One of the best things about being a mom is discovering how awesome you are at being a mom. My kids are 2, 4 and 6 so that means I've only been a mom for 6 years. It's relatively new to me. I mean, I've been other things for a lot longer like a teacher, a wife, just me in general. And in terms of being the mom of a 6-year old - I'm totally new at that! And even though I've been a mom for 6 years, I've only been a mom of a girl for four, so cut me some slack there, okay. And I think that being a mom makes you find shortcuts out of necessity and, well let's face it moms, some shortcuts are simply brilliant.
Here are the two things I discovered today and I think it's pretty awesome. You may read this, think "seriously?" and click that X never to read my blog again because you may think that I'm totally lame for finally getting this, but I finally got it so now I think I'm brilliant.
1. Washing the girls' hair in the bathtub.
My technique all these years (ha!) was to fill up this big plastic handled cup with water from the faucet, while the tub fills up, and pour it on the girls hair to get it wet, then shampoo it, and fill the cup again and again to rinse. Clearly, I don't use the shower head and I know that would be the simplest thing to do but it just doesn't work in my bathtub, okay. So, the girls are getting bigger and bigger which means their hair is getting longer and longer and the wetting and rinsing is taking more and more effort. AND - the girls want to fill up their own containers with water from the faucet or, press their hands to the underside of the faucet spraying water everywhere and it's turning into the battle of who gets to fill up their cup first - little girls who like to play or Mama.
TODAY, I figured out I could just scoop up water from within the tub quickly and effortlessly and wet, wash and rinse the girls' hair. Brilliant! Maybe, duh to you, but I figured this out today so I am a brilliant mom. Or I've just been so flippin' exhausted for the past 6 years it took this long to figure it out. No. No, I'm brilliant.
2. Folding my husband's socks.
I love my husband very much and this is not some passive-aggressive attempt to get him to change his ways. No. Not. At. All.
Once upon a time I met a man, we fell in love, moved in together and finally got married 8 years later. So, you see, I've had a domestic relationship with my husband for a long time. And while our laundry routine and roles have changed over the years, I seem to have always been the folder. At the beginning of our relationship, when newly formed couples have to sort out all their quirks and discrepancies with each other, and make compromises, and put the honeymoon on the shelf and take a month or two to figure out the mundane stuff like chores, preferences, and paperwork, we had a "discussion" about sock folding. When my husband pulls off his socks, they turn inside out. They end up in the laundry basket this way, the washer this way, the dryer this way, and again in the clean clothes laundry basket this way and I had to fold them. I, apparently, do not by happenstance turn my socks inside out when I pull them off (because, I don't know, I'm kind of perfect that way I guess) so I rarely had to deal with inside out socks prior to meeting my husband. So I was faced with a, a, a thing, about having to turn socks outside in before folding them and I brought this to his attention. I was young, our relationship was new, I felt that bringing these types of things to the attention of your partner is what you do in grown-up relationships.
TODAY, after 17 years of abiding by my "this is not my battle to fight, I will just turn the socks inside out and then fold them together" attitude regarding folding my husbands' socks, it hit me! I just folded them together the way the came out of the clean clothes laundry basket. Revolutionary! I fold 'em the way I see 'em. I mean, am I awesome or what?
In conclusion, am I brilliant? Awesome? Or did I just do some lazy shortcut out of pure exhaustion that I then perceived as brilliant or awesome because the understanding that I could have done this years ago made me realize how lame I've been? You decide.
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