MURFREESBORO ? Although 1950s television shows portrayed perfect, pearl-clad mothers cleaning and caring for kids, most American moms know that picture of life is far from the real world.
Yet the gap between the two ideals can leave a lot of moms with self-doubt.
"When it comes to parenting, I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants," admitted Murfreesboro mom Pam Johnson-Bennett, who has co-authored "Cookies for Dinner" with fellow 'Boro mom Kae Allen. "We've all been there and had those fears we were inadequate or thought, 'I can't believe my child did this.'"
"Even though we think we're under control, it still can go wrong," Kae chimed in.
Their book is a humorous look at the perils and not-so-pretty incidents they've experienced in their "quest to survive motherhood," as their website, www.twoloonsandabook.com, touts.
Don't expect "Cookies for Dinner" to be a handbook on how to be a perfect mother, the authors explained. That notion, most likely leftover from the baby-boomer generation, isn't realistic. Instead, the book is "the antidote to all that," the authors noted.
"The whole thing about this book is that you are not alone on this rollercoaster (of parenthood). We need to laugh (at life)," Pam said.
Sometimes, being a parent isn't all that pretty. In fact, parenthood can make you feel "loony" at times, thus the name for Kae and Pam's collective blog, twoloonsandabook.com.
The authors recall tales of potty training and poop patrol, along with brutally honest stories of disastrous trips to the grocery store, mishaps and mayhem on the "ride of your life."
In one chapter, Kae tells the story of how her home became Chicken Pox Island. She had just brought her third (and last) child home from the hospital, only to discover little, red dots on her other two children. Her husband was away on business and there were no friends or family able to help. "I had no help, no nothing," Kae recalled, now able to laugh about it all. She never told her children they were sick. Albeit an unorthodox approach, she took pink calamine lotion and covered all her children's pox spots, then did the same for herself and her baby, just to make it fun instead of the whole ordeal being traumatic. "They just thought they were getting to body paint," she said.
"To me, that's being a good mom," Pam said.
The book title comes from a culinary catastrophe when she couldn't get her son to eat chicken and dumplings, so she just told him he was going to have "cookies for dinner." It worked. From there, she'd give various foods gross names, just to entice her kids to eat.
A self-avowed obsessive-compulsive person, Pam had expected the arrival of her adopted daughter to be a grand, perfect experience. Friends and family were waiting at the airport to greet them. But after a diaper-changing mishap on the plane home from Guatemala and a bout with gastrointestinal issues, Pam and her husband, Scott, and baby Gracie arrived covered in vomit ? not what Pam had hoped. But soon she learned the reality of motherhood ? it's messy, but it's marvelous.
"As I reflect back on these stories ... I always tell my kids they bring out the child in me. ... I'm the one who is fortunate," said Pam, who became a first-time mother at 47.
Looking back and laughing at those incidents when you thought you were losing your mind can be "therapeutic," and the authors said it has been for them.
"You want people to look at you and validate you," Pam said. Your kids should be dressed perfectly, they should behave a certain way, but that doesn't always happen. "You realize that has nothing to do with being a good mother."
To purchase "Cookies for Dinner," visit http://www.twoloonsandabook.com/ or find it on amazon.com. Purchase price is $16.
