The Cool Mom

I want to be one of those cool moms.  Not trendy-cool; not one with a diaper bag that matches my purse; not the one who thinks it would be enjoyable to do something called "hot yoga."  The kind of cool I want to be is the mom who lets her kids do unconventional things.  The mom who is spontaneous, the mom who bends the rules from time to time, the mom who isn't bothered by a mess or a late bedtime if it means having more fun.

I get there sometimes.  I let my kids paint with pudding, slide down the stairs on cardboard, eat cake and ice cream for breakfast on birthdays, and eat underneath the dining room table (that's where all the food ends up anyway).  Michael tells me that at ages 2 and 4, our kids aren't going to remember these things and appreciate the extra effort and mess.  But I'm still going to aim for cool, because in the moment, it makes everyone happier.  Usually.

In pursuit of cool last week, I spontaneously announced that for dinner we would be having a popcorn picnic- on a blanket on the living room floor- while watching a movie. The boys were thrilled with the triple-awesome plan, and we had a nice little family moment where they chomped happily while watching whatever animated feature they were fixated on that week.  This lasted for eight minutes, until Charlie decided it wasn't cool enough for him, and dumped the popcorn on the blanket.  This was fine, because I have recently created the genius tablecloth-cleaning solution of shaking it out the dining room sliding doors onto the snow below (I'm waiting for the day when the cops show up at our house after our neighbors read a shaking, bold-colored cloth as an SOS for a hostage situation).  But then Charlie began to throw the popcorn at Oliver, walk in the popcorn, kick the popcorn, stomp on the popcorn...

So I took Charlie upstairs for the other cool mom thing I like to do from time to time- I threw on a suit and took a bath with him in my jetted soaker-tub, overfilling it with bubbles.  But it wasn't long until Oliver abandoned the movie in search of company.  Just as we were getting out of the tub, he decided he wanted a bath too.  Sigh.  Fine.  I refilled the tub, plunked him in and tried to multitask in the very near vicinity, as Charlie ran off to inevitably cause trouble.  And when Michael came upstairs, I heard him extricate said screaming troublemaker from the laundry room, explaining to Charlie that it is not okay to climb into the dryer.

It is on nights like this (which is most of them) that I ask myself, "why do I even bother?" If I had just done something normal like feed them dinner at the table and fold some laundry while they played, we would have had a shot at a peaceful night.  But no.  I had to try to be the cool mom, and it ended in epic disaster.  Now nobody was happy.

About an hour later at bedtime, I found the strength to take the time and ask Oliver what his favorite part of the day was.  He had a lot to choose from.  It was his turn at preschool to hide something in a mystery bag and give three clues about it.  It was also his turn at school to be the Star of the Week, present a poster about himself, and be the line leader on their way to the gym.  This is big stuff at age four.  And if that wasn't enough, he had his first playdate all by himself at a friend's house after his day in the spotlight at school. 

"So what was your most favorite part?" I asked.

He motioned for me to lean in closer, and with a giddy look on his face, whispered in my ear.  In one word, my preschooler silenced all of my self-defeat as he answered: "Popcorn!"