Mama’s Murphy’s Laws of Motherhood
Posted on June 8, 2010 by FoBaM-Jamie
You know what Murphy’s Law is, right? It states that “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” Well, becoming a mom is like experiencing the big bang of the universe-of-things-that-can-go-wrong up close and personal. The daily opportunities for mishaps and mayhem multiply exponentially when you put kids in the mix. We find that Murphy’s Law is more than a theory, it’s a way of life.
For those of you who are new to motherhood, this starter list will give you a sense of what you can expect. For those of you in the midst of prime time mothering, it’ll probably make you grimace in recognition (and, hopefully, commiseration). For moms who have survived the fray (including grandmothers!), this list will make you smile nostalgically as you remember what it was like when you were on the front lines.
Wherever you are in your motherhood journey, we hope you can laugh along with us at these oh-so-true rules of the mommy game, and we hope you will add your own Mama’s Murphy’s Laws to the list by leaving a comment.
Here’s to living with chaos and loving it!
- If you pat yourself on the back for some feat of mothering magnificence, whatever you’re congratulating yourself about will immediately implode, probably in front of your mother-in-law or child’s teacher.
- If you’re running late and trying to get through the grocery store in 5 minutes flat, at least one of your children will announce that they have to go to the potty – usually just as you’re about to get in the checkout line. The restroom will, of course, be on the absolute other end of the store.
- If you make elaborate plans for your child’s birthday or some other special occasion, said child will inevitably come down with something that will put a kibosh on the whole event. And your deposit will be non-refundable.
- If you pick up the phone, some child, somewhere in your house will have an emergency that only you can rectify. (Same goes for getting on the computer.)
- If there are 24 kids coming to your child’s party, there will only be 23 of the party favors you like left at the store.
- If you sign up to (finally!) volunteer in your child’s classroom, your boss will sign you up for an important meeting on the same day.
- The vacuum’s suction will only work properly when in close proximity to your child’s very favorite, teeny-tiny, irreplaceable treasure. Woosh & oops!
- Your child’s woobie bear will only get lost in the most inconvenient places – never at grandma’s house or the local library, but at the restroom of that roadside gas station you pulled into for an emergency potty break on the way back from your four hour road trip, or in the middle of the woods after an all-day hike.
- If you have an early morning commitment, your children will have a late night crisis.
- The one inappropriate thing you say in front of your child is the one thing she will retain long enough to share at circle time.
- Chocolate and ketchup will only spill on new clothes, usually white ones.
- No matter how incredibly naughty your kids are when they’re with you, they will always behave for the grandparents, thereby making you look like a raving lunatic. (It’s the same theory as when you bring your car to the mechanic and it runs perfectly.)
- All the really good temper-tantrums will happen in crowded, public places.
What are your favorite Mama’s Murphy’s Laws?
HAHA I LOVE LOVE LOVE this post!!! Everything is soooo very true!!! And I love the heading “Living With Chaos and Loving It”… that sounds like my household 100%. I guess that is just what life is like when you have almost a dozen living in your household
If I think of any “Mama Murphy Laws” I will post.
The night your child goes to bed late will be the same day you come down with something and the next day will be when they’ve woken up the earliest. This leaving you tired from being up all night ill and from the idiotic idea that they might sleep in!
I love reading these articles because theyre short but ifnromaitve.
As soon as your child is down for a nap, and you’ve decided to take a nice shower ALONE, you’ve stepped into the shower, and literally as the soap is in the hair, you hear crying from the other room!
When getting ready to walk out of the door to drop your kids off at daycare and go to work, on time for a change, the baby will spit up all over your blouse – causing the need for you to change yourself (and more than likely the baby, too) and thus, making you late – again.
Never have truer words been written. As the mother of of three (17, 11, 10) I found my head nodding in agreement from item one to thirteen.
Oh, the stories I could tell….
you finally get to go on night out with friends/date, that is the same night your 2 year old decides to throw his sippy cup at the light fixture, so you get a phone call that your sister-in-law has rushed him to the hospital for stitches, and your date drives you to the ER !
Your child sleeps in on days you need to get up early and the days you want to sleep in, they wake up at the crack of dawn.
The one time you forget to pack an extra outfit will be the one time that your child will have a major, up the back, out the legs blow out. (Happened. I had to take my freshly changed, but naked otherwise baby into a Target along the way & buy a new outfit. So embarassing!)
My favorite that I experienced with my daughter (now 37): If you leave your kindergartner home from school with a tummy ache, she will be fine all day. The first time you send her anyway, the teacher will call you to pick her up because she is throwing up and has a 104 degree temp.
Plan an exclusive or extended vacation and one of your children will come down with ear infection; flu; or other sickness that lasts as long as vacation!
The day that you bring home baby #5 from the hospital, child #4 (age 2 1/2) will welcome his new brother by jumping off of the dining room table and breaking his collar bone, thus requiring you to return to the hospital you just left.
From the time he wakes up in the morning until you have to get in the shower, he’s a perfect angel. Once you get in the shower, he’s into everything! Taking food out of the fridge, finding the markers that are hidden in the drawer, dumping your entire bottle of lotion (brand new) onto the newly dry cleaned duvet cover…the list goes on! But I love him more than life itself!
Parents came to visit and I cleaned up the whole house and picked everything up. Steam cleaned my carpets.Kids decide the kitchen isn’t where they want to drink their sodas.Also, parents dog decides to urinate and poop all over the just cleaned carpets.
Loving all the additional input. I’d forgotten just how many bullets a mom dodges on an average day!
As soon as you start to load the dishwasher, or pre-treat clothes—-someone will have a poopy explosion diaper! (thus resulting in more clothes to pre-treat)
I love all of these! I’ve experienced a few myself, and I have another one to add. You and your husband decide to paint your beautiful daughter’s room the color she wants…Pepto Bismol PINK!! Immediately after the paint dries, she decides to SILENTLY decorate the newly-painted wall with Disney stickers that don’t come off!
Never brag that your speedy diaper-changing abilities have left you un-peed on for over a month. As soon as you do, your next diaper-changing will be a very wet experience for you and for baby.
here is one I am sure all of us have gone through! so your 1 1/2 2 yr old is laying down for a nap, nap seems longer then normal, but it is so quiet… so you decide to leave them and enjoy your peace and quiet. you walk by the bedroom to smell the awfull sent of poop! and you open the door and they have coverd them selves, there bed, the walls and floor, and maybe if your lucky even some toys! i would have to say that is the most commen and most disgusting of all the moms murphys laws! and you wonder where to start, you bath child first just to have them in your way well you trying to clean everything else!
Whenever my kids go away overnight we get a huge break nice and relaxing yet….they seem to totally make up for it the next day and night they are home.For example our daughter will be up all night cryin and screamin for whatever reason..NEVER FAILS!
Just as soon as you return from the Dr.’s office with medication, the other one has a different illness.
Your precious darling will walk up a flight of stairs, past two functioning bathrooms, to vomit in your bed at 3am!!!
So true! These are cracking me up! I have 4 kids so I’ve said yes and laughed to just about every one of these. The phone and the shower things ALWAYS. Why do you suddenly need a bandaid now when we haven’t touched them for 4 months?! How about cooking for two of them, and the other isn’t hungry then as soon as you’ve cleaned up #3 wants something whipped up, then the baby wakes up with a poopy and hungry. Or what about the time we forgot #3 in the grocery store because he was mesmerized by the balloons and I was tired because #4 had just come along. “Would Blake’s mother please come to customer service?”
As soon as you change the sheets and think they are past the vomiting part, here it comes again.
just when you think they are sound asleep so you can take a shower in peace….one will get up, walk right past the bathroom with the running water…go out the front door, to the neighbors, so you turn off your shower, to hear pounding on the front door….so of course you go running in nothing bot a towel, soaking wet, open the door and theirs the neighbor with your kid at 10 0′clock at night! (luckily he thought it was funny, even the second time she did it-thankfully only twice)
My favorites…rising early as can be on a stay home day but having to DRAG them out of bed on a school day…emergencies can ONLY happen if Mom is on the phone….Chaos is our life…I try for organized chaos, at least. Being a mom is the best part of me
I love them like crazy!
LMBO Oh wow! I have an 8 yr old girl and a 3 yr old boy. At least half of those I can already relate to and crack up laughing at. (The phone crisis isn’t funny when it happens!) LOL My son is the worlds best at them! I especially loved # 12 bc I’m a single mom, so when I tell the guys ahead of time “how bad he is”, he’s great. Or I’ll brag how good he’s been to a guy and the moment said guy gets around him, he FLIPS OUT. I just stare and am baffled for a few minutes! Or he has a toy that won’t work, he’ll beat it on the floor. For a while, that might work. But it finally doesn’t work and before I can finish “Beating it won’t get it to…….”, it starts working!!! Gee, prove me wrong, why don’t u??
Laughing my head off! With my 5 there is never a dull moment!
The one thing you don’t have packed into your bag, purse or car is the one thing the kids will want. You offer graham crackers, gold fish, fruit snacks, granola bars, grapes… and they will ask for animal crackers.
I would modify #4 a little. In addition to being on the phone, my children always seen to need me most when I need to use the bathroom. Can I PLEASE have 1 minute to do this without someone banging on the door?
Or when you are in the bathroom and they ask you what you are doing in there? What do you think?!lol
It’s not the banging on the door that is so frustrating when you are in the bathroom. It’s the tiny little fingers that walk their way under the closed / locked door at the same time that little voice is heard screaming “MOMMY??? ARE YOU IN THERE??” Or, worse, when you are in a public rest room and your most precious child, with hands on the germiest (is that a word?) floor, their diapered butt in the air and their sweet little face – peeking under the stall to the person next door, asking “Who are you?”