SuperMom

Most of the time, the word SuperMom makes me think of a woman who looks fantastic, works full-time, always picks her kids up at daycare on time, always reads to them for more than 15 minutes at night and still has time to make cupcakes for preschool the next day. That's not me. In fact, that's completely laughable, as far as I'm concerned.

Perhaps I should be content with being my kids' hero from time to time instead. My kids didn't actually call me SuperMom today, but they thought I was cool and that counts for a lot these days. You know what else is laughable? I actually thought I was pretty cool too.

When the rocket from Smunch's prized "Stomp Rocket" (pictured at an earlier date) got stuck in a redwood tree at the park today , I waited for the breeze to knock it out. Didn't happen. Using my maternal SuperMom wiles, I remembered a miniature basketball in the back of the car. Leaving Mam to aid Smunch in further rocket launching (there are several rockets), I zipped back to the SuperMomMobile (aka: the minivan), got the ball and with one deft toss, knocked the rocket to the ground.

"Whoa! Thanks!" Smunch said. Yay. I'm cool.

Then, of course, Mam decided that the heroic ball needed to be used in a game of solitaire soccer. That was fine, but eventually Smunch got bored of rocketeering and decided to go after her. The park has a creek. You get the picture. I hear Mam screeching over by the creek. And I get there to find the basketball cheerfully bobbing along in the water...next to an equally unperturbed duck.

Moms with common sense and an appreciation for using "natural consequences" as a tool for teaching good behavior, would have used this opportunity to show the kids how they lose toys when they can't play nice. But not SuperMom. SuperMom saves the day by nimbly skooching (Can one skooch nimbly? Forget it. I can't even spell skootch!) down the creek bank and tip toeing across a few rocks to the ball, rescuing it from the water and leaving the duck unruffled before gracefully reachieving the shore.

SuperMom finds a caterpillar and asks Mam, to her squealing delight, if she'd like to hold it. "Hi, little caterpillar!" she says. SuperMom points out a second caterpillar that has landed, as if by magic (or so Smunch said) on Smunch's shoulder. We leave the park in time to catch Curious George on TV... pile on those SuperMom points!

And, as if the newly appreciative children aren't enough, SuperMom immediately goes to work on...not dinner...but on cleaning up the breakfast dishes...oh, and, uh, the lunch dishes. And she sweeps the dried out mud clods off the floor. All evidence of the day's earlier transgressions neatly concealed, she starts dinner. And completes it as husband walks in the door.

This is where there should be applause and I take a big bow. But SuperMom, with her omniscient powers, strongly suspects that husband is onto her. His keen vision probably notices that the dishes from breakfast are still dripping on the towel by the sink. He may have glimpsed the bathroom floor, still streaked with the kind of mud that doesn't just brush off.

But he says nothing.

Thank goodness the superpowers were available when choosing SuperDad!