Mom Guilt

Why do moms carry around so much guilt? Is it innate in us to feel guilty about working to provide your children with a better life when you see a stay-at-home mommy at school and you are just dropping your kids off while on your way to work? I see the moms who are casually walking their children into school and I'm hurrying mine out of the car....and it kills me! Those are the moments that I want to be a stay-at-home mom. To do the simple things, like attend every school party, not just the ones that work with my schedule.
I watched Tim Gunn's Guide to Style last night. He took a teacher who was also a mom and taught her the right way to dress but also to learn that its ok to pamper yourself. Of course, when they started talking about doing things for yourself and not just your children, she started crying and I started crying watching it. Why do we let ourselves go as moms?????? Do we think that being a nice looking, sharp dressed mom makes us seem self-indulgent - I don't think so. I always try to look my best - now somedays I don't feel my best - but hey, I try.

Proud mom!

I was glancing through my son's backpack last night and noticed a form that needed to be signed. It was the form for testing to get into the gifted and talented program for my 8 year old. I asked him about it and he said he didn't want to be in the gifted program because it would be a ton of extra work. I think he misunderstood that it was an honor to be asked to participate in the program. Not something that he should dread.

So....being the mom I am, I called to talk to the teacher about it and let her know that I really think he needs to be in it whether his test scores were high enough or not. To my surprise, she told me that he was going to qualify whether he tests high or not. She said he was one of the brightest kids in the class, but what was so special about him was that he was really well-rounded. I guess most kids who are smart really lack in social skills. Not my guy - with a mom that hasn't met a stranger, it would be extremely difficult for him to lack in any social skill whatsoever. That made me so proud of him. You see, he was injured at birth and paralyzed from the right shoulder down. This is a child that isn't even supposed to be able to move his arm, much less write with it. My son has turned out to be a go getter. He doesn't let the fact that his right arm doesn't straighten all the way get him down in the dumps. He embraces it. We call it his special arm or his lucky fin (Finding Nemo). We also live in a small town and all of these kids know him and play sports with him. They don't know him any other way.....and they really like him. But, the fact that he doesn't act shy and hide the fact that he's just a little different than anyone else makes me so full of pride. He's a great kid and I'm so proud to be his mom!

Hotdogs and the American family

Soccer season has started and so has the guilt feeling I get everytime I feed my little darlings hotdogs for dinner. When you have soccer practice two times a week and can't get home until 7pm, it's either feed them hotdogs or we all stay up until 10:30. There is no time for fixing dinner. So my question is this......is it really horrible to make almost no effort whatsoever on dinner when you have been running around like crazy? Or should I be one of those hyper-organized moms that has every element of the dinner planned out to the minute.

I'm getting a seal a meal - that's the answer! I'll be posting seal a meal recipes before long!