Mom Confessions: 10 Things I Do As a Mom That Make Me Feel Guilty. Kind of.

1) I let my kids eat the following foods: macaroni and cheese (from the box), chicken nuggets, gogurt, fruit snacks, and otter pops. Not every day...but not exactly once in a blue moon either.

2) On a good day, I limit their TV time to 1 1/2 hours. This usually works out to 2 shows in the morning (while everyone's waking up and I take a shower) and 1 more show at the end of the day (when I am making dinner). On other days this rule is non-existent...rainy days, super hot days, sick days, days when I need to make a phone call, days when their bickering drives me to the brink, etc. In other words, sort of often. That said, they're watching PBS Kids...so it's not that bad, right?

3) Occasionally I'll realize as I'm reading bedtime stories that they boys haven't brushed their teeth...and I don't remind them to because I'm too tired to get up and do it.

4) I hate bubbles and try to divert to another activity when the boys ask to do them. In my experience, about 90% of bubble play results in a sticky, spilled mess.

5) During the summer the boys regularly stay up way too late on Fridays and Saturdays because we're all having too much fun outside to be bothered with our regular bedtime. The weather cools off to be perfectly pleasant, the kids are happily riding bikes or playing in the pool, and the adults are enjoying an adult beverage... so we let the play go on and on. Plus, if the kids ride their bikes until it's dark they are flat-out exhausted and when we do finally come inside, putting the kids down is quick and easy. This is never a bad thing.

6) I take tons of pictures of the kids but I am terrible about printing and organizing them. 90% of their childhood is documented on our computer only. I used to love scrapbooking but find that it's way too time consuming these days. I also love the few photo books I've made on Kodak Gallery, but even these take a long time to put together. So, I keep snapping pictures and loading them onto the computer... where they wait and wait for me to create some sort of organized album.

7) When I take both kids to the grocery store, our first stop is for 2 boxes of animal crackers which I let them eat in the cart so that I can shop without constant interruptions

8) I say yes to one more treat, 5 more minutes outside, 1 more bedtime book, etc. because sometimes it's just the easy way out.

9) I have a whole bag of dum-dums in the pantry that I happily dole out when I need to use the phone...time to make a doctor's appointment? Time for a dum-dum!

10) When they want to listen to an annoying song in the car for the millionth time I sometimes pretend that the CD is lost or not working. One can only listen to "She'll be Coming 'Round the Mountain" so many times before going a little crazy, right?