As a mother, do you ever feel like you're stretched thinner than a politician's promise? Are there days when you wish you could just make the world go away so that you wouldn't feel badly when you realize halfway through your hardworking hubby's shower that you don't even have ONE clean towel for him to use?

One of the ways I keep myself in check when I start to feel like that is to remember just HOW quickly the years passed when my oldest child was younger. Now that he's 12, it is markedly apparent that they're gone for good. Those are years that I'll never get back. It's amazing how little we realize as new parents that THIS is the real deal. It's not a scrimmage or an experiment. We do the best we can, but sometimes, we wish we could go back and score a few more points, don't we?

As much as I'd wished for an "owner's manual" to help me navigate the intricacies of this job, more often than not, I've found that the driving force in me tells me instinctually to be more present in the here and now with my kids. There's a poem that my mother had hanging in our house when we were growing up and I'm sharing it as a reminder of that. Read it, hug your babies and blow off cooking dinner tonight in favor of take-out on paper plates.

“Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth
empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
hang out the washing and butter the bread,
sew on a button and make up a bed.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I've grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(lullaby, rockabye, lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).

The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew
and out in the yard there's a hullabaloo
but I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren't her eyes the most wonderful hue?
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
for children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.”

Author unknown

Amy Jones is a work at home mom to 3 heathens whom she loves more than life and wife to a tattoo-covered, guitar-playing firefighter who rocks her world. She is the Marketing Director of Whole Mothering Center, a new local maternal resource center. She loves shopping and dyeing her hair crazy colors that make her mother cringe.

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