When my daughter first learned to walk, someone said to me, “Oh boy! Now your life is really over.” It’s amazing how living with toddlers (those kids big enough to make real trouble, but still too small to know any better will quickly make you long for the sleepless nights of infanthood.

Doorbell Dinger. Two years ago my boys were ages 2 and 5. At that time we had some pretty interesting habits developing in both boys. My oldest thought it was fun to doorbell ditch. I instructed him that you have to leave a treat or something special if you want to ding the bell and run away. My 2 year old liked to run outside buck naked and started doing this around the same time he learned to unlock the door. Luckily he was little enough to be too afraid to venture very far on his own. One day I was getting ready for the day and all of a sudden I realized I didn’t hear kid noises. So I looked around the house (in my underwear and a towel, none the less and couldn’t find them). I happened to look out my front window and saw my two boys — the 2 year old naked as a jay bird, and my 5 year old standing in front of our very uptight neighbor’s door (you know the one, every neighborhood has one. Well I was stuck, and I painfully watched the events that unfolded. My 5 year old rang the door bell and ran and left my 2 year old standing their in his birthday suit for our neighbor lady to see. I guess the 5 year old did what I said: he left something at the door before he ran. All I could do was holler out the front window to get inside our house immediately. Needless to say I was mortified and to this day that neighbor lady has never said a word to me. – Kaysville, UT  

Barefoot But Obedient. I was taking my two boys (2-1/2 and 1 to IKEA to look at the kid stuff. I told my older son that if he stayed in the double stroller the whole time, there would be a treat waiting for him when we got back to the car. So he did as he was told and was talking nonstop about his surprise as I balanced my purchases and pushed the stroller all the way back to the car. Well, as I put him in his car seat all ready to hand over the cookie, I realized he had taken his brand new shoes off somewhere in the store. I felt like the story “Going on a Bear Hunt” because I had to take the kids back out of the car seats, load them back into the stroller, repeat the “You can’t get out of the stroller, etc” speech … until we found his shoes in the checkout aisle (thank goodness I worked backwards and started with the checkout line and not where we started shopping!) Did he get the cookie? Of course, because he did not get out of the stroller. Next time I will have to add, “DO NOT TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES!” – Atlanta, GA

Slip-N-Slide. One day while I was on the phone with our doctor, my two boys were being so loud I couldn’t hear. So I made the mistake of walking into the other room. From the other room I could hear squeals of joy and laughter and I recall thinking how nice it was that they were getting along. I should have known better. I finished my call and walked into my kitchen to see that they had dumped about three gallons of water from our water cooler all over my hardwood floor. My oldest looked at me very proudly and said, “Look Mom we made a slip and slide.” I honestly think he thought I would be happy. Anyway, all I could do was say, “Run. Run now!” I was in total shock. We cleaned it up and now I can look back and laugh — unless it happens again. – Kaysville, UT

There is a certain kind of embarrassment that only a Mom can truly understand. Our MomMoments column is filled with these war stories of motherhood. We’d love to hear your stories so please share with us!