Columnist Maria Rushe details the three times this week that she was a Silly Smug Mum so we can learn from her mistakes.

1. Deciding that of course I can wear heels to Mammy:

“I used to wear heels all the time” says inner BC-Mammy. (BC=Before Children).  “Of course I should still be able to put on a pair of heels to go to town with the kids.  I am after all a Thoroughly Modern Mammy and am quite fablis and glammy and I shall indeed wear those boots that I justified with ‘Of course I’ll get lots wear out of them!’ but which have only been on my feet twice, for approximately 2 hours each time…at night…to a restaurant.”

You’d think I’d know better by now wouldn’t you?  But Noooooooo.  Sometimes, Mammy feels the need to feel like her old BC-self and stick on her heels… 

And it all goes fine, until she remembers that they have to visit the supermarket and that she must push a trolley.

Going into the shop is generally fine, but as it gets heavier and your minions become less well behaved, you suddenly find yourself ready to fall off your modest heels. (Yes, they’re only 1.5 inches. Hardly my 5 inch stilettos now!)  But by the time I’m pushing the shopping trolley out of the shop, full of groceries, balancing a box of nappies and a toddler atop and with Mini-Me countersteering by pulling the opposite direction, I’m seriously considering walking to the car in my socks. This wouldn’t be such a huge problem to parents if the trolleys actually functioned.  You know? If the wheels ACTUALLY turned in the direction they are designed to?  But no.  If such a trolley exists, I have yet to find it.

This wouldn’t be such a huge problem to parents if the trolleys actually functioned. You know? If the wheels ACTUALLY turned in the direction they are designed to?  But no.  If such a trolley exists, I have yet to find it.

2.  Forgetting to bring the nappy bag

Imagine the scene:

You are about to pop out.  You change the baby.  She has pooped. Good timing Princess.  Mammy is pleased. You put her in the car seat and as you drive out the gate, realise that you’ve left the changing bag on the table in the kitchen.  

“I’m only popping to Granny’s/the Post Office/lift Mini-Me.  We’ll be back in 20 minutes,” you think as you drive on, certain that considering she has just removed a dinosaur sized poop from her butt that you will not require the forgotten nappy bag, and that you shall return home very shortly and laugh a victorious melodic chuckle alá Mary-of-the-Poppins at said nappy bag as you see it still sitting on the table: unnecessary, forgotten, futile and lonesome.  

And then as you pull into wherever you are going, you get the smell.  And you know that Karma has bitten you on the bum, because unless your minion now farts like a Guinness drinking 108 year old, you MIGHT need that nappy bag after all.

Or if you’re particularly lucky, like I was yesterday, your 25 minute visit will involve not one, but TWO more poos and the only nappies in the house you are visiting are size 3 and just about go around the Fudgemonster’s nether-regions. And so you shall drove home, feeling quite the fool and praying that she doesn’t go for a hat-trick because there’s no way that little size 3 is holding anything in. But then you thank your lucky stars that the house you were in actually HAD an option, or it your baby would have been going home with her bum wrapped in a plastic bag or a tea towel with sellotape!

3. Telling someone your Minions sleep all night

It’s a curse I tell you.  You might as well look into a mirror and say “Humpty Dumpty” backwards three times as bring upon the wrath of the universe by uttering such verbal diahorrea as “Yeah they sleep through the night.”  It’s like the sleep fairies alert the moon and all forms of magic and sorcery are suddenly employed to ensure that that very night, your little sleeping cherubs will not simply waken once, but on numerous occasions, for random reasons and varying lengths.

You will cry with exhaustion and only finally get to sleep at 5.45am, just in time for them to bounce out of bed as usual at 6am, full of the joys of fricken Spring and utterly oblivious to the fact that you are a Zombie because of them. 

Never say it.

Even if it’s true, don’t say it out loud.

Ever.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.  Lessons learned…

 

Feel free to add your own “Silly Smug Mammy” stories in the comments.

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