The following post contains what has come to be known as a Momocrite Moment. If you are offended by hypocrisy and faulty mothering, please read no further.

"So I can have my cookies before lunch today?" Crabtot asks, confused when I hand her a couple of vanilla wafers to distract her from something else. "Is it a special occasion?"

Consistency. Every mom knows that's the biggie. The numero uno. The scaffolding that supports all the rest of your parenting skills.

But consistency is for losers. At least that's what I feel today. Because like all moms (honest ones, at least), I may cleave to consistency but I do so inconsistently. Which is to say I try and I try and I try, and then sometimes I just, you know, don't. So when I don't, then I have to come up with excuses for my inconsistent behavior. Consistent excuses, that is. Ones that make sense. Like "special occasion" for small treats or privileges not usually extended but somehow deemed necessary to get through that particular day. And I tell ya, special occasions are happening an awful lot at our house at the moment. Because I'm lazy, tired, and a little bit at my wits' end this month.

When I first started mommyhood I was an absolute slave to consistency. Especially in matters of sleep. I had my sleep-training bible, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth, and I believed in every single line of that rigid and exacting technique (except that one curious sidebar in which after teaching you to be the most insanely consistent human alive he says, mysteriously, something like "remember: flexibility is good"). Weissbluth's methods are complex and strict indeed, but they work. And implementing them was something I did oh-so-diligently in year one of my child's life. God help the Crabfamily if Crabtot wasn't in bed by sundown and put down exactly as the book stipulates! And even while I pretended to understand when fellow moms told me the book "didn't work" for them, in the back of my mind my judgmental mommy voice piped up "It doesn't work because you're not being consistent."

These days I find myself caving more, giving in to my inconsistent side. And I feel bad for sending mixed messages to my child. But apparently I don't feel bad enough. It's just that being "on" as a mom is too much work sometimes, ya know? Which is why I have decided to let Crabtot eat as much sugar as she likes, stay up until 11pm if she wants to, and run around parking lots. I'm not saying I do let her do these things all the time. I mean, that would be way too much for a three year old! But some days I just let it all fall apart around me.

Okay, so some of you have have a bee in your bonnet over the above paragraph. Run around in parking lots? Whaa? Relax in your slacks! It's a JOKE. Would Crabmommy be Crabmommy without a spot of irony now and again? I have to have some consistency in my life, people!

In all seriousness, though, I have come to see that maintaining rules (even and especially your own) is perhaps the hardest part of motherhood. There's picking the child up and going straight home as threatened after that very first tantrum in the park. There's the actually following through and not allowing a scheduled play-date as forewarned if said Crabtot sticks her tongue out at Mommy one more time. Yes, I've learned to confine my punishments to that which I would actually follow through on, but sometimes your brain just doesn't work that fast. Sometimes you say something and you don't follow through at all, and it may just be a little tiny thing but it looms large in your head because you are Consistent.

And so I give up my Consistency Queen Crown. It's too hard to live up to the absolute. The only consistent thing about me? That I am inconsistent (sometimes). Therefore do I say unto you: consistency is for losers. Because whenever I'm not doing something well as a mother I have to find the positive in the negative in my momocrite way. Maybe it's consistency that is, after all, the hobgoblin of small minds, as the saying goes. If we are consistent we teach our kids that life is always reliably logical and makes sense and is fair, and we know that's not true. Inconsistency: It's the spirit of spontaneity! It's human and therefore humane; it's imprecise and surprising, which makes it real and true to life.

Okay, so maybe that's a bunch of hooey. But doesn't it sound good?

What about you? Consistently inconsistent too? Please say it's true!

**On another note, stop by my personal blog later this week for a swagtastic giveaway involving handknitted, ethically-made cotton baby sweaters from Totoknits of Kenya. Fa-bu-lous.