Official Entry Essay for 'Mom of the Year' Competition 2009

Dear Most Highly-Regarded Judges,

I would like to share with you an example of my extensive qualifications for the honorable award of 'Mom of the Year.'

Tonight I received a phone call from my daughter's adoption agency coordinator. My husband and sons had already seated themselves at the table for a meal of frozen pizza and canned mandarin oranges, but I excused myself with a polite "Shush--I'm.on.the.phone" and left the room. As I paced the living room in my typical antsy manner, it occurred to me that our adorable toddler was nowhere to be seen. Upon rounding the corner, I saw that she was happily giving herself a facial in the bathroom. Surely you've seen the commercials for Oil of Olay where the women gently splash manicured hands full of water onto their naturally beautiful faces. Apparently, my daughter wanted to have this same experience, so she used the "sink" that was closest to her height. She is 35" tall. I watched in shock as she happily dipped her hands into the water again and rubbed the water onto her adorable baby face. Because I was on the phone with the adoption agency, and not, say, venting to my mother or sister . . .I couldn't proceed in my usual manner of dealing with such things. Instead, I had to silently shoo her out of the bathroom and change her clothes. Through eyes dripping with toilet water, she gave me an utterly bewildered look, but thankfully, complied. Once in her room and stripped down to her diaper, she decided it would be a good time to have a little poop, which was immediately the source of sadness for her (and me) due to the fact that she's been making about 80% of #2s on the potty. Again, I had to silently maneuver my little angel into the bathroom where we wordlessly dumped the contents of her diaper into the proper receptacle. As I searched the bathroom for the missing flushable wipes, she proceeded to sit in several spots on her little potty, the big potty, and the step stool. . . leaving little "prints" all along the way.

I handled all of these issues with nothing more than a firm guiding hand and some well-time and executed facial expressions. For that reason alone, I believe that I deserve the honor of representing mothers everywhere.

If you need further evidence, I will write more tomorrow when our social worker will visit to meet with us and write our 12 month post-placement report. This report will be sent to China and if I have my way, it will not include any mention of the gigantic multi-colored goose egg on our daughter's forehead, the plastic storage tubs full of as-yet-unpacked Christmas decorations in the living room, or the state of our tile kitchen floor (which is currently under review by the health department).

Yours in the spirit of mothering,

Holly Huffman