In the 18 years it takes to bring a newborn to adulthood, Mom,
here’s a partial list of all you do:
You will have changed an average of 12,045 diapers (10 a day for
3.3 years).
You will have ransomed 20 baby teeth for a grand total of
$74.25.
You will have endured 12 First Day of School jitters (14 if you
add in preschool) and 12 conferences (unless you are one of the
lucky ones; then you get TWO conferences each year). You will
experience 12 Open House Nights at school, and get 36 report
cards.
You will have sat through six years of soccer (roughly 72 games,
all smack dab in the middle of the weekend, and 144 practices, all
scheduled during the dinner hour); four years of softball or
baseball (60 games, 120 practices, 17 times you were Snack Mom);
and three years of music lessons (“Mary Had a Little Lamb” and
scales five times a week for 1,095 renditions, nine hour-long
concerts or recitals, 85 hours of insisting they shouldn’t give
up).
You will have baked cookies 80 times, sold fundraising candy
bars/popcorn/magazine subscriptions/cookies 33 times, and paid for
camp seven times. (You will have received two “come get me” phone
calls from camp, and three letters that begin, “They are making us
write you this.”)
You’ll have spent close to 56 hours in waiting rooms at
pediatrician offices, dentist offices, and orthodontist offices
reading recipes and tips from approximately 762 different women’s
magazines. (You will try three recipes.)
You will have 94 gray hairs and one twitch for each time your
child attempts their driver’s license test and 29 gray hairs for
each prom.
By their 18th birthday, you’ll have made approximately 3,650
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (730 crust-less, and 1,460
diagonally-sliced) – all with the correct version of peanut butter
and the correct flavor of jelly. You’ll have cut the peels from
2,190 apples. You will have slipped 45 “I love you” notes in
lunchboxes. You will have gone through the drive-through 832 times,
ordering “hamburger, ketchup only” 384 of those times. You will
have made 138.6 cases of macaroni and cheese.
You will have 12 years’ worth of school pictures: the first one
baby-faced and sprinkled with freckles; four with forced, fake
smiles; two with slightly surprised looks; and one you meant to
send back but now kind of like.
You will have three macaroni necklaces, four (mostly-finished)
lanyards, and six unrecognizable lumps of clay, lovingly painted.
You will have two years’ worth of stick figure depictions of your
family, with you three times as large as any other figure. You will
have 42 examples of your child’s handwritten name in various forms
from shaky crayon on through pencil and then pen, from all capital
letters on through cursive. You will have the baby teeth, tinier
than you remember, hidden in the back of your lingerie drawer.
You will have given over 6,500 good-night kisses with another
8,954 random kisses thrown in “just because.” You will have hugged
19,710 times and tiptoed in to kiss a forehead and adjust the
blankets 3,650 times. You will have felt for fevers 486 times and
applied 900 band aids.
You will have averaged 5.5 hours of sleep a night for a grand
total of 36,135 hours since you brought your little 8 pound, 9
ounce bundle of joy home from the hospital after 17.5 hours of
labor (not that you’re counting), but you wouldn’t trade one second
of the 157,680 hours of motherhood for all the money in the Tooth
Fairy’s bank. Why? Because you’re the Mom, that’s why!
Happy Mother’s Day!
