Remember yesterday when I told you I wanted daddy to walk me to school and then refused to kiss you goodbye? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel bad.
Remember this morning when I ran into your bedroom at 5am and yelled "Good Morning!" so loud I woke the baby? I'm sorry. I keep forgetting about the baby.
Remember when I asked you to pick all the walnuts out of my muffin and then after you took a full ten minutes to make sure you removed every last one of them, I still refused to eat it? I'm sorry. That was really nice of you.
Remember when I screamed "HELP!" from your bedroom with such drama you thought the dresser had fallen on me and came running like the world was about to end, when actually I was screaming because there was a pretend shark swimming in your duvet? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to worry you.
Remember when we were in the car on the way to Grammy's house and I asked you to play "the firetruck song" twenty times in a row and whenever you tried to switch to 'your music' I screamed "FIRETRUCK SONG!!!!" until my screaming became more annoying than the actual firetruck song so you just let it play on repeat? I'm sorry. I can see how that would be irritating.
Remember when I refused to eat the pizza because the basil had touched it? I'm sorry. I realize the addition of basil doesn't render the pizza completely inedible.
Remember when you said it was time to leave the playground and instead of saying, "OK, let's go mom!", I yelled "Nooooooooooo!!!!!" and ran away so you had to chase me in circles around the jungle gym? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you look bad in front of the playground moms.
Remember when I decided a used straw was my most prized possession and cried like someone killed my puppy when you threw it in the garbage? I'm sorry. I must have lost my mind that day.
Remember when I asked you to cut up an apple and you said "if I cut up this apple, you better eat it" and I said "I'll eat it, I promise" but then once you finished cutting it up I didn't want it anymore? I'm sorry. I misrepresented myself.
Remember the time I lost my shit over putting on a jacket? I'm sorry. I know it was cold outside.
Remember that time you turned the lights off because it was bedtime but then after you left the room, I turned the lights back on? And then this happened five more times until you were so pissed you removed the lightbulb from the ceiling? I'm sorry. In retrospect, that was not a very fun game.
Remember the time you were trying to put my shoes and socks on and I wouldn't keep my legs still and then I kicked you in the face? I'm sorry. It was an accident.
Remember the time I was running around the room and jumping over Harlow like a hurdle in an obstacle course even though you repeatedly told me to stop? I'm sorry. I should be more careful.
Remember the time I had a total meltdown over my balloon deflating? I'm sorry. I shouldn't have blamed you for something you have no control over.
Remember my Calliou phase? I'm sorry. Calliou sucks.
Remember the time you stopped for coffee and while we were standing in line, I decided that would be the perfect time to throw a tantrum on the floor? And you were wearing Harlow in the carrier so you couldn't even bend over to pick me up and carry me out? And all the people were looking at you and thinking 'I will never have kids!'? That was hilarious. But also? I'm sorry.
You know I love you no matter what and I know you love me no matter what, so that's why I feel comfortable testing you.
You know that, right?
I love you,
Mazzy
PS: They should have a special day for you or something.
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Hehe love this! And the thing is, they would definitely write this letter if they could. I don’t think they mean to drive us insane (Plus, I’m stealing the light-bulb idea, that’s genius!)
Oh my god, this is perfect 🙂
this is awesome. and hilarious!
Love this! Especially the part about the Caillou phase…ugh!
I am laughing and crying at this right now! Because we had one of those mornings where we put on a dress it clearly needed an undershirt and we spent five minutes crying about that addition until dress came off a s skirt came on!!!
Perfect! Made my morning!
oh yes, 3 is the new 2. Though my second child is 2 and he’s got a serious letter of his own to write! Anyhoo, funny stuff! Thanks for the morning laugh and knowing head nod!
Oh. My. God. This is hilariously awesome in every way! LOVE LOVE LOVE it! “I misrepresented myself.” Ha ha ha! xoxo
Laughing out loud. So good. xo
This is amazing. I’m totally picturing the light bulb “game” situation.
My son is turning into a toddler.. I’m not sure if I should be excited or scared and run for my life.
This is amazing. I cried I was laughing so hard. Genius.
I love that you just took the lightbulb out. Awesome!
love this – sooo true – if only little man would actually write this letter but it would also have to include oh and i am so sorry about flooding the bathroom floor each and every night at bath time even though you tell me to leave the water in the tub and take away all of the toys that can be used to get the water out of the tub and i scoop it up with my hands – you know i am just testing your patience and mopping skills right?
Brilliant. I wish I had thought of this letter … now I can’t write one on my own page lol But I want to share it with all my childless friends who STILL JUST DON’T GET IT.
Oh my, I just laughed so hard I cried and then everyone in my office looked at me funny… :/
Thank you for this! I stumbled upon your blog today and it is OFFICIALLY earmarked in my favorites!
(I also called my husband and made him listen to the whole thing while I laughed out loud again…to the point of tears. he then said I was weird and hung up)
Oh man, I needed that.
Just yesterday I was wondering if my kid was the only one who couldn’t keep his feet and legs still. He kicked a teaspoon of medicine out of my hand and onto the floor. He also likes to kick everything off the coffee table. I’m sure he’s sorry too.
Remember the time you asked me repeatedly if I had to go potty, since I was wearing underwear, and I kept saying I didn’t, then I peed all over the floor? Sorry about that.
My 3 year old son could have written that too! Thank you for helping me keep his craziness in perspective. 🙂 Happy Mother’s Day!
I periodically (and in a humorous way) tell my 9 year old about the psycho toddler shit he used to pull, and he actually does have the grace to say he’s sorry.
That’s it! I am demanding an apology for Calliou when we get home!
RUN. FAST.
Mmmm… basil on pizza is delicious.
Ugh, Caillou does suck! I thought we had finally escaped that whiny little brat and somehow, after several (blissful) months without him, he’s baaaaaack.
Thanks once again for making me realize my child is not the only driving her mama crazy!
Um YES! Where is my letter! I would also like an apology for all bodily functions that have occurred on me.
Oh my gosh. This is EXACTLY my life with my 3 year old. Well, replace Caillou with Blue’s Clues and that’s pretty much my life. Amazing, I love this!!
lol love this!!
“I misrepresented myself.” – best line ever.
Happy Mother’s Day, Ilana.
This is hilarious! I hope you’ll write Harlow’s mother’s day letter to you too..:)
Anyway,advance Happy Mother’s day, Ilana!..
I wish my 13 year old would write this to me. It would read, ‘remember when I waited until the last minute to do my homework, and you helped me, but then I screamed at you that you were an idiot? I’m so sorry. You aren’t an idiot.’
Oh, and those damned baby carriers with the baby in them make it impossible to do anything like tie your own shoes, pick something up off the floor like a child!
I’m just glad for all the warnings against Caillou. It makes me so happy that my 1 1/2 and 2 1/3 year olds don’t know who he is, and I will be careful to keep it that way. Yay for Dora, Pocoyo, and Mickey, even on constant repeat.
I have a six month old and my husband and I were discussing yesterday how we are at the peak of cuteness (all smiles and can’t move or talk). I am enjoying it while it lasts
Oh my not quite three year old owes me this letter!
Seriously – I would do newborn phase over and over again if it would skip the crazy toddler meltdown phase. At least with newborns you know what to do…toddlers are a mile a minute in every which direction. Spoken as the mom of a 3 yr old and 1 yr old.
I’m glad I’m not the only one that deserves an apology for all those things. 😛
Yep…it doesn’t end with the toddlers! Definitely better but never over 🙂
Best letter e-ver!
Happy Mother’s Day!!!
Hehe, “that’s why I test you”. Happy Mother’s Day, Ilana! I’m sure Mazzy will say all of these things when she’s older :).
This is perfect!
It made me laugh and the same time cry because my kids a growing up and I still remember it as if was yesterday all those times they wanted the light on, kicks in the face and all the meltdown that occurred
Thank you for reminding of all of those happy times
Happy Mother’s Day
This is so great!
This is perfect. I have had many of these type of moments over the years. Once, while in the car my girls 3 and 6 began to fight. I told them to stop and asked what are you fighting about? They said candy. Where did you get candy, I asked. They said it was pretend. My response was just pretend you have more. Problem solved. Still laughing about this one. Fighting over pretend candy.
Perfection. They SHOULD have a day for you or something. Ellen
Frugalista nailed it too … my 13 year old could write a book of apologies for being a little turd while I’ve helped with homework–specifically his Spanish homework (I’m a Spanish teacher). If for no other reason, for his safety and my sanity, I could Never, Ever homeschool my kids.
Except it really does keep getting cuter! They’re nuts when they’re toddlers, but you deal with it because they’re even cuter than when they were babies.
I’m only just reading this now and if I were Oprah I would declare this one of my favorite things. It actually is one of my favorite things, but I don’t possess the super-human ability to make it rain new cars, so don’t expect my seal of approval to amount to much.
I have toddlers, too. If my mom had showed me something she wrote like this back when I was a child I wouldn’t appreciate it at all, nor would I want to be that sort of example for my kiddos.
Sometimes we should stop complaining about parenthood and take the hard stuff that comes with the easy stuff. 😉
My kids (now pre-teen/teen) don’t need to apologize for anything of the nature in this letter and I think it would make them feel awful if they saw I had penned something like this. Kids learn by pushing the limits and testing boundaries, this is what we signed on for. It’s frustrating and it’s exhausting but the reward for making it through is fantastic. You don’t realize how quickly and fleeting it is to find a shark in their bed or someone who is willing to let you cut food for them. The days are long but the time goes by fast.
Barbara Brotman (Chicago Tribune) once wrote:
“…It was a moment I thought would last forever, followed by early childhood years that seemed similarly enduring. Their youth defined them: My children were little girls, not girls who were temporarily little.
…And a fool for ever wishing, even as briefly and rarely as I did, that my children would grow up a little bit faster so they could amuse themselves/feed themselves/walk by themselves, and I could finally get a break.
What was I thinking? Didn’t I see that I would take a deep breath, and six years would be gone? Didn’t I realize that my whole life was the break, and the time when my children would need so much of my time was the momentary, marvelous interruption?”
Pro-tip: it’s easier to flip the breaker to their bedroom than it is to climb through a presumably messy room with a chair twice to unscrew/replace the light bulb.
This is awesome! How about, Know how I argue with you over everything and flat out tell you ‘no’ to everything you tell me to do? Yeah, my 6 years olds are studying for the bar exam in 6 months, I swear!
Ugh please NOOO!!! this is the only blog that I have left that the readers are not a bunch of complainy idiots that take all shit personal. Ilana is a freaking awesome mom, I can always count on her to make me laugh. She is not complaining, she is just making fun of stuff that we all moms go through on this adventure that motherhood is, yes, we Love our kids inconditionally and them punks kick us in the face when we’re just trying to put their shoes on, and we just have to make the best of it right? if you don’t have the IQ to understand her sarcasm, just don’t read the blog! Save your gilt trips and cheesy quotes for other drama ridden blogs
YOU GET ME. Don’t worry, this post got passed around a ton so it ended up attracting a bunch of people who don’t know or understand my sense of humor. I’m guessing they won’t be back:)
I am a regular reader (make that past tense, was a regular reader but based on the bloggers response I am no more, nor will my Mom’s group be reading). The insulting of another persons IQ only serves to put your IQ into question.
No has a single “o”; “complainy” is not an actual word; it’s personally not personal; the first word in any sentence should be capitalized; commas are useful for helping others understand what you are trying to say; guilt is spelled wrong; and my quote was from a well-renowned columnist, not a “blogger”.
I wasn’t trying to start drama, just have a dissenting point; however, it’s clear that you need to live in a simplified world where only one way is right and all others are wrong as you appear to not have the intelligence to consider others opinions (or form a single complete sentence). Don’t insult another person’s intelligence unless you are positive you possess any at all yourself.
It was my bad to respond to Patty and not respond here first. I actually have been thinking a lot about the quote you left and trying to work on appreciating the moment. As much as I complain about how hard it is to parent a newborn and a three-year-old at once, I also find myself wishing my kids could stay exactly the same age they are now.
I am also sorry that I assumed you weren’t a regular reader for not agreeing with this post. That gives me something to think about as well.
I try to balance out the good and the bad here. Not in every post but with my blog as a whole. At least that’s my goal. To talk about how hard it is, make fun of the situations we all find ourselves in but ultimately to show the undying devotion I have for my kids.
At the moment, I am struggling with Mazzy. For real. So, I am being honest in hopefully a lighthearted way so that my readers know they are not the only ones going through this. If I am not honest, I am doing a disservice as well. I don’t want to be a blog that makes it seem like everything is perfect when that’s not really true.
I promise I have Mazzy and Harlow at the age of thirteen in mind with every post. Believe me, there are a lot of pictures and stories I haven’t shared because I don’t think they would like people to know them.
I realize I followed up this post with my bad Mother’s Day post which only further illustrates your point. Maybe the balance has been off on the blog lately because the balance has been off in real life as well. All things for me to think about.
Thank you for your long yet lousy lesson on grammar and punctuation. Unfortunately intelligence is not based on your capacity to spell or write, but in your brain’s ability to process thoughts. My point here was; that you were not getting the joke, and laughing with the author. You just read the post and jumped to JUDGE like many other women do in the internet, throwing rocks and hiding behind your computer, carrying your I’M A PERFECT MOM FLAG. I would never say that about my kids bullshit. Drama, gilt, finger pointing crap.
Whatever. You can spend the next 30 minutes of your life formulating another 5 paragraph answer, I’m not gonna come back to read it! Shit like this is what I was talking about!
I’m not judging, my main point was that this post could potentially make a kid feel badly later in life and I would hope that if said kid saw the post it would be while they were holding a toddler in their arms so they could get it. I was also trying to say that IT GETS BETTER and I, and so many other moms, would love to get back some of that time. I don’t get sharks in the bed. I don’t find powder strewn from end to end of my house with signs saying, “SPA DAY” all spelled wonky. I don’t have children who are solely dependent on ME to make their meals, they can make things on the stove and microwave things. They can pick their own nuts out of a muffin. To an extent I love what I have now better but a lot of what was written is gone. Gone with their maturity and it’s hard to see that if you aren’t in that place. Toddler-hood, baby-dom is all consuming as it should be, that’s why the universe made them so dependent on us. Sometimes as mothers we need to be told to step back and see it for what it is, fleeting. That whole article (not that you would read it) was phenomenal. I printed it and kept it in my daytimer and I referred to it often when I was up to my ears and ready to blow. What’s even more humbling about it is that her kids are now in their 20’s. Now what she considered in the article to be a, “big girl” is gone too.
I’ve lost my shit, in fact I still lose my shit. I’ve been annoyed, I’ve been pissed, I’ve been humbled. Just like everyone else. Everyone. If you dig yourself out of your hole of lack of self-esteem or whatever it is, you’ll realize no one is perfect and almost no one thinks they are. It’s being able to see the forest through the trees. Just because I didn’t see the humor in it doesn’t mean that I think I’m perfect or I lack intelligence, it’s more likely that I’m coming at it from a different perspective.
OMG – and hells yeah Caillou sucks.
you would pick Dora over Caillou? lol…. i quickly change the channel when Dora is about to appear!
So funny!! Almost died at the Calliou comment!! He sucks!
Oh man, story of my life with my four year old! I should just invest in a rubber house at this point the water is getting so ridiculous.
My son would like to add a “Those times when I tore apart the couch so often that I made you buy an uglier couch, but one with cushions that were strapped with elastic and unable to be moved.. yeah I’m sorry” lol
Thanks for the giggles and sarcasm Ilana… not every one can handle it obviously and I appreciate your blog more than I can say.
Oh my goodness! Impressive article dude! Thank you, However I am going through issues
with your RSS. I don’t know the reason why I can’t subscribe to it.
Is there anyone else getting similar RSS
issues? Anyone who knows the answer can you kindly respond?
Thanx!!
Hahahah I’ve seen this before, but it popped up on Facebook so I’m here again. Still hilarious! I can just imagine Mazzy doing all that 🙂 I hope I’ll be as cool when I have kids of my own..