Freakin' Mom

My daughter turned to me yesterday and said, "You're a freakin' mom."

"Did you just say I was a 'freakin' mom'?" I asked her.

"Uh huh."

What do you say to that? I looked at my husband and we just tried to stifle our giggles. I told her that wasn't really a nice thing to say, dropped the subject, and haven't heard the word since.

I'm usually a pretty laid back mom, but I did witness a freakin' mom the other day. One of my dogs was sniffing around a thicket on the far side of our yard. I heard a bird going completely nuts. It turned out that my dog was sniffing around under a nest that's only about 3 ft / 1m above ground, and a mama robin was (understandably) freaking out about it. I took a tiny peek into the nest and saw one tiny little thing in there breathing, and it looked like it had recently hatched. I scampered out of there and called the dog off.

I've checked on the nest every few days. Turns out there are four chicks. This is the best shot I've been able to get; the mother and father robin spend much of their time now away from the nest looking for food for the chicks, but they get pretty worked up if they catch us near the thicket. I've even seen the mother dive-bomb my dogs. Now that's some freakin' mom.