Parenting can be a complicated gig at times. We know as parents the exhausting moments, the funny moments, the amazing precious moments, the proud moments and so on – but do you ever catch yourself doing something as a parent and think “how did it get to this?” Or, “what on earth am I doing?” – you know the times you step outside of yourself and catch yourself doing something down right bonkers!

This week my youngest picked up an acorn outside playgroup. It wasn’t just any old acorn, it was the shiniest acorn in the car park. I was duly instructed by my toddler to keep the acorn safe because it was for daddy.

I lost the acorn.

Don’t ask me how as I thought I had it in my pocket.

I kid you not, I spent 15 minutes looking for a suitable replacement. 15 minutes of my life looking for a damn acorn!

Over the years I’ve done some totally crazy things in the name of parenting. We do don’t we? We find ourselves in these situations ALL THE TIME- as if being a parent wasn’t hard enough.

In the hope of highlighting that we are all guilty of these crazy moments (and it’s not just me that’s a little bit bonkers), I spoke to some others parents about some of the ridiculous moments they’ve found themselves in since becoming a parent.

Fortunately there were PLENTY!

Erica from The Little Bargain Hunter found herself in a tricky situation over jelly shoes, it went like this:  “I once spent a good 15 minutes trying to reason with my toddler about jelly shoes. She wanted to wear them for nursery – it was raining. Long story short – she ended up going into nursery in jelly shoes. It’s amazing how many mornings are spent trying to reason with a miniature version of yourself over things like that”.

I think lots of people can probably identify with this, I know I’ve had similar conversations with my children over the years, and once one of them insisted on wearing snow boots with shorts on a really hot day!

Laura from the very clever The Parent Poet told me she has a five-year-old daughter who is a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to colouring. “So she has a particular order that she likes all her colouring pens to be laid out in the case. My sister and nephews came to visit recently and had great fun doing some crafty bits with her – but left her colouring pens all over the shop. I spent far too much time after they’d left putting the lids back on properly and lining them up in the exact colour order that she likes as I knew she’d have a paddy if she saw how they’d left them! I’m a total loser for doing it but also love the fact that she’s so particular about things that she loves.” I think lots of us can get a bit OCD about things like this, so I can totally sympathise!

Lucy over at Me, Being Mummy, told me that her toddler is obsessed with rainbows. She said this means that “naturally… I am now obsessed with rainbows too. Or more obsessed with the joy they bring to his face. So much so, that we have doodles of rainbows covering the fridge, a crystal hanging in our kitchen window that projects them onto the walls and floor, as well as rainbow coloured sticky tape to wrap up presents. Not content with that, I found myself wondering how I could bring a rainbow to him, after several attempts to chase real ones up on the Sussex Downs failed. Cue myself sat typing into Google ‘rainbows for the home’ one evening and up popped a rainbow projector. So now, every night, Teddy has a rainbow on his ceiling as he falls asleep, and, when he’s done with it, I may have to nab it for myself!”

Brilliant – the lengths us parents will go to to make our children happy!

Jessica from the beautiful blog Nora and Co went above and beyond for her three year old, all over a wooden cat! She told me, “about two years ago now we headed to our local shopping centre really close to Christmas to gather our last minute bits. Our then three year old insisted on carrying a tiny three legged, wooden cat around the entire day. It never left her sight until we headed to a less than clean coffee shop toilet for an emergency toddler wee stop. About 10 minutes post wee, the toddler gave out an almighty scream when she realised her beloved wooden cat was missing. Much to my horror, the last time we had seen it was in the grotty toilets. We rushed back to discover poor kitty on the toilet floor. I tried to convince Nora that she really didn’t need the kitty and we could get another. Of course we couldn’t and I spent the next 10 minutes desperately trying to exterminate the toilet germs with copious amounts of hand wash and alcohol gel. Definitely a what is life moment!”

As parents, many of us will have had nightmare situations relating to our children (normally at the toddler stage) and the car. Anyone who frequently wrestles their toddlers into their car seats will know what I’m talking about, or indeed, anyone who is at that ‘delightful’ stage when your child insists on climbing into the car by themselves – especially on the days you are late.

Kim from Raising a Ragamuffin says that “everyday when I go to pick up my daughter from nursery I have to do two laps of the car with her before she’ll even consider getting into it! ” – we’ve all been there Kim! At the moment, our two youngest will only do things by their ages, so our four year old has to have everything in fours, whatever it is – so basically he’d want to do four laps of the car!

Emma, who writes at The Kingers & I knows all about the routines we find ourselves in with our children and she feels these can be really important.

Lyndsay-Rose who blogs at My Family of Roses, says her toddler is very particular about her things in her bedroom, “we can’t move a thing when our toddler daughter goes to bed. By thing I mean if she’s laid anything out in a particular way in her room, hallway or living room. She has this amazing ability to remember where everything she did before bed is and completely loses it if so much of a centimetre is changed in anyway. Yet her memory throughout the day is like a sieve!”

Nikki from Yorkshire Wonders sounds like she has a similar school run to me every morning, she told me, ” We live in the country. Every day we drive down the single track hill to school. Every day we see the same pheasant. (Now, you might already know that pheasants are spectacularly stupid).” – Something I can confirm from our experiences Nikki! –   “This pheasant felt constantly aggrieved that I should drive past the spot where he was strutting for the ladies and would chase alongside my car to show me who was boss. My children thought this pheasant was the most wonderful and hilarious thing in the world. All was well until one day I was driving down to school to collect them and I see the pheasant, lying dead in the road – he had clearly picked upon the wrong car to chase and it had been his undoing.

Now, I knew the children would be looking for the pheasant on the way home and would be devastated by his untimely demise. So – I stopped my car, gingerly approached my pheasant and (with my bare hands) picked him up by his feet and gently laid him to rest, hidden in the undergrowth. Now that – is a mother’s love!! Bugger me though, when we were driving home, there he was strutting his stuff as perky as anything, so it wasn’t my pheasant at all! I can imagine him watching me from the hedgerow laughing his little pheasanty face off!!” – This tale of Nikki’s had me in stitches because this is basically my life!

Donna, who writes at Bobsy’s Mum had to buy her son a very ‘different’ sort of gift. She said “I had to buy Michael a pumice stone from boots once because he was obsessed with dinosaurs and he’d been learning about volcanoes in the times of the dinosaurs. It was on a little string and he used to carry it around on his wrist and tell everyone Mummy had bought him a pumice stone” – I’m sure everyone thought you were super generous Donna!

We all go above and beyond when it comes to a lost toy don’t we? I always feel as though parents are really supportive of each other in these matters too. Many a time I have seen something shared hundreds of times on Facebook and when you look it’s a lost toy. Often, these children are then reunited with their favourite things as well.

Lucy, who writes at her self-titled blog Lucy Griffiths said, “My son is obsessed with his Thomas the Tank engine and carries it everywhere and sleeps with it, and wakes crying if it’s missing… after a tantrum in Tescos he LOST THOMAS!!! After much searching and multiple visits to the shop, and lots of 2 AM tears, we were desperate and so I tweeted the head office and low and behold, Thomas appeared!”

Poor Davina who writes over at Motherhood IRL, had a rather eventful conker hunting trip recently. She told me, “My mum and I took my boys conker hunting last weekend. This is what happened: Last year the husband and I discovered a brilliant conker hunting spot and we gathered so many that we filled two huge jars and they looked lovely on the mantelpiece at Christmas. So I suggested that we go there and pointed out the best spot to pull the car off the road.

I genuinely don’t know what she was thinking, but my mum decided that instead of just pulling onto the level ground at the side of the road she would drive further into the clearing, which is when the car hit a load of mud under the leaves and slid straight into a ditch, resulting in a much longer stay than we originally intended.

The first half hour was fine while I ran around with the boys stuffing our pockets full of conkers and my mum called her insurance company to sort out recovery. The half hour after that was spent trying to keep both boys entertained in the car and the longest and most frustrating game of I Spy ever.”

Some of the awkward parenting moments can come when your children say something you perhaps don’t expect them to. My children are well trained in total Mummy humiliation when out in public. Vicki at Mumma and Her Monsters knows all about this, she told me, “We were swimming the other week and all of a sudden my daughter shouts ‘a smartie’ I want one pointing at my nipple showing through the mesh topping of my bikini top. Now she keeps asking why I keep smarties down my top”.

As does Sarah, who writes at Mummy’s Whine Club. “Quite a while ago just as my first boy was beginning to speak we were facing our weekly visit to the soft play. Dada was his new word. I blushed a lot that day when my boy picked out the ‘Hot Daddy’ in the play area and spent most of the time at the guys feet holding his arms up calling him Dada!” – at least he picked the hot one!

The lovely Kristie from Mammaprada was getting changed in front of her two year old recently when she piped up “When I’m big I want to have boobies too…. and pocket money” – well it’s good to know she’s got her priorities sorted out Kristie!

Carol from Virtually All Sorts, had a similar experience to my acorn. She told me, “When our daughter was in a buggy she found a special daisy with purple tinged petals, called it ‘pink’ and it was of course mislaid (just like the acorn!). Got home and gave hubby strict instructions not to move/chuck! It was all she wanted and I’ve never forgotten the frantic search for it!” – I totally sympathise, this happens all the time with daisies in our house!

Danielle, who writes about having four children under five over at Happy With Chaos told me about the time she broke her daughter’s heart when she literally decapitated her best friend, a doll who was a bit creepy!  After spending time trying to fix this doll, she went to plan B and went hunting for a new one – the transition was not especially smooth. You can read the full story on her blog.

Sarah, who blogs at Be Your Own Example told me about her son’s “obsession” with construction vehicles. She said, “On our route home from school we passed a team resurfacing the road. He made me stand there for 15 minutes to watch them rolling out fresh tar. I’m sure by their awkward looks the guys weren’t keen on such an attentive audience. He has also been staring out the team who are laying new driveways for what seems like every house on our street. One of the guys finally caved in and let him sit in the cab of his digger last week. Probably against health and safety but he must have hoped it would get rid of their little stalker.”

Renee, who blogs at Close Enough To Kiss, told me about the time she got a little mixed up with the days. “Like most mum’s I get mixed up with what day of the week it is, days often merge into each other and this particular day was no exception. The alarm went off as it always did and we got up, dressed and ate breakfast as normal. There was the normal fight to get shoes on in time, but we were out of the door a surprising 5 minutes ahead of time. As we walked up the road something was wrong, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, but something was ‘off’. The shops were beginning to open and there was people walking about like normal, I must be imagining it. As we got closer to the school I noticed a lack of parent and kids, that’s strange I thought, I must be earlier than I imagined. It only became obvious as I neared the school that all the gates were closed.

Was it a day off and I didn’t get the letter? Or perhaps there was a school flood or some other equally as random disaster and it was closed? I had no idea. So, we turned around with me scratching my head wondering what was going on and headed off home. We got back indoors and I rang my friend, enquiring what had happened as the school was closed. I was met with shrieks of laughter, unbidden howls down the phone. What? I thought, what was so funny? After what seemed to be 5 minutes of constant laughter my friend replied. “It’s Saturday”! Yup, I had gotten up forgetting what day of the week it was and went to school on a Saturday. I don’t think I will ever live that one down! ”

Has anyone else ever done this?

We’d love you to share some of your ridiculous parenting moments and make us all feel better.