I want a T-shirt that says, “I didn’t used to go out in public in sweat pants and messy buns, and I didn’t used to have gray hair and wrinkles, and I wasn’t fat, and I didn’t have stains on my clothes, but you do realize that I have children, right?” And another one for work that would say, “I used to be able to count to six and make a power point presentation with zero typos, but please bear with me as I spend the next eighteen years adjusting to parenthood.”

Instead, I just look out the windows of my eyes—the ones that didn’t need glasses before having children—and watch the mothers who were smart enough to have their children in their twenties, the ones whose bodies recovered, the ones who still turn heads and not in an I-can’t-believe-that-woman-is-wearing-curlers-in-Walmart-Doesn’t-she-know-people-can-see-her kind of a way. You know. The moms who have it all together. They don’t just LOOK good. They ARE good. You see them at the grocery store, and they have a toddler in the shopping cart—and he isn’t even trying to climb out of it! And you see her putting her groceries in her van—and toys and Cheerios aren’t even falling out the door when she opens it! Who are these women? And where did they learn to be so perfect? Is there a class for that?

I am sorry if I stare at you, Perfect Mama. I’m just in awe. I want to be you.

Here was me as a new mom: Wake up at 4:50 am, thinking, “OK, I can do this. I’m not going to be late. Walk dogs. Make breakfast. Take shower. Feed toddler; feed baby; get out the door. It’s really not that complicated.” But, you know, babies and toddlers just don’t understand about getting out the door. My toddler liked to do things like bring an armful of clothes hangers with her. She would try to carry about sixty plastic clothes hangers in her eleven-inch arms. Of course, six or seven would drop as she walked, and she would of course have to stop and pick them up, and then four or five more would fall, and she would need to pick those up, too. And then she would get mad that, instead of helping her with her load of hangers, I had the audacity to occupy myself with carrying the baby, the diaper bag, the keys, and the jackets. And the baby would either decide she needed to eat again (NOW) as soon as we got that load of clothes hangers actually through the door, or she would have a diaper blowout as soon as I buckled her into her car seat. By the time we actually pulled out of the driveway, it would be like 10:25, and all three of us had had at least one full-blown meltdown and were ready to turn right back around and head inside for a nap.

My kids are older now. They can feed and dress themselves and walk to the car on their own. Do I look any better? NO! I look worse, because I look like I’ve been doing this for ten years, because I have. Also, because now that they talk, they have been known to, on occasion, when we are most in a hurry, use that talking feature to do time-wasting things—like talk—instead of eat and get dressed and walk to the car.

Note to self: Must spend more time spying on Super Moms to learn the Secrets of Managing the Chaos.