Being a Mom is Kin to Owning A Farm

The minute the doctor handed you 7lbs of precious bouncing baby, you felt like singing "eee iiii eee iii oooo," right? The nurses might have checked your blood pressure to make sure you weren't becoming delusional, but let's face the facts: being a mom is kind of like being Old MacDonald.

Many of us chose to become moms, just like Old MacDonald probably chose to buy the farm. Let's compare. Old MacDonald was up all night birthing a mare, the rooster is still up crowing before the sun comes up. The cows need to be milked, the pigs need to be fed, and the fields need to be plowed. Sometime during the course of the day, the goats got out of their pen and into Mrs.Wilson's flower garden. Now Old MacDonald is fixing the broken goat pen, apolgizing to Mrs. Wilson and explaing to Mrs. Old MacDonald why he didn't come home in time for supper.

Singing "ee ii ee ii oo" yet? My husband leaves for work before the sun even thinks about coming up. My daughter usually crawls into my bed about 5:30a. Around 6:15a I hear brother on the monitor and quietly creep out of my own bed to reheat my coffee, make a bottle and a sippy cup of chocolate milk (warning: I thought I was the cool parent introducing my daughter to chocolate milk...boy was I wrong - there is no going back!) 

And so my day is off: laundry, bills, diapers, baths, lunches, snacks, post office. Somewhere in the mess I forget about what to make for dinner and my husband hits traffic and comes home an hour late even though my son is teething and I am about to pull my hair out. While I am having my first adult conversation of the day my daughter has found the baby powder and dusted her brother into the blizzard of 2011. Now I am rushing to wash his sheets before its bed-time, and forgetting to shut the bathroom door so Houston is munching on a nice meal of toilet paper. Eeeee iiiiii eeeee iiiii oooooo.....

Old MacDonald wakes up everyday promising that today he will work harder than yesterday. He has goals for himself and for his farm, yet he is tugged every direction by the needs of others, whether it be human or animal. In the end he just wants to be a succesful farmer with a successful crop. Sound familiar?  Next time you see a mom with a toddler throwing a major temper tantrum in the middle of Wally World, or a new mom struggling to pull coupons out of her wallet as her newborn screams in hunger, think about what's happening on their farm.