Team mom thank you very much.

So we have been traveling across the county with the boys on the family vacation. We are right out of the grizwalds but add in iPads. After four days, I have experienced something interesting.  Team mom. What does this mean? Well as we went to these places I saw families everywhere dealing with the same issues we had been; Kids with way too much energy and testing boundaries in a sleep deprived sugar buzzed frenzy.

So, as we traveled through these, Wonders of the World, such as the Badlands in SD, Mount Rush, and then Devils Tower, I had been comforted by Team Mom.  At the Badlands, when the kids were pushing boundaries and trying to climb these huge structures with nothing but crocks on, I looked to the sky  and asked for help and patience not to scream at my kids one more time. A Mom came up to me and said "Don't worry you are almost there, in a couple more years they will stop that constant bickering."  She had four kids in her brood and they were not currently killing each other, crying or screaming like mine were.

Another time when the kids were fighting over some nonsensical nothingness, another mother came up to me and told me I was doing a good job.  This really meant a lot to me.   I was trying to work out their problems and barely hanging on to my temper by the skin of my teeth.   Just this simple 'you are doing a good job', made all the difference.

The third time a Mom gave me a boost, was again at the Badlands. The kids were climbing something they could easily have fallen to their death from and I had just finished telling them they had to come down.   I told them that I had given them the freedom to climb, and they did not want me to regret giving them the freedom.  The reality was, there was no way I could have gone up there and gotten them down, so I had relying on their sense of honor to stop when I said it was high enough.   Another mother came up to me and said "Amen Sister" and then told her kids the same thing.

These interactions felt so good.  I will never see these women again.  Yet each one of them gave me a little strength to think maybe, just maybe, I am not nuts and will make it through the current parenting challenges of, traveling across country with the family.

Thanks Team Mom.