The Perfect Mother

Christmas with kids

Christmas is just around the corner and I must admit to having seen many of them. When I was a small child, we lived in an apartment in Canton, OH. The tradition then was to first decorate my grandmother's tree, then Aunt Mildred's and my dad did ours on Christmas Eve.

We had a sunroom in our apartment and my dad would get a large tree and put all his village pieces and animals around the tree. Christmas was always fun with lots of family around.

Fast forward to my getting married, my hubby in the Air Force and we lived in Indiana. I was pregnant with our third child and was determined to be the perfect mommy that particular Christmas Eve. Hubby had the afternoon shift and I decided to get the kids dressed and we'd go to Christmas Eve services at the church.

After rolling my three-year-old daughter's hair in those little pink foam curlers, I decided to take my bath--we didn't have showers back then in the house we rented. So there I was about 6 months pregnant and I told the two litle ones to play while I bathed. I left the bathroom door open so I could keep tabs on them.

My daughter came running into the bathroom, within five minutes of me being in there, her curlers bouncing, and said, "Mommy! Mommy! Chris has the fish on the floor."

We had a fish tank and after climbing out of the tub and throwing a robe on, I went into the living room to find several fish flopping on the floor. Seems my son had got the little net and went fishing! He was 4 years old at that time.

So after getting the fish back into the water, dressing, getting the kids fed and dressed, we headed off to church. My June Cleaver thoughts were to come home from church, read "Twas the night before Christmas," have cookies and milk and tuck my little angels into bed.

We got to church and I had let Chris take two little matchbook cars along. During the service, he managed to run the cars up the leg of the woman who sat beside him. My daughter continued to stick her tongue out at the people behind us in spite of my warnings that Santa surely wouldn't show up for the two of them if they didn't settle down. And of course, they wiggled and fussed and I was exhausted by the time we got home.

I got them ready for bed and told them to go to sleep or Santa wouldn't bring them toys in the morning.

Then when I was playing Mrs. Santa, I realized something--I FORGOT TO READ THEM THE STORY AND GIVE THEM COOKIES AND MILK! What a dreadful Mommy I was! I just wanted to get them into bed and have some peace and quite.
Of course I felt guilty all night long for not being the perfect mother. Then when hubby got home after midnight, he had to put together the rocking chairs his parents had sent from Ohio.

There seemed to be a problem--some of the pieces were missing. So he got on the phone with his parents to see if they knew where the pieces had gotten to. Of course they didn't and the chairs had to be returned.

Morning arrived a bit too early--like Chris and Michelle were up at 4 a.m., 4:30 am., 5, 5:30 and finally we said "forget sleeping in, let's get up!"

It was a great Christmas and one I'll aways remember. In spite of two kids being not as perfect as the kids in the movies or TV, in spite of the fact that we weren't exactly rich, or that I wasn't the perfect mother. We had family and friends and that's what Christmas is all about.
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