The title of this post has nothing to do with the entry....Gracie and Abigail have camp this week and the theme is "Going West".  They learned to sing Home on the Range today and this was Gracie's rendition of where the deer and the antelope play.  I laughed out loud when she sang it...and kept giggling when I wondered how exactly cantaloupes play....do they run around with the oranges or are they more into chilling with the bananas?  And I'm glad I had that laugh this afternoon, 'cause I sure needed to remember it this evening....

Some days.....

When I was younger, I didn't really think too much about being a mom.  I wasn't one of those teenage girls who couldn't wait to grow up and have children.  Oh, don't get me wrong....I couldn't wait to grow up all right....so I could go to places like Hawaii and India and Paris and Tahiti.  I wanted to wander around the world and write amazing stories.  I wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail and fly a Cessna solo.  My dreams pretty much consisted of rather selfish, over-the-top adventures.  Even when I hit my mid-20s, I still didn't really toy with the idea of becoming a parent....there were still places to visit, mysteries to solve, life to live.  And, if in the moments when I was totally honest with myself, I believed that I wouldn't make a very good parent.  In fact, in my heart of hearts, I believed I would be a terrible mother.  I was scatter-brained and disorganized.  I was more apt to wander around with my head in the clouds, dreaming up schemes than to focus long enough to take care of anything other than myself.  Really, I couldn't even keep plants alive...what would ever make me think I could actually be responsible for another human being.  Nope, I figured, I just wasn't mommy material.  Now aunt material?  Oh yeah, that I was born for.  I imagined that I would be the slightly eccentric relative in my nieces' and nephews' lives - the one who breezed in from exotic locales bearing bizarre gifts.  The one who would take them for ice cream for breakfast and let them finger paint my kitchen.  Yep, being a fun aunt was something I could definitely handle. 

Well, fast forward a decade.  For a long time, I did play the role of the cool aunt....while I didn't exactly breeze in from faraway spots, I did (and still do...shhh!!!) treat my nieces to ice cream before dinner and let them stay up later than they should watching movies.  And finger painting....well, let's just say that my back porch and my floors have been an array of colors over the years (and my sister's kitchen where she & I let our oldest niece paint with food coloring...at least I can blame that partly on my sister ).  But somehow, now, I find myself the mommy to my own two little girls.  I am responsible for them...I am the parent.  I am what I was terrified I would never be capable of doing.  And some days, like today, I'm still scared.  Because, on days like today, my insecurities about being a mom all come rushing back and I wonder if I have bitten off more than I can chew and I wonder if my babies have been jipped by getting me for a mommy.

We had another leak...this time, it appears to be on the thing in the roof that covers the oven exhaust hood, officially known as the stove thingamaboppy covery doodah...yeah, that.  Anyway, we had a strong storm blow through and about halfway into it, I heard drip, drip, drip on the stovetop.  Great, I thought, just great.  I put a mixing bowl under the leak and when Steve came home, he climbed up in the attic to take a look (yes, that would be twice in three days that he had to climb up in there and look for water leaks...when it rains in pours, or I guess in this case, when it leaks, it pours...).  I was cooking dinner and the girls were playing in the living room.  I pulled the biscuits out of the oven (don't you just love breakfast for dinner?  Yum, yum!).  Evidently, they heard Steve up in the ceiling and since they knew where the leak was coming from, they came up with an idea.  They ran into the kitchen to try and talk to him through the exhaust fan.  The exhaust fan that is right over the stove.  The stove where I had just placed the Pampered Chef stone with the biscuits.  The very, very hot Pampered Chef stone. 

It all happened so quickly that I'm not even sure I can correctly relay the chain of events.  All I know is I turned around and Gracie was jumping up and down and screaming.  My first reaction was that Abigail must have made her mad and judging from the height she was reaching with her jumps, she wasn't just mad, she was furious.  It took me a nanosecond to process what she was saying.  "Mommy, I burned myself!  Mommy, I burned myself!"  I heard her but I still didn't understand - she didn't look burned anywhere and what could she possibly have burned herself on?  Still jumping and screaming, she pointed one finger at the baking stone on the stove and with her other hand, she pointed to her chin.  And with a feeling of dread, I realized exactly what she had done.  She was looking up at the exhaust fan and put the bottom of her chin down on the baking stone.  I looked at the burn and probably in a mixture of guilt and worry, I panicked a bit.  I scooped her up and put her on the bed and ran to get some ice (after things calmed down, we read on the internet that you're not supposed to put ice on a burn, you're supposed to use cool water... who knew?).  I called to Steve that he needed to come down.  To me, it looked bad and it looked like we needed to go to the doctor.  Maybe because he wasn't right there when it happened, maybe because it wasn't his fault or maybe because he keeps his cool a lot better than me, Steve convinced me just to call the doctor first before we made the trip over there.  Gracie calmed down amazingly quickly.  She is my drama queen and I thought for sure she'd be screaming for hours, but within a couple of minutes she was sitting rather still and only occasionally mentioning that it hurt.  The doctor's advice was to keep cool water on it for 30 minutes and then doctor it with antibiotic cream and to bring her in on Tuesday if it still looked bad in the morning.

So, that's what we did and while it looks bad, at least to me, it doesn't seem to be causing her too much pain or worry.  I, other the other hand, feel sick every time I look at it.  And it all comes rushing back...the fear that's always there but usually just as a whisper is right now a loud roar.....that nagging doubt that I am not and will never be a good mommy....


But, since I am the girls' mommy, I don't get to sit around in wallow in self-doubt and pity.  I have to dust myself off and remind myself that things happen even to kids with the most vigilant of parents...

Here's a picture of the oh-so-lovely burn on my sweet girl's chin:


Gracie doesn't seem to be the least bit mad at me because I let her get burned.  She is, however, furious with the baking stone.  "Mama, I know I'm not supposed to, but I HATE THAT COOKING PAN!"  Me, too, baby, me too

(And, here's a little something:  Sometimes, I wonder about the time I spend writing down so many things that happen in our lives...I mean, really, do the girls or I gain anything by doing it?  It's when things like this happen that I'm so glad that I do.  As I was writing this, I remembered a journal entry that I wrote when I was writing for Babycenter.  Here's a link to it if you'd like to read it:  Dangerprone Daphne.  And when I went back and read it, it reminded me that I've always been worried about Gracie getting hurt & I've always overreacted )