Motherhood is when you are the world and your kids are your sun, feeding you with their light and love, making you bloom with life. It is also when you are a walking napkin your kids consistently coat with a film of cracker crumbs and stickiness. Everyone knows that nothing can prepare you for how much everything changes once you’re no longer just you, when you’re the bigger piece of a family puzzle that is never truly apart. You love being a part of something that fits so well, but it never stops being a game at heart full of crazy rules and familiar comforts—luckily, it is a game that is easy to love. This love is clear in the BAFTA- and Oscar-nominated film, Room, which celebrates the special bond between mother and child. Here are some of the truths about motherhood that we all know from playing that wonderful game every single day.
1. Every kid kiss begins with lips and ends with crumbs.
2. The 412 variations of your kid crying out “MOM!” and where each lies on the scale from Super Emergency Urgent to Get to It When You Get to It.
3. Scraps of paper with scribbles on them are far more valuable than the fanciest piece of jewelry you cherished pre-kids.
4. Showers are now taken with a live studio audience.
5. So is peeing.
6. A terrible day can be entirely erased by a toddler’s belly laugh.
7. You can have just as much fun staying in all day with your family as you can spending a weekend at an amusement park with them.
8. Milk makes bones strong and odors under the back seat of the minivan even stronger.
9. If your kid gets the tiniest case of the sniffles, your childcare workload increases ten-fold.
10. If you break a leg, your workload stays exactly the same.
11. If you call it “tapas,” eating your kids’ leftover scraps with a glass of wine is actually a pretty fancy dinner.
12. Kids only get sick on the first day of school after a long weekend or an hour before Girl’s Night Out.
13. A small adorable person can bite you in the nipple until you bleed but 20 minutes later you’ll make them their favorite kind of mac and cheese.
14. Every day you live a new Murphy’s Law.
15. Moms can make the whole world feel as safe as a cozy little room.
16. Moms can make the pain of a scraped knee disappear with a kiss.
17. You might not have the freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want to do it anymore, but you do have the freedom to eat ice pops at lunch every day, binge-watch cartoons, and wear a uniform of yoga pants and sneakers now—which is way better.
18. Nothing is more dangerous than unmonitored Sharpies.
19. “Do not glue things to the wall” is a real thing you have to say out loud to your kids…more than once.
20. Nothing is more exhausting than trying to teach your kids how to ride a bike on their own.
21. Nothing is more exhilarating than watching your kids ride away on a bike on their own.
More Mum Truths:
- 24 Things I’ll Never Say in Front of My Daughter
- VIDEOS: Things Mums Know for Sure
- Why We Parent the Wrong Way, According to Our Mums
