What's Your Thing?

Everyone has their thing, right? That thing that sets them apart from other moms. Sometimes you get to be the cool mom or the mom that always has good snacks or how about the sporty mom? My mom growing up was just "mom", she collected kids - all our friends always just called her mom. Diane, my next door neighbor, was more the fix it type mom - she untangled hair, had ingredients on hand for my infrequent forays into cooking. I still call her about things and I think that we had her and her husband over to the house several times within the first year of home ownership to help us out.

Well, this past week at camp I learned what kind of mom I was - I think I knew before this week but it was confirmed at camp. My first indication came when Amy asked me the first night what my nighttime routine was at camp - did I do baths before or after Vespers, did I visit the snack bar with the kids before or after bath? Hmmmmm........bath. At camp? Ummm, let's see. I totally was thinking the pool counted as the bath. They put chlorine in those things, right? Isn't that a cleansing type thing? I always feel way better after a dip in teh pool and I am assuming my children do to. Well, I thought Amy was going to pass out when I mentioned that my kids averaged a bath a week at previous camps (I was fudging just a bit - I don't think we gave them a bath/shower at all one year). She had certain ideas about putting clean kids into clean beds at night - which I must say was validated by the smell that was emitted from my children's room by the end of the week. Maybe next year we can shoot for 2 baths during the week.....we'll see.

Then came the question of proper footwear. Let's be honest, here. I have a hard time keeping the children fully clothed at all times (mainly Nico but Francesca has been known to strip down at times) so that shoes don't seem nearly as important as, say, underwear or pants. So at camp this year I would say that Francesca wore shoes less than half the time that she was at camp. She would walk into the dining hall with sucker in her hair, bangs all askew (we are desperately trying to grow them out since we are not very good at keeping up with the trimming - note the lack of showers, people - how on earth can we keep up on actually cutting hair.) and no shoes, by the third day we gave up the pretense of even putting them on before meal times.

However, I think one of my favorite moments of the week was on Thursday night. It's towards the end of the week - the kids have been engaged in NONSTOP PLAY and SUGAR CONSUMPTION and have had a TOTAL LACK OF SLEEP. So at this point it's all about keeping the peace. Francesca and I are at the Talent Show in Zimmerman (picture a glorified picnic shelter/elongated garage) and she has a bag of M&Ms. She decides it would be a great idea to pour these out on the DIRTY, FILTHY, STICKY floor. Then she lays down with HER FACE on that same floor and begins to pick them up with her grimy little fingers/tongue and chomps them up in her mouth. It is at this point that it becomes abundantly clear to me what kind of mom I am...........

I am the messy mom. Fingerpainting? Mud pits? Glitter in the house? Baking without worry? Collecting worms/bugs/cicada shells? Come to the Codispoti's house. And yes I realize that messy doesn't quite cover it but putting the dirty mom seems well,...........dirty.