My mothering.

Being a mother is definitely the most incredible thing I have done. Ever. Although, I am not the mother that I wanted to be and lately I have noticed this. I find myself mothering like I never intended to. As far as I was concerned, more then nine months ago, I was going to be a perfect mother.
Khage was never going to taste a lick of sugar until he was five, by this time he was supposed to know a caboodle of baby appropriate words in sign language. He was never going to fall asleep on the bottle and those nasty little germs were never supposed to ever grace his delicate baby skin. Instead, his eyes lite up while he sampled jelly beans with us yesterday, he knows one word in sign language and never uses it, frequently he falls asleep on the bottle with milk still dribbling down his adorable chin and today I caught Baggera licking him in his mouth while he belly laughed profusely.

This is my mothering.
And it has been torturing me to know that I am doing all those things I vowed to never do the day I held him in my arms for the first time.

I am the mother who sometimes doesn't get her baby out of jammies until two o'clock in the afternoon, it can be a couple days before I realize my baby hasn't breathed in the freshest of fresh air from the outdoors, and on occasion I will find a new scratch on his body and I will scramble around trying to find the cause of it because he was never supposed to get hurt on my watch.

"I'd like to be the ideal mother, but I'm too busy raising my kids."
^{Author Unknown.}
After coming across this quote online, while I was intent on finding some comfort for my lack of perfect parenting, I realized one thing:
I need to get off my own back.
I am not perfect, I have never been and being a mother wasn't sure to help that situation because now more then ever I find myself venturing into new territory. That lady at the grocery store can glare at me all she wants while I hand my baby a produce bag to fiddle with while I squeeze various types of fruits. Our family can call me out for allowing Khage to still use a pacifier when it was never intended in the first place. And I can just suck it up and enjoy this thing called parenting and accept that its not going to get easier just yet.

Khages siblings will eventually have the upper hand because by then I will be promoted from new mommy to an experienced one. Things wont happen as they do now.
I have learned that peas are a choking hazard to a seven month old, peanut butter isnt supposed to be in his diet until he turns one, if given a pen he will figure out how to click it into writing mode and ink will end up all over his chubby legs and that smirking face, and if given the opportunity to play in my makeup box he will consume as much eyeshadow as he can before its snatched out of his sweet little hands.

This is my mothering and I am doing my best.

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.
^{Author Rajneesh}