12. Ann S

Lily: "but where can we put these?" (markers)
Amy: "um,...maybe in the cretaceous time period."

My friend Ann is walking endorphins; she is a happy pill in cute skirts and polka dot heels toting three children in a minivan. She is the smile on my Thursday morning calendar and I hope I can describe her sunshine personality with at least as much pizzazz as she uses to describe a grocery list.

Ann is the mother of three: Lily, three, Amy, three, and Matthew, two. Yes, she has three children learning to use the potty right now. She has three children with more energy than Sonic the Hedgehog, three children with as many bright smiles and withering frowns as a preschool teacher working overtime. And she loves it.

I direct your attention to the quote above. I opened with this, an update from Ann's Facebook page, to illustrate for you just how entertaining life can be. It is from this spunky woman that I find inspiration to throw myself into the small and miraculous moments of being a mother, to push through the sometimes exhausting marathon of mommy-ing by seeing the sparkle amidst the rough.

Every Thursday morning I head to Chick-Fil-A to meet up with my sister-in-law and her kids, Ann and her kids, and often one or two other mothers toting toddlers as well. One such morning I was sitting in our customary cluster of tables and watched as Ann started detailing the pluses of a portable potty seat with hand gestures and widening of eyes.

"I mean, I don't go anywhere without this thing," she said as she clutched the tri-color plastic object to her chest.

She began pulling it from the grocery bag where it is conveniently stored in her over-sized purse, and as she did her mouth started forming her words with wide, pursing articulation, as she does when she's excited.

"I mean, it was so difficult when I had to take Lily to the potty, unbuckle, take her inside, do the potty thing," she explained rolling her eyes and slumping her shoulders in a perfect imitation of an exasperated young mother. "Then, of course Amy would have to go to... invariably there were accidents, and it was just terrible," she finished with a dramatic sweep of the hands and final eye roll.

"Then I discovered this," and she held up the potty like an Olympic medal, her eyebrows shooting heavenward.

"I highly recommend it when you start potty training."

Finished with her accomplished sales pitch, she relaxes back against the booth, replaces the plastic baggy clad potty topper, and sips her Diet Coke.

I think that at this point I sat in stunned silence, both unbelieving that she was actually willing to let her children have bowel movements in a parked van with only a Harris Teeter bag beneath a cheap plastic contraption as well as fascinated by her zealous advertising. Finally I concluded that no matter how crazy she was for both using and loving this mothering tool, I was appreciated her humor and lack of complaint.

After all, how many mothers do you know who are potty training twins +1 and laughing about it?

Ann does not start her days prepared for the worst. She starts her days with a cute top, a fashionable skirt or flattering jeans, and the cutest shoes. She lets her kids pick our their clothes, tosses them in her gold minivan, and sits in between them all, perched on the backseat console like a mother bird, and conferences with them about good attitudes. She divvies juice, allows them to enlighten her with all of the important issues facing them at the time, (such as the cretaceous time period), and breathes deep as she climbs over books and bouncy balls to get to the driver's seat. Then she fires up the van as she similarly prays to God for liquid energy and an IV.

And she's off, with her portable plastic potty and a sparkle in her determined mother's heart.