Best Mom Tip #17: Dull your sense of smell

Motherhood brings with it a wide variety of new and interesting smells that are sometimes difficult to deal with. When your kids are babies you have the poop/spit-up/baby shampoo combination that could tax even the most sturdy of noses. As your kids become school-age you get the barf/fruit snack/lice shampoo trifecta. In middle and high school your kids (especially boys) begin to fluctuate between actually stinking of BO and smelling like a ridiculous amount cologne.

These are not the smells of the world of non-parents. My life used to smell like coffee shops and book stores. Movie popcorn and Sno Caps on a Friday night for dinner. Chinese takeout when there was no food in the fridge. Any barf or BO belonged to me and therefore, wasn't nearly as gross. I never barfed in the car, spilled milk without cleaning it up or telling anyone, or refused to admit that I might need a bath.

Generally, if I smelled bad, it was because I had been doing something productive like training for a marathon. Now if something smells bad around me, someone is probably sick. I would love to just pawn off all of the smelly things my kids require on someone else, but I don't think there are any takers. Since I have to deal with the stinkiness because my kids need me to do so, I have decided to try to kill my sense of smell. According to my online research (Health A to Z:Smelling Disorders), I have a few options:

1. Take up smoking.
   
2. Eat a lot of paint chips.
   
3. Enter a nuclear facility without hazmat gear.
   
4. Roll around in insecticides for a really long time.

Most of these actions would require me to get a baby-sitter. Smoking is really just too expensive in this economy. I guess I could try to eat old lead paint after I put the kids to bed. I'll let you know if I come up with an option that seems reasonable.

In the meantime, we "Best Moms" have to snuggle a kid who smells like barf from time to time. We have to use strange-smelling medicines and bath products to keep them clean and healthy. We have to change their diapers, get used to spit-up, and do all of this without throwing up our own lunches even when our children have just gotten rid of theirs. It's a smelly job, but somebody has got to do it.