The life of a stay-at-home-mom doesn’t get much better than when your kids think you can fix anything. Their naivety is pretty adorable when they think just because I fixed their broken necklace days ago; I can fix the plastic toy that broke into smithereens.  It’s like they think I’m a superhero and I have the power to fix anything that breaks. They also ask me to find the stuff that gets lost and they look to me to remember to buy them the toys they see that they want (as if they’d forget).

Obviously, I don’t always know the answers and I can’t always fix everything. But I’m honored that my kids think that highly of me. I fear the day when I am just “Mom” or worse; they think I’m “lame”. Until then, their curiosity ignites in me a similar kind of wondering, usually landing me on the Internet.

Just this past week I Googled Daylight Savings time because I had to read about the genius who thought that would be a good idea. I seriously doubt that this person could have ever been a parent as I spent the entire week post-DST yawning and dealing with children who were completely off schedule.

Having remembered that a friend of mine said that she keeps her kids up an hour later in preparation for the time change, saying it “works like a charm every time”, I made my kids stay up late that Saturday night to try it out. I’ve decided that her kids must be aliens because this is the second time I’ve tried her suggestion and it never works. Instead I had my kids up later only to have them still wake up at 5:30 in the morning. Maybe my kids are aliens? Anyway, “falling back” is for single people to enjoy.

Turns out there are many guys to blame for DST, Benjamin Franklin and later George Vernon Hudson in 1895. Although Franklin first wrote about the concept of DST in 1784 in a Parisian paper discussing the economic benefits of saving light, most credit Hudson for DST because he, as an entomologist, needed more light in the day to study his bugs. Nerd. What is so interesting to me was to learn that DST was really set into motion in this country post 1966 with the establishment of the Uniform Time Act of 1966. But I digress….

What makes me feel accomplished these days, what makes me feel invincible, is the simple things in my day. I love that some how I’m able to show up to my kids to tape a rainbow drawing that was ripped in half, change diapers while answering the phone, remembering to pack lunches and not pack the meat sandwich in the kid’s lunch pail that has to be meat-free for school, quoting lines from the movie Tangled to my children and making them giggle, helping Olivia clean up the blood from her tooth that fell out, and all while on 6 hours of sleep.

These things may seem trivial or “nothing to write home about” but to me, as a SAHM, these are the simple parts of my day that I have struggled with loving.

Brent was away on business this past week and in his absence I was tired. But I didn’t revert to my usual feeling sorry for myself. I missed him and his helpfulness with the kids, but I buckled down and enjoyed my kids immensely. I did not allow myself to feel discouraged when they didn’t like the humongous pot of stone soup I made (they said it was too “spicy”).  I was patient when they didn’t want to put on their shoes or take a bath. I read to them, I colored with them, and I loved them.  In remaining calm in the face of being challenged by not having my husband’s help, I had the best time with my kids. Which ultimately, made his homecoming so much more enjoyable for him.

My friends tease me a lot because they can’t imagine how I have four children. Most of them only have one or two. They seem to think that if they had as many kids as I do that they wouldn’t be able to do it. But I disagree. I see these moms doing the same things I do, putting their best foot forward day in and day out, some days doing a great job, and other days longing for the day to end so they can start over.

I am grateful I know that I am not a superhuman; that I’m not perfect and that there are days filled with discouragement.  Today, I felt accomplished that I finally got a shower in at the start of my day. Too bad I remembered, after I got out, that I forgot to soap up my body. Yep, that about sums it up.