Score one for Mom!

It’s days like this that make me absolutely love being a mom. “Days like what?”, you may ask. Is it the warm hug they give you before they leave for school? Is it the joy on their face when they return home to fresh-baked cookies and just-milked-from-the-cow-fresh milk? Is it when they say “And God bless my mom, the best mom on the whole earth.” when they pray at night? Is it their sweet angelic faces when they’re fast asleep?

Naaaaaaaaahhhh. It’s none of that. That’s for moms with toddlers who don’t know any better-yet. No, what makes me LOVE being a mom is the chance for me, when we’re just one-on-one, to embarrass the crap out of them!

I finally caved and took Son #2 to the Dr. this morning. His lymph nodes have been swollen for 2 weeks now- I guess beyond the “it’s normal” stage. And now that one looks to be the size of a miniature golf-ball, I thought, “Well sheesh, I guess I’d better take him in. There’s goes a morning of good tennis- dang it!”. So I took him in (and before you call CPS, I actually made the appointment on Friday).

As we entered the exam room he plopped himself down on the table and then proceeded to do what he’s done at every doctors visit for 13 out of his 15 years: play with the stirrups. Every. Single. Time. He started pulling them out, then pushing them in, then pulling them out, then pulling them up, then pushing them down, then back in, etc. etc. etc. Then here’s what happened:

Me: "Please put those back and leave them alone (something I’ve said probably a million times in the past 13 years).
Then he asked the question he’s asked probably a million times in the past 13 years:

Him: “So what ARE those?”

Me: thinking, I have had enough of this now, so you think you wanna know? OK, buddy- here goes. “Those are stirrups. When a woman goes to the doctor to have an exam, or say, to the hospital to have a baby, they pull those all they way up and she puts her feet in them.”

I then sat back and enjoyed the view. I could see it start at the tippy top of his head- the slow, yet all-too-apparent horror start to dawn on him. His eyebrows furrowed for just a second- only a nano-second really, and then they shot up, almost into his hairline. His eyes narrowed and then widened so far that I thought they’d pop right out. His mouth widened just as much- he formed first a huge “O”, and then it turned into a disgusted grimace.

He dropped the stirrups like they had turned in to lava. He used the tip of one finger to gingerly shove them back into their hiding places. Then he wiped both hands on the legs of his jeans- totally and utterly disgusted, embarrassed and wishing there was a huge hole to swallow him up.

It was a proud, joy-filled moment for me. It still brings a tear to my eye to write about it.

Today’s Score: Son #2- 512 *Mom- 7,476,221

Janine is learning to live life differently since the sudden death of her husband on December 18th, 2007. She has 6 awesome children and expresses ‘I miss him more than I can say.’ Her personal blog One Breath at a Time is sometimes painful, most times humorous, always honest. She now seems to live one breath at a time.