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I had a wonderful motherhood moment the other day, the kind of thing you hesitantly confess to during a baby shower. The expectant mother laughs good naturedly, but you quickly realize she's thinking...what a psycho, I will not be that mother! Sadly, I never thought so either. Really, it's quite amazing our children make it to adulthood with us mothers around. Or perhaps it's just my children.

Now, when people ask, "What's your worst parenting moment?" I can ditch my old stories.

All I ever wanted was a smoothie. And as usual, it was a hurry hurry early morning. And dear husband was gone. He had flown to Baltimore, had just called to tell me all about his morning run past the White House, Smithsonian, war memorials, a few members of Congress who were still not balancing the budget, past the Lincoln Memorial to do a few fist pumps. Hmff.

I, however, was having my own morning run. Fist pumps included. The same run most mothers have between the hours of 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. It is the one that looks like dear mother shaking shoulders, turning on bedroom lights, singing annoying good morning sunshine songs, putting cold hands on warm stomachs (it works well). And then down the stairs to stumble around, letting the dog out, making lunches and snacks, finding papers you never signed, calling up the stairs (no yelling!), calling down the stairs (yelling!), hurry up, let's eat, bags packed, hair combed, backpacks found, shoes, underwear, feeding dog. ...Yes, it was that kind of morning run, not the serene one outside by myself.

Life would be much better with the smoothie; it always is. So I grabbed all the fixings for a top-notch special: lime, beet, carrot, apples, pear, spinach, avocado, strawberries.

From the fridge I also grabbed a small glass cup of smoothie left over from the previous day when some sneaky child had put it in the fridge for "later." I dumped it in the Vitamix and left it there to drain, to save every last nutritious drop.

To multitask I filled the sink with soapy water (yea, the dishwasher is broken AGAIN!!!), called up the stairs a few more times, told Paige that school really was fun, she just needs to find the fun, and please don't cry because it was going to be such a fabulous day!

I peeled the carrot and the beet and threw them in the Vitamix, added everything else and finally, turned it on. Crunch, crunch went the frozen vegetables; whir, whir went all the fresh fruits. For some added benefit I added chia and flax seeds. In less than a minute, we had smoothie-liscious.

I pulled out the five glasses, filled them to the top, and told the kids to chug it quickly before the train pulled out.

Nelson gulped first. "Mom, I think you added too many chia seeds." He licked his lips, made an incredulous face.

"Drink it," I said. Don't even think about foolin' this Mama. She's on to you and your crying wolf ways: "Mom, this milk doesn't taste right - it's spoiled!" they say almost daily, after they've left it too long and it's grown slightly warm.

There was that one time it really had spoiled and I had made them drink it anyway, before actually tasting it. Ooopsy.

Anyway, Nellie did what a good Nellie boy does and chugged his smoothie down.

Brynne was doing her hair in the bathroom so I brought her smoothie in and told her to drink up. "Hmmm," she said, taking a drink. This is Brynne language for: some concoctions are just better than others.

I went back into the kitchen and took a large slurp from my large glass. Yum! Pause. Hmmm. There was definitely something a little off about this smoothie. It tasted...gritty. It felt like I was actually chewing on tiny little pieces of something. It tasted like...ocean sand. Like...glass. My eye caught the sink.

The last 10 minutes of my life flashed before me.

With horror I realized there was no small smoothie glass cup from the day before, sitting in the sink waiting to be washed. I suddenly recalled how I had started the morning smoothie: By putting the small glass cup INSIDE the Vitamix to drain.

And had never taken it back out!

I ran to the bathroom and lifted the glass out of Brynne's hand. "You don't have to drink this," I said.

"Why not?"

"Um." At this point I should have changed the subject, but the truth was just too delightful.

"Well...I accidentally put a glass cup in it." Why I divulged this information I do not know.

"Nelson!" Brynne, the loudest child in the world, yelled. "Mom put a glass cup in the smoothie!"

Nelson looked at me and back to his empty cup. "So I just drank glass?"

"Yep, I think you did, buddy."

"Great, mom. I'm going to die of internal bleeding." Please not today. We have our last soccer game under the lights tonight...it'd be real inconvenient....

"Let's go to school!" I said briskly.

While they found shoes and talked about drinking glass, I dumped the entire, very large amount of smoothie outside on the overgrown lilies. Oh, it hurt. You know how I feel about my smoothies. It was a slow and painful death.

What a beautiful beet color it was...carrot, avocado, apples...all wasted...blended with ground glass. I also paused right there in the kitchen to stare at the Vitamix. What a marvel - in 60 seconds a glass cup was pulverized!

Off to school we went. And then worry began to attack. My cheeks began to burn, my heart began to pound. It is a common technique in mystery novels to poison your guests with ground glass. Shards are far too noticeable and cut your throat and esophagus to pieces. Ground glass, however, is undetectable. By the time we arrived at school I was having a full-blown panic attack.

I said a hasty good-bye (school is FUN, Paige, it's FUN! Find the FUN today!), wondering if this was the last time I would ever see them walking around like normal children should. I suddenly loved them even more. I especially watched Nelson walk away. He was the only one who had drank the entire smoothie. Was he going to keel over at any moment? What would husband say?

Should I go in and talk to the nurse? But how would I even start to explain? Hi, I just fed my son ground glass, is that okay? Like a coward I raced home, trying to comfort self that the glass had been spread amongst a large vat. He couldn't have gotten very much. Run, Mama, run - find that Google search to exonerate self!

I found a blog post recounting how one boy's mother had a mean neighbor who poisoned their pet dog with ground glass. They came home to find their sweet puppy dead, foaming at the mouth. This was incredibly unhelpful.

Then I found a snopes article explaining the origins of ground glass as a poison. Crush into fine powder, surreptitiously add it to something your victim will ingest and then watch your victim fall to the floor, writhing in agony. I could totally see Nelson doing this at school. I about pulled my hair out.

I began to recall all the accidents harried mothers had. My mother had always been so sure to tell me about these incidents - toddlers drowning in toilets, mothers leaving infants strapped into car seats in hot cars, mothers reaching into the backseat, turning their head for just a second - oh, I've heard them all. And all of them were accidents. Nonetheless, they were mothers who had just been too harried and busy.

Snopes quickly got to the point, thankfully, before I was fully hyperventilating and breathing into a brown paper bag. Fact or Myth: Ground glass is a poison. Verdict: Myth. Other quick Internet searches confirmed the same until I was finally breathing without the bag.

I watched the children carefully the next few days, especially Nelson, who, except for his normal moodiness, seems to not be suffering from glass poisoning.

I swear, I was just trying to make a healthy smoothie.

So, I have been an especially attentive mother ever since. I'm sure I will grow weary of such attentiveness. But for now, eyes are on the road. We are NOT in a hurry. We drink only cold milk. Floss? Check. No glass in smoothies. Crisis averted. For now.

- Amy Makechnie

Amy Makechnie is a freelance writer, sports nutrition consultant and the mother of four children who she tries to keep alive with nutritious vegetable smoothies. More of her amazing mothering skills can be found on her blog, Maisymak. She is in the querying stage of her first novel and collecting fabulous rejection letters for her thick rejection letter scrapbook. "It's really lovely," she quips.