No matter how much you love being a mom, sometimes it’s hard to keep a smile on your face. As rewarding as your “job” is, it’s also frustrating, repetitive and maddeningly illogical. On any given day, one, or maybe all of these annoying things might be happening to you (and I realize this list doesn’t even scratch the surface):

1. You ask one last time, “Does anyone need to use the bathroom before we hit the road. Once they’re dressed in layers, buckled into car seats and hurtling down the carpool lane on the freeway, you hear those dreaded four words: “I have to pee!”

2. As soon as you’ve prepaid for the custom-fitted dance recital costume that costs more than your car payment, that’s when she decides she’d rather play soccer.

3. The amount of glitter stuck between your floor boards can only be rivaled by the amount of sand in your bathtub.

4. You agreed to be one of four Room Parents for your child’s grade school class. How hard could it be? Then the other three Room Parents abruptly quit, leaving only you.

5. The little one fell asleep in the car five minutes before you got home, and now you have to drive around for two hours or risk losing the nap. And the Starbucks drive-thru is closed.

6. The letter R is missing from the alphabet puzzle. You are considering taking up woodworking just so you won’t have to buy an entire new puzzle until you remember that you don’t even have time to condition your hair.

7. “No Mommy, I can do it MYSELF” applies to everything except cleaning up their own toys.

8. The lunch you woke up 20 minutes early to make comes back completely uneaten, but that slice of cake you’ve been saving all day to be your special treat? Magically disappeared.

9. Your toddler is melting down and refusing to eat her banana because you made the critical error of opening it for her. And it’s the last banana.

10. Your 5-year-old just decided the 3-year-old would look better with bangs.