Mommy Brain...

Some think tankey folks came out with a study a couple of years ago showing that "mommy brain" is a myth, and that women with children are just as smart as they were before they had them. I didn't read it of course, but I remember clicking "like" on facebook when someone else (a mom friend, who also presumably didn't read it, because who has that kind of attention span really) posted it. I do "like" the idea that I'm just as smart as I was before I started this wild roller coaster ride that is motherhood (or as I like to think about it, preventing my children from killing themselves), but all personal evidence points to the contrary.

Today I arrived home to find two concerned pollsters standing in my front yard, cell phone in hand, waiting for the police to show up at my house because I had left my front door standing wide open when I packed up my children for a trip to the grocery store. "Do you live here?" one of them asked me as I pulled into the driveway. "Uh...yes." I answered, opening the doors of the minivan and releasing the hounds. "Well, uh, we called the police because your door was wide open, and we were afraid you might have been robbed." "Oh!" I waved away her concern nonchalantly, "I'm sure that was me, my children are very distracting." She raised her eyebrows at me, and motioned for her partner to call the boys in blue and tell them that there was no emergency, just a brain-fart by a mother of two. Then she asked if I might want to hear about the millage (for the police no less, those pillars of society that might even manage someday to save me from myself). While she politely gave her talking points about how even with the new millage my property taxes would probably go down, my eldest grabbed on to the knees of her jeans and rocked back and forth growling "I am a baby jaguar! I am a baby jaguar." If nothing else I think he demonstrated that it IS possible for a woman to be so distracted by her children that she might walk out of her house with the door wide open.

Lest you think this was some sort of aberration, let me assure you that this was simply the latest in a long line of mommy moments.

There was the time that I came out of the grocery store to find that I had left the side door of the mini-van standing open.

There was the time that I came out of the coffee shop to realize that I had not only left my keys in the ignition of my van, but had in fact left it running.

There was the time that I left my purse in the back pocket of the stroller parked in our front yard...overnight.

Not to mention the fact that I can't wrap my reading mind around any plot more complicated than "have you met my hunky boyfriend, he's a werewolf!"

I can only imagine the hijinks that will ensue when baby number 3 is born in September.

So, whoever you are, think-tank guys (or more likely defensive mothers), I appreciate the credit, but I beg to differ. I'm not saying that I won't recover those lost IQ points when my kids are...oh say...married, but for the moment, I am blaming my lack of smarts on mommy brain.

Ragnar...proud owner of one mommy brain

PS Manimal insists that I add that while I was proofreading this post I was holding Ragnarbaby in my arms while he simultaneously riffled my wallet and chewed on a ballpoint pen.