Hi, I’m An Average Mom

Hi, my name is Kendra. I’m a wife, daughter, friend… and an average mom.

In the mornings I set an early alarm to wake up and seize the day. By the seize the day I mean I’d love to get ready and have a cup of coffee all by my lonesome. Most of the time, though, I just snooze until I hear the sounds of my waking child’s cry. Sometimes I’m up – on it. Other times I lay in bed on a prayer he’ll go back to sleep. If I’m desperate and that doesn’t work, I’ll bring my son into my bed, turn on the tv, and go in and out of snoozing until he finally bonks me on the head.

When I do finally get ready for work, sure enough Mom’s bathroom is way cooler than any toys. He lines up bottles of hair products, rummages through empty ring boxes, and shakes (childproof) pill bottles like a rattle. I pretty much draw the line at waving around Dad’s razor.

No special breakfast at our house. We whisk away for breakfast at our in-home daycare, which is just about as average as me. Except she actually watches my child all day, feeds him, plays with him outside and makes him take a nap. So maybe that’s above average.

Speaking of feeding, I couldn’t tell you what he eats everyday.

Daycare provides all meals, and while there’s a weekly calendar posted on the wall, confession… I NEVER look at it. For all I know it’s Cheerios and bananas, and that’s fine by me.

Considering my whine level about having to go back to work after maternity leave was a 13 out of 10, you’d think I’d be rushing out the door everyday to pick him up at 5, but no, here I am wrapping up “just one more thing” at 5:45pm most days.

At home, dinner is never ready.

Actually, I’m most likely just now putting up all the dirty dishes I piled throughout the day. Since kiddo has an early bedtime, he eats by himself in his high chair, a dinner that is normally different than Mom and Dad’s, while we prep ourselves dinner for the night. We were so good about a proper, balanced meal as a baby, but now we eat a banana (or a fruit and veggie pouch) with our dinner just about every day. At least we moved on from daily bread.

Bath time – when I first drafted this post – hit or miss. More recently, a consistent every other day. There is still often the debate of “does he really need a bath?” And if yes, then there is a debate on if it is Mom or Dad’s turn. There’s about a 50/50 chance that we’d rather opt for dishes.

I’m proud to say we do now have a bedtime reading routine, but that was not always the case. For the longest, books before bed landed in the bottom 10% category. Inconsistent teeth brushing has now taken rank. Normally it’s diaper, pj’s, sound machine, pacifier, books, lights off, kiss on the forehead, goodnight. Nope, I’ve never been a rocker. Kid goes straight down.

I do love bedtime though. That’s probably because it’s normally by 7:30 which gives me an entire evening to myself. You know, because I work from home all day while my kid goes to daycare.

So no, I don’t make bento boxes with heart shaped snacks. I can’t say bath time has ever been my favorite.

I’ll skip rocking and head straight to Bravo and a glass of wine.

But what I can say is that I love my kid with all my dang heart.

I live for his laughs and silliness. I live for his snuggles too. I’ll happily ditch all my hobbies, even my friends, and plan all my PTO just to spend quality time adventuring with him. Truth be told, I’d be totally lost and unfulfilled without him. I’m just as dependent on him as he is on me.

So maybe our average routine is pretty average, and maybe I really am an average mom. But when I do occasionally go down the rabbit hole of mom envy or guilt, I think about all the wonderful, amazing, above average memories I had growing up in my average life with my average family, before there was ever social media and the internet to send parents down this rabbit hole in the first place.

I think about all the average things that make life so great, and my average mom self wouldn’t want to change an average thing.