And just when I thought that no one would EVER give me a Mother of the Year award, Lucy over at Lucy's Life in Suburb World came through!
Lucy is wildly hilarious, and I love her blog because her kids are almost all grown up but she still gets to be Mom and even though she lives in the suburbs she seems way normal and not plasticine at all and she's been married forever, giving me hope for happily everafters and good relationships between mothers and teens and maybe the suburbs aren't full of terrible people after all.
Maybe. I'm still reluctant to venture past city limits.

Rules of the Award:

•Admit one thing you feel awful about involving being a mom. Get it off your shoulders. Once you've written it down, you are No Longer allowed to feel bad.It's over with, it's in the past. Remember, you're a good mom!

Okay, ready. The thing that I feel awful about is...
EVERYTHING. I have this inborn trait that makes me feel like absolute rotten awfulness about everything I do. No matter how good a job I do at anything (including momming) I feel like a miserable failure.

So that's all gone now? Terrific. I feel better already.

•Remind yourself you are a good mom, list seven things you love about your kids, you love doing with your kids, or that your kids love about you. These

are the things to remind yourself everyday that you Rock!

1. I love that I think that Jake is so incredibly gorgeous and it makes me feel warmfuzzy to think that it's because Dave and I made him that way all by ourselves.

2. I love that people can't decide who he looks like. They always say Dave at first because of the dark hair and eyes, but after 5 minutes they aren't so sure.

3. I love that Jake wakes me up every morning by telling me how to do it. "just open your eyes and stretch and sit up and you're all ready for the daytime!". He also tells me I look like Ms. Hannigan in the morning. And the other day he skipped the formalities and threw a shirt at my face and said "come on, boobsie, put onna shirt and let's go downstairs".
Hey, I take what I can get.

4. I love that Jake and I like the same foods. It makes our Saturday Afternoon Downtown Adventures in Eating superfun. I also love that Jake thinks that all the gross stuff that Dave eats is gross and I swear I have never told that child that anything is gross ever. He's just smart about stinky nasty things like his mother.
I truly believe that humans are given a sense of smell so we don't put anything that smells like dirty balls or hooker vag into our mouths.

5. I love how Jake is my world and I am his. For now. I also love that it won't be this way forever because it's exhausting to be someone's everything all the time.

6. I love that I work full time and don't have to be with that kid 24 hours a day. I wouldn't love that life at all. I have a hard time getting through a weekend without my brain falling apart.

7. I love that Jake doesn't see differences in people yet. BigLittleLargeSmallShortTallBoyGirlManWomanBlackWhiteBrownRedYellowOldYoung it's all the same. I know I am going to have to start teaching him the old "some people do things differently than we do" lesson really soon as he is a little confused about why certain people do certain things that we don't now that he is building new friendships and studying other people's habits a bit more these days. I feel like that is the first step in the end of total innocence, but I look forward to watching him process the ways and means of others and see what he chooses for himself.