Mommy Fail.

I'm pretty sure I have at least 2-3 "Mommy Fails" a week.  It used to really bother me.  Now it's almost a challenge.  "What am I going to do to emotionally scar my daughter today?"  No no...I don't do it on purpose, at least I don't think I do.  I guess in all my plotting planning, I didn't factor in that Maddie would want some say in this as early as 2 years old.  How dare she have her own little personality!  Well, I'll share with you an example and I'll start with background.  I love starting with background  :)


When Dieter and I decided that we were going to try for a baby, I was pretty pumped.  I had all these plans and ideas for what I was going to do!  It got even worse when we found out we were having a girl!  SQUEAL!  Little girl things?!  Umm yes please!  Visions of tea parties danced through my head.  I thought of all the things that I did as a little girl and all the things I WANTED to do as a little girl (but didn't get to do because of *gasp* my evil parents :) ) and planned accordingly.  I was going to be this amazing super mom.  My daughter was going to be dazzled at all my ideas and be in awe at my parenting greatness.  In my mind's eye, I guess I saw this:

Then reality reared it's ugly head and life became more like this:



I think my first major parenting fail came early on when Maddie was a little over a year old.  I was tired all the time, but I still had these grandiose visions of parenting greatness.  One day, I decided that the activity of the day was going to be finger painting.  Not only were we going to be fingerpainting, but I WAS GOING TO MAKE MY OWN FINGER PAINT!  Because....well I'm awesome like that.  Maddie was going to love it.  It was going to be educational because we would talk about the colors and Maddie would LOVE being messy and the texture part would be fun.  Stop laughing!  I'm not even to the "good" part yet!


So I googled.  Because that's what parents of my generation do.  We google.  Everything.  I just now tried to find the site I used (so you could get the full experience) and I can't find it.  I can't even find the recipe I used.  It involved flour and boiling in a saucepan.  Now all the ones I see don't even involve "cooking" it.  Jerks.  


Anyway!  I went shopping and bought the ingredients and the food coloring (regular and neon because let's face it MY baby needs all 8 colors to choose from) and paper to paint on.  I even bought little containers to store my paint in because this was going to be so much fun that we would be doing this multiple times.  I printed out the recipe, put on a Baby Einstein DVD to distract Maddie, and got right down to it.  This was going to be AWESOME!  After all there were only like 4 ingredients...how hard can this be!  *snort*


I've kinda blocked out the details, but I remember it not going well.  I do remember the result being this horrific, thick, gummy, sticky, substance from hell.  I probably should have just cut my losses and thrown that hot mess straight into the trash can, but at this point I still have unrealistic ideals of parenting and just know that this is going to be an AWESOME idea.  So I sally forth and separate this congealing horror into my newly purchased containers and added the food coloring.  


Icky part over!  Now time for the fun part!  Add child!  **even in my memories Current Renee is screaming at Past Renee....NO NO YOU CAN STOP THIS!!!!!**


I blocked this part out as well.  I do remember the screaming as my daughter refused to touch the "fingerpaint" (I use quotes because the shit I made was NOT FINGERPAINT) that I had just spent the last 45 minutes trying to make salvage make.  Not that I can really blame her, that crap was gross.  It was pretty, but it would not spread nicely on paper.  I think the activity lasted all of three minutes before I cleaned my daughter up, gave her a MumMum cracker, and apologized profusely.  


Now, I have a college education and I pride myself on being moderately intelligent.  You would think that this experience would have taught me something.  Nope.  In the span of 6-7 months, I attempted this activity 2 more times (using the same horrible fingerpaint recipe......just keep on laughing...I know I was a moron).  It got a little better as Maddie got older.  At the very least, we did actually make a few pictures that the Grandparents could ooo and ahhh over.  I also have those cute toddler pictures with Maddie in her diaper covered in "paint" but that is about it.  


I did eventually learn from this experience.  I am now okay with the fact that my daughter is content in wanting to watch movies and play Plants vs. Zombies with me.  It's not educational, but they are much safer activities and don't mentally scar either of us.  We both enjoy it and enjoy doing it together.  What more can a parent ask for?


This also taught me to just buy the freakin play-doh  :)


**These pictures are not mine.  I randomly found them on the internet to suit the purpose of my blog  :)