I'm oh-so-not-a-perfect-mom.

I know there are the "perfect moms" out there. The ones who are always prepared, get everything right, and whose children (in addition to themselves) always look and behave oh-so-perfectly.

I'm just so not one of them.

Case - in - point.

Michael had what looked like a splinter. And it hurt him. So I told him I would have to try to grab it out. Before I even got the tweezers, Michael started shrieking. Like neighbors might call CPS on me shrieking. Let me remind you, I had not even gotten the device of torture, tweezers.

Once I had said device, the shrieking escalated.

Now - I usually am a patient person. But that patient mom has been worn thin for a variety of reasons: 1) Michael's been out of school and after 3 months - I'm about DONE with that. 2) I've got lots of deadlines this week and am already stressed out. 3) Brian's been traveling a lot and he was traveling during said period.

SO what does the perfect mommy do? Calms said screaming child down, pretends the tweezers are little crab pinchers trying to find shrimp in his little hand. Are there shrimp in there? I don't know! Let's see! And said child would happily let that perfect mommy dig in that little hand while he watched Open Season on TV.

What did I do?

Scream at him for making a fuss about absolutely nothing that has happened yet. Tell him he's being irrational. Remind him that if he doesn't want me to help fix the problem, he can't complain about it. Screaming vs. screaming. Manhandling him to get him to sit still so I could look. These were all things that did not go well.

He fell asleep from the exhaustion from crying and I got to dig around in his hand. No splinter to be found, but now he has a blister there.

Michael was pretty traumatized. He couldn't look at me without crying. I had to apologize profusely for being a "Mean Mommy" because I certainly am not. I am not normally the parent that loses it. I am not normally the parent that screams at their kid. I'm not better than anyone else - as evidenced by this display. When I offered to go into time out because I had behaved poorly, my son said to me, "It's ok Mommy. Don't go into timeout. It's ok."

And the next day, he played with me like nothing ever happened.

Grace is not just something you read about in the bible. You can find it in your everyday life.