You know you’ve achieved full "Momhood" when . . .
– You go to the bathroom while holding a baby (bonus points if you were breastfeeding at the time).
– You find yourself saying odd combinations of words like “don’t lick yogurt off the window”.
– It occurs to you that if you kick your oldest child really, really hard you could have everyone in the house crying at the same time.
– You yell at the kids for not being dressed even though it’s 1 in the afternoon and you’re still in your bathrobe.
– Your toddler follows you into the bathroom and helpfully tries to wipe your bottom.
– You allow your child to draw all over themselves with marker simply so they will stay occupied long enough for you to finish making their lunch.
– You share a couple of cookies with the kids just so when your husband gets home and finds the empty package you can say, “well, the kids ate some too.”
– You give your children cookies with their breakfast so that you won’t eat them all yourself.
– You can carry on a 10 minute conversation with your child about Pokemon without him catching on to the fact that you haven’t heard a word he said. (Trick: repeat the last 2 words of every second or third sentence and it seems like you’re actually listening – my husband’s been doing it to me for years.)
– When your 2 year old proudly says the f-word you encouragingly respond: “that’s right, Sweetheart – truck!”
– You see your toddler tearing up an artificial flower arrangement and figure, “it can be re-assembled” so you don’t bother stopping him.
– You insist on being the one to get the mail because you need your daily exercise.
– You plan all of your trips out of the house to minimize the number of times a child will have to be removed from a car seat.
– You know that trip planning has nothing to do with buying plane tickets and everything to do with grocery shopping.
– Your version of a cost-benefit analysis involves weighing whether cutting out a round of getting kids in and out of car seats is worth paying 50% more for diapers at the grocery store.
– You respond to a kid’s “why?” with “because I’m mean and I don’t like you very much.”
– You know that one day your child will tell his own child, “because I’m mean and I don’t like you very much” after being asked “why?” for the 5th time.
– You think other people are jealously admiring you and your attractive, smart, fun kids when really they’re just watching you so they can go home and start a conversation with, “I saw this poor woman while I was out today . . .”
– Even when all of your kids are crying at once – except for the oldest who wandered off to look at Pokemon cards and is now having you paged over the store intercom system because he didn’t see you when he looked up to ask if you’d buy him a pack of cards, you never think of yourself as “this poor woman”. You’re too busy enjoying your attractive, smart, fun kids.