Mother's Day

Of course we just celebrated Mother's Day, and I can't let the holiday pass without a little post about Mother's Day. It's the journalist in me.


Here are some things I love about being a mother.


1. I love how it has made me understand and appreciate my own mother even more. I still tease her about the same old stuff (isn't that what kids do to parents?). But she's the first person I turn to for advice if MrDartt and I don't know what to do with Big Boy and his strange behavior. She can listen to me and my dumb stories without judging, and we have become friends as I've grown up and she's gotten cooler (you know what I mean -- she was always cool but my outlook has changed).


2. I love it when my baby sees me and smiles and his little legs kick and he is obviously very excited. What I love most about it is that babies' emotions are true emotions. They don't know how to fake a smile. So when he hasn't seen me all morning because I slept in and he's just now seeing me for the first time in hours, and he's grinning so big and making that happy squealing noise, it just melts my heart.


3. I love how my 2.5-year-old will chase me to the door, yelling, "Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!" when I am leaving for work.


4. Most of the time, I love how my 2.5-year-old will imitate things his dad and I say or do. Not when he mutters, "God damn it," when his sandwich falls apart for the umpteenth time, or spits on the ground because he says that's what daddy does (although I'm not sure if he's really seen daddy do that), but when he says, "Mommy, do you have any idea where my book is?" Or when he says, "That was really nice of you to make me lunch, Mommy," or, "Ooh, nice pants, Mommy!" or "Those bracelets look really handsome on you, Mommy." And even cooler is when they come up with their own silly stuff -- tonight Big Boy didn't want his corn on the cob cooked. He took a bite of it raw, and said, "Yep, I like it fresh. I want to eat it fresh, Mommy."


5. I love that just because I'm a mother, I get a special day when my husband will fold laundry for me as a nice surprise.


Of course there are some drawbacks to motherhood -- you have to get up at least six times during each meal to get something for someone, and if someone wakes up crying in the middle of the night you can't just go back to sleep -- but come on, that stuff is tiny compared to watching your little boy use the hose to fill his watering can, all the while tipping his watering can so that it's emptying faster than he can fill it.


Even though I'm a couple days late (wouldn't fly in the daily newspaper biz), Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there whose kids like fresh corn and other weird stuff.