Mother of the Year

This past October had been a particularly hairy one, filled with work trips, weekend work obligations and lots of illnesses all around. In-between juggling work schedule, trying to squeeze in a girls' trip, nursing sick kids and being sleep-deprived, I committed a couple of cardinal sins. My confession would sound something like this if I were a Catholic: Forgive me, Father for I have sinned. It’s been over four years since I have been to church. I inadvertently fed straight-on peanuts to my allergic-to-peanut daughter. I mistook another child for my son. 

This unfortunate string of faux-pas began a few weeks ago. I was on a conference call when I saw K trying to reach me on my cell.
Here is the text message exchange:
     Me: On a call. What’s up?
     K: Nurse just called. EB’s snack had peanuts in it.
     Me: Oh sh*t.

Apparently, I completely missed the fact that the freebie Emerald’s breakfast packet that I got from a golf event had peanuts in it. I was in such a hurry when I was packing EB's snack that this was all I saw:

And somehow I missed this:

Luckily, EB’s peanut allergy is not of the anaphylactic sort. The school sent her home, and EB ended up vomiting a few times. All was well afterwards, but the poor girl ended up missing her school festival that afternoon. Which made me feel horrible. Guilt, upon guilt.

A couple of weeks after the peanut incident, I took BBoy to his school’s Halloween festival. The scene was a madhouse—sea of parents and kids, elbows and little heads everywhere, cacophony of giggles, whining, excited shrieks ringing in your ears. I got dizzy barely ten minutes into the event. But BBoy was beside himself with excitement because he got to wear his “yewow power wanger” costume. He buzzed around, collecting candies and proudly showing off his superhero power.

At one point we waited at a throw-the-ball-in-milk-jugs line that ran four heads deep. When it finally got to BBoy's turn, I fished my iPhone out of my pocket and positioned myself to take an action shot: “B, smile!” I urged. But the darned kid just ignored me so I tried a couple more times: "C'mon, look at Mommy and smile!" At that point I looked up and noticed that BBoy’s costume looked a bit different than I had remembered. The mask looked different, and so did the shoes for that matter. I looked harder at the boy. “B!...um, B?”
That was when I heard his teacher’s dumbfounded voice behind me: “Umm..that’s not B. That’s Joe-Schmo” (or whatever his name was. If I'm not going to recognize my own child, I'm certainly not going to remember this random kid's name).

Crap.

I realized that from the time that I moved to the front to the time that I pulled out my camera, B had managed to run to a different game station, and standing in front of me was another boy wearing a yellow costume.

That was definitely not a mother-of-the-year moment, but I say this in my defense -- all yellow superheros look the same.