When I was pregnant with the hummingbird back in 2008, I had never come across “attachment parenting, free-range parenting, or helicopter parenting”.

When my mom raised me, she was a tough but very loving parent. That’s all I knew and I admired and loved her for it. That’s what I wanted to be as a mom and I feel that I am that way now. Then I got into the world of blogging and my head swirled at all of these ways of parenting. To be honest, it made me feel like a giant f*cking loser that I wasn’t “the right” kind of mom. Whatever that is.

I feel like when it comes to parenting, I’m in the “happy medium” area. I let my daughter watch television during the day. I sometimes bribe her with chocolate so I can take a shower. Half the time when I read her a bedtime story, I’ll pass a few pages because I’m so freaking tired. She hasn’t caught on… yet. I told myself I would never let her eat at McDonald’s and recently, her favorite meal is Chicken McNuggets. I cringe but since she eats very little, it makes me very happy to see her actually eat something.

I try my best to teach her manners, respect others, and be polite. I don’t always succeed. Sometimes we look though my US Weekly together and occasionally I’ll tell her mommy needs to watch one of her shows. Last week it was The Rachel Zoe Project. A girl needs to learn about fashion. I don’t *always* love being around her every second of the day. By 3 pm (sometimes it can be 10 am), I usually start twitching because I need a little time to myself. I drop f-bombs more often than I’d like to admit when I’m driving and she’s in the car. Example: “What’s the deal asshole? This isn’t a f*cking parade!!”

And I’m totally fine by my happy medium parenting, the faults I have with my parenting, and all of the trials and errors. I don’t strive to be a perfect mom because it doesn’t exist. I know I’m doing something right because I have a very bright and loving child. I couldn’t have asked for a better daughter.

This post was originally published on Elle’s This Is Mommyhood. For more from Elle, check out her blog and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Living things change. They adapt and grow and die. Trees leaf out, snakes molt, babies grow up into frat boys.

Aren’t you glad I picked this picture instead of one of a frat boy?

So why is it I thought the moment I had a baby that I would be a full-grown mother?

A few months ago, I was talking with an adoptive mother at the park. She brought home her baby boy 4 months ago, and he was now a year and a half old. “It’s been hard to relate to the other moms with kids his age because we’re just hitting the 4 month mark of having a kid,” she said. Without even thinking, I said, “Yeah, I mean, he’s an 18-month-old baby and you’re a 4-month-old mom.”

That means I’m a 3-year-old mom. And back when I was wondering if I would ever feel like a “natural mother,” I was a 3-week-old mom. A newborn. I was 4 months old when I was white-knuckling through my exhaustion, anxiety and depression.

My maternal grandmother, who we called Dee Dee, was a full grown mother when I knew her. Since she had a son and a daughter who were 61 and 59 when she died, so I’d say she grew to the ripe old mom age of 120.

Thinking about my mom age this way makes me feel better. It helps me have more compassion how I handled those first few disorienting months. Things often felt wobbly and strange. Am I doing this right? Is it supposed to feel this way?

We don’t expect newborn babes to come out of the womb quoting Shakespeare. So why do we expect the equivalent of ourselves as mothers?

And here’s my dear friend E. She has a 2-year-old and just give birth to baby girl #2. So now, her mom age will grow twice as fast as mine.

For today, here’s the gift that I’d like to give to myself and to all of you: I’d like to let us all be the mom age that we are.

For a mom in her toddler years, I feel like I’m doing okay. I don’t have everything down to a science, like my 7-year-old mom friends, but I’m starting to have fewer tantrums.

…. You wonder what they’ve been smoking and don’t always know what they’re talking about. Bada-bing!

Here are the top ten ways you know your little babe has transitioned into a toddler.

10. You get to hear Elmo’s Song over and over and over again. Sure, I could hear Welcome To The Jungle on a loop and not get tired of it but at least Axl Rose isn’t a furry, red monster. Oh wait…..

9. Getting your little one to brush their teeth has become a sport of sorts. You chase them around the house while holding their toothbrush like an Olympic torch. When you finally catch them, they scream bloody murder when you get the toothbrush near their mouth.

8. You love going to Target and can spend hours going through the aisles while pretending it’s a mini vacation but your toddler gets restless only a few minutes in and doesn’t want to sit in the cart any longer. You give in and take them out of the cart and then have to go running after them full speed ahead, sometimes having to push the cart aside so you can grab your toddler before they step in front of someone else’s red cart.

7. Your little one has been given breakfast and lunch and you’re dying to eat something so you sneak into the kitchen for a quick bowl of cereal while they’re playing in the living room. I’m convinced toddlers have the sense of smell that dogs have and while you’re trying to eat, they start calling for you and ask for a snack. With their snack in hand, you go into the living room to give it to them but they spot what you’re eating and want it immediately. Since you can’t deny your child food, one bite becomes two, then three, and before you know it, your breakfast is gone.

6. You thought changing your baby’s diapers was hard but once they hit toddlerhood, they twist themselves in ways you never thought possible (which makes putting on their diaper comparable to wrestling an octopus).

5. There’s no need to get them presents. Just give them an empty box inside another box and they’ll think it’s the greatest thing ever. For the little hummingbird’s 2nd birthday she got a playhouse and even though she liked it (I think it’s awesome and wouldn’t mind moving into it), she still preferred a moving box that we ended up placing beside the playhouse.

4. Your sweet little angel can get toddler PMS in the blink of an eye.

3. You start to think maybe your toddler is much more energetic than other kids their age so you call your mom to ask if it’s normal. She laughs her ass off and enjoys every minute of it.

2. You thought you had very little time to do things when they were just a baby but realize just how much time you actually had compared to now and want to kick your own ass for not taking advantage of it.

1. Despite everything, you would do it all over again. You never knew you could love someone so much.

When did you realize your baby had become a toddler?

I used to think that I wasn’t built for parenthood. Like Brad Pitt was accused of missing the “sensitivity chip”, for years I was convinced that I was born without the mommy gene. Now I realize that I just hate babies.

Let me explain.

It’s not that babies are bad, per se. Apparently I just suck at dealing with them. I have come to the conclusion that I am simply not equipped to successfully manage, I don’t know, life in general on less than 5 hours of sleep. And since The Hubs and I had the brilliant idea to have our boys 23 months apart, I basically subsisted on 1.5 hours of sleep per night for over 4 years of back-to-back pregnancy and nursing cycles.

I have girlfriends who absolutely adore the baby stage. They love the cuddling, the nursing, the sweet-pickly smell of baby toes. While babies have their moments, I found the whole birth-to-three-years phase to be simply soul crushing. The sleep deprivation, combined with the overwhelming weight of being on call 24-7 and responsible for every need of this tiny human being are enough to make you wonder why the hell you got into this baby-making game to begin with.

While little kids are not the most logical bunch, there is some degree of reason related to the whims of the three-to-five year old set. Their life adheres to a certain amount of structure – their demands fall into basic categories that are relatively easy to anticipate and, at times, defuse. With babies, all bets are off. You can feed them, burp them, diaper them, swaddle them, walk them, rock them, drive them and still not know why the hell they are crying.

These days, my nights may be marred by the occasional request for water or trip to the bathroom, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. With the big boy in kindergarten and the baby starting nursery school, there is a clear cadence to our days. Drop off, aftercare, karate, piano, homework, dinner, bath, books and bed. Lather, rinse, repeat. The boys are even old enough to entertain themselves a bit, or (gasp) sleep until 7:30am on weekend mornings when we put them to bed a tad bit later. We play games, read books, have semi-intelligible conversations. We snuggle, sing songs and say prayers before bed. We pray for a good day on the way to school, and talk about the best part of their day over dinner.

So, while babies are cute and sweet, I think The BadAssMama is better suited for life with big kids. I’m falling in love with my boys more and more each day, and I am grateful to see the baby years fading into the rear view.

What are your thoughts on the baby-stage? Love it or leave it?

Here is one more thing about traveling with toddlers, traveling without them. I realize some people never have to cross that bridge, but for those of us that do, here are some ideas, again gathered from The Sisterhood, for coping with the pain (read my pain) of having to leave them.

When our children were younger Bill and I traveled for work quite a bit, or really my husband did, and I would occasionally go visit him for 3 or 4 days. Usually, I would burst into tears the minute I got in the car and I’d arrive at the airport a soggy, snotty mess wondering what long term damage I was inflicting on our daughters by leaving. Okay, I was then also thrilled with the hours of kid-free time at the airport and even on the plane itself – but it was always a cocktail mixed with guilt and self-recrimination.

At that time, we had the most amazing preschool teacher, Carol, who helped us with “All Things Toddler.” She explained that kids don’t have a firm grasp on time. For instance, one day can fly by or seem like forever, so she gave us a great tool to handle the situation; the Mom and Dad Calendar. We would get a big piece of paper, decorate it with our daughters and mark out the days we would be away. We made stick drawings of our faces smiling out of the plane’s windows or waving goodbye and we would always have a photograph of the returning parent on the calendar’s last day. Then we’d tape it on the fridge and every night they’d mark off the day and actually see how much closer they were to seeing us.

Here are a few pictures of Mom and Dad calendars I saved (see above and below). As I side note, I am a saver-of-things-I-probably-shouldn’t-save. I can’t help myself and I always get the vision of our kids going through our stuff after we are dead, and saying to each other, “Can you believe Mom saved this! What was she thinking?” Bit of a macabre way to end this post, but maybe you can relate. Or maybe I just put something in your head you will never be able to get rid of. Sorry.

Do you have any tricks for when you have to travel away from your children? Send them on.