We recently had a segment on the morning show called “Mom of the Year,” where we celebrated those delightful moments when you totally dropped the parenting ball. Whether it’s pure laziness, accidentally letting a curse word fly in front of your 3-year-old, or taking your kids to the grocery store in their PJs because getting them dressed felt like scaling Everest, the stories were hilarious when the calls started rolling in! This parenting gig is exhausting, and sometimes, no matter how hard we try to be perfect, things inevitably go wrong.
One of the best calls we received was from a woman who confessed to letting her daughter have multiple bowls of sugary cereal for dinner, while she herself lounged on the couch with a bottle of wine. She just wasn’t in the mood to enforce vegetable consumption that night. Don’t feel bad, moms - not every dinner needs to include the full food pyramid. Consider that little Pinot Grigio vacation on the couch a well-deserved mental health break.
My sweet grandma has a classic story she loves to share too. When my dad was a baby, he fell asleep in the middle of her bed. Thinking he was perfectly safe, she tiptoed out of the room to get a few chores done. About 10 minutes later, she returned to find that my dad had vanished! Where did the baby go? Panicked, she heard a faint whimper and investigated further. Turns out, my dad had rolled over, slid right into the tiny gap between the mattress and the wall, and was stuck like a little cork. Total “Mom of the Year” moment that my grandma laughs about now, although it was pretty terrifying at the time.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to bust my wife for her own “Mom of the Year” moment. Our 10-month-old daughter is currently in a rolling phase. She can’t crawl yet, but she’s mastered rolling all around the floor to get where she wants to go. One day, she was lying safely in the middle of our living room when my wife zipped into the kitchen to make her a bottle. In those few unsupervised minutes, our daughter rolled over to our dog, who was happily chewing on a rawhide bone. She managed to swipe it from him and, before anyone could intervene, popped the slimy, chewed-up end right into her mouth and started suckling away. My wife returned, horrified, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. She did her best to rinse out our daughter’s mouth and finally chalked it up to a “Mom of the Year” moment.
The nasty dog bone mishap happened a couple of weekends ago, and so far, my daughter seems to be doing just fine. Although, for some reason, every time the doorbell rings, she starts barking, and she won’t stop dragging her butt across the floor! Weird.
Parenting is tough, and perfection is impossible. Sometimes, you just have to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. So here’s to all the moms (and dads) out there who’ve had their own “Mom of the Year” moments - because, let’s face it, we’ve all been there.
Photography credit: Jeremy Padgett
