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…do all mothers almost constantly compare themselves to their own mothers? I was contemplating this last night around 1am after changing my youngest son’s sheets for the fourth night in a row. He seems to think that if he wets his bed, then he can come and sleep in my bed. His little voice is all hopeful even when he’s yelling, “Mom, I peed!”

So last night, I finally was so tired and really quite fed up with having to change the sheets every single night (he is three and a half, and has gone months without accidents, so it isn’t that he’s just not ready to sleep in underwear) and I asked if he was peeing just so he could come into my bed. And….he nodded. Sigh. I proceeded to tell him that it was just too bad then, because wetting the bed is not a free ticket to sleeping with Mommy and Daddy. And he cried. I felt sort of bad, but at the same time I couldn’t encourage him.

After getting him tucked in under the spare sheets, I went back to my bedroom wondering what my mom would have done. Would she have lost her patience like me? Or would she have been the same, unfailingly soft-spoken mother I remember from when I was small? Am I failing somehow because I am not always patient, and I can get snappy when I’ve had enough? Or is my mind only choosing to see select memories and maybe my mom really got just as annoyed and short with my brothers and me on occasion?