Traditions or My Accomplishment

I love chatting with my mum. She gives me great advice and lets me talk nonsense to her for as long as I like. I tend to give mum long drawn out versions of what I write in this blog PLUS more. So when she stops her life for the half hour it takes for me to verbalise all what is going on in my head, it makes me love her more.

I called mum the other day to ask her what she thought is an accomplished woman. I want to get a head start on being one myself. I'm really eager to look back on my life without regret. After some discussion and dissection of mum's life (up until now), mum made quite a poignant statement. She said "my accomplishment is my children."

Now, I've heard this statement from many women before and never has it had such an effect on me. My mum is an educated, bright woman who went on a mission before getting married in her late twenties. From my early twenties I just assumed she had tolerated having children (because that is how I thought I'd feel).

From that simple statement, it seems I have had a weight lifted from me. I realised that I don't need to have a highly successful career or become a phd student in genetics to be accomplished. In fact I don't even need to be the BEST at anything.... I could devote my entire life to raising my children and be content at the end of life knowing that I had achieved the ultimate - happy, successful children.

sooo.... the reason I started this post was to ask for ideas for traditions. Mum suggested that I start a few of my own for my children.... and I need some ideas to get started. What are your traditions?

This is my accomplishment, eating her toes