* Random Mom Jobs

While I would never say I was completely prepared for parenting - I do not think I went into the role blindly or with unreasonable expectations. I did not expect perfection from myself, from my husband, or even baby. There have been many surprises and some really unpleasant days, but what amazes me sometimes is not what I would have expected. I was amazed on the day of David's birth by an overwhelming feeling of permanence. The weight of that emotion which was neither positive nor negative really shook my thinking for a while. I still feel that weight in the back of my mind at all times, but now my amazement comes from the details of motherhood that never made it into a "what to expect when......" book or any article on parenting I have ever read.

And let me say that the details are not terribly flashy. I once told a friend expecting her first child. "Do you realize that over the next several years you will be responsible for the maintenance of someone else's fingernails?" My friend likely thought I was being a bit silly but that task has been my benchmark for all the unexpected "stuff" that comes from caring for children. Children grow fingernails at a great rate and keeping up with them, keeping them adequately trimmed so they don't rip off or get encrusted with mud(for those of us with boys who dig holes for fun) takes more time than I would ever have imagined.

My life is full of random mom jobs, only one of which is cutting fingernails at least once a week. (Random mom job #1)
I also spend time thinking about green vegetables and whether we have had any recently. (#2)
Even though my children take themselves to the bathroom I still spend mental energy on their bowel and bladder habits, watching for signs of illness or who knows what else. (#3)
Another random job that I never thought about before kids is sitting in the car with children who would like to be released from their car seats while their dad runs into a store. The sitting in the car technique sounds like a good plan for speeding up the errand and avoiding the unbuckling and herding involved when children go inside a store. However the time stream moves infinitely slower for the person in the car, usually me, and what sounded like a good idea often ends in shortened tempers all around. (#16)
I put a lot of things into containers - there is a great deal of packing involved in being a mother. I pack lunches, backpacks, suitcases, toy bags, quiet bags, and snack bags for long trips, etc etc etc. We have a container system for toys in the house also. Dress up box, weapons box (a must), transformers box, train box, ball box, purse box, etc etc etc. I put a lot of things into these boxes in a given day. (#27)
Random mom job #32 - finder of lost items, keys, sword, purse, small piece of string (!!!) essential to the imaginative play scenario in my oldest child's head.
I also remove splinters(#56), brush out ketchup tangles(#68), and answer at least 1000 questions a day(#1000)

All in all my job is fluid, unpredictable at times, but also returning to the same patterns over and over. I am a smoother of wrinkles in the flow of our day. I am a remover of obstacles before they cause a problem. I am a performer of random mom jobs.