it gets oh so messy. Luckily there are more good than messy moments. And if you feel inclined to share, I would love to hear some of your messiest moments.

Until Next Time,

Jamie