That Mom

I have become that mom. You know the one. The one you see in grocery stores before you have kids (or perhaps long after your kids have grown) and think with disdain, "Ugh. I will never be that mom."

As I was trudging through the grocery store today, blocking entire aisles and intersections with the gigantic "car cart" required to distract my children for 20 minutes, I saw that mom staring back at me in my freezer door reflection. And as I opened that freezer door to grab two boxes of the frozen waffles I vowed to never buy, I found myself creating justification for my behavior. "But they're multigrain!" or "Hmm. Let's grab the box of orange Annie's mac and cheese and see if I can fool my daughter into thinking it's Kraft. But...I'll grab on box of whole grain Kraft in case she figures out my switch. I wonder if it's really whole grain or pseudo enriched whole grain?"

And that makes me think about how I've become that mom at home, too. My name is Marisa, and I feed my kids macaroni and cheese from a box. Dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, too. Ugh. But not every day! Usually just once a week! (See? More justification.)

Ugh. But then I step back and look at the big picture. My kids are healthy, intelligent and mostly well-behaved. If I had a supervisor, I'd still get a good review, despite a few inadequacies. So I give myself some slack. And I need it--to make up for that doughnut I used in a frazzled moment to bribe the kids so they'd stop screaming and making a scene at the grocery store. And I almost let them eat it before we got to the checkout stand, but I'm not that mom...yet.