Five for Friday - The Five Worst Things About Being a Mom

I love lists. I love to make "to do" lists, grocery lists and play lists. I'm beginning to realize that I think in lists. So, I've decided to start a "Five for Friday" list. Every Friday I will pull one of the many lists from my brain and blog it.

Today's list concerns the things I most dislike about being a mom. So many cards and books are dedicated to the joys of motherhood, but let's be real, some of our tasks are simply not fun. So, here it goes...

1. Cleaning up bodily excretions. Whether it comes from the head or the bottom, somehow a mom is the only one apparently qualified to deal with these issues. I don't understand where or how I received my training, but everyone in my family believes I have an advanced degree in this area.

2. Catching whatever cold or infection that is brought into the home. I'm guessing this item is directly connected to #1 on the list.

3. Being helpless to heal certain hurts. I hate that feeling when my child looks at me as the doctor is sticking the needle in her little leg or when she comes home crying because someone at school called her "mean". I'm the one she trusts to protect her and it breaks my heart when I can do nothing to stop the pain.

4. The buck stops with me. I'm now the one responsible for taking care of all those little annoying things that I used to hand over to my mother, like knots in shoe strings, gum in hair and those incredibly frustrating plastic containers in which toys are packaged.

5. Dealing with spills, spills and more spills. I can handle the orange juice that literally was just turned over onto the tile floor, that's an easy one. But, the caramel that was flipped over onto the carpet in the living room or the milk in the floorboard of the car, that's an entirely different matter. I really don't know the best way to deal with these things.

So, that's when I call my mom.