thanks for a laugh, Erika!

I've had a few myself....

-when potty training my daughter a few years ago, i acutally asked a couple of my patients if they needed to pee before they left the practice....

-I went out on a rare nite without kids to a karaoke nite and wondered why there weren't any Wiggles songs....

-when walking with a friend, i automatically grabbed her hand as we started to walk across a street....

-I learned that the heart is an infinitely expanding organ....

have a great weekend-

I remember clearly one time when Seth was sick, and I was hugging him close to me, and I thought "this has got to be the only time that someone is puking, and I want to pull him even closer to me!"

I had a similar iPhone moment, but more like "how can you afford the time to sit there?"  If I wanted to be in that line (I don't FWIW), I would have to many outstanding mom and household things hanging over my head to enjoy it.

The puking is definitely a mommy/daddy moment thing.  When you would put your hands out and encourage someone to throw up into them, you know it's 100% unconditional love!

stood in an aisle, looking over a shelf of merchandise, rocking from side to side to keep your shopping cart in motion, and then realized the baby was at home and your cart was empty?

FYI on the iPhone... it is way cool.  My husband picked one up yesterday, which is funny because he is so not "cutting edge tech."  He showed up 30 minutes before opening and was on his way home w/ his new toy about 90 minutes later, so it wasn't too painful. They are so cool that even though I have little use, and no need for one, I'd be seriously tempted if ATT wasn't the exclusive carrier (their coverage sucks in my area)...

when I started flinging my right arm across the passenger seat -- no matter who was in it -- when I ran a yellow light or hit an unexpected dip in the road.

Such as:
Counting to three when she's doing something bad.
Singing "I love you a bushel and a peck" and old favoorite of my Gram's.
"Do you have to poop?"

But mostly it strikes me when I realize that she sees me as in charge, when most of the time I'm flying by the seat of my pants.  

I also feel very much like a mommy when I'm buying organic foods, patronizing small family businesses, writing my senator, keeping up with politics, etc. etc.
Nothing gets you involved with making the world a better place like having kids that have to live in it.

I love them more than words could ever say.
It's the best thing I've ever done.

my young toddler woke up, and in a barely awake state starting calling, "Mama!  Mama!"  It suddenly hit me... I'M the mama!  Someone was crying out for my comfort during the night.

I still spend lots of time wondering when I'm going to feel like one of the grown ups.  It doesn't help that I'm nearly a decade younger than most of the people with little kids around here since I started in my 20s rather than my 30s.  But I'm starting to think that I'll still be wondering the same thing when I'm an old lady.  

at the back of the plane as some random biker dudes and was careful not to let my son (2 at the time) wander back there.....only to find out later they were the rock band Twisted Sister!

it was when I was sitting in a meeting in church, and the man sitting next to me started leaning his chair back on two legs. I reached out and touched his arm before I realized it was not my place to tell him to put his chair down.

Another time I've really felt like a mom -- when I don't care that I am missing a super fabulous party, because it's not a kid-friendly gathering and I'd rather be with my kids.

I was watching my DS playing and jumping in the waves, and wondering if there was any sweeter moment in the world!

The times I have felt most like a mom are when DH is gone and DD and I are alone overnight in the house. I find myself running different emergency scenarios through my head -- how would we escape a fire? What if there was an intruder? Those times make me realize that I'M the one who is in charge and has to keep her safe. Also, when life's little cruelties sneak up -- like today, we were at the arboretum and she was running around inside a giant sculpture. She saw two little girls, probably 4 and 5, and immediately joined up with them to run around. The older girl kept tellling my DD (who is 3) to stop following them. My girl is very confident, and this didn't faze her at all. We tried getting her attention back to us, but she wanted to play with the kids. When the older girl said to stop following them for about the 5th time, I directed my daughter to a different area, and what do you know, the girl's followed her this time. At that point I said to them "if you don't want her to follow you, then let her be." Those moments always break my heart, but I love that she just goes about her way, like, oh well, I'll find someone else interesting.

mommy???" I do this all of the time in public so that ds will follow me instead of meandering around. Or just for fun. Sometimes I do this pretend run so he thinks I am running away. We can get to our destination fairly quickly while he's thinking it's a fun game. (I am sometimes still a tiny bit smarter than he is, but at 13 months, those days are numbered, I can feel it :).

I call most kids "sweetie" or "sweatheart" now, even my oldest friend's son, who could never be mistaken for sweet, if you know what I mean.

And a biggee - we just ordered an SUV! ARGH! I say ordered because we're getting a hybrid Escape and they are hard to get around here. I feel really weird about it. But my back can no longer abide bending forward and low to get him in his car seat, and my knees and mood can't abide kneeling in the parking lot to do the clips, in order to minimize the forward bend. Given how nuts that is, an SUV it is. At least it's a hybrid, uses no gas at all at less than 25 mph, and is pretty small in the scheme of things. But still ..... argh.

But the biggest of all is how I consciously try to do my best in my relationships, my self-care, and how I live in general because ds will live the same way someday.

RachelD

sometimes just do simple stuff like watch her play by herself or pick her up after she's fallen asleep on the couch and say to each other: yup, we are her parents.

But i haven't had the moment where I KNOW that I'm mommy yet. I think it'll come more when she calls me momma.

When I accidentally tell my boss bye-BYE at the end of the day in that goofy kidvoice...

a "bat in the cave" on a friend or colleague, and I have to literally STOP MYSELF, before sticking my finger up their nose and digging it out!!

My nonna used to put me to sleep by gently shaking the mattress, and I've done it for my boys since they were little. But now, when I'm in bed with DH and the boys are sleeping in their beds, I still do it. Start bouncing my foot to shake us to sleep.

I tell everyone at work that I'm going to the potty. Can't help myself.

In having had to curb the curse words in front of my boys, I find myself saying all sorts of wacky stuff. It changes periodically. Currently, it's "Sugar Booger" - a la Hugh Neutron. I say Sugar Booger everywhere now - I have trouble cursing at all.

...driving in the car, listening to "The Secret Garden" and Archibald started singing about being bereft without his dead wife, and how on this earth could he ever go on without her?  All very romantically angsty, and it's not like I hadn't heard it a zillion times before, but this time I found myself shouting at the radio: "You're a FATHER, you selfish son-of-a-bitch, that's why you go on- your cild is sick and he needs you so SUCK IT UP and get back there and do your job!"  Granted, Timothy was still in the NICU at the time- tomorrow marks one month out of the hospital, woohoo!- so I was not at my most emotionally stable, but that almost instinctive impatience with people abrogating their parenting responsibility has remained.  

Oh yeah, and I've done the poo-catching thing, too. :)