Round of Applause

To the mom making creative Pinterest valentines, I applaud you.  I applaud you because either you have a cooperative child who is happy to spend the time tying, cutting and gluing.  Or I applaud you because you have children like mine who you struggle to get to sign their names to their valentines and you STILL spent the extra time to work on the valentines without their assistance.  Either way, you deserve a hearty pat on the back.

Sure, I’d love my children to be invested in the valentines they give out to their peers. Sure, I’d like to spend my time with them working on arts and crafts other than the countless other chores (driving here and there, doing homework or so caught up in our routine). My applause strictly comes from a place of appreciation for being able to pull that off. I’m completely confident in the store bought cheesy valentines my children will be showing up with.

I used to think that you could look at families and instantly and be able to tell who has their acts together. The ones that show up nicely dressed, hair combed and ready for whatever task their up against was a sign of a mother who has her head on straight. Then Drew decided to wear the same jersey for the entire 3 year old year. I conceded to the fact that I have a girl and that was most definitely not the hill I wanted to die on.

Yesterday my daughter showed up to school looking like a Mormon Fundamentalist. I realize that this may sound offensive to any Mormon Fundamentalists reading this but I’m pretty confident there aren’t any. If you are, I apologize but I will let you be the judge of this…

All she’s missing is the bubble in the front of her hair.

The truth is that I have spent probably the last two years fighting with her about what she will wear. I can’t get over that overwhelming sound in the back of my mind that the families that look put together, probably are! Then I remember that you all read my blogs so who am I kidding?! It doesn’t matter if Gabby shows up looking like a Fundamentalist or a glam girl, I still don’t have my act together so who am I fooling?

If I stayed up until midnight Pinteresting the heck out of those valentines, would the parents look at their kids bags and say that I, the mother of these weird dressing kids, have my act together?!?! That’s the only reason I would want to spend the time and energy having my kids show up with creative valentines. So what’s the point? Unless they (my kids) are ready to “dress the part” of having our acts together…what’s the point of the show?

So I applaud anyone who has a kid that wears what you lay out for them in the morning. I applaud the mothers who can put their daughters’ hair back in a pretty bow. I applaud the mothers who walk out into the world and give off the image that everything is all hunkey dory. My life is not hunkey dory which is quite evident in their clothes, as well as their valentines. Oh well!