You know you're a good mom when...

Adam has been out of town the past couple of days and so it’s been just me and Ella, and within these past few days I have had some truly fantastic awesome mom moments.

 (Just so there's not too much confusion, the word "awesome" is dripping with sarcasm, you need to know that to understand how these stories fit that description).

Let’s start with the awesome moment where I showed my amazing mom skills in the Gap dressing room. 

Gap was having a killer sale and Adam told me to go find something for him to give me for Christmas (that’s how we do gifts around here). 

I had a pile of clothes to try on so I knew we would be in the dressing room for a while, so after cramming our entire stroller in the tiny dressing room, I scattered toys all over the floor and a container of cheerios to keep Ella entertained, but she was far from satisfied with my attempts. 

She was doing everything within her power to escape that room even going so far as to reach her arm under the dressing room door (luckily her head was too big for her to be able to fit through) and flail her arm (toy rings in hang) under the dressing room door to alert passers-by that she was in need of rescuing. 

Finally she contented herself with some toy and I noticed that she was chewing on something and I assumed it was a cheerio, or maybe a piece of paper (she’s eaten far worse than that, I’ve pulled out insect legs from her mouth before) so I left her alone. 

But then I had second thoughts so I dug my finger in her mouth (a regular routine in our home) to find an unidentified small yellow pill that someone had dropped on the floor. 

Awesome. 

My baby was taking unprescribed and unidentified drugs. 

Maybe it was nothing, maybe it was just an allergy medicine or something but what if it was something that’s bad for little babies to take? 

I mean, you aren’t even supposed to give babies adult advil because it could be harmful to them. 

I persuaded her to drink a lot of water and eat a lot of crackers to help dilute whatever she took and kept a close eye on her for the rest of the day to make sure she didn’t have a bad reaction thanks to the mysterious medicine that she’d consumed. 

Also, I left a mess of cheerio and chex crumbs in the dressing room, sorry Gap, it was a desperate moment.

Right before the pill incident.

This picture does not nearly grasp the chaotic state of this dressing room, I mean you can't even see the stroller or majority of the crumb mess, I was tying to be quick while taking this picture.

Later that day she also swallowed a piece of gum. 

Also awesome.

Along those lines of things Ella consumes: last week I was showing Adam pictures of Ella eating handfuls of dirt at the park and laughing about it and he asked 

“So you didn’t stop her? You just took pictures of it?” 

And that was another awesome mom moment. 

Yeah, why did I take pictures instead of stopping her? 

I guess I just assumed that eating dirt is like a toddler rite of passage, I don’t know.

Like I said, she’s eaten far worse things (unidentified drugs and bugs, for example).

Eating dirt.

Another awesome mom moment occurred at church. 

There are these little squeeze packets of pureed baby food, supposedly these help minimize messes while on the go. 

This seemed like a good idea so I brought one to church. 

Ella thought it tasted pretty great.

But then she grabbed the packet and simultaneously squeezed and flailed her arm around so that pureed baby food went flying all over our church bench and everywhere around us. 

I mean, can you picture that? 

Everyone is listening to the person speaking up front, the room is quiet and this little girl is spraying huge amounts of applesauce into the air. 

So awesome. 

And then I pull the packet of food from her hands and she starts screaming and everyone's eyes immediately look at me as I desperately try to wipe down the bench and floor with a baby wipe before the pureed baby food soaks in and also try to grab all her stuff to go rushing out of the door.

But at least she wore a cute dress to church.

Pretty much any room that Ella is in is left much messier than it was prior to her being there.

I give her food to try and keep her happy and quiet at church and we honestly have to vacuum our Sunday School room after class every single Sunday because there is like an entire box of cracker crumbs and cheerios spread across the entire floor. 

By the end of church I was completely fried and could hardly complete a sentence.

It was just one of those awesome mom days.

This is how these messes begin.

When we got home from church Ella took a much needed nap and I consumed an entire half a box of chocolates that Adam left for me before he headed out of town and I’m already feeling better about the day. 

I was supposed to make the chocolates last for several days but that was a completely unrealistic goal, especially after a day like today.

All I have to say is that single parents are ah-mazing.

The end.