Oh the joys of parenthood! And I'm serious this time.

There are some moments of parenthood that you simply cannot possibly recreate and when they happen you will never ever forget them.  One such event happened this week and it was an absolutely precious doozy!

I had sent the kids up to bed and then Luke showed up downstairs.  I put on my mean-mom-face and asked, "What are you doing?"

He responded, "Uh, I was going to bed, but Evie is upstairs crying."

Of course, I asked why and he told me what had happened. Although I was skeptical, I went on up just to see for myself, and this is what I saw...

If you're a girl, I promise this has happened to you at some point in your life.  And if not, then please don't mention it and so the rest of all of us mortals won't feel bad about our inadequacies.  This definitely happened to me, but (embarrassingly) it happened after I was married but before I had kids.  I'm ashamed to admit that I was probably 20 years old when I tangled my hair up in a brush.  I've officially dubbed this incident the "Comb Catastrophe."  Pure awesomeness!

I convinced her (while I suppressed my laughter) that we should take a picture so that she could laugh about it afterward.  I'm not sure how I got her to agree to this through the tears and embarrassment, but she did, so I took that awesome picture.  Definitely winning Mother of the Year for this one! And then I spent the next ten minutes gently unwinding and untangling her hair from a pink comb.  I asked her why she had felt the need to comb her hair in bed when she was supposed to be sleeping.  Of course, she gave me a completely reasonable answer (one that I would have probably given when I was a kid) by just shrugging her shoulders and saying, "Because I wanted to."  She was patient and sweet.  And I was finally able to get her to stop crying when I explained that she should have come to me as soon as it got tangled so I could help her.  After all, this is my job as her mother.  I mean, really!  This is the shit I actually pictured myself doing when I thought about becoming a parent.  I'll admit there was a lot of stuff I would have never expected, but this was actually on my list for taking care of a little girl!  I also used this as a bigger teachable moment.  The point is that she has to be able to come to me with all of her problems even when they are embarrassing or when she thinks she's going to get in trouble.  I really emphasized this to her, jumping all the way into the future for examples such as when she wrecks the car, or she gets in trouble at school.  It was one of those parenting moments that felt like an after school special or a Punky Brewster episode.  It was awesome. And eventually, I freed all the hair from the comb and she looked like this.

And after some gentle brushing, all evidence of the Comb Catastrophe had disappeared.

She is awesome!  She has allowed me to fulfill one of my expectations of motherhood.  What a blessing she is.  Now let's hope she calls me when she gets arrested!