Any Mom can feel guilty for the regular stuff: working too much, not slaving over a hot stove to have a sit down dinner waiting for her family, losing her temper and flying off of the handle over molehills.

In addition to those run-of-the-mill guilt inducers, I am sorry to my daughter for other things. Things that families do in the privacy of their own homes and until the light of the real world shines in on their oddities, they don’t realize how weird they are.

So, I have created a list of some of the things that I feel that I may owe an apology to my daughter for.

**Chickpeas, almonds, Halos, broccoli, and grilled cheese does not a normal dinner make. But in our house, that a pretty typical meal. I’m sorry for the day that you go to a friend’s house and are completely perplexed by the fact that you are looking at pork chops, asparagus, and mashed potatoes on your plate. And like, gravy, or some other such normal thing.

**I am sorry for my non-stop singing. This includes singing lots of made up songs that you probably don’t know are made up and I’m probably not aware that I’m singing. It was never clearer to me that I owed you an apology until I heard you walking up the stairs to your room the other day singing “may the force be with you” to the tune of “Rhinestone Cowboy”. That is not a real song. And now you probably think it is. Please don’t sing it at school.

**I’m sorry that I’ve always called it poultry or beef. I’m not ready to explain yet. This is going to be a heartbreaker. Remember when we were standing in the meat section at the grocery store and you asked a question about meat and I said that it was chicken that we were looking at and you laughed and thought I was being funny? Sigh.

**Oh, and I’m sorry for always blaming you for when we run late. Truth is, you totally get sidetracked, dawdle, and dick around when we need to be somewhere on time, but while I’m giving you a hard time for not having your shoes on and being ready, I am using that time to try and make my hair look less hideous, check my phone, or change my outfit. In other words, I am also sidetracked, dawdling, and dicking around. Oh well, the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree I guess.

**I don’t know if fork feeding your 5-year-old dinner because she won’t stop talking and we were already supposed to have been bathed and pajama-ed up does any permanent damage, but I am going to apologize in advance if it does.

**Sorry I’m such an old mom. As your sweet Gramma would say, Mommy is a “late bloomer” — a nice way of saying it took me extra long to get my shit together. Don’t worry, I fully intend to exercise and keep moving so that I can play with you for as long as possible before our idea of spending time together is you pushing my wheelchair around Shady Acres.

Well, there it is. A short list of the things that may cause you long term damage, or at the very least, short term embarrassment.