TV Mom

Yesterday morning's conversation:

Me: "Noah, please get dressed. This is the last time I am going to tell you. Do you want to be late for school? Camille and I are about to get in the car".

Noah: "Why can't you be more like Sid the Science Kid's mom? She never yells at Sid".

M: "Maybe that's because he gets dressed the first time she tells him"

N: "No, he never gets dressed because he gets to wear the same clothes all the time. Why can't I do that?"

Ugh. So it has been over a week since the kids have seen tv and yet here I am getting compared to a tv mom. It's the first time (but I am sure it won't be the last) that Noah has openly compared me to other moms. I bet that tv mom never has to deal with recurrent pink eye (yes, Noah has it again!), sleeping in a twin bed with two wild monkeys, and an on-going battle with prehistoric silverfish. Must be nice to never have to do laundry because your perfect tv kid just lives in the same outfit but that doesn't seem too hygenic, so you can't be all that "perfect". Damn you, tv mom, for making real moms look bad!

So I headed to yoga class today with these thoughts in my head and I ended up leaving in a much better mood. I love taking yoga classes with older Jewish women at the local Jewish community center. So much better than those power yoga classes I used take on the Marine base...surrounded by young muscular divas...I usually left class feeling sore and old. My older classmates make me feel good on two levels. First, it makes me appreciate having a young, strong, flexible body. I am far from perfect but I can feel my body starting to respond to being back on the mat and that makes me feel good. I will never be anywhere near the muscular diva Marine level, but that's not my goal. But here's the second and perhaps even more important reason I love taking classes with older Jewish women. I love being surrounded by a wide variety of personalities and body types. I love looking around the room and seeing all of us contorted into crazy looking pretzels. I love seeing the bulges, the wrinkles, the bodies of real women who have birthed babies, broken bones, carried pain, and jumped for joy.

Give me a bunch of real women any day of the week...they are way better than those "perfect" tv moms (yet another reason to keep the tv off!). And as much as I would love to always be the perfect mom in my son's eyes, I would much rather strive to be myself and to be happy with that even if it means I yell sometimes and my children daydream about living on a tv show. I will try to yell less, but I will still insist that Noah put on clean clothes each morning.