Things Mothers know

• How to reassemble a transformer back into a car, while in a car on a bendy road, in the dark.
• What "that thing over there" is.
• That a pain in your tummy or unexplained general grumpiness can be solved by going to the toilet.
• The plot to way too many random kids movies.
• The answer to every question your child can think of (or so they seem to think).
• Allowing your children to pick out their own clothes unsupervised can lead to some "interesting" fashion choices (did you get dressed in the dark?) but hey, they have clothes on and sometimes winning that battle is enough for one day.
• Shoveling Weetabix into a child who has come home from a birthday party three parts exhausted, one part wired, with no interest in dinner/listening/not turning into a well fed gremlin, may just be the sugar antidote that pulls them back from the "I'm so tired I can't even cope with being upright" edge they are so perilously close to tipping over.
• Distraction and bribery may not be mentioned much in parenting books but like the best kept dirty little secrets, everyone's had a go in times of desperation.
• Everyone gets a turn to be the mum with the great hair and the stylish outfit and the really well behaved, polite children but today is not your day and tomorrow's not looking likely either.

For the definitive list of things Mothers know, check out Isn't it well for ye? the book of Irish Mammies.  You'll crack up laughing till the day you hear yourself saying one of these gems and you realise you have turned into your Mam and your Granny and probably her Granny before her.  Don't worry though, sure isn't there great drying out?