The Adventures of a Mediocre Mommy

It all started with a blank white posterboard and a note:

"Dear Parents, Please decorate this posterboard with the theme 'What I learned at Longmire.' Feel free to include samples of art work and handwriting and also pictures of your child. We will be displaying these posters at our pre-school graduation on May 20th."

Then another note:

"Dear Parents, Good news! Our parent graduation committee has reserved _____ Hotel in Bryan for our pre-school graduation. This hotel is newly built and a beautiful facility in which to host this important event. We are so grateful to the committee for securing this wonderful location for us!"

Then another:

"Dear Parents, Please send $16.95 for your child's graduation cap and gown."

Then another:

"Dear Parents, Please complete the attached RSVP for our pre-school graduation so that our parent graduation committee can adequately plan for the event and the reception to follow. We will have cake and punch along with a special program, and our parent graduation committee has put together an exciting video presentation to reflect on your child's time at Longmire. If you'd like to help decorate the facility for graduation, please let me know."

Then came the handmade invitation complete with multi-colored paper and ribbon and personalized with my child's picture and artwork at the bottom.

Call me crazy, but people have been born, married, and buried with less fanfare. This was a pre-school graduation, for goodness sakes! I know this may sound like sacrilege to some, but, honestly, it's not that big of an accomplishment. I'm pretty sure that even if he didn't know his colors and couldn't tell me what sound an "S" makes he would still be "graduating."

My first thought, if I'm being honest, was "Who the hell has the kind of time to care this much about pre-school?"

My second thought, only moments later,was more of an epiphany. It was a defining moment of my life, if you will. It was spiritual.

I am a mediocre mommy.

That's right. By today's suburban standards, sometimes I suck. I let my kids put stickers on the wall and play catch in the living room. They take off on their bikes and I may not see them for 20 or 30 minutes. Just yesterday, they played for six straight hours wearing only their underwear. When Tucker got pegged in the shin with a baseball last week, I yelled through the fence, "Get up! You're fine!" I think pre-school gradations should involve paper hats and pizza for lunch.

I'm not crafty. I can't decorate things. I forget to regularly wash their sheets. I have road rage in front of them. I inadvertently use the words "jackass" and "crap." And sometimes, every so often, I just want them to leave me alone.

Don't get me wrong, I love my kids more than my own life. Next to my husband, they are the single greatest source of joy in my life. I want them to grow up to be well-adjusted and happy and kind.

But I can't cook a five course dinner in heels and a prom dress while they sit silently at the table in our pristine home making artwork for nursing home patients. This is not my world, even if everyone else around me wants me to believe it's theirs.

I am not, and I never will be, a Super Mommy. I have no desire to try. As the pre-school graduation from hell materialized, I resolved to never again care that I can't meet the present-day standard.

I stand before you (or my computer, actually) proud to be a Mediocre Mommy.